CHAP. declaration “ Orange Boven!' old times are returning : what we have suffered is forgotten and forgiven." XVI. 1794. 88. Immense commerce of the Dutch. Achievements so wonderful, a history so glorious, could have been brought about, in a country enjoying so limited and sterile a territory, only by the energies of commercial enterprise, and the resources of maritime wealth. It is the merchants and sailors of Holland who have, in every age, constituted alike in peace and war the strength and sinews of the state. Their industry and perseverance have discovered mines of wealth in every quarter of the globe. On the coast of Scotland they opened a fishery which yielded them two millions sterling annually, two centuries before that source of wealth was touched on by the Scotch people; in the West Indies their sagacity led to the discovery, and their industry to the cultivation, of the richest sugar colonies in existence; in the East they have acquired, and still retain, in Java, the noblest island in the Indian Archipelago. For centuries they engrossed nearly the whole carrying trade of the world; the vast colonial empire of Great Britain, and the disasters of the revolutionary war, alone wrested it in part from them during the late conflicts. The merchants of Amsterdam numbered all the sovereigns of Europe among their debtors. All the luxuries of the earth were wafted to their shores by the sails of their commerce; and the commercial influence of a state so small as to be scarcely distinguishable in a general map of the globe, was felt from one end of the world to the other. They have no vines; but they have more wine in their cellars than is to be found in the magazines of Bordeaux: they have no woods; but there is more timber in their dockyards than in the forests at the source of the Rhine and the Moselle: they have few arable fields; but they have more corn in their granaries than the inhabitants of Poland consume. There is more marble in their warehouses than ever was cut in the quarries of the Archipelago, more diamonds in their jewelboxes than in the hands of the goldsmiths of Portugal or XVI. 1794. Brazil, and a greater quantity of rosewood, mahogany, CHAP. and precious timber, than in all the rest of Europe, though their territory produces only willows and linden-trees. More marvellous still, in the midst of this opulence, produced by commerce, there is hardly a beggar to be seen, nor a house in which there is a brick out, or a pane broken. 1 1 St Pierre, la Nature, Et. xiii. vol. ii. 103. and extent and its The old United Provinces, now forming the kingdom 89. of Holland, enjoyed a very limited territory; they con- Population tained only 8326 square geographical miles, amounting of Holland to 2,814,000 hectares. This small and swampy territory colonies. is inhabited by 2,443,000 inhabitants, being in many places, particularly the province of Holland properly so called, the most densely peopled country in Europe.* Such, however, has been the vigour and enterprise of the Dutch, that this inconsiderable territory and population have acquired colonies in Africa, America, and the Indian Archipelago, inhabited by 9,426,000 souls, and extending over a superficies of 234,000 square miles; so that the kingdom of Holland now embraces, in all parts of the world, 12,000,000 of souls, and 244,000 square geographical miles of territory, or above two and a half times the whole area of Great Britain and Ireland, which contains 91,000. Its income, according to the budget of 1836, was 85,000,000 francs, (£3,400,000,) its expenditure is now 105,000,000 francs, (£4,200,000,) and its national debt, as fixed by the treaty of 1831, 559,000,000 francs, (£22,000,000,)—so disastrous has been the burden of the costly naval and military establishment which the iniquitous partition of the kingdom of the Netherlands, by the revolutionary ambition of *This is the superficies and population of the old United Provinces; the modern kingdom of Holland has received, by the Treaty of Separation with Belgium in November 15, 1831, a considerable district of Limbourg and Luxembourg, inhabited by 331,000 souls; making the total population of the kingdom of Holland, in Europe, at this time, 2,775,000 souls; and its area in Europe, 3,252,000 hectares, or 9780 square geographical miles.-MALTE BRUN, vii. 46; and BALBI, 637. XVI. 1794. 1 Malte CHAP. Great Britain and France in 1830, has occasioned.* Yet, in spite of this grievous load, such is the general confidence of all nations in the resources and good faith of the Dutch government, founded on centuries of probity and regularity of payment, that their funds are amongst the highest in Europe, and, although yielding hardly five per cent dividend, are sought after as a secure investment all over the world. 1 Brun, vii. 41, 43. Ann. Hist. xvi. 664. Balbi, 637. 90. and histori ty of their towns. It is in the extraordinary industry and activity of the Magnitude urban population of Holland, that the secret of these cal celebri- prodigious resources, existing in a country enjoying such The very limited natural advantages, is to be found. great towns of Holland are numerous, industrious, and wealthy, beyond those on a similar extent of territory in any other country of continental Europe. Considerable as they are in point of numerical amount of inhabitants, they are yet more remarkable from the vast commercial intercourse of which they have long been the emporium, and the many eminent men in literature and philosophy who have flourished within their walls. The numerous editions, dear to the student, which have issued from their printing-presses, and the glorious deeds in arms of which their ramparts have been the theatre, have given them a celebrity beyond what the magnitude of their population could otherwise have produced. The necessity of fortifications to protect their level and inconsiderable territory from the grasping ambition of France has caused all their cities to be surrounded with walls, nearly the whole of which, at least on the frontier towards the Scheldt, have been celebrated in military annals for obstinate and heroic * The total debt of the kingdom of the Netherlands was 1,198,625,000 francs, (£48,000,000 :) but of this immense sum 639,366,000 was, by the treaty of partition of 15th November 1831, fixed on Belgium, leaving 559,259,000 francs, or £22,400,000, to the charge of Holland.-See MALTE BRUN, vii. 43, and Treaty, 15th November 1831; MARTEN'S Nouvelle Série, ii. 398. The population of the principal towns in Holland is as follows: sieges. Like the cities of Greece in ancient, or of the Italian republics in modern times, they have become immortal alike in arts and in arms. Every step in Holland and Flanders is historical; the shades of William and De Witt, of Marlborough, of Eugene, arise at every step; glorious recollections recur to the mind with every name. CHAP. XVI. 1794. 91. naval forces Except in defending towns, when both the soldiers and citizens often evinced the most obstinate valour, the mili- Military and tary force of the United Provinces, which seldom exceeded of Holland. forty thousand regular forces, and which was generally only twenty-four, never acquired any great celebrity. It was the sea which was the theatre at once of their ambition, of their prowess, and of their glory. With the exception of the English, the Dutch sailors have always been the best in Europe; and if victory in the end inclined, in the desperate war with the United Provinces, to the British flag, it was less from any superiority in the seamen, than from the greater physical resources which a larger territory and wider colonial dominions brought to the arms of this country. No period, even in the bright annals of the English navy, has yet equalled the extraordinary and patriotic efforts made by the Dutch when assailed by the combined fleets of Louis XIV. and Charles II.; for England never had to withstand so overwhelming a superiority of force. Fleets of forty and fifty ships of the line were then repeatedly fitted out by the Republic, which combated, always with glory, often with success, the yet more numerous combined squadrons of France and England, led by the valiant Duke of York. When the war broke out in 1793, the United Provinces had XVI. 1794. CHAP. still forty-nine ships of the line, and seventy frigates and smaller vessels; though a large proportion of the former bore only sixty-four and fifty-six guns. But such were the calamities in which they became involved from the Revolutionary war, that at this time, notwithstanding the acquisition of a third of the Scheldt fleet by the treaty of 1814, the King of Holland possesses only five ships of the line, and nineteen frigates.1 1 James' Naval His tory, i. 50. Malte Brun, vii. 41, 43. 92. and social of the The government and social institutions of Holland, Government under the old commonwealth, were very peculiar, and institutions different from those of any other republic which ever United existed. The people had all a share in the administraProvinces. tion of public affairs; but they had so, not as individuals, but in their separate incorporations, guildries, or trades; and in these the distribution of power was so arranged that influence was nearly entirely centred in the burgomasters and heads of the different bodies. But these heads of incorporations or magistrates of towns did not constitute a hereditary exclusive aristocracy, as in Venice or Genoa; they were composed of persons who had risen by their wealth and frugality to eminence in their several crafts, or acquired the lead in them by their probity and good conduct. Thus, though the working-classes had scarcely any share in the actual appointment of government, yet no sullen line of demarcation debarred them from it. The career of industry was accessible to all; but none could obtain influence except such as had acquired property. The institutions of Holland in this manner combined that opening of the path of public eminence to the whole people, which Napoleon described as the great want which led to the French Revolution,2 with that arrangeAppeal from ment of the citizens in their separate classes, and according Whigs, 228, to their realised estates, which the Romans accomplished by their centuries, and Mr Burke described as the true principle of a conservative democracy.* It is in these 2 Burke's Old to New 229. * "There is no ground for holding a multitude, told by head, to be the People. Such a multitude can have no sort of title to alter the seat of power in any |