prospective arrangement were thoroughly discussed, and it was intimated
that the king would be expected to take shares in the enterprise.
Jeannin had also repeated conferences on the same subject with the great
cosmographer Plancius. It may be well understood, therefore, that the
minister of Henry IV. was not very ardent to encourage the States in
their resolve to oppose peace or truce, except with concession of the
India trade.

The States preferred that the negotiations should come to nought on the
religious ground rather than on account of the India trade. The
provinces were nearly unanimous as to the prohibition of the Catholic
worship, not from bigotry for their own or hatred of other creeds, but
from larger views of what was then called tolerance, and from practical
regard for the necessities of the State. To permit the old worship, not
from a sense of justice but as an article of bargain with a foreign
power, was not only to abase the government of the States but to convert
every sincere Catholic throughout the republic into a grateful adherent
of Philip and the archdukes. It was deliberately to place a lever, to be
used in all future time, for the overthrow of their political structure.

In this the whole population was interested, while the India navigation,
although vital to the well-being of the nation, was not yet universally
recognised as so supremely important, and was declared by a narrow-minded
minority to concern the provinces of Holland and Zeeland alone.

All were silently agreed, therefore, to defer the religious question to
the last.

Especially, commercial greed induced the States to keep a firm clutch on
the great river on which the once splendid city of Antwerp stood. Ever