aints, but
because their complaints were perpetually just.

The States-General were dissatisfied, all the Netherlanders were
dissatisfied--and not entirely without reason--that the English, with
whom the republic was on terms not only of friendship but of alliance,
should burn their ships on the high seas, plunder their merchants, and
torture their sea-captains in order to extort information as to the most
precious portions of their cargoes. Sharp language against such
malpractices was considered but proof of democratic vulgarity. Yet it
would be hard to maintain that Martin Frobisher, Mansfield, Grenfell, and
the rest of the sea-kings, with all their dash and daring and patriotism,
were not as unscrupulous pirates as ever sailed blue water, or that they
were not apt to commit their depredations upon friend and foe alike.

On the other hand; by a liberality of commerce in extraordinary contrast
with the practice of modern times, the Netherlanders were in the habit of
trading directly with the arch-enemy of both Holland and England, even in
the midst of their conflict with him, and it was complained of that even
the munitions of war and the implements of navigation by which Spain had
been enabled to effect its foot-hold in Brittany, and thus to threaten
the English coast, were derived from this very traffic.

The Hollanders replied, that, according to their contract with England,
they were at liberty to send as many as forty or fifty vessels at a time
to Spain and Portugal, that they had never exceeded the stipulated
number, that England freely engaged in the same traffic herself with the
common enemy, that it was not reasonable to consider cordage or dried
fish or shooks and staves, butter, eggs, and corn as contraband of war,
that if they were illegitimate the English trade was vitiated to the same
degree, and that it would be utterly hopeless for the provinces to
attempt to carry on the war, except by enabling themselves, through the
widest and most unrestricted foreign commerce, even including the enemy's
realms, to provide their nation with the necessary wealth to sustain so
gigantic a conflict.

Here were ever flowing fountains of bitterest discussion and
recrimination. It must be admitted however that there was occasionally an
advantage in the despotic and summary manner in which the queen took
matters into her own hands. It was refreshing to see this great
sovereign--who was so well able to grapple with questi