Sound familiar?
>>The republic had once had it's courageous side that eventually lost to it's opulent side. Its founders, that ambition had first made warriors became afterwards businessmen, by necessity, (the low countries were poor in resources) and the passion for interest on their money soon stifled their passion for glory. The soldier had often risked his life to augment his reputation. The businessman loved life, and didn't fear obscurity. One preferred victory to owning a fortune; the other had no knowledge of triumph save in his earnings. The one was given to only the pleasures that his courage alone had granted him, the second treasured with more caution the money made from his work and his diligence. The soldier had breathed nothing but combats, catching his breath only after a war; the businessman didn't see security save in peace which he desired.
>>A people devoured by a thirst for gold, did not seem to be made to taste the sweetness of love. The people of Holland were too cold and too conscientious in their work to taste a passion so tender. Their young men undertook it sometimes, not as a thing they felt but as something they'd heard spoken of. The women didn't even arrive at being indifferent and their chastity was hereditary in many families. It's true that the women were paid for their chastity with an absolute dominating role usurped from their husbands. These docile husbands, submitted patiently to the yoke, though their homes offered them no compensation for it. There they were but the equal of their servants, though sometimes they were the masters of their sons and often enough the slaves of their daughters who never failed as a consequence to compensate their husbands in the same manner, because with the example of their mother, they had an apprenticeship with their father learning an unjust scorn for men.
Translated from the original French of Abbe Raynal.
