A year before, the French Revolution had come suddenly, and boldly it
had struck its brutal bayonet into the industrious ants' nest of the
Dutch Republic. There had been great hurrying to save life and property.
After a while order had been reëstablished. And then to its intense
surprise, at first with unbelieving astonishment, later with
ill-concealed vexation, the political entymologists of the French
Revolution had discovered that in this little country they had hit upon
an entirely new variety of national fabric. Against all the rules of
well-conducted republics, every little ant and every small combination
of ants worked only for its own little selfish ends, disregarded its
neighbours, fought most desperately for every small advantage to its
own, bit at those who came near, stole the eggs of those who were not
looking--in a word, while outwardly the little heap of earth seemed to
cover a well-conducted colony of formicidæ, inwardly it appeared to be
an ill-conducted, quarrelsome congregation of very selfish little
individuals. And with profound common sense, the French, after their
first surprise was over, said: "Brethren, this will never do. Really
you must change all this. We will give you a chance to build a new nest,
a very superior one. You can upholster it just as you please. You can
put in all the extra outside and inside ornaments which you may care to
have around you. But you must stop this insane quarrelling among
yourselves, this biting at each other, this spoiling of each other's
pleasure. In one word, you have got to turn this chaotic establishment
of yours into a well-regulated, centralized commonwealth such as is now
being constructed by all modern nations."
Very well. But who was to perform the miracle? William the Silent had
failed. Oldenbarneveldt two hundred years before had told his fellow
citizens almost identically the same thing. John de Witt had tried to
bring about a union by making the whole country subservient to Holland,
but he had not been successful. William III had accomplished everything
he had set out to do, but he could not establish a centralized
government in the republic. The entire eighteenth century had been one
prolonged struggle to establish the beginning of a more unified system,
and in this struggle much of the strength and energy of the country had
been wasted in vain.
And now the untrained national assembly (Representative Assembly of the
People of the Netherlands was too long a word) was asked to perform a
task which was to make it odious to more than half of its own members
and to the vast majority of the people of the republic.
Revolution, sansculottes, assignats, carmagnole, unpowdered hair--the
Batavians were willing to stand for almost anything, but not one iota of
provincial sovereignty must be sacrificed.
Pieter Paulus, wise man of this revolution, knew and understood the
difficulties which were awaiting him and his assembly. Already, in his
inaugural address, he had warned the members of the assembly that they
must not forget to be "representatives of the whole people, not mere
delegates from some particular town or province." The members had
listened very patiently, but when, on the 15th of the month, the
commission for the drawing up of a constitution was elected, the
federalists, those who supported the idea of provincial sovereignty as
opposed to a greater union, proved to be in the majority.
Of the twenty-one members who were elected to make a constitution, only
one was known as a radical supporter of the idea of union. Since Zeeland
and Friesland, even at this advanced date, had not yet sent their
delegates, the commission could not commence its labours until the end
of April. And when at last they set to work the assembly had suffered an
irreparable loss. One week after the opening ceremonies the secretary of
the assembly had asked that Mr. Paulus be excused from presiding that
day. A heavy cold had kept him at home. Paulus was still a young man,
only a little over forty. But during the last fourteen months, almost
without support, he had carried the whole weight of the revolutionary
government. And as soon as the assembly had met, the disgruntled
Jacobins, who thought that he was not radical enough, had openly accused
him of financial irregularities. It is true the assembly had refused to
listen to these charges and the members had expressed their utmost
confidence in the speaker; but eighteen hours' work a day, the
responsibility for a State on the verge of ruin, and attacks upon his
personal honesty, seemed to have been too much for a constitution which
never had been of the strongest. The slight cold which had prevented
Paulus from presiding proved to be the beginning of the end. After the
6th of March the speaker no longer appeared in the assembly. On the 15th
of the same month he died.
The greatest compliment to his abilities can be found in the fact that
after his death the national assembly at once degenerated into an
endless debating society which, in imitation of the Roman Senate,
deliberated and deliberated until not merely Saguntum, but the country
itself, the colonies, and the national credit had been lost, and until
once more French bayonets had to be called upon to establish the order
which the people seemed to be unable to provide for themselves.
[Illustration: THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY]