ants, especially those of
Amsterdam, watched the progress of the war with anxiety, and engaged
in speculations which were profitable to themselves and beneficial to
the United States. The remonstrances made by the British minister at
the Hague against this conduct, were answered in the most amicable
manner by the government, but the practice of individuals continued
the same.

When the war broke out between France and England, a number of Dutch
vessels trading with France, laden with materials for shipbuilding,
were seized, and carried into the ports of Great Britain, although the
existing treaties between the two nations were understood to exclude
those articles from the list of contraband of war. The British cabinet
justified these acts of violence, and persisted in refusing to permit
naval stores to be carried to her enemy in neutral bottoms. This
refusal, however, was accompanied with friendly professions, with an
offer to pay for the vessels and cargoes already seized, and with
proposals to form new stipulations for the future regulation of that
commerce.

The States General refused to enter into any negotiations for the
modification of subsisting treaties; and the merchants of all the
great trading towns, especially those of Amsterdam, expressed the
utmost indignation at the injuries they had sustained. In consequence
of this conduct, the British government required those succours which
were stipulated in ancient treaties, and insisted that the _casus
foederis_ had now occurred. Advantage was taken of the refusal of
the States General to comply with this demand, to declare the treaties
between the two nations at an end.

The temper produced by this state of things, inclined Holland to enter
into the treaty for an armed neutrality; and, in November, the Dutch
government acceded to it. Some unknown causes prevented the actual
signature of the treaty on the part of the States General, until a
circumstance occurred which was used for the purpose of placing them
in a situation not to avail themselves of the aid stipulated by that
confederacy to its members.

While Mr. Lee, one of the ministers of the United States, was on a
mission to the courts of Vienna and Berlin, he fell in company with a
Mr. John de Neufwille, a merchant of Amsterdam, with whom he held
several conversations on the subject of a commercial intercourse
between the two nations, the result of which was, that the plan of an
eventual commercial tre