power which wages
eighty years' warfare with the most potent empire upon earth, and which,
during the progress of the struggle, becoming itself a mighty state, and
binding about its own slender form a zone of the richest possessions of
earth, from pole to tropic, finally dictates its decrees to the empire
of Charles.

... To the Dutch Republic, even more than to Florence at an earlier day
is the world indebted for practical instruction in that great science of
political equilibrium which must always become more and more important
as the various states of the civilized world are pressed more closely
together, and as the struggle for pre-eminence becomes more feverish and
fatal. Courage and skill in political and military combinations enabled
William the Silent to overcome the most powerful and unscrupulous
monarch of his age. The same hereditary audacity and fertility of genius
placed the destiny of Europe in the hands of William's great-grandson,
and enabled him to mould into an impregnable barrier the various
elements of opposition to the overshadowing monarchy of Louis XIV. As
the schemes of the Inquisition and the unparalleled tyranny of Philip, in
one century led to the establishment of the Republic of the United
Provinces, so, in the next, the revocation of the Nantes Edict and the
invasion of Holland are avenged by the elevation of the Dutch Stadholder
upon the throne of the stipendiary Stuarts.

To all who speak the English language, the history of the great agony
through which the republic of Holland was ushered into life must have
peculiar interest, for it is a portion of the records of the
Anglo-Saxon race--essentially the same whether in Friesland, England, or
Massachusetts.

... The great Western Republic, therefore--in whose ... veins flows much of
that ancient and kindred blood received from the nation once ruling a
noble portion of its territory, and tracking its own political existence
to the same parent spring of temperate human liberty--must look with
affectionate interest upon the trials of the elder commonwealth.

... The lessons of history and the fate of free states can never be
sufficiently pondered by those upon whom so large and heavy a
responsibility for the maintenance of rational human freedom rests.

* * * * *

=_Alexander B. Meek,[42] 1814-1865._= (Manual, p. 523.)

From "Romantic Passages in Southwestern History."

=_142._= EXILED FRENCH OFFICERS I