Litchfield enquirer., 1879-01-16

Holland declined, and it will never again at tam the relative position 1t once held Why did it thus fall away! We must own that its natural advantages were few The country it. self, the base of all Dutch operations was rescued with difficulty from the sea- and has been preserved from submergence by immense and unceasing eXertions. The Provinces were never so famous for manufactures as for trade, though the reputation of Dutch sugars, Dutch linen, Dutch paper, and other commodities, shows the excellence of their work. But in truth, the Dutch fetched and carried from all lands, insomuch that though the Provinces never produced corn enough for the food of their own people, Dutch ports were the empOra to which all nations could go with certainty of finding stocks of grain on sale How was 1t that the inhabitants of lands so Diggardly endowed by nature became so atfiuent Adam Smith may help us to answer this question. It is evident that the author of the Wealth of Nations was much impressed by the Dutch character and Dutch institutions, and he speaks of the Unit cd Provinces as if he had not suspected that their prosperity was on the way to decline. He praises the probity of the Dutch character, making the merchants of Holland everywhere trusted. He praises the equality and justice of their laws He praises the smplici- ty and good sense of their trade Legislation. He declares that in the United Provinces was to be seen nearer approximation to free trade than could be anywhere else observed. Final ly, he ascribes to their republican institutions by which 1 understand him to mean the ma chincry which secured to the people self-gOvern- ment, and discouraged inequalities in the dis tribution of wealth within fanrlics-their po- iitical and their commercial emincnce. But commercial people, having in themselves no guarantees of manufacturing supremacy, and depending for their greatness on the manten- ance of their trade as the carriers of the world, were necessarily dependent on the continued freedom of their traffic. If they were prevent ed from resorting to shores to which they had been accustomed to go, their occupation would be gone and it would be an imperfect recom- pense te them to remember that the country which refused to trade with them suffered al- so Our Navigation act of 1851 was great blow to the carrying trade of Holland, as far as regarded ourselves and our colonies and when in the course of the century that follow ed we acquired the lordship of larger and larg- CT portions of the world, the trading spheres of the Dutch were in a corresponding degree curtailed. Yet as we have seen, Adam Smith made no remark on the decline of Dutch com merce and it was not until the NapoleOnic wars, when Holland became first dependency and then part of France, that the final blow
 
 external trade was destroyed, and Holland ex- perienced suspension of vitality, the more serious because it happened simultaneously with a change in the conditions of the produc- ti0ns of the leading commodities of commerce, that must of itself have been very injurious to the Dutch supremacy. The Dutch had always been adopts iu the art of making air and water perform their work but the last hundred years have seen more powerful forces harnessed and put to ,lse and the Dutch had not these forces immediately at command. In the competition thus created they must in any case have found their superiority gradually passing away, and it was their misfortune that the NapOleOnic in terruption of their fehappened at such time that when they re-entcred the wOrld-field of industry they found rivals established too powerful for their competition. -1He Wine teenth CcntHry.
 Socialism, which has assumed such fOrmid- able proportions m Germany, virtually began with Lasallc hardly 10 years ago, and was merely dream of philosophers, a theory of thinkers, until after the Franco German war. The trades unions and labor associations in in dustrial centres had gone no further than con- bination for strikes and mutual aid in time of distress until the end of that struggle, when the character of the movement underwent to- tai change becoming at once practical and rev olutionary The German Socialists uow num- Der 5O0 900, one twenty y-fifth of all the grown Germans, 600O0 of them living in Berlin alone. Forty-one newspapers devoted to their principles are published in the Empire, and taken probably by S0O,000 persons, Of the Socialists in that country, 95 per cent. are working men, the remainder being students and Professors, rather speculative than other wise. Although they all believe themselves oppressed, and all seek for remedy and re- dress, a great many are earnestly opposed to transgressiau of law any violent measures. The more moderate aim to procure radical change in the laws by legitimate methods of agitation and legislation; but the extremists have recently been dominant. The late action of Bismark and the German authorities, though
 designed to be oppressive, if not destructive,
 has helped, and will continue to help, the cause by strengthening it inforce and numbers
 and enlisting the sympathy of thousands of
 people who, while they may be. averse to So- ciallsm, are still more averse tooppression and despotism of any and every knd.