birth, King William I, the authoritarian ruler of the nondemocratic Dutch state, abdicated. In 1848, his successor, King William II, consented to a new liberal constitution. Overnight, the Netherlands became a constitutional monarchy, the king’s powers were constrained, and a new set of modern democratic civil liberties became the framework that guided Dutch social interaction. With the advent of parliamentary democracy and enlarged suffrage came a basic set of rights—the freedoms of assembly, religion,