Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/550

 542 DUTCH MISSIONS TO ENGLAND IN 1689 October foreign relations afresh from the beginning, and it is not surprising that in these circumstances there were delays and muddles in the office. Equally it is not surprising that the four special diplomatic missions of the year created no grandiose scheme of revision in the relations of the Netherlands and the British Isles. Of the four conventions which they arranged, three make simply necessary adjustments in the details of policy — ^the treaty for the union of the fleets, the treaty of alliance, and the treaty on recaptured prizes. The fourth, the treaty for prohibiting commerce with France, is indeed a document of wider significance though short- lived in the execution, but it sprang full-grown from the policy of the king and the English, and was not materially altered by the discussions of the diplomatists. Some matters of non-con- tentious or scarcely contentious business were disposed of, amongst which the most important was the repayment to the Dutch for the expenses incurred on William's expedition, a repayment which many English critics afterwards thought excessive.^ These, however, we may pass over, going on to consider one by one the more serious and less temporary questions which occupied the negotiators. First comes the question of commercial relations. For a good many years before the outbreak of war in 1688, there had been much dissatisfaction in Holland with the state of the tariff. Various and conflicting plans for reform had been suggested, some tending in the direction of protectionism, others towards greater freedom of commerce. The French war, and the tariff war which preceded it, radically altered the problem of commercial policy. A stoppage and diversion of trade-routes came about similar to what would have resulted from a prohibitive French tariff against the Dutch and a prohibitive Dutch tariff against the French. The first attempt to deal with this situation was made by the missions to England. England's position had undergone exactly the same change as Holland's. The scope of the free movement of goods of either nation had been limited by the shutting off of a great market and a great source of supply. An attempt was made to compensate for this loss by creating gi'eater freedom of movement in the restricted area that was left. England was invited to consider a mutual removal of burdens, either general or partial. On one side, the way had been prepared for this by the existing demand for a lightenmg of burdens on Dutch trade : the same arguments applied, of course, still more strongly to burdens imposed by another power. The protective tendency, however, ran contrary to this attempt, not only in Holland, but still more in England, and in the result it frustrated the plan of liberation. » Sec Macaulay, History of England, ed. Firth, iii 1346.