Democrats and Aristocrats 249
the modern doctrine of people’s government (Volksregering, the word then mainly used
for “democracy”). The issue lay between the alleged sovereignty of constituted bod-
ies and the alleged sovereignty of the people.^10
Regent and popular Patriots were able for a time to cooperate. It had become
the custom, since 1748, for the Prince to place his own appointees in the self-
coopting councils, or the estate assemblies, or in offices to which these bodies had
the right to elect, by the practice of sending in the names of men who were accept-
able to him, and who were thereupon elected. Van der Capellen called this practice
insluipsel, an insidious “slipping in”; and the Orangist Van Goens, explaining
Dutch affairs to the Duke of Portland, called it a prerogative not exactly legal, but
one which gave the Prince “an influence in the assemblies and magistracies with-
out which he would be a phantom.” It will be seen that this insluipsel was some-
what like that “influence” which enabled the British crown and ministry to govern
through the aristocracy in the Parliament. It is likely that without some such “in-
fluence” there could be no effective direction of government, given the extraordi-
nary dispersion and separation of powers among independent bodies that charac-
terized the Dutch republic. What was needed was either less, or more, than
resistance to insluipsel. But on reduction of the Prince’s authority all Patriots could
agree. In 1782 and 1783 many towns declared his power of recommending for of-
fice abolished.^11
Amsterdam became the center of regent opposition, while the discontents of
those outside the regent families were seen most clearly at Utrecht. Burghers
began to arm, as urged by Van der Capellen. They organized Free Corps in the
various towns, adopted uniforms, drilled, listened to speeches, and sent delegates
to national meetings. They armed against vaguely sensed dangers of “violence from
without and within,” against the menace of the small standing army and the an-
cient militia commanded by Orangist officers, against invasion by the British, or a
little later by Austrians from the side of Belgium; against the obstinacy of the
Prince; and, finally, against the “aristocrats.” Among early democrats no principle
was more common than that free citizens must serve as soldiers, and the Estates of
Holland, in 1785, even decreed a small- scale anticipation of the famous French
levée en masse. The Free Corps opened their ranks to Protestant sectaries and to
10 A. Kluit, De souvereiniteit der Staaten van Holland, verdedigt tegen de hededaggsche leere der volks-
regering... (Groningen, 1785). Kluit also in 1782 published a work in Latin significantly entitled De
potestate ordinum, “On the power of the [socio- legal] orders,” and one called De rechten van den mensch
in Frankrijk geen gewaande rechten in Nederland (Amsterdam, 1793), “The rights of man in France no
so- called rights in the Netherlands.” On Kluit see E. Lousse, La société d ’ancien regime: organisation et
representation corporatives (Louvain, 1943), 1, 13, and Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek, III,
696–98. There is little ground for agreeing with Lousse’s remark that Dutch democrats like Van der
Capellen were gagnés aux idées de J. J. Rousseau. For Rousseau on the sovereignty of the people see
above pp. 91–92. For the argument of the present book, that the idea of the sovereignty of the people,
which was indeed the essential revolutionary idea of the period, arose from the needs of political de-
bate against claims to sovereignty made by constituted bodies see above pp. 96−97 (Geneva), 161−62,
167 (America), 110−11, 236 (England).
11 On insluipsel see Vijlbrief, 144; on une influence dans les assemblies, etc., Brieven aan R. M. van
Goens en onuitgegeven stukken hem betreffende (3 vols., Utrecht, 1886), III, 208; on the role of “influ-
ence” in the eighteenth- century British constitution, Holdsworth and others as cited in Chapter VI
above.