Dialogue XVIII

WILLIAM III., KING OF ENGLAND--JOHN DE WITT, PENSIONER, OF HOLLAND.

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.