ICO

HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

CHAP.

x.\iv.

lias.

arc so deeply interested in a question that they would bejustified in resorting to arms for the purpose of settling it,they must surely be sufficiently interested in it to be justi-fied in resorting to amicable arrangements for the purposeof settling it. Yet, strange to say, a multitude of writerswho have warmly praised the English and Dutch govern-ments for waging a long and bloody war in order to preventthe question of the Spanish succession from being settled ina manner prejudicial to them, have severely blamed thosegovernments for trying to attain the same end without theshedding of a drop of blood, without the addition of acrown to the taxation of any country in Christendom, andwithout a moment’s interruption of the trade of the worldby land or by sea.

It has been said to have been unjust that three statesshould have combined to divide a fourth state without itsown consent; and, in recent times, the partition of theSpanish monarchy which was meditated in 1698 has beencompared to the greatest political crime which stains thehistory of modern Europe, the partition of Poland. Butthose who hold such language cannot have well consideredthe nature of the Spanish monarchy in the seventeenthcentury. That monarchy was not a body pervaded by oneprinciple of vitality and sensation. It was an assemblageof distinct bodies, none of which had any strong sympathywith the rest, and some of which had a positive antipathyfor each other. The partition planned at Loo was there-fore the very opposite of the partition of Poland. The