V. 3.

Brief View of the History of the Netherlands, till the acknowledgement of the Independence of the Seven United Provinces by the Spanish Monarch.

The laws, the customs, and the government of all these provinces were nearly alike:  each had its representative assembly of the three orders, of the clergy, nobility, and burghers:  each had its courts of justice; and an appeal from the superior tribunal of each lay to the supreme court at Mechlin.

Public and fiscal concerns of moment fell under the cognizance of the sovereign.  The people enjoyed numerous and considerable privileges:  the most important of them was the Droit de Joyeuse entree, the right of not being taxed without the consent of the three estates.  Commerce, agriculture, and the arts, particularly music and painting, flourished among them.  The people were honest, frugal, regular and just in their general habits; more steady than active; not easily roused; but, when once roused, not easily appeased.

[Sidenote:  Brief View of the History of the Netherlands.]

Charles V. made over his hereditary territories in Germany to his brother Ferdinand; but retained the Netherlands, and annexed them to the crown of Spain.

With that crown, they descended to Philip the Second, the only son of Charles.

Unwise and unjust measures of that monarch drove the inhabitants into rebellion.

On the 5th of April 1566, a deputation of 400 gentlemen, with Lewis of Nassau, a brother of the prince of Orange, at their head, presented a petition to Margaret of Austria, the Governor of the Netherlands.  From the coarseness of their dress, they acquired the name of gueux or beggars, and retained it throughout the whole of the troubles which followed.

[Sidenote:  Brief View of the History of the Netherlands.]

Calvinism had, before this time, made great progress in these countries, and gained over to it numbers of the discontented party.  Philip proceeded to the most violent measures, and sent the Duke of Alva, with an army of 20,000 men, into the Netherlands.  William, Prince of Orange, placed himself at the head of the malcontents, and raised an army.  At an assembly of the States of Holland and Zealand in 1559, he was declared Stadtholder, or Governor of Holland, Friesland, and Utrecht:  Calvinism was declared to be the religion of the States.  In 1579, the three provinces were joined by those of Gueldres, Zutphen, Overyssell, and Groeningen.  All signed, by their deputies, the TREATY OF UNION; it became the basis of their constitution:  still, however, they acknowledged Philip for their sovereign.  But in 1581, the deputies of the United States assembled at Amsterdam, subscribed a solemn act, by which they formally renounced allegiance to Philip and his successors, and asserted their independence.  They declared in their manifesto, that “the prince is made for the people, not the people for the prince;” that “the prince, who treats his subjects as slaves, is a tyrant, whom his subjects have a right to dethrone, when they have no other means of preserving their liberty;” that “this right particularly belongs to the Netherlands; their sovereign, being bound by his coronation oath to observe the laws, under pain of forfeiting his sovereignty.”