In their letter of 26th August, they expressed their willingness, notwithstanding the past delinquencies of the Governor, to yield him their confidence again; but at the same time; they enumerated conditions which, with his education and views, could hardly seem to him admissible.

They required him to disband all the soldiers in his service, to send the Germans instantly out of the country, to dismiss every foreigner from office, whether civil or military, and to renounce his secret league with the Duke of Guise.

They insisted that he should thenceforth govern only with the advice and consent of the State Council, that he should execute that which should by a majority of votes be ordained there, that neither measures nor despatches should be binding or authentic unless drawn up at that board.

These certainly were views of administration which, even if consonant with a sound historical view of the Netherland constitutions, hardly tallied with his monarch's instructions, his own opinions, or the practice under Alva and Requesens, but the country was still in a state of revolution, and the party of the Prince was gaining the upper hand.
It was the determination of that great statesman, according to that which he considered the legitimate practice of the government, to restore the administration to the State Council, which executive body ought of right to be appointed by the states-general.

In the states-general, as in the states-particular, a constant care was to be taken towards strengthening the most popular element, the "community" of each city, the aggregate, that is to say, of its guild-representatives and its admitted burghers.
This was, in the opinion of the Prince, the true theory of the government--republican in all but form--under the hereditary protection, not the despotic authority, of a family, whose rights were now nearly forfeited.