The peace which now reigned in Europe allowed the United Provinces to direct their whole efforts toward the reform of those internal abuses resulting from feudality and fanaticism.  Confiscations were reversed, and property secured throughout the republic.  It received into its protection the persecuted sectarians of France, Germany, and Hungary; and the tolerant wisdom which it exercised in these measures gives the best assurance of its justice and prudence in one of a contrary nature, forming a solitary exception to them.  This was the expulsion of the Jesuits, whose dangerous and destructive doctrines had been long a warrant for this salutary example to the Protestant states of Europe.

In the year 1732 the United Provinces were threatened with imminent peril, which accident alone prevented from becoming fatal to their very existence.  It was perceived that the dikes, which had for ages preserved the coasts, were in many places crumbling to ruin, in spite of the enormous expenditure of money and labor devoted to their preservation.  By chance it was discovered that the beams, piles and other timber works employed in the construction of the dikes were eaten through in all parts by a species of sea-worm hitherto unknown.  The terror of the people was, as may be supposed, extreme.  Every possible resource was applied which could remedy the evil; a hard frost providentially set in and destroyed the formidable reptiles; and the country was thus saved from a danger tenfold greater than that involved in a dozen wars.

The peace of Europe was once more disturbed in 1733.  Poland, Germany, France, and Spain, were all embarked in the new war.  Holland and England stood aloof; and another family alliance of great consequence drew still closer than ever the bonds of union between them.  The young Prince of Orange, who in 1728 had been elected stadtholder of Groningen and Guelders, in addition to that of Friesland which had been enjoyed by his father, had in the year 1734 married the princess Anne, daughter of George II. of England; and by thus adding to the consideration of the House of Nassau, had opened a field for the recovery of all its old distinctions.

The death of the emperor Charles VI., in October, 1740, left his daughter, the archduchess Maria Theresa, heiress of his throne and possessions.  Young, beautiful, and endowed with qualities of the highest order, she was surrounded with enemies whose envy and ambition would have despoiled her of her splendid rights.  Frederick of Prussia, surnamed the Great, in honor of his abilities rather than his sense of justice, the electors of Bavaria and Saxony, and the kings of Spain and Sardinia, all pressed forward to the spoliation of an inheritance which seemed a fair play for all comers.  But Maria Theresa, first joining her husband, Duke Francis of Lorraine, in her sovereignty, but without prejudice to it, under the title of co-regent, took an attitude truly heroic.  When everything seemed to threaten the dismemberment of her states, she threw herself upon the generous fidelity of her Hungarian subjects with a dignified resolution that has few examples.  There was imperial grandeur even in her appeal to their compassion.  The results were electrical; and the whole tide of fortune was rapidly turned.