ts of the Dutch character. When, after driving out the
awful, vindictive, bloodthirsty Spaniards, the Dutch came into power, it
was but natural to think of retaliation: banish the Papists, or
persecute the Anabaptists, suppress their paganism, or crush their
fanaticism, would have been most natural. Against any such ideas the
nation as a whole set its face like a wall of adamant. Very soon the
sober convictions of the people were triumphant. And after the most
atrociously cruel war, in which these men had suffered untold agonies,
they became an example to the oppressed, the like of which the world had
never witnessed since the Son of God and Saviour of men cried out from
his cross, "Father, forgive them: they know not what they do." When the
union was formed between Holland and Zeeland, it was provided that no
inquisition should be made into any man's belief or conscience, nor
should any man by cause thereof suffer injury or hindrance. Toleration
for the oppressor by the oppressed, full forgiveness of enemies by the
victors, became thus the corner-stone of the republic, under which all
sects of Christians, the Roman Catholic Church, Jews, Turks, infidels,
and even heretics, throve and prospered.

Now, do you need anything said after thus showing Holland to have been
the teacher of a lesson to oppressors, and the example to the oppressed,
to show that she has ever been the sanctuary for the rights of mankind?

In the nature of things, she could not have been otherwise. The little
country of Holland, that in 1555, on the accession of Philip II to the
sovereignty, was the richest jewel in his crown, and of the five
millions poured annually into his treasury contributed nearly half,
emerged as a republic out of the war with Spain of eighty years'
duration, and remained for two full centuries the greatest republic in
the world. She has been the instructor of the world in art, in music, in
science; has outstripped other nations in the commercial race; had
wealth and luxury, palaces and architectural splendor, when England's
yeomanry lived in huts and never ate a vegetable; discovered
oil-painting, originated portrait and landscape-painting, was foremost
in all the mechanical arts; invented wood-engraving, printing from
blocks, and gave to the world both telescope and microscope, thus
furnishing the implements to see the largest things of the heavens
above, and the smallest of both earth beneath and waters under the
earth. Th