The common ground upon which Anti-Revolutionists and Roman Catholics meet is the conviction that religion must in everything be the starting-point. The Anti-Revolutionists take the Scriptures as such; the Roman Catholics accept the Pope's decisions, given _ex cathedrâ_, as inspired by the Holy Spirit and transmitted to him by Conclaves and Councils. For the rest, Rome's creed is sheer idolatry to the Anti-Revolutionist Protestants, whereas Rome looks upon ail Protestants as lost heretics. But both, again, consider such Protestants--the so-called 'Moderns'--who reject the Trinity, the miracles, the Divine origin of the Bible, and certain other dogmas, as simple atheists, and as most 'Moderns' are Liberals, and _vice-versâ_, they proclaim the Liberal State to be an atheistic State. Strictly speaking, there is really no Conservative party in Holland, for it ceased to exist in the beginning of the seventies. After Thorbecke gave Holland the Liberal constitution of 1848, the Conservatives tried for a time to obstruct the country's political development, but ultimately they gave up the attempt, and their best and ablest men, Mr. J. Heemsherk Azn and Earl C. Th. van Lynden van Sandenburg, headed Liberal Cabinets as men professing very moderately progressive views, yet openly opposed to the restoration of the somewhat autocratic and aristocratic conditions which prevailed before 1848 in consequence of the reaction against the chaotic era of the French Revolution and Napoleon Bonaparte. Yet though there is no Conservative party in Holland, there are, none the less, Conservatives in every party. The Liberal party counts three sections, the Old Liberals, the Radico-Liberals, and the Liberal Democrats. The Old Liberals adhere to Thorbecke's principles, and maintain that it is the primary business of a Liberal State to promote individuality and to create on this basis the general conditions by which social development can be achieved. According to them the State has no right to interfere in everything, to cure everything, to provide everything, as the collectivist would like; on the contrary, its first duty is abstinence--simply to preserve a fair field and to show no favour. These Old Liberals, in fact, regard the State as a legal corporation which exists merely to administer justice and to guard the constitutional rights of its citizens. Their political friends and next-of-kin are the Radico-Liberals of the 'Liberal Union,' who form, for the present, the bulk of the party. They admit the value of individual energy and enterprise, and hold that unlimited scope must be allowed to these; they even contend that, on the whole, the system of unfettered individualism proved to be more in the workman's favour than the opposite; but they also admit that this condition is not such as it might and ought to be, and in consequence they do not object to social legislation wherever individual efforts fail.