2 Benjamin Franklin 1737 
found some inconveniences, however, in the extent 
of powers annexed to that office, and exercised by a 
single person. On his death they resumed and di- 
vided those powers among the states and cities; but 
there has been a constant struggle since between that 
family and the nation. In the last century the then 
Prince of Orange found means to inflame the popu- 
lace against their magistrates, excite a general insur- 
rection, in which an excellent minister, Dewitt, was 
murdered, all the old magistrates displaced, and the 
Stadtholder re-invested with all the former powers. 
In this century, the father of the present Stadt- 
holder, having married a British princess, did, by 
exciting another insurrection, force from the nation 
a decree, that the stadtholdership should be thence- 
forth hereditary in his family. And now his son, 
being suspected of having favored England in the 
war, and thereby lost the confidence of the nation, is 
forming an internal faction to support his power, 
and reinstate his favorite, the Duke of Brunswick; 
and he holds up his family alliances with England and 
Prussia to terrify opposition. It was this conduct of 
the Stadtholder which induced the states to recur to 
the protection of France, and put their troops under 
a French, rather than the Stadtholder’s German gen- 
eral, the Duke of Brunswick. And this is the source 
of all the present disorders in Holland, which, if the 
Stadtholder has abilities equal to his inclinations, 
will probably, after a ruinous and bloody civil war, 
end in establishing an hereditary monarchy in his 
family. 
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