HOLLAND AN HISTORICAL ESSAY _________ SOME REASONS WHY THERE IS CONFUSION OF THOUGHT AS TO THE ORIGIN OF AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS. HE growth of the American Commonwealth has been too rapid to admit of much leisure for retrospection. Pioneers must not look backward if they would continue to look forward. The American public as a whole has been very busily occupied for the past three hundred years. To build, in the short space of three centuries a magnificent civilization out of a wilderness certainly required more than gradual and passive evolution. It meant work – hard work and intelligent work. If the problems of the present and future were to be solved, mere theorizing and brooding on the past had to be banished in favor of aggressive, practical thinking. And this not only on the part of statesmen and scholars. The people, the great middle class, with their demand for “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” have done much for the formation of the laws and institutions of the great American Republic. In the very beginning of our pre-national growth, before any national policy could be formed, we find a certain unity of political ideals in almost all the colonies. Certain principles, chief among which are freedom of religious belief, “no taxation without representation,” a representative government, a comprehensive school system and a written constitution, have distinguished the American idea from the founding of the first colonies on the Atlantic Coast until the present day. From what source did these forefathers of modern America acquire the high ideals of government and right living that made the American Republic first a possibility, and finally a proved realization? Whence came the vision of industrial peace and plenty, of personal and religious freedom that inspired the Puritan Fathers on their long voyage over unknown seas, and later led Wm. Penn, Roger Williams, Thos. Hooker and others to plant the seeds of a new civilization in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Connecticut and elsewhere throughout the New England and Middle Colonies? Was it the English organization of those times, embodying a State Church, and an unlimited monarchy with all its natural consequences? It seems hardly possible. England today takes a prominent place amongst the most enlightened nations on earth, but at the time of the founding of the American Colonies it occupied quite a different position in the family of nations. Notwithstanding that England has been called the Mother Country of the United States, and has been accepted as such by the world in general and Americans in particular with a sort of blind acquiescence in the statements of English historians and of those Americans who have written the story of their country with little regard to the foreign history which influenced it, we must look elsewhere for the inspiration. Where must we look? The unbiased historian has no difficulty in answering. One nation, and one only, in the whole of Western Europe, at the time of the founding of the New England Colonies, embodied the ideas that have become an integral part of American civilization. The Netherlands had been for centuries the home of religious freedom and toleration, of representative government, and of political liberty. Through all the terrible years of the struggle with Spain, the Netherlanders were true to their ideals, even cutting the dykes and allowing the waters of the North Sea to flood the Lowlands, thereby destroying the labor of years, rather than preserve their homes and property at the price of their liberty. “Thousands for defense but not one cent for tribute” was Dutch for centuries before it was American. None were better aware of these conditions than the progressive elements of England. To them Holland was the mecca of their desires. To the Netherlands fled the persecuted Pilgrims from England. For twelve years they lived under the vigorous, but for those times, benign Dutch rule and when they set sail to seek a home of their own it was the well wishes of their good friends of Leyden that cheered them in their frail craft on the turbulent Atlantic. In the Netherlands they had observed the appalling sacrifices which the heroic people of Holland were daily making on the altar of their Fatherland, in the great struggle for religious liberty and civic freedom against the oppression of Spain. It was there the great truth that no sacrifice is too mighty for the attainment of so glorious a goal had been written indelibly on their brains, nay, burned into their very souls. What is more natural than to believe that in forming the government of their new country, the colonists should adopt the forms and customs that they had seen work so successfully in Holland? They had seen in the Netherlands the concrete application of their own beliefs. This plan of government was fresh in their memories, easily adopted, and with such alterations as were necessary to meet the new conditions, eminently practical. It seems somewhat remarkable on first examination that so much confusion should have arisen over so simple a situation. On second consideration the reasons become more evident' and easily understood. In the first place, the colonists of New England were in the majority of cases of English origin. They spoke the English tongue and were, until the American Revolution, under English supervision; English was the official language. It is but natural that the English historians should claim for England the intellectual parenthood of so illustrious an offspring. In justice to the historians, it must be remembered that only in comparatively recent times have the Government archives of England been opened to public inspection. Consequently, much valuable data has been withheld from the conscientious historian, and biased ideas have naturally arisen. History as a philosophical science is of no very great age, and few Americans understood the Dutch language sufficiently to make independent investigations. Another drawback to arriving at a logical conclusion as to the origin of American institutions is a very human trait due to patriotism. It seems the almost universal habit of national writers to disclaim or overlook any foreign influence on English or American civilization. This habit and its effect are evident in the attitude of the American public at large, an attitude often misguided. Added to this is the influence of Washington Irving's “Diedrich Knickerbocker.” If that genial writer could have foreseen the result of his “literary joke,” (his own words), it is doubtful if it would ever have seen the light of day. Even one example of its effect on American historians is quite enough to measure the confusion it has accomplished. It is from such statements as that of Julian Hawthorne in his “History of America,” that the American public has gleaned its ideas of the Dutch in this country and elsewhere. “The Dutch are not funny anywhere but in Seventeenth Century Manhattan, nor can this singularity be explained by saying that Washington Irving made them so. It inheres in the situation; and the delightful chronicles of Diedrich Knickerbocker owe half their enduring fascination to their sterling veracity,” etc. On a preceding page he has enumerated some of the virtues of these “funny” people. He says in part: “The burghers set us an example good for us to follow; and they deeded to us some of our best citizens and most engaging architectural traditions …. For their character, their temperament … the industrious decorum of their women, the dignity of their patroons, the strictness of their social conduct, the stoutness of their independence, the excellence of their good sense, and the simplicity of their prudence, we are indebted to them.” It would take more than a keen sense of humor to see anything “funny” in such qualities, but since Irving has said so, funny they must be, and the historian praises his “veracity.” Irving certainly was successful with his literary joke. Because of a common language, certain similar legal institutions, many of which are becoming slowly but surely obsolete in the United States, and the English origin of some of the early colonists, it has been assumed that all this wonderful new structure of American civilization was founded on English ideals or built up in some miraculous way from the imaginations of the indifferently educated farmers and mechanics who made up the larger part of the English population of New England.