534 TRADING WITH THE ENEMY AND October is satisfied with any argument in the pamphlet which advocates the exclusion of all wines and brandies on the ground that the Spaniards, being unable to export them, will thus have more for their sailors, who need them badly on their long Atlantic voyages. 1 The attempt to make out that the prohibition of trade with the enemy was actually profitable cannot have been convincing : the common sense of the Dutch merchants must have told them that whatever advantages the plan had were not economic but political. When economic advantages were claimed for it, this was most likely done by Orange partisans who really wished rather to injure the French than directly to benefit the Dutch. There is a small incident, standing by itself, which brings out clearly the difficulty of stopping the leakages in the restric- tions of trade with France and shows the nature of the forces on both sides : the incident of the Corunna packets. It appears that on the outbreak of war no alteration was made in the postal arrangements of either the English or the Dutch with France and the countries bordering on France. It was, of course, illegal to conduct treasonable correspondence with the enemy, and there were convictions in both countries for offences of this kind, but other correspondence was freely permitted and carried on. From the autumn of 1689 the duke of Shrewsbury, as secretary of state, was working for the stoppage of the Calais packets, because of their usefulness for treasonable designs. 2 Even before this, it had been proposed for a different and more significant reason that the sending and receiving of all letters and bills of exchange to and from France should be prohibited : the commons inserted a clause to this effect in the bill for forbid- ding trade with France. 3 This clause was not enacted, but it is interesting as a sign of this new phase of commercial hostilities. In the same month Nicholas Witsen, one of the Dutch ambassadors in London, reported to the burgomasters of Amsterdam a proposal which had been put forward in London by the Spanish ambassador and had some English supporters. Until the treaty of the Pyrenees, thirty years before, the Dutch post for Spain and Portugal had always been carried by sea, and it was now sug- gested that this plan should be revived. Letters for the Penin- sula and also for Italy should go by water from Land's End to Corunna or Vigo. Count Taxis, to whom the postal service of the empire belonged, should have an agent at The Brill to pass German letters through to the same route if the emperor and the 1 C. Indiae Raven, Consideratien. 2 See his letters to Wildman, 23 October/2 November (Cal. of State Papers, Dom., 1689-90, p. 301), 3/13 November (ibid. p. 313), 12/22 December 1689 (ibid. p. 354), and to the lords of the treasury and the mayor of Dover, 13/23 February 1689/90 (ibid. p. 461). 3 Commons' Journals, 27 July/6 August 1689.
