[Footnote 9: "How can France, with her solemn assurances of liberty, arbitrarily interfere with the government of a country already possessing a representative elected by the people? How can she proclaim us as a free nation, and, at the same moment, deprive us of our liberty? Will she establish a new mythology of nations, and divide the different peoples on the face of the earth, according to their strength, into nations and demi-nations?"--_Protest of the Provisional Council of the City of Brussels. The President, Theodore Dotrenge._ "Every free nation gives to itself laws, does not receive them from another."--_Protest of the City of Antwerp, President of the Council, Van Dun._ "You confiscate alike public and private property. That have even our former tyrants never ventured to do when declaring us rebels, and you say that you bring to us liberty."--_Protest of the Hennegau._ The most copious account of the revolutionizing of the Netherlands is contained in Rau's History of the Germans in France, and of the French in Germany. Frankfort on the Maine, 1794 and 1795.] CCXLIX. The Defection of Prussia--The Archduke Charles Frederick William's advisers, who imagined the violation of every principle of justice and truth an indubitable proof of instinctive and consummate prudence, unwittingly played a high and hazardous game. Their diplomatic absurdity, which weighed the fate of nations against a dinner, found a confusion of all the solid principles on which states rest as stimulating as the piquant ragouts of the great Ude. Lucchesini, under his almost intolerable airs of sapience, as artfully veiled his incapacity in the cabinet as Ferdinand of Brunswick did his in the field, and to this may be ascribed the measures which but momentarily and seemingly aggrandized Prussia and prepared her deeper fall. Each petty advantage gained by Prussia but served to raise against her some powerful foe, and finally, when placed by her policy at enmity with every sovereign of Europe, she was induced to trust to the shallow friendship of the French republic.