DE WITT.

The father of this wise and honest statesman was burgomaster of the town of Dort, or Dordrecht, and one of its representatives in the Assembly of the States of Holland, a man of patriotism, courage, and integrity, who apprehended danger to the liberties of the United Provinces from the hereditary power of the House of Orange, and used his best exertions to counteract it. His sons, Cornelius and John De Witt, born at Dort, the former June 25, 1623, the latter September 25, 1625, inherited his principles and his integrity; and rendered his name illustrious by greater talents exerted in a higher sphere of action. Of these brothers, united in their counsels, their lives, and their deaths, it is the younger, John, the original of our portrait, who rendered the name of De Witt most illustrious, by the ability and virtue with which, during eighteen years, he directed the government of his country.

Cornelius De Witt served in the navy during several years, and distinguished himself in the bloody wars of England and Holland; he also studied jurisprudence in his youth, and displayed talents for civil and military business not unnoticed by his fellow-citizens, who bestowed several municipal offices on him at an early age. The youth of John De Witt appears to have been less occupied by active employments; though he possessed great knowledge and practical skill in maritime affairs, and was esteemed one of the best pilots of his time. The early development of his political talents, aided probably by family connexion, and the respect due to his father’s services, soon introduced him to high civil employment. In 1650 he was appointed Pensionary of his native town, and in 1652, Grand Pensionary of Holland, an office which gave him a commanding influence over thedeliberations of the whole Union. It was granted nominally only for five years, but in effect was permanent, since at the end of each period it was customary to re-appoint the holder.

It was the leading object of De Witt’s policy to diminish the influence which the princes of the House of Orange had acquired, as much by their services and high personal qualities, as by their power and territorial possessions, and to strengthen the republican institutions of his country, which he saw to be endangered, as it was ultimately destroyed, by their hereditary tenure of the office of Stadtholder. “The chief direction of the affairs of Holland, for eighteen years, continued in the hands of their Pensionary De Witt, a minister of the greatest authority and sufficiency, the greatest application and industry, ever known in their state. In the course of his ministry he and his party reduced, not only all the civil charges of the government in this province, but in a manner all the military commands of the army, out of the hands of persons affectionate to the Prince of Orange, into those esteemed more sure and fast to the interests of their more popular state. And all this was attended for so long a course of years with the perpetual success of their affairs, by the growth of their trade, power and riches at home, and the consideration of their neighbours abroad.” Such is the testimony of Sir William Temple, (Essay on the Origin and Nature of Government,) to the policy, success, and merits of a friend whom he loved and venerated. The position of affairs, when De Witt attained to the direction of the state, favoured the development of his republican views. William II., Prince of Orange, had died in 1650, and his posthumous son and heir, afterwards William III. of England, was an infant. Had the representative of that house been of mature age, we may conclude that gratitude for the eminent services of his predecessors, and the natural inclination of the people towards the form of government to which they had been accustomed, would have led again to the appointment of a Stadtholder in his person. But the office was of a nature which could not be well exercised by a regent, or committed to an infant, without acknowledging a species of hereditary right, scarcely differing from the claims of royalty: and accordingly in some provinces another prince of the Nassau family was appointed Stadtholder, in others, of which Holland was one, the office continued in abeyance, and De Witt, thwarted by no superior, was able to direct his best efforts to counteract the workings of the Orange party, and to effect those changes in the civil and military organization of the state, which are mentioned in the above quotation from Sir W. Temple. The sameleading principle guided his foreign policy. When he was appointed Grand Pensionary, the Provinces were engaged in war with England; an unequal contest while her government was directed by Cromwell. But the true interest of both parties lay in their amity, and peace was concluded in 1654. While Cromwell lived, the republican party was upheld by his influence. He endeavoured to obtain from the States General, in the treaty of 1654, the perpetual exclusion of the Prince of Orange from the Stadtholdership: but not being able to obtain their consent to this, contented himself with the assent of the States of Holland, as far as regarded their own province, which was accorded by a secret article. After the Restoration it was to be expected that Charles II. would support the interests of his nephew the Prince of Orange; and De Witt thenceforward cultivated the alliance of France in preference to that of England. This, and the jealousy of the English nation at the commercial prosperity of the Dutch, led to the breaking out of a bloody war in 1665, in which the preponderance of success was on the side of England. The spirit, energy, and ability of De Witt was the main stay of his countrymen under the reverses which they sustained in this contest: their disasters were promptly repaired, their defeated armaments refitted, their credit sustained; and Charles II. becoming weary of a war which brought no advantages to compensate for the drain which it occasioned on the treasury, condescended to open negotiations for peace in 1667. These, however, proceeded but slowly: and while they were yet pending, De Witt planned that memorable expedition which surprised our ill-guarded shores, burnt our ships in the Thames, and threw the metropolis into the utmost alarm. The course of diplomacy being quickened by this event, the treaty of Breda was soon after concluded, on terms not disadvantageous to Holland.

In the following year a closer union, called the Triple League, was formed, chiefly by the agency of De Witt and Sir William Temple, between these two powers, in conjunction with Sweden. It was intended to restrain the ambition of Louis XIV., which had manifested itself in such encroachments upon the Spanish Netherlands as gave just cause of anxiety to the United Provinces. De Witt saw that a new danger threatened the independence of his country from abroad, and sacrificed to the emergency his own political prepossessions and his jealousy of everything which could restore the House of Orange to power. So great was his earnestness, that he violated a fundamental principle of the Union, by inducing the States Generalto ratify the treaty at once, instead of referring it, as was prescribed by the constitution, to the acceptance of the several provinces: an act by which, had it proved unpalatable to the nation, the lives of all who were concerned in it were endangered, and which is only to be excused on the plea of necessity, and by the certainty that the measure, which its framers regarded as essential to the welfare of the whole confederacy, would have been frustrated by the influence of France over some or other of its least important members. In 1670 De Witt concluded another treaty with the emperor of Germany and the King of Spain, with the same object of maintaining the power of Spain in the Netherlands, as a barrier against the encroachments of France.

All these precautions were rendered vain by the weak and corrupt conduct of the English Court. The ministers were bribed, and the King cajoled by a French mistress, sent over in the train of his sister the Duchess of Orleans, to renounce the Triple League and to declare war against the United Provinces, in 1672, on the most frivolous pretences. At the same time the king of France in person led against them a numerous, well appointed, and well officered army. It is probable that De Witt had relied with confidence on the sincerity of England in promoting the objects of the Triple League, and that though well aware of the disposition of Louis, he had not thought the danger so near at hand. At all events he had made no sufficient preparation to meet it; and the consequences of this omission were most disastrous. The troops of the Provinces, composed in a great measure of new levies, could make no head; the frontier fortresses yielded almost without resistance; the Rhine was passed, an event remarkable only by the flatteries for which it gave a subject to the French poets; and Louis held his court at Utrecht, while his troops advanced within a few miles of Amsterdam. A loud clamour was now raised against De Witt, who was roundly accused of having disbanded the veteran troops of the Republic, dismantled the fortresses, and exhausted the treasury, that his country might fall an easier prey to the French connexion. This calumny, even at the time, probably, was hardly believed: but too great neglect of the military establishment seems justly chargeable as a fault on his administration. For this, however, some excuse may be found in the necessity of economy, the inconsistency of a mercenary army of foreigners with republican principles, and the readiness of the Orange party to misrepresent this policy of the Pensionary, as tending to concentrate in himself the powers of Stadtholder, a name and office which he had been so eagerto abolish. By the machinations of that party the embarrassments of the government were increased, and discontent was fomented; and their sufferings and danger led the people to think more and more favourably of the claims of William of Orange. The natural high qualities of that prince had received most careful cultivation under the superintendence of De Witt, who was resolved, he said, to render him capable of serving his country, if any change should throw the administration into his hands. Already, February 25, he had been declared captain-general and admiral of the Provinces. Shortly after, De Witt’s life was attempted by four assassins, who left him for dead, as he was returning home at night, unattended, with his usual simplicity of demeanour. While he lay ill of his wounds, the repeal of the Perpetual Edict passed in 1667, by which the office of Stadtholder was abolished for ever in the province of Holland, was demanded by the populace, with much violence and sedition. That State yielded to the clamour, and the Prince was thus reinstated in the full power enjoyed by his predecessors.

Cornelius De Witt was induced, with great difficulty, to sign the revocation of the Edict. Soon after, he was accused of being concerned in a plot to murder the Prince of Orange. The informer and only witness, one Tichelaer, was a person of infamous character: yet on his evidence this brave and well-deserving citizen was thrown into prison at the Hague, and cruelly tortured to extort confession of a plot, the very existence of which, without that confession, could not be proved. He bore the trial with unshaken constancy, protesting that if they cut him to pieces, they should not make him confess a thing which he had never thought of. Without it, he could not be convicted: but he was stripped of his employments and banished from Holland; and such was the madness of the time, that even this iniquitous decree gave great offence, by its leniency, to the people, who were fully persuaded of Cornelius De Witt’s guilt. John De Witt meanwhile had recovered from his wounds; and finding that in the existing state of public feeling his continuance at the head of affairs was both undesirable for himself and unpleasing to the country, he resigned his office. After the promulgation of his brother’s sentence, he went to receive him upon his delivery from prison; and probably to do him more honour, and testify his own sense of the malice of the charge, and the unworthiness of the treatment which he had received, repaired to the Hague in his coach and four, a sort of display which he was not wont to affect. This bravado proved stillmore unfortunate than ill-judged. The people, collected by the unusual spectacle, began to murmur at the presumption of one suspected traitor coming in state to insult the laws, and triumph in the escape of a traitor-brother from a deserved death. De Witt went to the prison, to convey his brother to his own house; but Cornelius replied, that having suffered so much, being innocent, he would not leave the prison as a culprit, but remain, and appeal against the sentence; a resolution which John De Witt strove in vain to shake. Meanwhile Tichelaer, the informer, was busily engaged in stirring up the populace to riot. Apprehending some disturbance, the States of Holland, which were then sitting at the Hague, requested the Prince of Orange to repair thither with a military force. Meanwhile the tumult spread from the lowest people to the burghers, and a furious mob collected round the gates of the prison where the brothers still remained. The military force which had been sent for did not arrive, and that which was in the city was drawn off, by written order from one or more of the magistrates, upon a false report, that a body of peasants was advancing to pillage the Hague. Actuated by fear, or some worse motive, the gaoler opened the gates, the leaders of the mob rushed in, the brothers were violently dragged from their chamber, and massacred as soon as they reached the street, with circumstances of brutality too revolting to be narrated in detail. Their corpses were dragged to the gibbet, and publicly suspended with the heads downwards; and the mangled limbs of these upright magistrates and patriotic citizens were offered for sale, and bought at prices of fifteen, twenty, and thirty sols.

There is another account, different in some particulars, which intimates that this atrocious murder was preconcerted, and that a train was laid for it, if not by the Prince of Orange himself, at least by the leaders of his party. Such charges are often lightly made; and we are not aware that there is any direct evidence to fix this guilt on any one, certainly not personally on that distinguished monarch. But that there was culpable neglect, even acquitting those in power of wilful connivance, seems certain; and the proceedings of the court which sentenced Cornelius, show that the government was not delicate in finding means to remove those whom it disliked. And William’s subsequent conduct may almost be said to have merited the imputation which he incurred; for though the States of Holland voted the murder detestable in their eyes and the eyes of all the world, and requested the Stadtholder to take proper measures to avenge it, none of themurderers were ever brought to justice. The flimsy pretext for this neglect was, that it would be dangerous to inquire into a deed in which the principal burghers of the Hague were concerned.

Mr. Fox, in his History of James II., has made the following reflections on this event. “The catastrophe of De Witt, the wisest, best, and most truly patriotic minister that ever appeared upon the public stage, as it was an act of the most crying injustice and ingratitude, so likewise it is the most completely dis-encouraging example that history affords to the lovers of liberty. If Aristides was banished, he was also recalled: if Dion was repaid for his service to the Syracusans by ingratitude, that ingratitude was more than once repented of: if Sidney and Russell died upon the scaffold, they had not the cruel mortification of falling by the hands of the people; ample justice was done to their memory, and the very sound of their names is still animating to every Englishman attached to their glorious cause. But with De Witt fell also his cause and his party; and although a name so respected by all who revere virtue and wisdom when employed in their noblest sphere, the political service of the public, yet I do not know that even to this day any public honours have been paid by them to his memory.”

After De Witt’s death, all his papers were submitted to the most rigorous examination, in hope of discovering something which should confirm the popular notion of his being traitorously in league with France. One of the persons appointed to perform this service being asked what had been found in De Witt’s papers, replied, “What could we have found? Nothing but probity.” To the moral qualities of integrity, intrepidity, and patience, he added intellectual endowments of the highest order: his perception was acute, his judgment solid; he possessed great skill and readiness in transacting business, and that persuasive influence over those who came in contact with him, which is perhaps the most serviceable gift of a statesman. His manners, we are told by Sir William Temple, (Observations on the United Provinces, c. 11), were such as befitted his station and his principles. “His habit was grave, plain and popular; his table, what only served turn for his family or a friend; his train was only one man, who performed all the menial service of his house at home, and upon his visits of ceremony, putting on a plain livery cloak, attended his coach abroad; for upon other occasions he was seen usually in the streets on foot and alone, like the commonest burgher of the town. Nor was this manner of life affected; but was the general fashion and mode among all the magistrates of the state.”

De Witt cultivated mathematics, and published a Treatise onCurves. Burnet says, “Perhaps no man ever applied algebra to all matters of trade so nicely as he did. He made himself so entirely master of the state of Holland, that he understood exactly all the concerns of their revenue, and what sums, and in what manner, could be raised upon any emergent of state. For this he had a pocket book full of tables, and was ever ready to show how they could be furnished with money.” The most remarkable of his works are his Memoirs, published during his life in 1667, in which, after examining the principles which govern the prosperity and decline of states, he proceeds to apply them to Holland, and to review the condition and prospects of the country. They have been translated into French by Mad. Zoutelandt, who has also written a life of the two brothers. De Witt’s correspondence with the plenipotentiaries of France, England, Sweden, Denmark, and Poland, has also been published, and translated into French.

[Murder of the brothers De Witt, from a Dutch print in Wagenaar’s ‘Vaterlandsche Historie,’ 1770.]

Engraved by J. Posselwhite.HAMPDEN.From a Print by J. Houbraken 1740.Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.London, Published by Charles Knight & Co. Ludgate Street.

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