Pieter Paulus

Pieter Paulus (9 April 1753 – 17 March 1796) was a Dutch jurist, fiscal (prosecutor) of the Admiralty of the Maze and politician.

In the early intrigues between the Stadtholder's Court, led by princess Wilhelmina of Prussia, and the fiscal of the Admiralty of Amsterdam Joan Cornelis van der Hoop to give her more influence to counteract the Duke of Brunswick, and to institute a secret Naval Council, Paulus was seen as a useful ally.

[7] The Princess regarded him as the most sympathetic of her opponents (as she wrote to the Prussian ambassador), but his suggestion that the stadtholder should make an alliance with the democrats under the Patriots, she completely rejected.

[8] After the events in Hattem,[Note 5] Paulus refused to come to Het Loo, but probably was in friendly negotiations with the French ministry of Foreign Affairs.

He spoke with Mattheus Lestevenon, and unsuccessfully mediated between the quarreling democratic and aristocratic factions of the exiled Patriots, led by Valckenaer and Van Beyma respectively.

[12] Convinced of the ideals of the French Revolution, he turned against slavery and in 1793 published a treatise on the question: In welken zin kunnen de menschen gezegd worden gelijk te zijn?

Another person won, but Paulus' entry immediately attracted far more attention and enthusiasm, especially among adherents of the Patriot faction.

[17] One of the political issues in the Revolutionary States-General was the question of how far to go in democratising the country and making it a unitary state, in which the defenders of the privileges of the Regenten (also those of the "Patriot" persuasion) and of provincial particularism opposed the radical democrats (gaining a large following in the political clubs in the city quarters of the larger cities) and the unitarists.

Zeeland, Friesland and Groningen remained opposed until in January 1796 popular unrest in those provinces forced the hands of the provincial governments.