ions of
that place, a proper equivalent, that may content him, be given him:
And, as England cannot furnish that equivalent, the discussion of it
shall be referred to the conferences to be held for the negotiation of
the peace.

"VII. When the conferences for the negotiation of the peace shall be
formed, all the pretensions of the princes and states, engaged in the
present war, shall be therein discussed _bona fide_, and amicably: And
nothing shall be omitted to regulate and terminate them, to the
satisfaction of all the parties.

"MESNAGER."

These overtures are founded upon the eighth article of the Grand
Alliance, made in one thousand seven hundred and one; wherein are
contained the conditions, without which a peace is not to be made; and
whoever compares both, will find the preliminaries to reach every point
proposed in that article, which those who censured them at home, if they
spoke their thoughts, did not understand: for nothing can be plainer,
than what the public hath often been told, that the recovery of Spain
from the house of Bourbon was a thing never imagined, when the war
began, but a just and reasonable satisfaction to the Emperor. Much less
ought such a condition to be held necessary at present, not only because
it is allowed on all hands to be impracticable, but likewise because, by
the changes in the Austrian and Bourbon families, it would not be safe:
neither did those, who were loudest in blaming the French preliminaries,
know any thing of the advantages privately stipulated for Britain, whose
interests, they assured us, were all made a sacrifice to the corruption
or folly of the managers; and therefore, because the opposers of peace
have been better informed by what they have since heard and seen, they
have changed their battery, and accused the ministers for betraying the
Dutch.

The Lord Raby, Her Majesty's ambassador at The Hague, having made a
short journey to England, where he was created Earl of Strafford, went
back to Holland about the beginning of October, one thousand seven
hundred and eleven, with the above preliminaries, in order to
communicate them to the Pensionary, and other ministers of the States.
The Earl was instructed to let them know, "That the Queen had, according
to their desire, returned an answer to the first propositions signed by
Mons. Torcy, signifying, that the French offers were thought, both by
Her Majesty and the States, neither so particular nor so full as they