the control of Parliament. In following these tendencies of his own,
Charles had to take account of certain decided wishes of his people.
The English, of the same race as the Dutch, and with similar
conditions of situation, were declared rivals for the control of the
sea and of commerce and as the Dutch were now leading in the race, the
English were the more eager and bitter. A special cause of grievance
was found in the action of the Dutch East India Company, "which damned
the monopoly of trade in the East, and had obliged distant princes
with whom it treated to close their States to foreign nations, who
were thus excluded, not only from the Dutch colonies, but from all the
territory of the Indies." Conscious of greater strength, the English
also wished to control the action of Dutch politics, and in the days
of the English Republic had even sought to impose a union of the two
governments. At the first, therefore, popular rivalry and enmity
seconded the king's wishes; the more so as France had not for some
years been formidable on the continent. As soon, however, as the
aggressive policy of Louis XIV. was generally recognized, the English
people, both nobles and commons, felt the great danger to be there, as
a century before it had been in Spain. The transfer of the Spanish
Netherlands (Belgium) to France would tend toward the subjection of
Europe, and especially would be a blow to the sea power both of the
Dutch and English; for it was not to be supposed that Louis would
allow the Scheldt and port of Antwerp to remain closed, as they then
were, under a treaty wrung by the Dutch from the weakness of Spain.
The re-opening to commerce of that great city would be a blow alike to
Amsterdam and to London. With the revival of inherited opposition to
France the ties of kindred began to tell; the memory of past alliance
against the tyranny of Spain was recalled; and similarity of religious
faith, still a powerful motive, drew the two together. At the same
time the great and systematic efforts of Colbert to build up the