commonwealth. Its object was a single one--defence against a foreign
oppressor. The contracting parties bound themselves together to spend
all their treasure and all their blood in expelling the foreign soldiery
from their soil. To accomplish this purpose, they carefully abstained
from intermeddling with internal politics and with religion. Every man
was to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience. Every
combination of citizens, from the provincial states down to the humblest
rhetoric club, was to retain its ancient constitution. The establishment
of a Republic, which lasted two centuries, which threw a girdle of rich
dependencies entirely round the globe, and which attained so remarkable a
height of commercial prosperity and political influence, was the result
of the Utrecht Union; but, it was not a premeditated result. A state,
single towards the rest of the world, a unit in its external relations,
while permitting internally a variety of sovereignties and institutions--
in many respects the prototype of our own much more extensive and
powerful union--was destined to spring from the act thus signed by the
envoys of five provinces. Those envoys were acting, however, under the
pressure of extreme necessity, and for what was believed an evanescent
purpose. The future confederacy was not to resemble the system of the
German empire, for it was to acknowledge no single head. It was to
differ from the Achaian league, in the far inferior amount of power which
it permitted to its general assembly, and in the consequently greater
proportion of sovereign attributes which were retained by the individual
states. It was, on the other hand, to furnish a closer and more intimate
bond than that of the Swiss confederacy, which was only a union for
defence and external purposes, of cantons otherwise independent. It was,
finally, to differ from the American federal commonwealth in the great
feature that it was to be merely a confederacy of sovereignties,
not a representative Republic. Its foundation was a compact, not a
constitution. The contracting parties were states and corporations,
who considered themselves as representing small nationalities 'dejure et
de facto', and as succeeding to the supreme power at the very instant in
which allegiance to the Spanish monarch was renounced. The general
assembly was a collection of diplomatic envoys, bound by instructions
from independent states. The voting was not by heads, but by states.
The deputies were not representatives of the people, but of the states;
for the people of the United States of the Netherlands never assembled--
as did the people of the United States of America two centuries later--to
lay down a constitution, by which they granted a generous amount of power
to the union, while they reserved enough of sovereign attributes to
secure that local self-government which is the life-blood of liberty.
The Union of Utrecht; narrowed as it was to the nether portion of that
country which, as a whole, might have formed a commonwealth so much more
powerful, was in origin a proof of this lamentable want of patriotism.
Could the jealousy of great nobles, the rancour of religious differences,
the Catholic bigotry of the Walloon population, on the one side,
contending with the democratic insanity of the Ghent populace on the
other, have been restrained within bounds by the moderate counsels of
William of Orange, it would have been possible to unite seventeen
provinces instead of seven, and to save many long and blighting years of
civil war.
The Utrecht Union was, however, of inestimable value. It was time for
some step to be taken, if anarchy were not to reign until the inquisition
and absolutism were restored. Already, out of Chaos and Night, the
coming Republic was assuming substance and form. The union, if it
created nothing else, at least constructed a league against a foreign
foe whose armed masses were pouring faster and faster into the territory
of the provinces. Farther than this it did not propose to go.
It maintained what it found. It guaranteed religious liberty, and
accepted the civil and political constitutions already in existence.
Meantime, the defects of those constitutions, although visible and
sensible, had not grown to the large proportions which they were destined
to attain.
Thus by the Union of Utrecht on the one hand, and the fast approaching
reconciliation of the Walloon provinces on the other, the work of
decomposition and of construction went Land in hand.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
Are apt to discharge such obligations--(by) ingratitude
Like a man holding a wolf by the ears
Local self-government which is the life-blood of liberty
No man ever understood the art of bribery more thoroughly
Not so successful as he was picturesque
Plundering the country which they came to protect
Presumption in entitling themselves Christian
Protect the common tranquillity by blood, purse, and life
Republic, which lasted two centuries
Throw the cat against their legs
Worship God according to the dictates of his conscience