to the sovereign the whole executive power, much of which had formerly been shared with the States General and the Provincial States, is far from constituting the most important matter connected with the construction of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. did not enter into any minute ex- substituting a king for an herediamination of the modifications of tary stadtholder and transferring which this class of governments is susceptible. The status ante bellum, on the strength of which the Allies had fought and conquered, was good for the Prince but of no avail when applied to the People. It is true, the absurdity was not attempted of subjecting the hardy Swiss peasantry, who had retained at least a nominal independence in the worst of times, to the sway of sovereign princes, but the ancient renown of Venice and Genoa pleaded in vain for their renewed existence as separate States; and it could hardly be expected that, in taking from France some of the most valuable additions made to her territory by the Republican and Imperial Governments, it was intended to give places in the councils of Europe to the untitled burghers of Amsterdam, or to constitute into a republic those Austrian provinces, which had of old preferred despotism and the inquisition to independence, accompanied by religious toleration. The well concerted plans of the adherents of the house of Orange had, indeed, in some degree relieved Metternich and Castlereagh and their worthy associates from the responsibility of proclaiming to the enterprising and industrious Hollanders that that system, under which their ancestors had immortalized themselves by an almost continued struggle of eighty years with the then most powerful State of Christendom, was gone forever. But the change which the Government of Holland underwent in This state is truly and emphatically a creation of the Congress of Vienna, and as, from recent events, it is probable its two great divisions, which were disconnected prior to 1814, for nearly two centuries and a half, will hereafter form separate principalities, a brief reference to some of the causes which produced the marked dissimilarity between the people of Holland and Belgium may not, at this time, be without advantage. Though the history of the Kingdom of the Netherlands fully shows that the influence of religion and present interest are more influential with nations than the recollection of a common origin, it is not unworthy of notice, that the northern section of the Kingdom, constituting the old Republic of the United Provinces, as well as Flanders and the western and maritime districts, was settled by inhabitants from Germany, while only the people between the Meuse and the Scheldt, denominated Walloons, belonged to the Gallic race. The territory of the latter, indeed, with a portion of France, formed one of the three parts of ancient Gaul, and is known by the name of Belgium in the Commentaries of Julius Cæsar. In the contests of the fifth cen- of the successful efforts of the tury between the Salians and the burghers against the influence of Saxons we have a prototype of feudality. The Courts of the the long wars which were to arise Provinces, also, though acknowbetween France and England, ledging a nominal dependence on and which, as has since so fre- the Emperor, ruled without referquently happened, were then set- ence to the superior lord. tled in the Low Countries. In the fourteenth and fifteenth In a subsequent age, even centuries, the Government of the those Districts which had been Netherlands was in a great measenabled to escape the Roman ure concentrated in the houses of yoke, were compelled to submit Burgundy and Bavaria, which to the combined operations of were closely connected by interChristianity and civilization; and marriages. Charles, the great when, about the commencement grandfather of the illustrious monof the ninth century, Witikend, arch of that name, having under the last avenger of national inde- his domination an extent of terripendence, was converted to Chris- tory, exceeding that of the late tianity and became a noble of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, conCourt of Charlemagne, the con- ceived the idea of assuming the quest of his country was consum- royal diadem, -a project that, mated. according to the views of those times, required the sanction of the Emperor, but in obtaining which he was defeated by his own arrogance. The same causes were every where attended with similar effects. The origin of the Italian Republics of the middle age and the resistance which the cities of The daughter and heiress of Germany offered to the neigh- Charles married Maximilian of boring barons present many analo- Austria. His son and daughter gous features. The despotism of formed matrimonial connexions the Franks led the Netherlanders with the daughter and son of Ferto form those associations for mu- dinand and Isabella of Castile and tual protection in the different Arragon,—an alliance which led towns, which are the foundation to the connexion with Spain, — of many of their most valuable a connexion which cost the Dutch municipal rights, and which, under two thirds of a century of protractalmost the same name of Guild ed war and suffering, before their or Guilder, are to be recognised deliverance from all foreign sway as the basis of the English corpo- was gloriously achieved. rate Trades. Within a century The fruit of this marriage was from the death of Charlemagne the Emperor Charles Fifth, who these corporations had extended was inaugurated Duke of Brabant themselves over the whole of and Count of Flanders and HolFlanders; and after the crusades land, and became, by other titles had diminished the power of the and acquisitions, Sovereign of all Nobles and increased that of the the Netherlands almost at the People, we trace many examples same epoch that the principles of the reformation were adopted and promulgated in the Low Countries by the Bishops of Utrecht, the learned Erasmus of Rotterdam, and other distinguished individuals. It is from this date that we may trace those distinctions between the Northern and Southern provinces, which, fostered by national institutions leading to the pursuit of different branches of industry, overcame all ties of primitive origin and common language, and led to those frequent altercations, for which, the deliberations of the Netherlands Legislature during the whole period of its short-lived existence, was conspicuous., Charles, who, while on the throne, had never discovered what his simple effort to make two watches go alike taught him while in retirement, the absolute impossibility of bringing about a conformity in the sentiments of mankind, laid, in his reign, the foundation of the persecution of the Protestants. The Inquisition, in a modified form, was introduced into the Netherlands, but it was Philip who drove his subjects to an armed resistance against edicts, aimed not less at their civil liberty than at their religious faith. This monarch, who left behind him, in his wide dominions, a most unenviable reputation for cruelty and bigotry, was wholly devoid of sympathy for the people of the Low Countries, of whose language and customs he was entirely ignorant. The States of the Provinces still possessed many of the rights usually exercised by the nobles and deputies of towns in the feudal monarchies of the middle ages. The most insidious attempts were made to wrest the liberties of the People from them, but they were effectually thwarted by William of Nassau, who commenced in the States General in 1559, a constitutional resistance, to which subsequent events compelled him to give a totally different aspect. In the early discussions, the removal of an obnoxious minister was the ostensible ground of opposition, and the name of Granville figures as much in the annals of 1560, as that of Vanmaanen in those of 1830; but the stress laid on those comparatively insignificant individuals, in the one and the other case, only proves how much easier it is to interest the feelings of the people against obnoxious rulers than to induce them to embark in the support of an abstract proposition. In this hostility, however, to the unconstitutional servants of the Crown, principles were distinctly embodied, and despotism was attacked in the persons of its ministers. The defenders of the People's rights were stigmatized as gueur or beggars; a term which, like that of Democrats or Workingmen among us, soon became a title of triumph instead of reproach. At first, it was a general resistance to illegal edicts that united all good patriots, and the Southern Provinces co-operated with their countrymen. The city of Antwerp, indeed, was the central point of Union. But the special grievances under which the Protestants labored by the attempt to rapid retrospect the occurrences of those remote times. We must, therefore, pass over the cruelties of Alva the treachery of Anjou, the judgment and moderation of William of Nassau and the many interesting incidents of the civil war. From the treaty of Munster, the history of the United Provinces is blended with that of the great European world. Connected with the primary states in all the important wars and negotiations of the 17th and 18th centuries, they not only became the commercial rivals of England, The supremacy of the ocean. influence of the Dutch was not confined to their own continent. They were successful in laying the foundation of colonies in the East and West Indies and many of the inhabitants of the middle section of our Union, boast a descent from the natives of Holland. put into vigorous execution the furious decrees of the Council of Trent against heresy, and the establishment, in its fullest rigor, of the Inquisition, gave to this persecuted sect peculiar grounds of resistance; while their deep-rooted bigotry led the Walloons Provinces, in 1578, to abandon all association with their heretical brethren, and desert the patriot cause. This proceeding was followed by a union of the northern section of the country, the foundation of the Republic of the seven United Provinces, embracing Holland, Zealand, Utrecht, Friesland, but contended with her for the Groningen, Overryssel and Guilderland. The new government was remarkably wanting in energy, having many of the defects, and in a still greater degree, of our old confederacy. Each province was independent, and though Holland, from its preponderating strength, possessed great influence, yet the assent of each member of the confederacy was in all cases necessary, a provision which frequently occasioned the most ruinous délays in foreign negotiations and other matters of paramount importance. Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges, and other commercial towns had likewise, at first, sided with the cause of liberty and protestanism. They were, however, subsequently compelled by superior force to leave the association and to adopt as their exclusive faith, the religion of their Spanish rulers, which, in time eradicated Protestantism from the Provinces, that continued subject to foreign domination. The plan of our labors only allows us to describe by way of In our own revolution, the United Provinces were appealed to by the infant Republic of America, and strongly urged to aid in furtherance of a contest for those principles of national independence, of which their own annals presented so glorious a precedent. Crippled in her naval strength, by the unequal struggles, which in the last wars she had carried on with her formidable rival, and weakened by the attempt in 1787 to diminish the power of the Stadtholder and which had been terminated by the interposition of foreign troops, Holland could offer no resistance to the overwhelming current of the French Revolution. Following the example of the great nation' the Stadt- lands were only accounted of holderate was abolished, the States importance among nations, when General were transmuted into a it became necessary to settle a National Assembly, the name of question of conflicting indemnithe United Provinces was lost in ties. Before the Austrian sway that of the Batavian republic; and was withdrawn from these counwhen Bonaparte subsequently as- tries, it was manifested, by the sumed the imperial crown, this result of the reforms proposed by country was granted to his bro- the Emperor Joseph, that, howther Louis, from whom it was in a ever much influence the writings few years wrested and annexed to of the French philosophers might the empire on the extraordinary elsewhere have produced, the pretext that the Provinces of Provinces of the Low Countries Holland were an alluvion of the had escaped the infection. The French rivers. Before, however, Catholic religion had nigh effecther nominal independence was ed in the southern section of the annihilated, England had put an Netherlands, in behalf of superend to all those formidable means stition, what Protestantism had forof annoyance, which the country- merly accomplished for more enmen of De Ruyter and Von lightened doctrines in the regions Tromp, had once possessed. At of the north. The Belgian clergy the battle of Camperdown (17th vehemently resisted all attempts to Oct. 1797) the principal part of interfere with the absolute control the Navy of Holland was utterly which the usages of that religion destroyed, and the Colonies fell, give to the priests, over the minds of course, into the hands of the and actions of their parishioners. mistress of the ocean. Belgium, which was one of the first conquests of the republican arms, had been long previously annexed to France; and of its history subsequent to the independence of the Northern provinces, it may suffice to observe that, in the partition of the Spanish successions, by the treaty of Utrecht in 1713, the possessions of the Catholic King in the Low Countries were ceded to the Emperor, as a compensation for his consenting to the accession of the grandson of Louis XIV., to the crown of Spain and the Indies. While, indeed, the United Provinces for two centuries, commanded the respect and admiration of mankind, the Southern Nether The revolution of Holland, of 1813, was one of those national movements,not unusual in the times in which it was accomplished. The people seemed disposed to rise in the majesty of their strength and redeem their country from the bondage of foreign oppressors. It was not, as has often been remarked, the Princes but the People, who overturned Napoleon's widely extended empire; and assuredly, if any part of Europe suffered from the French sovereignty, it was Holland. Not only was one half of the youth carried away to fight battles in which they had no interest, not only was the whole population burthened with the heaviest taxes, but the continental system was fatal to Am |