Page:A Tour Through the Batavian Republic.djvu/364

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352
TOUR THROUGH

with me on the subject, estimated his losses from the French, in the various ways of requisitions, loans, voluntary contributions, the expence of keeping, or furnishing quarters for soldiers, and other items too long for enumeration, at five-and-forty per cent on his capital. The circumstances of his traffic perhaps made the quota of his contributions heavier than was felt by the generality of the inhabitants of the United Provinces, and this he admitted himself; but he contended, that the general loss sustained by Holland from the French could not be far short of forty per cent on the whole capital of the country. The amount of the losses sustained by the republic from other causes, he could not pretend to ascertain. He urged with great plausibility, that England had suffered an equal, if not a more serious diminution of its capital, from the enormous debt incurred by the war, and the profligate expenditure of its ministers. No opinion prevails in Holland more generally than that, whenever peace is restored to