第89章 LETTER 8(31)

But they would possibly have laid aside their vain hopes,if they had seen the queen's ministers ready to sign her treaty of peace,and those of some principal allies ready to sign at the same time;in which case the mischief that followed,had been prevented,and better terms of peace had been obtained for the confederacy:a prince of the house of Bourbon,who could never be king of France,would have sat on the Spanish throne instead of an emperor:the Spanish sceptre would have been weakened in the hands of one,and the Imperial sceptre would have been strengthened in those of the other:France would have had no opportunity of recovering from former blows,nor of finishing a long unsuccessful war by two successful campaigns:her ambition,and her power,would have declined with her old king,and under the minority that followed:one of them at least might have been so reduced by the terms of peace,if the defeat of the allies in one thousand seven hundred and twelve,and the loss of so many towns as the French took in that and the following year,had been prevented,that the other would have been no longer formidable,even supposing it to have continued;whereas I suppose that the tranquility of Europe is more due,at this time,to want of ambition,than to want of power,on the part of France.But,to carry the comparison of these two measures to the end,it may be supposed that the Dutch would have taken the same part,on the queen's declaring a separate peace,as they took on her declaring a cessation.The preparations for the campaign in the Low countries were made;the Dutch,like the other confederates,had a just confidence in their own troops,and an unjust contempt for those of the enemy;they were transported from their usual sobriety and caution by the ambitious prospect of large acquisitions,which had been opened artfully to them;the rest of the confederate army was composed of Imperial and German troops:so that the Dutch,the Imperialists,and the other Germans,having an interest to decide which was no longer the interest of the whole confederacy,they might have united against the queen in one case,as they did in the other;and the mischief that followed to them and the common cause,might not have been prevented.This might have been the case,no doubt.They might have flattered themselves that they should be able to break into France,and to force Philip,by the distress brought on his grandfather,to resign the crown of Spain to the emperor,even after Great Britain,and Portugal,and Savoy too,perhaps,were drawn out of the war;for these princes desired as little,as the queen,to see the Spanish crown on the emperor's head.But,even in this case,though the madness would have been greater,the effect would not have been worse.The queen would have been able to serve these confederates as well by being mediator in the negotiations,as they left it in her power to do,by being a party in them:and Great Britain would have had the advantage of being delivered so much sooner from a burden,which whimsical and wicked politics had imposed,and continued upon her till it was become intolerable.Of these two measures,at the time when we might have taken either,there were persons who thought the last preferable to the former.But it never came into public debate.