Political Science Of The State

CONFEDERATIONS. 335
the eastern provinces do not seem to have had much sympa-
thy with Holland. The form of polity cannot be called a
bundesstaat in the strict sense ; at the most it was one of the
loosest of the confederacies that deserve to bear that name.
The practical introduction of monarchy in a mild shape, late
in its history, seems not to be due to a tendency towards uni-
ty of power in the polity, but to weariness of useless contests,
and the decay of political life in an old and wealthy country.
Why was it, we may ask, that the federal republics of
Federal system in Switzerland and of the seven provinces had so
sSe±t"dvTnVehs different a -destiny—the one developing itself
compared. jn ^ CQUrse Qf tjme jnto a Well-COmpacted
democratic state, the other ending in a monarchy. The an-
swer given by M. Passy in his treatise entitled, " des formes
de gouvernement," p. 346,* is that the dissimilar destiny is
owing to the difference of territorial situation. Switzerland,
defended by its mountains and aloof from the politics of other
lands, having once gained, could retain the form of polity
suited to its traditions and forms of social life. Holland, with
a commerce spread over the world, exposed to the jealousies
of rivals in trade, with larger powers in its neighborhood, was
almost of necessity involved in European war, "and at the
end ranged itself amid the perils of invasion and ruin under
a form of government which gave it a unity of direction, the
absence of which would, without fail, have been punished by
reverses more or less deplorable." And this tendency towards
a unitary monarchy was aided, he thinks, by the presence
of the Orange family, which was associated in unfading re-
membrance with the heroic struggles of its birth and early
years as an independent state.
All this may he admitted, an<J yet we cannot concede that
the whole or the chief difference between the two was caused
by territorial situation. Holland had a stronger aristocracy
of wealth and ancient title than Switzerland, it grew more
rapidly in wealth and culture, while the political interests as
* Paris, 1870.