Only a year's previous residence was necessary for any foreigner to obtain it. The privileges it conferred were, freedom of trade, exemption from tolls, special privileges and preferences in the conduct of lawsuits, and an exclusive eligibility of election to municipal office. The |)rivileges of the two classes of burghers varied only in degree. The city and town governments consisted of a Board of Burgomasters and Schepens, and a Schout, that is a Board of magistrates and aldermen, and a sheriff who was also a prosecuting officer.

These Burgom;istei-s and Schepens, provided for the l>ublic safety, attended to police matters, called out the military when needed, assessed all taxes, and administered all financial, and civic matters. They were elected either by the general body of the citizens possessing a small property (jualification, or by the '• Vroedschapen,'' or Boards of Managers mentioned before, who were themselves elected by the general body of qualified citizens, the custom varying in different towns and Provinces.

Such was the form of political liberty which constituted the great strength of the Dutch Republic, by which it conquered its own independence of Spain, and which it carried to, and established in,

' Maaetlorp's intruductiun to liis translatiuD of Grotius, vi. I. Brod. Hist. N. Y., 454.

New York.'^ It is well summed up by Brodhead in these words, " The self-relying burghers governed the towns; the representatives, of the towns, and of the rural nobility, governed the several Provinces, and the several States of the respective Provinces claimed supreme jurisdiction within their own precincts." The system of the Dutch Republic was a thorough system of town government, expanded to meet the needs of a national governmental organization. It was also a strikingly conservative as well as effective form of government, and after the termination of the twelve years truce with Spain in l(j21,it enabled the Netherlands to carry on that brilliant series of hostilities against Spain which, in 1G48, resulted in her final acknowledgment of the United Provinces as an Independent Nation.' Subsequently to that event the Republic enlarged and increased the machinery of her government -- developing it further upon the same principles to meet the enlarged sphere of action upon which she had entered, but this ic is unnecessary to describe here.