第60章 LETTER 8(2)

After the peace,what remained to be done;in the whole nature of things there remained but three.To abandon all care of the Spanish succession was one;to compound with France upon this succession was another;and to prepare,like her,during the interval of peace,to make an advantageous war whenever Charles the Second should die,was a third.Now the first of these was to leave Spain,and,in leaving Spain,to leave all Europe in some sort at the mercy of France;since whatever disposition the Spaniards should make of their crown,they were quite unable to support it against France;since the emperor could do little without his allies;and since Bavaria,the third pretender,could do still less,and might find,in such a case,his account perhaps better in treating with the house of Bourbon than with that of Austria.

More needs not be said on this head;but on the other two,which I shall consider together,several facts are proper to be mentioned,and several reflections necessary to be made.

We might have counter-worked,no doubt,in their own methods of policy,the councils of France,who made peace to dissolve the confederacy,and great concessions,with very suspicious generosity,to gain the Spaniards:we might have waited,like them,that is in arms,the death of Charles the Second,and have fortified in the mean time the dispositions of the king,the court and people of Spain,against the pretensions of France:we might have made the peace,which was made some time after that,between the emperor and the Turks,and have obliged the former at any rate to have secured 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.

But all such measures were rendered impracticable,by the emperor chiefly.

Experience had shown,that the powers who engaged in alliance with him must expect to take the whole burden of his cause upon themselves;and that Hungary would maintain a perpetual diversion in favor of France,since he could not resolve to lighten the tyrannical yoke he had established in that country and in Transylvania,nor his ministers to part with the immense confiscations they had appropriated to themselves.Past experience showed this:and the experience that followed confirmed it very fatally.But further;there was not only little assistance to be expected from him by those who should engage in his quarrel:he did them hurt of another kind,and deprived them of many advantages by false measures of policy and unskilful negotiations.Whilst the death of Charles the Second was expected almost daily,the court of Vienna seemed to have forgot the court of Madrid,and all the pretensions on that crown.When the Count d'Harrach was sent thither,the imperial councils did something worse.The king of Spain was ready to declare the archduke Charles his successor;he was desirous to have this young prince sent into Spain:the bent of the people was in favor of Austria,or it had been so,and might have been easily turned the same way again:at court no cabal was yet formed in favor of Bourbon,and a very weak intrigue was on foot in favor of the electoral prince of Bavaria.Not only Charles might have been on the spot ready to reap the succession,but a German army might have been there to defend it;for the court of Madrid insisted on having twelve thousand of these troops,and,rather than not have them,offered to contribute to the payment of them privately.because it would have been too unpopular among the Spaniards,and too prejudicial to the Austrian interest,to have had it known that the emperor declined the payment of a body of his own troops that were demanded to secure the monarchy to his son.These proposals were half refused,and half evaded:and in return to the offer of the crown of Spain to the archduke,the imperial councils asked the government of Milan for him.They thought it a point of deep policy to secure the Italian provinces,and to leave to England and Holland the care of the Low Countries,of Spain,and the Indies.By declining these proposals the house of Austria renounced in some sort the whole succession:at least she gave England and Holland reasons,whatever engagements these powers had taken,to refuse the harder task of putting her into possession by force;when she might,and would not,procure to the English and Dutch,and her other allies,the easier task of defending her in this possession.

I said that the measures mentioned about were rendered impracticable,by the emperor chiefly,because they were rendered so likewise by other circumstances at the same conjuncture.A principal one I shall mention,and it shall be drawn from the state of our own country,and the disposition of our people.

--Let us take this up from king William's accession to our crown.During the whole progress that Louis the Fourteenth made towards such exorbitant power,as gave him well-grounded hopes of acquiring at last to his family the Spanish monarchy,England had been either an idle spectator of all that passed on the Continent,or a faint and uncertain ally against France,or a warm and sure ally on her side,or a partial mediator between her and the powers confederated in their common defence.The revolution produced as great a change in our foreign conduct,as in our domestic establishment:and our nation engaged with great spirit in the war of one thousand six hundred and eighty-eight.But then this spirit was rash,presumptuous,and ignorant,ill conducted at home,and ill seconded abroad:all which has been touched already.We had waged no long wars on the Continent,nor been very deeply concerned in foreign confederacies,since the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.