Chap. XII.} 1778. |
The commercial treaty between France and the United States was, about the same time, delivered to the grand pensionary and to the pensionary of Amsterdam. The former took no notice of it whatever. Van Berckel, in the name of the regency of Amsterdam, wrote to an American correspondent at the Hague: ‘With the new republic, clearly raised up by the help of Providence, we desire leagues of amity and commerce, which shall last to the end of time.’ Yet he acknowledged that these wishes were the wishes of a single city which could not bind even the province to which it belonged. Not one province, nor one city; not Holland, nor Amsterdam; no, not even one single man, whether in authority or in humble life,—appears to have expected, planned, or wished a breach with England; and they always to the last rejected the idea of a war with that power as an impossibility. The American commissioners at Paris, being indirectly invited by van Berckel to renew the offer of a treaty of commerce between the two republics, declined to do so; for, as the grand pensionary had not replied to their letter written some months before, ‘they apprehended that any further motion of that kind on their part would not at present be agreeable.’
Meantime, one Jan de Neufville, an Amsterdam merchant, who wished his house recommended to good American merchants, and who had promised more about an American loan than he could make
