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Quoted from De Witt's Interest of Holland, in Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. ii. p. 472. Observations on the Commerce of the American States, 1783, p. 115. Concerning this pamphlet, Gibbon wrote, "The Navigation Act, the palladium of Britain, was defended, perhaps saved, by his pen." American State Papers, Foreign Relations, vol. i. pp. 296-299.
The deposit intrusted to Van Baerle, and carefully locked up by him, was nothing more nor less than John de Witt's correspondence with the Marquis de Louvois, the war minister of the King of France; only the godfather forbore giving to his godson the least intimation concerning the political importance of the secret, merely desiring him not to deliver the parcel to any one but to himself, or to whomsoever he should send to claim it in his name.
De Witt's authoritative ways, his practical monopoly of power, and his bestowal of so many posts upon his relatives and friends, aroused considerable jealousy and irritation. Cabals began to be formed against him and old supporters to fall away.
Why did the Dutch in De Witt's time have admirals of their whaling fleets? Why did Louis XVI. of France, at his own personal expense, fit out whaling ships from Dunkirk, and politely invite to that town some score or two of families from our own island of Nantucket? Why did Britain between the years 1750 and 1788 pay to her whalemen in bounties upwards of L1,000,000?
He considered it "the finest old Greek classical MS. now in England." The library of Seripandus was preserved in the Augustinian monastery of St. John of Carbonara at Naples, but a part of it was sold to Jan de Witt, who took it to Holland, and this manuscript was among the number, and was included in the sale catalogue of De Witt's library in 1701.
Witt's part in the struggle was an important one, and the solid benefit resulting from the success that crowned the enterprise was well deserved by him. Before the work of construction was half completed, Mr. Harbach died, and the firm remained Stone & Witt, under which name it has become familiar to all parts of the American railroad world.
"Do you know anything about it, Doctor?" "What!" said the Doctor; "the mysterious hidden land of the great South Sea. Tasman's land, Nuyt's land, Leuwin's land, De Witt's land, any fool's land who could sail round it, and never have the sense to land and make use of it the new country of Australasia.
I will say in passing that a French version of the Interest of Holland by M. de la Cour has just been published, under the deceptive title of Mémoires de M. le Grand-Pensionnaire de Witt; as if the thoughts of a private individual, who was, to be sure, of de Witt's party, and a man of talent, but who had not enough acquaintance with public affairs or enough ability to write as that great Minister of State might have written, could pass for the production of one of the first men of his time.
So Sir W. Batten told his of the ten or twelve ships Sir G. Carteret did then tell us that upon the newes of the burning of the ships and towne the common people a Amsterdam did besiege De Witt's house, and he was force to flee to the Prince of Orange, who is gone to Cleve to the marriage of his sister.
De Witt's Widow' should have come from the hand which gave us the histories of the Princess Osra, and created the Kingdom of Ruritania. The one kind of work is clever, and smart, and knowingly rather pretentiously man-of-the-worldish. The other is large and simple, sweet and credulous. Mr.
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