"The Archduke will never be contented," said the Advocate, "unless his
Majesty of Great Britain takes a royal resolution to bring him to reason.
That he tries to lay the fault on us is pure malice. We have been ready
and are still ready to execute the treaty of Xanten. The Archduke is the
cause of the dispute concerning the act. We approved the formularies of
their Majesties, and have changed them three times to suit the King of
Great Britain. Our Provincial States have been notified in the matter, so
that we can no longer digest the Spanish impudence, and are amazed that
his Majesty can listen any more to the Spanish ministers. We fear that
those ministers are working through many hands, in order by one means or
another to excite quarrels between his Majesty, us, and the respective
inhabitants of the two countries . . . . . Take every precaution that no
attempt be made there to bring the name of the Emperor into the act. This
would be contrary to their Majesties' first resolution, very prejudicial
to the Elector of Brandenburg, to the duchies, and to ourselves. And it
is indispensable that the promise be made to the two kings as mediators,
as much for their reputation and dignity as for the interests of the
Elector, the territories, and ourselves. Otherwise too the Spaniards will
triumph over us as if they had driven us by force of arms into this
promise."

The seat of war, at the opening of the apparently inevitable conflict
between the Catholic League and the Protestant Union, would be those
debateable duchies, those border provinces, the possession of which was
of such vital importance to each of the great contending parties, and the
populations of which, although much divided, were on the whole more
inclined to the League than to the Union. It was natural enough that the
Dutch statesman should chafe at the possibility of their being lost to
the Union through the adroitness of the Catholic managers and the
supineness of the great allies of the Republic.