Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 4.djvu/151

Rh and powerful assistance, they had never been conquered.

"To return to those ill consequences which relate to the trade of your kingdoms. We beg leave to observe to your majesty, that though this treaty revives and renders your majesty a party to the fourteenth and fifteenth articles of the treaty of Munster, by virtue of which the impositions upon all goods and merchandises brought into the Spanish Low Countries by the sea, are to equal those laid on goods and merchandises imported by the Scheld, and the canals of Sass and Swyn, and other mouths of the sea adjoining; yet no care is taken to preserve that equality, upon the exportation of those goods out of the Spanish provinces, into those countries and places which, by virtue of this treaty, are to be in possession of the States; the consequence of which must in time be, and your commons are informed that in some instances it has already proved to be the case, that the impositions upon goods carried into those countries and places by the subjects of the States General, will be taken off, while those upon the goods imported by your majesty's subjects remain: by which means, Great Britain will entirely lose this most beneficial branch of trade, which it has in all ages been possessed of, even from the time when those countries were governed by the house of Burgundy, one of the most ancient, as well as the most useful allies to the crown of England.

"With repard to the other dominions and territories of Spain, your majesty's subjects have always been distinguished in their commerce " with