uport are not actually in
the power of France. If their designs are just, or agreeable to those
treaties, they will doubtless not scruple, in the least, to make your
high mightinesses easy on that head, by openly explaining themselves to
a quiet and pacific neighbour, and by giving you indisputable proofs
of their intentions to fulfil the stipulations of the said two treaties
with regard to the Netherlands. The king hath so much confidence in the
good sense, prudence, and friendship of your high mightinesses, that he
makes not the least doubt of your taking the most efficacious measures
to clear up an affair of such importance; and of your being pleased,
in concert with his majesty, to watch over the fate of a country whose
situations and independence have, for more than a century, been regarded
as one of the principal supports of your liberty and commerce." It
does not appear that this remonstrance had the desired effect upon the
states-general, who were apprehensive of embroiling themselves with an
enemy so remarkably alert in taking all advantages. The truth is,
they were not only unprepared for a rupture with France, but extremely
unwilling to forego the commercial profits which they derived from their
neutrality.

The king of Prussia, about this period, began to harbour a suspicion
that certain other powers longed eagerly to enjoy the same respite from
the dangers and inconveniences of war, and that he ran the risk of being
abandoned by his sole patron and ally, who seemed greatly alarmed at his
defeat in Bohemia, and desirous of detaching himself from a connexion
which might be productive of the most disagreeable consequences to his
continental interest. Stimulated by this opinion, his Prussian majesty
is said to have written an expostulatory letter [433] _[See note 3 L,
at the end of this Vol.]_ to the king of Great Britain, in which he
very plainly taxes that monarch with having instigated him to commence
hostilities; and insists upon his remembering the engagements by which
he was so solemnly bound. From the strain of this letter, and the
Prussian king's declaration to the British minister when he first
set out for Saxony, importing that he was going to fight the king of
England's battles, a notion was generally conceived that those
two powers had agreed to certain private pacts or conventions,
the particulars of which have not yet transpired. Certain it is, a
declaration was delivered to the Prussian resident