The Columbia herald. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 18??-1935, 1906-08-31
DUTCHMAN In
AMERICA

The Puritans made New England
and he Dutch made the Puritans
In many respects little Holland is
the most wonderful country that APP
pears in history. Or, to be more pre-
else, the Hollanders are the most won
derful people that appear in history.
+ No people has a more heroic rec
ord. The struggle, told by Motley. of
the Dutch against Philip H. is the
most glorious of which pen ever
wrote
I 1t was wonderful to have lifted their
country from the bottom of the sea-
it was still more wonderful to have
been able to defend successfully that
country's institutions against the we'll
nigh almighty power of Spain.
, During the three-quarters of GEN.
TRY or more that the Dutch struggle
asted Englishmen. from time to time,
came over to help them in their fight.
and the English soldiers who came
monarchists went back republicans.
Dutchmen have always lo1sd their
pipes and liberty, and from the sturdy
burghers the soldiers of England serv-
ing with them learned the principles
Of democracy that were eventually to
transform the British throne into a
mere ornament" as Bagehot would
call it.
Again, when old Alva set up his
Council of Blood" in the little land
that the Dutchmen had raised from
the sea more than one hundred thou
and Hollanders crossed the Channel
and made their homes in England. :
These men," it has been well said,
were not paupers seeking aims; they
were industrious, self-supporting men,
scholars, bankers, manufacturers,
merchants; all of them freemen, refu-
gees for freedoms sake, and for con-
sciences sake. They were grand,
brave men, constructed out OF the
very -prodigality of Nature, massive
in intellect and in soul. Never in all
the history of the world was there
such another missionary movement
on such magnificent scale"
1t was from those splendid men that
England learned to love liberty and
to dispise the tinsel of the aristoc-
racy and the red tape Of royalty.
From the southern and eastern
counties of England, where the Hol-
anders settled and intermarried with
the English, came the English Com
monwealth. Cromwell and his Iron
sides" the ''Bill of Rights" the free
Parliament, and pretty nearly all the
other great and good things that Eng
lishmen today prize so highly
The Pilgrims, it is well known
dwelt in Holland for twelve years be-
fore starting out on their memorable
voyage to the New World, and it was
in Holland that they learned the re-
publican ideas which later on clothed
themselves in the New England town
meeting" that starting point of our
American Democratic institutions.
William Penn had 2 Dutch mother
and 1t was from the teachings Of that
mother that he drafted into his Penn
sylvania code the liberal principles of
the brave little republic beyond the
seas.
Thomas Booker, the founder of the
city Of Hartford, and the leading spirit
in the making of the Connecticut con-
stitution, was an English refugee who
came direct from Holland to New Eng
land, full of Dutch ideas and princi-
pies which he was not slow in put.
ting into his laws for the young State
in the New World.
In what is now the great Empire
State" of the Union, founded entirely
by the Dutch, was reared the first free
church and free school known In
America
In 1863, the burghers of New Ans
terdam in their tilt with old Peter
Stuyvesant, declared that "All men
own their own consciences, and,
standing upon that principle as upon
a rock, they held their ground until
they had secured the recognition of
the idea that government receives
its power from the consent of the
governed"
This, as another has well put it, was
the first declaration of independence
ever issued upon the American CONT
nent. It was Bunker Hill, New York
one hundred and twenty-five years in
advance of Bunker Hill, Boston
Among the things that we have re-
ceived from HoNand are the free