第82章 LETTER 8(24)

Upon the whole matter,my lord,the low and exhausted state to which France was reduced,by the last great war,was but a momentary reduction of her power;and whatever real and more lasting reduction the treaty of Utrecht brought about in some instances,it was not sufficient.The power of France would not have appeared as great as it did,when England and Holland armed themselves and armed all Germany against her,if she had lain as open to the invasions of her enemies,as her enemies lay to hers.Her inward strength was great;but the strength of those frontiers which Louis the Fourteenth was almost forty years in forming,and which the folly of all his neighbors in their turns suffered him to form,made this strength as formidable as it became.The true reduction of the exorbitant power of France,I take no notice of chimerical projects about changing her government,consisted therefore in disarming her frontiers,and fortifying the barriers against her,by the cession and demolition of many more places than she yielded up at Utrecht;but not of more than she might have been obliged to sacrifice to her own immediate relief,and to the future security of her neighbors.That she was not obliged to make these sacrifices,I affirm,was owing solely to those who opposed the peace:and I am willing to put my whole credit with your lordship,and the whole merits of a cause that has been so much contested,on this issue.I say a cause that has been so much contested;for in truth,I think,it is no longer a doubt any where,except in British pamphlets,whether the conduct of those who neither declined treating,as was done in one thousand seven hundred and six;nor pretended to treat without a design of concluding,as was done in one thousand seven hundred and nine and ten,but carried the great work of the peace forward to its consummation;or the conduct of those who opposed this work in every step of its progress,saved the power of France from a greater and a sufficient reduction at the treaty of Utrecht.The very ministers who were employed in this fatal opposition,are obliged to confess this truth.How should they deny it?Those of Vienna may complain that the emperor had not the entire Spanish monarchy,or those of Holland that the States were not made masters directly and indirectly of the whole Low Countries.But neither they,nor any one else that has any sense of shame about him,can deny that the late queen,though she was resolved to treat because she was resolved to finish the war,yet was to the utmost degree desirous to treat in a perfect union with her allies,and to procure them all the reasonable terms they could expect;and much better than those they reduced themselves to the necessity of accepting,by endeavoring to wrest the negotiation out of her hands.The disunion of the allies gave France the advantages she improved.The sole question is,Who caused this disunion?

And that will be easily decided by every impartial man,who informs himself carefully of the public anecdotes of that time.If the private anecdotes were to be laid open as well as those,and I think it almost time they should,the whole monstrous scene would appear,and shock the eye of every honest man.I do not intend to descend into many particulars at this time:but whatever I,or any other person as well informed as I,shall descend into a full deduction of such particulars,it will become undeniably evident,that the most violent opposition imaginable,carried on by the Germans and the Dutch in league with a party in Britain,began as soon as the first overtures were made to the queen;before she had so much as begun to treat:and was therefore an opposition not to this or that plan of treaty,but in truth to all treaty.

And especially to one wherein Great Britain took the lead,or was to have any particular advantage.That the Imperialists meant no treaty,unless a preliminary and impracticable condition of it was to set the crown of Spain on the emperor's head,will appear from this;that prince Eugene,when he came into England,long after the death of Joseph and elevation of Charles,upon an errand most unworthy of so great a man,treated always on this supposition.