The Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland, 1609-10 | Page 7

resources absolutely, although not
relatively, than the Seven Provinces, while at least trebling them in
population. The yearly revenue of Spain after deduction of its pledged
resources was perhaps equal to a million sterling, and that of France
with the same reservation was about as much. England had hardly been
able to levy and make up a yearly income of more than L600,000 or
L700,000 at the end of Elizabeth's reign or in the first years of James,
while the Netherlands had often proved themselves capable of
furnishing annually ten or twelve millions of florins, which would be
the equivalent of nearly a million sterling.
The yearly revenues of the whole monarchy of the Imperial house of
Habsburg can scarcely be stated at a higher figure than L350,000.
Thus the political game--for it was a game--was by no means a
desperate one for the Netherlands, nor the resources of the various
players so unequally distributed as at first sight it might appear.
The emancipation of the Provinces from the grasp of Spain and the
establishment by them of a commonwealth, for that epoch a very free
one, and which contained within itself the germs of a larger liberty,
religious, political, and commercial, than had yet been known, was
already one of the most considerable results of the Reformation. The
probability of its continued and independent existence was hardly
believed in by potentate or statesman outside its own borders, and had
not been very long a decided article of faith even within them. The
knotty problem of an acknowledgment of that existence, the admission
of the new-born state into the family of nations, and a temporary peace
guaranteed by two great powers, had at last been solved mainly by the
genius of Barneveld working amid many disadvantages and against
great obstructions. The truce had been made, and it now needed all the
skill, coolness, and courage of a practical and original statesman to

conduct the affairs of the Confederacy. The troubled epoch of peace
was even now heaving with warlike emotions, and was hardly less
stormy than the war which had just been suspended.
The Republic was like a raft loosely strung together, floating almost on
a level of the ocean, and often half submerged, but freighted with
inestimable treasures for itself and the world. It needed an unsleeping
eye and a powerful brain to conduct her over the quicksands and
through the whirlpools of an unmapped and intricate course.
The sovereignty of the country so far as its nature could be
satisfactorily analysed seemed to be scattered through, and inherent in
each one of, the multitudinous boards of magistracy--close corporations,
self-elected--by which every city was governed. Nothing could be more
preposterous. Practically, however, these boards were represented by
deputies in each of the seven provincial assemblies, and these again
sent councillors from among their number to the general assembly
which was that of their High Mightinesses the Lords States-General.
The Province of Holland, being richer and more powerful than all its
six sisters combined, was not unwilling to impose a supremacy which
on the whole was practically conceded by the rest. Thus the Union of
Utrecht established in 1579 was maintained for want of anything better
as the foundation of the Commonwealth.
The Advocate and Keeper of the Great Seal of that province was
therefore virtually prime minister, president, attorney-general, finance
minister, and minister of foreign affairs of the whole republic. This was
Barneveld's position. He took the lead in the deliberations both of the
States of Holland and the States-General, moved resolutions, advocated
great measures of state, gave heed to their execution, collected the
votes, summed up the proceedings, corresponded with and instructed
ambassadors, received and negotiated with foreign ministers, besides
directing and holding in his hands the various threads of the home
policy and the rapidly growing colonial system of the Republic.
All this work Barneveld had been doing for thirty years.
The Reformation was by no mans assured even in the lands where it
had at first made the most essential progress. But the existence of the
new commonwealth depended on the success of that great movement
which had called it into being. Losing ground in France, fluctuating in
England, Protestantism was apparently more triumphant in vast

territories where the ancient Church was one day to recover its mastery.
Of the population of Bohemia, there were perhaps ten Protestants to
one Papist, while in the United Netherlands at least one-third of the
people were still attached to the Catholic faith.
The great religious struggle in Bohemia and other dominions of the
Habsburg family was fast leading to a war of which no man could even
imagine the horrors or foresee the vast extent. The Catholic League and
the Protestant Union were slowly arranging Europe into two mighty
confederacies.
They