so long loomed forth like giants and gods.

To vindicate the laws of nations and of nature; to make a noble effort
for reducing to a system--conforming, at least approximately, to divine
reason--the chaotic elements of war and peace; to recal the great facts
that earth, sea, and sky ought to belong to mankind, and not to an
accidental and very limited selection of the species was not an unworthy
task for a people which had made such unexampled sacrifice for liberty
and right.

Accordingly, at the conference on the 15th February, the Spanish
commissioners categorically summoned the States to desist entirely from
the trade to either India, exactly as before the war. To enforce this
prohibition, they said, was the principal reason why Philip desired
peace. To obtain their freedom was surely well worth renunciation of
this traffic; the more so, because their trade with Spain, which was so
much shorter and safer, was now to be re-opened. If they had been able
to keep that commerce, it was suggested, they would have never talked
about the Indies. The commissioners added, that this boon had not been
conceded to France nor England, by the treaties of Vervins and London,
and that the States therefore could not find it strange that it should be
refused to them.

The States' commissioners stoutly replied that commerce was open to all
the world, that trade was free by the great law of nature, and that
neither France, England, nor the United Provinces, were to receive edicts
on this great subject from Spain and Portugal. It was absurd to
circumscribe commercial intercourse at the very moment of exchanging
war for peace. To recognise the liberty of the States upon paper,
and to attempt the imposition of servitude in reality, was a manifest