THORBECKE.
BY the death of its Premier, Johann Rudolf Thorbecke, Holland has lost one of the Most distinguished states- men who have ever adorned, not only the Netherlands, not unfruitful of great political capacities, but any country of Europe. It was of Thorbecke that Palmerston said that he was a statesman too great for his little country ; and the recollection of his life and labours must indeed excite the regret, coupled with no envious feeling towards the sturdy commonwealth which honoured him as its foremost citizen, that nations of greater weight and influence have been so destitute of public servants whose names deserve to be men- tioned in the same breath with his. Seventy-four years of age, for Thorbecke was born in 1798, represents a vast total of useful activity in a man who could not be inactive and who had been engaged from his earliest year in the dis- charge of public or quasi-public functions. It was not, however, without a feeling of painful surprise, notwithstanding that rumours of M. Thorbecke's failing health had been current for some months past, that the news of the death of the venerable Premier broke upon the community. It was but a few days since he had made his last appearance in the Chamber, during the dis- cussions upon the Income-tax. The step had been taken contrary to the advice of his physicians, and the knowledge that there was more of patriotic zeal than personal prudence in the proceeding no doubt contributed to swell the enthusiastic applause with which he was greeted by the Deputies. It is now certain that the exertion directly accelerated his death. At the time, however, the spectacle of Thorbecke in his accustomed place was little calculated to prepare his colleagues and countrymen for the sad event that was so soon to supervene. We might almost say of him, as of Chatham, that his last breath was given to the service of his country. Perhaps it was not less emblematic of the man, that while Chatham f411 on the well-known occasion, the last energies of Thor- becke were expended on a question of budgetary finance. In his time he had been called to decide upon the gravest ques- tions which could affect the public welfare, but in every question it was his character to be equally thorough, reflective, and resolved.
In an epoch which beholds the son of a Marseilles lock- smith on the Presidential Throne of France, the rise of Thor-
becke may not excite any extraordinary emotion. It was none
the less remarkable in a high degree. Born at Zwolle, the unpretending capital of the province of Overyssel, and of
parents in but middling circumstances, there was little con- nected with his origin which seemed to promise the favour of fortune. In truth, it was not to fortune, but to brilliant abilities which his parents spared no pains to cultivate, that he owed his advancement. An undergraduate of the University of Leyden at the age of nineteen, within three years he had obtained the baccalaureate, with the highest honours which the University could bestow, and when he de- parted from the collegiate cloisters in 1820 to visit during The first Ministry of M. Thorbecke lasted from 1849 to 1853. During that period, old, illiberal Holland came to an end, and new Liberal Holland was born. The activity of the Premier extended over the entire field of communal, provin- cial, and electoral legislation, and the existing Dutch Consti- tution is the work of his hands. Had the principles of religions equality been adopted five-and-twenty years earlier, the secession of Belgium might never have taken place. Even in 1849, however, Thorbecke had enough to do to vanquish the resistance of the ultra-Protestant party, which regarded as a profanation the grant of Catholic emancipation in the
country of William of Orange. In 1853 that ultra party, whose chief, M. Groen van Prinaterer, would have satisfied the ideal of Mr. Newdegate, found its opportunity in an event analogous to the one which in England produced the Durham Letter and the Ecclesiastical Titles' Act. In the month of March of that year the Pope made Utrecht the seat of a Catholic Archbishopric, with suffragan sees at Haarlem, Bois-le-Due, Breda, and Ruremond. Imme- diately the tide of Protestant feeling rose against the invasion, and as Thorbecke professed himself to be unable to perceive the danger, and, on the contrary, opined that the organisation of the Catholic Church was a matter for that communion exclusively, he was compelled to retire in favour of the more orthodox zeal which suited the fervour of the moment. As a considerable body of the Dutch Liberals hated the Pope with still greater energy than they loved liberty, the affair was the beginning of a scission in the Liberal ranks which has lasted to the present day, and which partly affords the reason why Thorbecke, though always remaining the acknowledged head of Dutch Liberalism, was reproached with a tendency to fall behind the more advanced members of the school. In 1862 and 1870 Thorbecke was again called to form Ministries. With regard to his religious opinions, beyond the fact of his early Spinozaism, perhaps the most definite indication of his views is afforded by the oration which M. Jolles, the Minister of Justice, delivered over his remains, in which we are assured that the deceased had firm faith in the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. In summing up the character of Thorbecke, we should probably be right in describing him as having never lost that professorial and didactic turn which his more youth- ful pursuits had lent him. No man was ever, more careful in following the Baconian rule of the multiplication of instances, in storing his mind with the results of wide and varied ex- perience, which his vast grasp of principles easily enabled him to reduce to order and sequence. With all his strong convictions, however, he had the Palmerstonian knack of never failing to present an unruffled geniality to the worst of cir- cumstances. Along with the professor, not only the man of State, but the man of the world, were happily blended in Thorbecke.
Previous page
