entered into an alliance with the King of France, for the double purpose of dividing the Spanish Netherlands between them, and upsetting the Republic in England. But he died before doing more than arouse the Republican Party in his own country, and convince those who now ruled England that their own safety was bound up with the destruction of the House of Orange Nassau. In the absence of an Admiral-General, the control of the naval forces of the Low Countries was divided between five Boards of Admiralty,--that of the Maas, which sat at Rotterdam, that of Amsterdam, that of North Holland, and the Boards of Zeeland and Friesland. The States General, the only approach to a common government of the Confederacy, was a body in which each republic had one vote, though represented by a number of deputies. It was of more dignity than real strength, and exercised only the powers delegated to it by the different members of the Union. At a later period, the State of Holland, the most wealthy of the seven republics, was enabled to gain a supremacy which to some extent replaced the authority of the Stadtholder. It owed its success mainly to the statesmanship of the Grand Pensionary, John de Witt. But in the first Dutch war, De Witt was at the very beginning of his career, and the republics suffered from all the weaknesses of an ill-knit and jarring Confederacy. Even if all the inhabitants of the seven provinces had been united in sentiment, the defects in the construction of their government would have put them at a disadvantage in a conflict with England. But it is notorious that this was far from being the case. The victory of the Republicans had been the victory of the moneyed classes in the towns, of a very able, very patriotic, but also very narrow and jealous oligarchy. The majority of the nobles and the mass of the poorer classes were devoted in sentiment to the House of Orange Nassau, and would, if they had had their way, have seen the Stadtholdership conferred at once on the young prince, with a regent drawn from his own family to administer for him until he came of age. Many of the army and navy officers had the same wish, so that the States General were in constant fear of domestic sedition, while the party feelings of the officers of the fleet are believed to have interfered with the discharge of their duty.