Kingdom of the Netherlands

“ We have dealt hard measure to the Dutch upon a good many occasions in history, and even the recent annexation of the Transvaal republic has been to them a somewhat distasteful transaction, as placing a community of Dutch origin under a foreign flag. But the independence of the Netherlands is to Great Britain a matter of the deepest interest, and prosperous as the Belgian kingdom undoubtedly is, its establishment as a separate State may be regretted on the ground that it has rendered more difficult the future maintenance of that independence. ”

“ Consequently they agreed to make a kingdom which might act as a buffer between France and the rest of Europe; and to this end they decreed that Belgium and Holland should be one. But in doing this, the statesmen or politicians concerned failed to take into account certain factors and facts which must inevitably, in the course of time, undermine their arrangements. Nations cannot be arbitrarily manufactured to suit the convenience of others. There is a chemistry in nationalities which has laws of its own, and will not be ignored. ”

“ The wealth of these burghers was the strength and wealth of their counts, and many a European sovereign was far less securely opulent than these many potentates were who occupied a country which was collectively smaller than any European kingdom.
The dukes and counts of the Netherlands were not slow to discern that the prosperity of their subjects was a matter of profound interest to the nobles, and that the concession of privileges would be a plentiful source of riches and strength to themselves. The communities became practically little republics. ”

“ A pusillanimous peace, always possible at any period of their war, would have been hailed with rapture by contemporary statesmen, whose names have vanished from the world's memory; but would have sown with curses and misery the soil of Europe for succeeding ages. The territory of the Netherlands is narrow and meagre. It is but a slender kingdom now among the powers of the earth. The political grandeur of nations is determined by physical causes almost as much as by moral ones. ”

“ When, after Napoleon's downfall, the Netherlands constituted themselves a kingdom, the depleted ranks of the aristocracy were soon amply filled from these old patrician families. Clause 65 of the Netherlands constitution says, 'The Queen grants nobility. No Dutchman may accept foreign nobility.' This is the only occasion upon which the word nobility appears in any code. ”

“ CHAPTER I FROM THE INVASION OF THE NETHERLANDS BY THE ROMANS TO THE INVASION BY THE SALIAN FRANKS B.C. 50—A.D. 200 The Netherlands form a kingdom of moderate extent, situated on the borders of the ocean, opposite to the southeast coast of England, and stretching from the frontiers of France to those of Hanover. The country is principally composed of low and humid grounds, presenting a vast plain, irrigated by the waters from all those neighboring states which are traversed by the Rhine, the Meuse, and the Scheldt. ”

“ The Dutch republic was the first free nation to put a girdle of empire around the earth. It had courage, enterprise, intelligence, perseverance, faith in itself, the instinct of self-government and self- help, hatred of tyranny, the disposition to domineer, aggressiveness, greediness, inquisitiveness, insolence, the love of science, of liberty, and of money—all this in unlimited extent. ”

“ The pictures painted of the republic by shrewd and caustic observers, not inclined by nature or craft to portray freedom in too engaging colours, seem, when contrasted with those revealed of Spain, almost like enthusiastic fantasies of an ideal commonwealth.
During the last twenty years of the great war the material prosperity of the Netherlands had wonderfully increased. They had, become the first commercial nation in the world. ”

“ But, however much they differ in practical measures, their common ground is the recognition of the Holy Scriptures as the only right basis for statesmanship, and their conviction that the present modern State is merely a passing, non-Dutch consequence of the French Revolution and its disastrous teachings. They all agree that the Netherlands should be governed according to the principles that made Holland great and powerful ever since the Reformation of the sixteenth century. ”

“ Whither has fled the noble spirit of our brave forefathers, that never brooked the tyranny of foreign nations, nor suffered a stranger even to hold office within our borders? If the little province of Holland can thus hold at bay the power of Spain, what could not all the Netherlands—Brabant, Flanders, Friesland, and the rest united accomplish?" In conclusion, the estates-general were earnestly adjured to come forward like brothers in blood, and join hands with Holland, that together they might rescue the fatherland and restore its ancient prosperity and bloom. ”

“ The authority of governor-general, though not the title, was now fully shared by the count of Fuentes, who was sent to Brussels by the king of Spain; and the ill effects of this double viceroyalty was soon seen, in the brilliant progress of Prince Maurice, and the continual reverses sustained by the royalist armies. The king, still bent on projects of bigotry, sacrificed without scruple men and treasure for the overthrow of Henry IV. and the success of the League. The affairs of the Netherlands seemed now a secondary object ”

“ To govern the city magistracies of Holland, through them the provincial estates; and through them again the States-General of the whole commonwealth; as first citizen of a republic to wield; the powers of a king; as statesman, diplomatist, and financier, to create a mighty empire out of those slender and but recently emancipated provinces of Spain, was a more flattering prospect for a man of large intellect, iron will, and infinite resources, than to sink into the contemptible position of stipendiary to a foreign master. ”

“ Their national industry was untiring; their prosperity unexampled; their love of liberty indomitable; their pugnacity proverbial. Peaceful in their pursuits, phlegmatic by temperament, the Netherlands were yet the most belligerent and excitable population of Europe. Two centuries of civil war had but thinned the ranks of each generation without quenching the hot spirit of the nation. ”

“ The whole history of the world is a perpetually recurring struggle between liberty and the lust of power and possession; as the history of nature is nothing but the contest of the elements and organic bodies for space. The Netherlands soon found to their cost that they had become but a province of a great monarchy. So long as their former masters had no higher aim than to promote their prosperity, their condition resembled the tranquil happiness of a secluded family, whose head is its ruler. ”

“ But to feel how a little confederacy of seven provinces loosely tied together by an ill-defined treaty could hold so prominent and often so controlling a place in the European system of the seventeenth century, we must remember that there was then no Germany, no Russia, no Italy, no United States of America, scarcely even a Great Britain in the sense which belongs to that mighty empire now.
France, Spain, England, the Pope, and the Emperor were the leading powers with which the Netherlands were daily called on to solve great problems and try conclusions ”

“ Few strides more gigantic have been taken in the march of humanity than those by which a parcel of outlying provinces in the north of Europe exchanged slavery to a foreign despotism and to the Holy Inquisition for the position of a self-governing commonwealth, in the front rank of contemporary powers, and in many respects the foremost of the world. It is impossible to calculate the amount of benefit tendered to civilization by the example of the Dutch republic. It has been a model which has been imitated, in many respects, by great nations. ”

“ All these princes grew up with no higher hope than to be the heads of a republic, and none of their territories afforded them experience of a higher authority. Besides, these princes possessed nothing but what the Netherlands gave them; no armies but those which the nation sent into the field; no riches but what the estates granted to them. Now all was changed. The Netherlands had fallen to a master who had at his command other instruments and other resources, who could arm against them a foreign power. ”

“ For Holland, without manufactures, was the natural mart for those of England, while Belgium under an English prince had been the route for constantly inundating France and Germany."
So asked Napoleon, and England may answer and justify her conduct so impugned, on principles consistent with the general wishes and the common good of Europe. The discussion of the question is foreign to our purpose, which is to trace the circumstances, not to argue on the policy, that led to the formation of the Netherlands as they now exist. ”

“ And it appears tolerably certain that the Paladins of Ariosto were in reality nothing more than those brigand chieftains of the Ardennes, whose ruined residences preserve to this day the names which the poet borrowed from the old romance writers. But in all the rest of the Netherlands, excepting the provinces already mentioned, no form of government existed, but that fierce feudality which reduced the people into serfs, and turned the social state of man into a cheerless waste of bondage. ”

“ Its trade, its wealth, and its prosperity, were gradually transferred to Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and the towns of Holland and Zealand; and the growth of Dutch commerce attained its proud maturity in the establishment of the India Company in 1596, the effects of which we shall have hereafter more particularly to dwell on.
The exciting and romantic enterprises of the Portuguese and Spanish navigators in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries roused all the ardor of other nations for those distant adventures; and the people of the Netherlands were early influenced by the general spirit of Europe. ”

“ The fundamental law was altered in 1848 and the Dutch monarchy, from being autocratic, became henceforth constitutional. The king’s attitude secured for him the good will and affection of a people, loyal by tradition to the house of Orange, and the revolutionary disturbances of 1848 found no echo in Holland. ”

“ The object of sending an envoy of high rank and European reputation like the Count of Egmont, was to tell the King the truth. Let Philip know it now. Let him be unequivocally informed that this whole machinery of placards and scaffolds, of new bishops and old hangmen, of decrees, inquisitors, and informers, must once and forever be abolished. Their day was over. The Netherlands were free provinces, they were surrounded by free countries, they were determined to vindicate their ancient privileges. ”

“ Differing with England on the policy which led the latter to weaken and humiliate France, jealousies sprung up between the two countries, and Dutch commerce became the object of the most vexatious and injurious efforts on the part of England. Remonstrance was vain; resistance impossible; and the decline of the republic hurried rapidly on. The Hanseatic towns, the American colonies, the northern states of Europe, and France itself, all entered into the rivalry with Holland, in which, however, England carried off the most important prizes. ”

“ A religious creed would be forced upon Holland and perhaps upon two other provinces which was repugnant to a considerable majority of the people. And this would be done by a majority vote of the States-General, on a matter over which, by the 13th Article of the fundamental compact—the Union of Utrecht—the States-General had no control, each province having reserved the disposition of religious affairs to itself. For let it never be forgotten that the Union of the Netherlands was a compact, a treaty, an agreement between sovereign states. ”

“ The extended and profound remarks of many celebrated writers on the state of Europe from the decline of the Roman power to the epoch at which we are now arrived must be referred to, to judge of the gradual progress of civilization through the gloom of the dark ages, till the dawn of enlightenment which led to the grand system of European politics commenced during the reign of Charles V. The amazing increase of commerce was, above all other considerations, the cause of the growth of liberty in the Netherlands. ”

“ The first thing to be done, continued the Advocate, is to persuade the provinces to aid the king with all their means to conquer the disunited provinces—to dispose of the archdukes, in short, and to drive the Spaniards from the soil—and then, little by little, to make it clear that there could be no safety for the States except in reducing the whole body of the Netherlands under the authority of the king. ”

“ The Netherlands Become an Independent Country.—Who were these Dutch, or Hollanders? How came they to wrest from Spain and Portugal a colonial empire, which they hold to-day without loss of prosperity or evidence of decline? In the north of Europe, facing the North Sea, is a low, rich land, intersected by rivers and washed far into its interior by the tides, known as Holland, the Low Countries, or the Netherlands. Its people have ever been famed for their industry and hardihood. ”

“ Flanders once subjugated, it would not be long before the Spaniards were swept from the obedient Netherlands as thoroughly as they had been from the domains of the commonwealth, and all the seventeen provinces, trampling out every vestige of a hated foreign tyranny, would soon take their natural place as states of a free; prosperous, and powerful union. ”