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The return of Carleton from England, where he had gone to receive the more positive promises of support from King James, was only wanting, to decide Maurice to take the final step; and no sooner did the ambassador arrive at The Hague than Barneveldt and his most able friends, Grotius, Hoogerbeets, and Ledenberg, were arrested in the name of the states-general.
The whole strength of the intellects which had long been engaged in the conflict for national and religious liberty, was now directed to metaphysical theology, and wasted upon interminable disputes about predestination and grace. Barneveldt enrolled himself among the partisans of Arminius; Maurice became a Gomarist.
Verreiken, a councillor of state, who assisted Neyen in his diplomatic labors, was formally summoned before the assembled states-general, and there Barneveldt handed to him the diamond and the bond; and at the same time read him a lecture of true republican severity on the subject.
He even undertook to obtain Maurice's consent to the armistice. The prince listened to his arguments, and was apparently convinced by them. He, at any rate, sanctioned the proposal; but he afterward complained that Barneveldt had deceived him, in representing the negotiation as a feint for the purpose of persuading the kings of France and England to give greater aid to the republic.
From personal regard to Barneveldt, and with a view of terminating the discord, the monarch sent an ambassador extraordinary to the United States, and ordered him to join Du Maurier, his ambassador in ordinary, in soliciting them in favour of the accused, and in labouring to restore the public tranquillity. The ambassadors executed their commission with the greatest zeal.
The names of William the Silent, Barneveldt, Arminius, Rembrandt, Rubens, Hobbema, Grotius, De Ruyter, Erasmus, Ruysdael, Daendels, Van Speijk, Tromp afford proof of the pertinacity, courage, and devotion of Netherland's sons in the great movements which have sprung from her soil.
The president Richardst was, with Neyen and Verreiken, ambassador from the archdukes; but Barneveldt and Jeannin appear to have played the chief parts in the important transaction which now filled all Europe with anxiety. Every state was more or less concerned in the result; and the three great monarchies of England, France, and Spain, had all a vital interest at stake.
Uitenbogaard, the enlightened pastor and friend of Maurice, who on all occasions labored for the general good, now moderated, as much as possible, the violence of either party; but he could not persuade Barneveldt to render himself, by compliance, a tacit accomplice with a measure that he conceived fraught with violence to the public privileges.
Though it was the residence of the stadtholders in former times, it was only a small village, and its notable features are of modern origin. Barneveldt was executed and the De Witts murdered here. The Picture Gallery and the Museum were specially opened for the young Americans.
To be a citizen of a great and growing state, or to belong to one of the dominant races of the world, is no doubt a legitimate source of patriotic pride, though there is perhaps an equal justification for such a feeling in being a citizen of a tiny state like Holland, which, in spite of its small dimensions, has nevertheless achieved so much, fighting at one time the battle of freedom for the world, producing statesmen like William and Barneveldt, generals like Maurice, scholars like Erasmus and Grotius, and thinkers like Spinoza, and taking the lead even to-day in the study of Christianity and in the interpretation of the Bible.
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