New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1891-12-06
THE NETHERLANDS And THE AMERE
can REPTBLIT


If is almost time for the members OF the New
England Society and of the Holland Society to
eat their respective annual dinners, and that in
cidental duty DONE to discharge the more i'm
portant one of celebrating their respective clans
All OF them-but not all for the same reason
before proceeding to feast would do well 10 turn
their attention to a paper which the Rev. Dr.
William Elliot Griffis lately read before Boston
club. DR.. Griffis spent portion Of last summer
in the Netherlands, and for years has been a
student of the question of the influence of that
country in the making of the English common
wealth and our own Republic. In the paper
under consideration he presents the outline OF
the results of his Investigations.
The Doctor finds that the debt which the
English commonwealth and this Republic owe
to Holland is-to put it mildy-a colossal one.
Promising that in many respects Holland is the
land of first things in modern Christian civiza-
ton," he files a number of superb claims in her
behalf She was the first of the nations to pop
ularze science and art. She had the first sys
tenn of common schools ever known in Europe.
She stood first in the field of notable practical
inventions, the pendulum clock the telescope
and spectacles being part of her proud boast.
If not the first of Bbe-readers, she was so early
a one that her common people had bought and
perlsed twenty-four editions of the Dutch New
Testament and fifteen editions of the entire Bible
before ever there was Bible printed in Eng
land She furnished the first martyr to the
Reformation, and when it came to be "saturated
with Bible ideas was the first nation in Europe.
In word, in the sixteenth century the common
people of the Netherlands were :" the best fed,
the best clothed, the best educated and the
most religious people in the world" And it was
because tens of thousands of these first-cass
people, driven from the Netherlands by Spanish
prosecutions, settled in England and because, the
Pilgrim Fathers tarried eleven years in Holland
before sailing for the New World that the set
tiers of w-England-the charter members of
the New-Engand Society-were what they were
splendid specimens of manhood, sturdy, demo-
cratic, Gpdfearing, fit founders of great Re-
public.
"The men who settled New-England,' says DR..
Cliffs, "put in operation at written constitu-
tons, registration of deeds and mortgages, common
schools and written ballots besides other things hav
ing precedent in England, but known, pracsed and
seen by men in Republic. In other words the life
Of English Noncomformsts in England being made
burden to them and liberation being refused at home,
had left their native land before 1640 and come to
America, thousands Of them by way Of Holland.
These settlers were not average Englshmen. As a
rule, they picked men, morally aud spiritually.
Many Of them especially their leaders, had breathed
long and deeply the air Of freedom in Republic, and
so carried with them TO the virgin soil OF the New
World the best English traditions reinforced by living
examples and presidents of Protestant federal and
FREQ Republic. Hence, in settling Massachusetts,,
Rhode Island and Connecticut they did not repro
duce English social political lfc but by noble
version, they regretted American soil the old
TeutOnic Institutions and they copied largely, with
improvements, exactly what they had in opera
ton under the red, white and blue flag Of the United
states Of the Netherlands
1t will be seen why we hold that all the men,
bers of the New-England Society and Of the
Holland Society would do well to read and di-
gest this scholarly paper of DR.. Griffis's before
they set out for their yearly dinners and after
dinners. The NewEnglanders will want TO read
it in order to answer it-not to say jump on it
to the end that Holland may not think more
highly of herself than the facts really warrant;
while the Hollanders will want to in order TO
improve their appetite for their yearly feast
by being confronted with the renewed assurance
that the horn of the Dutch cannot be too highly
exalted A large number of New-Englanders
contend that they owe nothing to the Dutch.
Dr. Griffs, on the contrary, contends that they
owe the Dutch pretty much everything. The
quarrel is one of the prettiest that can be brought
up for the consideration of whom it may con-
Germ after the cloth has been removed.