Love of freedom, readiness to strike and bleed at any moment in her cause, manly resistance to despotism, however overshadowing, were the leading characteristics of the race in all regions or periods, whether among Frisian swamps, Dutch dykes, the gentle hills and dales of England, or the pathless forests of America.
Doubtless, the history of human liberty in Holland and Flanders, as every where else upon earth where there has been such a history, unrolls many scenes of turbulence and bloodshed; although these features have been exaggerated by prejudiced historians.

Still, if there were luxury and insolence, sedition and uproar, at any rate there was life.

Those violent little commonwealths had blood in their veins.

They were compact of proud, self-helping, muscular vigor.

The most sanguinary tumults which they ever enacted in the face of day, were better than the order and silence born of the midnight darkness of despotism.