The Rise of the Dutch Kingdom by Hendrik van Loon (classic fiction .txt) 📖

they were so funny! And Citizen Delacroix, having accepted a nice little gratuity (a golden snuffbox studded with diamonds and filled with gold pieces), wrote back to Paris that being minister to The Hague was as good fun as an evening at vaudeville. This, however, was merely the beginning. Much else was to follow soon.

Here we have a country becoming every day more like a French department. And what did the thinking part of the nation do? It continued its petty political quarrels as if it consisted of a lot of villagers engaged in the habitual row in the local vestry. The Orangeistic party of these years reminds us strongly of those pious supporters of the Pope who wish to see the whole kingdom of Italy go to smash in order that his Holiness may return to govern a city which during many previous centuries of his august rule was turned into a byword for civic mismanagement and municipal corruption. The Orangeists sat in their little corner and jeered at everything the patriots did. But they lacked the courage and the conviction to come forward and assist in such constructive work as the revolutionary parties tried to perform.

In previous chapters we have had a chance to talk with considerable irritation about much of what the Patriots did. Do not expect the historian to read through the twenty-three volumes of speeches of the assembly, to study the twelve volumes of Wagenaar containing the history of those three years, to wade through the endless documents addressed to free citizens, and not to feel a personal resentment against his ancestors, who, while the country was in such grave danger, talked and talked and talked without any regard to the threatening facts about them.

It is true that very much can be said in defense of the Patriotic statesmen. They had never enjoyed any political training. For centuries they and their families had been kept out of all governmental institutions. They had not even been allowed to run their own town meeting. There had been no school for parliamentary methods or oratory. And since the death of Paulus they had not possessed a leader of sufficient influence to force one single will upon their ill-organized party. For a moment there was some improvement after the first coup d'état. The idea of ending political anarchy by establishing an executive body of five members was a curious one, but it was better than the executive body of more than a hundred which had existed before. And under the spur of the moment the committee on the constitution set to work so eagerly that it finished its labours in as many months as the old assemblies had used years.

The moderate nature of the Dutch people in political matters was again shown after this little upheaval. Two or three clubs and coffee-houses which had shown too open a delight at the former difficulties of the unionists were closed until further notice. A few of the expelled members of the old assembly were temporarily lodged in the house in the woods. But otherwise no enemy of the unionists had to suffer a penalty for his acts or for his words.

The committee of five went to work at once and tried to reëstablish some semblance of order without bothering about political persecutions, and the committee of seven laboured on the new constitution with an ardour which excluded all active participation in such matters as did not pertain to paragraphs and articles and preambles. The French minister energetically assisted them in their task. He had made many a constitution in his own day and knew of what he was talking.

It was a gratifying result that six weeks after the coup d'état the committee reported that it was ready to submit the new constitution to the approval of the assembly. On the 6th of March it presented a document consisting of five hundred and twenty-seven articles. Three days sufficed to discuss these articles thoroughly. On the evening of the 17th of March the second constitution of the Batavian Republic was accepted by the entire assembly, and in less than two months after the memorable victory of the unionists the constitution was in such shape that it could be brought before the people.

In the place of the old oligarchic republic it established a centralized government. It provided a strong executive power, which was subject to the will of the legislature. The latter was divided into two chambers, which were to work in cooperation. The final source of all power, however, was brought down to the voters. In all religious and personal matters it tried to furnish complete equality and complete liberty, and as the best means of controlling the legislature and the executive it insisted upon absolute freedom for the political press.

In the matter of finances the country henceforward would be a union and not a combination of seven contrary-minded pecuniary interests. The provinces, divided according to a new system, retained such local government as was necessary for the proper conduct of their immediate business, but in all matters of any importance the provinces became subject to the higher central powers in The Hague.

Finally it brought about one great improvement for which many men during many centuries had worked in vain. It established a cabinet. Eight agents (we would call them ministers) would henceforth handle the general departments of the government. In this way, in the year of grace 1798, disappeared that endless labyrinth of committees and sub-committees and sub-sub-committees within sub-committees in which during former centuries all useful legislation had lost its way and had miserably perished.

This time when the constitution was brought before the people the result was very different from that of the year before. Of those who took the trouble to walk to the polls, twelve out of every thirteen declared themselves in favour of the new constitution. On the 1st of May, 1798, the constitutional assembly was informed that the Batavian people had, by an overwhelming majority, accepted the constitution, and that its fruitful labours were over. The Batavian republic now was a bona-fide modern state and all was well with the world.

XII COUP D'ÉTAT NO. II

Who was the wise man who first said that a little power was a dangerous thing? Oh, Citizen Vreede, who knew more about the price and quality of cloth than of politics; Brother van Langen, who so dearly loved the little glory and the fine parties to which his exalted rank as one of the five members of the executive gave him admission; Rev. Mr. Fynje, who once used to fill the devout Baptist eye with pious tears and who now talked for the benefit of the Jacobin gallery—why did ye not disappear from our little stage when your rôle was over, when the curtain dropped upon the constitution which you had just given to an expectant fatherland? It would have been so much better for your own reputation. It would have been so much better for the reputation of the good cause which you had so well defended. It would have been so much better for the country which, at one time, you loved so well.

For listen what happened: In an evil hour the constitutional assembly, under pressure of its aforementioned leaders, declared itself to be the representative assembly provided for by their own constitution, and calmly parcelled out the seats of the upper and the lower chambers among its own members. At the same time the intermediary executive of five members was declared to be a permanent body. And of the entire constitutional assembly only six members had the courage to declare themselves openly against this grab, whereupon they were promptly removed from the meeting by the others. Indeed this was a very stupid thing to do. For it gave all the enemies of union a most welcome chance to attack the unconstitutional procedure of those who had just made this self-same constitution, the rules of which they now violated. It gave them a chance to talk about graft and to insinuate that not love for the country but love for the twelve thousand a year actuated the five directors when they staged this unlawful affair. It exploded all the noble talk of an unselfish love for a united fatherland when at the very first chance the unionists disregarded their own laws and continued a situation by which they personally were directly profited.

Furthermore, the glory of their sudden elevation went disastrously to the heads of several of the men who had played a leading rôle during the fight against the federalists. It did not take a long time to show the unionists that their constitution, while theoretically a perfect success, did not bring all the practical results which had been hoped for. A country which has been running in a provincial groove for more than three centuries cannot suddenly forget all its antecedents and become a well-organized, centralized state. The old officials who had to be retained until new ones could be trained for these duties were trained to perform their duties in a certain old-fashioned way. The constitution asked them to do their new work in a very different way. The result was confusion and congestion. The directors and the new secretaries of the different departments worked with great industry. Their desks, however, were loaded with new labours. All the thousand and one little items which formerly had been decided in the nearest village or town now had to be referred to The Hague. And soon it became clear that the constitution was too good, that it had centralized too much, and that all its energy marred what it tried to do to such an extent that now nothing at all was ever accomplished.

The leaders of the unionist party, especially the more ardent of the Patriots (for although the name began to disappear the party and its ideals continued), began to suspect bad faith among their opponents. The chaotic condition of internal affairs, according to them, was due to the machinations of their federalist and Orangeist opponents. And they began to lose their heads. They wanted to show their power and make clear to their enemies that they were not afraid. First of all, they placed the federalist members who were still detained in the house in the woods under very strict supervision and talked of weird plots of the country's enemies, and dismissed all the ancient clerks who on account of their slowness were suspected of Orangeistic inclination, and ended by building a foolish temple of liberty on an open place in The Hague, where they wasted much bad rhetoric and told the astonished populace that they, the unionists, would stop at nothing if it came to a defence of what they considered their most holy rights. But when they came to this point the sun of French approbation began to hide itself behind dark clouds of disapproval, and a threatening thunder of discontent began to rumble in far-off Paris.

And now we come to an amusing episode which better than any lengthy disquisition shows the rapidity with which France was changing from her stormy revolutionary nature to a well-established and well-regulated nation of respectable citizens. A year before Delacroix had been sent to the republic to supplant a French minister who no longer seemed to be the right man in the right place. And now M. Talleyrand, the estimable French minister of foreign affairs, did not feel that Delacroix fully represented the sentiments of the Directorate, and decided to get rid of him and fill his place with a more suitable personage. As a preliminary measure he sent to The Hague a certain Champigny-Aubin, whose express duty it was to spy on Delacroix, and who was to get into touch with the defeated federalist party, while his chief supported the unionists. For several weeks an entertaining situation followed. Delacroix played with the radicals; Aubin played with the conservatives. Now it so happened that among those who