John Lothrop Motley was an American author, best known for his two popular histories The Rise of the Dutch Republic and The United Netherlands. He was also a diplomat, who helped to prevent European intervention on the side of the Confederates in the American Civil War. Wikipedia
John Lothrop Motley The Rise of the Dutch Republic
The Rise of the Dutch Republic (1856; New York: Harper, 1861) vol. 3, part 6, ch. 7, p. 627.
Of William the Silent. In a footnote Motley cites the original of his last phrase in an official report made by the Greffier Corneille Aertsens: "dont par toute la ville l'on est en si grand duil tellement que les petits enfans en pleurent par les rues."
“Local self-government…is the life-blood of liberty.”
John Lothrop Motley The Rise of the Dutch Republic
The Rise of the Dutch Republic (1856; New York: Harper, 1861) vol. 3, part 6, ch. 1, p. 416.
“Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessaries.”
Quoted from Motley's conversation by his friend Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., in The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (Boston: Phillips, Sampson, 1858), ch. 6, p. 143.
