LAISSEZ FAIRE 
World would exorcise the commercial jealousy of the European 
peoplest. For a time the French Government was content 
with giving clandestine assistance to the colonists? but this 
attitude could not be maintained for long; and in 1778 King 
Louis openly espoused the American cause and concluded a 
was taken treaty with the United States. When the mask was once 
hy ® thrown aside, it was impossible to explain away the unfriendly 
preneh and aets of which the French had been guilty, and Englishmen 
rivals, with heavy hearts? drifted into a war which had become 
inevitable. The various branches of the House of Bourbon 
were so closely connected that this involved a quarrel with 
Spain¢, The Dutch were eager to reestablish the regular 
commercial relations with the North American coast from 
which the Navigation Acts had excluded them, and naturally 
followed the course pursued by France. They supplied the 
colonists with arms and ammunition, and joined in the fray 
when war was declared in 1780. England found herself 
actively opposed by the most powerful maritime nations of 
the Continent, at the time when she was seeking to coerce 
her colonies. Nor was assistance to be hoped for from any of 
the Powers which were not actually in arms against Great 
Britain. Frederick of Prussia cherished a grudge against 
England, and though he gave no open countenance to the 
Americans, he discouraged the efforts of the English King to 
utilise his German connection in order to enlist soldiers for 
employment in dealing with the colonists. But the most 
serious blow came from Catharine of Russia, who was pro- 
bably more inclined to sympathise with England than any of 
and Russia the other European monarchs. The English had been strictly 
insisted on . . . . 
maintain Scrupulous in respecting Russian commerce, but the Spaniards 
doctrine of Nad been less careful ; and Catharine, in self-defence, defined 
yl a doctrine of neutral trading which she was prepared to 
enforce. The rule, which she enunciated in 1780, differed 
from the traditional vrincivles. which England maintaineds. 
670 
\ Turgot, Memotre sur la maniére dont la France et I Espagne devoient envisager 
les suites de la querelle entre la Grande Bretagne et ses Colonies, in Buvres (1809). 
vir. 461. 
* Lecky, op. cit. 44. 8 Parl. Hist. 31x. 920, 928. 
! The Spaniards were strongly anti-English and supplied the Americans with 
gunpowder. Lecky, op. cit. Iv. 45. 
s “The doctrine of maritime law which England had steadily asserted was