resources, and constancy lies the greatest safeguard of the Reformed Churches, so far as human means avail, the Reformed Religion itself must be endangered and brought to an extreme crisis.  On the other hand, were all of the Protestant name to cultivate perpetual peace with that brotherly unanimity which becomes them, there will be no reason at all to be very much afraid of inconvenience to us from all that the arts or force of our enemies can do.”  O that his Majesty may see his way to a pacific settlement of his differences with the Dutch!  The Protector will gladly do anything to secure that result.

(LXXXIX.) TO THE STATES OF HOLLAND, Sept. 1856:—­William Cooper, a London minister, has represented to the Protector that his father-in-law, John le Maire of Amsterdam, invented, about thirty-three years ago, a certain device by which much revenue was brought in to the States of Holland, without any burden to the people.  It was the settling of a certain small seal or stamp to be used in the Provinces ("id autem erat parvi sigilli in Provinciis constitutio").  For the working this invention he had taken into partnership one John van den Brook; and the States of Holland had promised the partners 3000 guilders yearly, equal to about L300 English, for the use of the thing.  Not a farthing, however, had they ever received, though the States had benefited so much; and now, as they are both tired out, they have transferred their right to William Cooper, who means to prosecute the claim.  The States are prayed to look into the matter, and to pay Cooper the promised annual pension, with arrears.

(XC.) To LOUIS XIV. of FRANCE, Sept. 1656:—­His Highness is sorry to trouble his Majesty so often; but the grievances of English subjects must be attended to.  Now a London merchant, called Robert Brown, who had bought 4000 hides, part of the cargo of a Dieppe ship, legally taken before the League between France and Britain, had sold about 200 of them to a currier in Dieppe, but; instead of receiving the money, had found it attached and stopped in his factor’s hands.  He could have no redress from the French court of law to which the suit had been referred; and the Protector now desires his Majesty to bring the matter before his own Council.  If acts done before the League are to be called in question, Leagues will be meaningless; and it would be well to make an example or two of persons causing trouble of this kind.

Six of these thirteen State-Letters, it ought to be observed, belong to the single month of August 1656.  They form Milton’s largest contribution of work of this kind in any one month since the very beginning of his Secretaryship, with the exception of his burst of letters on the news of the Piedmontese Massacre in May 1655.  Nor ought it to escape notice that some of the letters of Aug. 1656 are particularly important, and that two of them are manifestos of that