ries and Catholics acted together. This same year saw
the first phase of the war with the piratical state of Achin. An
expedition of 3600 men under General Koehler was sent out against the
defiant sultan in April, 1873, but suffered disaster, the General
himself dying of disease. A second stronger expedition under General van
Swieten was then dispatched, which was successful; and the sultan was
deposed in January, 1874. This involved heavy charges on the treasury;
and the ministry, after suffering two reverses in the Second Chamber,
resigned (June, 1874), being succeeded by a Heemskerk coalition
ministry.

Heemskerk in his former premiership had shown himself to be a clever
tactician, and for three years he managed to maintain himself in office
against the combined opposition of the advanced liberals, the
anti-revolutionaries and the Catholics. Groen van Prinsterer died in
May, 1876; and with his death the hitherto aristocratic and exclusive
party, which he had so long led, became transformed. Under its new
leader, Abraham Kuyper, it became democratised, and, by combining its
support of the religious principle in education with that of progressive
reform, was able to exercise a far wider influence in the political
sphere. Kuyper, for many years a Calvinist pastor, undertook in 1872 the
editorship of the anti-revolutionary paper, _De Standdard_. In 1874 he
was elected member for Gouda, but resigned in order to give his whole
time to journalism in the interest of the political principles to which
he now devoted his great abilities.

The Heemskerk ministry had the support of no party, but by the
opportunist skill of its chief it continued in office for three years;
no party was prepared to take its place, and "the government of the king
must be carried on." The measures that were passed in this time were
useful rather than important. An attempt to deal with primary
instruction led to the downfall of the ministry. The elections of 1877
strengthened the liberals; and, an amendment to the speech from the
throne being carried, Heemskerk resigned. His place was taken by Joannes
Kappeyne, leader of the progressive liberals. A new department of State
was now created, that of Waterways and Commerce, whose duties in a
country like Holland, covered with a net-work of dykes and canals, was
of great importance. A measure which denied State support to the
"private" schools was bitterly resisted by the anti-revolutionaries and
the Cat