Negapatam, on the coast of Coromandel, and the free navigation of the Indian seas, were ceded to England, who occupied the other various colonies taken during the war. Opinion was now rapidly opening out to that spirit of intense inquiry which arose in France, and threatened to sweep before it not only all that was corrupt, but everything that tended to corruption. It is in the very essence of all kinds of power to have that tendency, and, if not checked by salutary means, to reach that end. But the reformers of the last century, new in the desperate practice of revolutions, seeing its necessity, but ignorant of its nature, neither did nor could place bounds to the careering whirlwind that they raised. The well-meaning but intemperate changes essayed by Joseph II. in Belgium had a considerable share in the development of free principles, although they at first seemed only to excite the resistance of bigotry and strengthen the growth of superstition. Holland was always alive to those feelings of resistance, to established authority which characterize republican opinions; and the general discontent at the result of the war with England gave a good excuse to the pretended patriotism which only wanted change, while it professed reform. The stadtholder saw clearly the storm which was gathering, and which menaced his power. Anxious for the present, and uncertain for the future, he listened to the suggestions of England, and resolved to secure and extend by foreign force the rights of which he risked the loss from domestic faction.