James Edwin Thorold Rogers

“ In earlier days the sympathy of the poorer Dutchmen with the house of Orange was partly hereditary gratitude, partly disgust at the arrogance of the mercantile and manufacturing oligarchy of the towns. It is an inherent vice with most of those who raise themselves in life, that they are more harsh and severe to the class from which they have sprung than those are who have been born and brought up in more affluent circumstances. ”

“ The State could borrow from its thrifty citizens on better terms than other governments could, and though the interest laid on Dutch stock was low, foreigners invested in a security the dividends of which were always punctually paid. But the prosperity of Holland depended on its supremacy in trade, and here the rivalry of England, a country with far greater resources, and in a far more safe position, was sure to affect the activity of the Republic. ”

“ The debt of Holland was very heavy for the times. The State of Holland alone, the largest of the United Provinces, had a debt of nineteen millions of guilders, and the collective debt of the United Provinces was nearly ten times that amount. At the beginning of the eighteenth century such a debt filled statesmen with alarm, and not only in Holland, but in England, the state of the finances made people fear that a collapse of public credit was inevitable. ”

“ In 1722 the partisans of the boy, now eleven years old, urged that he should be elected Stadtholder of the United Provinces, with the object, as I have suggested, of breaking down the supremacy of Holland, and especially of Amsterdam. But the attempt was premature, and William was for some time merely Stadtholder of Guelderland, and with very limited powers. There was, however, no doubt that most of the European monarchs were sincerely anxious that the Dutch Republic should have an hereditary chief. ”

“ The contribution which each should make to the common expenses of government was a matter of arrangement, but the several States were not always ready to abide by the compact, and often threatened to stand aloof at a crisis. It is remarkable that so flimsy a union should have held together at all, and it is not strange that the most vigorous and successful of the stadtholders desired nothing so much as the opportunity of arresting these tendencies to disintegration which were always vexatious and sometimes threatening. ”

“ Generally the progress of the Stadtholder was from the influence which he acquired in the lesser States to the maintenance of his authority over the larger, especially Holland, and he often found it or thought it necessary to put down popular institutions in the smaller States in order to prepare himself for a struggle with the elements of resistance in the larger. ”

“ These severe restraints of trade in the interests of a monopoly granted by the state are interesting as they indicate what was, in the opinion of the age, the safest and most continuous source of national wealth. ”

“ Now this proceeding was denounced by the United Provinces as a plain infraction of the provisions contained in the treaty of Munster, under which the King of Spain bound himself that none of his subjects should sail from Europe to India, and that as the emperor had succeeded to the King of Spain in the Netherlands and Southern Italy, he was bound by the conditions under which his predecessor was limited. ”

“ To obviate such alarms, redoubled efforts were needed, and more energetic rivalry practised, in which it was hard for the weaker nation to make head against the stronger, even if the relations between the two countries, Holland and England, had been maintained with perfect fairness. ”