flourishing  and  daily  increasing  commerce  in  the  farthest
East  and  the  imperial  establishments  already  rising  there
were  cause  of  envy  and  jealousy  not  to  Spain  alone,  hut  to
friendly  powers.
Yet  the  government  of  Great  Britain  affected  to  regard
them  as  something  less  than  a  sovereign  state.  Although
Elizabeth  had  refused  the  sovereignty  once  proffered  to  her,
although  James  had  united  with  Henry  IV.  in  guaranteeing
the  treaty  just  concluded  between  the  States  and  Spain,  that
monarch  had  the  wonderful  conception  that  the  Republic
was  in  some  sort  a  province  of  his  own,  because  he  still  held
the  cautionary  towns  in  pledge  for  the  loans  granted  by  his
predecessor.  His  agents  at  Constantinople  were  instructed
to  represent  the  new  state  as  unworthy  to  accredit  its  envoys
as  those  of  an  independent  power.  The  Provinces  were
represented  as  a  collection  of  audacious  rebels,  a  piratical
scum  of  the  sea.1  But  the  Sultan  knew  his  interests  better
than  to  incur  the  enmity  of  this  rising  maritime  power.
The  Dutch  envoy  declaring  that  he  would  sooner  throw  him-
self into  the  Bosphorus  than  remain  to  be  treated  with  less
consideration  than  that  accorded  to  the  ministers  of  all
great  powers,  the  remonstrances  of  envious  colleagues  were
hushed,  and  Haga  was  received  with  all  due  honours.
Even  at  the  court  of  the  best  friend  of  the  Republic,  the
French  king,  men  looked  coldly  at  the  upstart  common-
wealth. Francis  Aerssens,  the  keen  and  accomplished
minister  of  the  States,  resident  in  Paris  for  many  years,  was
received  as  ambassador  after  the  truce  with  all  the  cere-
monial befitting  the  highest  rank  in  the  diplomatic  service  ;
yet  Henry  could  not  yet  persuade  himself  to  look  upon  the
power  accrediting  him  as  a  thoroughly  organized  common-
wealth.
