_William_.--Though I had no cause to love you, yet, believe me, I
sincerely lament your fate. Who could have thought that De Witt, the
most popular Minister that ever served a commonwealth, should fall a
sacrifice to popular fury! Such admirable talents, such virtues as you
were endowed with, so clear, so cool, so comprehensive a head, a heart so
untainted with any kind of vice, despising money, despising pleasure,
despising the vain ostentation of greatness, such application to
business, such ability in it, such courage, such firmness, and so perfect
a knowledge of the nation you governed, seemed to assure you of a fixed
and stable support in the public affection. But nothing can be durable
that depends on the passions of the people.
_De Witt_.--It is very generous in your Majesty, not only to
compassionate the fate of a man whose political principles made him an
enemy to your greatness, but to ascribe it to the caprice and inconstancy
of the people, as if there had been nothing very blamable in his conduct.
I feel the magnanimity of this discourse from your Majesty, and it
confirms what I have heard of all your behaviour after my death. But I
must frankly confess that, although the rage of the populace was carried
much too far when they tore me and my unfortunate brother to pieces, yet
I certainly had deserved to lose their affection by relying too much on
the uncertain and dangerous friendship of France, and by weakening the
military strength of the State, to serve little purposes of my own power,
and secure to myself the interested affection of the burgomasters or
others who had credit and weight in the faction the favour of which I
courted. This had almost subjected my country to France, if you, great
prince, had not been set at the head of the falling Republic, and had not
exerted such extraordinary virtues and abilities to raise and support it,
as surpassed even the heroism and prudence of William, our first
Stadtholder, and equalled yon to the most illustrious patriots of Greece
or Rome.
_William_.--This praise from your mouth is glorious to me indeed! What
can so much exalt the character of a prince as to have his actions
approved by a zealous Republican and the enemy of his house?
_De Witt_.--If I did not approve them I should show myself the enemy of
the Republic. You never sought to tyrannise over it; you loved, you
defended, you preserved its freedom. Thebes was not more indebted to
Epaminondas or Pelopidas for its independence and glory than the United
Provinces were to you. How wonderful was it to see a youth, who had
scarce attained to the twenty-second year of his age, whose spirit had
been depressed and kept down by a jealous and hostile faction, rising at
once to the conduct of a most arduous and perilous war, stopping an enemy
victorious, triumphant, who had penetrated into the heart of his country,
driving him back and recovering from him all he had conquered: to see
this done with an army in which a little before there was neither
discipline, courage, nor sense of honour! Ancient history has no exploit
superior to it; and it will ennoble the modern whenever a Livy or a
Plutarch shall arise to do justice to it, and set the hero who performed
it in a true light.
_William_.--Say, rather, when time shall have worn out that malignity and
rancour of party which in free States is so apt to oppose itself to the
sentiments of gratitude and esteem for their servants and benefactors.
_De Witt_.--How magnanimous was your reply, how much in the spirit of
true ancient virtue, when being asked, in the greatest extremity of our
danger, "How you intended to live after Holland was lost?" you said, "You
would live on the lands you had left in Germany, and had rather pass your
life in hunting there than sell your country or liberty to France at any
rate!" How nobly did you think when, being offered your patrimonial
lordships and lands in the county of Burgundy, or the full value of them
from France, by the mediation of England in the treaty of peace, your
answer was, "That to gain one good town more for the Spaniards in
Flanders you would be content to lose them all!" No wonder, after this,
that you were able to combine all Europe in a league against the power of
France; that you were the centre of union, and the directing soul of that
wise, that generous confederacy formed by your labours; that you could
steadily support and keep it together, in spite of repeated misfortunes;
that even after defeats you were as formidable to Louis as other generals
after victories; and that in the end you became the deliverer of Europe,
as you had before been of Holland.
_William_.--I had, in truth, no other object, no other passion at heart
throughout my whole life but to maintain the independence and freedom of
Europe against the ambition of France. It was this desire which formed
the whole plan of my policy, which animated all my counsels, both as
Prince of Orange and King of England.
_De Witt_.--This desire was the most noble (I speak it with shame) that
could warm the heart of a prince whose ancestors had opposed and in a
great measure destroyed the power of Spain when that nation aspired to
the monarchy of Europe. France, sir, in your days had an equal ambition
and more strength to support her vast designs than Spain under the
government of Philip II. That ambition you restrained, that strength you
resisted. I, alas! was seduced by her perfidious Court, and by the
necessity of affairs in that system of policy which I had adopted, to ask
her assistance, to rely on her favour, and to make the commonwealth,
whose counsels I directed, subservient to her greatness. Permit me, sir,
to explain to you the motives of my conduct. If all the Princes of
Orange had acted like you, I should never have been the enemy of your
house. But Prince Maurice of Nassau desired to oppress the liberty of
that State which his virtuous father had freed at the expense of his
life, and which he himself had defended against the arms of the House of
Austria with the highest reputation of military abilities. Under a
pretence of religion (the most execrable cover of a wicked design) he put
to death, as a criminal, that upright Minister, Barneveldt, his father's
best friend, because, he refused to concur with him in treason against
the State. He likewise imprisoned several other good men and lovers of
their country, confiscated their estates, and ruined their families. Yet,
after he had done these cruel acts of injustice with a view to make
himself sovereign of the Dutch Commonwealth, he found they had drawn such
a general odium upon him that, not daring to accomplish his iniquitous
purpose, he stopped short of the tyranny to which he had sacrificed his
honour and virtue; a disappointment so mortifying and so painful to his
mind that it probably hastened his death.
_William_.--Would to Heaven he had died before the meeting of that
infamous Synod of Dort, by which he not only dishonoured himself and his
family, but the Protestant religion itself! Forgive this interruption--my
grief forced me to it--I desire you to proceed.
_De Witt_.--The brother of Maurice, Prince Henry, who succeeded to his
dignities in the Republic, acted with more moderation. But the son of
that good prince, your Majesty's father (I am sorry to speak what I know
you hear with pain), resumed, in the pride and fire of his youth, the
ambitious designs of his uncle. He failed in his undertaking, and soon
afterwards died, but left in the hearts of the whole Republican party an
incurable jealousy and dread of his family. Full of these prejudices,
and zealous for liberty, I thought it my duty as Pensionary of Holland to
prevent for ever, if I could, your restoration to the power your
ancestors had enjoyed, which I sincerely believed would be inconsistent
with the safety and freedom of my country.
_William_.--Let me stop you a moment here. When my great-grandfather
formed the plan of the Dutch Commonwealth, he made the power of a
Stadtholder one of the principal springs in his system of government. How
could you imagine that it would ever go well when deprived of this
spring, so necessary to adjust and balance its motions? A constitution
originally formed with no mixture of regal power may long be maintained
in all its vigour and energy without such a power; but if any degree of
monarchy was mixed from the beginning in the principles of it, the
forcing that out must necessarily disorder and weaken the whole fabric.
This was particularly the case in our Republic. The negative voice of
every small town in the provincial States, the tedious slowness of our
forms and deliberations, the facility with which foreign Ministers may
seduce or purchase the opinions of so many persons as have a right to
concur in all our resolutions, make it impossible for the Government,
even in the quietest times, to be well carried on without the authority
and influence of a Stadtholder, which are the only remedy our
constitution has provided for those evils.
_De Witt_.--I acknowledge they are; but I and my party thought no evil so
great as that remedy, and therefore we sought for other more pleasing
resources. One of these, upon which we most confidently depended, was
the friendship of France. I flattered myself that the interest of the
French would secure to me their favour, as your relation to the Crown of
England might naturally raise in them a jealousy of your power. I hoped
they would encourage the trade and commerce of the Dutch in opposition to
the English, the ancient enemies of their Crown, and let us enjoy all the
benefits of a perpetual peace, unless we made war upon England, or
England upon us, in either of which cases it was reasonable to presume we
should have their assistance. The French Minister at the Hague, who
served his Court but too well, so confirmed me in these notions, that I
had no apprehensions of the mine which was forming under my feet.
_William_.--You found your authority strengthened by a plan so agreeable
to your party, and this contributed more to deceive your sagacity than
all the art of D'Estrades.
_De Witt_.--My policy seemed to me entirely suitable to the lasting
security of my own power, of the liberty of my country, and of its
maritime greatness; for I made it my care to keep up a very powerful
navy, well commanded and officered, for the defence of all these against
the English; but, as I feared nothing from France, or any Power on the
Continent, I neglected the army, or rather I destroyed it, by enervating
all its strength, by disbanding old troops and veteran officers attached
to the House of Orange, and putting in their place a trading militia,
commanded by officers who had neither experience nor courage, and who
owed their promotions to no other merit but their relation to or interest
with some leading men in the several oligarchies of which the Government
in all the Dutch towns is composed. Nevertheless, on the invasion of
Flanders by the French, I was forced to depart from my close connection
with France, and to concur with England and Sweden in the Triple
Alliance, which Sir William Temple proposed, in order to check her
ambition; but as I entered into that measure from necessity, not from
choice, I did not pursue it. I neglected to improve our union with
England, or to secure that with Sweden; I avoided any conjunction of
counsels with Spain; I formed no alliance with the Emperor or the
Germans; I corrupted our army more and more; till a sudden, unnatural
confederacy, struck up, against all the maxims of policy, by the Court of
England with France, for the conquest of the Seven Provinces, brought
these at once to the very brink of destruction, and made me a victim to
the fury of a populace too justly provoked.
_William_.--I must say that your plan was in reality nothing more than to
procure for the Dutch a licence to trade under the good pleasure and
gracious protection of France. But any State that so entirely depends on
another is only a province, and its liberty is a servitude graced with a
sweet but empty name. You should have reflected that to a monarch so
ambitious and so vain as Louis le Grand the idea of a conquest which
seemed almost certain, and the desire of humbling a haughty Republic,
were temptations irresistible. His bigotry likewise would concur in
recommending to him an enterprise which he might think would put heresy
under his feet. And if you knew either the character of Charles II. or
the principles of his government, you ought not to have supposed his
union with France for the ruin of Holland an impossible or even
improbable event. It is hardly excusable in a statesman to be greatly
surprised that the inclinations of princes should prevail upon them to
act, in many particulars, without any regard to the political maxims and
interests of their kingdoms.
_De Witt_.--I am ashamed of my error; but the chief cause of it was that,
though I thought very ill, I did not think quite so ill of Charles II.
and his Ministry as they deserved. I imagined, too, that his Parliament
would restrain him from engaging in such a war, or compel him to engage
in our defence if France should attack us. These, I acknowledge, are
excuses, not justifications. When the French marched into Holland and
found it in a condition so unable to resist them, my fame as a Minister
irrecoverably sank; for, not to appear a traitor, I was obliged to
confess myself a dupe. But what praise is sufficient for the wisdom and
virtue you showed in so firmly rejecting the offers which, I have been
informed, were made to you, both by England and France, when first you
appeared in arms at the head of your country, to give you the sovereignty
of the Seven Provinces by the assistance and under the protection of the
two Crowns! Believe me, great prince, had I been living in those times,
and had known the generous answers you made to those offers (which were
repeated more than once during the course of the war), not the most
ancient and devoted servant to your family would have been more your
friend than I. But who could reasonably hope for such moderation, and
such a right sense of glory, in the mind of a young man descended from
kings, whose mother was daughter to Charles I., and whose father had left
him the seducing example of a very different conduct? Happy, indeed, was
the English nation to have such a prince, so nearly allied to their Crown
both in blood and by marriage, whom they might call to be their deliverer
when bigotry and despotism, the two greatest enemies to human society,
had almost overthrown their whole constitution in Church and State!
_William_.--They might have been happy, but were not. As soon as I had
accomplished their deliverance for them, many of them became my most
implacable enemies, and even wished to restore the unforgiving prince
whom they had so unanimously and so justly expelled from his kingdom.
Such levity seems incredible. I could not myself have imagined it
possible, in a nation famed for good sense, if I had not had proofs of it
beyond contradiction. They seemed as much to forget what they called me
over for as that they had called me over. The security of their
religion, the maintenance of their liberty, were no longer their care.
All was to yield to the incomprehensible doctrine of right divine and
passive obedience. Thus the Tories grew Jacobites, after having
renounced both that doctrine and King James, by their opposition to him,
by their invitation of me, and by every Act of the Parliament which gave
me the Crown. But the most troublesome of my enemies were a set of
Republicans, who violently opposed all my measures, and joined with the
Jacobites in disturbing my government, only because it was not a
commonwealth.
_De Witt_.--They who were Republicans under your government in the
Kingdom of England did not love liberty, but aspired to dominion, and
wished to throw the nation into a total confusion, that it might give
them a chance of working out from that anarchy a better state for
themselves.
_William_.--Your observation is just. A proud man thinks himself a lover
of liberty when he is only impatient of a power in government above his
own, and were he a king, or the first Minister of a king, would be a
tyrant. Nevertheless I will own to you, with the candour which becomes a
virtuous prince, that there were in England some Whigs, and even some of
the most sober and moderate Tories, who, with very honest intentions, and
sometimes with good judgments, proposed new securities to the liberty of
the nation, against the prerogative or influence of the Crown and the
corruption of Ministers in future times. To some of these I gave way,
being convinced they were right, but others I resisted for fear of
weakening too much the royal authority, and breaking that balance in
which consists the perfection of a mixed form of government. I should
not, perhaps, have resisted so many if I had not seen in the House of
Commons a disposition to rise in their demands on the Crown had they
found it more yielding. The difficulties of my government, upon the
whole, were so great that I once had determined, from mere disgust and
resentment, to give back to the nation, assembled in Parliament, the
crown they had placed on my head, and retire to Holland, where I found
more affection and gratitude in the people. But I was stopped by the
earnest supplications of my friends and by an unwillingness to undo the
great work I had done, especially as I knew that, if England should
return into the hands of King James, it would be impossible in that
crisis to preserve the rest of Europe from the dominion of France.
_De Witt_.--Heaven be praised that your Majesty did not persevere in so
fatal a resolution! The United Provinces would have been ruined by it
together with England. But I cannot enough express my astonishment that
you should have met with such treatment as could suggest such a thought.
The English must surely be a people incapable either of liberty or
subjection.
_William_.--There were, I must acknowledge, some faults in my temper and
some in my government, which are an excuse for my subjects with regard to
the uneasiness and disquiet they gave me. My taciturnity, which suited
the genius of the Dutch, offended theirs. They love an affable prince;
it was chiefly his affability that made them so fond of Charles II. Their
frankness and good-humour could not brook the reserve and coldness of my
nature. Then the excess of my favour to some of the Dutch, whom I had
brought over with me, excited a national jealousy in the English and hurt
their pride. My government also appeared, at last, too unsteady, too
fluctuating between the Whigs and the Tories, which almost deprived me of
the confidence and affection of both parties. I trusted too much to the
integrity and the purity of my intentions, without using those arts that
are necessary to allay the ferment of factions and allure men to their
duty by soothing their passions. Upon the whole I am sensible that I
better understood how to govern the Dutch than the English or the Scotch,
and should probably have been thought a greater man if I had not been
King of Great Britain.
_De Witt_.--It is a shame to the English that gratitude and affection for
such merit as yours were not able to overcome any little disgusts arising
from your temper, and enthrone their deliverer in the hearts of his
people. But will your Majesty give me leave to ask you one question? Is
it true, as I have heard, that many of them disliked your alliances on
the Continent and spoke of your war with France as a Dutch measure, in
which you sacrificed England to Holland?
_William_.--The cry of the nation at first was strong for the war, but
before the end of it the Tories began publicly to talk the language you
mention. And no wonder they did, for, as they then had a desire to set
up again the maxims of government which had prevailed in the reign of
their beloved Charles II., they could not but represent opposition to
France, and vigorous measures taken to restrain her ambition, as
unnecessary for England, because they well knew that the counsels of that
king had been utterly averse to such measures; that his whole policy made
him a friend to France; that he was governed by a French mistress, and
even bribed by French money to give that Court his assistance, or at
least his acquiescence, in all their designs.
_De Witt_.--A King of England whose Cabinet is governed by France, and
who becomes a vile pensioner to a French King, degrades himself from his
royalty, and ought to be considered as an enemy to the nation. Indeed
the whole policy of Charles II., when he was not forced off from his
natural bias by the necessity he lay under of soothing his Parliament,
was a constant, designed, systematical opposition to the interest of his
people. His brother, though more sensible to the honour of England, was
by his Popery and desire of arbitrary power constrained to lean upon
France, and do nothing to obstruct her designs on the Continent or lessen
her greatness. It was therefore necessary to place the British Crown on
your head, not only with a view to preserve the religious and civil
rights of the people from internal oppressions, but to rescue the whole
State from that servile dependence on its natural enemy, which must
unquestionably have ended in its destruction. What folly was it to
revile your measures abroad, as sacrificing the interest of your British
dominions to connections with the Continent, and principally with
Holland! Had Great Britain no interest to hinder the French from being
masters of all the Austrian Netherlands, and forcing the Seven United
Provinces, her strongest barrier on the Continent against the power of
that nation, to submit with the rest to their yoke? Would her trade,
would her coasts, would her capital itself have been safe after so mighty
an increase of shipping and sailors as France would have gained by those
conquests? And what could have prevented them, but the war which you
waged and the alliances which you formed? Could the Dutch and the
Germans, unaided by Great Britain, have attempted to make head against a
Power which, even with her assistance, strong and spirited as it was,
they could hardly resist? And after the check which had been given to
the encroachments of France by the efforts of the first grand alliance,
did not a new and greater danger make it necessary to recur to another
such league? Was not the union of France and Spain under one monarch, or
even under one family, the most alarming contingency that ever had
threatened the liberty of Europe?
_William_.--I thought so, and I am sure I did not err in my judgment. But
folly is blind, and faction wilfully shuts her eyes against the most
evident truths that cross her designs, as she believes any lies, however
palpable and absurd, that she thinks will assist them.
_De Witt_.--The only objection which seems to have any real weight
against your system of policy, with regard to the maintenance of a
balance of power in Europe, is the enormous expense that must necessarily
attend it; an expense which I am afraid neither England nor Holland will
be able to bear without extreme inconvenience.
_William_.--I will answer that objection by asking a question. If, when
you were Pensionary of Holland, intelligence had been brought that the
dykes were ready to break and the sea was coming in to overwhelm and to
drown us, what would you have said to one of the deputies who, when you
were proposing the proper repairs to stop the inundation, should have
objected to the charge as too heavy on the Province? This was the case
in a political sense with both England and Holland. The fences raised to
keep out superstition and tyranny were all giving way; those dreadful
evils were threatening, with their whole accumulated force, to break in
upon us and overwhelm our ecclesiastical and civil constitutions. In
such circumstances to object to a necessary expense is folly and madness.
_De Witt_.--It is certain, sir, that the utmost abilities of a nation can
never be so well employed as in the unwearied, pertinacious defence of
their religion and freedom. When these are lost, there remains nothing
that is worth the concern of a good or wise man. Nor do I think it
consistent with the prudence of government not to guard against future
dangers, as well as present; which precaution must be often in some
degree expensive. I acknowledge, too, that the resources of a commercial
country, which supports its trade, even in war, by invincible fleets, and
takes care not to hurt it in the methods of imposing or collecting its
taxes, are immense, and inconceivable till the trial is made; especially
where the Government, which demands the supplies, is agreeable to the
people. But yet an unlimited and continued expense will in the end be
destructive. What matters it whether a State is mortally wounded by the
hand of a foreign enemy, or dies by a consumption of its own vital
strength? Such a consumption will come upon Holland sooner than upon
England, because the latter has a greater radical force; but, great as it
is, that force at last will be so diminished and exhausted by perpetual
drains, that it may fail all at once, and those efforts, which may seem
most surprisingly vigorous, will be in reality the convulsions of death.
I don't apply this to your Majesty's government; but I speak with a view
to what may happen hereafter from the extensive ideas of negotiation and
war which you have established: they have been salutary to your kingdom;
but they will, I fear, be pernicious in future times, if in pursuing
great plans great Ministers do not act with a sobriety, prudence, and
attention to frugality, which very seldom are joined with an
extraordinary vigour and boldness of counsels.