What lay upon the surface the Netherland statesmen saw and pondered well.

What lurked beneath, they surmised as shrewdly as they could, but it was impossible, with plummet and fathom-line ever in hand, to sound the way with perfect accuracy, where the quicksands were ever shifting, and the depth or shallowness of the course perpetually varying.

It was not easy to discover the intentions of a government which did not know its own intentions, and whose changing policy was controlled by so many hidden currents.
Moreover, as already indicated, the envoys and those whom they represented had not the same means of arriving at a result as are granted to us.

Thanks to the liberality of many modern governments of Europe, the archives where the state-secrets of the buried centuries have so long mouldered, are now open to the student of history.

To him who has patience and industry many mysteries are thus revealed, which no political sagacity or critical acumen could have divined.