First Salute - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [33]
Yorke’s démarche was one that might be expected from this haughty envoy whose father, having been in April, 1754, raised in the peerage to an earldom—that step in the life of the English that went to their heads like wine—his son could now look down from heights that disdained the conventional, even advisable, courtesies of an ambassador. Adams said Yorke addressed the States General in the same tone the British had used to Boston.
His veiled threat was angrily met by the Duke of Brunswick, chief adviser to the Prince and unofficial premier, as “the most insolent and improper piece that I have ever seen sent from one sovereign to another.” When made public, it caused furious indignation, although another of the Prince’s advisers pointed out that it was “not easy to swallow, but vana sine viribus ira [wrath without power is in vain], and so we’ll be compelled to come down a peg or two.” And the needed power, the adviser pointed out, the Netherlands did not have.
To the British, de Graaff’s return to his post in St. Eustatius was seen as an insult rather than the satisfaction London had demanded, and they began to contemplate active reprisal. A warning hint appeared in murmurs about abrogating the century-old Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1674, which Britain had always disliked as affirming rights of neutrality on the basis of “free ships, free goods.” Holland was too disjointed politically to pay attention to the hint.
This was the time when wrathful citizens suggested blocking the delivery of supplies to the British embassy. Serenely unaware of how close had been his discomfort, Sir Joseph acknowledged with some satisfaction to his Minister in London that his memorial had “raised a violent fermentation through the country” and alarmed and frightened the people. On his part, the Duke of Brunswick replied to William V that the threat expressed by the Ambassador of the King of England was an insult as well as an injustice to the United Provinces. Worse, in his opinion, was Yorke’s oral statement that he would be recalled if satisfaction were not given within three weeks. Yorke well knew, as the Duke reminded him, that the necessity of obtaining agreement by all the consultative bodies in the Dutch system precluded any decision within three weeks. Honor and dignity required, Brunswick said, that satisfaction be denied until the accused could be heard. The States General were obliged to protect the country’s commerce and her ports. The Duke was clearly put out. The excess of Yorke’s language had only succeeded in antagonizing a strong partisan of Britain. Brunswick concluded that Yorke’s threat was a scare tactic to justify the searching and seizing of Dutch ships.
In this affair Yorke had accomplished the exact opposite of an ambassador’s function—maintenance of mutual amiability cloaking whatever displeasure might lie beneath. In this atmosphere, the deepest and most serious debate in Dutch politics and public opinion erupted, and turned against the British. At issue was a demand of the Amsterdam merchants to the States General for a vote in favor of unlimited convoy, meaning in effect resistance to search and seizure in full performance of the principle of “free ships, free goods.” From the beginning, Britain, in her assumption as dominant sea power of her right to make the rules on the high seas, had bitterly rejected the idea of a mare liberum or “freedom of the seas,” as the United States was later to call it. The Prince-Stadtholder, anxious to keep Britain’s good will, which he saw as his protector against French invasion and more especially against revolutionary overthrow by the pro-French Patriot party, was strongly opposed to unlimited convoy, and the Orangist party of his supporters was no less so. The advocates of