Page:Karl Marx - Secret Diplomatic History of the Eighteenth Century (1899).djvu/71

 Rh formerly, it is not easily proved, that it was occasioned only by the Czar's forcing us out of our old channel of trade to Archangel, and bringing us to Petersburg, and our complying therewith. So that all the inconveniences we laboured under upon that account ought to have been laid to the Czar's door, and not to the King of Sweden's?

"Query IX. Whether the Czar did not in the very beginning of 1715 again permit us to trade our old way to Archangel, and whether our Ministers had not notice there of a great while before our fleet was sent that year to protect our trade to Petersburg, which by this alteration in the Czar's resolution was become as unnecessary for us as before?

"Query X. Whether the King of Sweden had not declared, that if we would forbear trading to Petersburg, etc., which he looked upon as ruinous to his kingdom, he would in no manner disturb our trade, neither in the Baltic nor anywhere else; but that in case we would not give him this slight proof of our friendship, he should be excused if the innocent came to suffer with the guilty?

"Query XI. Whether, by our insisting upon the trade to the ports prohibited by the King of Sweden, which be sides it being unnecessary to us, hardly makes one part in ten of that we carry on in the Baltic, we have not drawn upon us the hazards that our trade has run all this while, been ourselves the occasion of our great expenses in fitting out fleets for its protection, and by our joining with the enemies of Sweden, fully justified his Swedish Majesty's resentment; had it ever gone so far as to seize and confiscate without distinction all our ships and effects, wheresoever he found them, either within or without his kingdoms?

"Query XII. If we were so tender of our trade to the northern ports in general, ought we not in policy rather to have considered the hazard that trade runs by the approaching ruin of Sweden, and by the Czar's becoming the whole and sole master of the Baltic, and all the naval stores we want from thence? Have we not also suffered greater hardships and losses in the said trade from the Czar, than that