e Prince of Orange was closely related, and a powerful army. Under
these conditions of government, and weak in numbers, the United
Provinces in 1660, with their vast wealth and external activities,
resembled a man kept up by stimulants. Factitious strength cannot
endure indefinitely; but it is wonderful to see this small State,
weaker by far in numbers than either England or France, endure the
onslaught of either singly, and for two years of both in alliance, not
only without being destroyed, but without losing her place in Europe.
She owed this astonishing result partly to the skill of one or two
men, but mainly to her sea power.

The conditions of England, with reference to her fitness to enter upon
the impending strife, differed from those of both Holland and France.
Although monarchical in government, and with much real power in the
king's hands, the latter was not able to direct the policy of the
kingdom wholly at his will. He had to reckon, as Louis had not, with
the temper and wishes of his people. What Louis gained for France, he
gained for himself; the glory of France was his glory. Charles aimed
first at his own advantage, then at that of England; but, with the
memory of the past ever before him, he was determined above all not to
incur his father's fate nor a repetition of his own exile. Therefore,
when danger became imminent, he gave way before the feeling of the
English nation. Charles himself hated Holland; he hated it as a
republic; he hated the existing government because opposed in internal
affairs to his connections, the House of Orange; and he hated it yet
more because in the days of his exile, the republic, as one of the
conditions of peace with Cromwell, had driven him from her borders. He
was drawn to France by the political sympathy of a would-be absolute
ruler, possibly by his Roman Catholic bias, and very largely by the
money paid him by Louis, which partially freed him from the control of
Parliament. In following these tendencies of his own, Charles had to
take account of certain decided wishes of his people. The English, of
the same race as the Dutch, and with similar conditions of situation,
were declared rivals for the control of the sea and of commerce; and
as the Dutch were now leading in the race, the English were the more
eager and bitter. A special cause of grievance was found in the action
of the Dutch East India Company, "which claimed the monopoly of trade
in the East, and had oblige