Page:A Tour Through the Batavian Republic.djvu/60

48 of his birth; and not far from the venerable figure of this great man, the hat of liberty is erected on a pole of enormous height. The death of three or more trees, successively consecrated to liberty, made it necessary to substitute a pole to display the emblem of Batavian freedom; but its slightness promises a duration scarcely longer than that of its predecessors, and it is probable that the municipality, when the love of the fantasies of freedom shall have departed from them, will not trouble themselves to erect another. In the fish-market and elsewhere are similar erections, but these are scarcely superior to barbers' poles, or the flag-staffs which we see in the tea-gardens near London.

A weak and recently established government is generally more arbitrary in the exercise of its power, than those authorities which have derived stability from the length of their duration; and to this cause I attribute the