gher Bank by a squadron of Dutch ships of the same force
under Admiral Zoutman. An action of four hours was maintained
with all the ancient courage which made so many of the memorable
sea-fights between Tromp, De Ruyter, Blake, and Monk drawn battles.
A storm separated the combatants, and saved the honor of each;
for both had suffered alike, and victory had belonged to neither.
The peace of 1784 terminated this short, but, to Holland, fatal
war; the two latter years of which had been, in the petty warfare
of privateering, most disastrous to the commerce of the republic.
Negapatam, on the coast of Coromandel, and the free navigation of
the Indian seas, were ceded to England, who occupied the other
various colonies taken during the war.

Opinion was now rapidly opening out to that spirit of intense
inquiry which arose in France, and threatened to sweep before
it not only all that was corrupt, but everything that tended
to corruption. It is in the very essence of all kinds of power
to have that tendency, and, if not checked by salutary means,
to reach that end. But the reformers of the last century, new
in the desperate practice of revolutions, seeing its necessity,
but ignorant of its nature, neither did nor could place bounds
to the careering whirlwind that they raised. The well-meaning
but intemperate changes essayed by Joseph II. in Belgium had a
considerable share in the development of free principles, although
they at first seemed only to excite the resistance of bigotry and
strengthen the growth of superstition. Holland was always alive
to those feelings of resistance, to established authority which
characterize republican opinions; and the general discontent at the
result of the war with England gave a good excuse to the pretended
patriotism which only wanted change, while it professed reform.
The stadtholder saw clearly the storm which was gathering, and
which menaced his power. Anxious for the present, and uncertain
for the future, he listened to the suggestions of England, and
resolved to secure and extend by foreign force the rights of
which he risked the loss from domestic faction.

In the divisions which were now loudly proclaimed among the states
in favor of or opposed to the House of Orange, the people, despising
all new theories which they did not comprehend, took open part
with the family so closely connected with every practical feeling
of good which their country had yet known. The states of Holland