right to reign over France.

Certainly it was fair enough for the queen and her, counsellors to stand
out for an equitable arrangement of the debt; but there was much to
dispute in the figures. When was ever an account of fifteen years'
standing adjusted, whether between nations or individuals, without much
wrangling? Meantime her Majesty held excellent security in two thriving
and most important Netherland cities. But had the States consented to
re-establish the Spanish authority over the whole of their little
Protestant republic, was there an English child so ignorant of arithmetic
or of history as not to see how vast would be the peril, and how
incalculable the expense, thus caused to England?

Yet besides the Cecils and the lord high admiral, other less influential
counsellors of the crown--even the upright and accomplished Buckhurst,
who had so often proved his friendship for the States--were in favour of
negotiation. There were many conferences with meagre results. The
Englishmen urged that the time had come for the States to repay the
queen's advances, to relieve her from future subsidies, to assume the
payment of the garrisons in the cautionary towns, and to furnish a force
in defence of England when attacked. Such was the condition of the
kingdom, they said--being, as it was, entirely without fortified cities--
that a single battle would imperil the whole realm, so that it was
necessary to keep the enemy out of it altogether.

These arguments were not unreasonable, but the inference was surely
illogical. The special envoys from the republic had not been instructed
to treat about the debt. This had been the subject of perpetual
negotiation. It was discussed almost every day by the queen's
commissioners at the Hague and by the States' resident minister at