Courage and skill in political and military combinations enabled
William the Silent to overcome the most powerful and unscrupulous
monarch of his age. The same hereditary audacity and fertility of genius
placed the destiny of Europe in the hands of William's great-grandson,
and enabled him to mould into an impregnable barrier the various
elements of opposition to the overshadowing monarchy of Louis XIV. As
the schemes of the Inquisition and the unparalleled tyranny of Philip, in
one century led to the establishment of the Republic of the United
Provinces, so, in the next, the revocation of the Nantes Edict and the
invasion of Holland are avenged by the elevation of the Dutch Stadholder
upon the throne of the stipendiary Stuarts.
To all who speak the English language, the history of the great agony
through which the republic of Holland was ushered into life must have
peculiar interest, for it is a portion of the records of the
Anglo-Saxon race--essentially the same whether in Friesland, England, or
Massachusetts.
... The great Western Republic, therefore--in whose ... veins flows much of
that ancient and kindred blood received from the nation once ruling a
noble portion of its territory, and tracking its own political existence
to the same parent spring of temperate human liberty--must look with
affectionate interest upon the trials of the elder commonwealth.
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