SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES. 65 



of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in so far as it 

 depended on material progress, owed everything. Not only 

 were they the pioneers of progress in agriculture, but in finance, 

 in commerce, and in banking. Nor were their services less to 

 mankind in insisting that governments are to be the servants, 

 and not the proprietors of nations, and that the true claim 

 to obedience on the part of the subject is proved desert on the 

 part of the ruler. It is also to their credit that they were the 

 first people who accepted all that is contained in the doctrine of 

 toleration, that they respected freedom of conscience, and were 

 the earliest nation in Europe which put all religions on an 

 equality before the state 1 . 



1 I am not of course forgetting the brief but shameful quarrel of the Arminians 

 and Gomarists, and the infamous judicial murder of Barneveldt. 



VOL. V. 



