228	POLITICAL SCIENCE.
disaffected members of the clergy. The working of the
Dutch political system was at this time and afterwards some-
thing like this. Every province had its own stadtholder, as
it had had before the revolt from Spain, or, it might happen,
two or more provinces united in selecting the same person to
hold this office. The estates of the provinces consisted
chiefly either of nobles or of towns, governed by town coun-
cils which perpetuated themselves without any popular vote.
All the constitutions, then, were aristocratic, while there was
a population of free men who had no share in the govern-
ments. In general meetings of the estates the deputies were
sent by appointment of the particular province, and as the
magistrates in the towns (the Schoffen or Schepen) were not
skilled in political affairs, it had long been the custom for
particular estates and for the estates of a whole province to
transact their business by paid agents called pensionaries,*
who were sometimes accomplished lawyers and statesmen.
Such was Olden-Barneveldt, a contemporary of prince Mau-
rice ; and such Hugo Grotius: both were in their time pen-
sionaries of Rotterdam, and the former, of all Holland and
Zeeland, that is, of the council of the estates, hence called
grand pensionary, having an influence from his station and
character greater than that of any other man in the provinces.
Holland with its large cities and its numerous operatives on
the land and on the sea had, as has been said, a democratic
class which was a dangerous element, and the more so, be-
cause the government was in the hands of the aristocracy.
We may conceive that where the reformation under a synodal
form of church government was organized, jealousies might
arise between the ministers and the leaders of the state which
were increased after Arminianism was beginning to supplant
the Calvinistic theology at the university of Francker and
elsewhere. The sympathies too of such men as Barneveldt
and Grotius lay on the Arminian side in theology ; but espe-
* See for an account of the office of pensionaries, Warnkonig,
Staats-u. Rechtsgesch. Flandern, ii., 146, and § 237 of the present
work.