ies, or to their own
great progenitors. "Holland," says Professor Thorold Rogers, "is
the origin of scientific medicine and rational therapeutics. From
Holland came the first optical instruments, the best mathematicians,
the most intelligent philosophers, as well as the boldest and most
original thinkers. Amsterdam and Rotterdam held the printing
presses of Europe in the early days of the republic; the Elzevirs
were the first publishers of cheap editions, and thereby aided
in disseminating the new learning. From Holland came the new
agriculture, which has done so much for social life, horticulture
and floriculture. The Dutch taught modern Europe navigation. They
were the first to explore the unknown seas, and many an island
and cape which their captains discovered has been renamed after
some one who got his knowledge by their research, and appropriated
the fruit of his predecessor's labors. They have been as much
plundered in the world of letters as they have been in commerce
and politics. Holland taught the Western nations finance--perhaps
no great boon. But they also taught commercial honor, the last
and hardest lesson which nations learn. They inculcated free
trade, a lesson nearly as hard to learn, if not harder, since
the conspiracy against private right is watchful, incessant,
and, as some would make us believe, respectable. They raised
a constant and for a long time ineffectual protest against the
barbarous custom of privateering, and the dangerous doctrine of
contraband of war, a doctrine which, if carried out logically,
would allow belligerents to interdict the trade of the world. The
Dutch are the real founders of what people call international law,
or the rights of nations. They made mistakes, but they made fewer
than their neighbors made. The benefits which they conferred were
incomparably greater than the errors they committed. There is nothing
more striking than the fact that, after a brief and discreditable
episode, the states were an asylum for the persecuted. The Jews,
who were condemned because they were thrifty, plundered because
they were rich, and harassed because they clung tenaciously to
their ancient faith and customs, found an asylum in Holland;
and some of them perhaps, after they originated and adopted,
with the pliability of their race, a Teutonic alias, have not
been sufficiently grateful to the country which sheltered them.
The Jansenists, expelled from France, found a refuge in Utrecht,