REPUBLICS— THE LADDER TO LIBERTY 



247 



quisition, and in the following year a 

 wave of popular indignation against the 

 royal edicts, which condemned to be 

 burned fifty or sixty thousand persons, 

 swept over the Netherlands. 



The Duke of Alba was sent to execute 

 the orders which the Prince of Orange 

 refused to obey and to exterminate the 

 heretics. A reign of terror followed, 

 during which the Prince of Orange raised 

 armies, which he led with consummate 

 military genius ; but they steadily melted 

 away before the Duke's superior power, 

 until heresy and patriotism seemed fatally 

 crushed. 



With unfaltering faith, however, the 

 Prince of Orange pursued his resistance, 

 steadily demanding the withdrawal of the 

 Spaniards from the Netherlands, the free 

 exercise of religion, and the restoration 

 of the ancient rights and liberties of the 

 land. By the Union of Delft, in 1576, 

 he had federated Holland and Zeeland. 

 In 1579, by the Union of Utrecht, Hol- 

 land, Zeeland, Utrecht, Gelderland, Fries- 

 land, Overyssel, and Gronigen united to 

 sustain the freedom of religion and re- 

 nounce allegiance to the King of Spain. 



These seven provinces, presided over 

 by the Prince of Orange as elective Stadt- 

 holder, formed a confederation with a 

 central legislative body called the States 

 General; but so jealous of all central au- 

 thority were the provinces that no laws 

 or engagements could become effective 

 without the sanction of a majority of the 

 separate provincial assemblies. In 1650 

 the anti-monarchical sentiment was so 

 strong that even the elective stadtholder- 

 ate was abolished ; to be restored, how- 

 ever, in 1672, and made hereditary in 

 1674. 



Like Venice, the Dutch Republic be- 

 came a maritime power of great impor- 

 tance, waged war on land and sea, and 

 acquired by conquest valuable colonies. 



FREEDOM HAS ALWAYS BEEN A DELICATE 

 FLOWER TO KEEP ALIVE 



All these republics, as we have seen, 

 were primarily based upon the repudia- 

 tion of autocratic power ; but no perma- 

 nent political organization can be sus- 

 tained by a mere negation. At the basis 

 of republicanism in every form is a con- 



ception of liberty united with a sense of 

 social solidarity. 



The positive element in the conception 

 of a republic is the freedom of the indi- 

 vidual, which rests upon the conviction 

 that there are in the nature of man cer- 

 tain innate qualities that may justly claim 

 the right of expression, and which, there- 

 fore, ought not to be suppressed by arbi- 

 trary power. 



The chief problem for a republic has 

 always been the organization of liberty 

 in such a manner as to render it perma- 

 nently secure. In this no one of the 

 republics of antiquity had ever entirely 

 succeeded. The Greek city-states — like 

 Athens, Sparta, Thebes, and Argos — 

 wavered between aristocratic and demo- 

 cratic control ; but the existence of slavery 

 and a subject class rendered all of them 

 to some extent oligarchical. 



The Roman city-republic was sub- 

 merged by its own internal expansion of 

 power and its external growth of respon- 

 sibility, which created conditions that no 

 democracy could satisfy or control. The 

 later Italian city-states were either ab- 

 sorbed by more powerful neighbors or 

 in their efforts at self-preservation from 

 foreign intrusion degenerated into tyran- 

 nies, as the Greek republics often had 

 before them. 



Freedom has always proved a delicate 

 flower to keep alive. Oligarchy has 

 tended to narrow the depositories of 

 power until it became the possession of a 

 single master ; while democracy, on the 

 other hand, recognizing in emergencies 

 the weakness of divided counsels, has 

 tended to confide its power to the hands 

 of a dictator. 



REPUBLICS THAT HAVE FAILED 



In no form of government is equilib- 

 rium so unstable as in a republic, which 

 is essentially a balance of forces, any one 

 of which, if exaggerated, is capable of 

 consummating its destruction. In addi- 

 tion to this inherent internal instability, 

 upon which the demagogue skilfully plays 

 for the accomplishment of his selfish 

 designs, a republic is always peculiarly 

 exposed to the intrusion of foreign 

 influences and to the peril of foreign 

 attack. 



