us, such as Portugal and the small Barbary States.
(b.) Nations which we particularly desired to detach from some hostile alliance by means of important concessions, like Holland, and who would be usually not neutral but either in alliance with or hostile to us, in both of which cases the concession would not injure us.
(c.) Nations usually at war with us—like France, when the concession would be, ipso facto revoked on the first declaration of war; whereas we studiously avoided making this stipulation with those nations who habitually held to a neutral policy—like Sweden and Denmark in the Northern Seas, and Spain, Naples, &c. in the Southern Seas.
IV. As very few nations (none one may say) had a larger commercial marine—except England and Holland—than the necessities of their own commerce demanded, the stipulation was practically harmless and unmeaning, except in the cases of
