Before this absurd quarrel had come to an end, Oldenbarnevelt, the man who next to William the Silent had been responsible for the foundation of the Republic, lay dead with his head between his feet; Grotius, whose moderation had made him the first great advocate of an equitable system of international law, was eating the bread of charity at the court of the Queen of Sweden; and the work of William the Silent seemed entirely undone. But Calvinism did not gain the triumph it had hoped. The Dutch Republic was a republic only in name. It was really a sort of merchants’ and bankers’ club, ruled by a few hundred influential families. These gentlemen were not at all interested in equality and fraternity, but they did believe in law and order. They recognized and supported the established church. On Sundays with a great display of unction they proceeded to the large white-washed sepulchers which in former days had been Catholic Cathedrals and which now were Protestant lecture halls. But on Monday, when the clergy paid its respects to the Honorable Burgomaster and Town Councilor, with a long list of grievances against this and that and the other person, their lordships were “in conference” and unable to receive the reverend gentlemen. If the reverend gentlemen insisted, and induced (as frequently happened) a few thousand of their loyal parishioners to “demonstrate” in front of the town hall, then their lordships would graciously deign to accept a neatly written copy of the reverend gentlemen’s complaints and suggestions. But as soon as the door had been closed upon the last of the darkly garbed petitioners, their lordships would use the document to light their pipes. For they had adopted the useful and practical maxim of “once is enough and too many” and they were so horrified by what had happened during the terrible years of the great Supralapsarian civil war that they uncompromisingly suppressed all further forms of religious frenzy. Posterity has not always been kind to those aristocrats of the ledger. Undoubtedly they regarded the country as their private property and did not always differentiate with sufficient nicety between the interests of their fatherland and those of their own firm. They lacked that broad vision which goes with empire and almost invariably they were penny-wise and pound-foolish. But they did something which deserves our hearty commendation. They turned their country into an international clearing-house where all sorts of people with all sorts of ideas were given the widest degree of liberty to say, think, write and print whatever pleased them.