James Edwin Thorold Rogers

“ If at the time when Great Britain and the States of the American Union were negotiating the terms on which the Independence of the Union should be recognized, the Government of Great Britain had insisted that the treaty should contain a clause by which the United States should bind themselves to keep the ten commandments, the other parties to the treaty might have justly resented even so harmless a proposal. For there can be no independence as long as one of the contracting parties insists on a concession in a matter of domestic government. ”

“ The immediate toleration of the old creed would have been the concession of a right that Dutch citizens should be allowed to conspire with a foreign enemy against the independence and honour of the state, to be in league with the enemy against whom the Dutch had done battle for forty years, who did not mean to relinquish in one particular the sovereignty which he claimed over them, and would probably, if his resources were equal to his designs, seek at the end of the time to subdue them. ”

“ The attitude of James towards Holland at the beginning of the seventeenth century led, in the first instance, to that malignant bitterness which marked the relations of Englishmen and Dutchmen during the whole of that century, with occasional interruptions, and even for long after. ”

“ We will have nothing to do with them. We have good reason to believe that they are false even to those who permit or protect them. To us, who openly declare our distrust or detestation of them, they are entirely inadmissible. ”

“ In negotiations between two independent states, it is sheer impertinence for one of the parties to claim that the other should do that which is a matter of internal action, however wise and good the policy might be. ”

“ The mass of our people belong to the Reformed Church, and have followed the model of the great saint and doctor, Calvin of Geneva. We cannot answer for their patience if they see that the rites of that religion which has striven to enslave us for forty years, are to be paraded and flaunted in our midst. ”

“ And if under the constitution which we have won for them, these persons prove quiet and peaceful, it is most probable that we shall do, of our own accord hereafter what no human power should or shall force us to do. ”

“ Besides, they might argue with justice, “a considerable part of the northern provinces of Holland is inhabited by a Roman Catholic population. These persons have been tolerated and treated kindly. We have no Inquisition which is to search them out and extinguish their tenets in their blood. Under our domestic regulations these persons give us little trouble, though sometimes we have been anxious about their attitude. ”

“ For this he intrigued before and after the truce, and unquestionably had the life of this king been prolonged Holland would have finished a War. with Spain, only to begin another with France. The dream of Henry in 1605, was nearly realized by his grandson in 1672. Up to our own times, French governments have inherited and striven to give effect to the policy of Henry of Navarre, and nearly every great European war has found that the conquest or the defence of the Low Countries was the real object of the combat. ”