A comparison of ours with them would be to the advantage of ours,
and would increase the veneration of our countrymen for it. It is
a misfortune, that they do not sufficiently know the value of their
constitutions, and how much happier they are rendered by them, than any
other people on earth, by the governments under which they live.
You know all that has happened in the United Netherlands. You know
also that our friends, Van Staphorsts, will be among the most likely to
become objects of severity, if any severities should be exercised. Is
the money in their hands entirely safe? If it is not, I am sure you have
already thought of it. Are we to suppose the game already up, and that
the Stadtholder is to be reestablished, perhaps erected into a monarch,
without the country lifting a finger in opposition to it? If so, it is a
lesson the more for us. In fact, what a crowd of lessons do the present
miseries of Holland teach us? Never to have an hereditary officer of any
sort: never to let a citizen ally himself with kings: never to call in
foreign nations to settle domestic differences: never to suppose that
any nation will expose itself to war for us, &c.
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