No nation is more interested than England in the examination of all that concerns this remote corner of Europe, so resolute in its opposition to both civil and religious tyranny; for it was there that those Saxon institutions and principles were first developed without constraint, while the time of their establishment in England was still distant.  Restrained by our narrow limits, we can merely indicate this curious state of things; nor may we enter on many mysteries of social government which the most learned find a difficulty in solving.  What were the rights of the nobles in their connection with these freemen?  What ties of reciprocal interest bound the different cantons to each other?  What were the privileges of the towns?—­These are the minute but important points of detail which are overshadowed by the grand and imposing figure of the national independence.  But in fact the emperors themselves, in these distant times, had little knowledge of this province, and spoke of it vaguely, and as it were at random, in their diplomas, the chief monuments of the history of the Middle Ages.  The counts of Holland and the apostolic nuncios addressed their acts and rescripts indiscriminately to the nobles, clergy, magistrates, judges, consuls, or commons of Friesland.  Sometimes appeared in those documents the vague and imposing title of “the great Frison,” applied to some popular leader.  All this confusion tends to prove, on the authority of the historians of the epoch, and the charters so carefully collected by the learned, that this question, now so impossible to solve, was even then not rightly understood—­what were really those fierce and redoubtable Frisons in their popular and political relations?  The fact is, that liberty was a matter so difficult to be comprehended by the writers of those times that Froissart gave as his opinion, about the year 1380, that the Frisons were a most unreasonable race, for not recognizing the authority and power of the great lords.

The eleventh century had been for the Netherlands (with the exception of Friesland and Flanders) an epoch of organization; and had nearly fixed the political existence of the provinces, which were so long confounded in the vast possessions of the empire.  It is therefore important to ascertain under what influence and on what basis these provinces became consolidated at that period.  Holland and Zealand, animated by the spirit which we may fairly distinguish under the mingled title of Saxon and maritime, countries scarcely accessible, and with a vigorous population, possessed, in the descendants of Thierry I., a race of national chieftains who did not attempt despotic rule over so unconquerable a people.  In Brabant, the maritime towns of Berg-op-Zoom and Antwerp formed, in the Flemish style, so many republics, small but not insignificant; while the southern parts of the province were under the sway of a nobility who crushed, trampled on, or sold their vassals at their pleasure or caprice.