Briefwisseling en aantekeningen. Deel 1

LVI.
Willem Bentinck aan de gravin van Portland.

[B.M., Eg. 1712]

Sorgvliet, 23 Juni 1743.

......I wish I could pay a visit to England, but as things are at present, I cannot make any considerable absence. There are people enough who would be glad to make me insignificant, some of whom you would least suspect, and have least reason to expect it from. But that only makes me more alert, and more attentive not to lose ground. He²⁾ never forgives upon one point, which is his great one, I may say his only one, which he never loses out of sight. He is so taken with it, that he would rather sacrifice anything, than that. And yet besides the absolute necessity of the thing for the publick, it is so much the interest of his body³⁾ that nothing in the world is more plain. Had I a better subject to work with, it would certainly not be the worse, but as it is, if you knew the others, you would own the truth of what you have so often had from me. I can't tell what there may be wrong in private life, but as to sense and capacity for business, I am sure of it, and have undoubted proofs of it. Great affairs and occupations that take up the mind wear off things that are the effect of bad education. And I know more of those people than I am generally imagined to do, as well as of the other side.

If one was to make a general assembly of the whole nation, I should have a majority of ten thousand to one

2) Deze passage is met opzet duister. Zeker spreekt Bentinck hier wel over Wassenaer-Obdam en diens onverzoenlijke anti-Oranjegezindheid. Vgl. brief LXXV hierna.

3) De Ridderschap.

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at least; in an assembly of members of the government, I should have a majority of ten to one, if they dared vote as they think; in the army a majortiy of seventy odd thousand to five or six persons whose opinion I can account for. And if one was not to count votes but weigh 'em, I am sure that taking the soundest and wisest part, people that have been in business twenty, thirty, forty, fifty nay threescore years, I should have a majority of two to one at least. Others know this as well as I, and they try to hide it, because it shews the défaut de la cuirasse. And they are peevish at me for seeing what I see. I plainly perceive every day that their intention has been and is still to lead me, and they take it very ill that I will not be led without knowing why nor whither and prevent others being led. There is a certain tyrannical turn of genius mix'd with devotion¹⁾ which you have no notion of and which increases daily; it is the bane of all society, as wel as of all concert in business......

1) Vgl. P. Geyl, Een opvoeding in de 18e eeuw, Bijdr. voor vaderl. geschied., 1922, waar Wassenaer-Obdam zich onmiskenbaar met die trekken vertoont.