except by the representative body—­which forbade intermeddling on the part of the sovereign with the conscience of the subject in religious matters—­when such laws had been subverted by blood tribunals, where drowsy judges sentenced thousands to stake and scaffold without a hearing by excommunication, confiscation, banishment-by hanging, beheading, burning, to such enormous extent and with such terrible monotony that the executioner’s sword came to be looked upon as the only symbol of justice—­then surely it might be said, without exaggeration, that the complaints of the Netherlanders were “no pedantic fantasies,” and that the King had ceased to perform his functions as dispenser of God’s justice.

The Netherlanders dealt with facts.  They possessed a body of laws, monuments of their national progress, by which as good a share of individual liberty was secured to the citizen as was then enjoyed in any country of the world.  Their institutions admitted of great improvement, no doubt; but it was natural that a people so circumstanced should be unwilling to exchange their condition for the vassalage of “Moors or Indians.”

At the same time it may be doubted whether the instinct for political freedom only would have sustained them in the long contest, and whether the bonds which united them to the Spanish Crown would have been broken, had it not been for the stronger passion for religious liberty, by which so large a portion of the people was animated.  Boldly as the united states of the Netherlands laid down their political maxima, the quarrel might perhaps have been healed if the religious question had admitted of a peaceable solution.  Philip’s bigotry amounting to frenzy, and the Netherlanders of “the religion” being willing, in their own words, “to die the death” rather than abandon the Reformed faith, there was upon this point no longer room for hope.  In the act of abjuration, however, it was thought necessary to give offence to no class of the inhabitants, but to lay down such principles only as enlightened Catholics would not oppose.  All parties abhorred the Inquisition, and hatred to that institution is ever prominent among the causes assigned for the deposition of the monarch.  “Under pretence of maintaining the Roman religion,” said the estates, “the King has sought by evil means to bring into operation the whole strength of the placards and of the Inquisition—­the first and true cause of all our miseries.”

Without making any assault upon the Roman Catholic faith, the authors of the great act by which Philip was for ever expelled from the Netherlands showed plainly enough that religious persecution had driven them at last to extremity.  At the same time, they were willing—­for the sake of conciliating all classes of their countrymen—­to bring the political causes of discontent into the foreground, and to use discreet language upon the religious question.