The Batavian Republic 515
state are formed into a single body. The whole machine is too broken down to be
cured by palliatives. We need an extraordinary remedy, a new order, a general re-
casting, a completely new administration, which, while injuring no individual, can
arouse enthusiasm for the re- establishment of order and the public credit, by giv-
ing more consideration to some people and more part in the government to oth-
ers... .” In this very accurate diagnosis he suggested England as his model, but
what he described was what most Batavians hoped to achieve.^17
Another Orangist, van Lampsins, submitted long reports to the Hereditary
Prince after a secret visit to Holland. He thought counterrevolution impossible.
He found no one outside the Batavian government itself complaining of depen-
dency upon France. He believed that Orange and British agents were supporting
“aristocracy in a few provinces like Zeeland and Friesland only by all sorts of arti-
fices,” while in Holland and Utrecht, the principal provinces, “democracy is mak-
ing rapid progress.” The democrats and lesser people, suspicious of old regents and
oligarchs, were, it seemed to him, natural allies for the House of Orange. He pro-
posed, therefore, that “the self- respect of the patriots of 1795 and the democrats
should be saved” by a few concessions. In addition to trifles, such as abolition of
hunting rights, these concessions should include the admission of the whole bur-
gher class and of Catholics and minority Protestants to positions in most offices of
state, and to the managing boards of the Bank of Amsterdam and the East India
Company.^18 Van Lampsins’ belief that the Reformed Religion should nevertheless
remain established, with the highest political office limited to its adherents, was
enough to keep his program, as of 1795, in the “moderate” category.
The Hereditary Prince, persuaded of the wisdom of such advice, repeatedly took
up the matter with his father.^19 William V, however, could not be moved. He was
much influenced by his wife, a Prussian princess, who, as the heroine of counter-
revolution in 1787, had shown that she was not a woman to put up with radical
impudence. William V was willing to throw himself humbly on England and
Prussia, though the Prussian king, having just made peace with France, showed
little inclination to aid his embarrassed sister. Frederick William II, indeed, deter-
mined to keep north Germany neutral, even broke up the gathering of two thou-
sand armed Dutch émigrés at Osnabruck. It was therefore without much chance
of success that the exiled stadtholder, in May 1795, entreated his brother- in- law
“to restore the constitution which Your Majesty and His Britannic Majesty
deigned to guarantee in 1788.”^20
“I persist,” wrote William V to his son in September 1796, “in the idea I have
always had, that I cannot accept the stadholderate unless the [old] constitution is
re- established.” The Batavian ideas were to him French ideas, and there could be
no question of adopting “the French system and the ideas of equality and abolition
of nobility, hereditary honors and offices and the dominant position of the Re-
formed religion.” In June 1797: “Privileges of provinces, towns and corps des no-
bles must be restored.... I will not accept any such position as president of a
17 d’Yvoy to the Hereditary Prince, July 17, 1795, in Colenbrander, I, 841.
18 Colenbrander, II, 839–41, 873, 924–25.
19 Ibid., 893–908, 961–65.
20 Ibid., 827.