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280 which the citizens were forbid to alienable for the discussion of public affairs, in a season of national distress. This ordinance was issued when the French were on the frontiers of the republic, and at a time when the most desperate measures, for the security of the United Provinces, were deliberated on by the stadtholder and his party.

In the month of October, 1794, when affairs were drawing near to a crisis, the stadtholder, accompanied by the Duke of York, repaired to Amsterdam, to concert, it was thought, with the regency of that city, the terrible measure of preventing the further progress of the French arms by an inundation of the country, as had been executed with success in 1672, when Lewis XIV. with a numerous and well-appointed army, was master of Utrecht, and threatened Amsterdam. The regency of the city, alarmed at the progress of the French, and corrupted or intimidated by the stadtholder, would probably have acceded to the inundation proposed, had not the burghers of Amsterdam received intimation that such a measure