Page:A Tour Through the Batavian Republic.djvu/365

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THE BATAVIAN REPUBLIC
353

Europe, a national bankruptcy will take place in Great Britain; and this persuasion is so firmly established, that many of the Dutch who have property in the English funds, account it of no more value than their French assignats.

I shall now conclude my remarks oh the revolution of Holland, with a short detail of the probable future state of the country, according to the ideas of well-informed persons in it, whenever a general peace shall take place.

Greatly as the Dutch nation has suffered by the war, as well before as since its conquests by the French, its condition is not yet desperate, or its salvation hopeless. Its opulence is wasted, but the sources from whence that opulence was derived, though impoverished, are not dried up. The heavy calamities that have fallen on Holland, have in some degree produced a beneficial effect; they have opened the eyes of the nation to a true sense of its condition, and obliged the people to the exercise of those virtues — frugality, temperance, and simplicity of manners —