1651 - United Provinces
At first William the Silent had been governor of the Provinces, nominally at least under the king of Spain; and in the reconstruction he secured his own rights, while the sovereign power was transferred to the States General. They took the right of making peace and war, of concluding alliances, of taxing and coining. The governor had all military commands, had power to pardon, and controlled the civil appointments; he represented the dignity of the state, with a court, and guards, and envoys from other lands. Each province had its own stadtholder, an office in name at least derived from the Spanish times; each town had its own pensionary or chief minister.
But after the death of William II on 06 November 1650, the office of stadtholder of Holland was for a time suspended; there was no captain-general or admiral; and the grand pensionary of Holland, first minister of the state, became virtual president of the republic, as seen in the cases of John De Witt and Heinsius. Since the abolition of the stadtholderate after the premature death of William II in 1650, the center of authority had lain in the hands of John de Witt, the sagacious leader of the anti-Orange or Amsterdam Wittburgher-party; and he guided the foreign affairs of the provinces in such a way as to secure the fair development of their commerce on every side.
When the English envoys returned to tell their masters, the Commonwealth, of their failure at the Hague, parliament at once replied by passing the memorable Navigation Act of 1651, which aimed at destroying the carrying-trade of the Provinces. The struggle for the lordship of the seas which ensued, and with which the names of Tromp and Buyter, Blake, and Monk are so splendidly associated, was waged with equal bravery and nearly equal success on both sides, until 1654, when peace was made by the Amsterdam burgher-party.
By the terms of the treaty with Cromwell the Orange-Nassau family was altogether to be excluded from the stadtholderate of Holland, the other Provinces reserving their independence, and the Dutch populace also much disliking the peace. England preserved the honor of her flag, while Holland was seen to be a worthy and equal rival for the command of the sea.
Hostilities between the Dutch and Portuguese respecting their rights in Brazil followed, in which, after each side with had done much damage to the other, peace was also made. Holland in 1658 interfered to save the Danes from Charles Gustavus of Sweden. In 1659 a treaty of peace was made between France, England, and the United Provinces, with a view to the settlement of the Dano-Swedish question, which ended in securing a northern peace in 1660, and in keeping the Baltic waters open for Dutch trade.
For a time the death of William II in 1650 restored the burgher party to power, and made Amsterdam the head of the United Provinces. Holland triumphed over Zealand; the house of Orange, friend of the Stewarts, seemed to suffer eclipse with them; and though the royalist mob even at the Hague, set on by a princely rough of the palatine house, made it impossible for the envoys of the English Commonwealth to come to terms with the republic, still the popular monarchical party was in fact powerless in the Provinces for mora than twenty years.
It was with a view to the security of this aristocratic government that a great assembly of the Provinces was held in 1651, and established that form of rule which Sir William Temple so well described in his Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands.
There were four chief elements in that federation: the terms of the Union of Utrecht (1579); the claims and position of the house of Orange; the sovereignty, within its own borders, of each province; and lastly, the liberties and power of the cities. In the last two the lead was taken by Holland. Holland was the chief province, and Amsterdam, its capital, the chief city of the union. And these two parts of the federation were at one also in their resistance to the house of Orange, of which the chief strength lay in Zealand.
The union was governed, in theory at least, by the States General of the provinces, which met at the Hague, and consisted of a fluctuating number of deputies (sometimes as many as 800), and was supplemented by a permanent council of state, a kind of cabinet composed of twelve deputies from the provinces, and a chamber of accounts. Besides this body each province had its own estates, and each great city its own senate. Thus Amsterdam was ruled by a senate of thirty-six burghers, who kept order, administered justice, and raised local taxes. The office of senator was for life, originally by election of the whole body of freemen, but from the 16th century by co-optation, so that the government of the city became a close oligarchy. The chief towns followed Amsterdam in this direction. The senate elected the deputies of the city to the states of Holland.
The commercial prosperity of the Provinces went on advancing throughout the 17th century; each town had its own work. Flushing received the West India trade; Middelburg was entrepot for French wines; Terveer was the Scottish and Dort the English staple; Leyden manufactured; Haarlem made linen and mixed stuffs, and grew tulips for profit and pastime; Delft was known for beer and hardware; Zaandam built ships; Enkhuizen caught and cured herrings; Friesland had the Greenland trade; and lastly Amsterdam, recognized chief of Dutch cities, had the East India trade, with that of Spain and the Mediterranean: their whole carrying business reached from the Gulf of Bothnia to the farthest Indies.
Their seafaring enterprise received an early scientific impulse from the labors of Coignet and Mercator. All questions as to the nature and development of wealth were still in their infancy: it was believed that all depended on balances of actual bullion; and the Spaniards were envied because their ships brought over masses of gold and silver. The "balance of trade," the establishment of banks at home and colonies abroad, especially mining colonies, a huge carrying trade, the making of goods to be sold for cash only, the discouragement of all imports, and the support of all monopolies — these things, chief elements of what is called the "isolation theory of trade," guided the politics of the 17th century, gave Holland vast temporary wealth, discouraged her power of production, and eventually left her impotent among the nations.
