MEMORIAL PRESENTED TO THE DUTCH.

The court of Great Britain, justly displeased with the Dutch, on account of the extreme facility with which they had granted the French a free passage through Namur and Maestricht for their provisions, ammunition, and artillery, in the beginning of this campaign, had very properly remonstrated against that step, before it-was absolutely resolved on, or at least declared to be so; but in vain; a pusillanimous answer being all the satisfaction that was obtained. The tameness and indifference with which the states-general has since seen Os-tend and Nieuport put into the hands of the French, drew upon their high mightinesses a further remonstrance, which was delivered to them on the twenty-eighth of November of this year by colonel Yorke, his Britannic majesty’s plenipotentiary at the Hague, in the following terms, well calculated to awaken in them a due sense of their own danger, as well as to evince the injustice of the proceedings of the house of Austria:—Considering the critical situation which Europe has been in during the course of this year, in consequence of measures concerted to embroil all Europe, the king of Great Britain was willing to flatter himself that the courts of Vienna and Versailles, out of regard to the circumspect conduct observed by your high mightinesses, would have at least informed you of the changes they have thought proper to make in the Austrian Netherlands. It was with the utmost surprise the king heard, that without any previous consent of yours, and almost without giving you any notice, the court of Vienna had thought proper to put the towns of Ostend and Nieuport into the hands of the French troops, and to withdraw her own, as well as her artillery and stores, whilst France continues to send thither a formidable quantity of both. The conduct of the court of Vienna towards his majesty is indeed so unmerited and so extraordinary, that it is difficult to find words to express it; but whatever fallacious pretexts she may have made use of to palliate her behaviour towards England, it doth not appear that they can be extended so far as to excuse the infringement, in concert with France, of the most solemn treaties between her and your high mightinesses. The king never doubted that your high mightinesses would have made proper representations to the two courts newly allied, to demonstrate the injustice of such a proceeding, and the danger that might afterwards result from it. Your high mightinesses will have perceived that your silence on the first step encouraged the two courts, newly allied, to attempt others, and who can say where they will stop? The pretext at first was, the need which the empress-queen stood in of the troops for the war kindled in the empire, and the necessity of providing for the safety of those important places, and afterwards of their imaginary danger from England. But, high and mighty lords, it is but too evident that the two powers who have taken these measures in concert, have other projects in view, and have made new regulations with regard to that country, which cannot but alarm the neighbouring states. The late demand made to your high mightinesses, of a passage for a large train of warlike implements through some of the barrier towns, in order to be sent to Ostend and Nieuport, could not fail to awaken the king’s attention. The sincere friendship, and parity of interests, of Great Britain and Holland, require that they should no longer keep silence, lest in the issue it should be considered as a tacit consent, and as a relinquishment of all our rights. The king commands me, therefore, to recall to your high mightinesses the two-fold right you have acquired to keep the Austrian Netherlands under the government of the house of Austria; and that no other has a title to make the least alteration therein, without the consent of your high mightinesses; unless the new allies have resolved to set aside all prior treaties, and to dispose at pleasure of everything that may suit their private interest. In the treaty between your high mightinesses and the crown of France, signed at Utrecht on the eleventh of April, one thousand seven hundred and thirteen, in the fifteenth article are these words: “It is also agreed, that no province, fort, town, or city of the said Netherlands, or of those which are given up by his catholic majesty, shall ever be ceded, transferred, or given, or shall ever devolve to the crown of France, or any prince or princess of the house or line of France, either by virtue of any gift, exchange, marriage contract, succession by will, or by any other title whatever, to the power and authority of the most christian king, or of any prince or princess of the house or line of France.” In the barrier-treaty these very stipulations are repeated in the first article: “His imperial and catholic majesty promises and engages, that no province, city, town, fortress, or territory of the said country, shall be ceded, transferred, given, or devolve to the crown of France, or to any other but the successor of the German dominions of the house of Austria, either by donation, sale, exchange, marriage-contract, heritage, testamentary succession, nor under any other pretext whatsoever; so that no province, town, fortress, or territory of the said Netherlands shall ever be subject to any other prince, but to the successor of the states of the house of Austria alone, excepting what has been yielded by the present treaty to the said lords the states-general. A bare reading of these two articles is sufficient to evince all that I have just represented to your high mightinesses: and whatever pretext the courts of Vienna and Versailles may allege, to cover the infraction of these treaties, the thing remains nevertheless evident, whilst these two courts are unable to prove that the towns of Ostend and Nieuport are not actually in the power of France. If their designs are just, or agreeable to those treaties, they will doubtless not scruple, in the least, to make your high mightinesses easy on that head, by openly explaining themselves to a quiet and pacific neighbour, and by giving you indisputable proofs of their intentions to fulfil the stipulations of the said two treaties with regard to the Netherlands. The king hath so much confidence in the good sense, prudence, and friendship of your high mightinesses, that he makes not the least doubt of your taking the most efficacious measures to clear up an affair of such importance; and of your being pleased, in concert with his majesty, to watch over the fate of a country whose situations and independence have, for more than a century, been regarded as one of the principal supports of your liberty and commerce.” It does not appear that this remonstrance had the desired effect upon the states-general, who were apprehensive of embroiling themselves with an enemy so remarkably alert in taking all advantages. The truth is, they were not only unprepared for a rupture with France, but extremely unwilling to forego the commercial profits which they derived from their neutrality.

The king of Prussia, about this period, began to harbour a suspicion that certain other powers longed eagerly to enjoy the same respite from the dangers and inconveniences of war, and that he ran the risk of being abandoned by his sole patron and ally, who seemed greatly alarmed at his defeat in Bohemia, and desirous of detaching himself from a connexion which might be productive of the most disagreeable consequences to his continental interest. Stimulated by this opinion, his Prussian majesty is said to have written an expostulatory letter 433 [See note 3 L, at the end of this Vol.] to the king of Great Britain, in which he very plainly taxes that monarch with having instigated him to commence hostilities; and insists upon his remembering the engagements by which he was so solemnly bound. From the strain of this letter, and the Prussian king’s declaration to the British minister when he first set out for Saxony, importing that he was going to fight the king of England’s battles, a notion was generally conceived that those two powers had agreed to certain private pacts or conventions, the particulars of which have not yet transpired. Certain it is, a declaration was delivered to the Prussian resident at London, which appears to have been calculated as an answer to the letter. In that paper the king of Great Britain declared, that the overtures made by his majesty’s electoral ministers in Germany, touching the checks received on the continent, should have no influence on his majesty as king; that he saw, in the same light as before, the pernicious effects of the union between the courts of Vienna and Versailles, threatning a subversion of the whole system of public liberty, and of the independence of the European powers; that he considered as a fatal consequence of this dangerous connexion, the cession made by the court of Vienna of the ports in the Netherlands to France, in such a critical situation, and contrary to the faith of the most solemn treaties; that, whatever might be the success of his arms, his majesty was determined to act in constant concert with the king of Prussia in employing the most efficacious means to frustrate the unjust and oppressive designs of their common enemies. He concluded with assuring the king of Prussia, that the British crown would continue to fulfil, with the greatest punctuality, its engagements with his Prussian majesty, and to support him with firmness and vigour. Such a representation could not fail of being agreeable to a prince, who, at this juncture, stood in need of an extraordinary cordial. He knew he could securely depend, not only on the good faith of an English ministry, but also on the good plight of the British nation, which, like an indulgent nurse, hath always presented the nipple to her meagre German allies. Those, however, who pretended to consider and canvas events, without prejudice and prepossession, could not help owning their surprise at hearing an alliance stigmatized as pernicious to the system of public liberty, and subversive of the independence of the European powers, as they remembered that this alliance was the effect of necessity, to which the house of Austria was reduced for its own preservation; reduced, as its friends and partisans affirm, by those very potentates that now reproached her with these connexions.

GEORGE II. 1727-1760