Thus modestly, religiously, and sincerely spoke a statesman, who felt
that he had accomplished a great work, and that he had indeed brought the
commonwealth through the tempest at last.

The republic had secured the India trade. On this point the negotiators
had taken refuge in that most useful figure of speech for hard-pressed
diplomatists and law-makers--the ellipsis. They had left out the word
India, and his Catholic Majesty might persuade himself that by such
omission a hemisphere had actually been taken away from the Dutch
merchants and navigators. But the whole world saw that Article IV.
really contained both the East and West Indies. It hardly needed the
secret clause to make assurance doubly sure.

President Richardot was facetiously wont to observe that this point in
the treaty was so obscure that he did not understand it himself. But he
knew better. He understood it very well. The world understood it very
well. The United Provinces had throughout the negotiations ridiculde the
idea of being excluded from any part of the old world or, the new by
reason of the Borgian grant. All the commissioners knew that the war
would be renewed if any attempt were to be seriously made to put up those
famous railings around the ocean, of which the Dutch diplomatists spoke
in such bitter scorn. The Spanish plenipotentiaries, therefore, had
insisted that the word itself should be left out, and that the republic
should be forbidden access to territories subject to the crown of Spain.
So the Hollanders were thenceforth to deal directly with the kings of
Sumatra and the Moluccas, and the republics of Banda, and all the rich
commonwealths and principalities of nutmegs; cloves, and indigo, unless,
as grew every day more improbable, the Spaniards and Portuguese could
exclude them from that traffic by main force. And the Orange flag of
the republic was to float with equal facility over all America, from the