CHAP. XI. 38. of this iden duct of the opposite It must appear, at first sight, not a little extraordinary that conduct so precisely similar, and in both cases. so diametrically at variance with the real interests of 1714. the country, should in this manner have been alter- Real causes nately pursued by the two great parties whose contests tity of conhave for nearly two hundred years so entirely engrossed English domestic history. But the marvel ceases when these occatheir internal political situation is considered. In both sions. cases, the Opposition who resisted a war and strove to arrest its progress, which was conducted with glory and success by their opponents, had recently before been dispossessed of power. The Tories, by the Revolution of 1688, had been so completely driven from the helm, that, as the event proved, they did not recover their ground for seventy years, and a change of dynasty at the time could alone secure them in it. The Whigs had, by the ministerial revolution of 1784, been, after the most strenuous efforts on their part, so effectually dispossessed of power, that they had no prospect of recovering it, but by the national calamity of a failure in the war in which their antagonists were engaged. Thus, by a singular combination of circumstances, the two parties, at the interval of a century from each other, stood in precisely the same situation, so far as the depending foreign war and its reaction upon their domestic prospects were concerned. The interests of both were identified with the misfortunes of this country and the triumphs of its enemies. Their wishes, as is generally the case, followed in the same direction. The secret. inclinations of the Tories, in the War of the Succession, were with the court of St Germains, because its restoration to royalty would at once have replaced them at the helm; the secret wishes of the Whigs, in the war of the XI. 1714. CHAP. Revolution, were with the tricolor flag, because its triumphs would at once have ruined their opponents, and restored them to the much-coveted possession of power. In both cases the selfish prevailed over the generous, the party over the patriotic, feelings of our nature. In both, the party in opposition were false to their country, but true, as they thought, at least to themselves. And both have obtained their just punishment by receiving the merited condemnation of succeeding times. 39. Excuses which ex Tories at the treaty from the dread of Spain. Though the event, however, has decisively proved that Bolingbroke and Oxford judged wrong in detaching isted for the England from the Grand Alliance in 1712, and that policy of the their measures, by securing to France the family compact of Utrecht, with the Spanish Bourbons, brought the country to the brink of ruin in 1782, yet it must be admitted, in their vindication, that plausible arguments were not awanting to justify the unpatriotic course which they adopted. Great as was the power of France in the time of Louis XIV., it was comparatively of recent growth. Serious as had been the perils of the nation from his ambition, it had been placed in yet greater danger by the enterprises of the Spanish monarchy. The terrors of the Armada were yet fresh in the minds of the people; the monarchy of Charles V. was the nearest approach to universal dominion which had been made since the days of Charlemagne. If the Whigs had succeeded in making Louis XIV. accept the terms offered to him by the Allies at Gertruydenberg in 1709, which they were within a hair's-breadth of doing, the monarchy of Charles V. was reconstructed in favour of the Emperor of Germany, with an apparently considerable accession of power. The whole present dominions of Austria in Germany and Lombardy, Naples and Sicily, Flanders, Spain, and South America, would have constituted the hereditary dominions of a power to which the imperial crown would, as a matter of course, have come to be permanently united. CHAP. XI. 1714. 40. ruined state ish monar period. The Tories, however, in the time of Queen Anne, were too clear-sighted not to see that the danger from the Bolingbroke's picSpanish monarchy, great as it had been a century before, had passed away before their time, and that France was of the Spanthe power by which the independence of England was chy at this really threatened. If circumstances had rendered the junction of the Spanish dominions to one or other unavoidable, it was evidently for the interest of Great Britain that it should be united to the distant and inland territories of the house of Austria, destitute of fleets and harbours, and constantly engrossed with wars with the Turks, rather than to the great and flourishing monarchy of France, with an extensive sea-coast, and a navy rivalling our own, in close vicinity, and actuated by a jealousy of England of many centuries' standing. Bolingbroke has shown that he perceived these obvious truths as clearly as any man, and consequently that the terrors expressed by the Tories on occasion of the peace of Utrecht, at the prospect of reconstructing the empire of Charles V., were hypocritical, and had been got up to conceal objects fundamentally different. "Philip II.,” says he, "left his successors a ruined monarchy. He left them something worse; he left them his example and his principles of government, founded in ambition, pride, ignorance, bigotry, and all the pedantry of state. The war in the Low Countries cost him, by his own confession, five hundred and sixty-four millions-a prodigious sum, in whatever specie he reckoned. At home there was much form, but no good order, no economy or CHAP. XI. wisdom of policy in the state. The Church continued to devour its resources; and that monster, the Inquisi1714. tion, to dispeople the country even more than perpetual war, and all the numerous colonies that Spain had sent out to the West Indies; for Philip III. drove more than nine hundred thousand Moriscoes out of his dominions by one edict, with such circumstances of inhumanity as the Spaniards alone could exercise, and that tribunal, which had provoked that unhappy race to revolt, could alone approve. Abroad, the conduct of that prince was directed by the same wild spirit of ambition. Rash in undertaking, though slow to execute, obstinate in pursuing, though unable to succeed, they opened a new sluice to let out the little life and vigour that remained in the monarchy. What completed their ruin was this-they knew not how to lose, nor when to yield. They acknowledged the independence of the Dutch commonwealth, and became the allies of their ancient subjects by the treaty of Munster; but they would not forego their usurped claims on Portugal, and they persisted in carrying on singly the war against France. Thus they were reduced to such a lowness of power as can scarcely be paralleled in any other kingthe Study dom. As to France, this era of the entire fall of the 1 Boling broke on of History, Works, iii. Let. vi. Spanish power is likewise that from which we may reckon that France grew as formidable as we have seen her to her neighbours in power and pretensions." 1 464, 465. 41. What course the Notwithstanding all this, which subsequent events have proved to be entirely well-founded, it is not surTories prising that the Tories, in the days of Queen Anne, pursued at paused before contributing to such a result-union of the of Utrecht. monarchies of France and Spain-as the consequence of the national efforts during ten campaigns for the preser should have the Treaty XI. vation of the balance of power in Europe. There were CHAP. difficulties, and those too of a very serious nature, on all sides. They were right in their dread of reconstructing 1714. the monarchy of Charles V.; their great error consisted in the way they set about preventing it. They did this by giving Spain and the Indies to a Bourbon prince, which at once closely united two great maritime powers, far more formidable to Britain than the union of one of these with the inland and far-severed monarchy of Charles V. ever could have been. What they should have done, was to have given the crown of Spain and the Indies to the Austrian Archduke, but to have stipulated that it should never be placed on the same head as the Imperial crown, or on that which wore the diadem of the Hereditary Dominions in Germany. But though this would have preserved the balance of power, it would not have answered their secret views for rescuing Louis XIV. from his difficulties, in order to prop the exiled throne of St Germains. Thence it was that they preferred all the risks of leaving Spain and the Indies in the hands of a Bourbon prince, the result of which, seventy years afterwards, brought England to the verge of ruin in consequence. Thence it is that they have incurred the merited condemnation of all subsequent ages. 42. Bri- But no ex cuse can be and found for the tion of the Utrecht by our viola had It is difficult, however, to see even a plausible reason on the surface of things for the conduct of Great tain in 1834, in violating the Treaty of Utrecht, forming the Quadruple Alliance with France, for purpose of dispossessing the male line, which she herself established in Spain, as a security against crown falling into the hands of a French prince, and establishing the female succession in its stead. Was it that the experience of the preceding forty years had its Treaty of the Quadruple Alliance in 1834. |