The blood of a world-wide traffic was daily coursing through the thousand arteries of that water-in-woven territory.

There was a mutual exchange between the Netherlands and all the world; and ideas were as liberally interchanged as goods.

Truth was imported as freely as less precious merchandise.

The psalms of Marot were as current as the drugs of Molucca or the diamonds of Borneo.

The prohibitory measures of a despotic government could not annihilate this intellectual trade, nor could bigotry devise an effective quarantine to exclude the religious pest which lurked in every bale of merchandise, and was wafted on every breeze from East and West.
The edicts of the Emperor had been endured, but not accepted.