The answer which he received was that the King was determined, not only to persist, but also to increase the duties on many of those articles in which Holland carried on a lucrative trade with France.

The consequence of these errors, errors committed in defiance of repeated warnings, and, as it should seem, in the mere wantonness of selfwill, was that now, when the voice of a single powerful member of the Batavian federation might have averted an event fatal to all the politics of Lewis, no such voice was raised.

The Envoy, with all his skill, vainly endeavoured to rally the party by the help of which he had, during several years, held the Stadtholder in check.

The arrogance and obstinacy of the master counteracted all the efforts of the servant.

At length Avaux was compelled to send to Versailles the alarming tidings that no reliance could be placed on Amsterdam, so long devoted to the French cause, that some of the well intentioned were alarmed for their religion, and that the few whose inclinations were unchanged could not venture to utter what they thought.