As to Holland, they never forgave either the king or the
ministry for suffering that object, which they justly looked on as
principal in their design of reducing the power of England, to escape
out of their hands. This was the true secret of the commercial treaty,
made, on their part, against all the old rules and principles of
commerce, with a view of diverting the English nation, by a pursuit of
immediate profit, from an attention to the progress of France in its
designs upon that republic. The system of the economists, which led to
the general opening of commerce, facilitated that treaty, but did not
produce it. They were in despair, when they found, that, by the vigor of
Mr. Pitt, supported in this point by Mr. Fox and the opposition, the
object to which they had sacrificed their manufactures was lost to their
ambition.
This eager desire of raising France from the condition into which she
had fallen, as they conceived, from her monarchical imbecility, had been
the main spring of their precedent interference in that unhappy American
quarrel, the bad effects of which to this nation have not as yet fully
disclosed themselves. These sentiments had been long lurking in their
breasts, though their views were only discovered now and then in heat
and as by escapes, but on this occasion they exploded suddenly. They
were professed with ostentation, and propagated with zeal. These
sentiments were not produced, as some think, by their American alliance.
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