Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/564

 566 DUTCH MISSIONS TO ENGLAND IN 1689 October matter and form, one might have expected to find that some contemporary noted the fact. No contemporary seems to have hinted anything of the kind. The necessary powers having been granted by the states general, an invitation to negotiations for an alliance was given by the English as soon as the naval negotiations ended, but it was a month before the English commissions were signed and sealed and another month before the discussions began .^ Even then there were formal difficulties about the powers of the Dutch ambassadors and delays of many kinds.^ From the first the powerful English commission showed itself ready not only to renew but also to strengthen the treaty of March 1678.^ Strengthening it, however, was an indefinite term, and it soon appeared that it might mean something unwelcome to Witsen and Amsterdam, if not to the Dutch in general. The English refused to discuss the proportions of forces until the Dutch had agreed to make no separate peace. ^ Witsen thought that the English had more serious causes than the Dutch for a quarrel with France, that the English would find it harder to make peace if they came to want it, and that it would therefore be unwise for the Dutch, by making such an agreement, to lose a chance of limiting their liabilities in the future. Moreover, he thought that England had more staying power than the republic and might still have the strength to fight when the Dutch had lost it.^ William thought that an agreement to make no separate peace was as good for one state as for the other.* The ambassadors as a body would have liked to reserve for the states general the question of freedom to make a separate peace, but they gave way to the persistence of the English with the remark that to have refused would have aroused great uproar here and might have been taken up by ill-intentioned persons as a pretext for giving more colour to their discourses which are daily scattered abroad to foster mistrust and disunion between this kingdom and the state.' In conceding this point, the Dutch hoped that they would make the rest of the negotiations easier for themselves. After a time, however, it appeared that there was little .disposition among the English commissioners even now to fix the forces of the two allies. They seemed to think that each ought simply 4/14 June ; Witsen to Heinsius, 16/26 May. ' Ambassadors' dispatch, 11/21 June.
 * Stat. Gen. Secr. Res., 23 March/2 April ; ambassadors' dispatches, 21/31 May,
 * Secr. dispatch, 11/21 June, &c.
 * Ibid., 4/14 June. * Ibid., 11/21 June.
 * In Scheltema, Mengehoerk, in. ii 165.
 * Witsen to burgomasters, 2/12 July.