ng among governments, a
recognised member of the great international family, was now gravely
expected to purchase from its ancient tyrant the independence which it
had long possessed, while the price demanded for the free papers was not
only extravagant, but would be disgraceful to an emancipated slave.
Holland was not likely at that turning point in her history, and in the
world's history, to be false to herself and to the great principles of
public law. It was good for the cause of humanity that the republic
should reappear at that epoch. It was wholesome for Europe that there
should be just then a plain self-governing people, able to speak homely
and important truths. It was healthy for the moral and political
atmosphere--in those days and in the time to come--that a fresh breeze
from that little sea-born commonwealth should sweep away some of the
ancient fog through which a few very feeble and very crooked mortals had
so long loomed forth like giants and gods.

To vindicate the laws of nations and of nature; to make a noble effort
for reducing to a system--conforming, at least approximately, to divine
reason--the chaotic elements of war and peace; to recal the great facts
that earth, sea, and sky ought to belong to mankind, and not to an
accidental and very limited selection of the species was not an unworthy
task for a people which had made such unexampled sacrifice for liberty
and right.

Accordingly, at the conference on the 15th February, the Spanish
commissioners categorically summoned the States to desist entirely from
the trade to either India, exactly as before the war. To enforce this
prohibition, they said, was the principal reason why Philip desired
peace. To obtain their freedom was surely well worth renunciation of this
traffic; the more so, because their trade with Spain, which was so much
shorter and safer, was now to be re-opened. If they had been able to keep
that commerce, it was suggested, they would have never talked about the
Indies. The commissioners added, that this boon had not been conceded to
France nor England, by the treaties of Vervins and London, and that the
States therefore could not find it strange that it should be refused to
them.

The States' commissioners stoutly replied that commerce was open to all
the world, that trade was free by the great law of nature, and that
neither France, England, nor the United Provinces, were to receive edicts
on this great subject from Spain and