the burgher aristocracy, did much to secure a unity of interest among the different provinces. [Sidenote: =Unique position of Holland.= This was still further developed by the unique position of the province of Holland in the confederation. It was so far superior to the other provinces in wealth, in population and in dignity, that in common talk it has given its name to the whole republic. It contained within its borders the great trading towns of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Delft and Dordrecht, Leyden the seat of the university, and the Hague the centre of the government. It alone had the right of being represented at the courts of Paris and Vienna. It paid in taxes almost as much as all the other provinces put together. From its ports issued year by year the merchant ships which had acquired for the United Provinces the carrying trade of the world, the navy which at the beginning of the century was the undisputed mistress of the ocean, and the bands of hardy colonists who had planted the Dutch flag in every quarter of the globe. The great city of Amsterdam itself, with its banks, its docks, and its thousands of fishermen and artisans, founded, as it was said, on the carcases of herrings, was the centre of the commerce and the opulence of northern Europe. The Venice of the North, alike in her commercial prosperity and her close oligarchical government, she so far dominated over all her colleagues that in the days of her greatness the United Provinces were little less than Amsterdam writ large. Shorn of the province of Holland, the country certainly could not have maintained its independence for a moment. [Sidenote: =Leadership of the House of Orange.=]