It is an attempt to prevent us from helping the Elector-Palatine and the other Protestant princes of Germany and coreligionists everywhere against hostile violence.

For the Elector-Palatine can receive aid from us and from Great Britain through the duchies only.

It is plainly the object of the enemy to seclude us from the Palatine and the rest of Protestant Germany.

It is very suspicious that the proposition of Prince Maurice, supported by the two kings and the united princes of Germany, has been rejected." The Advocate knew well enough that the religious franchises granted by the House of Habsburg at the very moment in which Spain signed her peace with the Netherlands, and exactly as the mad duke of Cleve was expiring--with a dozen princes, Catholic and Protestant, to dispute his inheritance--would be valuable just so long as they could be maintained by the united forces of Protestantism and of national independence and no longer.

What had been extorted from the Catholic powers by force would be retracted by force whenever that force could be concentrated.