Page:A Tour Through the Batavian Republic.djvu/118

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
106
TOUR THROUGH

as a general I shall have occasion hereafter to speak, I shall therefore at present only observe, that they fully justify the high confidence which the nation and government repose in him.

It is most honourable to all who were concerned in the subversion of the ancient government of the United Provinces, a government which had subsisted two hundred years, respected in its foreign and domestic relations, and enjoying all the advantages of prescription and long establishment, that not one drop of human blood was judicially shed on its overthrow. I was at great pains to gather what would probably have been the fate of the stadtholder and his family, had they awaited in Holland the storm that burst over their unfortunate house, and amidst a great diversity of opinions, the prevailing sentiment was, that they would have been banished from the territories of the republic. This opinion is corroborated by: the knowledge of the influence which the King of Prussia, at that time negociating with France, possessed in the councils of that