In that case, of course, eager citizens hastened to lay in a supply of the official buttons bearing the proud inscription, “Tolerance first.” But these sudden conversions, due to a fear of His Majesty’s hangman, were rarely of a lasting nature and only bore fruit if the sovereign accompanied his threat by an intelligent system of gradual education along the lines of practical every day politics. Such a fortunate combination of circumstances occurred in the Dutch Republic during the latter half of the sixteenth century. In the first place the country consisted of several thousand semi-independent towns and villages and these for the greater part were inhabited by fishermen, sailors and traders, three classes of people who are accustomed to a certain amount of independence of action and who are forced by the nature of their trade to make quick decisions and to judge the casual occurrences of the day’s work upon their own merits. I would not for a moment claim that, man for man, they were a whit more intelligent or broadminded than their neighbors in other parts of the world. But hard work and tenacity of purpose had made them the grain and fish carriers of all northern and western Europe. They knew that the money of a Catholic was just as good as that of a Protestant and they preferred a Turk who paid cash to a Presbyterian who asked for six months’ credit. An ideal country therefore to start a little experiment in tolerance and furthermore the right man was in the right place and what is infinitely more important the right man was in the right place at the right moment. William the Silent was a shining example of the old maxim that “those who wish to rule the world must know the world.” He began life as a very fashionable and rich young man, enjoying a most enviable social position as the confidential secretary of the greatest monarch of his time. He wasted scandalous sums of money upon dinners and dances, married several of the better known heiresses of his day and lived gayly without a care for the day of tomorrow. He was not a particularly studious person and racing charts interested him infinitely more than religious tracts. The social unrest which followed in the wake of the Reformation did not at first impress him as anything more serious than still another quarrel between capital and labor, the sort of thing that could be settled by the use of a little tact and the display of a few brawny police constables. But once he had grasped the true nature of the issue that had arisen between the sovereign and his subjects, this amiable grand seigneur was suddenly transformed into the exceedingly able leader of what, to all intents and purposes, was the prime lost cause of the age. The palaces and horses, the gold plate and the country estates were sold at short notice (or confiscated at no notice at all) and the sporting young man from Brussels became the most tenacious and successful enemy of the house of Habsburg.