t required all the personal influence of William to secure the
signing of a treaty (September 3), which many leading Hollanders
considered to be a subordinating of Dutch to English interests. And
they were right; from this time began that decline of Dutch commercial
supremacy which was to become more and more marked as the 18th century
progressed. The policy of William III, as Frederick the Great remarked
most justly, placed Holland in the position of a sloop towed behind the
English ship-of-the-line.

The carrying trade of the world was still, however, in the reign of
William III practically in the hands of the Dutch, despite the losses
that had been sustained during the English wars and the French invasion.
The only competitor was England under the shelter of the Navigation Act.
The English had, under favourable conditions, their staple at Dordrecht,
the Scots their staple at Veere; and the volume of trade under the
new conditions of close alliance was very considerable. But the imports
largely exceeded the exports; and both exports and imports had to be
carried in English bottoms. The Baltic (or Eastern) trade remained a
Dutch monopoly, as did the trade with Russia through Archangel. Almost
all the ships that passed through the Sound were Dutch; and they
frequented all the Baltic ports, whether Russian, Scandinavian or
German, bringing the commodities of the South and returning laden with
hemp, tallow, wood, copper, iron, corn, wax, hides and other raw
products for distribution in other lands. The English had a small number
of vessels in the Mediterranean and the Levant, and frequented the
Spanish and Portuguese harbours, but as yet they hardly interfered with
the Dutch carrying-trade in those waters. The whole trade of Spain with
her vast American dominions was by law restricted to the one port of
Cadiz; but no sooner did the galleons bringing the rich products of
Mexico and Peru reach Cadiz than the bulk of their merchandise was
quickly transhipped into Dutch vessels, which here, as elsewhere, were
the medium through which the exchange of commodities between one country
and another was effected. It was a profitable business, and the
merchants of Amsterdam and of the other Dutch commercial centres grew
rich and prospered.

The position of the Dutch in the East Indies at the close of the 17th
century is one of the marvels of history. The East India Company, with
its flourishing capital at Batavia, outdistanced all c