had
entered into public and diplomatic relations and conventions with them,
and their agents at foreign courts were now dignified with the rank and
title of ambassadors.

The Spanish king had likewise refused to them the concession of the right
of navigation and commerce in the East Indies, but it was a matter of
notoriety that the absence of the word India, suppressed as it was in the
treaty, implied an immense triumph on the part of the States, and that
their flourishing and daily increasing commerce in the farthest East and
the imperial establishments already rising there were cause of envy and
jealousy not to Spain alone, but to friendly powers.

Yet the government of Great Britain affected to regard them as something
less than a sovereign state. Although Elizabeth had refused the
sovereignty once proffered to her, although James had united with Henry
IV. in guaranteeing the treaty just concluded between the States and
Spain, that monarch had the wonderful conception that the Republic was in
some sort a province of his own, because he still held the cautionary
towns in pledge for the loans granted by his predecessor. His agents at
Constantinople were instructed to represent the new state as unworthy to
accredit its envoys as those of an independent power. The Provinces were
represented as a collection of audacious rebels, a piratical scum of the
sea. But the Sultan knew his interests better than to incur the enmity of
this rising maritime power. The Dutch envoy declaring that he would
sooner throw himself into the Bosphorus than remain to be treated with
less consideration than that accorded to the ministers of all great
powers, the remonstrances of envious colleagues were hushed, and Haga was
received with all due honours.

Even at the court of the best friend of the Republic, the French king,
men looked coldly at the upstart commonwealth. Francis Aerssens, the keen
and accomplished minister of the States, resident in Paris for many
years, was received as ambassador after the truce with all the ceremonial
befitting the highest rank in the diplomatic service; yet Henry could not
yet persuade himself to look upon the power accrediting him as a
thoroughly organized commonwealth.

The English ambassador asked the King if he meant to continue his aid and
assistance to the States during the truce. "Yes," answered Henry.

"And a few years beyond it?"

"No. I do not wish to offend the King of Spain from mere gaiety