After the collision with Cromwell the maritime power and trade of Holland had most vigorously revived. The result of a glance over her roadsteads and harbours was astonishing. In Flushing the West Indian, in Amsterdam the East Indian trade of Europe seemed almost to centralise. Dort and Rotterdam were enlivened by the Anglo-Scottish trade, Enkhuypen by the herring-fisheries, Saardam by shipbuilding. The East Indian Company formed as it were a republic which stood forth as a sovereign power. On the goods brought in its ships depended the trade with southern, as well as with northern Europe, and with Germany.

The English remarked that this world-wide commerce, by which they themselves were injured and thrown into the shade, in reality rested upon England itself.

The whole wealth of the Dutch, it was said, was founded upon the fisheries in the English and Scottish seas; their gains from these amounted to several millions; the English wool which, mixed with Spanish, constituted the material for their manufactures, was sold to them too cheap: even English manufactures had to serve them, in so far as English work was first offered for sale in Holland. They drew their largest gains from the still continued sale of foreign products in England,—principally on account of the higher value of English money, which was not rated on the continent according to its true proportion to foreign coinages; if prices were anywhere raised by the English, the Dutch were the soonest at hand to take advantage of them.