six different categories of persons
entitled to exercise the suffrage: (1) payers of at least one guilder in
direct taxation; (2) householders or lodgers paying a certain minimum
rent and having a residential qualification; (3) proprietors or hirers
of vessels of 24 tons at least; (4) earners of a certain specified wage
or salary; (5) investors of 100 guilders in the public funds or of 50
guilders in a savings bank; (6) persons holding certain educational
diplomas. This very wide and comprehensive franchise raised the number
of electors to about 700,000.

The election of 1897, after first promising a victory to the more
conservative groups, ended by giving a small majority to the liberals,
the progressive section winning a number of seats, and the socialists
increasing their representation in the Chamber. A liberal-concentration
cabinet took the place of the Roell-Van Houten ministry, its leading
members being Pierson (finance) and Goeman-Borgesius (interior). For a
right understanding of the parliamentary situation at this time and
during the years that follow, a brief account of the groups and sections
of groups into which political parties in Holland were divided, must
here interrupt the narrative of events.

It has already been told that the deaths of Thorbecke and Groen
van Prinsterer led to a breaking up of the old parties and the
formation of new groups. The Education Act of 1878 brought about an
alliance of the two parties, who made the question of religious
education in the primary schools the first article of their political
programme--the anti-revolutionaries led by the ex-Calvinist pastor
Dr Abraham Kuyper and the Catholics by Dr Schaepman, a Catholic
priest. Kuyper and Schaepman were alike able journalists, and used
the press with conspicuous success for the propagation of their
views, both being advocates of social reform on democratic lines. The
anti-revolutionaries, however, did not, as a body, follow the lead of
Kuyper. An aristocratic section, whose principles were those of Groen
van Prinsterer, "orthodox" and "conservative," under the appellation of
"Historical Christians," were opposed to the democratic ideas of Kuyper,
and were by tradition anti-Catholic. Their leader was Jonkheer Savornin
Lohman. For some years there was a separate Frisian group of "Historical
Christians," but these finally amalgamated with the larger body. The
liberals meanwhile had split up into three groups: (1) the Old
Indep