eated with
insolence and barbarity. The subjects of the United Provinces raised
a loud clamour against the English, for having, by these captures,
violated the law of nations and the particular treaty of commerce
subsisting between Great Britain and the republic. Remonstrances were
made to the English ministry, who expostulated, in their turn, with
the deputies of the states-general; and the two nations were inflamed
against each other with the most bitter animosity. The British resident
at the Hague, in a conference with the states, represented that the king
his master could not hope to see peace speedily re-established, if the
neutral princes should assume a right of carrying on the trade of his
enemies; that he expected, from their known justice, and the alliance
by which they were so nearly connected with his subjects, they would
honestly abandon this fraudulent commerce, and agree that naval stores
should be comprehended in the class of contraband commodities.
He answered some articles of the complaints they had made with an
appearance of candour and moderation; declared his majesty's abhorrence
of the violences which had been committed upon the subjects of the
United Provinces; explained the steps which had been taken by the
English government to bring the offenders to justice, as well as
to prevent such outrages for the future; and assured them that his
Britannic majesty had nothing more at heart, than to renew and maintain,
in full force, the mutual confidence and friendship by which the
maritime powers of England and Holland had been so long united.

These professions of esteem and affection were not sufficient to quiet
the minds and appease the resentment of the Dutch merchants; and the
French party, which was both numerous and powerful, employed all their
art and influence to exasperate their passions, and widen the breach
between the two nations. The court of Versailles did not fail to seize
this opportunity of insinuation: while, on one hand, their ministers and
emissaries in Holland exaggerated the indignities and injuries which
the states had sustained from the insolence and rapacity of the
English; they, on the other hand, flattered and cajoled them with little
advantages in trade, and formal professions of respect.--Such was
the memorial delivered by the count d'Affry, intimating that the
empress-queen being under an absolute necessity of employing all her
forces to defend her hereditary dominions in Ge