d provisions for the French troops, under colour of the
barrier-treaty, which it no longer observed; nay, after having put
France in possession of Ostend and Nieuport, in manifest violation of
that treaty, and without any regard to the rights which they and the
king his master had acquired in that treaty, at the expense of so much
blood and treasure.

A COUNTER-MEMORIAL PRESENTED BY THE FRENCH MINISTER.

This memorial seems to have made some impression on the states-general,
as they scrupled to allow the artillery and stores belonging to the
French king to be removed from Amsterdam; but these scruples vanished
entirely on the receipt of a counter-memorial presented by the count
d'Affrey, the French ambassador, who mingled some effectual threats with
his expostulation. He desired them to remember, that, during the whole
course of the war, the French king had required nothing from their
friendship that was inconsistent with the strictest impartiality; and,
if he had deviated from the engagements subsisting between him and
the republic, it was only by granting the most essential and lucrative
favours to the subjects of their high mightinesses. He observed, that
the English, notwithstanding the insolence of their behaviour to the
republic, had derived, on many occasions, assistance from the protection
their effects had found in the territories of the United Provinces; that
the artillery, stores, and ammunition belonging to Wessel were deposited
in their territories, which the Hanoverian army in passing the Rhine had
very little respected; that when they repassed that river, they had no
other way of saving their sick and wounded from the hands of the French,
than by embarking them in boats, and conveying them to places where
the French left them unmolested, actuated by their respect for the
neutrality of the republic; that part of their magazines was still
deposited in the towns of the United Provinces, where also the enemies
of France had purchased and contracted for very considerable quantities
of gunpowder. He told them that, though these and several other
circumstances might have been made the subject of the justest
complaints, the king of France did not think it proper to require that
the freedom and independency of the subjects of the republic should be
restrained in branches of commerce that were not inconsistent with
its neutrality, persuaded that the faith of an engagement ought to be
inviolably preserved, th