A tour through Holland

by Sir John Carr

Before we ascended to the dome, we were introduced into the great magazine of arms, which extends the whole length of the front and part of the sides of this vast pile: it contains a curious and valuable collection of ancient and modern Dutch arms. Some colours which the French took from the Spaniards have been lately added, as a present from the king to this city, a donation which could not fail affording great gratification to a people, who to this hour hold the Spanish nation in abhorrence. The prospect from the tower, or dome, is very fine and extensive, commanding the whole of the city and its environs, crowded with windmills, the river Y filled with ships, the Zuyder Zee, the Amstel, the Haarlem lake, and the quarter containing the gardens, the admiralty, and ships of war on the stocks. From this elevated spot we were nearer the bronze figures which adorn the front, representing Justice, Wealth, and Strength, and which are of an enormous size: on the other side is a colossal bronze statue of Atlas supporting the world, executed in a masterly manner. The tower contains a vast number of bells, the largest of which weighs between six and seven thousand pounds; the carillons in this dome are remarkably sweet, they play every quarter of an hour an agreeable air, which is executed to admiration. An excellent carilloneur is engaged to entertain the citizens of Amsterdam three times a week; the perfection to which he has brought his performance can only be appreciated by those who have heard it. The brass barrel by which he plays is seven feet and a half in diameter, and weighs four thousand four hundred and seventy-four pounds. The clocks strike the full hour, at the half hour, and upon the expiration of the full hour, repeat it upon a bell of a deeper tone.

CHAPTER XV.
DUNGEONS IN THE STADT-HOUSE ... TREATMENT OF THE PRISONERS ... HALL OF JUSTICE ... THE TORTURE ... CRIMINAL TRIALS ... CAPITAL PUNISHMENT ... ANECDOTE OF A MALEFACTOR ... THE BANK ... ITS FORMER AND PRESENT STATE ... POPULAR TUMULT ... EFFECTS OF DIFFUSIVE EDUCATION ... PUBLIC FETE AT AMSTERDAM ... DANCING DUTCHMEN ... THE BEGUINES ... LADIES OF HOLLAND ... HOUSE RENT ... THE WATER OF AMSTERDAM.

By considerable interest, and with much difficulty, I was admitted to see the prison which occupies one of the courts of the Stadt-house, on two sides of which, below ground, are the dungeons, to which the gaoler conducted us by a lamp: as a place of confinement nothing can be more secure, and as a place of punishment more horrible. After descending a dreary flight of steps, and passing through a long narrow passage, midway vast double doors, thickly plated with iron, were opened, through which we entered, and at the end were stopped by two other massy doors which, upon being unbolted, led to a row of subterranean dungeons. In the first, by the faint light of a rush candle, I discerned the emaciated figure of a man who had been convicted of robbery, attentively reading: he just turned from his book to look at us a moment, and then returned to it; he was condemned to inhabit this cell alone for life! In the next were two young men who, in the forms of Dutchmen, seemed to carry the elastic souls of Frenchmen, that bend to and carol under every human misery; for in this gloomy abode, in which one would suppose resignation would turn to despair, they were whistling and waltzing in the dark; whilst in the third were several women and a young girl, the latter about fifteen, confined for having displayed an early, and rather too violent a fondness for the laws of nature. These miserable beings were also in darkness, except when they closely approached the vast double bars which crossed the windows of their cells, when they were enabled to behold a little light, which faintly reached them through some low oblong apertures on the opposite side of the passage, thickly guarded by similar massy bars, just raised above the level of the court, into which these poor wretches are never permitted to walk; for, deplorable to relate, from the first minute of their commitment till their fate is finally fixed, they are never suffered to quit their gloomy abodes but to appear before their judges in the adjoining hall, where they undergo private examinations, and at length a close trial. The crimes with which these latter unhappy prisoners stood charged were not of a very malignant nature, yet were they, even before the guilt of some of them was established, cut off from light and air, and immured in regions fit only to be a receptacle for the dead. I need scarcely inform the reader that their appearance when they pressed towards the grating, when alone they were distinguishable, was in a high degree squalid and sickly.

None of these miserable wretches were loaded with irons; they would, indeed, have been a very unnecessary augmentation of cruelty, for nothing but the miraculous interference of an angel could have burst their prison-doors, which were doubly cased with iron, and fastened with enormous bolts and locks, whilst the walls of the cells were cased with ponderous masonry, through which, if a prisoner had the means to penetrate, he would afterwards have to encounter all the earth upon which the rest of the Stadt-house stood. The gaoler showed us some irons of a particular construction, and a board which fastened round the neck and one hand, for refractory criminals, but he assured me they had not been used for many years.

The principal secretary of the magistracy showed me the hall of justice, which was also formerly the torture-chamber. Here the miserable sufferer, who refused to confess his guilt, at the pleasure of his barbarous judge, underwent a variety of torments; amongst others, it was usual to fasten his hands behind his neck, with a cord which passed through pullies fastened to a vaulted ceiling, by means of which he was jerked up and down, with leaden weights of fifty pounds each lashed to his feet, until anguish overpowered his senses, and a confession of guilt was heard to quiver on his lips. Some of the iron work by which this infamous process was effected was still adhering to the walls. This ferocious and stupid practice was only abolished in the year 1798. This room is entirely of stone, low, and vaulted; the windows are small, and guarded by vast double bars of iron, and the whole is very little better than a large dungeon. A bar for the prisoner to appear at, a seat for the witness, for only one is most judiciously admitted at a time; a table and raised seats for the judges, and lower ones for the officers attached to the tribunal, form all the arrangements of this gloomy seat of justice. The prisoner is permitted to have a counsellor to plead his cause, and no strangers are admitted on any account. Three days are suffered to elapse between the sentence and its execution in capital cases; during which the prisoner is allowed whatever refreshment he may choose; an indulgence which, from the state of the appetite at such a period, seldom runs the state into much expense. Public punishments are inflicted four times in the course of the year. On these occasions a vast scaffold is erected, as I have mentioned, in the great area between the stadt-house and the weighing or custom-house, upon a level with the first floor of the former building, through which the criminals enter to the spot assigned for them to receive their punishment: those who are to be whipped receive that punishment with considerable severity, and are not permitted to retire till those who are to die have suffered death, which is inflicted by decapitation with the sword or hanging, though the latter is most frequent. On these melancholy occasions, the chief magistrates attend in their robes, and nothing is omitted to augment the solemnity of the scene.

In consequence of its being expected that though a culprit is to suffer death, he is to receive the fatal stroke in the precise mode prescribed by the law, a magistrate who presided at the execution of a murderer a few years since, had nearly subjected himself to a severe punishment. The guilt of the criminal was aggravated by cruelty, and he was condemned to lose his life by decapitation, in which case the law directs that it shall be severed by one stroke of the sword: previous to his quitting the chamber of the last prayers he laid a wager with a friend who attended him that he had suggested an expedient by which the executioner should not be able to perform his office; and accordingly, the moment he knelt to receive the fatal stroke, he rolled his head in every direction so violently, and so rapidly, that the executioner could not strike him with any probability of decollating him at one blow; and after many fruitless aims, was compelled to renounce the attempt. The officers who were entrusted to see to the execution of the sentence were in the greatest dilemma; in vain did they try by argument to persuade the fellow to remain still, and quietly have his head taken off; he was remanded back to prison, and after an hour’s deliberation, the presiding magistrate, upon his own responsibility, ordered the gallows to be brought out, upon which he caused him to be executed. The judges and lawyers took alarm, and half the city felt as if the murderer had been murdered; and nothing but the high character, rank, and influence of the magistrate, by whose resolute orders the miscreant at length paid the forfeit of his life, preserved him from the most unpleasant consequences for enforcing the spirit of the law after a different fashion from that prescribed. Capital punishments are very rare: four malefactors were executed in 1799, and nine since. The Dutch entertain a frightful opinion of the criminal laws of England, which they consider very sanguinary, from the great number of delinquents who are annually put to death there.

The strong apartments which formerly contained the vast treasures of the bank, and the offices attached to that wealthy concern, are on the ground-floor, where several clerks are employed to transact the business of that celebrated establishment. From the wise measures adopted by the king, who made, as I have before observed, the recognition of the national debt one of the first measures of his government, the national creditor has no apprehensions. Before the war, this institution, which was a bank of deposit, was supposed to contain the greatest quantity of bullion in the world, and popular credulity dwelt with ostentatious fondness upon the extent of its accumulated treasures, which they resembled to a Peruvian mine; its pile of precious metals was valued at the enormous sum of forty millions. The regulations which governed deposits made in this bank were as follow: the person depositing cash or bullion received a credit in the books for the amount, and a receipt for the same, which expired at the end of six months, was given, renewable upon paying a small per centage for warehouse rent: if such receipt expired before the money or bullion was redeemed, neither the one nor the other could be afterwards removed, but for it an equivalent in bank credit was given, which receipt could afterwards be converted into cash in the market. Another regulation was, that not a florin of the cash or bullion invested should ever be removed by way of loan. This compact between the bank and the creditor was always considered inviolable. A rumour was circulated, with equal celerity and anxiety, soon after the arrival of the French in Holland, highly injurious to the responsibility of the institution, and a deputation of merchants waited respectfully on the directors of the bank, to solicit satisfaction as to its solvency; to which an answer, couched in general terms, but favourable to its responsibility, was given. Owing to the unshaken stability which it had displayed, from 1672, when Louis the Fourteenth, at the head of a victorious army, was expected every hour to have made his triumphal entry into Amsterdam, to 1795, when the French fixed the destiny of the country, this answer was received with perfect confidence and security in the bank, and any doubt upon the subject was considered to be the result of party malignity. Upon the French taking possession of Amsterdam, a complete investigation of the business followed, and the official report of the provisional representatives of the city announced, that

“No deficiency whatever will exist in the said bank, and the debits and credits will precisely balance, with this exception, that instead of species, there have been received into the said bank, from time to time, as securities for large sums advanced by it within the last fifty years, a very considerable number of bonds, viz.

“Seventy bonds of the India Company of Amsterdam, guaranteed by the states of that province, being each of 100,000 florins banco, at three per cent. interest; besides a similar one of 50,000 banco, on which there will be due, according to the calculation of the said clerks, the sums of 249,000 florins banco, for interest. On account of which bonds, the treasurer of the said city is debited in the aforesaid balance 6,273,000 florins banco.

“Besides these, there are fifty bonds, each for 24,000 florins, on account of the provinces of Holland and West Friesland, belonging to the loan-office of this city, on which, according to the information of the clerks, the bank has advanced, agreeable to the aforesaid balance, the sum of 838,857 florins banco, on which there will be due for interest 30,000 florins. In addition to which, the loan-office owes the bank, conformable to the same information, the sum of 1,715,000 florins banco.