COLONIAL HISTORY. CHAPTER XV. NEW NETHERLANDS. THE spirit of the age was present when the foundations of New York were laid. Every great European event affected the fortunes of America. Did a state prosper, it sought an increase of wealth by plantations in the west. Was a sect persecuted, it escaped to the New World. The reformation, followed by collisions between English_dissenters and the Anglican hierarchy, colonized New England; the reformation, emancipating the United Provinces, led to European settlements on the Hudson. The Netherlands divide with England the glory of having planted the first colonies in the United States; they also divide the glory of having set the examples of public freedom. If England gave our fathers the idea of a popular representation, Holland originated for them the principle of federal union. At the discovery of America, the Netherlands were in possession of the municipal institutions which had been saved from the wreck of the Roman world, and of the feudal liberties which the middle ages had bequeathed. The power of the people was unknown to the laws; but the landed aristocracy, the hierarchy, and the municipalities, possessed political franchises. The municipal officers, in part appointed by the sovereign, in part perpetuating themselves, had common interests with the industrious citizens, from whom they were selected; and the nobles, cherishing the feudal right of resisting arbitrary taxation, joined the citizens in defending national liberty against encroachments. 1517 The urgencies of war, the reformation, perhaps also 1559. the arrogance of power, often tempted Charles V. to violate the liberties of the states; Philip II., on his acces VOL. II. sion, formed the deliberate purpose of subverting the constitutions of the Netherlands, and found in the church the willing instrument of usurpation. During the middle age, the church was the sole guardian of the people; and the political influence of the clergy rested on gratitude towards the order, which had limited absolute power by invoking the truths of religion, and, indifferent to the claims of birth, had opened for plebeian ambition an avenue to the highest distinctions. In the progress of society, the political influence of the clergy had fulfilled its office. The ward was now of age, and could protect its rights. But would the guardian resign its supremacy? The Roman hierarchy, rigidly asserting authority, refused to subject faith to inquiry, and struggled to establish a spiritual despotism: the sovereigns of Europe, equally refusing to subject their administrations to discussion, aimed at absolute dominion in the state. A new political alliance was the consequence. The Roman church, and the temporal sovereigns, during the middle age so often and so bitterly opposed, entered into a natural and neces sary friendship. By increasing the number of 1559. bishops, who, in right of their office, had a voice in the states, Philip II. destroyed the balance of the constitution. Thus arbitrary power was arrayed against national liberty.-Patriotism and hope were on the side of the provinces; despotism and bigotry on the side of Philip. Each party was destined to be represented in the United States. We have witnessed the sanguinary character of the Spanish system at St. Augustine; we are now to trace the feudal liberties of the Netherlands to the Isle of Manhattan. The contest in the Low Countries was one of the most memorable in the history of the human race. All classes were roused to opposition. The nobles framed a solemn petition; the common people broke in pieces the images that filled the churches. Despotism then seized possession of the courts, and invested a commission with arbitrary power over life and property. To overawe the burghers, the citadels were filled with mercenary_soldiers; to strike terror into the nobility, Egmont and Horn were executed. Men fled; but whither ? The village, the city, the court, the camp, were held by tyranny; the fugitive could find no asylum but the ocean, no refuge but the pirate-ship. The establishment of arbitrary tribunals was followed by arbitrary taxation. But feudal liberty forbade taxation, except by consent; and the levying of the tenth penny excited more commotion than the tribunal of blood. "Merchant and landholder, citizen and peasant, Catholic and Protestant, were ripe for insurrection; and even with foreign troops Alba vainly attempted to enforce tax1572. ation without representation. Just then a party of the despised fugitive "beggars" succeeded in gaining the harbour of Briel; and the states of Holland, creating the prince of Orange their stadtholder, prepared to levy money and troops. Courage increased. Zealand 1575. joined with Holland in demanding for freedom some better guarantee than the word of Philip II., and nearly all the provinces united to drive foreign troops from their soil. "The spirit that animates them," said Sidney to Queen Elizabeth, "is the spirit of God, and is invincible." 1576. The particular union of five northern provinces at Utrecht, perfected the insurrection by forming the basis of a sovereignty; and a rude structure of a republic was the unpremeditated result of the revolution. The republic of the United Netherlands was by its origin and its nature commercial. The device on the first Dutch coin was a ship labouring on the billows without oar or sails. The rendezvous of its martyrs had been the sea; the muster of its patriot emigrants had been on shipboard; and they had hunted their enemy, as the whaleships pursue their game, in every corner of the ocean. The two leading members of the confederacy, from their situation, could seek subsistence only on the water. Holland is but a peninsula, intersected by navigable rivers ; protruding itself into the sea; crowded with a dense population on a soil saved from the deep by embankments, and kept dry only by pumps driven by windmills. Its houses were rather in the water than on land. And Zealand is composed of islands. Its inhabitants were nearly all fishermen; their villages were but nests of sea-fowl on the margin of the ocean. Both provinces were by nature a nursery of sailors; the principles of navigation were imbibed from infancy; every house was a school for mariners. The sport of children was among the breakers; their boyish pastimes in boats; and if their first excursions were but voyages to some neighbouring port, they soon ventured into every clime, and braved the dangers of every sea. The states advanced to sudden opulence; before the insurrection, (1) they could with difficulty keep their embankments in repair; and now they were able to support large fleets and armies. They connected hemispheres; their commerce gathered into their harbours the fruits of the wide world. Producing almost no grain of any kind, Holland had the best-supplied granary of Europe; without fields of flax, it had an infinite number of weavers of linen; destitute of flocks, it became the centre of all woollen manufactures; and the country which had not a forest, built more ships than all Europe besides. Their enterprising mariners displayed the flag of the republic from Southern Africa to the Arctic circle. The ships of the Dutch, said Raleigh, outnumber those of England and ten other kingdoms.(2) To the Italian cardinal, the number seemed infinite. Amsterdam was the centre of the commerce of Europe. The sea not only bathed its walls, but entered among its streets; and the fleets of its merchantmen, as seen from the ramparts, lay so crowded together, that vision was intercepted by the thick forests of masts and yards. War for liberty became unexpectedly a guarantee of opulence; Holland gained the commerce of Spain by its maritime force; it secured the wealth of the Indies by traffic. and Antwerp were despoiled; Amsterdam, the depôt of the merchandise of Europe and of the East, was esteemed beyond dispute the first commercial city in the world. 1581. Lisbon Within two years of the union of Utrecht, Bath, an Englishman who had five times crossed the Atlantic, proposed to the states to conduct four ships of war to America. The adventure was declined by the government; but no obstacles were offered to private enterprise. Ten years afterwards, William Wsselinx, who had lived some years in Castile, Portugal, and the Azores, proposed a West-India Company; but the dangers of the undertaking were still too appalling. (3) It was not till 1597 that voyages to the New World were actually 1597. undertaken. In that year, Bikker of Amsterdam, and Leyen of Enkhuisen, each formed a company to 1590. (1) William Wsselinx, in Argonautica Gustaviana, 10. (2) How agreeable to follow such authorities as Bentivoglio and Grotius, Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir William Temple! Compare, too, Goethe's Egmont; Schiller's Abfall, &c. A copy of Wagenaar, Vaderlandsche Historie, is at Albany. (3) Arg. Gust. 31. Mercurius Germaniæ, p. 33. 1600. traffic with the West Indies. (1) The commerce was continued with such success, that, after years of discussion, a plan for a West-India Company was reduced to writing, and communicated to the States-General.(2) The system was not new: privileged corporations were a part of the bundle of liberties gathered together in the age of feudalism, and formed the only balance of the commercial and manufacturing interests against the aristocracy of the sword. As years rolled away, the progress of English commerce in the west awakened the attention of the Dutch. England and Holland had been allies in the contest against Spain; had both spread their sails on the Indian seas; had both become competitors for possessions in America. For should the whole continent be abandoned to the Spanish crown? In the same year in which Smith embarked for Virginia, vast designs were ripening among the Dutch; and Grotius, himself of the commission (3) 1607. to which the affair was referred, acquaints us with the opinions of his countrymen. The United Provinces, it was said, abounded in mariners and in unemployed capital: not the plunder of Spanish commerce, not India itself; America alone, so rich in herbs of healing virtues, in forests, and in precious ores, could exhaust their enterprise. Their merchants had perused every work which shed light on the Western World, had gathered intelligence from the narratives of sailors; and now they planned a privileged company, which should count the StatesGeneral among its stockholders, and possess, exclusively, the liberty of approaching America from Newfoundland to the Straits of Magellan, and Africa from the tropics to the Cape of Good Hope.(4) The Spaniards are feeblest, it was confidently urged, where they are believed to be strongest; there would be no war but on the waters, the home of the Batavians, whose country, congenial to adventure, and thrust into the lap of ocean, nursed its children in the discipline of maritime fatigue. It would, moreover, be glorious to bear Christianity to the heathen, and rescue them from their oppressors. Principalities might easily be won from the Spaniards, whose scattered citadels protected but a narrow zone. To the eagerness of enterprise it was replied, that war had its uncertain events, the sea its treacheries; the (1) Wagenaar, ix. 152, 153. (3) Ibid. 51, 46. VOL. II. (2) Arg. Gust. 51. 2 N |