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DIARY AND CORRESPONDENCE OF
reserve. For my own part, I will say nothing more to you upon it, than just to ask you a question, without which I think none of us can say much that will be to the purpose; and that is, to know of you what Monsieur Van Beuninghen's project is. Monsieur Van Lewen speaks of it as a thing he had expected to receive from the Pensioner, but never has yet; and you mention it as a thing sent over, upon which you expect an answer; but neither my Lord Sunderland nor I can find any thing more by your letters than that Monsieur Van Beuninghen dislikes a guarantee of the peace being concluded between us and Holland, according to the project that came first from them, or the other that you carried over a copy of :[1] and
- ↑ This plan of the Guarantee, of which we read so much in the Journals, and which was ultimately rejected by the States, has been ably and clearly stated by Ralph, in the following passage extracted from his history. This short and accurate account of it will make the whole transaction more intelligible and more interesting.
"Mr. Algernon Sidney calls this plan of the Guarantee one of Sir W. Temple's projects, and that the great drift of it was, under the pretence of a Guarantee, to draw Holland and Spain into a League with England, that should help the Prince of Orange to an occasion of breaking the peace so lately made; that to induce the Council to embrace it, Sir William, who was taken to be the oracle of those parts, assured them there was no such thing as a party in Holland inclined to oppose the
