We cannot follow the misguided prince in all the winding ways of intrigue and subterfuge through which he labored to reach his object. Religion, the holiest of sentiments, and Christianity, the most sacred of its forms, were perpetually degraded by being made the pretexts for that unworthy object. He was for a while diverted from its direct pursuit by the preparation made to afford assistance to some of the allies of the republic. Fifty thousand florins a month were granted to the duke of Savoy, who was at war with Spain; and seven thousand men, with nearly forty ships, were despatched to the aid of the republic of Venice, in its contest with Ferdinand, archduke of Gratz, who was afterward elected emperor. The honorary empire of the seas seems at this time to have been successfully claimed by the United Provinces. They paid back with interest the haughty conduct with which they had been long treated by the English; and they refused to pay the fishery duties to which the inhabitants of Great Britain were subject. The Dutch sailors had even the temerity, under pretext of pursuing pirates, to violate the British territory. They set fire to the town of Crookhaven, in Ireland, and massacred several of the inhabitants. King James, immersed in theological studies, appears to have passed slightly over this outrage. More was to have been expected from his usual attention to the affairs of Ireland; his management of which ill-fated country is the best feature of his political character, and ought, to Irish feelings at least, to be considered to redeem its many errors. But he took fire at the news that the states had prohibited the importation of cloth dyed and dressed in England. It required the best exertion of Barneveldt's talents to pacify him; and it was not easy to effect this through the jaundiced medium of the ambassador Carleton. But it was unanswerably argued by the pensionary that the manufacture of cloth was one of those ancient and natural sources of wealth which England had ravished from the Netherlands, and which the latter was justified in recovering by every effort consistent with national honor and fair principles of government.