The minority in the States of Holland, the five cities often named, protested against the protest.
The defective part of the Netherland constitutions could not be better illustrated. The minority of the States of Holland refused to be bound by a majority of the provincial assembly. The minority of the States-General refused to be bound by the majority of the united assembly.
This was reducing politics to an absurdity and making all government impossible. It is however quite certain that in the municipal governments a majority had always governed, and that a majority vote in the provincial assemblies had always prevailed. The present innovation was to govern the States-General by a majority.
Yet viewed by the light of experience and of common sense, it would be difficult to conceive of a more preposterous proceeding than thus to cram a religious creed down the throats of half the population of a country by the vote of a political assembly. But it was the seventeenth and not the nineteenth century.
Moreover, if there were any meaning in words, the 13th Article of Union, reserving especially the disposition over religious matters to each province, had been wisely intended to prevent the possibility of such tyranny.
When the letters of invitation to the separate states and to others were drawing up in the general assembly, the representatives of the three states left the chamber. A solitary individual from Holland remained however, a burgomaster of Amsterdam.
Uytenbogaert, conversing with Barneveld directly afterwards, advised him to accept the vote. Yielding to the decision of the majority, it would be possible, so thought the clergyman, for the great statesman so to handle matters as to mould the Synod to his will, even as he had so long controlled the States-Provincial and the States-General.
"If you are willing to give away the rights of the land," said the
Advocate very sharply, "I am not."
Probably the priest's tactics might have proved more adroit than the stony opposition on which Barneveld was resolved.
But it was with the aged statesman a matter of principle, not of policy. His character and his personal pride, the dignity of opinion and office, his respect for constitutional law, were all at stake.