Holland, the birthplace of American political, civil and religious liberty; an historical essay

HOLIADD

•An-HISTORICAL-eSSAY- BY-

H-AvAn-coenen-TORCHiAnA

HOLLAND

AN HISTORICAL

ESSAY

THE ROYAL FAMILY OF THE NETHERLANDS. HER
MAJESTY WILHELMINA, QUEEN OF THE NETHER-
LANDS, PRINCESS OF ORANGE, ETC., ETC. His ROYAL
HIGHNESS HENRY, PRINCE OF THE NETHERLANDS,
ETC., THE PRINCE CONSORT. HER ROYAL HIGH-
NESS PRINCESS JULIANA, HEIR APPARENT.

HOLLAN D

THE BIRTHPLACE OF AMERICAN

POLITICAL, CIVIC AND

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

sin Historical Essay

BY
H. A. VAN COENEN ToRCHIANA

OF THE SAN FRANCISCO BAR
CONSUL-GENERAL OF THE NETHERLANDS ON

THE PACIFIC COAST

RESIDENT COMMISSIONER-GENERAL TO THE

PANAMA-PACIFIC INTERNATIONAL

EXPOSITION, 1915

PAUL ELDER & COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

SAN FRANCISCO

U. S. A.

Copyright, 191$

Paul Elder &P Company

San Francisco

To my wife,

Catherina van Coenen Torchiana,

whose never-failing gentleness and kindliness

to all Netherlander residing in or visiting

the Western States of America have ever

commanded my highest esteem, this

volume is dedicated by

The Author

INTRODUCTION

HIS is the age of fast accumu-
lations. The impulse of the
times seems to drive us irre-
sistibly to admire everything
of huge proportions. The
"Cult of the Immense" finds
many worshippers.

The directors of a bank
proudly publish their total deposits, assets and
liabilities, and the more impressive these figures
the safer the interests of the depositors are sup-
posed to be. A city publishes the number of its
inhabitants, and when that number has increased
far beyond the growth reasonably to be expected
there is great local rejoicing; when the census
shows simply a healthy growth, a natural evolu-
tion, there is disappointment, if not intense gloom.
The citizens' pride and happiness seem actually
to be threatened. And as it is with banks and
cities, so it is also with states and countries.

But is the individual depositor really better
off because his bank has assumed mammoth pro-
portions? Is the individual citizen of New York
more fortunately situated because the city has
four million instead of two million inhabitants?
Is the average suburbanite happier because his
little village is annexed to a large city, and real
estate speculators have reaped a big harvest?
And is the citizen of Sleeswyck economically,
morally or mentally benefited because the country
of his nativity belongs to a huge empire instead
of to a small kingdom?

Looking at Western Europe, the cradle of our
modern civilization, there is one thing which
must strike the thoughtful person very forcibly —
that through all the ages it has been the small
countries and not the large empires whose citi-
zens have stood unflinchingly for the highest

INTRODUCTION

human ideals, for religious and civic liberty, for
true human culture in the highest sense of the
word.

Are not the Netherlands and Switzerland shin-
ing proofs of the contention that principles of
great civic strength and righteousness, and ideals
of human happiness find their strongest cham-
pions in small countries and that it is not the geo-
graphical dimensions, but the strength of the
character of its people which fixes a country's
place in the family of nations?

As the apostles of peace, these so-called ff small
countries" stand pre-eminent amongst their sis-
ters. It is not prudence dictated by weakness
which commands a policy of peace. Strength is
a comparative element. But a war between the
Netherlands and Belgium, between Denmark
and Switzerland would, at the present time, be
an absurdity. These small nations in their great
comparative strength have developed different
and higher ideals, and have learned to scorn the
theory that "Might is Right."

That the development and growth of these
lofty national ideals is a boon to mankind, no
thoughtful person will or can deny. That these
smaller nations should be undisturbed in working
out their national destinies for the benefit of the
human race must be self-evident. The destruc-
tion of a small nation with high ideals is far
greater a blow to human progress than the fall of
a great empire in which such ideals do not pre-
vail.

The great powers of today were weak powers
in their infancy. It was then that they received
tremendous stimulation from the precepts and
histories of these powerful Davids in the ever-
lasting world struggle for freedom.

The People of the United States, the citizens
of one of the most powerful nations of the globe,
owe a great debt of gratitude to the People of
the Netherlands.

[x]

INTRODUCTION

Is this always realized? Is it always realized
that a great part of American civilization was
born in that amphibious little swamp that borders
on the North Sea, known variously as the "Low
Countries" "The Netherlands/' and in later days
by the name of its greatest and most powerful
province, Holland?

Here from the time that the hitherto invincible
CtBsar gave up the conquest of the Batavians as
impossible, and made them his honorable allies
instead of his slaves f through the terrible Eighty
Years War with Spain, then the most powerful
empire of the world, through all the centuries
when the Low Countries were known as the
"Battle Ground of Europe," and when the North
Sea lurked like a grim gray wolf ready to gnaw
and devour the sodden land; through all these
vicissitudes, perhaps because of them, the people
of Holland upheld and defended the very prin-
ciples that distinguish America today.

No fair-minded person would deny for a mo-
ment that the United States owes a great debt to
England. The language of America, though
compounded of Saxon, Teutonic and Latin roots,
first took shape in England. The poets of Brit-
ain, her great novelists and essayists have set the
pace for American writers and have been their
inspiration. In personal bravery and fortitude in
the face of awful danger the English yeoman is a
model and example. To the sturdy sons of old
England Americans owe a not inconsiderable
part of their national robustness. There is little
danger that this debt will be underestimated.

It is to other creditors that justice must be
done, and Holland is the greatest of these by far.

The writer has not attempted to compose an
exhaustive treatise on the subject. A brief state-
ment of the facts in the case, with their obvious
deductions is his only object. If even a small part
of the dense fog of historical illusion is cleared

[XI]

INTRODUCTION

away in the fallowing pages f and the American
public, always fair-minded, is given the oppor-
tunity of judging for itself, this essay will not
have been written in vain.

In as much as this essay is written for the pur-
pose of suggesting to the American reader that
he extend his study on the subject no attempt is
made to cite any of the Dutch authorities con-
sulted t and the very limited space prohibits the
citing of authorities in the English language to
any great extent, but the reader is respectfully re-
ferred to Motley's "Rise of the Dutch Republic/'
and the t(United Netherlands" Dr. Campbell's
"The Puritan in Holland, England and Amer-
ica"'/ and Griffis' "Brave Little Holland and
What She Taught Us," and "The Dutch Influ-
ence in New England" Here I wish also to
acknowledge gratefully the assistance received
from Anita Day Downing of San Francisco.

The Panama-Pacific International Exposition
stands today in the face of the terrific conflict
now being waged in Europe as a lofty Monument
of Peace. It stands on the western edge of the
continent, voicing the impelling dictate that the
civilization of the white man must march forever
to the West.

It is difficult to imagine a single enterprise
which had to battle with so many international
complications during the short period of its con-
ception and birth.

But the idea of the Exposition, conceived in
the love of the people of California for their
State, is born into realization after a great travail,
and instead of a mountain of love and devotion
bringing forth a mouse, there was given to the
light of day a magnificent enterprise.

Here it is that ignorance born of arrogance
will be humbled to the dust, and the arts and sci-
ences, the commerce and industries of the world
will celebrate High Mass.

[XII]

INTRODUCTION

Holland takes its just position among the na-
tions at this World's Fair and shows what a so-
called "small country" through the virility of
its citizens, can accomplish in the affairs of the
world.

As though symbolizing the traditional friend-
ship of the two nations the Red, White and Blue
are the national colors of both, and the seven red
stripes in Old Glory are a fitting emblem of the
seven Provinces of the Old Republic of the
United Netherlands, the birthplace of so many
American ideals, and of so many industrial in-
ventions that made the growth of this and other
countries possible.

Today the old battle flag of the Netherlands,
a flag which has remained during the centuries
without blemish or stain, floats over the Nether-
lands Pavilion, and kissed by the zephyrs of the
Golden Gate, it waves a friendly greeting to its
brilliant daughter, the Stars and Stripes of the
United States of America.

THE AUTHOR,

SAN FRANCISCO, CAL.

1915.

[XIII]

CONTENTS

PAGE

Introduction IX

Some Reasons Why There Is Confusion of
Thought as to the Origin of American
Institutions 3

Comparison Between the Political Institu-
tions of England and the United States,
and the United States and The Nether-
lands ii

Dutch Influence on Civilization, European
and American 25

The Direct Influence of The Netherlands
on America 45

The Debt of the United States to The Neth-
erlands 57

Holland's Attitude During the Birth of the
American Republic 69

Appendix 85

[xv]

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING
PAGE

The Royal Family of The Netherlands. Her
Majesty Wilhelmina, Queen of The Nether-
lands, Princess of Orange, etc., etc. His
Royal Highness Henry, Prince of The Neth-
erlands, etc., the Prince Consort. Her Royal
Highness Princess Juliana, Heir Apparent .
Frontispiece

The Peace Palace at The Hague, Holland. A
Gift of the American Citizen, Andrew Car-
negie 14

"The Palace in the Forest" at The Hague, Hol-
land. The Historic Home of the Princes of
Orange, Stadholders and later Sovereigns of
The Netherlands 28

The Official Pavilion of The Netherlands and
Its Colonies at the Panama-Pacific Interna-
tional Exposition at San Francisco, 1915. (W.
Kromhout, Rotterdam, Architect. Messrs.
Ward & Blohme, San Francisco, Consulting
Architects) 50

His Excellency, Jonkheer Dr. J. Loudon, The
Netherlands Minister of Foreign Affairs; in-
augurator of negotiations for the general
arbitration treaty of December, 1913, being
the first treaty of this nature concluded be-
tween the United States and a European
country 60

A detail of a diaroma exhibited in the Official
Pavilion of The Netherlands at the San
Francisco Exposition, representing a fleet of
merchantmen belonging to the famous Dutch
Chartered (geoctrooieerd) West Indies Com-
pany or America Company, sailing in the year
1670 from Amsterdam along the Eastern
Coast of the Island Marken, bound for New
Amsterdam, now New York 72

View of the Official Reception Hall of The
Netherlands Pavilion at the Panama-Pacific

[ XVII ]

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING
PAGE

International Exposition, San Francisco, 1915.
Decorations and Mural painting representing
the Meeting of Labor of the Old and New

World by Herman Rosse 78

View of the Division of the Dutch East Indies
in the Official Pavilion of The Netherlands
and Colonies at the Panama-Pacific Interna-
tional Exposition, San Francisco, 1915 . . 82

[XVIII]

SOME REASONS WHY THERE

IS CONFUSION OF THOUGHT AS TO

THE ORIGIN OF AMERICAN

INSTITUTIONS

SOME REASONS WHY THERE
IS CONFUSION OF THOUGHT
AS TO THE ORIGIN OF AMERI-
CAN INSTITUTIONS

|HE growth of the American
Commonwealth has been too
rapid to admit of much leis-
ure for retrospection. Pio-
neers must not look backward
if they would continue to go
forward.

The American public as a
whole has been very busily occupied for the past
three hundred years. To build, in the short
space of three centuries a magnificent civiliza-
tion out of a wilderness certainly required more
than gradual and passive evolution. It meant
work — hard work and intelligent work. If the
problems of the present and future were to be
solved, mere theorizing and brooding on the
past had to be banished in favor of aggressive,
practical thinking. And this not only on the part
of statesmen and scholars. The people, the great
middle class, with their demand for "life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness," have done much
for the formation of the laws and institutions of
the great American Republic.

In the very beginning of our pre-national
growth, before any national policy could be
formed, we find a certain unity of political ideals
in almost all the colonies. Certain principles,
chief among which are freedom of religious be-
lief, "no taxation without representation," a rep-
resentative government, a comprehensive school
system and a written constitution, have distin-
guished the American idea from the founding
of the first colonies on the Atlantic Coast until
the present day.

[3]

HOLLAND

From what source did these forefathers of
modern America acquire the high ideals of gov-
ernment and right living that made the Ameri-
can Republic first a possibility, and finally a
proved realization? Whence came the vision
of industrial peace and plenty, of personal and
religious freedom that inspired the Puritan
Fathers on their long voyage over unknown seas,
and later led Wm. Penn, Roger Williams, Thos.
Hooker and others to plant the seeds of a new
civilization in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Con-
necticut and elsewhere throughout the New
England and Middle Colonies?

Was it the English organization of those times,
embodying a State Church, and an unlimited
monarchy with all its natural consequences? It
seems hardly possible. England today takes a
prominent place amongst the most enlightened
nations on earth, but at the time of the founding
of the American Colonies it occupied quite a dif-
ferent position in the family of nations.

Notwithstanding that England has been called
the Mother Country of the United States, and
has been accepted as such by the world in gen-
eral and Americans in particular with a sort of
blind acquiescence in the statements of English
historians and of those Americans who have
written the story of their country with little re-
gard to the foreign history which influenced it,
we must look elsewhere for the inspiration.

Where must we look? The unbiased historian
has no difficulty in answering.

One nation, and one only, in the whole of
Western Europe, at the time of the founding of
the New England Colonies, embodied the ideas
that have become an integral part of American
civilization. The Netherlands had been for cen-
turies the home of religious freedom and tolera-
tion, of representative government, and of po-
litical liberty. Through all the terrible years of

[4]

AN HISTORICAL ESSAY
the struggle with Spain, the Netherlanders were
true to their ideals, even cutting the dykes and
allowing the waters of the North Sea to flood
the Lowlands, thereby destroying the labor of
years, rather than preserve their homes and prop-
erty at the price of their liberty. "Thousands
for defense but not one cent for tribute" was
Dutch for centuries before it was American.

None were better aware of these conditions
than the progressive elements of England. To
them Holland was the mecca of their desires.

To the Netherlands fled the persecuted Pil-
grims from England. For twelve years they
lived under the vigorous, but for those times,
benign Dutch rule and when they set sail to seek
a home of their own it was the well wishes of
their good friends of Leyden that cheered them
in their frail craft on the turbulent Atlantic. In
the Netherlands they had observed the appalling
sacrifices which the heroic people of Holland
were daily making on the altar of their Father-
land, in the great struggle for religious liberty
and civic freedom against the oppression of
Spain. It was there the great truth that no sacri-
fice is too mighty for the attainment of so glori-
ous a goal had been written indelibly on their
brains, nay, burned into their very souls.

What is more natural than to believe that in
forming the government of their new country,
the colonists should adopt the forms and customs
that they had seen work so successfully in Hol-
land? They had seen in the Netherlands the
concrete application of their own beliefs. This
plan of government was fresh in their memories,
easily adopted, and with such alterations as
were necessary to meet the new conditions, emin-
ently practical.

It seems somewhat remarkable on first exam-
ination that so much confusion should have
arisen over so simple a situation. On second

[si

HOLLAND

consideration the reasons become more evident
and easily understood.

In the first place, the colonists of New Eng-
land were in the majority of cases of English
origin. They spoke the English tongue and
were, until the American Revolution, under
English supervision; English was the official
language. It is but natural that the English his-
torians should claim for England the intellectual
parenthood of so illustrious an offspring. In
justice to the historians, it must be remembered
that only in comparatively recent times have the
Government archives of England been opened
to public inspection. Consequently, much valu-
able data has been withheld from the conscien-
tious historian, and biased ideas have naturally
arisen. History as a philosophical science is of
no very great age, and few Americans under-
stood the Dutch language sufficiently to make
independent investigations.

Another drawback to arriving at a logical con-
clusion as to the origin of American institutions
is a very human trait due to patriotism. It seems
the almost universal habit of national writers to
disclaim or overlook any foreign influence on
English or American civilization. This habit
and its effect are evident in the attitude of the
American public at large, an attitude often mis-
guided.

Added to this is the influence of Washington
Irving's "Diedrich Knickerbocker." If that
genial writer could have foreseen the result of his
"literary joke," (his own words), it is doubtful
if it would ever have seen the light of day. Even
one example of its effect on American historians
is quite enough to measure the confusion it has
accomplished. It is from such statements as that
of Julian Hawthorne in his "History of Amer-
ica," that the American public has gleaned its
ideas of the Dutch in this country and elsewhere.

[6]

AN HISTORICAL ESSAY

"The Dutch are not funny anywhere but in
Seventeenth Century Manhattan, nor can this
singularity be explained by saying that Washing-
ton Irving made them so. It inheres in the situa-
tion; and the delightful chronicles of Diedrich
Knickerbocker owe half their enduring fascina-
tion to their sterling veracity," etc.

On a preceding page he has enumerated some
of the virtues of these "funny" people. He says
in part:

"The burghers set us an example good for us to
follow; and they deeded to us some of our best
citizens and most engaging architectural tradi-
tions. . . . For their character, their tempera-
ment . . . the industrious decorum of their
women, the dignity of their patroons, the strict-
ness of their social conduct, the stoutness of their
independence, the excellence of their good sense,
and the simplicity of their prudence, we are in-
debted to them."

It would take more than a keen sense of humor
to see anything "funny" in such qualities, but
since Irving has said so, funny they must be, and
the historian praises his "veracity." Irving cer-
tainly was successful with his literary joke.

Because of a common language, certain similar
legal institutions, many of which are becoming
slowly but surely obsolete in the United States,
and the English origin of some of the early col-
onists, it has been assumed that all this wonderful
new structure of American civilization was
founded on English ideals or built up in some
miraculous way from the imaginations of the in-
differently educated farmers and mechanics who
made up the larger part of the English popula-
tion of New England.

[7]

COMPARISON BETWEEN

THE POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS OF

ENGLAND AND THE UNITED

STATES, AND THE UNITED

STATES AND THE

NETHERLANDS

COMPARISON BETWEEN THE
POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS OF
ENGLAND AND THE UNITED
STATES, AND THE UNITED
STATES AND THE NETHER-
LANDS

HE institutions peculiar to the
United States are to a large
extent not English but Dutch
in origin. Lest this seem too
radical a statement, let us
compare in some detail the
more salient parts of the po-
litical and social structures of
England and America, and of America and
Holland.

The political structures of the two first men-
tioned nations differ greatly in many essentials.
The United States and each of the separate States
have written constitutions. These constitutions
are the enactment of the will of the people, are
superior to congresses and legislatures, and can
only be altered by the people in such modes, as
to time and majorities, as guarantee deliberation
and a widespread settled feeling amongst the
people of the necessity for change.

The American system is almost identical with
the system now in vogue in the Netherlands, and
in all essentials of principle, though possibly not
in detail, with that which existed in the Nether-
lands for centuries.

England never had and has not now a written
constitution. Each new Parliament is a law unto
itself, limited only by an unwritten accumulation
of sentiment, tradition, theory and precedent, and
this unwritten constitution provides no special
safeguard against revolutionary reforms like

HOLLAND

those in America and Holland. It is the high
quality of its citizens and reverence for its great
traditions, not its written laws, which constitute
England's safeguard.

Both countries possess two legislative houses,
but the likeness is in number only. In the United
State the Senate represents the individual States.
Each State, no matter how large or small its
area or population, has two Senators. One third
of the membership changes every two years.
Though the members are elected at present by
the State Legislatures, a powerful movement is
on foot to have them elected by the people, and
they are already, in fact if not in name, actually
elected by the people in several of the States. The
Senate of the United States has wide powers and
a very influential voice in the executive branch
of the Federal Government. It must confirm the
appointment of judges and executive officers ex-
cept those of the lowest grade, and its different
committees, that of Foreign Relations for in-
stance, are very powerful indeed. No treaty is
valid, nor may war or peace be made without its
sanction, and its general influence is keenly felt
in the political structure of the country.

The House of Lords of England is distinctly
different. The members represent the aristoc-
racy, born or created, keep their seats for life,
and exercise a very restricted legislative power.
The Cabinet, responsible to the varying dictates
of the House of Commons alone, wields the ab-
solute power in all matters in which the Ameri-
can President must act with and by the consent
of the United States Senate.

The American House of Representatives is
made up of men elected for two years and paid a
liberal salary. Their term of office cannot be
abrogated by the Executive power. In England
the members of the House of Commons may hold
office for seven days or seven years, for the Cab-

[12]

AN HISTORICAL ESSAY
inet may order a new election at any time. Be-
fore the year 1911 no salaries were paid its mem-
bers, and they were dependent on their own
purses or voluntary contributions for support.
Since 1911 they are paid a very modest stipend
indeed.

In the United States, guarding the Constitution
with an unwearying eye, and in its own sphere
above the powers of President, Senate or House,
sits the Supreme Court. Lord Salisbury, in a
speech at Edinburgh, November 23, 1882, spoke
of it in this manner:

"I confess I do not often envy the United
States, but there is one feature in their institu-
tions which appears to me the subject of the
greatest envy, their magnificent institution of a
Supreme Court. In the United States, if Par-
liament passes any measure inconsistent with
the Constitution of the country, there exists a
court which will negative it at once, and that
gives a stability to the institutions of the coun-
try which, under the system of vague and mys-
terious promises here, we look for in vain."

Moreover, each State Supreme Court has
within the limits of the boundaries of its own
State the same absolute power to decree whether
or not an act is in conformity with or contrary
to the Constitution of the State and therefore
valid or invalid.

In the details of the government of the two
countries a contrast even more marked is evident.

Local self government has been the rule in
America since the beginning of the first New
England colonies. At the foundation of the sys-
tem is the township, varying in size in the dif-
ferent States, but of the same political import-
ance. Each township elects its own officers and
manages its own local affairs. At the annual
town meeting, where suffrage is limited only by
citizenship, the supervisors, town clerks, justices

[13]

HOLLAND

of the peace and other town officials are elected,
and money is appropriated for schools, libraries,
roads, bridges and other local purposes.

The county, the next unit, consists of an aggre-
gate of several townships. Its officials are chosen
at the general State election, and it possesses a
local assembly formed of the township super-
visors. This assembly audits accounts, supervises
the county affairs, and legislates as to various
county matters.

Next to the county stands the sovereign State,
with its legislature for the regulation of State
affairs, and above the State the Federal govern-
ment, which deals only with national concerns.

Here we have a consistent and balanced system
of self government. Let us glance at the English
arrangement of local rule. Here we find differ-
ent conditions.

M. D. Chalmers, in "Local Government" in
the "English Citizen Series," describes it in the
following manner:

"Local government in this Country may be
fitly described as consisting of a chaos of areas,
a chaos of authorities and a chaos of rates.
Confusion and extravagances are the charac-
teristic features of the whole system."

In practice this arrangement may be presumed
to work beneficially and to the entire satisfaction
of the majority of the English people, but it is
certainly widely different from the American
system.

The English Parliament makes laws and regu-
lates local and municipal, to say nothing of do-
mestic and parochial affairs for all the communi-
ties of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
As we have seen, the American Congress is
concerned only with questions of national im-
port. To it are delegated only certain limited
powers, all the other rights remaining in the in-
dividual States. State affairs are left to the State,

[Hi

AN HISTORICAL ESSAY
county concerns to the county, and township mat-
ters to the township meeting or elections, etc.

Any student of Dutch history will at once rec-
ognize the analogy between the American system
and the former and present Dutch systems in
Holland. The States General has two legislative
houses, the First and Second Chamber. The
members of the First Chamber or Upper House
are elected by the Legislatures of the Provinces.
The members of the Second Chamber are elected
by popular vote, and receive a substantial salary.
The provincial affairs are left to the different
provincial legislatures, the city and town affairs
to the respective city and town councils. The
Supreme Court of the Netherlands has been
from time immemorial a powerful and august
tribunal.

The written ballot was not adopted in England
until 1872. Four of the original thirteen States,
Delaware, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and
Georgia, in their first state constitutions adopted
during the years from 1776 to 1790, provided
that all elections should be by ballot. In New
York the governor and lieutenant governor were
elected by this system in 1778. The written bal-
lot was an established institution in ten years
more.

So much for the contrast of the English and
American governments, politically speaking,

As the slogan, "All men are created equal," is
the foundation of the political edifice of the Uni-
ted States, so is "freedom of thought and speech"
the cornerstone of the social system. Making due
allowance for the very restricted ideas people
formerly had of freedom of thought and speech,
still we must look in vain for a manifestation of
this principle in England at the time of the foun-
dation of the colonies. The last restriction to
religious freedom in England, the religious tests
in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, was

HOLLAND

abolished only in 1871, nearly a century after
complete religious liberty had been proclaimed
in the United States.

Most important in the development of Eng-
land has been the Established Church. Equally
important in the United States has been the lack
of a State Church. In England the church was
for centuries an adjunct of the State supported
by a universal tax levied alike on conformists and
non-conformists. Its ministers are not appointed
by their congregations but are selected by the
government, or by private individuals who have
purchased or inherited this right. In the begin-
ning several of the colonies established churches
supported by the State, following the English ex-
ample. The Revolution severed this tie with the
others. New York, as befitted her Dutch origin,
led the way in her first constitution adopted in
1777, repealing and abrogating, in this instru-
ment, all such parts of the Common Law and all
such statutes as "could be construed to establish
or maintain any particular denominations of
Christians or their ministers." All the other
original States followed her example, Massa-
chusetts being the last in 1833. Some of the Col-
onies, having no established church, seemed to
require no constitutional provision on the subject.

Clearly, it was not the English example that
the Americans followed in establishing religious
toleration. Rather is Great Britain a debtor to
the United States in this respect, as the world at
large is in many other respects.

Freedom of the press is always a doubtful priv-
ilege in an aristocratic government. As soon as
it came to be recognized as a power, about a cen-
tury after its introduction into England, the
printing press was placed under a strict censor-
ship. Printing might be carried on only in speci-
fied places, and a book had to be approved by an
official board before it could be given to the pub-

[16]

AN HISTORICAL ESSAY

lie. In 1693 this law expired, but immediately

there began a series of trials for libel.

Backed by the remarkable Common Law doc-
trine, "The greater the truth the greater the
libel," the courts tried the unfortunate publisher
for any statement concerning the corruption of
an official, having no regard for the truth of the
statement, but only allowing the jury to decide
whether or not the prisoner had published the ar-
ticle in question. If the prisoner was found
guilty, he was punished by fine or imprisonment
or both.

This abuse grew to such proportions that stur-
dy English jurors were found who were willing
to suffer imprisonment for contempt of court
rather than convict a man for telling a self-evi-
dent fact. It was not until 1845 that the truth
was admitted as evidence, and the jury allowed to
inquire what motive actuated the defendant,
whether malice or the good of the community.

In the United States quite a different condition
appears. An amendment to the Federal Consti-
tution, adopted in 1791, forbade Congress to
make any "law abridging the freedom of speech
or of the press." Even before this, in 1790, Penn-
sylvania had adopted her second Constitution,
which provided for the same freedom of the
press that was established in England fifty-five
years later. The other States followed in close
order with similar provisions. Freedom of the
press, it is easily seen, was American before it
was English.

It seems hardly necessary to speak of the early
public school system of England as compared
with that of the United States.

From its inception, New England devoted
much attention to the education of her children.
As early as 1647 in Massachusetts Colony, a law
was passed providing a schoolmaster for every
fifty families, his wages to be paid either by the

[17]

HOLLAND

parents or from the public fund, as the majority
of citizens should decide. Every Massachusetts
town had a common school and every community
of over a hundred population a grammar school
by 1665. In Connecticut every town was com-
pelled to support a school for three months of
every year, or be liable to a fine. In New York
the Dutch had already founded the first free
schools and the first Protestant Church in Amer-
ica. In accordance with this policy, we find the
other New England colonies adopting similar
plans.

Only in Virginia, the most typically English
of all the colonies, untouched by the Dutch influ-
ence that tempered the Northern States, do we
find opposition to popular education and the
freedom of the press. It seems strange to an
American mind to read the words of Sir William
Berkeley, the English Governor of Virginia,
written to England in 1671:

"I thank God there are no free schools or
printing, and I hope we shall not have them
this hundred years. For learning has brought
heresy and disobedience and sects into the
world, and printing has divulged them and
libels against the best government. God keep
us from both."

And all this time free schools and free print-
ing were flourishing in the Netherlands.

Free schools, both for girls and boys, dated in
the Netherlands from the thirteenth century.

In England we find the condition that the
worthy Governor prayed for. From the time of
Edward VI, who ascended the throne in 1547,
until 1832 there was no growth in the number
of free schools in England. During his reign
eighteen grammar schools, charitable institutions
rather than popular schools, were established.
Added to these were several founded by private
citizens. Not until 1832 did Parliament sup-

[18]

AN HISTORICAL ESSAY
plement these by an appropriation of £20,000.
In 1870 England for the first time established
schools for the masses.

Passing into the realm of higher education, we
find that while the United States possessed for
years a system of free high schools, England af-
forded no free education to the middle class, and
no free higher education to any. Almost every
State in the Union has its State university and its
State normal schools for the training of teachers,
men and women. In these free instruction is the
almost universal rule. We must look in vain to
England for the origin of the American recog-
nition of the right of every person to a complete
and thorough education at the public expense.

In the United States, as in the Netherlands,
the blind, deaf, dumb and imbecile have been
looked upon for long years as having a claim on
the State, and the asylums for their care and in-
struction are supported, in almost every case, en-
tirely by the government. There was a time
when Great Britain did not take the same view of
this important matter.

In the matter of prisons little comment is
necessary. When the House of Commons decid-
ed for the first time, in 1831, to investigate the
subject of prison reform, a Mr. Crawford was
sent to examine the prisons of America for pos-
sible improvements on the English system, and
his report resulted in the adoption of the Ameri-
can system as a model in England.

The method of land distribution and title
transference is of great consequence in the devel-
opment of the per capita wealth of any nation.
The almost unbelievably confusing system of
land transference made it very difficult for the
small farmer in England to buy or hold land.
We refer the interested reader to "Ten Thousand
a Year," written by Dr. Warren. Compare with
this the simplicity of the American system of

[19]

HOLLAND

deed and mortgage recording universally recog-
nized. This system, too, was bodily taken from
the Dutch laws and customs.

But how about the famous Common Law of
England? Isn't that great system of jurispru-
dence the foundation of the whole American
legal system? Let us answer this question with
another query: Is the Common Law of England,
long looked upon as an unbreakable bond be-
tween the two countries, indeed as American as
we have been led to believe? No less an author-
ity than the Hon. M. F. Morris, in his "Intro-
duction to the History of the Development of
the Law," claims differently. In speaking of the
relation of the Common Law to the American
Code, he says:

" Almost every salient feature of the Com-
mon Law of England has been banished from
our social system and from our jurisprudence.
We have abolished the invidious distinction be-
tween males and females in the inheritance.
We have discarded as far as practicable all
the intricate incidents of feudal tenure. . . .
Their name is legion, and they cannot all be
reached at once, and possibly some of them
are innocuous. We have restored to woman
the management of her own estate, and her
right to contract for herself, which was se-
cured to her by the Roman Law and denied
by the Common Law of England. We have
repudiated and utterly rejected the barbarous
and inhuman penal branch of the Common
Law, and have legislated on the subject inde-
pendently of the rigid demands of Feudalism
and more in accord with the more reasonable
regulations of the Code of Justinian."

A more definite and convincing statement
could hardly be found. Verily, a critical exam-
ination will soon show that the modernized Code
of Justinian, known as the Dutch Roman juris-

[20]

AN HISTORICAL ESSAY
prudence, has had as powerful if not a more
powerful influence on the American legal sys-
tem than the English Common Law.

In the very first laws passed in the Northern
Colonies this aversion to the Common Law is
very evident. In the Southern, and more purely
English, States the movement was slower but
still sure, depending on the rapidity with which
these people assimilated the more advanced ideas
of their Yankee neighbors. The militant suf-
fragettes of our English friends across the seas
would have some difficulty in justifying their ac-
tivities in this commonwealth.

In the United States, for all purposes of busi-
ness, ownership of property, and claim to her
individual earnings, a married woman is today
as independent as her husband, and in not a few
of the States she has obtained political equality
as well.

The United States therefore can hardly be re-
garded as beholden to England for a majority of
the so-called American institutions. In govern-
ment structure, in religious toleration, in free-
dom of speech and of the press, in popular educa-
tion, in charitable institutions and prisons, in
land distribution, and legal code, the people of
the United States are as much the teacher of the
great British nation as they are the pupil of the
Netherlands.

[21]

DUTCH INFLUENCE

ON CIVILIZATION, EUROPEAN

AND AMERICAN

DUTCH INFLUENCE ON CIVI-
LIZATION, EUROPEAN AND
AMERICAN

|HE great river of Dutch influ-
ence which carried on its
strong tide many of the seeds
of present-day American civ-
ilization, and cast them on the
western shores of the Atlan-
tic, where they took root and
grew, had three sources.
These consisted of : first, the great and almost
immeasurable effect the example of the Nether-
lands had upon the general culture and progress
of Northern Europe prior to the establishment
of the colonies ; second, the knowledge the Eng-
lish soldiers brought back from their never-
ending excursions to the "Low Countries," the
battle ground of religious and political freedom,
knowledge which traveled from England to
America; and, third, and most important, the
direct contact of the founders of the American
colonies with the enlightened ideas of the Neth-
erlands, which later served as a model to the
builders of the American republic.

Of the first of these sources, the volume is so
great that it is well nigh impossible to compass
even a small part of it in limited space. From
the beginning of the twelfth century the Low
Countries were the clearing, house of European
culture and commerce, and its inhabitants had
far outstripped their neighbors. To the factories
of the Netherlands were brought the raw mate-
rials of England, France and Spain, whose mer-
chants took back to their own lands the products
of Dutch ingenuity. These people who built
their cities on piles and fought a bitter fight with
the North Sea for every foot of their miniature
land, were the first to glorify the "home" both as

[25]

HOLLAND

a physical dwelling place and as a spiritual unit.
From the intercourse they held with the Orient,
first through the returning Crusaders and later
through commercial contact, they observed and
adopted with improvements a multitude of the
ideas which the comfort-loving Oriental had
evolved in his "heathen" land. The bulbs which
laid the foundation of an industry of almost un-
believable proportions were brought in some
travelers' packs from the far land of the "Pay-
nim," to be tenderly cared for by the beauty-
loving Hollander. Fruits and vegetables un-
known to Western Europe were brought from
the East and transformed by the magic of Dutch
gardeners, soon spreading to the rest of Europe.
The marvelous fabrics of the Orient inspired the
master weavers of the Low Countries, and the
Oriental wind-mill was put to work at the never-
ending task of keeping the encroaching waters in
their proper place and furnishing power for
every conceivable purpose.

In accordance with the Dutch idea, which is
to improve on whatever is borrowed, the wind
mills assumed a somewhat new shape. The
Dutch enlarged the size of the arms and the sails
outside and the wheels and grinding stones with-
in. They invented the sawmill, which has played
so important a part in the lumber industry of the
United States. The interior of the mill became
a human dwelling or a store house, and the re-
volving top was added, which enables the miller
to catch the wind from any quarter.

It is characteristic that while all other Euro-
peans were doing their best to destroy as much of
the Oriental civilization as possible, the tolerant
Netherlander was busy learning from the pol-
ished Oriental those things that have made the
beauty and elegance of Dutch dwellings, even of
the peasant class, a matter of wonderment to the
travelling foreigner, from Guicciardini in 1533

[263

AN HISTORICAL ESSAY
to de Amicis and countless others of the present
day. Underclothing, napkins, table and bed
linen, carpets, wall paper, bathtubs, soap and
perfume, were only a few things that the Hol-
lander realized the worth of and brought back to
his home from southeastern Europe and Asia
Minor. Then he improved them and gave them
to the rest of Europe.

As the demand for these luxuries grew, the
ship building industry assumed a like proportion,
and the Dutch cities grew rich and powerful
through trade with Mediterranean and Oriental
ports.

The effect of one cause becomes in its turn the
cause of a second effect.

Having plenty of work and consequently
wealth and power, the mechanics were able to
form guilds. The towns with their abundant
funds purchased from the feudal lords charters
giving liberal rights and privileges. Step by step
the towns gained more freedom. Never relin-
quishing one iota of it, except after a fierce strug-
gle and then soon regaining what was lost, they
fast became centers of liberty and political equal-
ity. How strange this condition must have ap-
peared to their English neighbors in those days
may be imagined from the statement of David
Meldrum, an English writer who remarks : "The
spirit of self-government seems to rest over Hol-
land."

One powerful factor in forming the civiliza-
tion of the Netherlands was the never ceasing in-
tercourse with Italy. The Roman occupation of
the Low Countries left its mark in many ways,
direct and indirect. The dykes, which one writer
calls the "skeleton of the Netherlands," were at
first the work, not of a primitive barbarian race,
but of the skilled engineers of Rome. There is no
suggestion in the Holland of today of the neglect
of Roman engineering as in some other European

[27]

HOLLAND

countries. The first dykes have been enlarged
and perfected, the lakes drained and canals dug,
until the geography of Holland has become al-
most unrecognizable, and an entire new province,
Sealand, or Zeeland, as the motto "luctor et em-
ergo," (I struggle but I emerge), implies, has
risen from the jealous bed of the North Sea to
take her place among her sister provinces.

The dykes, though very important, were by no
means the only outcome of the Roman influence.
Holland, unlike other lands occupied for a time
by Caesar's cohorts, did not revert to a primitive
condition when the Romans withdrew.

The Romans had been great users of brick, and
in Britain and the Rhine regions samples of a
small tile-like brick are not unknown in the
places where Roman ruins still remain. After
the crusades, brick making was recommenced
with great vigor in Holland. Indeed the brick
of Northern Europe, in its modern form, may be
called a Dutch invention. Dwellings, walls,
pavements and roadbeds were only a few of the
uses found for the clay mud at the bottom of the
rivers, after it had been baked into a brick so
hard that the common name is "klinker." Great
churches arose. Notable is the wonderful cathe-
dral tower at Utrecht. Built of millions of bricks
it has not swerved a hair's breadth from the per-
pendicular in five centuries.

Besides making bricks, tiles, drain pipes and
terra cotta ornamentation, the Netherlanders
learned to glaze tiles and to roof their houses
with them. Out of their experience with these
forms of handling clay later industries were
evolved. Table crockery, fireplace picture tiles
and tobacco pipes made Delft and Gouda
famous.

Wood engraving was a Dutch invention. Print-
ing from blocks is admittedly of Holland origin,
and though the Germans claim the invention of

[28]

AN HISTORICAL ESSAY
printing from movable type, many give the honor
to Laurenz Janszoon Coster of Haarlem, Hol-
land, and set the date as 1434. However this may
be, Holland has the incontestable glory of bring-
ing forth the Elzevirs whose books were so per-
fect that a typographical error in one of them
renders it almost priceless as a bibliographical
curiosity.

The Netherlands soon became the chief print-
ing office of Europe. The Bible was translated
into Dutch and published in 1477. As many as
twenty-four editions of the New Testament and
fifteen of the Bible had been printed and pub-
lished in the Netherlands before one copy of
either was printed in England. Books were
printed in every civilized tongue and spread
throughout the world.

Until the time of Elizabeth the Netherlands
was practically the only manufacturing country
in Northern Europe. The cloth industry of the
Dutch Provinces absorbed the raw material of
England, Spain and France.

In horticulture Holland took her place as
leader from the very beginning. Brilliant
blooms, foliage and fruits never before seen in
Europe were brought from distant lands to a new
home in the Low Countries, and by 1450 Hol-
land had become one of the gayest garden lands
in the world. From the end of the earth the ven-
turesome Dutch captains brought exotics to such
good purpose that hundreds of our present day
common flowers, trees and vegetables, under the
skillful care of the Netherland gardeners, became
acclimated, first in Holland, then throughout
Europe and later in America.

The Dutch invented or greatly improved the
green-house, and invented the enclosed and cov-
ered forcing bed, and the winnowing fan.

The modern plough consisting of several dis-
tinct parts is a Dutch invention.

[29]

HOLLAND

Not only did the botanists of the Netherlands
write in their own language, but almost all of the
early English agricultural works were written
by Dutch authors.

Because of the careful study of soils and scien-
tific feeding the Netherlands soon led Europe
in the production of milk, cream, butter, cheese,
meat, hides and horns. In the days when tea and
coffee were unknown the introduction of hops to
improve the flavor of beer, then the universal
beverage of the people, was a great feat of the
Dutch brewers.

Through long and careful experimentation
the Egyptian flax in its new home by the North
Sea was made to yield such wondrous fibre that
Flemish and Dutch flax soon became famous all
over Europe. Linen manufacturers sprang up,
and with them the kindred trades. Spinners and
websters, dyers, bleachers and burrelers flour-
ished. Lace making, probably originated in the
convents of Italy, soon reached a high plane in
the Netherlands. So precious became the fine
yarn only produced in the Low Countries that
one year the price of the crop exceeded the value
of the ground it grew on.

Of the small things that spell the difference
between primitive living and comfort the Dutch
took particular care. They invented the thimble.
We owe to them the use and application of starch.
So famous became the laundresses of Holland
that most of the soiled linen from the homes of
the English nobles found its way across the Chan-
nel to return spotless. Bleaching of linen reached
such a dignity that "Holland" became the mark
of perfection on any white fabric. The inven-
tion, in the thirteenth-century Netherlands, of
the shirt, night dress, bed-tick, pocket handker-
chief, tablecloth and napkin meant a great deal
in those days when personal comfort and cleanli-
ness were the rarest of luxuries. So many of the

[30]

AN HISTORICAL ESSAY
products of civilization surround us today, so
many little taken-for-granted things, that it is
difficult to realize that each was evolved in the
brain of some individual or improved step by
step in the onward march of mankind.

Health, cleanliness and comfort for man and
beast became and remain a passion with the
Netherlander. In spite of, perhaps because of
the harshness of Dame Nature in the treatment
of this swampy land the Dutch home became a
model of luxury and refinement to the whole of
Europe.

In 1609, nearly a century before the founda-
tion of the Bank of England, the Bank of Am-
sterdam was founded and grew immediately to
enormous power in the commercial community.
It is interesting to note that when the great cen-
tral Bank of England did come into existence,
not a few of the first directors of the new enter-
prise were Dutch settlers in London. And the
Netherlanders still maintain their pre-eminence
in financial matters, the Bourse of Amsterdam
being foremost amongst the Exchanges of the
world.

In Holland was discovered the art of polish-
ing and cutting diamonds, and for centuries Am-
sterdam possessed a monopoly enterprise which
indeed she may be said to hold today. Amster-
dam lapidaries are considered the best in the
world.

Along with the development of the more pro-
saic manufacturers went the growth of the fine
arts.

Nowhere was the cultivation of architecture
more general than in the Netherlands. While
many of the cathedrals throughout the Low
Countries are brilliant masterpieces, still the
church did not absorb all the genius of the people
as it did in many other countries. Town halls,
guild halls and other public buildings erected

[31]

HOLLAND

by master builders as early as the twelfth century,
still delight the eye and excite the wonder of the
tourist.

Not only were official buildings constructed
carefully and well, but private dwellings were
charmingly and strongly built to satisfy the exact-
ing taste of the rich burghers. Even the houses
of the peasants and the common people surpassed
those of the gentry in the other countries of
Northern Europe, in regard to comfort, conveni-
ence and hygienic surroundings.

For two hundred years the Netherlanders had
no rivals in the field of music. From 1380 to
1562 the Low Countries furnished all the courts
of Europe not only with singers, but with com-
posers and performers of instrumental music.
William Dufay, John Okeghem and Adrian
Willaert are the notable names in the "Nether-
land School" of this period.

While Campbell claims that Milton did not
disdain to copy from the Dutch bard Vondel,
and adds that Holland produced some great poets,
it is in scientific literature that the Netherlands
places its claim to literary excellence. History,
law and legal philosophy, engineering, medicine,
botany and horticulture, scientific research and
countless other branches of practical civilization
owe a great debt to the writers of the Nether-
lands. One modern writer has called Dutch liter-
ature "the finest fruit of civilization."

If nothing else of mark had ever been pro-
duced in Holland, she would have come down to
fame as the birthplace of great painters. De
Amicis says : "Dutch painting was born with the
liberty and independence of Holland."

Rembrandt, Jan Steen, Paul Potter of the fa-
mous bull, Ruysdael, Hobbema, Van der Meer,
Van der Velde, Berghem, Karel de Jardyn,
Backhysen, Van der Heist, Hals, Gerard Douw,
Albert Cupp, are only a bare handful of the il-

[32]

AN HISTORICAL ESSAY
lustrious names in the development of Dutch art.
Enough to say that the world owes the invention
of oil painting to the brothers Van Eyck, as well
as the introduction of a perspective background
instead of the flat color or gilt background of the
early "distemper" painters. In later years the
Dutch school of painting has maintained its pre-
eminence. Joseph Israels, Mesdag, the brothers
Maris, Mauve, Schelfhout, Bosboom, Rozen-
boom, Willey Martins, Willem Witsen, Blom-
mers, and many others are maintaining the glori-
ous tradition.

The Dutch painters were the first to glorify
the homely and material things of life. They did
not confine themselves to subjects only suitable
for the churches, but produced pictures to grace
the walls of even the humblest homes. The be-
loved canals and the changeable skies, the green
"polder," and the contented cattle, the happy,
rosy face of the capable, cleanly "huisvrouw"
took the place of the saints and angels of prior
schools. Because the Netherlanders had to
struggle so hard for the comforts that nature had
denied them, they prized them accordingly.

But the Netherlanders were foremost in the
sciences as well as in the fine and liberal arts and
manufacturing.

So many of the inventions that have made the
study of the exact sciences possible originated in
the Netherlands, that it is almost impossible to
assemble even the greatest of them.

Cornelius Drebbel invented the thermometer,
and while the name of the discoverer of the tele-
scope is in some doubt, the three possibilities
were all Hollanders. To Leeuwenhoek is due
the microscope. Snellius introduced the true
method of measuring the degrees of latitude and
longitude. Christian Huygens invented the pen-
dulum clock, and was the first to apply the
micrometer to the telescope. The invention of

[33]

HOLLAND

these instruments made possible the investiga-
tion of the whole field of science.

Glories like these are by no means confined to
the long ago, for today the scientists of the Hol-
land Universities are foremost among their
brethren in the world of learning.

But to proceed: The first scientific study of
Greek was begun under Hemsterhuys.

Probably the most celebrated physician that
ever lived, with the exception of Hippocrates,
was the Hollander Boerhaave; with Albinus and
Sylvius, he made the medical school of Leyden
the most famous in Europe.

In 1586 Stevinus published his "Principles of
Equilibrium," which founded the science of
statics. He also introduced the use of decimal
fractions and predicted the adoption of a decimal
coinage, weights and measures.

In the liberal or speculative sciences, too, the
Hollanders were foremost amongst the scholars
of the world.

Of the world's philosophers Erasmus and
Spinoza are only two of the multitude whose
teachings were the gift of Holland to mankind.

The lawyers of the Netherlands have been
notable at all times. The first great systematic
treatise on International Law was published by
Grotius. His great work on "Law of Peace and
War" "awakened the world's conscience," as
Griffith expresses it.

Many were the notable Dutch lawyers who
preserved the spirit and the letter of the just and
liberal Code of Justinian and contributed to the
legal literature of modern civilization. Rome
was to the lawyers of the Netherlands what Italy
was to the Dutch painters, merely an inspiration.
Their own accomplishments stand out boldly.

The same may be maintained in regard to the
study of botany. Pisa had established a public
botanical garden in 1543, and other Italian cities

[34]

AN HISTORICAL ESSAY
followed close suit. Leyden, in 1577, founded
the first one outside of Italy. From this start
Holland became the home of the greatest agri-
cultural and horticultural researches of medieval
and modern times, and today the Holland botan-
ists, florists and gardeners are foremost in their
profession. What botanist does not know our
present Hugo de Vries of Amsterdam?

While the influence of Italy helped Holland
mightily in her victorious battle with the dark-
ness of Western and Northern Europe, too much
stress must not be laid on this source of her great-
ness. It was the well-balanced, liberty-loving
and tolerant character of the Dutch people that
formed the crucible into which the amalgam and
the dross of European and Oriental civilization
were cast, and out of which flowed the pure
golden stream of philosophic, scientific, artis-
tic and mechanical attainment that placed the
Netherlands "two centuries ahead of the rest of
Europe at the time of the founding of the Ameri-
can colonies."

It was only in keeping with the rest of her
policy that the Netherlands should have been the
the home and the refuge of religious liberty.
William the Silent, the personification of all that
is fine and high in the Dutch nature, in 1578 put
this principle into a simple sentence. "We de-
clare to you, therefore," he said, "that you have
no right to trouble yourselves with any man's
conscience so long as naught is done to cause pri-
vate harm or public scandal." A novel statement
this in Europe of the sixteenth century, when
rack and stake were considered necessary ad-
juncts to religion.

Hand in hand with the principles of religious
toleration goes the progress of education. Drawn
by the promise of peace and the opportunity for
unpersecuted endeavor, the great students of re-
ligious and scientific philosophy flocked to the

[35]

HOLLAND

cities of the Netherlands. The University of
Leyden, born of the unfailing patriotism and lib-
erality of William the Silent and the Legislature
of Holland, grew to be more than worthy of its
origin. Other magnificent schools arose, vying
with one another to procure and to produce the
greatest teachers and scholars. No honors were
too great for the distinguished men who came as
preceptors to these seats of learning. A partial
list of the great professors of Leyden reads like
the roll of the Hall of Fame. There was Scalig-
er, "the most extraordinary master of general
erudition that ever lived," according to Hallam.
Of his successor Salmasius it was said "that what
he did not know was beyond the bounds of
human knowledge." Grotius came as a boy of
eleven to study at Leyden. While it is as a law-
yer that he is best known to the modern world, he
was also famous as a diplomatist, theologian,
philologist and historian. Decartes, "founder
of modern mechanical philosophy"; Spinoza,
perhaps the greatest philosopher and the most
perfect character of modern times; Justus Lip-
sius, the remarkable historian; John Drusius,
the Orientalist; Gomarus and Arminius, the
theologians; the celebrated geographer Cluver-
ius; and Peter Paauw, who founded the botani-
cal gardens at Leyden and whose writings on
physics, anatomy and botany are still among the
foremost authorities; these and others almost as
notable but too numerous to mention, helped to
make Leyden the marvel of the educational
world.

Gerhard Groot, founder of the famous
"Brotherhood of the Common Life," was born in
Deventer in 1340, and from the wonderful
schools founded by this order came Thomas a
Kempis, Zerbolt, Gansevoort and Erasmus. To
these schools and to the Universities flocked the
youth of the Netherlands. Next to Italy in the

[36]

AN HISTORICAL ESSAY

fourteenth century the Netherlands led the world

in the number of her schools for the people.

The Netherlanders, as befitted their maritime
situation, were from an early date notable among
those "who go down to the sea in ships."

The fisheries grew to enormous proportions.
In their frail boats the sturdy sailors breasted the
turbulent North Sea and took toll of their an-
cient enemy. They discovered fish curing, and
the smoked and salted herring came into com-
mercial existence.

Not satisfied with the passages already discov-
ered by Spanish and Portuguese merchants and
explorers, the stalwart Dutch navigators resolved
to open up a northern way to the rich lands of
the Orient, and made several remarkable voyages
with that aim.

Under the leadership of Linschoten, author of
the first scientific book on the navigation of
Eastern waters, the first expedition to the polar
areas was begun on June 5, 1594. On this voyage
the islands of Nova Zembla were discovered and
accurately mapped, and the Straits of Waigatz

?assed. In the next year, 1595, encouraged by
an van Oldenbarneveldt and the Stadholder
Maurice, seven ships were equipped and set out
to find the dreamed-of north-east passage. Sail-
ing again through the Straits of Waigatz, they
landed at Staten Island, but were forced to return
to Amsterdam by the approaching winter. Al-
though the officials refused to finance further at-
tempts, a liberal reward was offered for the dis-
covery of the new way to the East, and nothing
daunted, another expedition set forth in May,
1696. This time Spitzbergen, within ten degrees
of the pole, was reached, but the ice made it
necessary to turn back, and the winter was passed
amid terrible hardships on Nova Zembla.

While these voyages were being made toward
the north pole the Dutch had reached the East

[37]

HOLLAND

Indies by the Cape Passage in 1595, and founded
that great institution, the Dutch East Indian
Company, incidentally exploring the antarctic as
well as the arctic zones at the same time.

Linschoten's map of the Indies, the first of its
kind, and the result of untiring labors on the part
of the cartographer, together with a translation
of his book of voyages, was published in England
in 1598, and created an intense and lasting inter-
est there. Shakespeare refers to it in "Twelfth
Night."

Batavia, the present day headquarters of the
Dutch Colonial Empire, was founded as a city
in 1602 on the island of Java. It stands today as
an evidence of the beneficent and far-seeing co-
lonial policy that enables a small nation at the
far side of the world to rule her vast possessions
without the aid of great standing armies, and in
peace and prosperity for both the natives and
their white governors.

Such, therefore, was the Republic of the Uni-
ted Netherlands at the time of the settlement of
the American Continent by the white race. Hol-
land was holding the flaming torch of civiliza-
tion high above Europe and the effect on the gen-
eral culture of the western world, including
America, was both direct and predominant.

We come now to the second source of Dutch
influence on America. Of the numerous English
soldiers who went to the Lowlands in the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries and later emi-
grated to the Colonies, it was only natural that
many should carry away the seed of this high
civilization to the American shore, where it fell
on rich ground.

Situated as she was geographically and com-
mercially, Holland became the logical "battle
ground of Europe." War followed war, and the
powerful nations were forever vainly contending
with one another for the possession of what Na-

[38]

AN HISTORICAL ESSAY

poleon later called "a deposit of German mud,

thrown there by the Rhine."

But it was not every traveler who took a sym-
pathetic view of Holland's achievements. We
find for instance this amusing bit of rhymed
satire by Andrew Marvell, entitled "Character
of Holland."

Holland, that scarce deserves the name of Land,
Is but the off-scouring of the British sand,
And so much earth as was contributed
By English pilots when they heaved the lead,
Or what by the ocean's slow alluvian fell
Of shipwreckt cockle and mussel-shell ;
This indigested vomit of the sea
Fell to the Dutch by just propriety.

Glad, then, as miners who have found the ore,
They, with mad labor, fished the land to shore ;
And dived as desperately for each piece
Of earth, as if 't had been of amber greece ;
Collecting anxiously small loads of clay,
Less than what building swallows bear away.

How they did rivet, with gigantic piles,
Through the center their new-catched miles;
And to the stake a struggling country bound,
Where barking waves still bait the forced ground —

and so on for many pages, branding the unsur-
passed engineering of the Low Countries as an
unforgivable national crime. The Duke of Alva
remarked charmingly that the Dutch were "of
all peoples those that lived nighest hell," and the
Dutch people, vindicating this reputation, sent
many of their would-be conquerors to that un-
desirable place.

In 1664 an English writer, after condemning
everything Dutch, added to his aspersions this
horrible accusation, as sure proof of the outer
darkness of the Netherlander:

"The Dutchman's building is not large, but
neat; handsome on the outside, on the inside hung

[39]

HOLLAND

with pictures and tapestry. He that hath not
bread to eat hath a picture."

But however much the rest of Europe resented
the man-made prosperity of the Netherlands,
they soon recognized the desirability of possess-
ing some of it for themselves. The Low Coun-
tries became a recognized school for the soldiers
of every land, and it was here that Miles Stand-
ish of the Pilgrims, John Smith, Gorgas, Dudley,
Lion Gardiner, Leisler, Argall, Wingfield, Ra-
leigh, and all the other military men of the early
American colonies were trained in their warlike
profession and fought to their own everlasting
glory the great battle of freedom. Certainly the
Netherlands and the world at large owed a great
debt of gratitude to these men and to England
who produced them.

Many of these English soldiers covered them-
selves with glory in the Lowlands. There they
fought side by side with the Hollanders in their
great war for freedom. They were apt pupils
of those great generals, Maurice and Frederic
Henry, both princes of Orange and both sons of
the immortal William the Silent, the Liberator
of the Netherlands.

These princes, as Stadholders of Holland, were
captains-general of the armies of the Republic,
and to be allowed to serve on their staffs was
equivalent to a first-class military education.

But these foreign soldiers absorbed more than
a military training. When they returned to Eng-
land they brought with them the free ideas and
ideals of the Netherlands, and through them
these were communicated to the people of Eng-
land and the Colonies across the sea.

However, the influence of the Netherland civi-
lization on England was by no means restricted
to the training of her soldiers.

In the arts of peace as well England vastly
benefited from the more advanced stage of eco-

[40]

AN HISTORICAL ESSAY

nomic development of her neighbor, and the

American Colonies reaped the direct advantage.

It is impossible, here, to write in detail even
of those things that directly affected the early
American Colonies through the contact of the
founders, either soldiers or civilians, with Dutch
ideas which had penetrated England long before
these men fled to the Low Countries. Many
volumes could be filled, and still much would
remain unsaid.

Very early in the history of religious reform,
when the Netherlanders seemed doomed to be
crushed under the iron heel of their Spanish in-
vaders, there began a scattered immigration of
Netherlanders into England. Naturally attract-
ed by the regions reminding them most of home,
they settled in the low swampy lands on the east-
ern coast. Here they built dykes, dug canals and
even gave the name Holland to a district in Lin-
colnshire. In Norfolk they laid the foundation
of a great weaving industry, and as their number
grew to larger proportions, they made window
glass, pins and needles, hats, gloves and fine fur-
niture in London; baize-needles and parchment
in Glochester; lace in Honiton and elsewhere in
Devonshire; tapestry in Mortlake and Fullham;
steel and iron in Sheffield; and in Sandwich,
Leeds and Norwich, baize, serges, flannels, silks
and bombazines. The people among whom these
skilled artisans settled knew little of manufac-
tures and less of scientific agriculture. The set-
tlers showed the English fisherman how to cure
herrings and the farmer how to raise vegetables,
grasses and roots for his own table and the winter
food for his cattle. With the merchants that
came later from the Netherlands, they taught the
English that the true source of wealth lay in the
practice of skilled agriculture, manufactures and
commerce rather than in the haphazard produc-
tion of raw wool.

[41]

HOLLAND

The use of glass, the coach, and systematic
sewer drainage were all introduced into England
by the Netherlanders.

Elizabeth, far-seeing monarch that she was,
required each Dutch artisan to take an English-
born apprentice, and every family in which such
an apprentice lived started an ever-widening
wave of moral and intellectual light.

London and Norwich, where the Netherland-
ers made their most important settlements, be-
came the strongholds of English Puritanism.

It was from Norwich that the first Brownist
colony went to Holland. In the adjoining county
of Lincoln the Pilgrim Fathers founded their
first congregations and thence also came the great
body of the Puritans, who settled New Eng-
land. In the low districts about the Humber
and the Wash, reclaimed from the sea by the
Hollanders, was the original Boston, and the
Cambridge that gave name to the seat of Har-
vard College in the new land; and it was from
these parts of England that America received its
best immigration.

Not to speak, therefore, of the direct influence
which the settlement of the Hollanders in New
Amsterdam, later New York, naturally exercised
on the shaping of American ideas, we see that
indirectly and through diverse channels the in-
fluence of the Netherlands on the American
Commonwealth was bound to be great.

To the third source of Dutch influence on
America we shall devote the following chapter.

[42]

THE DIRECT INFLUENCE

OF THE NETHERLANDS ON

AMERICA

THE DIRECT INFLUENCE OF

THE NETHERLANDS ON

AMERICA

HE reasons for the unity in the
history and ideas of the Uni-
ted States and the Nether-
lands form a very interesting
chapter of historical philoso-
phy. Just as a stream, small
at the source, is fed along its
course by the springs and
seepage from its banks, and finally grows to a
powerful river, so in the evolution of the great
American Republic — from the handful of Pil-
grims that landed on the rock of Plymouth, men
and women fresh from a sojourn in Leyden and
imbued with the Dutch ideals of liberty; from
the fifty years' stay of the Dutch in New Amster-
dam; from the political ideas borrowed later by
American statesmen from the Netherlands; from
these and many other sources came the great force
that made Holland the real Mother Country of
the United States.

We have seen how the Dutch artisans who set-
tled in England had much to do with the rise of
Puritanism in that country. It was but natural
that the persecuted Pilgrims should turn to the
home of religious toleration, whence had come
news of the peaceful liberty enjoyed by believers
in every form of worship. As a youth William
Brewster had been sent to the Netherlands in an
official capacity. When he advised the Pilgrims
to go to Holland where "religion was free to all
men," while in England they momentarily ex-
pected to suffer the same treatment that had been
accorded other "heretics" of almost the same be-
lief as theirs, they were glad to follow him and
John Robinson, their pastor, across the sea to
the Low Countries.

[45]

HOLLAND

After many vicissitudes due both to human
iniquity and the perversity of the elements, the
Pilgrims arrived in Amsterdam, and after a
year's stay, Robinson obtained leave from the
authorities of Leyden to bring his flock to that
city. There they lived quietly for eleven years,
prospering despite the fact that they were mostly
farmers, ill adapted to the mechanical work that
the city life demanded of them. They bought
and sold land, and took part in the municipal or
township politics. They learned the cardinal
Dutch virtues of thrift, patience, neatness, faith
and toleration. They saw the public schools,
orphan asylums, homes for the aged and poor, a
free press. They recognized that the condition
of the courts of justice, prisons and legal system
in general was vastly superior to that of the same
institutions in other parts of the world. Today
in the Klog Steeg of Leyden may be seen the
memorial stone placed there in 1865 with these
words engraved on it: "On this spot lived, taught
and died John Robinson, 1611-1622."

The Pilgrims were very happy in Leyden, but
there were several reasons why a protracted stay
in the Netherlands was inadvisable, chief among
which was the fact that the war with Spain
was to recommence in 1621, when the twelve
years' truce was over. This meant the terror
of strife, and the possible extermination of the
Pilgrims as heretics in case Spain should be
victorious.

Robinson's first idea was to settle near the
Dutch colony in New Netherland, in the region
of the Hudson River. In the early part of 1620 he
communicated with the Dutch West India Com-
pany, planning to settle there with four hundred
families, which were to include the Independents
in England as well as those he had brought with
him to Leyden. In a letter dated February i2th
of the same year and addressed to the States Gen-

[46]

AN HISTORICAL ESSAY
eral, the Amsterdam merchants offered to fur-
nish free passage across the Atlantic to the Ley-
den Englishmen, and included the gift of cows
and land. In addition they recommended that
the States-General furnish two ships of war to
protect the colonists from the Spaniards, but this
the government was unable to do, as the war
about to begin required the presence of every
available means of defense at home.

Turning to England, after much trouble Rob-
inson, Bradford and others succeeded in raising
some funds at a very high rate of interest. Char-
tering the ship "Speedwell," they set out to join
the English Pilgrims, who had procured the
"Mayflower." The "Speedwell" proving unsea-
worthy, they were forced to crowd as many as
possible of their number into the "Mayflower,"
and sailing from the Netherlands, adventured
forth once more. One hundred men, women and
children, besides the captain and crew, trusted
themselves to the frail little craft. The adults
were people of English, Dutch, French and Irish
ancestry, and the children, who made up at least
one third of the number, had most of them been
born in Holland.

Naturally Plymouth, in the first years of its
existence, had a very Dutch aspect, and many
were the customs that its citizens had borrowed
from their kind hosts in Leyden. Nor were the
Pilgrims insensible of the gratitude they owed
to the Hollanders, for in 1627 Bradford expressed
their thanks for the kind treatment they had re-
ceived in the Netherlands, to de Razieres, the
Dutch envoy.

In the other New England colonies the Dutch
influence was almost as strong as in Massa-
chusetts if not so evident at the first glance.

Thomas Hooker, the founder of the very typ-
ical American commonwealth of Connecticut,
was driven from England on account of his be-

[47]

HOLLAND

lief. He was for some time in Amsterdam,
preached two years at Delft, afterward at Rotter-
dam, and came directly from that city to New
England. Here he took a prominent part in
politics and in 1638 addressed a remarkably
forceful letter to Governor Winthrop of Massa-
chusetts favoring a permanent confederation of
the colonies after the example of the seven Uni-
ted Provinces of the Netherlands.

William Penn, father of Pennsylvania, was
the son of the daughter of a Dutch merchant at
Rotterdam. He saw service in the Dutch war
and during an evangelistic tour of Holland in
1686 conferred with the Prince of Orange and
found him in entire sympathy with the policy of
toleration.

Roger Williams, to whom Rhode Island owes
its existence, was a profound scholar of Dutch
literature, and deeply imbued with the spirit of
religious freedom acquired therefrom. Some of
these ideas were imparted to the great English
poet Milton, who in turn gave them to the Brit-
ish public. Williams refused to expel the Quak-
ers who found refuge in Rhode Island, (al-
though he was not at all in sympathy with their
belief), regardless of the importunities of the
more English citizens of the less tolerant com-
munities.

The majority of the university-bred clergy-
men, physicians and lawyers who emigrated to
the American Colonies, after the English col-
lege had been closed to non-conformists, were
educated at Leyden or Utrecht, the rolls of the
former showing over four thousand seven hun-
dred names of English-speaking students be-
tween 1573 and 1873, the majority being in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The sons
of John Adams are among the number.

The theology of the Dutch professor Coccejus
moulded not only the opinions of Robinson and

[48]

AN HISTORICAL ESSAY
of Brewster, but of nearly all the Puritan writers
of old and New England. Harvard College in-
vited to her presidency Comenius of Amsterdam,
and the first "printery" at Cambridge came from
the same city. The first paper made in America
was the work of the Dutch at Wissachickon
Creek near Philadelphia in 1690.

In 1643, in accordance with Hooker's sugges-
tion of five years previous, a confederation of the
New England Colonies was formed with Massa-
chusetts as the principal member, just as Holland
was in the United Netherlands.

Naturally, the half century of Dutch occupa-
tion of New York and the surrounding territory
left an indelible impression upon the history of
the Eastern States. Under the leadership of Jesse
de Forest, thirty-one families set forth from Ley-
den in March 1623, and settled at Staten Island,
Wallen Bocht, (Wallabout as it is called today),
and at Fort Nassau, on the present site of the city
of Albany. The first settlement on Manhattan
was in 1624, and from this beginning numerous
colonies were spread over a large territory, cov-
ering practically the whole of New York and
New Jersey.

The fruits of the contact of the early Ameri-
cans with the Dutch on both sides of the Atlantic
ripened early and the seeds, falling on a fertile
soil, brought forth in abundance. The struggle
for a material existence was of course a very im-
portant part of the endeavors of the first settlers,
and from the example of the far-sighted Neth-
erlander who possessed a veritable genius in
making the land produce the very best possible
crops, to whom the scientific breeding and care of
cattle had long been a fine art, who made his
swampy, wet little country the last word in the
comfort and luxury of home life, who had built
the great wealthy city of Amsterdam "on herring
bones," as Captain John Smith remarked, to

[49]

HOLLAND

whom Peter the Great, Czar of Russia, had gone
to learn shipbuilding, and who had invented the
sawmill — from this experienced teacher the col-
onists gained the knowledge that laid the founda-
tion of the great industries that make the United
States of today a wealthy, productive and great
nation.

While the New Englander was vainly trying
to produce crops entirely unsuitable to the rug-
ged climate and striving with primitive tools to
wrest a living from poorly cultivated soil, the
slow but sure Dutchman was scientifically plant-
ing his carefully chosen land along the Hudson
River and in the Mohawk Valley, draining and
irrigating, and always taking care to enrich the
soil, rich though it was in the beginning, in con-
trast to the wasteful methods of his more hur-
ried neighbors. Some of the very best of the
domesticated fruits of present-day America came
directly from the experimental stations and bo-
tanical gardens in Leyden and Amsterdam, and
were planted in the fertile river valleys of New
Netherland.

As the Netherlanders had, after the crusades,
introduced Oriental flowers, trees and vegetables
to the rest of Europe, so their descendants in
America instructed their neighbors to such good
advantage in the raising of root crops, vegetables,
buckwheat, flowers and various fruits and in the
use of light plows, winnowing fans, axes, hot
houses and sawmills, that the hardships of gain-
ing a living in New England were materially
alleviated.

It was Captain John Smith, the discoverer and
namer of both Plymouth and New England, who
first pointed out the latent wealth of the ocean.
His prophecy that the main staple of wealth
would be in the fisheries is proven true by the
golden codfish that has hung for over a century
in the legislative halls of Massachusetts as a sym-

[50]

> c/i 2 h3> 2

> > > ^

i

•

AN HISTORICAL ESSAY
bol of her prosperity drawn from the sea. From
the Dutch the New Englanders learned, as the
English had before them, to catch whales and
herring, to cure food fish, and to make of the in-
ferior kinds fertilizer for their fields. In due
time the fisheries of New England became the
permanent nursery of the United States navy and
a school for heroes, besides being a source of un-
told wealth to the thrifty descendants of the orig-
inal Yankees.

Next to the production of food comes the ques-
tion of shelter and warmth in the list of necessi-
ties of the pioneer. In this respect no better in-
structors could have been found than the Dutch
colonists whose countrymen had raised personal
comfort and luxury to the dignity of a fine art.
How eagerly the New Englanders adopted the
ideas they had partly brought from Leyden and
partly acquired from their New England neigh-
bors, is easy of observation. The colonial relics
that have come down to us reveal very plainly in
name and appearance their Dutch origin. The
Delft tiles on the hearths, the crockery, the blue
tiles lining the front of the fireplaces in the best
houses and most of the fine imported furniture in
the northern colonies came from Holland. In
the old Dutch towns in New York State and in
Massachusetts villages the brick dwellings erect-
ed in the early colonial days by builders from
Haarlem or Dordrecht, and made of klinkers
fresh from the Vaderland, are still to be seen.
Many of the old teapots and other tableware that
followed the introduction of tea and coffee from
the Orient came direct from the Netherlands.

Military gear and equipment, clothing, books
printed on Dutch presses, spinning wheels and
kitchen utensils were only some of the many im-
portations from the land of dykes.

The New England Dutch thought little of
traveling long distances on sleighs and of doing

HOLLAND

their hauling in winter over snow and ice, and
while their milk, butter and fresh meat were plen-
tiful in the heart of the winter, their neighbors
to the eastward were forced to cut and haul their
firewood in clumsy carts before the winter set in,
live on salt meat, make journeys only with the
greatest difficulty and struggle desperately dur-
ing the long winter months to keep life in their
own bodies and those of their miserable cattle,
who, Eggleston says, "survived the long winters
rather as outlines than oxen."

It was on a Dutch sleigh that Oliver H. Perry
made rapid transit to Lake Erie. It was by means
of the Dutch invention called a "sea camel," so
long successfully used in floating ships over the
land bars known as the Pampus in front of the
Zuiderzee Harbor of Amsterdam, that he floated
his green timber ships out over the bar to victory,
under the same colors that had floated from the
masts of all the conquering ships of Piet Hein,
Van Tromp and de Ruyter.

As the seventeenth century literature and folk
speech of England are full of references to the
mechanical and inventive genius of the Dutch
artisans who laid the foundation of British su-
premacy in manufacture and commerce, so even
in Connecticut was the skill of the Knickerbock-
ers admired. A new invention or improvement
was said to be Dutch.

When the open fireplace in the colonial kitch-
en disappeared a Dutch invention with a Dutch
name took its place, the stove ("stoofje" in the
Netherlands) . In Plymouth principally, but oc-
casionally throughout New England, may still be
seen the spacious dome of brick and clay called
a Dutch oven that made possible the production
of the delectable baked dishes so closely associat-
ed with the skill of the New England housewife.
To this day the cookey (Koekje) , noodles, hodge-
podge, smearcase and cold slaw that are import-

[52]

AN HISTORICAL ESSAY
ant items in the menu of the Yankee farm house
are, despite their changed spelling and pronun-
ciation, ample proof that the early colonist en-
riched his monotonous fare by borrowing the
more varied recipes of his Dutch neighbors in
the west and south.

Even the buckwheat cake, associated forever
with the American winter breakfast table, was
introduced by the Hollanders from Central
Asia, acclimated, cultivated, named "boek-weit"
(beech-mast) and brought to perfection in the
kitchens of the Low Countries.

After the New Englanders had borrowed the
Dutch sawmill they soon made progress in the
mastery of the great forests. It had been slow
work with the old-fashioned saw pit and axe. In-
deed, such strides did they make in ship building,
in which Massachusetts ultimately led the world,
that at the opening of the Revolution approxi-
mately half the British ships were colony-built.

Thanksgiving day was a Dutch institution.
Whether consciously or unconsciously, the Pil-
grims imitated the custom they had observed dur-
ing their stay in the Netherlands. A day of
thanksgiving and prayer was frequent after vic-
tory or good harvests in the Dutch States.

The American language bears witness to a
marked Dutch influence. Such words as anchor,
caboose, ballast, school (of fishes), sloop, stoker,
stove, doily, brandy, duffel, cambric, easel, land-
scape, boss, stoop, forlorn hope, scow, Santa
Claus, and a host of phrases in art, music, sea-
manship, handicraft, war, exploration and the
peculiar lines of human achievement in the sev-
enteenth century are Dutch more or less mis-
pronounced.

In the development of the popular music of
New England there is evident a distinctly Dutch
influence. In the Netherlands the "voorsanger"
and the singing school where the children were

[53]

HOLLAND

taught hymns and patriotic songs, were common-
place. In New England and Western Massa-
chusetts this institution was immediately adopt-
ed. In every Dutch church the congregation
and the young people were instructed in music
by a special teacher, and from this beginning
sprang the singing schools which became a pow-
erful factor in the evolution of New England
civilization and which brought to light the tal-
ents of such men as Lowell, Mason and Thomas
Hastings.

The van Ragens, mother and son, who brought
both voice culture and instruments from the
Netherlands, surpassed any of the native players
or makers of musical instruments in Massachu-
setts, and were half a century in advance of the
influences that made for the present excellence of
Boston, musically speaking.

It would be easy to mention an additional long
list of facts showing the direct influence of the
Netherlands and its people on the economic and
spiritual development of the people of the early
American Commonwealth, but for fear of be-
coming monotonous we will desist.

[54]

THE DEBT OF

THE UNITED STATES TO

THE NETHERLANDS

THE DEBT OF THE UNITED
STATES TO THE NETHER-
LANDS

HE debt of America to Hol-
land is difficult of estimation.
If only the most obvious of
the items, those for which the
United States is self-evident-
ly a debtor, be enumerated,
the list is of amazing length.

Of all the western world

Holland first established religious toleration, the
principle which is one of the main foundations of
the "American Idea," if not the greatest.

As the first modern Republic, Holland set the
example of political equality that has gradually
revolutionized this western world.

In the realm of international law her place is
supreme. The American peace treaty policy of
today is of Netherland descent.

The acceptance by the State of the obligation
of educating the entire population, male and fe-
male, regardless of birth or property, was bor-
rowed bodily from the Dutch.

Public schools, free to the children of the poor
and charging a small sum to the well-to-do, had
been established in the Netherlands by the mid-
dle of the fourteenth century, centuries before the
founders of Massachusetts came to live in the
city of Leyden. These were supported by taxes
paid into the public treasury. In 1582 Friesland
provided for the official selection of schoolmas-
ters in the towns and villages, and in the follow-
ing, year Zeeland insisted upon general education
"because it is the foundation of the common-
wealth," as the school law reads. From this be-
ginning the supervision of education by the State
soon spread over the whole country.

[57]

HOLLAND

In 1609 John of Nassau, oldest brother of Wil-
liam the Silent, wrote to his son, Stadtholder of
Friesland, praising the system of free popular
education: "Soldiers and patriots thus educated,
with a true knowledge of God and a Christian
conscience, besides churches and schools, good
libraries, books and printing presses, are better
than all armies, arsenals, armories, munitions, al-
liances and treaties that can be imagined in the
world." We are accustomed to such arguments
in the twentieth century, but such sentiments
were most unusual in those dark days when might
made right and popular education was often
regarded as a danger in the rest of Europe.

The free schools in the first New England col-
onies and the comprehensive system of popular
education which have developed in the most re-
mote parts of the United States, play a very im-
portant part in the general enlightenment of
America. An enormous proportion of the great
American statesmen, executives and inventors,
born in the country districts, might have been
doomed to perpetual oblivion but for the time
they spent in the ever-present "district school"
assimilating the three "R's."

The first free schools in America, open to all
and supported by the government, were estab-
lished by the Dutch settlers of New York, and
even at the present time, true to her Dutch found-
ers, the Empire State leads the rest of the country
in the excellence and number of her schools and
the enormous sums appropriated by her State
Legislature for their support. As in Holland,
so in the United States, there is a large foreign
population seeking in the new country what cen-
turies ago they sought in the old: the right to
make a decent living without unjust interference,
and it is the children of these aliens that make the
citizens of tomorrow; citizens that in most cases,
owing to the fine schools they have attended, will

[58]

AN HISTORICAL ESSAY
add materially to the growth and prosperity of
the adopted country of their often more or less
uneducated parents.

In free universities also Holland was Ameri-
ca's preceptor.

Higher education of the people of the Neth-
erlands was never neglected. For this purpose
were established the classical schools, now called
gymnasiums, corresponding to the American
high schools. These were to be found in every
large city in the Netherlands. The most famous
was at Dordrecht. It was founded in 1290, and
by 1635 had a matriculation of six hundred pu-
pils, many coming from France and Germany.

Something has already been said of the famous
University of Leyden which opened in 1575. By
1638 four universities had been established in
this small country, all of them of remarkable ex-
cellence and with famous instructors gathered
from the nations of the earth, regardless of relig-
ious beliefs or other prejudices.

When the Pilgrims went to Leyden in 1609
they found to their surprise that the Netherlands
was a country of schools supported by the State.
"A land," according to Motley, "where every
child went to school, where almost every indi-
vidual inhabitant could read and write, where
even the middle classes were proficient in mathe-
matics and the classics and could speak two or
more modern languages."

When Roman Catholicism was abolished as
State Church in the Netherlands, the ecclesias-
tical property was devoted to education, to char-
itable institutions and to the support of the
clergy, quite in contrast to the distribution of
similar wealth in England by Henry VIII, who
claimed for himself what he did not distribute
among his favorites.

And to what country is America indebted for
the origin of its great charitable institutions?

[59]

HOLLAND

Surely, next in importance to the education of
children comes the care of the incompetents and
unfortunates in a community. The Netherland-
ers realized at an early date the beneficial results
of the systematic care of these citizens, and as a
consequence the writers of every age have ex-
claimed over the remarkably efficient institutions
in the Netherlands for this purpose.

By the middle of the sixteenth century the
Dutch led the world in caring for the decrepit
and the unfortunate. Hospitals provided with
every convenience were always open to the sick
and aged, and in addition to these were old peo-
ple's homes similar to the modern ones, in which
for payment of a moderate sum care was assured
an old person for the remainder of his life. In
each town persons of wealth and responsibility
were biennially appointed to receive alms in the
churches and principal places of resort and to ad-
minister such funds at their discretion, to which
were added the proceeds of a small tax and the
bequests of the charitable. Under their direc-
tion the poor were so well cared for that they
were under no necessity to beg. The children
of such as were unable to support them were
brought up until a certain age at the expense of
the State, and then bound out as apprentices to
some trade or manufacture. In times of scarcity
the authorities of the town distributed food
among the needy, whether native or foreign
born. So frugal and industrious were the peo-
ple that except on rare occasion there were few
requiring alms save the sick, maimed and aged.

The vast numbers of widows and orphans that
the struggle with Spain inevitably created, to-
gether with the disabled soldiers and sailors were
never neglected or forgotten by the people of the
Netherlands. With the proceeds of the con-
fiscated church property, asylums and hospitals
were founded in every town to care for such un-

[60]

His EXCELLENCY, JONKHEER DR. J. LOUDON,
NETHERLANDS MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS ; IN-
AUGURATOR OF NEGOTIATIONS FOR THE GENERAL
ARBITRATION TREATY OF DECEMBER, IQI3, BEING THE

FIRST TREATY OF THIS NATURE CONCLUDED BETWEEN

THE UNITED STATES AND A EUROPEAN COUNTRY.

AN HISTORICAL ESSAY
fortunates. In these institutions administered
with wisdom and economy and provided with
every comfort, the orphans were educated and
the widows and the veterans spent their years in
ease. The magistrates of the cities were called
upon to take an oath "to protect widows, orphans
and miserable persons."

When we consider that at this time England
was overrun with sturdy beggars, and that her
soldiers and sailors when not in active service
were allowed to die neglected in the streets, it is
very evident where the United States acquired
the ideas that have led to the establishment of
the soldiers7 homes, orphan asylums and hospit-
als for the sick and wounded of which the pres-
ent-day American is so justly proud.

Voltaire, though he left Holland in anger, said
that in her capital cities he saw "neither an idle
man nor a poor man nor a dissipated man nor an
insolent man," and that he had seen everywhere
"labor and modesty." Amsterdam at the conclu-
sion of the war with Spain, spent a million dol-
lars annually on her public charities.

Owen Feltham, an English Royalist and High
Churchman, writing as a contemporary, devotes
a very interesting page of his "Observations" to
the public institutions of the Netherlands at this
time. More than any array of the multitudinous
facts in the case, this statement of an Englishman
of the period throws light on the subject. Let
it speak for itself:

"You would think," says he, "being with them,
you were in old Israel, for you find not a beggar
among them. Nor are they mindful of their
own alone, but strangers also partake of their
care and bounty. If they will depart, they will
have money for their convoy. If they will stay,
they will have work provided. If unable, they
find a hospital. The deprivation of manners they
punish with contempt, but the defects of nature

[61]

HOLLAND

they favor with charity. Even their Bedlam is
a place so curious that a lord might live in it.
Their hospital might lodge a lady; so that safely
you may conclude amongst them even poverty
and madness do both inhabit handsomely. And
though vice makes everything turn sordid, yet
the State will have the very correction of it to be
near, as if they would show that, though obedi-
ence fail, yet government must be still itself and
decent. To prove this they that do but view their
Bridewell will think it might receive a gentle-
man, though a gallant, and so their prison a
wealthy citizen. But for a poor man 'tis his best
policy to be laid there for he that cast him in
must maintain him."

Modern Holland is worthy of its great tradi-
tion in this respect as well as in all others.

When in 1914 its sister country, Belgium,
overrun by foreign soldiers, was suffering all
the horrors of war, the people of Belgium fled
by the thousands, nay by the hundred thousands,
across the border into Holland. The flag of
Holland was floating over the sign posts indicat-
ing the Dutch frontier, the frontier of the land of
liberty and charity. Thousands of homeless wan-
derers saw this flag waving to them a friendly
welcome, if they could see at all, blinded by
tears as they were. And over the border these poor
people streamed in endless procession, the rich
and the poor, the sane and the insane, the hale
and the cripples, the law-abiding and the lawless
— for poor Belgium gave up its population from
the cities and the fields, from the homes, the fac-
tories and the asylums. And all of them were
made welcome. It was a heavy burden Holland
was staggering under. It not only kept its whole
army under the colors, marking time at the fron-
tier and in the fortress, ready to defend the coun-
try's honor and liberty, but in addition thousands
of its own people had been compelled by the war

[62]

AN HISTORICAL ESSAY
conditions prevailing in Europe generally to join
the ranks of the unemployed, and now it har-
bored refugees variously estimated in numbers
between seven hundred thousand and a million,
refugees mostly destitute of all the necessaries of
life. Nevertheless, the people of Holland, true
to their heroic past, rose to the occasion and not
a mouth was left unfed, not a body unsheltered,
and when a powerful neighbor offered to pay
part of the expenses the Queen's government
quietly answered that it would discharge its own
obligation of charity and benevolence.

What a tremendous undertaking for a numer-
ically small nation already suffering under indus-
trial distress!

But to return to our subject —

It was the Dutch that first adopted the plan
now generally in vogue in the United States of
making the convicts work at some useful trade
during their confinement, rather than herding
them together like unclean animals with no meas-
ure of time but light and darkness. The prisons
were clean, the prisoners well fed and decently
treated, and the dreadful prison fevers, the re-
sult of unspeakable conditions in other European
prisons, were unknown in the Dutch peniten-
tiaries. John Howard, the great English reform-
er, claimed in 1772 that more persons died from
the jail-fever than on the gallows, although there
were at that time one hundred and sixty offenses
punishable by death in England. Even the
judges sitting in the court of criminal assizes had
to take precautions that this disease would not
"attack them from the prisoners' dock."

While in England the wretched inmates were
obliged to pay in some manner for their food and
the straw upon which they slept, and were often
compelled to remain in prison after their term
had expired for lack of funds to pay their jailor,
in the Dutch jails the prisoners were given the

[63]

HOLLAND

same food as the seamen, with beer, and were
only required to do a very moderate amount of
work. While elsewhere men and women were
huddled together, and helpless children subject-
ed to the revolting horrors of the common cell,
in Holland there was a separate prison for
women, where they were employed in spinning
and sewing, slept but two in a room, and were
well fed, while the children were cared for in the
numerous institutions for that purpose.

The Dutch prison reports of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries read very much like those
of the more enlightened countries of the twen-
tieth century, and very much indeed like those of
the United States of today.

The Netherlands, from the very nature of
their land, were forced to be constructive; in a
material way they had nothing to destroy. Natu-
rally, they became as careful in other matters,
and placed too high a value on human life to
destroy or blight it unnecessarily, a sentiment en-
tirely unknown in the countries where the feudal
system placed the worth of a man at a little less
than that of a horse or other valuable animal.

There is another phase of the Dutch nature
which had a lasting effect upon America, and
which in view of the present-day agitation on the
subject is of more than passing importance.

The position of the women of Holland was
always a matter of wonderment to the traveling
Latin or Englishman. They were a little dis-
posed to poke fun at the man who was willing
to consult his wife upon important questions and
to accept her word as law in any matter pertain-
ing to the home. To these travelers the level-
headed, calm-eyed Dutch "huis vrouw," schooled
like her husband and ruling her home with a rod
of iron, was a revelation.

Under the common law of England, which al-
lowed a man to beat his wife, provided he used

[64]

AN HISTORICAL ESSAY
a stick no larger than his finger, the women were
dependent upon the personal justice of their men
to almost as great an extent as a slave upon the
gentleness of his master.

Thanks to some very modern writers whose
more or less interesting "Impressions of America
and the Americans" are as numerous as the sands
of the sea, the position of the American woman
as viewed by the average European today is not
hard to determine. Some look with interest,
some with horror, and all with surprise at the
freedom enjoyed by wives in the United States,
at the advanced ideas of the women, and of their
calm acceptance by American men as being the
just due of their life partners.

It is somewhat amusing to notice how very
identical were the criticisms of the position of
the women of Holland by the progenitors of
these up-to-date travelers in the United States.
Even the sympathetic De Amicis, in the nine-
teenth century, writes with wonder that the en-
gaged girls in Holland were allowed to receive
their fiances unattended, and that even the un-
married young ladies of the better class were free
to make calls at distant parts of the cities, un-
chaperoned and fearless of being molested, and
in all respects were allowed perfect freedom.

Guicciardini, writing in the sixteenth century,
voices almost the same impressions: "They go
out alone to make visits, and even journeys with-
out evil report; they are able to take care of
themselves. Moreover, they are housekeepers,
and love their households."

Coeducation began in the Netherlands. In
Holland the girls of every class receive the same
schooling as their brothers. They are educated,
treated as equals by their husbands, mingle in all
the business of life, and in many cases take entire
charge of the family property. Their opinion
is listened to with respect.

[65]

HOLLAND

Wise men have said that the position of the
wife and mother throws the most light upon the
civilization of a people. Tried by this test alone,
the Netherlands stood two centuries in advance
of the rest of Europe, at the time of the settle-
ment of America, and America did well to adopt
this advanced feminine policy long prevailing in
the Netherlands.

[66]

HOLLAND'S ATTITUDE

DURING THE BIRTH OF THE

AMERICAN REPUBLIC

HOLLAND'S ATTITUDE DUR-
ING THE BIRTH OF THE
AMERICAN REPUBLIC

fHAT the essential political and
economic qualities which the
American is only too prone to
look upon as his special prop-
erty, and which inquiry shows
to be largely of Holland ori-
gin, were not adopted uncon-
sciously, is evident in the
words of some of the early American statesmen.

John Adams remarked that "the originals of
the two Republics are so much alike that the
history of one seems but a transcript from that of
the other." Said Benjamin Franklin of the
Netherlands: "In love of liberty and in the de-
fense of it, she has been our example."

Nor were these statements in the least exag-
gerated. As the Dutch threw off the yoke of
Spain, so the United States rebelled against Eng-
land because of the invasion of rights and unfair
taxation. Like the Americans, the Netherland-
ers first formed a Union of States, and then issued
a Declaration of Independence. Both nations
fought long wars on their native soil, with a
powerful enemy, both gaining in the end their
hard-won freedom through sheer perseverance
and endurance of unspeakable hardships. Both
emerged from the great struggle as Republics
and both nations today are open in their dislike
if not hate of militarism and absolutism.

Holland has its liberator in William the Sil-
ent, Prince of Orange; the United States of
America in George Washington.

The trouble the founders of the United States
met in keeping the States within the Union dur-
ing the critical period of the Revolutionary war,

HOLLAND

and even after the Constitution had been formed,
was paralleled in the Dutch Republic after the
Pact of Union of Utrecht in 1579, two centuries
before the same problems confronted the Ameri-
can statesmen. Like the United States, however,
after much discussion of State rights, secession
and the Union, the integrity of the republic was
maintained for two hundred and fifteen years,
finally giving way at that time to a constitutional
monarchy in which personal, political and re-
ligious freedom are upheld by a descendant of
the martyred "Father William," who laid down
his life and fortune in defense of these very
principles.

Almost all the words and phrases generally as-
sociated with the scream of the American eagle
were roared out by the Dutch lion centuries be-
fore the eagle was even hatched. "The Union
must and shall be preserved," "In Union there is
strength" (the motto of the Dutch States Gen-
eral), "Without God all is vain" (like the Amer-
ican "In God we trust"), and countless other
mottos and slogans that today inspire the patriot-
ism of the American Republic, were born of the
struggle of their Dutch forefathers in the war
for independence.

In 1787, when the American Constitution was
formed, the Dutch Republic was a living ex-
ample before the eyes of the fathers of the Re-
public of the United States. Small wonder that
the best parts of the Dutch system were incor-
porated in the new government. America profit-
ed by the Dutch example by accepting the best of
its institutions and eliminating its wrongs and
mistakes.

There is nothing remarkable in the same fun-
damental happenings appearing in the history of
the two nations. The Dutch mind is closely akin
to the American in its method of thought. The
same keen practical genius distinguishes both.

[70]

AN HISTORICAL ESSAY
The American is, perhaps, less conservative than
the Hollander, but that is due rather to geogra-
phy than to any difference in principle. The
new-born movement in the United States towards
the constructive conservation of her resources
has a tendency to remove even this distinction be-
tween the two national characters.

We have already seen that the township sys-
tem, adopted from the start by the New England
settlers, was the main plank in the foundation of
the whole political structure of the present-day
American Republic. The influence of local self-
government upon New England life was very
great. It proved an excellent training school in
the science and art of politics.

Samuel Adams, who had more to do with pre-
paring the public mind of Massachusetts for the
Revolution than any other one man, has been
called the "man of the town meeting." Thomas
Jefferson expressed great admiration for town
government and strove to introduce it into Vir-
ginia, where the English county system had tend-
ed to create an aristocratic and centralized local
government. He said, "These wards, called
townships in New England, are the vital prin-
ciple of their government, and have proved
themselves the wisest invention ever devised by
the wit of man for the perfect exercise of self-
government and for its preservation," and again,
"these little republics would be the main strength
of the great one. We owe to them the vigor given
to our Revolution in its commencement in the
Eastern States."

There is nothing in the English system of gov-
ernment to suggest the New England township.
Virginia, as befitted her entirely English origin,
adopted the British ideas of parish and county.

The Massachusetts Pilgrims and Puritans and
the Connecticut settlers, whose leaders, Daven-
port and Hooker, came direct from Holland

[71]

HOLLAND

after several years' residence there, laid out the
land in the identical manner prevalent in Fries-
land, the ultra-democratic province of the Neth-
erlands. Following the same example they built
their houses with stockades, gates, "a trench of
six foote long and two foote broad," with com-
mon forest, pasture and arable land, with "com-
mon fence," common herd of swine daily led out
at the sound of a horn, tended by day and led
back by night, all "according to ye laudable cus-
tom of ye Low Countries."

There was published in Leyden in 1616, Ubbo
Emmius' "History of Friesland," the press work
and composition having been partly done by the
Pilgrim printers. In this book the details of
local organization and town government are
given at length and read like a description of the
early New England town meeting, with its ac-
count of the election after prayer by the written
ballot of magistrates and selectmen.

The Dutch created in New York the chartered
town, and after the English conquest of 1664 the
county came into existence, but the township was
first and retained the local powers not delegated
to the county. In Pennsylvania, Penn set up a
purely county organization, but the Dutch in-
fluence was too powerful, and the township ap-
peared and began to develop in the colony.

As they followed the example of the Nether-
lands, who were "two centuries ahead of the rest
of Europe," it is no wonder that Hinsdale in his
"American Government" said : "Upon the whole,
the colonies were fully abreast of any communi-
ties in the world in respect to civil and religious
rights, and far in advance of most of them."

"When in the course of human events" the col-
onies decided to throw off the yoke of England
and establish a government for themselves they
had more than the political and diplomatic sym-
pathy of the Hollanders.

[72]

AN HISTORICAL ESSAY

From the beginning of the Revolution the
Dutch sided with the colonies and their republic
against the monarchy of Great Britain.

They saw that England, endeavoring to replete
her damaged treasury, was doing much as the
Spanish King had done when he imposed exor-
bitant taxes on the Provinces of the Netherlands.
Four of the thirteen States had been settled by
Dutchmen, and the founders of New England
had been educated in Holland. The American
revolt followed in a hundred details that of the
Netherlands in 1579 and 1581. The same red,
white and blue flag, led the two forces to victory.

When the Declaration of Independence was
signed many Dutch officers crossed the ocean to
enlist in the Continental Army. In New York
and New Jersey the English-sympathizing "tory"
was almost unknown. New York, largely Dutch
in population, was the one State of the thirteen
which paid up fully and promptly her quota of
men, money and supplies.

A Dutch engineer in the United States Army
named Romayne, greatly beloved by Washing-
ton, built the forts on the Hudson River, and was
the author of a book comparing the Dutch and
American Union, declarations of war, of inde-
pendence, difficulties and prospects, and prophe-
sying the success of the cause for which he later
laid down his life.

A man-of-war was constructed by the Dutch
for the United States in Amsterdam in 1777. The
"Indian," afterwards renamed the "South Caro-
lina," was a very large vessel for that time, and
almost equalled a first-class ship of the line in
appearance.

The first foreign salute to the American flag
was fired by Dutch guns. When the ship "An-
drea Doria" sailed into the harbor of St. Eusta-
chius in the West Indies with a copy of the Dec-
laration of Independence on board, the governor

[73]

HOLLAND

of the island, Johannes de Graeff, ordered eleven
"honor shots" to be fired.

While, according to the stipulations of the
treaty of the Netherlands with England, Eng-
land and the Netherlands were allies and the lat-
ter had furnished soldiers and money in several
previous wars, the Dutch refused to allow even
the "Scotch Brigade" who were stationed in Hol-
land at that time, to be used against the American
Colonies, or to give one man or a single guilder
to be used against the new republic, claiming that
the war was being waged by George III against
his own subjects and had nothing to do with the
subject of Protestant succession upon which the
treaty was founded.

When the young Republic needed friends
whose voices would be powerful in the moulding
of a favorable public opinion, it found its first
powerful foreign champion of the American
cause in a Hollander named Jan Dirk van de
Capellen. His affection for the Americans was
warm and disinterested, and his translations of
pamphlets dealing with the United States kept
the Dutch people informed of the progress of
the war. The most famous and effective of all
the pamphlets published in the Netherlands at
this time, espousing the cause of the United
States, was from the pen of this friend of the
Americans, and its distribution throughout the
principal Dutch cities and country districts had
the effect of an electric shock. It was called
"Aan het volk van Nederland" ("To the People
of the Netherlands").

Besides corresponding with Dr. Franklin, Gov.
Trumbull, John Adams and other eminent Amer-
icans, in company with other Dutch writers, like
Dr. Calkoens, van der Capellen soon filled the
Netherlands with literature showing the justice
of the American cause. He found his audience
to be most sympathetic.

[74]

AN HISTORICAL ESSAY

In 1908, through the efforts of Mr. John R.
van Wormer, President of the Holland Society
of New York, the debt of honor owed to this de-
voted friend of the American Republic was at
least partly paid by the placing of a bronze tablet
on the walls of his former residence "in grateful
recognition of the services rendered by him dur-
ing the war of the Revolution on behalf of the
United Colonies of North America, 1775-1783,
which materially contributed toward the estab-
lishment of their independence as a nation."

Professor Jean Luzac, another noted Hollan-
der and editor of an influential paper, "The Ga-
zette de Leyde," published in Leyden and circu-
lated throughout Europe, was also exceedingly
helpful in arousing sympathy for the Americans.
His memory was honored by the Holland So-
ciety of Philadelphia in 1909 by a tablet placed
in the house he once occupied in Leyden.

When John Paul Jones captured the English
"Serapis" he brought his prize to Texel, Hol-
land, and the streets of the Dutch cities resound-
ed with the praise of the valor of the Yankee
man-of-war.

Claas Taan with a fleet of Dutch grain ships,
broke the British blockade and relieved Balti-
more of pressing, need. The students of the Uni-
versity of Franeker held a grand festival cele-
brating the auspicious future of the young re-
public. These same "free Frisians" led the way
in the official recognition of the United States of
America. This came about in the following
manner:

In the beginning of March of the year 1782
the deputies of Friesland proposed to the States
General the admission and recognition of Adams
as "Minister of the Congress of North America."
"As the Frisians generally carry through anything
that they undertake," it was generally thought
that Ambassador Adams — and at the same time

[75]

HOLLAND

the independence of the United States — would
soon be recognized. Adams prepared to transfer
his residence from Amsterdam to The Hague,
the seat of the Dutch Government, and pur-
chased a large and elegant house in a noble situa-
tion for 6,000 guilders. This was, according to
Frederich Edler in his work "The Dutch Repub-
lic and the American Revolution," the first lega-
tion the United States ever owned. "L'Hotel des
Etats Unis de TAmerique," as it was officially
called, was situated upon the "Fluweelen Burg-
wal."

In 1913 a memorial tablet was placed in the
building which was once the first Legation Build-
ing of the United States. It reads:

1609-1913.

GOD ZY MET ONS IN GOD WE TRUST.

IN TOKEN OF MORE THAN THREE CENTURIES OF

ENDURING FRIENDSHIP

AND OF THE MANIFOLD DEBT OF THE PEOPLE

OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TO THE

NETHERLANDS
THE ALBANY INSTITUTE AND HISTORICAL AND

ART SOCIETY

GRATEFULLY REARS THIS MEMORIAL
SEPTEMBER 1913.

On April 22nd, 1782, the States-General agree-
able to the Frisian proposal resolved upon the
admission of John Adams as "Minister of the
Congress of North America." Three days later
Mr. John Adams, as ambassador from the Uni-
ted States of America to The Hague, had formal
audience with the Stadtholder, and soon a treaty
between the two republics was completed.

The Frisians, known through the centuries as
the most democratic and fearless of the members
of the Commonwealth of the Netherlands, had
once more vindicated their reputation.

[76]

AN HISTORICAL ESSAY

In this remarkably exhaustive treatise on the
"Dutch Republic and the American Revolution"
Dr. Frederich Edler writes :

"The conclusion of the treaty with the
United Provinces was a signal success for the
United States. The Dutch Republic was the
first nation, after France, to enter into closer
relations with America. There was, how-
ever, a vast difference between the two agree-
ments. With France the treaty was, in some
degree, an act of charity and had been felt
as such by the United States, but with the
United Provinces the parties had negotiated
as equals. Furthermore, the recognition of
American independence by the Dutch and the
conclusion of the treaty between the two Re-
publics established the value of the United
States in the eyes of the world, thereby mak-
ing a step forward in the independent na-
tional life of the new commonwealth."

By this time the British had already declared
war against the Netherlands because of the
Dutch intervention in the war with the colonies.
Not only had the salute to the American flag
been fired, but the American privateers, equipped
at the Dutch Port of St. Eustachius, supplied ful-
ly one half of the munitions of war to the Con-
tinental army. In addition, the papers of van
der Capellen, van Berckel, Gov. Trumbull of
Connecticut and Erkelens, a Dutchman in Phil-
adelphia, had been found when Henry Laurens,
ex-president of the Continental Congress, was
captured on the ocean by a British frigate the
"Vestal." The States-General refused to punish
either de Graeff or van Berckel, and England de-
clared war immediately.

Leaving Cornwallis to take care of himself as
best he might in Yorktown, the British Admiral
Rodney sailed for St. Eustachius with a great
fleet, and captured the port together with fifty

[77] '

HOLLAND

American merchant ships loaded with cotton and
tobacco, and two thousand American prisoners.
Thus the Republic of the Netherlands and the
Republic of the United States both paid dearly
for their mutual friendship.

The Dutch bankers at Amsterdam furnished
the struggling colonists a much needed loan of
fourteen million dollars, and with these sinews
of war the Americans were prepared to renew
the struggle when Cornwallis surrendered.

During the peace negotiations at Paris the re-
lations of the American minister John Adams
with the Dutch diplomats were notably cordial.

In return for the signal benefits the United
States had obtained from the freely given friend-
ship of the Hollanders, Adams did his best to
convince the English diplomats of the justice of
the Dutch demands for the return of captured
booty and for free and unrestricted navigation.
Writing to a friend in Paris, he said, "Unneces-
sary however as any exertions of mine have been,
I have not omitted any opportunity of throwing
in any friendly suggestions in my power where
there was a possibility of doing any good to our
good friends the Dutch," and details follow of
the conversations he had with many of the in-
fluential men in the conference.

It is not for the material help that Holland
gave her that the United States is most indebted.
It was the noble example of the Netherlands in
the eighty years' struggle for liberty that gave the
colonists heart to continue their seemingly hope-
less fight with the powers of oppression. It was
in emulation of that immortal Father William, a
martyr to the common cause, that George Wash-
ington, "Father of his country," led the half-
starved continentals on to a glorious victory. The
Fathers of this Great Republic were profound
students of history and the message that the fam-

[78]

§§s

AN HISTORICAL ESSAY
ishing Burgers in the besieged city of Leyden
sent out to the entrenched Spanish army beyond
their walls was graven in imperishable letters in
their minds and gave courage to the commanders
of these suffering continentals.

Reduced to eating rodents, the Burgers of Ley-
den were offered full pardon if they would but
surrender. They answered, "Ye call us rat eat-
ers and dog eaters, and it is true. So long then
as ye hear a dog bark or a cat mew within the
walls, ye may know that the city holds out. And
when all has perished but ourselves, be sure that
we will devour our left arms, retaining our right
to defend our women, our liberty, and our re-
ligion, against the foreign tyrant. Should God
in his wrath doom us to destruction and deny us
all relief, even then will we maintain ourselves
against your entrance. When the last hour has
come, with our own hands we will set fire to the
city and perish, men, women and children, to-
gether in the flames rather than suffer our homes
to be polluted and our liberties to be crushed."

This was the kind of "Dutch courage" that
helped make the American Republic possible
and gave hope and solace in the darkest hours.

The bell that pealed forth Freedom "through-
out all the land and to all the inhabitants thereof"
on July 4, 1776, named "Liberty Bell" by the
Pennsylvania Dutchmen, had its glorious proto-
type in the liberty bells which had sounded for
hundreds of years from the towers of the Town
Halls in the cities of the Netherlands, the bells
that rang to call the burgers to festivals and
funerals, to Sunday prayers and arms.

After the United States had obtained her na-
tional independence, the first need of the country
was for a definite, consistent policy of govern-
ment. What was more natural than that the
fathers of the American Republic should turn to

[79]

HOLLAND

the example of the Netherlands for aid in draft-
ing the necessary instruments?

The history of that free form of government
was an inspiring one, and was rooted in the ages.

At the early date of 1477 the death of Charles
the Bold resulted in some political turmoil,
which led to the summoning of a general assem-
bly or parliament of all the Netherlanders.

The first congress or national legislature of
the Low Countries met at Ghent, and provided
means to carry on war if necessary, but refused
to vote any money until their complaints were
heard and justice granted. Thus was laid down
the doctrine that centuries later was preached in
America against the Stamp Act, no taxation with-
out representation. In answer to these popular
demands, "Het groote Trivilegie,' " one of the
many Dutch great charters, was granted, whose
provisions were not at all unlike those of the
much more modern Constitution of the United
States of America.

The great Council, like the Cabinet, and the
Supreme Court of Holland were re-established,
the Netherlands congress was to levy taxes, coin
money, regulate manufacture and commerce, de-
clare war and raise armies and navies. The an-
cient liberties of the city republics were fully
restored. None but natives could hold office, and
only the Dutch language was to be used in public
documents. The right of trial in one's own town-
ship was confirmed, and no command of the over-
lord was to prevail against the town charters.
There was to be no alteration of the coinage with-
out the consent of the states, and no taxation with-
out representation.

More than a century later we arrive at another
milestone in the history of Dutch parliamentary
liberty.

In 1581, on July 26th, the Dutch States issued
their Declaration of Independence, deposing

[80]

AN HISTORICAL ESSAY
King Philip of Spain as their monarch, and re-
nouncing his authority on account of his viola-
tion of the provisions of this instrument granted
a century previous, thus setting the example for
the American defiance of July 4, 1776. Up to
1581 the Dutch had waged war against the Span-
ish forces of Alva in the name of his royal mas-
ter, and even the charter of the University of
Leyden, given to that town as a reward for its
heroic defense against the troops of Philip, was
solemnly granted in the name of that sinister
monarch himself.

Much the same sort of legal joke was perpe-
trated by the Continentals when they fought at
Bunker Hill and Lexington in the name of
George III, claiming that the British soldiers
were interfering with the free passage of the col-
onists, his majesty's loyal subjects, on the King's
Highway.

Some years before the Dutch Declaration was
published, the Union of Utrecht in 1579 had uni-
ted the seven Dutch northern States of Holland,
Utrecht, Zeeland, Overyssel, Gelderland, Fries-
land and Groningen in a federal republic, with a
written constitution under the orange, white and
blue flag. This constitution was still in full force
and effect at the time of the Declaration of Amer-
ican Independence. But how these Hollanders
had fought, suffered and bled to accomplish this
end!

Such then was the living example before the
eyes of Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and the
other American patriots, students of Dutch his-
tory.

When the rebellious American Colonies
framed their first plan of government during the
Revolutionary War, they adopted articles of con-
federation which followed the example of the
Netherlands constitution very closely. Under
these articles a Congress was established in which

[80

HOLLAND

each State, whatever its population and whatever
the number of its representatives, from two to
seven, had but a single vote. This Congress, like
the States-General of the Netherlands, exercised
all executive powers. Neither republic had a
president or other executive officer at first, for
the same reason. In the Netherlands, William I
had been accepted by the people as a whole, with-
out vote or other formality, as the virtual head
of the army and the government. In the same
manner George Washington was understood to
be the actual head of the Colonial Federation
through his position as Commander-in-Chief of
the Army. As in the Netherlands, the legislative
body made war and peace, appointed all officers,
civil and military, and exercised all functions of
government, except those purely judicial.

Both the Union of Utrecht and the first con-
federation of the American colonies had been
formed for the conduct of a government of di-
verse states during the time of war, under the
guardianship of a powerful and justly popular
leader.

Very naturally some of the features of such a
system, however successful in time of war, were
not adopted to the permanent government of a
country at peace.

So nearly akin, however, were the integral
parts of the two republics, that the solutions of
the problem of the Netherlands confederation
were well adapted to the same situations in the
United States.

The plan of the United States Senate was bor-
rowed almost bodily from the Dutch States-Gen-
eral, when the Constitution took its permanent
form. Each State, however large or small, is
given equal representation in this body. Only
one third of its members go out of office at a time,
following the lead of the Dutch, who had learned
at an early date the advantages of new blood com-

[82]

VIEW OF THE DIVISION OF THE DUTCH EAST
INDIES IN THE OFFICIAL PAVILION OF THE NETHER-
LANDS AND COLONIES AT THE PANAMA-PACIFIC
INTERNATIONAL EXPOSITION, SAN FRANCISCO, 1915.

AN HISTORICAL ESSAY
bined with experience, many of their important
bodies changing but a fraction at a time. An
age test, unknown in England but entirely famil-
iar in the Netherlands as a Roman precedent,
completes the likeness of the United States Sen-
ate to the similar bodies in the Dutch Federation
and distinguishes it from the House of Lords of
England.

The appointment by the President, with the
confirmation of the Senate, of the Judges and all
the subordinate officers of the State, is the evolu-
tion of the old Dutch plan of the submission of
a triple number of candidates to the Stadtholder
by the Estates, and is very dissimilar to the
English system, wherein the executive authority,
formerly the monarch, but now the Cabinet,
makes the appointments without the confirmation
or control of any other body.

The restriction of the power of the executive
in regard to the making of war or peace, by the
legislative body, is of Netherland origin.

The Supreme Court of the United States, the
admiration of all thoughtful English statesmen,
was directly copied from the Dutch precedent,
established in 1477, by "het groote Privilegie."
But even more important than any consciously
adopted forms of legal or political structure, are
the principles which give birth to them.

Professor Thorold Rogers, Professor of Po-
litical Economy in the University of Oxford, and
of Economic Science and Statistics, King's Col-
lege, London, in his "Story of Holland," says:

"I hold that the revolt of the Netherlands
and the success of Holland is the beginning of
modern science and of modern civilization. It
utterly repudiated the divine right of kings,
and the divine authority of the church, the
two most inveterate enemies which human
progress has had to do battle with. At present
the king in civilized communities is the serv-

[83]

HOLLAND

ant of the state, whose presence and influence
is believed to be useful.

"The priest can only enjoy an authority
which is voluntarily conceded to him, but has
no authority over those who decline to recog-
nize him. These two principles of civil gov-
ernment the Dutch were the first to affirm.
. . . Holland was the solitary European
state for a long time, in which a man's re-
ligious opinions were no bar to his exercise of
all civil rights. . . . To the true lover of lib-
erty, Holland is the Holy Land of modern
Europe and should be held sacred."

Said James Madison, writing in 1822:

"The example of Holland proved that a tol-
eration of sects dissenting from the estab-
lished sect was safe and even useful . . . that
religion flourishes in greater purity without
than with the aid of government."

At the time of the rise of the great American
Republic the system of government in the Neth-
erlands had shown many serious defects. No sys-
tem devised by men can stand the test of more
than two centuries without showing its weak-
nesses and blemishes.

The fathers of the American Constitution, deep
students of history and government, were able to
eliminate the flaws and mistakes and adopt the
system they admired free from its less desirable
elements. The wisdom of two centuries made
improvements easy.

[84]

APPENDIX

HOLLAND'S HOSPITALITY

(From The Literary Digest, December 12, 1914.)

Nine newly born babes snatched from a burn-
ing hospital in Antwerp formed, says the Am-
sterdam Handelsblad, a group before which
strong men were moved to tears on the arrival at
the Amsterdam Stock Exchange of the little
party in the arms of the Red Cross nurses that
had rescued them. In describing the flight of the
Belgian poor toward food and safety in the Neth-
erlands, the correspondent of the Handelsblad
goes on to say:

"Afterwards as I tramped for hours among
them, one thing imprest itself strongly upon
my memory: the noise of so many little wood-
en shoes — children's shoes — that click-clacked
on the cobblestones in the characteristic short
run of frightened people. My memory holds
a whole collection of noises, but none quite as
pathetic as the quick 'tok-tok-tok' of these
hordes of children trying desperately with
their tired little legs to keep up with father
and mother."

In speaking of the reception these refugees
met at the hands of their hospitable neighbors,
the London Times remarks that the Dutch

"have risen with a noble charity to the de-
mands made upon them, and the charity of the
poor has been as wide and active as the charity
of the rich. Touching stories have reached us
of the warmth with which the homeless wan-
derers have been welcomed in the frontier vil-
lages and towns. We hear of families taking
in as many as thirty refugees in their houses,
and going forth themselves to sleep in the
streets. Food and clothing have been freely
given by all classes according to their abilities,
and the sufferers have been consoled by the
kindliness and the sympathy of their tender-
hearted Dutch hosts. Do most of us realize
how immense this charity has been, and how

[87]

HOLLAND

heavy is the glorious burden which it is casting
upon the Dutch people ? It is credibly affirmed
that not less than 700,000 Belgian fugitives
have sought and found an asylum in the Neth-
erlands. The entire population of that King-
dom is but 6,000,000 souls. The Dutch are
therefore housing and feeding considerably
more than one-tenth of their own numbers in
fugitives alone."

In the opinion of The Times, this burden
ought to fall, at least in part, upon Great Britain
and those other countries that have benefited by
"the heroic stand of the Belgian nation," and
such also is the view of the London Daily Mail,
which thinks:

"But the burden that is thereby thrown up-
on the people of Holland is one that with the
utmost good-will in the world they can not sus-
tain unaided. At a time of intense national
anxiety and acute commercial depression the
influx of nearly three-quarters of a million
homeless and destitute refugees places upon
them responsibilities that even their noble
spirit of charity and pity can not adequately
discharge. Nothing can exceed the generous
solicitude with which they have received and
cared for their hapless guests. But the task is
one that is really beyond their resources, and
beyond the resources, too, of any combination
of charitable agencies.

4 'We in this country owe to Belgium a debt
we must forever despair of repaying. But we
can at least show some sense of its immensity
by claiming a right to house and feed and find
employment for those of her people whom the
initial fortunes of the war have driven into a
temporary exile."

It is noteworthy, however, that, according to
the London Times and the American press, the
Dutch Government has declined to shift this bur-

[88]

AN HISTORICAL ESSAY
den of hospitality and has refused offers of finan-
cial assistance, both from America and Great
Britain, as incompatible with the country's honor.
Tho the Dutch press is not blind to the drain
upon the resources of the Netherlands that this
charity entails, yet the Amsterdam Nieuws van
den Dag insists that greater military preparations
are necessary for the adequate defense of the
Dutch people and their guests.

[89]

HERE ENDS "HOLLAND, AN HISTORICAL
ESSAY," AS WRITTEN BY H. A. VAN COENEN
TORCHIANA. PUBLISHED IN BOOK FORM
BY PAUL ELDER & COMPANY, AND SEEN
THROUGH THEIR TOMOYE PRESS BY JOHN
SWART, IN THE CITY OF SAN FRANCISCO,
DURING THE MONTH OF MAY, NINETEEN
HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN.