322 CHAP. RECONQUEST OF NEW YORK BY THE DUTCH. It was easy to burn the votes which the yeomanry of Long Island had passed in their town-meetings. But, meantime, the forts were not put in order; the government of the duke of York was hated as despotic; and when, in the next war between England and the 1673. Netherlands, a small Dutch squadron, commanded by July 30. the gallant Evertsen of Zealand, approached Manhat tan, the city was surrendered without a blow; the people of New Jersey made no resistance, and the counties on the Delaware, recovering greater privileges than they had enjoyed, cheerfully followed the example.1 The quiet of the neighboring colonies was secured by a compromise for Long Island and a timely message from Massachusetts. The year in which Champlain and the French entered New York on the north as enemies to the Five Nations, Hudson and the Dutch appeared at the south as their friends. The Mohawk chiefs now came down to congratulate their brethren on the recovery of their colony. "We have always," said they, "been as one flesh. If the French come down from Canada, we will join with the Dutch nation, and live and die with them;" and the words of 1673, love were confirmed by a belt of wampum.2 New York was once more a province of the Netherlands. 1674. The moment at which Holland and Zealand retired for a season from American history, like the moment of their entrance, was a season of glory. The little nation of merchants and manufacturers had just achieved its independence of Spain, and given to the Protestant world a brilliant example of a federal republic, when its mariners took possession of the Hudson. The country was now reconquered, at a time when the 1 Albany Records, xxiii. 318, 323-326, 332, &c. 2 Albany Records, xxiii. 211, &c. WAR BETWEEN ENGLAND AND THE DUTCH. 323 XV. provinces, single-handed, were again struggling for CHAP. existence against yet more powerful antagonists. France, supported by the bishops of Munster and Cologne, had succeeded in involving England in a conspiracy for the political destruction of England's commercial rival. Charles II. had begun hostilities as a pirate; and Louis XIV. did not disguise the purpose of conquest. With armies amounting to two hundred thousand men, to which the Netherlands could oppose no more than twenty thousand, the French monarch invaded the republic; and within a month, Holland 1673. was exposed to the same desperate dangers which had been encountered a century before; while the English fleet, hovering off the coast, endeavored to land English troops in the heart of the wealthiest of the provinces. Ruin was imminent, and had come but for the public virtue. The annals of the human race record but few instances where moral power has so successfully defied every disparity of force, and repelled such desperate odds by invincible heroism. At sea, where greatly superior numbers were on the side of the allied fleets of France and England, the untiring courage of the Dutch would not consent to be defeated. On land, the dikes were broken up; the country drowned; the son of Grotius, suppressing anger at the ignominious proposals of the French, protracted the negotiations till the rising waters could form a wide and impassable moat round the cities. Was an invasion still feared from the east? At Groningen, the whole population, without regard to sex, children even, labored on the fortifications; and fear was not permitted even to a woman. Would William of Orange sustain the crisis with calm intrepidity? Arlington, one of the joint proprietaries of Virginia, advised him to seek advancement by yielding 324 WAR BETWEEN ENGLAND AND THE DUTCH. CHAP. to England. XV. 66 My country," calmly replied the young man, "trusts in me; I will not sacrifice it to my inter1673. ests, but, if need be, die with it in the last ditch." The landing of British troops in Holland could be prevented only by three naval engagements. De Ruyter and the younger Tromp had been bitter enemies; the latter had been disgraced on the accusation of the former; political animosities had increased the feud. At the June battle of Souls bay, where the Dutch with fifty-two 7. ships of the line engaged an enemy with eighty, De June 14. Ruyter was successful in his first manœuvres, while the extraordinary ardor of Tromp plunged headlong into dangers which he could not overcome; the frank and true-hearted De Ruyter checked himself in the career of victory, and turned to the relief of his rival. Oh, there comes grandfather to the rescue," shouted Tromp in an ecstasy; "I never will desert him so long as I breathe." The issue of the day was uncertain. In the second battle, the advantage was with the Dutch. About three weeks after the conquest of New Netherlands, the last and most terrible conflict took Aug. 21. place near the Helder. The enthusiasm of the Dutch mariners dared almost infinite deeds of valor; the noise of the artillery boomed along the low coast of Holland; the churches on the shore were thronged with suppliants, begging victory for the right cause and their country. The contest raged, and was exhausted, and was again renewed with unexampled fury. But victory was with De Ruyter and the younger Tromp, the guardians of their country. The British fleet retreated, and was pursued; the coasts of Holland were protected. For more than a century, no other naval combat was fought between Netherlands and England. The English parliament, condemning the war, refused sup HOLLAND AND THE RIGHTS OF NEUTRAL FLAGS. All 325 XV. plies; Prussia and Austria were alarmed; Spain openly CHAP. threatened, and Charles II. consented to treaties. conquests were to be restored; and Holland, which 1674. had been the first to claim the enfranchisement of the oceans, against its present interests, established by compact the rights of neutral flags. In a work dedicated to all the princes and nations of Christendom, and addressed to the common intelligence of the civilized world, the admirable Grotius, contending that right and wrong are not the evanescent expressions of fluctuating opinions, but are endowed with an immortality of their own, had established the freedom of the seas on an imperishable foundation. Ideas once generated live forever. With the recognition of this principle, Holland disappears from our history; when, after the lapse of more than a century, this principle comes in jeopardy, Holland, the mother of four of our states, will rise up as our ally, bequeathing to the new federal republic that great principle of maritime freedom which she had vindicated against Spain, and for which we shall see her prosperity fall a victim to England. 31. On the final transfer of New Netherlands to Eng- Oct. land, after a military occupation of fifteen months by the Dutch, the brother of Charles II. resumed the possession of New York, and Carteret appears once more as proprietary of the eastern moiety of New Jersey; but the banks of the Delaware were reserved for men who had been taught by the uneducated son of a poor Lancashire weaver to seek the principle of God in their own hearts, and to build the city of humanity by obeying the nobler instincts of human nature. CHAPTER XVI. THE PEOPLE CALLED QUAKERS IN THE UNITED STATES. CHAP. THE nobler instincts of humanity are the same in every age and in every breast. The exalted hopes, that have dignified former generations of men, will be renewed as long as the human heart shall throb. The visions of Plato are but revived in the dreams of Sir Thomas More. A spiritual unity binds together every member of the human family; and every heart contains an incorruptible seed, capable of springing up and producing all that man can know of God, and duty, and, the soul. An inward voice, uncreated by schools, independent of refinement, opens to the unlettered hind, not less than to the polished scholar, a sure pathway into the enfranchisements of immortal truth. This is the faith of the people called QUAKERS. A moral principle is tested by the attempt to reduce it to practice. The history of European civilization is the history of the gradual enfranchisement of classes of society. The feudal sovereign was limited by the power of the military chieftains, whose valor achieved his conquests. The vast and increasing importance of commercial transactions gave new value to the municipal privileges of which the Roman empire had bequeathed the precedents; while the intricate questions that were perpetually arising for adjudication, crowded the igno |