There was no special reason why the Prince should love the republican form of government provided that an hereditary one could be legally substituted for it.

He had sworn allegiance to the statutes, customs, and privileges of each of the provinces of which he had been elected stadholder, but there would have been no treason on his part if the name and dignity of stadholder should be changed by the States themselves for those of King or sovereign Prince.
Yet it was a chief grievance against the Advocate on the part of the Prince that Barneveld believed him capable of this ambition.
The Republic existed as a fact, but it had not long existed, nor had it ever received a formal baptism.

So undefined was its constitution, and so conflicting were the various opinions in regard to it of eminent men, that it would be difficult to say how high-treason could be committed against it.

Great lawyers of highest intellect and learning believed the sovereign power to reside in the separate states, others found that sovereignty in the city magistracies, while during a feverish period of war and tumult the supreme function had without any written constitution, any organic law, practically devolved upon the States-General, who had now begun to claim it as a right.

The Republic was neither venerable by age nor impregnable in law.