established, it was not to be bought by either party. Each gave and each
received, and certainly Spain was in no condition to dictate the terms of
a sale. Peace, without freedom of commerce, would be merely war without
killing, and therefore without result. The Netherlanders, who in the
middle of the previous century had risen against unjust taxation and
arbitrary laws, had not grown so vile as to accept from a vanquished foe
what they had spurned from their prince. To be exiled from the ocean was
an unimaginable position for the republic. Moreover, to retire from the
Indies would be to abandon her Oriental allies, and would be a dishonour
as well us a disaster. Her good faith, never yet contaminated, would be
stained, were she now to desert the distant peoples and potentates with
whom she had formed treaties of friendship and commerce, and hand them
over to the vengeance of the Spaniards and Portuguese.

And what a trade it was which the United Provinces were thus called upon
to renounce! The foreign commerce of no other nation could be compared
in magnitude to that of their commonwealth. Twenty ships traded
regularly to Guinea, eighty to the Cape de Verd Islands, twenty to
America, and forty to the East Indies. Ten thousand sailors, who gained
their living in this traffic, would be thrown out of employment, if the
States should now listen to the Spanish propositions.

It was well known too that the profits of the East India Company had
vastly increased of late, and were augmenting with every year. The trade
with Cambay, Malabar, Ceylon, Koromandel, and Queda, had scarcely begun,
yet was already most promising. Should the Hollanders only obtain a
footing in China, they felt confident of making their way through the
South Seas and across the pole to India. Thus the search for a great
commercial highway between Cathay, Europe, and the New World, which had
been baffled in the arctic regions, should be crowned with success at the