put into the balance with
the preservation of a Protestant confederate nation, much less to give
us a just reason _to make war against that nation, which, though not
declared, has done it more harm than the united efforts of all its
enemies_?

"_Query VIII._ Whether, if it happened two years ago, that this trade
became something more necessary to us than formerly, it is not easily
proved, that it was occasioned only by the Czar's forcing us out of our
old channel of trade to Archangel, and bringing us to Petersburg, and
our complying therewith. So that all the inconveniences we laboured
under upon that account ought to have been laid to the Czar's door, and
not to the King of Sweden's?

"_Query IX._ Whether the Czar did not in the very beginning of 1715
again permit us to trade our old way to Archangel, and whether our
Ministers had not notice thereof a great while before our fleet was sent
that year to protect our _trade to Petersburg_, which by this alteration
in the Czar's resolution was become as unnecessary for us as before?

"_Query X._ Whether the King of Sweden had not declared, that if we
would forbear trading to _Petersburg_, etc., which he looked upon as
ruinous to his kingdom, he would in no manner disturb our trade, neither
in the Baltic nor anywhere else; but that in case we would not give him
this slight proof of our friendship, he should be excused if the
innocent came to suffer with the guilty?

"_Query XI._ Whether, by our insisting upon the trade to the ports
prohibited by the King of Sweden, which besides it being unnecessary to
us, hardly makes one part in ten of that we carry on in the Baltic, we
have not drawn upon us the hazards that our trade has run all this
while, been ourselves the occasion of our great expenses in fitting out
fleets for its protection, and by our joining with the enemies of
Sweden, fully justified his Swedish Majesty's resentment; had it ever
gone so far as to seize and confiscate without distinction all our ships
and effects, wheresoever he found them, either within or without his
kingdoms?

"_Query XII._ If we were so tender of our trade to the northern ports in
general, ought we not in policy rather to have considered the hazard
that trade runs by the approaching ruin of Sweden, and _by the Czar's
becoming the whole and sole master of the Baltic, and all the naval
stores we want from thence_? Have we not also suffered greater hardships
and losses in the said trade