120 TWO CHAPTERS ILLUSTRATIVE OF 



ner. Now if a diplomatist of the present day were to ask whether 

 this self-sufficient adept of Kingcraft had obtained a quid pro quo ? 

 the fair and impartial answer would be, he had suffered himself to be 

 so completely over-reached that England had not gained a single 

 advantage, while the Netherlands were piteously consigned to their 

 fate. 



Again, upon the negociation which the Netherlands entered into 

 with Spain, respecting the recognition of their independence in the 

 year 1607, it might have been anticipated he would assume an atti- 

 tude of greatness corresponding to the bravery of the people over 

 whom he reigned. When Elizabeth would have spoken that generous 

 and warlike language which would have succeeded doubtless in attach- 

 ing the new state to her, by the surest of all ties — confidence in her 

 power as well as in her integrity and ability — nothing of this fell 

 from the lips of James. The people of the Netherlands were odious 

 and wicked in his eyes as a set of rebels ; and from his outrageously 

 insulting their feelings at one time by avowing them to be such, and 

 at another by conducting himself in the most contradictory manner — 

 blowing hot and cold with the quickest change, during the midst of 

 the negociation — the result of his fluctuating, irresolute, timid policy 

 was that Henry acquired that paramount influence which Elizabeth 

 would have grasped and maintained. 



Now we love peace and we hate war ; especially a war of pride, 

 ambition, passion, aggrandisement, and tyranny. We should then 

 have applauded the pacific dispositions of James if he had pursued 

 peace as the means of alleviating the burdens of his people, as open- 

 ing to them fresh channels of commercial intercourse and commercial 

 enterprize, as promoting arts, sciences, and civilization. But history 

 has recorded on her most durable tablet that this possessor of the 

 English throne would have purchased peace always at the price of 

 ignominy : however inconsistent it might be with public interest or 

 national honour, he would have sought it as a prize justifying the 

 basest arts and compliances, provided it could only have insured him 

 the indulgence of his habitual apathy and indolence. What was his 

 declared motto, " Becti pacifici," but a confession or proclamation in 

 him that he was of a nature impassible to those insults and offences 

 which would have unsheathed the sword of every other crowned head 

 in Europe ? 



His relations, then, with the principal continental powers might 

 have soon ceased if family circumstances had not again served to re- 

 new them. By a most unaccountable perversity of judgment, he was 



