Friesland and Zeeland, neither of which liked the idea of this assembly, which was forced upon them by a revolutionary committee, had purposely delayed their elections--had not even commenced with the preliminaries of the first election. The other provinces, however, especially Drenthe and the former Generalities, which for the first time in their history acted as independent bodies, had been eager to go to work, and at eleven o'clock of this 1st of March their representatives and their substitutes, in their Sunday best, came walking to their new quarters. Slowly they gathered, until at the stroke of noon just ninety members were present. Punctually at that moment a delegation appeared from across the way, from the Estates General. They were to be the godfathers of the new assembly. Nine members of the old Estates General, escorted by a guard of honour from among the assembly, filed into the hall and took special seats in front of the Speaker's chair. One of them then read the names of the assemblymen whose credentials had been examined and had been passed upon favourably. The new members then drew lots for their seats. This ceremony was to be repeated every two weeks and was to prevent the formation of a Mountain and a Plain and other dangerous geographical substances fatal to an undisturbed political cosmos. The substitute representatives took their seats on benches behind their masters. Then the chairman of the delegation from across the way read a solemn declaration, which took the place of the former oath of allegiance, and the representatives expressed their fidelity to this patriotic pledge. The chairman ended this part of the ceremony with a fine outburst of rhetoric in which the Spanish tyranny, King Philip the second, Alva, the dangerous ambition of William of Nassau, and the spirit of liberty of the Batavian people passed in review before his delighted hearers. And having dispatched the odious tyrant, William V, across the high seas, he referred to the blessings that were now to flow over the country, and thanked the gentlemen for their kind attention. The next subject on the program was the election of a Speaker. At the first vote Pieter Paulus, with 88 votes against 2, was elected Speaker of the Assembly. The chief delegate from the Estates General, in his quality of best man at this occasion, put a tricoloured sash across the shoulders of Mr. Paulus and conducted him to the Speaker's chair. Profound silence. The galleries, crowded to the last seat, held their breath. The ministers from the French Republic and the United States of America, who, with the diplomatic representatives of Denmark and Portugal, were the only official foreigners present, looked at their watches that they might inform their home governments at what moment exactly the new little sister republic had started upon her career.