[Speech of Rev. Dr. George R. Van de Water at the eighth annual
dinner of the Holland Society of New York, January 15, 1893. The
President, Judge Augustus Van Wyck, said: "The next toast is:
'Holland--a lesson to oppressors, an example to the oppressed, and
a sanctuary for the rights of mankind.' This toast will be
responded to by one of the greatest stars in New York's
constellation of the Embassadors of Him on High--Rev. Dr. George R.
Van de Water, rector of St. Andrew's Church, Harlem."]
MR. PRESIDENT AND MEMBERS OF THE HOLLAND SOCIETY:--One loves to
observe a fitness in things. There is manifest fitness in one coming to
New York from Harlem to speak to the members of the Holland Society and
their friends. There is also manifest fitness in taking the words of
this country's earliest benefactor, the Marquis de Lafayette, and,
removing them from their original association with this fair and favored
land, applying them to that little but lovely, lowly yet lofty, country
of the Netherlands. Geologists tell us that, minor considerations
waived, the character of a stream can be discerned as well anywhere
along its course as at its source. Whether this be true or not, anything
that can be said of the fundamental principles of liberty, upon which
our national fabric has been built, can be said with even increased
emphasis of the free States of the Netherlands.
From the Dutch our free America has secured the inspiration of her
chartered liberties. Of the Dutch, then, we can appropriately say, as
Lafayette once said of free America, "They are a lesson to oppressors,
an example to the oppressed, and a sanctuary for the rights of mankind."
We are here to-night to glorify the Dutch. Fortunately for us, to do
this we have not by the addition of so much as a jot or a tittle to
magnify history. The facts are sufficient to justify our boast and
fortify our pride. We need to detract nothing from other nationalities
that have contributed much to the formation of our modern national
conglomerate, although it is easily seen that the superior qualities of
other nations have had a large infusion of Dutch virtue. All that we
claim is that no nation under the heavens can make such an exhibit of
marvellous success against adverse circumstances as does Holland. From
the days when Julius Cæsar mentions their bravery under the name of
Batavians, to the notable time when, voluntarily assuming the title of
reproach, they became "the beggars of the sea," and for nearly a century
fought for their chartered rights against the most powerful and
unscrupulous of foes, the Dutch have shown the most splendid of human
virtues in most conspicuous light. In doing this they have made a noble
name for themselves, and furnished the worthiest of examples for all the
nations of the earth. This is not the time nor the place to deal with
mere facts of history. Yet I take it that even this jolly assembly will
take pleasure in the mention of the deeds that have now become eternally
historic. Who that knows anything of the son of Charles V, who in 1555
made promises to Holland that he never meant to keep, and for years
after sought in every way to break; who that has ever read of this
fanatical, heartless, cruel, and despotic Philip II of Spain, or of that
wonderful, pure, magnanimous, noblest Dutchman of all, William of
Orange, or of that fickle and false Margaret of Parma, the wicked sister
in Holland, who lived to execute the will of a wicked brother in Spain,
or of those monsters at the head of Spanish armies, Alva, Requesens, and
Don Juan; who that has been fired by the sieges of Leyden and Haarlem,
by the assassinations concocted in the Council of Blood, by the patient,
faithful, undying patriotism of the Netherlanders in protesting for the
truth of God and the rights of man, will need any response to the toast
"a lesson to oppressors"? A little land, fighting for the right,
succeeded in overcoming the power of the mightiest nation of Europe.
"Truth crushed to earth will rise again."
When once we consider the earnestness for civil and religious liberty,
the record of no nation can stand comparison with that of Holland. Some
of the English Puritans fled across the Atlantic from persecutions very
slight compared with those inflicted upon Dutchmen by Philip, here to
found a New England. Those who did not flee remained in old England,
fought a few battles, and tried to establish a commonwealth, which in
less than fifteen years ended disastrously, because the founders were
unfit for government. But these Puritans of Holland, to their
everlasting praise be it remembered, battled for their homes, lives, and
liberty for eighty years. For four-fifths of a century they faced not
only the best and bravest soldiers of Europe, but they faced, along with
their wives, their children, and their old folk, the flame, the gibbet,
the flood, the siege, the pestilence, the famine, "and all men know, or
dream, or fear of agony," all for one thing--to teach the oppressor that
his cause must fail. It is difficult, sitting around a comfortable board
at a public dinner, to make men realize what their forefathers suffered
that the heritage of priceless liberty should be their children's pride.
But read Motley, or the recent and remarkably well-written volumes of
Douglas Campbell, and you will see that every atrocity that Spanish
hatred, religious intolerance, and mediæval bigotry could invent, every
horror that ever followed in the train of war, swept over and desolated
Holland. And yet, to teach a lesson to oppressors, they endured, they
fought, they suffered, they conquered; and when they conquered, the
whole world was taught the lesson--worth all the Dutchmen's agony to
teach it--that the children of a heavenly Father are born free and
equal, and that it is neither the province of nation or church to coerce
them into any religious belief or doctrine whatsoever.
The principle of Protestantism was won in the eighty-year war of the
Netherlanders. During all this time the Dutch were notably giving a
lesson to oppressors. But then and afterward they furnished a brilliant
and commendable example to the oppressed. Though they fought the wrong,
they never opposed the truth. They were fierce, but never fanatical.
They loved liberty, but they never encouraged license; they believed in
freedom and the maintenance of chartered rights, but they never denied
their lawful allegiance to their governor, nor refused scriptural
submission to the powers ordained of God. The public documents
throughout the eighty years of war invariably recognized Philip as
lawful king. Even the University of Leyden, founded as a thanksgiving
offering for their successful resistance to the Spanish siege, observed
the usual legal fiction, and acknowledged the King as ruler of the
realm. And, although the Dutch had abundant reason to be vindictive,
once the opportunity offered, the desire for persecution vanished.
William the Silent, as early as 1556, in a public speech before the
regent and her council, says, "Force can make no impression on one's
conscience." "It is the nature of heresy," he goes on to say (would we
had the spirit of William in our churches to-day)--"it is the nature of
heresy, if it rests it rusts: he that rubs it whets it." His was an age
when religious toleration, except as a political necessity, was unknown.
Holland first practised it, then taught it to the world. No less in her
example to the oppressed than in her warning to oppressors, is Holland
conspicuous, is Holland great. During the reign of William of Orange,
first a Romanist, then a Calvinist, never a bigot, always gentle, at
last a Christian, in Holland and in Zeeland, where for years he was
almost military dictator, these principles of tolerance were put to
severest test. Fortunately for the world, they were sufficiently strong
to stand the strain. The people about him had been the sad victims of a
horrible persecution which had furrowed their soil with graves, and
filled their land with widows and orphans. We know what is human nature.
But Dutch nature is a little more generous than ordinary human nature. A
Dutchman's heart is big, a Dutchman travels on a broad-gauge track; a
Dutchman can forgive and forget an injury; a Dutchman has no fears and
few frowns; a Dutchman is never icebergy, nor sullen, nor revengeful. He
may make mistakes from impulse, he never wounds with intention; he will
never put his foot twice in the same trap, nor will he take any pleasure
in seeing his enemy entrapped. All of a Dutchman's faults come from an
over-indulgence of a Dutchman's virtues. He is not cold, nor
calculating, nor cruel. Generally happy himself, he desires others to be
happy also. If he cannot get on with people, he lets them alone. He
does not seek to ruin them.
Such are traits of the Dutch character. When, after driving out the
awful, vindictive, bloodthirsty Spaniards, the Dutch came into power, it
was but natural to think of retaliation: banish the Papists, or
persecute the Anabaptists, suppress their paganism, or crush their
fanaticism, would have been most natural. Against any such ideas the
nation as a whole set its face like a wall of adamant. Very soon the
sober convictions of the people were triumphant. And after the most
atrociously cruel war, in which these men had suffered untold agonies,
they became an example to the oppressed, the like of which the world had
never witnessed since the Son of God and Saviour of men cried out from
his cross, "Father, forgive them: they know not what they do." When the
union was formed between Holland and Zeeland, it was provided that no
inquisition should be made into any man's belief or conscience, nor
should any man by cause thereof suffer injury or hindrance. Toleration
for the oppressor by the oppressed, full forgiveness of enemies by the
victors, became thus the corner-stone of the republic, under which all
sects of Christians, the Roman Catholic Church, Jews, Turks, infidels,
and even heretics, throve and prospered.
Now, do you need anything said after thus showing Holland to have been
the teacher of a lesson to oppressors, and the example to the oppressed,
to show that she has ever been the sanctuary for the rights of mankind?
In the nature of things, she could not have been otherwise. The little
country of Holland, that in 1555, on the accession of Philip II to the
sovereignty, was the richest jewel in his crown, and of the five
millions poured annually into his treasury contributed nearly half,
emerged as a republic out of the war with Spain of eighty years'
duration, and remained for two full centuries the greatest republic in
the world. She has been the instructor of the world in art, in music, in
science; has outstripped other nations in the commercial race; had
wealth and luxury, palaces and architectural splendor, when England's
yeomanry lived in huts and never ate a vegetable; discovered
oil-painting, originated portrait and landscape-painting, was foremost
in all the mechanical arts; invented wood-engraving, printing from
blocks, and gave to the world both telescope and microscope, thus
furnishing the implements to see the largest things of the heavens
above, and the smallest of both earth beneath and waters under the
earth. The corner-stone was liberty, and especially religious liberty
and toleration. As such Holland could not have been other than the
sanctuary for the rights of mankind. The great number of Englishmen in
the Netherlands, and the reciprocal influence of the Netherlands upon
these Englishmen--an influence all too little marked by English
historians--prepared the way for transplanting to this country the seeds
from which has sprung the large tree beneath the bounteous shade of
which nearly seventy millions of people take shelter to-day, and, while
they rest, rejoice in full security of their rights and their freedom.
Two hundred years ago, the English courtiers about Charles II,
regardless of the fact that the Netherlands had been the guide and the
instructor of England in almost everything which had made her materially
great, regarded the Dutchman as a boor, plain and ill-mannered, and
wanting in taste, because as a republican the Hollander thought it a
disgrace to have his wife or his daughter debauched by king or noble.
From the aristocratic point of view, the Dutchman was not altogether a
gentleman. To-day we have some representatives of the Charles II
courtiers, who affect to ape the English, and would, no doubt, despise
the Dutch. But he who appreciates the genuine meaning of a man, born in
the image and living in the fear of his God, has nothing but direst
disgust for a dude, nothing but the rarest respect for a Dutchman.