"The Resolution taken at a Council held at St James the 17th of April, 1780, in presence of his Majesty. Since Great Britain has been brought involuntarily into a war against France and Spain, the Ambassador of the King to the States-General of the United Provinces has presented several Memorials for demanding the succors stipulated by the treaties. These representations, although repeated in the most pressing manner by the Memorial of the 21st of March, have remained without answer, and their High Mightinesses have not manifested an intention to oppose them. By delaying thus to fulfil engagements the most positive, she deserts the alliance, which has subsisted so long between the Crown of Great Britain and the Republic, and places herself on a level with neutral powers, which are not connected with this kingdom by any treaty. The principles of wisdom and equity prescribe, by consequence, to the King no longer to consider the States but in the distant relation in which they have placed themselves; and his Majesty having taken this subject into consideration, has thought fit, by the advice of his privy council, to put in execution immediately the measures, which have been formerly annexed by the Memorial of the 21st of March last, and which had been previously suggested to the Count de Welderen, the Envoy Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic, by a verbal declaration of Lord Stormont, one of the Secretaries of State, nearly two months before the presentation of said Memorial. For these causes the King, with the advice of his Council, declares, that the subjects of the United Provinces shall henceforward be considered on the footing of neutral powers, who are not privileged by treaties. His Majesty suspends by these presents, conditionally, and until further order, all the particular stipulations designed to favor in time of war the liberty of the navigation and commerce of the subjects of the States-General, such as they are expressed in the different treaties, which subsist between his Majesty and the Republic, and especially in the Marine Treaty concluded between Great Britain and the United Provinces at London on the 1st day of December, 1674.