After De Witt’s death all his papers were submitted to the most rigorous examination in hope of discovering something which should confirm the popular notion of his being traitorously in league with France. One of the persons appointed to perform this service being asked what had been found in De Witt’s papers, replied, “What could we have found?—nothing but probity.”[173] We cannot better conclude than with the reflections of the greatest of modern orators upon this event. “The catastrophe of De Witt—the wisest, best, and most truly patriotic minister that ever appeared upon the public stage, as it was an act of the most crying injustice and ingratitude, so likewise it is the most completely disencouraging example that history affords to the lovers of liberty. If Aristides was banished, he was also recalled. If Dion was repaid for his service to the Syracusans by ingratitude, that ingratitude was more than once repented of. If Sidney and Russell died upon the scaffold, they had not the cruel mortification of falling by the hands of the people; ample justice was done to their memory, and the very sound of their names is still animating to every Englishman attached to their glorious cause. But with De Witt fell also his cause and his party; and although a name so respected by all who revere virtue and wisdom when employed in their noblest sphere—the political service of the public, yet I do not know that even to this day any public honours have been paid by them to his memory.”[174]