n at all only by repeated violations of the constitution.
In order to excuse measures dictated by this necessity, each
stadtholder was perpetually obliged to form partisans, and he
thus became the hereditary head of a faction. His legitimate
power was trifling: but his influence was capable of fearful
increase; for the principle which allowed him to infringe the
constitution, even on occasions of public good, might be easily
warped into a pretext for encroachments that had no bounds but
his own will.

Besides, the preponderance of the deputies from the commercial
towns in the states-general caused the others to become mere
ciphers in times of peace; only capable of clogging the march
of affairs, and of being, on occasions of civil dissensions,
the mere tools of whatever party possessed the greatest tact
in turning them to their purpose. Hence a wide field was open
to corruption. Uncertainty embarrassed every operation of the
government. The Hague became an arena for the conflicting intrigues
of every court in Europe. Holland was dragged into almost every
war; and thus, gradually weakened from its rank among independent
nations, it at length fell an easy prey to the French invaders.

To prevent the recurrence of such evils as those, and to establish
a kingdom on the solid basis of a monarchy, unequivocal in its
essence yet restrained in its prerogative, the constitution we
are now examining was established. According to the report of
the commissioners who framed it, "It is founded on the manners
and habits of the nation, on its public economy and its old
institutions, with a disregard for the ephemeral constitutions
of the age. It is not a mere abstraction, more or less ingenious,
but a law adapted to the state of the country in the nineteenth
century. It did not reconstruct what was worn out by time; but
it revived all that was worth preserving. In such a system of
laws and institutions well adapted to each other, the members
of the commission belonging to the Belgian provinces recognized
the basis of their ancient charters, and the principles of their
former liberty. They found no difficulty in adapting this law,
so as to make it common to the two nations, united by ties which
had been broken only for their own misfortune and that of Europe,
and which it was once more the interest of Europe to render
indissoluble."

The news of the elevation of William I. to the throne was received
in the Dutch provinces with gre