other nations, had their roughnecks.
In contrast, the governing class, called the Regents, was exclusively patrician. The Regents were the body and soul of Dutch governorship. They filled the offices of town councilors and deputies to the provincial and national states. They held office under a system nominally elective, but no candidate could even be considered for office unless he belonged to a known and substantial family of property and recognized socialposition, based on fortune and connections. Regents married into each other’s families, supported each other, appointed each other to the important offices of town government—burgomaster, sheriff, captains of militia, members of the town council, directors of financial corporations, including the sacred seventeen who were the East India Company’s Board of Governors—and through town offices to seats as representatives in the provincial and general estates. They kept outsiders outside. The system was the same as—and in fact was derived from—the medieval system of filling the offices of local government. As it became entrenched, the whole of the Republic came to be dominated after the Abjuration of 1581 by an oligarchy of the upper middle class representing some 10,000 persons, one-eighth the number of working sailors. Yet, whether sailor or Regent, every man called himself a Haarlemer or Leydener, or Amsterdammer, identifying with his city rather than with the nation—to its loss.
Complacent and conservative, the Regents shared the point of view toward the working class of any privileged class prior to the French Revolution, seeing them as the “little people”—the
popolo minuto
, as the Italians called them—and were not shy about expressing it. “While the burgher is small,” said a Regent of Dordrecht, whose family had been Regents in his city for generations, “he should be kept small.” It was a calm assertion of the social order established, as was firmly believed, by the Almighty.
The belief of the Regents—like that of the English governing class, who undertook the actual work of government, and unlike the French
gratin
, who did nothing for the state but fuss about protocol and precedence based on the relative antiquity of their respective titles—was that they were qualified for the task, whereas “unqualified and mean persons,” in the words of Jan de Witt, called “the perfect Hollander,” should have nothing to do with government or administration “which must be reserved for qualified people alone.” As Grand Pensionary or Governor of the province of Holland and the most effective statesman his country had produced to date, Jan de Witt could justifiably call himself qualified, except perhaps in political tact. Too open in his contempt for the commoners, de Witt made himself hated, with the result that he and his brother Cornelis were torn to pieces by a lynch mob in 1672, when the commoners, suffering the fury of a French invasion, believed the de Witts were responsible for failing to prevent it. The murder was a strange paradox of extremism to erupt through the orderly surface of Dutch life.
The Regents of the Netherlands upholding a tradition of care for the poor, not always a feature of a comfortable ruling class, supported a system of public charity that impressed foreign visitors. In Amsterdam every house had a box hanging by a chain on which was written “Think of the Poor.” Small change from every merchants’ sale was deposited and the boxes kept locked until the deacons came on their rounds to retrieve the money. Twice a week they rang a bell at every house to ask what donation the resident might be expected to leave in the box. Amsterdam’s almshouse for the aged and indigent was a handsome building with a charming garden, which is still selected as a tourist sight in guidebooks. Orphanages, hospitals for “lame and decrepit” soldiers, shelters for aged sailors and for care of the insane were part of the system
In contrast, the governing class, called the Regents, was exclusively patrician. The Regents were the body and soul of Dutch governorship. They filled the offices of town councilors and deputies to the provincial and national states. They held office under a system nominally elective, but no candidate could even be considered for office unless he belonged to a known and substantial family of property and recognized socialposition, based on fortune and connections. Regents married into each other’s families, supported each other, appointed each other to the important offices of town government—burgomaster, sheriff, captains of militia, members of the town council, directors of financial corporations, including the sacred seventeen who were the East India Company’s Board of Governors—and through town offices to seats as representatives in the provincial and general estates. They kept outsiders outside. The system was the same as—and in fact was derived from—the medieval system of filling the offices of local government. As it became entrenched, the whole of the Republic came to be dominated after the Abjuration of 1581 by an oligarchy of the upper middle class representing some 10,000 persons, one-eighth the number of working sailors. Yet, whether sailor or Regent, every man called himself a Haarlemer or Leydener, or Amsterdammer, identifying with his city rather than with the nation—to its loss.
Complacent and conservative, the Regents shared the point of view toward the working class of any privileged class prior to the French Revolution, seeing them as the “little people”—the
popolo minuto
, as the Italians called them—and were not shy about expressing it. “While the burgher is small,” said a Regent of Dordrecht, whose family had been Regents in his city for generations, “he should be kept small.” It was a calm assertion of the social order established, as was firmly believed, by the Almighty.
The belief of the Regents—like that of the English governing class, who undertook the actual work of government, and unlike the French
gratin
, who did nothing for the state but fuss about protocol and precedence based on the relative antiquity of their respective titles—was that they were qualified for the task, whereas “unqualified and mean persons,” in the words of Jan de Witt, called “the perfect Hollander,” should have nothing to do with government or administration “which must be reserved for qualified people alone.” As Grand Pensionary or Governor of the province of Holland and the most effective statesman his country had produced to date, Jan de Witt could justifiably call himself qualified, except perhaps in political tact. Too open in his contempt for the commoners, de Witt made himself hated, with the result that he and his brother Cornelis were torn to pieces by a lynch mob in 1672, when the commoners, suffering the fury of a French invasion, believed the de Witts were responsible for failing to prevent it. The murder was a strange paradox of extremism to erupt through the orderly surface of Dutch life.
The Regents of the Netherlands upholding a tradition of care for the poor, not always a feature of a comfortable ruling class, supported a system of public charity that impressed foreign visitors. In Amsterdam every house had a box hanging by a chain on which was written “Think of the Poor.” Small change from every merchants’ sale was deposited and the boxes kept locked until the deacons came on their rounds to retrieve the money. Twice a week they rang a bell at every house to ask what donation the resident might be expected to leave in the box. Amsterdam’s almshouse for the aged and indigent was a handsome building with a charming garden, which is still selected as a tourist sight in guidebooks. Orphanages, hospitals for “lame and decrepit” soldiers, shelters for aged sailors and for care of the insane were part of the system
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