Thus it will be observed that Lord Buckhurst—­while doing his best to conciliate personal feuds and heart-burnings—­had done full justice to the merits of Leicester, and had placed in strongest light the favours conferred by her Majesty.

He then proceeded to Utrecht, where he was received with many demonstrations of respect, “with solemn speeches” from magistrates and burgher-captains, with military processions, and with great banquets, which were, however, conducted with decorum, and at which even Count Moeurs excited universal astonishment by his sobriety.  It was difficult, however, for matters to go very smoothly, except upon the surface.  What could be more disastrous than for a little commonwealth—­a mere handful of people, like these Netherlanders, engaged in mortal combat with the most powerful monarch in the world, and with the first general of the age, within a league of their borders—­thus to be deprived of all organized government at a most critical moment, and to be left to wrangle with their allies and among themselves, as to the form of polity to be adopted, while waiting the pleasure of a capricious and despotic woman?

And the very foundation of the authority by which the Spanish yoke had been abjured, the sovereignty offered to Elizabeth, and the government-general conferred on Leicester, was fiercely assailed by the confidential agents of Elizabeth herself.  The dispute went into the very depths of the social contract.  Already Wilkes, standing up stoutly for the democratic views of the governor, who was so foully to requite him, had assured the English government that the “people were ready to cut the throats” of the Staten-General at any convenient moment.  The sovereign people, not the deputies, were alone to be heeded, he said, and although he never informed the world by what process he had learned the deliberate opinion of that sovereign, as there had been no assembly excepting those of the States-General and States-Provincial—­he was none the less fully satisfied that the people were all with Leicester, and bitterly opposed to the States.

“For the sovereignty, or supreme authority,” said he, through failure of a legitimate prince, belongs to the people, and not to you, gentlemen, who are only servants, ministers, and deputies of the people.  You have your commissions or instructions surrounded by limitations—­which conditions are so widely different from the power of sovereignty, as the might of the subject is in regard to his prince, or of a servant in, respect to his master.  For sovereignty is not limited either as to power or as to time.  Still less do you represent the sovereignty; for the people, in giving the general and absolute government to the Earl of Leicester, have conferred upon him at once the exercise of justice, the administration of polity, of naval affairs, of war, and of all the other points of sovereignty.  Of these a governor-general is however only the depositary or guardian, until