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THE LATE PRINCESS OF ORANGE.

induced her to spare the lives of the guilty, but that they should be held incapable of discharging the duties of any public trust in future. Among the persons whom she caused to be dismissed were several distinguished and po pular citizens, the survivors of whom were, upon the overthrow of the house of Orange, called to participate in the government of the country with the most flattering marks of congratulation.

This princess I know has had her admirers, she has been extolled for her spirit, and capaciousness of mind; but upon almost every occasion her talents were misapplied, and only served to augment the storm that burst over and laid the glory of her house prostrate. What was to close a reign (if such it may be called), so characterized by weakness and disaster, required not the spirit of a prophet to foretell. The French revolution found an unembarrassed introduction into Holland, and the feeble resistance which the Dutch troops opposed to the French armies, pretty clearly demonstrates the estimation in which the country held its unworthy ruler, and the desire they had of delivering themselves from him and the influence of England upon their councils. It is well known, that in the last war, the Dutch refused the sick and wounded of their allies, the British army, admission into Delft, and a body of burghers was formed at Amsterdam, to prevent the entrance of fo

FETE AT THE HAGUE.

125

reign troops-in other words, the English, into that city. In his last struggles the Stadtholder obtained a plenary power, resembling that of a dictator, a short time before the French crossed the Waal, an event that decided the fate of Holland. Aukwardly clothed with this vast authority, he issued a proclamation, invoking the people to rise en masse to oppose their invaders: in obedience to the invocation, the Dutch army was strengthened by the accession of about fifty recruits. An order then followed, that throughout the United Provinces three houses should furnish one man for the defence of the state, the order experienced a worse fate than the proclamation.

The public antipathy to the Stadtholder and his government was now raised to its highest elevation: the French entered the country in triumph, and the flight of the Prince of Orange was received with enthusiastic expressions of exultation. On the 16th of February, 1795, `a solemn assembly of the deputies from all the provinces was held at the Hague, at which meeting the stadtholderate was formally declared to be abolished for ever, and in the evening of that day a grand republican festival was celebrated, at which the Dutch legislators, the French representatives, and the chiefs of the army, assisted. When the British troops afterwards landed at the Helder, they found the sense of the people still the same. It was not the

126

THE PROGRESS OF THE FRENCH ARMS.

dread of the revenge of the French army, that induced them to observe such marked and unequivocal disinclination to co-operate with a force which professed to have in view the achievement of salutary objects for their benefit, but the unextinguishable abhorrence in which they held the house of Orange, in whose name the English army endeavoured to wrest the country from the arms of France; and, I believe, since the death of the son of the Stadtholder, a young prince of great promise, that throughout the kingdom scarcely one partizan for the house of Orange is to be found.

The fate of Holland is a memorable lesson to other nations. We wonder that the power of France rolls on with overwhelming fury: the military observer traces her resistless march to her brilliant improvements in modern warfare; the politician to the magnitude, energy, and endless reinforcements of her troops; the superstitious to her good fortune, and the moralist to the divine interposition to rebuke the vices of her enemies. They forget, or will not see, that the victories of France have hitherto been the triumph of genius, promptitude, and energy, over ignorance, procrastination, and supineness: of vigorous over weak councils; of able, experienced, and faithful, over hereditary, senseless, and perfidious commanders. These are the causes that made Austria bow her neck to:

BRITISH PROWESS.

127 the chief of the French empire, and in ten days offered up Prussia to the manes of Poland, in memorable expiation of the horrors she perpetrated in that devoted country in 1771. In the glorious triumphs of the British flag upon the ocean, we saw great yielding to greater skill: in Egypt and Maida we beheld indisputable heroism yielding to superior intrepidity, directed by great military skill, and united to high national honor.

The moderation and mildness which characterized the conduct of the French, rendered them popular by a comparison with the rigorous folly of the Stadtholder in the last convulsions of his expiring power. The French checked and kept in complete awe some of the most illiterate and most depraved of the Dutch patriots, who were preparing to avenge the long and galling triumph of their adversaries, with sharp and sanguinary resentment; not a drop of blood was judicially shed upon the overthrow of the ancient government of the United Provinces, although it had endured for two centuries; and the pensioners of the house of Orange, whose stipends were the rewards of meritorious services, received, and continue to receive, their salaries with generous punctuality, without being obliged to take an oath, of hatred to the Stadtholder, as other persons who lived by the bounty of the republic were obliged to do. After Bonaparte had assumed the

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CONDUCT OF THE NEW GOVERNMENT.

imperial purple of France, and determined upon creating a dynasty of sovereigns in his own family, he prepared the Dutch for the conversion of their republic into a kingdom, and the reception of a king.

On the 9th of June, 1806, Messrs. Verhuel and Van Styrum returned from Paris. His Excellency M. Verhuel, after paying a visit to the acting pensionary, held conferences with the secretaries of state, and opened the special mission entrusted to him by his Imperial Highness Prince Louis Napoleon, as King of Holland, as the result of several resolutions for the organization of the government, and communicating, that his majesty the King had appointed M. Verhuel minister of the marine, and M. Gogel minister of finances; the other secretaries of state being charged to continue in their posts till the king's arrival.

The same gentleman repaired in person to the assembly of their High Mightinesses, where also, in pursuance of his commission, he expressed his majesty's desire, and made the necessary communications; he also repaired to the council of state; after which his excellency assumed the executive power, in the name, and by authority of his majesty, whilst the pensionary, who had acted ad interim, resigned that post, and resumed that of president of their High Mightinesses. The following is the new consti