The task Brunswick had to fulfil was an anxious one, but by the exercise of great tact, during the seven years of William’s minority, he managed to gather into his hands a great deal of the powers of a stadholder, and at the same time to ingratiate himself with the anti-Orange States party, whose power especially in Holland had been growing in strength and was in fact predominant.  By politic concessions to the regents, and by the interest he displayed in the commercial and financial prosperity of the city of Amsterdam, that chief centre of opposition gave its support to his authority; and he was able to do this while keeping at the same time on good terms with Bentinck, Steyn, Fagel and the Orange party.

The political position of the United Provinces during the early part of the Brunswick guardianship was impotent and ignominious in the extreme.  Despite continued protests and complaints, Dutch merchantmen were constantly being searched for contraband and brought as prizes into English ports; and the lucrative trade that had been carried on between the West Indies and France in Dutch bottoms was completely stopped.  Even the fitting out of twenty-one ships of the line, as a convoy, effected nothing, for such a force could not face the enormous superiority of the English fleet, which at that time swept the seas.  The French ambassador, D’Affry, made most skilful use of his opportunities to create a pro-French party in Holland and especially in Amsterdam, and he was not unsuccessful in his intrigues.  But the Dutch resolve to remain neutral at any cost remained as strong as ever, for, whatever might be the case with maritime Holland, the inland provinces shrank from running any risks of foreign invasion.  When at last the Peace of Paris came in 1763, the representatives of the United Provinces, though they essayed to play the part of mediators between the warring powers, no longer occupied a position of any weight in the councils of the European nations.  The proud Republic, which had treated on equal terms with France and with Great Britain in the days of John de Witt and of William III, had become in the eyes of the statesmen of 1763 a negligible quantity.

One of the effects of the falling-off in the overseas trade of Amsterdam was to transform this great commercial city into the central exchange of Europe.  The insecurity of sea-borne trade caused many of the younger merchants to deal in money securities and bills of exchange rather than in goods.  Banking houses sprang up apace, and large fortunes were made by speculative investments in stocks and shares; and loans for foreign governments, large and small, were readily negotiated.  This state of things reached its height during the Seven Years’ War, but with the settlement which followed the peace of 1763 disaster came.  On July 25 the chief financial house in Amsterdam, that of De Neufville, failed to meet its liabilities and brought down in its crash a very large number of other firms, not merely in Holland, but also in Hamburg and other places; for a veritable panic was caused, and it was some time before stability could be restored.