| Marriages. | Emigration. | |||||
| Portugal. | Holland. | Sweden. | Portugal. | Holland. | Sweden. | |
| 1895 | 33,018 | 35,598 | 28,728 | 44,746 | 1,314 | 14,982 |
| 1908, 1909, or 1910 | 34,150 | 42,740 | 33,131 | 40,056 | 3,220 | 23,529 |
The emigration from Portugal in 1895 was abnormal; but in 1896 the figures were 24,212, and in 1907 they reached 41,950. In Sweden in 1895 the excess of births over deaths was as high as 60,000. In Portugal it was 47,997; a figure which in 1896 fell to 38,134; rising again to 64,312 in 1909. In Holland, the average excess in 1879-84 was 54,751; in 1897 it had risen to 77,586; in 1909 to 90,483. Under such circumstances it needs the alleged doubling of Dutch commerce between 1872 and 1891, and the subsequent continued expansion, to maintain well-being. As it is, despite the tradition of good management of the poor, the number of the needy annually relieved temporarily or continuously by the charitable societies and communes[870] appears to be always over five per cent. of the population—or about twice the average proportion of paupers in the United Kingdom. The Dutch figures of course do not stand for the same order of poverty; and there is certainly not in Holland a proportional amount of the sordid misery that everywhere fringes the wealth of England. But it is clear that Holland is becoming relatively over-populated; and that the industrial conditions are not making steadily for popular elevation, standing as they do for low wages and grinding competition in many occupations.
Nor are these conditions favourable in Holland to general culture, as apart from forms of specialism, any more than in England. Dutch experts in recognised studies latterly hold their own with any—witness the names of Kuenen, Tiele, van t'Hoff, de Goeje, de Vries, Dozy, Kern, Lorentz, Waals—and the middle-class has probably a better average culture than prevails in England or the United States; but the lapsed Republic has yet to prove how much a small State may achieve in the higher civilisation. Meantime, it is plainly not smallness but too rapid increase in numbers that is the stumbling-block; and the possession of a relatively great "empire" in Java does not avail, for Holland any more than for England, to cure the social trouble at home.
FOOTNOTES:
[725] Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1-vol. ed. 1863, p. 18. For details of the different invasions see David, Manuel de l'histoire de Belgique, 1847, pp. 37, 39, 41, 49. Cp. van Kampen, Geschichte der Niederlande, Ger. ed. i, 82-89. Wenzelburger notes that the "Norsemen" included not only Norwegians and Danes, but Saxons and even Frisians (Geschichte der Niederlande, 1879, i, 61).
[726] Dutch writers claim the invention for one of their nation in the fourteenth century (cp. M'Culloch, Treatises, p. 342; Rogers, Holland, pp. 26, 27). There is clear evidence, however, that fish-salting was carried on at Yarmouth as early as 1210, one Peter Chivalier being the patentee (see Torrens M'Cullagh's Industrial History of the Free Nations, 1846, ii, 29; Madox, History of the Exchequer, ch. xiii, § 4, p. 326, cited by him; and Macpherson, Annals of Commerce, 1802, i, 384, 385). The practice was very common in antiquity; see Schürer, Jewish People in the Time of Christ, Eng. tr. Div. ii, vol. i, p. 43.
[727] It is noteworthy that an English navy practically begins with King John, in whose reign it was that fishing began to flourish at Yarmouth. See Macpherson, Annals of Commerce, i, 374, 378, 384, 532.
[728] Originally the name Flanders covered only the territory of the city of Bruges. It was extended with the extension of the domain of the Counts of Flanders (David, Manuel, pp. 48, 49).
[729] Motley, p. 20; Grattan, pp. 38-40, 43, 56. At 1286 the Flemish cities were represented side by side with the nobles in the assembly of the provincial states. The same rights were acquired by the Dutch cities in the next century.
[730] Dykes existed as early as the Roman period (Blok, Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche Volk, Groningen, 1892, i, 315; Eng. tr. i, 211; Wenzelburger, Geschichte der Niederlande, 1878, i, 52). In the Middle Ages co-operative bodies took the work out of the Church's hands (Blok, pp. 315-17; tr. p. 212).