The Story of Nations - Holland/Chapter 38

I have now arrived at the end of the object which I had before me, which was to give a brief narrative of the manner in which the Dutch people vindicated their nationality, and were for a long time the very centre of modern European history. In my opinion, the story of this heroic people is entirely worthy of study, and, as I have stated, is more romantic and more instructive than that of the famous stand which Greece made against Persia, near twenty-four centuries ago. The debt which civilization and liberty owe to these people is greater than that which is due to any other race, however little it may be known and acknowledged. The administration of the United Provinces, no doubt, committed some grave errors, which were visited over severely, upon it. But there was a time when these errors were deemed to be political wisdom, and the English Government, which treated the Dutch more ungenerously, more unjustly, and more unwisely than any other European Power did, clung to these errors after they had been discarded in the Netherlands.

In a brief sketch like this the difficulty is, not what one should say, but what one should omit, without impairing the historical lesson, which the narrative of Dutch heroism and enterprize should and can convey. It is true that towards the end of the eighteenth century, Holland was assailed by jealous rivals, into whose hands their own chief magistrate played. But it is also true that after sixty years of humiliation, the Dutch have reasserted themselves, and though a small people, hemmed in by large military governments, they hold a considerable place among nations. Some scribbler, the other day, who knows little of what they were, and nothing of what they are, has called them an effete nation. Nothing can be more untrue. They are fortunately disabled from wasting their substance on militarism, and they are, and I trust will be, protected by the public conscience of Europe, as they should be, in so far as political wisdom goes for anything, by the persistent goodwill of Great Britain. But I do not find that in any department of enterprize, of commercial integrity, and of intellectual vigour, the Dutchman of to-day is behind any European nation whatever, or even the race which achieved so remarkable a position in the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth centuries. I need only quote the name of Kuenen.

I have been constrained in the necessary task of selecting the materials for this sketch, to omit much that might have been said about the place which bygone generations of Dutchmen have done for progress and for letters. The language of the people is a dialect, spoken by the inhabitants of what is only a corner of Europe. But the Dutch are justly proud of their native poets, of Vondel and of Katz, for instance, from the former of whom, it is said, our Milton did not disdain to borrow, if we do not accept the alternative, that two persons of nearly the same age, not only thought alike, but expressed their thoughts in nearly the same words; in the latter of whom the Dutch allege that they have a lyrist whose poems rank with the best.

In the early days of the Republic, Holland, and especially Amsterdam and Rotterdam, held the printing-presses of Europe, whatever may be said of the modern claim that this great invention was made at Haarlem. The Elzevirs were the first publishers of cheap editions, and thereby aided in disseminating not the new learning only, but all that the world knew at the time. From Holland came the first optical instruments, the best mathematicians, the most intelligent philosophers, as well as the boldest and most original thinkers. Holland is the origin of scientific medicine and rational therapeutics. From Holland came the new agriculture, which has done so much for social life, horticulture, and, floriculture. The Dutch taught modern Europe navigation. They were the first to, explore the unknown seas, and many an island and cape which their captains discovered has been renamed after some one who got all his knowledge by their research, and appropriated the fruit of his predecessor's labours. They have been as much plundered in the world of letters, as they have been in commerce and politics.

Holland taught the Western nations finance, perhaps no great boon. But they also taught commercial honour, the last and the hardest lesson which nations learn. They inculcated free trade, a lesson which is nearly as hard to learn, if not harder, since the conspiracy against private right is watchful, incessant, and, as some would make us believe, respectable. They raised a constant, and for a long time ineffectual, protest against the barbarous custom of privateering, and the dangerous doctrine of contraband in war, a doctrine which, if carried out logically, would allow belligerents to inderdict the trade of the world. The Dutch are the real founders of what people call international law, or the rights of nations. They made mistakes, but they made fewer than their neighbours made. The benefits which they conferred were incomparably greater than the errors which they committed.

There is nothing more striking in the Dutch character than the fact that, after a brief and discreditable episode, the States were an asylum for the persecuted. The Jews, who were contemned because they were thrifty, plundered because they were rich, and harassed because they clung tenaciously to their ancient faith and customs, found an asylum in Holland; and some of them perhaps, after they originated and adopted, with the pliability of their race, a Teutonic alias, have not been sufficiently grateful to the country which sheltered them. The Jansenists, expelled from France, found a refuge in Utrecht, and more than a refuge, a recognition, when recognition was a dangerous offence.

There is no nation in Europe which owes more to Holland than Great Britain does. The English, I regret to say, were for a long time, in the industrial history of modern civilization, the stupidest and most backward nation in Europe. There, was, to be sure, a great age in England during the reign of Elizabeth, and that of the first Stewart king. But it was brief indeed. In every other department, of art, of agriculture, of trade, we learnt our lessons from the Hollanders. How we repaid them I have striven to show, I hope in no unpatriotic strain. Our own Selden, who learnt all his learning from Dutch sources, never lets an opportunity slip of gibing at his literary benefactors and teachers.

I must not permit myself to linger on the modern merits of restored and revived Holland. I doubt whether any other small European race, after passing through the trials which it endured from the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle to the conclusion of the continental war, ever had so entire a recovery. The chain of its history, to be sure, was broken, and cannot, in the nature of things, be welded together. But there is still left to Holland the boast and the reality of her motto, “Luctor et emergo.”