Their Noble and Grand Mightinesses, the States of Holland and West Friesland, after having stated these circumstances to the States-General, have adopted in their report; "that they considered this excessive audacity of the English or Scotch coalmen, as a manifest and voluntary violation of the territory of the Republic, accompanied with circumstances the most aggravated, as having been committed in going out of a harbor of this country, and in a place where it could not be doubtful that they were within reach of the cannon of the shore, since their own balls reached the land, without the least provocation from the French privateer, which did not fire a single gun. So that this action of the coalmen, has had no other cause than a premeditated hostility, whilst there was not the least reason to fear that the privateer, after having got to sea, would interrupt one of them, considering that the attack was begun on their part, in the very moment when the privateer had tacked about to quit the open sea and return into port, besides, that he was pursued for two hours after that he was indubitably aground upon the shore, and that the enterprise was finished by taking away the French privateer from the Dutch shore, contrary to the exhortation and warnings of the coasting pilots. That in the judgment of their Noble and Grand Mightinesses, the States-General had not only a right to complain of the insolence so excessive on the part of the English or Scotch masters, which their High Mightinesses admit into the ports of the Republic, but that they cannot even suffer them without wounding the neutrality, which they have embraced in the present troubles, and without prejudicing the dignity, the sovereignty, and the independence of the State; and having been under obligation effectually to have opposed and hindered them, even by force, if they could have been informed in time of these violences, they cannot excuse themselves from demanding, in a manner the most serious, the vessel which was taken, and from demanding of his Britannic Majesty, a suitable satisfaction for this conduct of his subjects."