CHAPTER XI
DEMOCRATS AND ARISTOCRATS—
DUTCH, BELGIAN, AND SWISSDo we see in the Austrian Netherlands, or in the United Netherlands... that con-
fidence in one another, and in the common people, which enabled the United
States to go through a revolution?
—JOHN ADAMS, LONDON, 1787
It is unfortunate that the affairs of the smaller European peoples do not enter
more fully into our general histories, for their experience has been illuminating.
The very words “democrat” and “aristocrat,” as observed above in the first chapter,
were coined in the Dutch and Belgian troubles of the decade from 1780 to 1790.
In both countries the common pattern of the time was especially evident. Consti-
tuted bodies—in this case town councils and estate- assemblies—determining their
own membership within a closed system, claimed to represent the country and to
rule in their own right. Both asserted their powers and liberties against a “prince”—
the Prince of Orange in the case of the Dutch, the Austrian Emperor in that of
the Belgians—and both, after 1780, found a new popular party fighting at their
side. The new party, which was neither exactly popular not yet a party in a more
modern sense, at first felt no difference of purpose from its allies. As the controver-
sies developed, however, the new party began to brand its allies, or erstwhile allies,
as “aristocrats,” and to favor an actual reconstitution of the old constituted bodies,
so that these bodies would become representative in a new kind of way, either by
actual choice at the hands of voters outside their own ranks, or through a broaden-
ing of membership to reflect wider segments of the population.
The United Netherlands comprised the seven Dutch provinces, Holland,
Utrecht, Zeeland, Overyssel, Gelderland, Friesland, and Groningen, which to-
gether ruled over Drenthe and northern Brabant, The Austrian Netherlands, of
which Brabant and Flanders were the most important, were the ten provinces
which had remained under the Spanish crown in the sixteenth- century wars, and