Page:History of England (Macaulay) Vol 5.djvu/371

 his own hand, and sealed in such a manner that no subordinate officer was let into the secret. Blanks were left, as the King had directed, for the names of two Commissioners. But Somers gently hinted that it would be proper to fill those blanks with the names of persons who were English by naturalisation, if not by birth, and who would therefore be responsible to Parliament.

The King now had what he wanted from England. The peculiarity of the Batavian polity threw some difficulties in his way; but every difficulty yielded to his authority and to the dexterous management of Heinsius. And in truth the treaty could not but be favourably regarded by the States General; for it had been carefully framed with the especial object of preventing France from obtaining any accession of territory or influence on the side of the Netherlands; and Dutchmen, who remembered the terrible year when the camp of Lewis had been pitched between Utrecht and Amsterdam, were delighted to find that he was not to add to his dominions a single fortress in their neighbourhood, and were quite willing to buy him off with whole provinces under the Pyrenees and the Apennines. The sanction both of the federal and of the provincial governments was given with ease and expedition; and in the evening of the fourth of September 1698, the treaty was signed. As to the blanks in the English powers, William had attended to his Chancellor's suggestion, and had inserted the names of Sir Joseph Williamson, minister at the Hague, a born Englishman, and of Portland, a naturalised Englishman. The Grand Pensionary and seven other Commissioners signed on behalf of the United Provinces. Tallard alone signed for France. He seems to have been extravagantly elated by what seemed to be the happy issue of the negotiation in which he had borne so great a part, and in his next despatch to Lewis boasted of the new treaty as destined to be the most famous that had been made during many centuries.

William too was well pleased; and he had reason to be so. Had the King of Spain died, as all men expected, before the end of that year, it is highly probable that France would have