anywhere, the corsairs of England sailed
with the utmost effrontery from English ports, to prey upon the commerce
of friend and foe alike. After a career of successful plunder, it was not
difficult for the rovers to return to their native land, and, with the
proceeds of their industry, to buy themselves positions of importance,
both social and political. It was not the custom to consider too
curiously the source of the wealth. If it was sufficient to dazzle the
eyes of the vulgar, it was pretty certain to prove the respectability of
the owner.

It was in vain that the envoys of the Dutch and Venetian republics sought
redress for the enormous damage inflicted on their commerce by English
pirates, and invoked the protection of public law. It was always easy for
learned juris-consuls to prove such depredations to be consistent with
international usage and with sound morality. Even at that period,
although England was in population and in wealth so insignificant, it
possessed a lofty, insular contempt for the opinions and the doctrines of
other nations, and expected, with perfect calmness, that her own
principles should be not only admitted, but spontaneously adored.

Yet the piratical interest was no longer the controlling one. That city
on the Thames, which already numbered more than three hundred thousand
inhabitants, had discovered that more wealth was to be accumulated by her
bustling shopkeepers in the paths of legitimate industry than by a horde
of rovers over the seas, however adventurous and however protected by
Government.

As for France, she was already defending herself against piracy by what
at the period seemed a masterpiece of internal improvement. The Seine,
the Loire, and the Rhone were soon to be united in one chain of
communication. Thus merchandise might be water-borne from the channel to
the Mediterranean, without risking the five or six months' voyage by sea
then required from Havre to Marseilles, and exposure along the whole
coast to attack from the corsairs of England Spain and Barbary.

The envoys of the States-General had a brief audience of the new
sovereign, in which little more than phrases of compliment were
pronounced.

"We are here," said Barneveld, "between grief and joy. We have lost her
whose benefits to us we can never describe in words, but we have found a
successor who is heir not only to her kingdom but to all her virtues."
And with this exordium the great Advocate plunged at once