LETTER VIII.

The fame fubject continued from the year one thousand fix hundred and eighty-eight.

YOUR

OUR lordship will find, that the objects proposed by the alliance of one thousand fix hundred and eighty-nine between the emperor and the States, to which England acceded, and which was the foundation of the whole confederacy then formed, were no less than to reftore all things to the terms of the Weftphalian and Pyrenean treaties, by the war; and to preferve them in that ftate, after the war, by a defenfive alliance and guaranty of the fame confederate powers against France. The particular as well as general meaning of this engagement was plain enough: and if it had not been so, the sense of it would have been fufficiently determined, by that feparate article, in which England and Holland obliged themselves to affist the "house of Auftria, in taking and keeping poffeffion of the Spanish monarchy, whenever "the cafe should happen of the death of CHARLES "the fecond, without lawful heirs." This engagement was double, and thereby relative to the whole political fystem of Europe, alike affected by the power and pretenfions of France. Hitherto the

power of France had been alone regarded, and her pretenfions feemed to have been forgot: or to what purpose fhould they have been remembered, whilst Europe was fo unhappily conftituted, that the states, at whofe expenfe fhe increafed her power, and their friends and allies, thought that they did enough upon every occafion if they made fome tolerable compofition with her? They whọ were not in circumstances to refufe confirming prefent, were little likely to take effectual measures against future ufurpations. But now, as the alarm was greater than ever, by the outrages that France had committed, and the intrigues fhe had carried on; by the little regard she had shown to public faith, and by the airs of authority fhe had affumed twenty years together: fo was the fpirit against her raised to a higher pitch, and the means of reducing her power, or at least of checking it, were increased. The princes and states who had neglected or favored the growth of this power, which all of them had done in their turns, faw their error; faw the neceffity of repairing it, and faw that unless they could check the power of France, by uniting with a power fuperior to her's, it would be impoffible to hinder her from fucceeding in her great designs on the Spanish fucceffion. The court of England had fubmitted, not many years before, to abet her ufurpations, and the king of England had stooped to be her penfioner. But the crime was not national. On the contrary, the nation had cried out loudly against it, even whilft it was committing and as foon as ever the abdi

cation of king JAMES, and the elevation of the prince of ORANGE to the throne of England happened, the nation engaged with all imaginable zeal in the common caufe of Europe, to reduce the exorbitant power of France, to prevent her future and to revenge her paft attempts; for even a fpirit of revenge prevailed, and the war was a war of anger as well as of intereft.

Unhappily this zeal was neither well conducted, nor well feconded. It was zeal without fuccefs in the first of the two wars that followed the year one thousand fix hundred and eighty-eight; and zeal without knowledge, in both of them. I enter into no detail concerning the events of these two wars. This only I obferve on the first of them, that the treaties of Ryfwic were far from answering the ends propofed and the engagements taken by the first grand alliance. The power of France, with respect to extent of dominions and ftrength of barrier, was not reduced to the terms of the Pyrenean treaty, no, nor to those of the treaty of Nimeguen. Lorraine was restored indeed with very confiderable referves, and the places taken or ufurped on the other fide of the Rhine: but then Strafburg was yielded up abfolutely to France by the emperor, and by the empire. The conceffions to Spain were great, but fo were the conquefts and the encroachments made upon her by France, fince the treaty of Nimeguen and she got little at Ryfwic, I believe nothing more than fhe had faved at Nimeguen before. All these conceffions, however, as well as the acknowledgment of king

WILLIAM, and others made by Lewis the fourteenth after he had taken Ath and Barcelona, even during the course of the negociations, compared with the loffes and repeated defeats of the allies and the ill state of the confederacy, furprised the generality of mankind, who had not been accuftomed to fo much moderation and generofity on the part of this prince. But the pretenfions of the house of Bourbon on the Spanish fucceffion remained the fame. Nothing had been done to weaken them; nothing was prepared to oppose them and the opening of this fucceffion was vifibly at hand for CHARLES the fecond had been in immediate danger of dying about this time. His death could not be a remote event: and all the good queen's endeavours to be got with child had proved ineffectual. The league diffolved, all the forces of the confederates difperfed, and many disbanded; France continuing armed, her forces by fea and land increased and held in readiness to act on all fides, it was plain that the confederates had failed in the first object of the grand alliance; that of reducing the power of France; by fucceeding in which alone they could have been able to keep the second engagement, that of securing the fucceffion of Spain to the house of Austria.

After this peace, what remained to be done? In the whole nature of things there remained but three. To abandon all care of the Spanish fucceffion was one; to compound with France upon this fucceffion was another, and to prepare, like her, during the interval of peace, to make an

advantageous war whenever CHARLES the fecond fhould die, was a third. Now the first of these was to leave Spain, and, in leaving Spain, to leave all Europe in fome fort at the mercy of. France; fince whatever difpofition the Spaniards should make of their crown, they were quite unable to support it against France; fince the emperor could do little without his alliance; and fince Bavaria, the third pretender, could do still lefs, and might find, in such a cafe, his account perhaps better in treating with the house of Bourbon than with that of Auftria. More needs not be faid on this head; but on the other two, which I fhall confider together, feveral facts are proper to be mentioned, and feveral reflections neceffary to be made.

We might have counter-worked, no doubt, in their own methods of policy, the councils of France, who made peace to diffolve the confederacy, and great conceffions, with very fufpicious generofity, to gain the Spaniards: we might have waited, like them, that is in arms, the death of CHARLES the fecond, and have fortified in the mean time the difpofitions of the king, the court, and people of Spain, against the pretenfions of France : we might have made the peace, which was made fome time after that, between the emperor and the Turks, and have obliged the former at any rate to have fecured the peace of Hungary and to have prepared, by these and other expedients, for the war that would inevitably break out on the death of the king of SPAIN.