ations that their country requires of them.

We flatter ourselves, noble, great, venerable, noble and venerable
Lords, that the present public demonstration of our esteem and
attachment will be so much the more agreeable, as it is more rare in our
republic, and perhaps even it is without example; and as it is more
proper to efface all the odious impressions that the calumny and
malignity of the English ministry, not long ago so servilely adored by
many, but whose downfal is at present consummated, had endeavoured to
spread, particularly a little before and at the beginning of this war,
insinuations, which have since found partisans in the United Provinces,
among those who have not been ashamed to paint the Exchange of Amsterdam
(that is to say the most respectable and the most useful part of the
citizens of this city, and at the same time the principal support of the
well-being of the United Provinces) as if it consisted in a great part
of a contemptible herd of vile interested souls, having no other object
than to give loose to their avidity, and to their desire of amassing
treasures, in defrauding the public revenues, and in transporting
articles, against the faith of treaties; calumniators, who have had at
the same time, and have still the audacity to affront the most upright
regency of the most considerable city of the Republic, and to expose it
to public contempt, as if it participated by connivance, and otherwise,
in so shameful a commerce; insinuations and accusations which have been
spread with as much falshood as wickedness, and which ought to excite so
much the more the indignation of every sensible heart, when it is
considered that not only the merchants of this city, but also those of
the whole Republic have so inviolably respected the faith of treaties
that, to the astonishment of every impartial man, one cannot produce any
proofs, at least no sufficient proofs; that there hath ever been
transported from this country contraband merchandizes; whilst that the
conjuncture in which imputations of this kind have been spread rendered
the proceeding still more odious, seeing it has been done at an epoch
when the commerce and navigation of Amsterdam, and of the whole
Republic, would have experienced the first and almost the only attack of
an unjust and perfidious ally, for want of necessary protection, upon
which you, noble, great, venerable, and noble and venerable Lords, have
so often and so seriously insisted, ev