of Great Britain and Holland, require that they should
no longer keep silence, lest in the issue it should be considered as
a tacit consent, and as a relinquishment of all our rights. The king
commands me, therefore, to recall to your high mightinesses the two-fold
right you have acquired to keep the Austrian Netherlands under the
government of the house of Austria; and that no other has a title to
make the least alteration therein, without the consent of your high
mightinesses; unless the new allies have resolved to set aside all prior
treaties, and to dispose at pleasure of everything that may suit their
private interest. In the treaty between your high mightinesses and
the crown of France, signed at Utrecht on the eleventh of April, one
thousand seven hundred and thirteen, in the fifteenth article are these
words: "It is also agreed, that no province, fort, town, or city of
the said Netherlands, or of those which are given up by his catholic
majesty, shall ever be ceded, transferred, or given, or shall ever
devolve to the crown of France, or any prince or princess of the house
or line of France, either by virtue of any gift, exchange, marriage
contract, succession by will, or by any other title whatever, to the
power and authority of the most christian king, or of any prince or
princess of the house or line of France." In the barrier-treaty these
very stipulations are repeated in the first article: "His imperial and
catholic majesty promises and engages, that no province, city, town,
fortress, or territory of the said country, shall be ceded, transferred,
given, or devolve to the crown of France, or to any other but the
successor of the German dominions of the house of Austria, either by
donation, sale, exchange, marriage-contract, heritage, testamentary
succession, nor under any other pretext whatsoever; so that no province,
town, fortress, or territory of the said Netherlands shall ever be
subject to any other prince, but to the successor of the states of the
house of Austria alone, excepting what has been yielded by the present
treaty to the said lords the states-general. A bare reading of these
two articles is sufficient to evince all that I have just represented
to your high mightinesses: and whatever pretext the courts of Vienna and
Versailles may allege, to cover the infraction of these treaties, the
thing remains nevertheless evident, whilst these two courts are unable
to prove that the towns of Ostend and Nie