A COUNTER-MEMORIAL PRESENTED BY THE FRENCH MINISTER.

This memorial seems to have made some impression on the states-general, as they scrupled to allow the artillery and stores belonging to the French king to be removed from Amsterdam; but these scruples vanished entirely on the receipt of a counter-memorial presented by the count d’Affrey, the French ambassador, who mingled some effectual threats with his expostulation. He desired them to remember, that, during the whole course of the war, the French king had required nothing from their friendship that was inconsistent with the strictest impartiality; and, if he had deviated from the engagements subsisting between him and the republic, it was only by granting the most essential and lucrative favours to the subjects of their high mightinesses. He observed, that the English, notwithstanding the insolence of their behaviour to the republic, had derived, on many occasions, assistance from the protection their effects had found in the territories of the United Provinces; that the artillery, stores, and ammunition belonging to Wessel were deposited in their territories, which the Hanoverian army in passing the Rhine had very little respected; that when they repassed that river, they had no other way of saving their sick and wounded from the hands of the French, than by embarking them in boats, and conveying them to places where the French left them unmolested, actuated by their respect for the neutrality of the republic; that part of their magazines was still deposited in the towns of the United Provinces, where also the enemies of France had purchased and contracted for very considerable quantities of gunpowder. He told them that, though these and several other circumstances might have been made the subject of the justest complaints, the king of France did not think it proper to require that the freedom and independency of the subjects of the republic should be restrained in branches of commerce that were not inconsistent with its neutrality, persuaded that the faith of an engagement ought to be inviolably preserved, though attended with some accidental and transient disadvantages. He gave them to understand, that the king his master had ordered the generals of his army carefully to avoid encroaching on the territory of the republic, and transferring thither the theatre of the war, when h in enemies retreated that way before they were forced to pass the Ehine. After such unquestionable marks of regard, he said, his king would have the justest ground of complaint, if, contrary to expectation, he should hear that the artillery and stores belonging to him were detained at Amsterdam. Thirdly, he declared that such detention would be construed as a violation of the neutrality; and demanded, in the name of the king his master, that the artillery and stores should, without delay, be forwarded to Flanders by the canals of Amsterdam and the inland navigation. This last argument was so conclusive, that they immediately granted the necessary passports; in consequence of which the cannon were conveyed to the Austrian Netherlands.