This etext was produced by David Widger
[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of thefile for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making anentire meal of them. D.W.]
A History
JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY, D.C.L., LL.D.
Corresponding Member of the Institute of France, Etc.
1855
[Etext Editor's Note: JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY, born in Dorchester, Mass.1814, died 1877. Other works: Morton's Hopes and Merry Mount, novels.Motley was the United States Minister to Austria, 1861-67, and the UnitedStates Minister to England, 1869-70. Mark Twain mentions his respectfor John Motley. Oliver Wendell Holmes said in 'An Oration deliveredbefore the City Authorities of Boston' on the 4th of July, 1863:"'It cannot be denied,'—says another observer, placed on one of ournational watch-towers in a foreign capital,—'it cannot be deniedthat the tendency of European public opinion, as delivered from highplaces, is more and more unfriendly to our cause; but the people,'he adds, 'everywhere sympathize with us, for they know that our causeis that of free institutions,—that our struggle is that of thepeople against an oligarchy.' These are the words of the Minister toAustria, whose generous sympathies with popular liberty no homagepaid to his genius by the class whose admiring welcome is mostseductive to scholars has ever spoiled; our fellow-citizen, thehistorian of a great Republic which infused a portion of its lifeinto our own,—John Lothrop Motley." D.W.]
The rise of the Dutch Republic must ever be regarded as one of theleading events of modern times. Without the birth of this greatcommonwealth, the various historical phenomena of: the sixteenth andfollowing centuries must have either not existed; or have presentedthemselves under essential modifications.—Itself an organized protestagainst ecclesiastical tyranny and universal empire, the Republic guardedwith sagacity, at many critical periods in the world's history; thatbalance of power which, among civilized states; ought always to beidentical with the scales of divine justice. The splendid empire ofCharles the Fifth was erected upon the grave of liberty. It is aconsolation to those who have hope in humanity to watch, under the reignof his successor, the gradual but triumphant resurrection of the spiritover which the sepulchre had so long been sealed. From the handbreadthof territory called the province of Holland rises a power which wageseighty years' warfare with the most potent empire upon earth, and which,during the progress of the struggle, becoming itself a mighty state, andbinding about its own slender form a zone of the richest possessions ofearth, from pole to tropic, finally dictates its decrees to the empire ofCharles.
So much is each individual state but a member of one great internationalcommonwealth, and so close is the relationship between the whole humanfamily, that it is impossible for a nation, even while struggling foritself, not to acquire something for all mankind. The maintenance of theright by the little provinces of Holland and Zealand in the sixteenth, byHolland and England united in the seventeenth, and by the United Statesof America in the eighteenth centuries, forms but a single chapter in thegreat volume of human fate; for the so-called revolutions of Holland,England, and America, are all links of one chain.
To the Dutch Republic, even more than to Florence at an ea