States in their resolve to oppose peace or
truce, except with concession of the India trade.

The States preferred that the negotiations should come to nought on the
religious ground rather than on account of the India trade. The provinces
were nearly unanimous as to the prohibition of the Catholic worship, not
from bigotry for their own or hatred of other creeds, but from larger
views of what was then called tolerance, and from practical regard for
the necessities of the State. To permit the old worship, not from a sense
of justice but as an article of bargain with a foreign power, was not
only to abase the government of the States but to convert every sincere
Catholic throughout the republic into a grateful adherent of Philip and
the archdukes. It was deliberately to place a lever, to be used in all
future time, for the overthrow of their political structure.

In this the whole population was interested, while the India navigation,
although vital to the well-being of the nation, was not yet universally
recognised as so supremely important, and was declared by a narrow-minded
minority to concern the provinces of Holland and Zeeland alone.

All were silently agreed, therefore, to defer the religious question to
the last.

Especially, commercial greed induced the States to keep a firm clutch on
the great river on which the once splendid city of Antwerp stood. Ever
since that commercial metropolis had succumbed to Farnese, the republic
had maintained the lower forts, by means of which, and of Flushing at the
river's mouth, Antwerp was kept in a state of suspended animation. To
open the navigation of the Scheld, to permit free approach to Antwerp,
would, according to the narrow notions of the Amsterdam merchants, be
destructive to their own flourishing trade.

In vain did Richardot, in one well-fought conference, do his best to
obtain concessions on this important point. The States' commissioners
were as deaf as the Spaniards had been on the India question. Richardot,
no longer loud and furious, began to cry. With tears running down his
cheeks, he besought the Netherlanders not to insist so strenuously upon
all their points, and to remember that concessions were mutually
necessary, if an amicable arrangement were to be framed. The chances for
peace were promising. "Let not a blight be thrown over all our hopes," he
exclaimed, "by too great pertinacity on either side. Above all, let not
the States dictate terms as to a