“VII.  When the conferences for the negotiation of the peace shall be formed, all the pretensions of the princes and states, engaged in the present war, shall be therein discussed bona fide, and amicably:  And nothing shall be omitted to regulate and terminate them, to the satisfaction of all the parties.

“MESNAGER.”

These overtures are founded upon the eighth article of the Grand Alliance, made in one thousand seven hundred and one; wherein are contained the conditions, without which a peace is not to be made; and whoever compares both, will find the preliminaries to reach every point proposed in that article, which those who censured them at home, if they spoke their thoughts, did not understand:  for nothing can be plainer, than what the public hath often been told, that the recovery of Spain from the house of Bourbon was a thing never imagined, when the war began, but a just and reasonable satisfaction to the Emperor.  Much less ought such a condition to be held necessary at present, not only because it is allowed on all hands to be impracticable, but likewise because, by the changes in the Austrian and Bourbon families, it would not be safe:  neither did those, who were loudest in blaming the French preliminaries, know any thing of the advantages privately stipulated for Britain, whose interests, they assured us, were all made a sacrifice to the corruption or folly of the managers; and therefore, because the opposers of peace have been better informed by what they have since heard and seen, they have changed their battery, and accused the ministers for betraying the Dutch.

The Lord Raby, Her Majesty’s ambassador at The Hague, having made a short journey to England, where he was created Earl of Strafford, went back to Holland about the beginning of October, one thousand seven hundred and eleven, with the above preliminaries, in order to communicate them to the Pensionary, and other ministers of the States.  The Earl was instructed to let them know, “That the Queen had, according to their desire, returned an answer to the first propositions signed by Mons. Torcy, signifying, that the French offers were thought, both by Her Majesty and the States, neither so particular nor so full as they ought to be; and insisting to have a distinct project formed, of such a peace as the Most Christian King would be willing to conclude:  that this affair having been for some time transacted by papers, and thereby subject to delays, Mons. Mesnager was at length sent over by France, and had signed those preliminaries now communicated to them:  that the several articles did not, indeed, contain such particular concessions as France must and will make in the course of a treaty; but that, however, Her Majesty thought them a sufficient foundation whereon to open the general conferences.

“That Her Majesty was unwilling to be charged with determining the several interests of her allies, and therefore contented herself with such general offers as might include all the particular demands, proper to be made during the treaty; where the confederates must resolve to adhere firmly together, in order to obtain from the enemy the utmost that could be hoped for, in the present circumstances of affairs; which rule, Her Majesty assured the States, she would, on her part, firmly observe.”