Still more just was it, therefore, to carry arms against a nation which
closed the ports of other people.

The dispute about the India navigation could be settled in a moment, if
Spain would but keep her word. She had acknowledged the great fact of
independence, which could not be gainsaid. Let each party to the
negotiation, therefore keep that which it already possessed. Let neither
attempt to prescribe to the other--both being free and independent
States--any regulations about interior or foreign trade.

Thus reasoned the States-General, the East India directors, the great
majority of the population of the provinces, upon one great topic of
discussion. A small minority only attempted to defend the policy of
renouncing the India trade as a branch of industry, in which a certain
class, and that only in the maritime provinces, was interested. It is
certainly no slight indication of the liberty of thought, of speech, and
of the press, enjoyed at that epoch in the Netherlands and nowhere else
to anything like the same extent--that such opinions, on a subject deemed
vital to the very existence of the republic, were freely published and
listened to with toleration, if not with respect. Even the enlightened
mind of Grotius was troubled with terrors as to the effect on the public
mind at this crisis of anonymous pamphlets concerning political affairs.
But in this regard it must be admitted that Grotius was not in advance of
his age, although fully conceding that press-laws were inconsistent with
human liberty.

Maurice and Barneveld were equally strenuous in maintaining the India
trade; the prince, because he hoped that resistance to Spain upon this
point would cause the negotiations to be broken off, the Advocate in the
belief that firmness on the part of the States would induce the royal