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 532 TRADING WITH THE ENEMY AND October more selfish and unscrupulous attitude may be alleged against the English privateers and king's ships which seized Dutchmen on suspicion of trading with the enemy. Although there were complaints about this, they did not lead to any serious diplomatic difficulty between the two countries. There are at least a dozen cases in which the Dutch representatives sent in memorial after memorial, the commonest type being those of Dutch ships seized by Dover privateers and taken away from the large merchant fleets as they passed through the Straits under convoy. In 1692 the states-general remarked that such incidents were now of daily occurrence. 1 They lay on the border-line between piracy and police. The plainest contrast between the Dutch and the English in the matter of enemy trade lies not in the records of what they did, but in what they wrote about it. However little the English merchants liked or obeyed the decisions of the government, they did not argue against them ; but in the pamphlet literature of the Dutch there is a vigorous controversy about the economics of the enemy trade. There were many who wanted to limit as far as possible the restriction of trade which resulted from hostility to France. They held to the old Dutch tradition by which trade, and, if need were, even trade with the enemy, provided the means for making war. Innovations, they said, should be avoided in such times as those. 2 They wished to see France defeated, but they wanted also welfare at home. These writers saw clearly, what some of their contemporaries in Holland and other countries did not see so well, that such an obstruction and diversion of trade-routes as the war brought with it must in itself bring economic loss. The commercial system of Europe was made rigid by the exclusions of the mercantilist states : it was hard to find new outlets when trade was shut out from its old routes and destinations. The English, at the beginning of the war, had refused commercial concessions. Twelve Amster- dam houses and twelve of Ley den applied in 1692 for permission to do their Levant trade overland by Venice, Mestre, and Augs- burg, but the permission was refused. 3 So much the more reason for keeping open every outlet that was not dangerous. Several pamphleteers held that France would suffer less than the allies by becoming a closed trade-system to herself. 4 She had a surplus from her own production of food and all common wares. 5 This 1 Res. Stat. Gen. 22 January/1 February 1691/2 ; memorial of Citters, 13 April 1694 (State Papers, For., For. Ministers, 21). 2 Korte burgelijke remarques, 1691. 3 Belazioni Venete, ed. Blok (Rijks Geschiedkundige Publication), pp. 321-2. 4 Qudque reponse a quelques considerations, 1690, pp. 5-7 ; Bibliotheca Thysiana, no. 5045, p. 111. The latter is a manuscript pamphlet of French origin. 5 Consideratie om de inlandse gewassen te beneficeren, 1691.