On the other hand, the States had extorted from their former sovereign a
recognition of their independence.

They had secured the India trade.

They had not conceded Catholic worship.

Mankind were amazed at this result--an event hitherto unknown in
history. When before had a sovereign acknowledged the independence of
his rebellious subjects, and signed a treaty with them as with equals?
When before had Spain, expressly or by implication, admitted that the
East and West Indies were not her private property, and that navigators
to those regions, from other countries than her own, were not to be
chastised as trespassers and freebooters?

Yet the liberty of the Netherlands was acknowledged in terms which
convinced the world that it was thenceforth an established fact. And
India was as plainly expressed by the omission of the word, as if it had
been engrossed in large capitals in Article IV.

The King's Government might seek solace in syntax. They might triumph in
Cardinal Bentivoglio's subtleties, and persuade themselves that to treat
with the republic as a free nation was not to hold it for a free nation
then and for ever. But the whole world knew that the republic really was
free, and that it had treated, face to face, with its former sovereign,
exactly as the Kings of France or Great Britain, or the Grand Turk, might
treat with him. The new commonwealth had taken its place among the
nations of the earth. Other princes and potentates made not the
slightest difficulty in recognising it for an independent power and