like--as Leicester was fond of designating the men who opposed him--in
assuming these airs of sovereignty.

This might, perhaps, be philosophical doctrine, had its supporters not
forgotten that there had never been any pretence at an expression of the
national will, except through the mouths of the States. The States-
General and the States-Provincial, without any usurpation, but as a
matter of fact and of great political convenience, had, during fifteen
years, exercised the authority which had fallen from Philip's hands.
The people hitherto had acquiesced in their action, and certainly there
had not yet been any call for a popular convention, or any other device
to ascertain the popular will. It was also difficult to imagine what was
the exact entity of this abstraction called the "people" by men who
expressed such extreme contempt for "merchants, advocates, town-orators,
churls, tinkers, and base mechanic men, born not to command but to obey."
Who were the people when the educated classes and the working classes
were thus carefully eliminated? Hardly the simple peasantry--the boors--
who tilled the soil. At that day the agricultural labourers less than
all others dreamed of popular sovereignty, and more than all others
submitted to the mild authority of the States. According to the theory
of the Netherland constitutions, they were supposed--and they had
themselves not yet discovered the fallacies to which such doctrines could
lead--to be represented by the nobles and country-squires who maintained
in the States of each Province the general farming interests of the
republic. Moreover, the number of agricultural peasants was
comparatively small. The lower classes were rather accustomed to plough
the sea than the land, and their harvests were reaped from that element,
which to Hollanders and Zeelanders was less capricious than the solid
earth. Almost every inhabitant of those sea-born territories was, in one
sense or another, a mariner; for every highway was a canal; the soil was