had thought proper to recall her
minister from England, and consequently to break off all correspondence.
Mr. Keith, in pursuance of this notice, set out from Vienna on the
twenty-ninth of July; as did also Mr. Desrolles, his Britannic majesty's
minister at the court of Brussels, from this last place, about the
same time. On the seventh of July, general Pisa, commandant of Ostend,
Nieuport, and the maritime ports of Flanders, sent his adjutant to the
English vice-consul at Ostend, at six o'clock in the morning, to tell
him, that by orders from his court all communication with England was
broke off; and desired the vice-consul to intimate to the packet-boats
and British shipping at Ostend, Bruges, and Nieuport, to depart in
twenty-four hours, and not to return into any of the ports of the
empress-queen till further disposition should be made. The reasons
alleged by the court of Vienna for debarring the subjects of his
Britannic majesty from the use of these ports, obtained for the house
of Austria by the arms and treasures of Great Britain, were, "That her
imperial majesty the empress-queen, could not, with indifference, see
England, instead of giving the succours due to her by the most solemn
treaties, enter into an alliance with her enemy the king of Prussia,
and actually afford him all manner of assistance, assembling armies to
oppose those which the most christian king, her ally, had sent to her
aid, and suffering privateers to exercise open violence in her roads,
under the cannon of her ports and coasts, without giving the least
satisfaction or answer to the complaints made on that account; and the
king of Great Britain himself, at the very time she was offering him a
neutrality for Hanover, publishing, by a message to his parliament, that
she had formed, with the most christian king, dangerous designs against
that electorate; therefore, her majesty, desirous of providing for the
security of her ports, judged it expedient to give the forementioned
orders; and at the same time to declare, that she could no longer permit
a free communication between her subjects and the English, which had
hitherto been founded upon treaties that Great Britain had, without
scruple, openly violated." Notwithstanding these orders, the English
packet-boats, with letters, were allowed to pass as usual to and from
Ostend; the ministers of her imperial majesty wisely considering
how good a revenue the postage of English letters brings in to th