Peace concluded.
By the Treaty of Breda each nation retained
the goods and moveables they had respectively
captured; and, by the nineteenth article, all ships
of war as well as merchant vessels belonging to the
United Provinces, meeting on British waters any of
her ships of war, were required "to strike the flag
and lower the sail as had been formerly practised."
Thus terminated this bitter and bloody struggle. If
England suffered much, Holland, with a larger capital
but fewer permanent resources, suffered still more
severely.
Its effects. Turning to events more within our province, it may be mentioned that, on the authority of Sir Josiah Child, the opponents of the Navigation Laws point out with exultation that, thirty years after these stringent Acts came into operation, "the Dutch were beating us in every quarter." Such may have been the case in some special branches of commerce, but it is undeniable that, from the date of these laws, the merchant navy of England steadily increased; and that soon afterwards the power over the seas previously claimed by the Dutch was permanently transferred to the English. Whatever may have been the cause of these changes, whether the Navigation Acts, or "the stoppage of trade, insecurity of capital, inherited debts, and taxes on ships" sustained by the Dutch during the war, England's maritime resources increased, while those of Holland declined; and London became what Amsterdam once was, the chief emporium of the commercial world. Perhaps
- [Footnote: stopped his further advance (Cust, vol. ii. p. 391). There is at
Hampton Court an original painting by Vandevelde of the later action of August 1673, in which Spragge was drowned.]
