In this remarkable document, which was no doubt drawn up by Coutherele himself, the Duke gave legal sanction to the changes accomplished in July. He fully recognised the claim of the plebeians to participate in the government of the city; he decreed that henceforth three aldermen and eleven jurors should be chosen from among their ranks, and that all other municipal functions should be equally divided between the two classes. The elections were to take place annually, the plebeian members being named by the patricians and the patrician members by the plebeians--a very prudent regulation, calculated to secure in each case the return of moderate men. The action of Coutherele in this matter must not be judged by the standard of to-day. In permitting his prisoners to purchase their freedom he was only following the usage of the age in which he lived. But that Winceslaus should have exacted a heavy fine or loan or gratuity--call it what you will--from the man who had realised for him his heart's desire was conduct more questionable. The only excuse that can be made for him is this: his expenses were heavy and his purse was light. The men of Louvain, however, were too well satisfied at the success of their enterprise to grumble at the bill of costs, more especially as the cash with which it was paid had been extracted from their enemies' pockets, and so elated were they at Coutherele's management of the whole affair that the magistrates voted him, from the public funds, a large annuity for life. If the patricians had been wise enough to recognise accomplished facts, and had accepted the new constitution, which, after all, gave them the lion's share in the government, all might yet have gone well, and the city of Louvain would have been saved many years of strife and bloodshed; but their privileges had been so large and so profitable, and the good things which accrue to holders of office had been theirs for so long, that they would have been more than human if they had been willing at once to forego all thought of regaining their former position, and these substantial men of commerce were neither heroes nor saints. Most of them left the city in which they had once been supreme, and where now their claims were mocked at; where their very lives were, perhaps, in danger, and certainly were made a burthen to them by reason of domiciliary visits and all kinds of vexatious precautions. For the men in power were by no means sure of the stability of the new _régime_--they lived in constant dread of a counter revolution. What wonder, then, that their opponents, who, if the truth must be told, were not famous for courage, found it more comfortable to plot in their country homes than amid the turmoil of their town mansions, even though their voluntary exile meant confiscation of property?