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.  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 himself 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 commonwealth.  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 ceremonial 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 commonwealth.

The English ambassador asked the King if he meant to continue his aid and assistance to the States during the truce.  “Yes,” answered Henry.

“And a few years beyond it?”

“No.  I do not wish to offend the King of Spain from mere gaiety of heart.”

“But they are free,” replied the Ambassador; “the King of Spain could have no cause for offence.”

“They are free,” said the King, “but not sovereign.”—­“Judge then,” wrote Aerssens to Barneveld, “how we shall be with the King of Spain at the end of our term when our best friends make this distinction among themselves to our disadvantage.  They insist on making a difference between liberty and sovereignty; considering liberty as a mean term between servitude and sovereignty.”

“You would do well,” continued the Dutch ambassador, “to use the word ‘sovereignty’ on all occasions instead of ‘liberty.’” The hint was significant and the advice sound.

The haughty republic of Venice, too, with its “golden Book” and its pedigree of a thousand years, looked askance at the republic of yesterday rising like herself out of lagunes and sand banks, and affecting to place herself side by side with emperors, kings, and the lion of St. Mark.  But the all-accomplished council of that most serene commonwealth had far too much insight and too wide experience in political combinations to make the blunder of yielding to this aristocratic sentiment.