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Rh convention had rendered hostilities inevitable.

The partisans of the stadtholder, and the creatures of the government, entered with alacrity into a war, which favoured their views, and promised to gratify their resentments. But the majority of the Dutch nation, unpersuaded of the necessity of hostilities, or fearful of the consequences, coolly acquiesced in, rather than approved of, the violent measures of the government.

The more numerous part of the citizens of Amsterdam were decidedly averse, from animosity to the stadtholder, and other causes connected with their dislike of the Prince of Orange, to the war with France; and beheld first with secret satisfaction, and afterwards with open exultation, the victorious progress of the armies of that republic. But the magistrates were entirely devoted to the stadtholder; and their authority was employed to suppress the public voice. To prevent popular meetings, at which the wishes of the people might have been loudly expressed, an obsolete law was revived, by