Note 419 — Chapter XIII · ISOLATION (1784, 1785)

See Colenbrander, “De Patriottentijd,” i, 415, for the Prince’s difficulty in forming (February 1784) a permanent force of 8,000 sailors subject to the Council of War and not to the provincial Estates; also “A View of the Policy ... of the United Provinces” (Dublin, 1787). As Grenville wrote to Pitt from The Hague on 31st July 1787, that the Dutch understood their Constitution very imperfectly (“Dropmore P.,” iii, 410), I may be pardoned for not seeking to unravel it here.