gned the document.

After two years and a quarter of dreary negotiation, the republic had
carried all its points, without swerving a hair's breadth from the
principles laid down in the beginning. The only concession made was that
the treaty was for a truce of twelve years, and not for peace. But as
after all, in those days, an interval of twelve years might be almost
considered an eternity of peace, and as calling a peace perpetual can
never make it so, the difference was rather one of phraseology than of
fact.

On the other hand, the States had extorted from their former sovereign a
recognition of their independence.

They had secured the India trade.

They had not conceded Catholic worship.

Mankind were amazed at this result--an event hitherto unknown in history.
When before had a sovereign acknowledged the independence of his
rebellious subjects, and signed a treaty with them as with equals? When
before had Spain, expressly or by implication, admitted that the East and
West Indies were not her private property, and that navigators to those
regions, from other countries than her own, were not to be chastised as
trespassers and freebooters?

Yet the liberty of the Netherlands was acknowledged in terms which
convinced the world that it was thenceforth an established fact. And
India was as plainly expressed by the omission of the word, as if it had
been engrossed in large capitals in Article IV.

The King's Government might seek solace in syntax. They might triumph in
Cardinal Bentivoglio's subtleties, and persuade themselves that to treat
with the republic as a free nation was not to hold it for a free nation
then and for ever. But the whole world knew that the republic really was
free, and that it had treated, face to face, with its former sovereign,
exactly as the Kings of France or Great Britain, or the Grand Turk, might
treat with him. The new commonwealth had taken its place among the
nations of the earth. Other princes and potentates made not the slightest
difficulty in recognising it for an independent power and entering into
treaties and alliances with it as with any other realm.

To the republic the substantial blessing of liberty: to his Catholic
Majesty the grammatical quirk. When the twelve years should expire, Spain
might reconquer the United Provinces if she could; relying upon the great
truth that an adverb was not a preposition. And France or Great Britain
might attempt the same thing if either