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 divided
 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 populace
 against their magistrates, excite a general insurrection,
 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 Stadtholder,
 having married a British princess, did, by
exciting another insurrection, force from the nation
a decree, that the stadtholdership should be thenceforth
 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 general,
 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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