ents would soon survive merely as a memory. The three
addresses aroused immense enthusiasm, and a decree was passed for their
printing and circulation.[112]

These ecstatic praises of the Convention sounded oddly, as that body had
just been discussing a petition from several Parisians who had lately
been imprisoned without knowing why or by whom. And the Belfast address
of congratulation on the progress of religious liberty was followed by
the complaints of two members of the Convention that they had been half
drowned at Chartres for a profession of atheism.[113] But undoubtedly
these addresses by British Radicals caused exultation on both sides of
the Channel. Frenchmen believed that our people were about to overthrow
the Cabinet;[114] while the visitors returned home to trumpet forth the
triumphs of Reason and the doom of Tyranny.

Certainly the action of the French Convention seemed to assume the
speedy advent of a Jacobinical millennium. To the eye of faith the
headlong flight of the Austrians from Belgium opened up boundless vistas
of conquest, or rather, of fraternization with liberated serfs.
Consequently the month from 16th November to 15th December witnessed the
issue of four defiantly propagandist decrees. That of 16th November
enjoined on French generals the pursuit of the Austrians on to any
territory where they might find refuge--obviously a threat to the German
and Dutch States near at hand. On the same day the French deputies
decreed freedom of navigation on the estuary of the River Scheldt within
the Dutch territory, which that people had strictly controlled since the
Treaty of Muenster (1648). In this connection it is well to remember that
the right of the Dutch to exclude foreigners from that estuary had been
recognized by France in five treaties signed with Great Britain since
the Peace of Utrecht. Further, by the Anglo-Dutch alliance of the year
1788, we had covenanted to uphold the rights of the Dutch in this and
other respects. Thus, the French Republic was taking upon itself to
rescind a well-established right of the Dutch Republic.

There is, however, another side to this question. The law of Nature, as
distinct from the law of nations, forbade the barring of a navigable
river to the commerce of aliens; and in this particular case the
exclusive privileges retained by the Dutch had almost strangled the
trade of Antwerp. Visitors describe the desolate aspect of the quays and
streets in a city whi