Page:William the Silent.djvu/75

Rh must hold their conventicles inside the town." And the Regent is forced to submit. Having established something like order and toleration in Holland, the Prince returned to Antwerp.

From Utrecht William addressed to the States a memoir or manifesto on the religious questions at issue, which is worthy of minute study, as presenting a summary of his views thereon, or rather, as embodying the policy which at this epoch seemed to him statesman-like. It will be borne in mind that he was himself neither Lutheran nor Calvinist, was actually serving Philip and Margaret as their official governor, and that his aim was to find a peaceful solution of a revolutionary imbroglio. Like his other manifestoes, and indeed like the State papers of that age, it is exceedingly diffuse, allusive, and often obscure or indefinite. Some three hundred words will follow in one involved sentence without a pause. The language is somewhat rhetorical and redundant, the ideas are guarded with provisoes, and there is a manifest desire to conciliate opposite views, to avoid irritating expressions and dogmatic propositions. In essentials it is like a modern State paper in the forms of an age before prose writing had been cast into an art, and with much of the conventional compliments and verbiage of the old official and ecclesiastical style. The substance of it is as follows:—

I have often in mind the deplorable condition of this country, which must end in its utter ruin, owing to the great diversity of opinions, both as to religion and as to its government; and I grieve to see how few people really take it to heart with a view to find a remedy: some from indifference, some from selfishness, some from cowardice. Now, without presuming too much on my own age and experience, I hold it the duty of every citizen, young or