History of the United Netherlands, 1608b | Page 7

adherents by public appeals and private conversation to defeat all
schemes of truce. The people were stirred by the eloquence of the two
stadholders. They were stung to fury against Spain and against

Barneveld by the waspish effusions of the daily press. The magistrates
remained calm, and took part by considerable majorities with
Barneveld. That statesman, while exercising almost autocratic influence
in the estates, became more and more odious to the humbler classes, to
the Nassaus, and especially to the Calvinist clergy. He was denounced,
as a papist, an atheist, a traitor, because striving for an honourable
peace with the foe, and because admitting the possibility of more than
one road to the kingdom of Heaven. To doubt the infallibility of Calvin
was as heinous a crime, in the eyes of his accusers, as to kneel to the
host. Peter Titelmann, half a century earlier, dripping with the blood of
a thousand martyrs, seemed hardly a more loathsome object to all
Netherlanders than the Advocate now appeared to his political enemies,
thus daring to preach religious toleration, and boasting of, humble
ignorance as the safest creed. Alas! we must always have something to
persecute, and individual man is never so convinced of his own wisdom
as when dealing with subjects beyond human comprehension.
Unfortunately, however, while the great Advocate was clear in his
conscience he had scarcely clean hands. He had very recently accepted
a present of twenty thousand florins from the King of France. That this
was a bribe by which his services were to be purchased for a cause not
in harmony with his own convictions it would be unjust to say. We of a
later generation, who have had the advantage of looking through the
portfolio of President Jeannin, and of learning the secret intentions of
that diplomatist and of his master, can fully understand however that
there was more than sufficient cause at the time for suspecting the
purity of the great Advocate's conduct. We are perfectly aware that the
secret instructions of Henry gave his plenipotentiaries almost unlimited
power to buy up as many influential personages in the Netherlands as
could be purchased. So they would assist in making the king master of
the United Provinces at the proper moment there was scarcely any price
that he was not willing to pay.
Especially Prince Maurice, his cousin, and the Advocate of Holland,
were to be secured by life pensions, property, offices, and dignities, all
which Jeannin might offer to an almost unlimited amount, if by such
means those great personages could possibly be induced to perform the
king's work.
There is no record that the president ever held out such baits at this

epoch to the prince. There could never be a doubt however in any one's
mind that if the political chief of the Orange-Nassau house ever wished
to make himself the instrument by which France should supplant Spain
in the tyranny of the Netherlands, he might always name his own price.
Jeannin never insulted him with any such trading propositions. As for
Barneveld, he avowed long years afterwards that he had accepted the
twenty thousand florins, and that the king had expressly exacted
secrecy in regard to the transaction. He declared however that the
money was a reward for public services rendered by him to the French
Government ten years before, in the course of his mission to France at
the time of the peace of Vervins. The reward had been promised in
1598, and the pledge was fulfilled in 1608. In accepting wages fairly
earned, however, he protested that he had bound himself to no
dishonourable service, and that he had never exchanged a word with
Jeannin or with any man in regard to securing for Henry the
sovereignty of the Netherlands.
His friends moreover maintained in his defence that there were no laws
in the Netherlands forbidding citizens to accept presents or pensions
from foreign powers. Such an excuse was as bad as the accusation.
Woe to the republic whose citizens require laws to prevent them from
becoming stipendiaries of foreign potentates! If public virtue, the only
foundation of republican institutions, be so far washed away that laws
in this regard are necessary to save it from complete destruction, then
already the republic is impossible. Many who bore illustrious names,
and occupied the highest social positions at, that day in France,
England, and the obedient provinces, were as venal as cattle at a fair.
Philip and Henry had bought them over and over again, whenever
either was rich enough to purchase and strong enough to enforce the
terms of sale. Bribes were taken with both hands in overflowing
measure; the difficulty was only in obtaining the work for the wage.
But it would have been humiliating beyond expression had the new
commonwealth, after