CHAPTER XXIII.

GREAT BRITAIN MAKES WAR ON THE NETHERLANDS.

1780-1781.

THE successor of Lord Weymouth was Lord Stormont, the late British ambassador at Paris. He had an unbounded confidence in the spirit and resources of his country; but this confidence took the worst forms of haughty blindness to moral distinctions in dealing with foreign powers. To complaints by the Dutch of the outrage on their flag, he answered by interpreting treaties contrary to their plain meaning, and then by saying: "We are determined to persist in the line of conduct we have taken, be the consequences what they may."

The British ministry sent the case of the Dutch merchant vessels that had been carried into Portsmouth to the court of admiralty, where Sir James Mariott, the judge, thus laid down the law: "It imports little whether the blockade be made across the narrows at Dover or off the harbor at Brest or L'Orient. If you are taken, you are blocked. Great Britain, by her insular position, blocks naturally all the ports of Spain and France. She has a right to avail herself of this position as a gift of Providence." Swayed by the more weighty members of the republic, the stadholder addressed a representation to the empress of Russia for concert in the defence of neutral flags. Before it was received at Petersburg, Prince Galitzin, the Russian envoy at the Hague, on the third of April 1780, invited the states-general to a union for the protection of neutral trade and navigation. "The same invitation," said the envoy, "has been made to the courts of Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Lisbon, in order that by the joint endeavors of

all neutral maritime powers a natural system, founded on justice, may be established as a rule for future ages." The states-general desired to join in the association; but the stadholder, under English influence, contrived to make delay.

England acted promptly. On the seventeenth an order of the king in council suspended all treaties between the two countries. In consequence of this order, Dutch ships were taken into English ports and condemned by the admiralty, on the assumption that, French harbors being naturally blockaded by those of England, Dutch ships had no right to sail near them.

France yielded to Spain the distinction of being the first to accept the Russian proposal; and Florida Blanca on the eighteenth of April did it so heartily that, in the autobiographic report which he made of his administration to his king, he relates: "The honor of this successful project has been ascribed to Russia, which, in fact, gave it support; but it had its origin in the cabinet of your majesty."

A week later France followed Spain, saying: "The war in which the king is engaged has no other object than the liberty of the seas. The king believed he had prepared an epoch glorious for his reign, in fixing by his example the rights of neutrals. His hopes have not been deceived."

On the fifth of October the United States of America in congress, by a resolution which Robert R. Livingston drafted, proclaimed the maritime code of the empress of Russia, and afterwards included it in their treaties with the Netherlands, with Sweden, and with Prussia.

The king of England and his ministry were of the opinion that to tolerate the armed neutrality was to confess that British supremacy on the high seas was broken; and they established two points, from neither of which they would depart: the one, to attack any Netherlands convoy; the other, to prevent the association of the Netherlands with Russia at all hazards.

Even Lord Shelburne, the chief of the opposition in the upper house, condemned the Russian manifesto as an attempt by a "nation scarcely known as a maritime power thirty years ago to dictate laws of navigation to Great Britain;" and Lord Camden denounced it as a dangerous and arbitrary edict, sub

versive of the first principle of the law of nations. Yet the British government avoided expressing any opinion on the rules which had been laid down. "An ambiguous and trimming answer was given:" such is the narrative of Harris. "We seemed equally afraid to accept or dismiss the new-fangled doctrines. I was instructed secretly to oppose, but avowedly to acquiesce in them."

The neutral powers on the continent, from Archangel to Constantinople, one after the other, accepted the code of Catharine. Bernstorff, though very reluctant to do anything not agreeable to the English court with which he was then conducting a private negotiation defining contraband, on the eighth of July confirmed the adhesion of Denmark by a treaty with Russia. Gustavus of Sweden set forth to the belligerents that the principles of Russia were his own, and on the twentyfirst his kingdom acceded to the treaty between Denmark and Russia, and Denmark to that between Russia and Sweden. The three powers agreed to support each other against every attack by reprisals and other means. Each was to fit out a fleet, and the several commanders were ordered to protect every mercantile ship of the three nations against injury. When in autumn it came to light that Bernstorff in a separate treaty with Great Britain had compromised the rule respecting contraband, the minister was for the time dismissed from office. On the seventh of May 1781, Frederic of Prussia joined the armed neutrality. Five months later, Joseph II. acceded by treaty with the empress of Russia, from whom he gained advantages for the commerce of Belgium. The accession of Portugal took place in July 1782; that of Naples in February of the following year; that of the Ottoman Porte in September 1782 by its treaty with Spain, confirmed in June 1783 by its treaty with Russia.

After the British had suspended every commercial treaty with the Netherlands, Stormont wrote to Yorke: "The best way to bring the Dutch around to their senses is to wound them in their most feeling part, their carrying trade. The success of our cruisers has hitherto fallen much short of expectation." So on the thirtieth of May 1780, in a time of uninterrupted peace, Yorke was instructed to collect the best intel

ligence on the voyages of the Dutch merchants, that British cruisers might know where to go for the richest prizes.

The condition of the Netherlands was truly difficult to be borne their honor was trifled with; their commerce pillaged; they were weak and without promise of help from any side; their stadholder did not support them. They anxiously awaited the arrival of each English mail to learn by what new measures the British cabinet would abuse their power, and how many more Dutch ships had been seized. The republic had no part to choose but submission to Great Britain or an association with Russia. The draft of the convention, which the empress had directed to be offered to Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands, arrived in June. The grand pensionary and the country wished at once to accede to the confederacy of the North. But the stadholder, who in May, acting in the interests of England, refused to take a step till the conduct of all the other neutral powers should be thoroughly understood, in June would not listen to any treaty with Russia unless it should include a guarantee of the possessions of the republic in both. Indies.

The commissioners for the Netherlands found in Panin a statesman who regarded the independence of America as a result very advantageous for all nations, and especially for Russia, and who did not doubt that England would be forced to recognise it. In the course of September he drafted a convention which he held to be the only possible one between Russia and the republic. The draft did not include the wishedfor guarantee of the Dutch possessions in America, at the Cape of Good Hope, and in India; but, if the republic should be attacked on account of the convention, the other powers were to take her part. A separate article declared the object of the armed neutrality to be the restoration of peace. At the same time couriers were despatched to the courts of Stockholm and Copenhagen; so that, against the return of a favorable answer from the Hague, all things might be prepared for receiving the Dutch republic into the league of neutral powers.

Every step of this negotiation was watched by England. Yet the ministry, who were all the time seeking an alliance with Russia, disliked the appearance of going to war with the

republic solely on account of her intention of joining the armed neutrality. In October, Henry Laurens, whom the United States had accredited to the Netherlands for the purpose of raising a loan, was taken on his passage to Europe, and among his papers was found the unauthorized project for a treaty, concerted, as we have seen, between Neufville and William Lee. To Lord Stormont the "transaction appeared to be the act of individuals;" and Hillsborough owned "that the statesgeneral had had no knowledge of the treaty, which had never been signed except by private persons." But the resolution was instantly taken to use the Laurens papers so as to "give the properest direction to the war." To produce upon the public mind a strange and startling sensation, Laurens, after an examination at the admiralty before the three secretaries of state, was escorted through the streets of London by a large guard, and confined as a state's prisoner in the Tower, where he was debarred from all intercourse and from the use of pen and paper.

When the courier from Petersburg arrived at the Hague with the treaty which Panin had drafted, Stormont saw there was no time to be lost. On the last day of October, Yorke announced that the states-general, at their meeting in the first week of November, would disavow the transaction between Amsterdam and America, but would decide to join the northern league.

On the third of November this despatch was laid before the king. On that same day the states of Holland, after full deliberation, condemned the conduct of Amsterdam for the acts which Great Britain resented, and resolved to give to the British government every reasonable satisfaction, so as to leave not the slightest ground for just complaint. Even Yorke, who saw everything with the eyes of an Englishman, thought their conduct rather fair. Yet Stormont would brook no delay; and the British cabinet, well aware of the peaceful intentions of the states of Holland and the states-general, with the approval of the king came to a determination to make war upon the republic, unless it should recede from its purpose of joining the northern confederacy. In the very hours in which this decision was taken, Yorke was writing that a war with