第79章 LETTER 8(21)

But to resume what I have said or hinted already;the necessary consequences of protracting the war in order to dethrone Philip,from the year one thousand seven hundred and eleven inclusively,could be no other than these:our design of penetrating into France might have been defeated,and have become fatal to us by a reverse of fortune:our first success might not have obliged the French to submit;and we might have had France to conquer,after we had failed in our first attempt to conquer Spain,and even in order to proceed to a second:the French might have submitted,and the Spaniards not:and whilst the former had been employed to force the latter,according to the scheme of the allies;or whilst,the latter submitting likewise,Philip had evacuated Spain,the high allies might have gone together by the ears about dividing the spoil,and disposing of the crown of Spain.To these issues were things brought by protracting the war;by refusing to make peace,on the principles of the grand alliance at worst,in one thousand seven hundred and six;and by refusing to grant it,even on those of the new plan,in one thousand seven hundred and ten.Such contingent events as I have mentioned stood in prospect before us.The end of the war was removed out of sight;and they,who clamored rather than argued for the continuation of it,contented themselves to affirm,that France was not enough reduced,and that no peace ought to be made as long as a prince of the house of Bourbon remained on a Spanish throne.When they would think France enough reduced,it was impossible to guess.Whether they intended to join the Imperial and Spanish crowns on the head of Charles,who had declared his irrevocable resolution to continue the war till the conditions insisted upon at Gertruydenberg were obtained:whether they intended to bestow Spain and the Indies on some other prince;and how this great alteration in their own plan should be effected by common consent.how possession should be given to Charles,or any other prince,not only of Spain but of all Spanish dominions out of Europe,where the attachment to Philip was at least as strong as in Castile,and where it would not be so easy,the distance and extent of these dominions considered,to oblige the Spaniards to submit to another government:These points,and many more equally necessary to be determined,and equally difficult to prepare,were neither determined nor prepared;so that we were reduced to carry on the war,after the death of the emperor Joseph,without any positive scheme agreed to,as the scheme of the future peace,by the allies.That of the grand alliance we had long before renounced.

That of the new plan was become ineligible;and,if it had been eligible,it would have been impracticable,because of the division it would have created among the allies themselves:several of whom would not have consented,notwithstanding his irrevocable resolution,that the emperor should be king of Spain.I know not what part the protracters of the war,in the depth of their policy,intended to take.Our nation had contributed,and acted so long under the direction of their councils,for the grandeur of the house of Austria,like one of the hereditary kingdoms usurped by that family,that it is lawful to think their intention might be to unite the Imperial and Spanish crowns.But Irather think they had no very determinate view,beyond that of continuing the war as long as they could.The late Lord Oxford told me,that my Lord Somers being pressed,I know not on what occasion nor by whom,on the unnecessary and ruinous continuation of the war;instead of giving reasons to show the necessity of it,contented himself to reply,that he had been bred up in a hatred of France.This was a strange reply for a wise man:and yet I know not whether he could have given a better then,on whether any of his pupils could give a better now.

The whig party in general acquired great and just popularity,in the reign of our Charles the Second,by the clamor they raised against the conduct of that prince in foreign affairs.They who succeeded to the name rather than the principles of this party,after the revolution,and who have had the administration of the government in their hands with very little interruption ever since,pretending to act on the same principle,have run into an extreme as vicious and as contrary to all the rules of good policy,as that which their predecessors exclaimed against.The old whigs complained of the inglorious figure we made,whilst our court was the bubble,and our king the pensioner of France;and insisted that the growing ambition and power of Louis the Fourteenth should be opposed in time.The modern whigs boasted,and still boast,of the glorious figure we made,whilst we reduced ourselves,by their councils,and under their administrations,to be the bubbles of our pensioners,that is,of our allies:and whilst we measured our efforts in war,and the continuation of them,without any regard to the interests and abilities of our own country,without a just and sober regard,such an one as contemplates objects in their true light and sees them in their true magnitude,to the general system of power in Europe;and,in short,with a principal regard merely to particular interests at home and abroad.