Letters on the Study and Use of History
by Henry St. John Bolingbroke



LETTER 1




Chantelou in Touraine, Nov. 6, 1735.




My Lord: I have considered formerly, with a good deal of attention,
the subject on which you command me to communicate my thoughts to you: and
I practised in those days, as much as business and pleasure allowed me time
to do, the rules that seemed to me necessary to be observed in the study
of history. They were very different from those which writers on the same
subject have recommended, and which are commonly practised. But I confess
to your lordship, that this neither gave me then, nor has given me since,
any distrust of them. I do not affect singularity. On the contrary, I think
that a due deference is to be paid to received opinions, and that a due compliance
with received customs is to be held; though both the one and the other should
be, what they often are, absurd or ridiculous. But this servitude is outward
only, and abridges in no sort the liberty of private judgment. The obligations
of submitting to it likewise, even outwardly, extend no further than to those
opinions and customs which cannot be opposed, or from which we cannot deviate
without doing hurt, or giving offence to society. In all these cases our
speculations ought to be free: in all other cases, our practice may be so.
Without any regard, therefore, to the opinion and practice even of the learned
world, I am very willing to tell you mine. But, as it is hard to recover
a thread of thought long ago laid aside, and impossible to prove some things,
and explain others, without the assistance of many books which I have not
here, your lordship must be content with such an imperfect sketch, as I am
able to send you at present in this letter. The motives that carry men to
the study of history are deficient. Some intend, if such as they may be said
to study, nothing more than amusement, and read the life of Aristides or
Phocion, of Epaminondas or Scipio, Alexander or Caesar, just as they play
a game at cards, or as they would read the story of the seven champions.




Others there are, whose motive to this study is nothing better, and who
have the further disadvantage of becoming a nuisance very often to society,
in proportion to the progress they make. The former do not improve their
reading to any good purpose; the latter pervert it to a very bad one, and
grow in impertinence as they increase in learning. I think I have known most
of the first kind in England, and most of the last in France. The persons
I mean are those who read to talk, to shine in conversation, and to impose
in company; who having few ideas to vend of their own growth, store their
minds with crude unruminated facts and sentences; and hope to supply, by
bare memory, the want of imagination and judgment.




But these are in the two lowest forms. The next I shall mention are in
one a little higher; in the form of those who grow neither wiser nor better
by study themselves, but who enable others to study with greater ease, and
to purposes more useful; who make fair copies of foul manuscripts, give the
signification of hard words, and take a great deal of other grammatical pains.
The obligation to these men would be great indeed, if they were in general
able to do any thing better, and submitted to this drudgery for the sake
of the public: as some of them, it must be owned with gratitude, have done,
but not later, I think, than about the time of the resurrection of letters.
When works of importance are pressing, generals themselves may take up the
pick-axe and the spade; but in the ordinary course of things, when that pressing
necessity is over, such tools are left in the hands destined to use them
-- the hands of common soldiers and peasants. I approve, therefore, very
much the devotion of a studious man at Christ-church, who was overheard in
his oratory entering into a detail with God, as devout persons are apt to
do, and, amongst other particular thanks givings, acknowledging the divine
goodness in furnishing the world with makers of dictionaries! These men court
fame, as well as their betters, by such means as God has given them to acquire
it: and Littleton exerted all the genius he had, when he made a dictionary,
though Stephens did not. They deserve encouragement, however, while they
continue to compile, and neither affect wit, nor presume to reason.




There is a fourth class, of much less use than these, but of much greater
name. Men of the first rank in learning, and to whom the whole tribe of scholars
bow with reverence. A man must be as indifferent as I am to common censure
or approbation, to avow a thorough contempt for the whole business of these
learned lives; for all the researches into antiquity, for all the systems
of chronology and history, that we owe to the immense labors of a Scaliger,
a Bochart, a Petavius, an Usher, and even a Marsham. The same materials are
common to them all; but these materials are few, and there is a moral impossibility
that they should ever have more. They have combined these into every form
that can be given to them: they have supposed, they have guessed, they have
joined disjointed passages of different authors, and broken traditions of
uncertain originals, of various people, and of centuries remote from one
another as well as from ours. In short, that they might leave no liberty
untaken, even a wild fantastical similitude of sounds has served to prop
up a system. As the materials they have are few, so are the very best, and
such as pass for authentic, extremely precarious; as some of these learned
persons themselves confess.




Julius Africanus, Eusebius, and George the monk, opened the principal
sources of all this science; but they corrupted the waters. Their point of
view was to make profane history and chronology agree with sacred; though
the latter chronology is very far from being established with the clearness
and certainty necessary to make it a rule. For this purpose, the ancient
monuments, that these writers conveyed to posterity, were digested by them
according to the system they were to maintain: and none of these monuments
were delivered down in their original form, and genuine purity. The Dynasties
of Manetho, for instance, are broken to pieces by Eusebius, and such fragments
of them as suited his design, are stuck into his work. We have, we know,
no more of them. The Codex Alexandrinus we owe to George the monk. We have
no other authority for it; and one cannot see without amazement such a man
as Sir John Marsam undervaluing this authority in one page, and building
his system upon it in the next. He seems even by the lightness of his expressions,
if I remember well, for it is long since I looked into his canon, not to
be much concerned what foundation his system had, so he showed his skill
in forming one, and in reducing the immense antiquity of the Egyptians within
the limits of the Hebraic calculation. In short, my lord, all these systems
are so many enchanted castles; they appear to be something, they are nothing
but appearances: like them too, dissolve the charm, and they vanish from
the sight. To dissolve the charm, we must begin at the beginning of them:
the expression may be odd, but it is significant. We must examine scrupulously
and indifferently the foundations on which they lean: and when we find these
either faintly probable, or grossly improbable, it would be foolish to expect
any thing better in the superstructure. This science is one of those that
are "a limine salutandae." To do thus much may be necessary, that
grave authority may not impose on our ignorance: to do more, would be to
assist this very authority in imposing false science upon us. I had rather
take the Darius whom Alexander conquered, for the son of Hystaspes, and make
as many anachronisms as a Jewish chronologer, than sacrifice half my life
to collect all the learned lumber that fills the head of an antiquary.




LETTER 2




Concerning the True Use and Advantage of the Study of History




Let me say something of history, in general, before I descend into the
consideration of particular parts of it, or of the various methods of study,
or of the different views of those that apply themselves to it, as I had
begun to do in my former letter.




The love of history seems inseparable from human nature, because it seems
inseparable from self-love. The same principle in this instance carries us
forward and backward, to future and to past ages. We imagine that the things,
which affect us, must affect posterity: this sentiment runs through mankind,
from Caesar down to the parish-clerk in Pope's Miscellany. We are fond of
preserving, as far as it is in our frail power, the memory of our own adventures,
of those of our own time, and of those that preceded it. Rude heaps of stones
have been raised, and ruder hymns have been composed, for this purpose, by
nations who bad not yet the use of arts and letters. To go no farther back,
the triumphs of Odin were celebrated in runic songs, and the feats of our
British ancestors were recorded in those of their bards. The savages of America
have the same custom at this day: and long historical ballads of their huntings
and their wars are sung at all their festivals. There is no need of saying
how this passion grows, among civilised nations, in proportion to the means
of gratifying. it. but let us observe that the same principle of nature directs
us as strongly, and more generally as well as more early, to indulge our
own curiosity, instead of preparing to gratify that of others. The child
hearkens with delight to the tales of his nurse: he learns to read, and he
devours with eagerness fabulous legends and novels: in riper years he applies
himself to history, or to that which he takes for history, to authorised
romance: and, even in age, the desire of knowing what has happened to other
men, yields to the desire alone of relating what has happened to ourselves.
Thus history, true or false, speaks to our passions always. What pity is
it, my lord, that even the best should speak to our understandings so seldom?
That it does so, we have none to blame but ourselves. Nature has done her
part. She has opened this study to every man who can read and think: and
what she has made the most agreeable, reason cain make the most useful, application
of our minds. But if we consult our reason, we shall be far from following
the examples of our fellow-creatures, in this as in most other cases, who
are so proud of being rational. We shall neither read to soothe our indolence,
nor to gratify our vanity: as little shall we content ourselves to drudge
like grammarians and critics, that others may be able to study with greater
ease and profit, like philosophers and statesmen; as little shall we affect
the slender merit of becoming great scholars at the expense of groping all
our lives in the dark mazes of antiquity. All these mistake the true drift
of study, and the true use of history. Nature gave us curiosity to excite
the industry of our minds; but she never intended it should be made the principal,
much less the sole object of their application. The true and proper object
of this application is a constant improvement in private and in public virtue.
An application to any study that tends neither directly nor indirectly to
make us better men and better citizens, is at best but a specious and ingenious
sort of idleness, to use an expression of Tillotson: and the knowledge we
acquire by it is a creditable kind of ignorance, nothing more. This creditable
kind of ignorance is, in my opinion, the whole benefit which the generality
of men, even of the most learned, reap from the study of history: and yet
the study of history seems to me, of all other, the most proper to train
us up to private and public virtue.




Your lordship may very well be ready by this time, and after so much bold
censure on my part, to ask me, what then is the true use of history? in what
respects may it serve to make us better and wiser? and what method is to
be pursued in the study of it, for attaining these great ends? I will answer
you by quoting what I have read some where or other, in Dionysius Halicarn,
I think, that history is philosophy teaching by examples. We need but to
cast our eyes on the world, and we shall see the daily force of example:
we need but to turn them inward, and we shall soon discover why example has
this force. "Pauci prudentia," says Tacitus, "honesta abdeterioribus,
utilia ab noxiis discernunt: plures aliorum eventis docentur." Such
is the imperfection of human understanding, such is the frail temper of our
minds, that abstract or general propositions, though ever so true, appear
obscure or doubtful to us very often, till they are explained by examples;
and that the wisest lessons in favor of virtue go but a little way to convince
the judgment, and determine the will, unless they are enforced by the same
means; and we are obliged to apply to ourselves what we see happen to other
men. Instructions by precept have the further disadvantage of coming on the
authority of others, and frequently require a long deduction of reasoning.
"Homines amplius oculis, quam auribus, credunt: longum iter est per
praecepta, breve et efficax per exempla." The reason of this judgment,
which I quote from one of Seneca's epistles in confirmation of my own opinion,
rests, I think, on this; that when examples are pointed out to us, there
is a kind of appeal, with which we are flattered, made to our senses, as
well as our understandings. The instruction comes then upon our own authority:
we frame the precept after our own experience, and yield to fact when we
resist speculation. But this is not the only advantage of instruction by
example; for example appeals not to our understanding alone, but to our passions
likewise. Example assuages these, or animates them; sets passion on the side
of judgment, and makes the whole man of a piece; which is more than the strongest
reasoning and the clearest demonstration can do: and thus forming habits
by repetition, example secures the observance of those precepts which example
insinuated. Is it not Pliny, my lord, who says, that the gentlest, he should
have added the most effectual, way of commanding, is by example? "Mitius
jubetur exemplo." The harshest orders are softened by example, and tyranny
itself becomes persuasive. What pity it is that so few princes have learned
this way of commanding! But again: the force of examples is not confined
to those alone, that pass immediately under our sight: the examples, that
memory suggests, have the same effect in their degree, and a habit of recalling
them will soon produce the habit of imitating them. In the same epistle,
from whence I cited a passage just now, Seneca says that Cleanthes had never
become so perfect a copy of Zeno, if he had not passed his life with him;
that Plato, Aristotle, and the other philosophers of that school, profited
more by the example, than by the discourse of Socrates. [But here, by the
way, Seneca mistook; for Socrates died two years according to some, and four
years according to others, before the birth of Aristotle: and his mistake
might come from the inaccuracy of those who collected for him; as Erasmus
observes, after Quintilian, in his judgment on Seneca.] But be this, which
was scarce worth a parenthesis, as it will; he adds that Metrodorus, Hermachus,
and Polyaenus, men of great note, were formed by living under the same roof
with Epicurus, not by frequenting his school. These are instances of the
force of immediate example. But your lordship knows that the citizens of
Rome placed the images of their ancestors in the vestibules of their houses;
so that, whenever they went in or out, these venerable bustoes met their
eyes, and recalled the glorious actions of the dead, to fire the living,
to excite them to imitate and even to emulate their great forefathers. The
success answered the design. The virtue of one generation was transfused,
by the magic of example, into several: and a spirit of heroism was maintained
through many ages of that commonwealth. Now these are so many instances of
the force of remote example; and from all these instances we may conclude,
that examples of both kinds are necessary.




The school of example, my lord, is the world: and the masters of this
school are history and experience. I am far from contending that the former
is preferable to the latter. I think upon the whole otherwise: but this I
say, that the former is absolutely necessary to prepare us for the latter,
and to accompany us whilst we are under the discipline of the latter, that
is, through the whole course of our lives. No doubt some few men may be quoted,
to whom nature gave what art and industry can give to no man. But such examples
will prove nothing against me, because I admit that the study of history,
without experience, is insufficient, but assert, that experience itself is
so without genius. Genius is preferable to the other two; but I would wish
to find the three together: for how great soever a genius may be, and how
much soever he may acquire new light and heat, as he proceeds in his rapid
course, certain it is that he will never shine with the full lustre, nor
shed the full influence he is capable of, unless to his own experience he
adds the experience of other men and other ages. Genius, without the improvement,
at least of experience, is what comets once were thought to be, a blazing
meteor, irregular in his course, and dangerous in his approach; of no use
to any system, and able to destroy any. Mere sons of earth, if they have
experience without any knowledge of the history of the world, are but half
scholars in the science of mankind. And if they are conversant in history
without experience, they are worse than ignorant; they are pedants, always
incapable, sometimes meddling and presuming. The man, who has all three,
is an honor to his country, and a public blessing: and such, I trust, your
lordship will be in this century, as your great-grandfather, was in the last.




I have insisted a little longer on this head, and have made these distinctions
the rather, because though I attribute a great deal more than many will be
ready to allow, to the study of history, yet I would not willingly even seem
to fall into the ridicule of ascribing it to such extravagant effects, as
several have done from Tully down to Casaubon, La Mothe le Vayer, and other
modern pedants. When Tully informs us, in the second book of his Tusculan
disputations, that the first Scipio Africanus had always in his hands the
works of Xenophon, he advances nothing but what is probable and reasonable.
To say nothing of the retreat of the ten thousand, nor of other parts of
Xenophon's writings; the images of virtue, represented in that admirable
picture the Cyropaedia, were proper to entertain a soul that was fraught
with virtue, and Cyrus was worthy to be imitated by Scipio. So Selim emulated
Caesar, whose commentaries were translated for his use against the customs
of the Turks; so Caesar emulated Alexander; and Alexander, Achilles. There
is nothing ridiculous here, except the use that is made of this passage by
those who quote it. But what the same Tully says, in the fourth book of his
academical disputations, concerning Lucullus, seems to me very extraordinary.
"In Asiam factus imperator venit; cum esset Roma profectus rei militaris
rudis;" [one would be ready to ascribe so sudden a change, and so vast
an improvement, to nothing less than knowledge infused by inspiration, if
we were not assured in the same place that they were effected by very natural
means, by such as it is in every man's power to employ] "partim percontando
a peritis, partim in rebus gestis legendis." Lucullus, according to
this account, verified the reproach on the Roman nobility, which Sallust
puts into the mouth of Marius. But as I discover the passion of Marius, and
his prejudices to the patricians, in one case; so I discover, methinks, the
cunning of Tully, and his partiality to himself, in the other. Lucullus,
after he had been chosen consul, obtained by intrigue the government of Cilicia,
and so put himself into a situation of commanding the Roman army against
Mithridates: Tully had the same government afterwards, and though he had
no Mithridates, nor any other enemy of consequence, opposed to him; though
all his military feats consisted in surprising and pillaging a parcel of
highlanders and wild Cilicians; yet he assumed the airs of a conqueror, and
described his actions in so pompous a style, that the account becomes burlesque.
He laughs, indeed, in one of his letters to Atticus, at his generalship;
but if we turn to those he wrote to Coelius Rufus, and to Cato, upon this
occasion, or to those wherein he expresses to Atticus his resentment against
Cato for not proposing in his favor the honors usually decreed to conquerors,
we may see how vanity turned his head, and how impudently he insisted on
obtaining a triumph. Is it any strain now to suppose, that he meant to insinuate,
in the passage I have quoted about Lucullus, that the difference between
him and the former governor of Cilicia, even in a military merit, arose from
the different conjuncture alone; and that Lucullus could not have done in
Cilicia, at that time, more than he himself did? Cicero had read and questioned
at least as much Lucullus, and would therefore have appeared as great a captain
if he had had as great a prince as Mithridates to encounter. But the truth
is that Lucullus was made a great captain by theory, or the study of history,
alone, no more than Ferdinand of Spain and Alphonsus of Naples were cured
of desperate distempers by reading Livy and Quintus Curtius; a silly tale,
which Bodin, Amyot, and others have picked up and propagated. Lucullus had
served in his youth against the Marsi, probably in other wars, and Sylla
took early notice of him: he went into the east with this general and had
a great share in his confidence. He commanded in several expeditions. It
was he who restored the Colophonians to their liberty, and who punished the
revolt of the people of Mytelene. Thus we see that Lucullus was formed by
experience, as well as study, and by an experience gained in those very countries,
where he gathered so many laurels afterwards in fighting against the same
enemy. The late Duke of Marlborough never read Xenophon, most certainly,
nor the relation perhaps of any modern wars; but he served in his youth under
Monsieur de Turenne, and I have heard that he was taken notice of, in those
early days, by that great wan. He afterwards commanded in an expedition to
Ireland, served a campaign or two, if I mistake not, under king William in
Flanders: and, besides these occasions, had none of gaining experience in
war, till he came to the head of our armies in one thousand seven hundred
and two, and triumphed not over Asiatic troops, but over the veteran armies
of France. The Roman had on his side genius and experience cultivated by
study: the Briton had genius improved by experience, and no more. The first
therefore is not an example of what study can do alone; but the latter is
an example of what genius and experience can do without study. They can do
so much, to be sure, when the first is given in a superior degree. But such
examples are very rare; and when they happen it will be still true, that
they would have had fewer blemishes, and would have come nearer to the perfection
of private and public virtue, in all the arts of peace and achievements of
war, if the views of such men had been enlarged, and their sentiments ennobled,
by acquiring that cast of thought, and that temper of mind, which will grow
up and become habitual in every man who applies himself early to the study
of history, as to the study of philosophy, with the intention of being wiser
and better, without the affectation of being more learned.




The temper of the mind is formed and a certain turn given to our ways
of thinking; in a word, the seeds of that moral character which cannot wholly
alter the natural character, but may correct the evil and improve the good
that is in it, or do the very contrary, are sown betimes, and much sooner
than is commonly supposed. It is equally certain, that we shall gather or
not gather experience, be the better or the worse for this experience, when
we come into the world and mingle amongst mankind, according to the temper
of mind, and the turn of thought, that we have acquired beforehand, and bring
along with us. They will tincture all our future acquisitions; so that the
very same experience which secures the judgment of one man, or excites him
to virtue, shall lead another into error, or plunge him into vice. From hence,
it follows, that the study of history has in this respect a double advantage.
If experience alone can make us perfect in our parts, experience cannot begin
to teach them till we are actually on the stage: whereas, by a previous application
to this study, we con them over at least before we appear there: we are not
quite unprepared; we learn our parts sooner, and we learn them better.




Let me explain what I mean by an example. There is scarce any folly or
vice more epidemical among the sons of men, than that ridiculous and hurtful
vanity by which the people of each country are apt to prefer themselves to
those of every other; and to make their own customs, and manners, and opinions,
the standards of right and wrong, of true and false. The Chinese mandarins
were strangely surprised, and almost incredulous, when the Jesuits showed
them how small a figure their empire made in the general map of the world.
The Samojedes wondered much at the Czar of Muscovy for not living among them:
and the Hottentot, who returned from Europe, stripped himself naked as soon
as he came home, put on his bracelets of guts and garbage, and grew stinking
and lousy as fast as he could. Now nothing can contribute more to prevent
us from being tainted with this vanity, than to accustom ourselves early
to contemplate the different nations of the earth, in that vast map which
history spreads before us, in their rise and their fall, in their barbarous
and civilised states, in the likeness and unlikeness of them all to one another,
and of each to itself. By frequently renewing this prospect to the mind,
the Mexican with his cap and coat of feathers, sacrificing a human victim
to his god, will not appear more savage to our eyes than the Spaniard with
a hat on his head, and a gonilla round his neck, sacrificing whole nations
to his ambition, his avarice, and even the wantonness of his cruelty. I might
show, by a multitude of other examples, how history prepares us for experience,
and guides us in it: and many of these would be both curious and important.
I might likewise bring several other instances, wherein history serves to
purge the mind of those national partialities and prejudices that we are
apt to contract in our education, and that experience for the most part rather
confirms than removes: because it is for the most part confined, like our
education. But I apprehend growing too prolix, and shall therefore conclude
this head by observing, that though an early and proper application to the
study of history will contribute extremely to keep our minds free from a
ridiculous partiality in favor of our own country, and a vicious prejudice
against others; yet the same study will create in us a preference of affection
to our own country. There is a story told of Abgarus. He brought several
beasts taken in different places to Rome, they say, and let them loose before
Augustus: every beast ran immediately to that part of the circus where a
parcel of earth taken from his native soil had been laid. "Credat Judaeus
Apella." This tale might pass on Josephus; for in him, I believe, I
read it: but surely the love of our country is a lesson of reason, not an
institution of nature. Education and habit, obligation and interest, attach
us to it, not instinct. It is however so necessary to be cultivated, and
the prosperity of all societies, as well as the grandeur of some, depends
upon it so much, that orators by their eloquence, and poets by their enthusiasm,
have endeavored to work up this precept of morality into a principle of passion.
But the examples which we find in history, improved by the lively descriptions,
and the just applauses or censures of historians, will have a much better
and more permanent effect than declamation or song, or the dry ethics of
mere philosophy. In fine, to converse with historians is to keep good company:
many of them were excellent men, and those who were not such, have taken
care, however, to appear such in their writings. It must be, therefore, of
great use to prepare ourselves by this conversation for that of the world;
and to receive our first impressions, and to acquire our first habits, in
a scene where images of virtue and vice are continually represented to us
in the colors that belong properly to them, before we enter on another scene,
where virtue and vice are too often confounded, and what belongs to one is
ascribed to the other.




Besides the advantage of beginning our acquaintance with mankind sooner,
and of bringing with us into the world, and the business of it, such a cast
of thought and such a temper of mind, as will enable us to make a better
use of our experience; there is this further advantage in the study of history,
that the improvement we make by it extends to more objects, and is made at
the expense of other men: whereas that improvement, which is the effect of
our own experience, is confined to fewer objects, and is made at our own
expense. To state the account fairly, therefore, between these two improvements,
though the latter be the more valuable, yet allowance being made on one side
for the much greater number of examples that history presents to us, and
deduction being made on the other of the price we often pay for our experience,
the value of the former will rise in proportion. "I have recorded these
things," says Polybius, after giving an account of the defeat of Regulus,
"that they who read these commentaries may be rendered better by them;
for all men have two ways of improvement, one arising from their own experience,
and one from the experience of others. Evidentior quidem illa est, quae per
propria ducit infortunia at tutior illa, quae per aliena." I use Casubon's
translation. Polybius goes on, and concludes, "that since the first
of these ways exposes us to great labor and peril, whilst the second works
the same good effect, and is attended by no evil circumstance, every one
ought to take for granted that the study of history is the best school where
he can learn how to conduct himself in all the situations of life. "Regulus
had seen at Rome many examples of magnanimity, of frugality, of the contempt
of riches, and of other virtues; and these virtues he practised. But he had
not learned, nor had opportunity of learning another lesson, which the examples
recorded in history inculcate frequently, the lesson of moderation. An insatiable
thirst of military fame, an unconfined ambition of extending their empire,
an extravagant confidence in their own courage and force, an insolent contempt
of their enemies, and an impetuous overbearing spirit with which they pursued
all their enterprises, composed in his days the distinguishing character
of a Roman. Whatever the senate and people resolved, to the members of that
commonwealth appeared both practicable and just. Neither difficulties nor
dangers could check them; and their sages had not yet discovered, that virtues
in excess degenerate into vices. Notwithstanding the beautiful rant which
Horace puts into his mouth, I make no doubt that Regulus learned at Carthage
those lessons of moderation which he had not learned at Rome: but he learned
them by experience, and the fruits of this experience came too late, and
cost too dear; for they cost the total defeat of the Roman army, the prolongation
of a calamitous war which might have been finished by a glorious peace, the
loss of liberty to thousands of Roman citizens, and to Regulus himself the
loss of life in the midst of torments, if we are entirely to credit what
is perhaps exaggeration in the Roman authors.




There is another advantage, worthy our observation, that belongs to the
study of history; and that I shall mention here, not only because of the
importance of it, but because it leads me immediately to speak of the nature
of the improvement we ought to have in our view, and of the method in which
it seems to me that this improvement ought to be pursued: two particulars
from which your lordship may think perhaps that I digress too long. The advantage
I mean consists in this, that the examples which history presents to us,
both of men and of events, are generally complete. the whole example is before
us, and consequently the whole lesson, or sometimes the various lessons,
which philosophy proposes to teach us by this example. For first, as to men;
we see them at their whole length in history, and we see them generally there
through a medium less partial at least than that of experience: for I imagine
that a whig or a tory, whilst those parties subsisted, would have condemned
in Saturninus the spirit of faction which he applauded in his own tribunes,
and would have applauded in Drusus the spirit of moderation which he despised
in those of the contrary party, and which he suspected and hated in those
of his own party. The villain who has imposed on mankind by his power or
cunning, and whom experience could not unmask for a time, is unmasked at
length: and the honest man, who has been misunderstood or defamed, is justified
before his story ends. Or if this does not happen, if the villain dies with
his mask on, in the midst of applause, and honor, and wealth, and power,
and if the honest man dies under the same load of calumny and disgrace under
which he lived, driven perhaps into exile, and exposed to want; yet we see
historical justice executed, the name of one branded with infamy, and that
of the other celebrated with panegyric to succeeding ages. "Praecipuum
munus annalium reor, ne virtutes sileantur; utque pravis dictis factisque
ex posteritate et infamia metus sit. "Thus, according to Tacitus, and
according to truth, from which his judgments seldom deviate, the principal
duty of history is to erect a tribunal, like that among the Egyptians, mentioned
by Diodorus Siculus, where men and princes themselves were tried, and condemned
or acquitted, after their deaths; where those who had not been punished for
their crimes, and those who had not been honored for their virtues, received
a just retribution. The sentence is pronounced in one case, as it was in
the other, too late to correct or recompense; but it is pronounced in time
to render these examples of general instruction to mankind. Thus Cicero,
that I may quote one instance out of thousands, and that I may do justice
to the general character of that great man, whose particular failing I have
censured so freely. Cicero, I say, was abandoned by Octavius, and massacred
by Antony. But let any man read this fragment of Aurelius Fuscus, and choose
which he would wish to have been, the orator, or the triumvir? "Quoad
humanum genus incolume manserit, quamdiu usus literis, honor summae eloquentiae
pretium erit, quamdiu rerum natura aut fortuna steterit, aut memoria duraverit,
admirabile posteris vigebis ingenium, et uno proscriptus seculo, proscribes
Antonium omnibus. "




Thus again, as to events that stand recorded in history; we see them all,
we see them as they followed one another, or as they produced one another,
causes or effects, immediate or remote. We are cast back, as it were, into
former ages: we live with the men who lived before us, and we inhabit countries
that we never saw. Place is enlarged, and time prolonged, in this manner;
so that the man who applies himself early to the study of history, may acquire
in a few years, and before he sets his foot abroad in the world, not only
a more extended knowledge of mankind, but the experience of more centuries
than any of the patriarchs saw. The events we are witnesses of, in the course
of the longest life, appear to us very often original, unprepared, single,
and unrelative, if I may use such an expression for want of a better English;
in French I would say isolés: they appear such very often, are called
accidents, and looked on as the effects of chance; a word, by the way, which
is in constant use, and has frequently no determinate meaning. We get over
the present difficulty, we improve the momentary advantage, as well as we
can, and we look no farther. Experience can carry us no farther; for experience
can go a very little way back in discovering causes: and effects are not
the objects of experience till they happen. From hence many errors in judgment,
and by consequence in conduct, necessarily arise. And here too lies the difference
we are speaking of between history and experience. The advantage on the side
of the former is double. In ancient history, as we have said already, the
examples are complete, which are incomplete in the course of experience.
The beginning, the progression, and the end appear, not of particular reigns,
much less of particular enterprises, or systems of policy alone, but of governments,
of nations, of empires, and of all the various systems that have succeeded
one another in the course of their duration. In modern history, the examples
may be, and sometimes are, incomplete; but they have this advantage when
they are so, that they serve to render complete the examples of our own time.
Experience is doubly defective; we are born too late to see the beginning,
and we die too soon to see the end of many things. History supplies both
these defects. Modern history shows the causes, when experience presents
the effects alone: and ancient history enables us to guess at the effects,
when experience presents the causes alone. Let me explain my meaning by two
examples of these kinds; one past, the other actually present.




When the revolution of one thousand six hundred and eighty-eight happened,
few men then alive, I suppose, went farther in their search after the causes
of it, than the extravagant attempt of king James against the religion and
liberty of his people. His former conduct, and the passages of king Charles
the Second's reign might rankle still at the hearts of some men, but could
not be set to account among the causes of his deposition; since he had succeeded,
notwithstanding them, peaceably to the throne: and the nation in general,
even many of those who would have excluded him from it, were desirous, or
at least willing, that he should continue in it. Now this example, thus stated,
affords, no doubt, much good instruction to the kings, and people of Britain.
But this instruction is not entire, because the example thus stated, and
confined to the experience of that age, is imperfect. King James's mal-administration
rendered a revolution necessary and practicable; but his mal-administration,
as well as all his preceding conduct, was caused by his bigot attachment
to popery, and to the principles of arbitrary government, from which no warning
could divert him. His bigot attachment to these was caused by the exile of
the royal family; this exile was caused by the usurpation of Cromwell: and
Cromwell's usurpation was the effect of a former rebellion, begun not without
reason on account of liberty, but without any valid pretence on account of
religion. During this exile, our princes caught the taint of popery and foreign
politics. We made them unfit to govern us, and after that were forced to
recall them that they might rescue us out of anarchy. It was necessary therefore,
your lordship sees, at the revolution, and it is more so now, to go back
in history, at least as far as I have mentioned, and perhaps farther, even
to the beginning of king James the First's reign, to render this event a
complete example, and to develope all the wise, honest, and salutary precepts,
with which it is pregnant, both to king and subject.




The other example shall be taken from what has succeeded the revolution.
Few men at that time looked forward enough to foresee the necessary consequences
of the new constitution of the revenue, that was soon afterwards formed;
nor of the method of funding that immediately took place; which, absurd as
they are, have continued ever since, till it is become scarce possible to
alter them. Few people, I say, foresaw how the creation of funds, and the
multiplication of taxes, would increase yearly the power of the crown, and
bring our liberties by a natural and necessary progression, into more real,
though less apparent danger, than they were in before the revolution. The
excessive ill husbandry practised from the very beginning of king William's
reign, and which laid the foundations of all we feel and all we fear, was
not the effect of ignorance, mistakes, or what we call chance, but of design
and scheme in those who had the sway at that time. I am not so uncharitable,
however, as to believe that they intended to bring upon their country all
the mischiefs that we, who came after them, experience and apprehend. No,
they saw the measures, they took singly, and unrelatively, or relatively
alone to some immediate object. The notion of attaching men to the new government,
by tempting them to embark their fortunes on the same bottom, was a reason
of state to some: the notion of creating a new, that is, a moneyed interest,
in opposition to the landed interest or as a balance to it, and of acquiring
a superior influence in the city of London at least by the establishment
of great corporations, was a reason of party to others: and I make no doubt
that the opportunies of amassing immense estates by the management of funds,
by trafficking in paper, and by all the arts of jobbing, was a reason of
private interest to those who supported and improved this scheme of iniquity,
if not to those who devised it. They looked no farther. Nay, we who came
after them, and have long tasted the bitter fruits of the corruption they
planted, were far from taking such an alarm at our distress and our danger,
as they deserved; till the most remote and fatal effects of causes, laid
by the last generation, was very near becoming an object of experience in
this. Your lordship, I am sure, sees at once how much a due reflection on
the passages of former times, as they stand recorded in the history of our
own, and of other countries, would have deterred a free people from trusting
the sole management of so great a revenue, and the sole nomination of those
legions of officers employed in it, to their chief magistrate. There remained
indeed no pretence for doing so, when once a salary was settled on the prince,
and the public revenue was no longer in any sense his revenue, nor the public
expense his expense. Give me leave to add, that it would have been, and would
be still, more decent with regard to the prince, and less repugnant if not
more conformable to the principles and practice too of our government, to
take this power and influence from the prince, or to share it with him; than
to exclude men from the privilege of representing their fellow-subjects who
would choose them in parliament, purely because they are employed and trusted
by the prince.




Your lordship sees, not only how much a due reflection upon the experience
of other ages and countries would have pointed out national corruption, as
the natural and necessary consequence of investing the crown with the management
of so great a revenue; but also the loss of liberty, as the natural and necessary
consequence of national corruption.




These two examples explain sufficiently what they are intended to explain.
It only remains therefore upon this head, to observe the difference between
the two manners in which history supplies the defects of our own experience.
It shows us causes as in fact they were laid, with their immediate effects:
and it enables us to guess at future events. It can do no more, in the nature
of things. My Lord Bacon, in his second book of the Advancement of Learning,
having in his mind, I suppose, what Philo and Josephus asserted of Moses,
affirms divine history to have this prerogative, that the narration may be
before the fact as well as after. But since the ages of prophecy, as well
as miracles, are past, we must content ourselves to guess at what will be,
by what has been: we have no other means in our power, and history furnishes
us with these. How we are to improve, and apply these means, as well as how
we are to acquire them, shall be deduced more particularly in another letter.




LETTER 3




An Objection against the Utility of History Removed. II. The False
and True Aims of Those who Study it. III. Of the History of the First Ages,
With Reflections on the State of Ancient History Profane and Sacred.




Were these letters to fall into the hands of some ingenious persons who
adorn the age we live in, your lordship's correspondent would be joked upon
for his project of improving men in virtue and wisdom by the study of history.
The general characters of men, it would be said, are determined by their
natural constitutions, as their particular actions are by immediate objects.
Many very conversant in history would be cited, who have proved ill men,
or bad politicians; and a long roll would be produced of others, who have
arrived at a great pitch of private, and public virtue, without any assistance
of this kind. Something has been said already to anticipate this objection;
but, since I have heard several persons affirm such propositions with great
confidence, a loud laugh, or a silent sneer at the pedants who presumed to
think otherwise; I will spend a few paragraphs, with your lordship's leave,
to show that such affirmations, for to affirm amongst these fine men is to
reason, either prove too much, or prove nothing.




If our general characters were determined absolutely, as they are certainly
influenced, by our constitutions, and if our particular actions were so by
immediate objects; all instruction by precept, as well as example, and all
endeavors to form the moral character by education, would be unnecessary.
Even the little care that is taken, and surely it is impossible to take less,
in the training up our youth, would be too much. But the truth is widely
different from this representation of it; for, what is vice, and what is
virtue? I speak of them in a large and philosophical sense. The former is,
I think, no more than the excess, abuse, and misapplication of appetites,
desires, and passions, natural and innocent, nay useful and necessary. The
latter consists in the moderation and government, in the use and application
of these appetites, desires, and passions, according to the rules of reason,
and therefore often in opposition to their own blind impulse.




What now is education? that part, that principle and most neglected part
of it, I mean, which tends to form the moral character? It is, I think, an
institution designed to lead men from their tender years, by precept and
example, by argument and authority, to the practice, and to the habit of
practising these rules. The stronger our appetites, desires, and passions
are, the harder indeed is the task of education: but when these efforts of
education are proportioned to this strength, although our keenest appetites
and desires, and our ruling passions cannot be reduced to a quiet and uniform
submission, yet, are not their excesses assuaged? are not their abuses and
misapplications, in some degree, diverted or checked? Though the pilot cannot
lay the storm, cannot he carry the ship, by his art, better through it, and
often prevent the wreck that would always happen, without him? If Alexander
who loved wine, and was naturally choleric, had been bred under the severity
of Roman discipline, it is probable he would neither have made a bonfire
of Persepolis for his whore, nor have killed his friend. If Scipio, who was
naturally given to women, for which anecdote we have, if I mistake not, the
authority of Polybius, as well as some verses of Naevius preserved by A.
Gellius, bad been educated by Olympius at the court of Philip, it is improbable
that he would have restored the beautiful Spaniard. In short, if the renowned
Socrates bad not corrected nature by art, this first apostle of the Gentiles
had been a very profligate fellow, by his own confession; for he was inclined
to all the vices Zopyrus imputed to him, as they say, on the observation
of his physiognomy.




With him, therefore, who denies the effects of education, it would be
in vain to dispute; and with him who admits them, there can be dispute, concerning
that share which I ascribe to the study of history, in forming our moral
characters, and making us better men. The very persons who pretend that inclinations
cannot be restrained, nor habits corrected, against our natural bent, would
be the first perhaps to prove, in certain cases, the contrary. A fortune
at court, or the favors of a lady, have prevailed on many to conceal, and
they could not conceal without restraining, which is one step towards correcting,
the vices they were by nature addicted to the most. Shall we imagine now,
that the beauty of virtue and the deformity of vice, the charms of a bright
and lasting reputation, the terror of being delivered over as criminals to
all posterity, the real benefit arising from a conscientious discharge of
the duty we owe to others, which benefit fortune can neither hinder nor take
away, and the reasonableness of conforming ourselves to the designs of God
manifested in the constitution of the human nature; shall we imagine, I say,
that ill these are not able to acquire the same power over those who are
continually called upon to a contemplation of them, and they who apply themselves
to the study of history are so called upon, as other motives, mean and sordid
in comparison of these, can usurp on other men?




2. That the study of history, far from making us wiser, and more useful
citizens, as well as better men, may be of no advantage whatsoever; that
it may serve to render us mere antiquaries and scholars; or that it may help
to make us forward coxcombs, and prating pedants, I have already allowed.
But this is not the fault of history: and to convince us that it is not,
we need only contrast the true use of history with the use that is made of
it by such men as these. We ought always to keep in mind, that history is
philosophy teaching by examples how to conduct ourselves in all the situations
of private and public life; that therefore we must apply ourselves to it
in a philosophical spirit and manner; that we must rise from particular to
general knowledge, and that we must fit ourselves for the society and business
of mankind by accustoming our minds to reflect and meditate on the characters
we find described, and the course of events we find related there. Particular
examples may be of use sometimes in particular cases; but the application
of them is dangerous. It must be done with the utmost circumspection, or
it will be seldom done with success. And yet one would think that this was
the principal use of the study of history, by what has been written on the
subject. I know not whether Machiavel himself is quite free from defect on
this account: he seems to carry the use and application of particular examples
sometimes too far. Marius and Catulus passed the Alps, met, and defeated
the Cimbri beyond the frontiers of Italy. Is it safe to conclude from hence,
that whenever one people is invaded by another, the invaded ought to meet
and fight the invaders at a distance from their frontiers? Machiavel's countryman,
Guicciardin, was aware of the danger that might arise from such an application
of examples. Peter of Medicis had involved himself in great difficulties,
when those wars and calamities began which Lewis Sforza first drew and entailed
on Italy, by flattering the ambition of Charles the Eighth in order to gratify
his own, and calling the French into that country. Peter owed his distress
to his folly in departing from the general tenor of conduct his father Laurence
had held, and hoped to relieve himself by imitating his father's example
in one particular instance. At a time when the wars with the pope and king
of Naples had reduced Laurence to circumstances of great danger, he took
the resolution of going to Ferdinand, and of treating in person with that
prince. The resolution appears in history imprudent and almost desperate:
were we informed of the secret reasons on which this great man acted, it
would appear very possible a wise and safe measure. It succeeded, and Laurence
brought back with him public peace, and private security. As soon as the
French troops entered the dominions of Florence, Peter was struck with a
panic terror, went to Charles the Eighth, put the port of Leghorn, the fortresses
of Pisa, and all the keys of the country, into this prince's hands; whereby
he disarmed the Florentine commonwealth, and ruined himself. he was deprived
of his authority, and driven out of the city, by the just indignation of
the magistrates, and people: and in the treaty which they made afterwards
with the king of France, it was stipulated, that Peter should not remain
within an hundred miles of the state, nor his brothers within the same distance
of the city of Florence. On this occasion Guicciardin observes, how dangerous
it is to govern ourselves by particular examples; since to have the same
success, we must have the same prudence, and the same fortune; and since
the example must not only answer the case before us in general, but in every
minute circumstance. This is the sense of that admirable historian, and these
are his words -- "é senza dubio molta pericoloso il governarsi
con gl' esempi, se non concorrono, non solo in generale, ma in tutti i particulari,
le medesime ragioni; se le cose non sono regolate con la medesima prudenza,
et se oltre a tutti li altri fondamenti, non, v'ha la parte sua la medesima
fortuna." An observation that Boileau makes, and a rule he lays down
in speaking of translations, will properly find their place here, and serve
to explain still better what I would establish. "To translate servilely
into modern language an ancient author phrase by phrase, and word by word,
is preposterous: nothing can be more unlike the original than such a copy.
It is not to show, it is to disguise the author: and he who has known him
only in this dress, would not know him in his own. A good writer, instead
of taking this inglorious and unprofitable task upon him, will jouster contre
l'original, rather imitate than translate, and rather emulate than imitate;
he will transfuse the sense and spirit of the original into his own work,
and will endeavor to write as the ancient author would have written, had
he written in the same language." Now, to improve by examples is to
improve by imitation. We must catch the spirit, if we can, and conform ourselves
to the reason of them; but we must not affect to translate servilely into
our conduct, if your lordship will allow me the expression, the particular
conduct of those good and great men, whose images history sets before us.
Codrus and the Decii devoted themselves to death: one, because an oracle
had foretold that the army whose general was killed would be victorious;
the others in compliance with a superstition that bore great analogy to a
ceremony practised in the old Egyptian church, and added afterwards, as many
others of the same origin were, to the ritual of the Israelites. These are
examples of great magnanimity, to be sure, and of magnanimity employed in
the most worthy cause. In the early days of the Athenian and Roman government,
when the credit of oracles and all kinds of superstition prevailed, when
heaven was piously thought to delight in blood, and even human blood was
shed under wild notions of atonement, propitiation, purgation, expiation,
and satisfaction; they who set such examples as these, acted an heroical
and a rational part too. But if a general should act the same part now, and,
in order to secure his victory, get killed as fast as he could, he might
pass for a hero, but, I am sure, he would pass for a madman. Even these examples,
however, are of use: they excite us at least to venture our lives freely
in the service of our country, by proposing to our imitation men who devoted
themselves to certain death in the service of theirs. They show us what a
turn of imagination can operate, and how the greatest trifle, nay the greatest
absurdity, dressed up in the solemn airs of religion, can carry ardor and
confidence, or the contrary sentiments, into the breasts of thousands.




These are certain general principles, and rules of life and conduct, which
always must be true, because they are conformable to the invariable nature
of things. He who studies history as he would study philosophy, will soon
distinguish and collect them, and by doing so will soon form to himself a
general system of ethics and politics on the surest foundations, on the trial
of these principles and rules in all ages, and on the confirmation of them
by universal experience. I said he will distinguish them; for once more I
must say, that as to particular modes of actions, and measures of conduct,
which the customs of different countries, the manners of different ages,
and the circumstances of different conjunctures, have appropriated, as it
were; it is always ridiculous, or imprudent and dangerous to employ them.
But this is not all. By contemplating the vast variety of particular characters
and events; by examining the strange combination of causes, different, remote,
and seemingly opposite, that often concur in producing one effect; and the
surprising fertility of one single and uniform cause in the producing of
a multitude of effects, as different, remote, and seemingly as opposite;
by tracing carefully, as carefully as if the subject he considers were of
personal and immediate concern to him, all the minute and sometimes scarce
perceivable circumstances, either in the characters of actors, or in the
course of actions, that history enables him to trace, and according to which
the success of affairs, even the greatest, is mostly determined; by these,
and such methods as these, for I might descend into a much greater detail,
a man of parts may improve the study of history to its proper and principal
use; he may sharpen the penetration, fix the attention of his mind, and strengthen
his judgment; he may acquire the faculty and the habit of discerning quicker,
and looking farther; and of exerting that flexibility, and steadiness, which
are necessary to be joined in the conduct of all affairs that depend on the
concurrence or opposition of other men.




Mr Locke, I think, recommends the study of geometry even to those who
have no design of being geometricians: and he gives a reason for it, that
may be applieS to the present case. Such persons may forget every problem
that has been proposed, and every solution that they or others have given;
but the habit of pursuing long trains of ideas will remain with them, and
they will pierce through the mazes of sophism, and discover a latent truth,
where persons who have not this habit will never find it.




In this manner the study of history will prepare us for action and observation.
History is the ancient author: experience is the modern language. We form
our taste on the first, we translate the sense and reason, we transfuse the
spirit and force; but we imitate only the particular graces of the original;
we imitate them according to the idiom of our own tongue, that is, we substitute
often equivalents in the lieu of them, and are far from affecting to copy
them servilely. To conclude, as experience is conversant about the present,
and the present enables us to guess at the future; so history is conversant
about the past, and by knowing the things that have been, we become better
able to judge of the things that are.




This use, my lord, which I make the proper and principal use of the study
of history, is not insisted on by those who have written concerning the method
to be followed in this study: and since we propose different ends, we must
of course take different ways. Few of their treatises have fallen into my
hands: one, the method of Bodin, a man famous in his time, I remember to
have read. I took it up with much expectation many years ago; I went through
it, and remained extremely disappointed. He might have given almost any other
title to his book as properly as that which stands before it. There are not
many pages in it that relate any more to his subject than a tedious fifth
chapter, wherein he accounts for the characters of nations according to their
positions on the globe, and according to the influence of the stars; and
assures his reader that nothing can be more necessary than such a disquisition;
"ad universam historiarum cognitionem, et incorruptum earum judicium."
In his method, we are to take first a general view of universal history,
and chronology, in short abstracts, and then to study all particular histories
and systems. Seneca speaks of men who spend their whole lives in learning
how to act in life, "dum vitae instrumenta conquirunt." I doubt
that this method of Bodin would conduct us in the same, or as bad a way;
would leave us no time for action, or would make us unfit for it. A huge
common-place book, wherein all the remarkable sayings and facts that we find
in history are to be registered, may enable a man to talk or write like Bodin,
but will never make him a better man, nor enable him to promote, like an
useful citizen, the security, the peace, the welfare, or the grandeur of
the community to which he belongs. I shall proceed therefore to speak of
a method that leads to such purposes as these directly and certainly, without
any regard to the methods that have been prescribed by others.




I think then we must be on our guard against this very affectation of
learning, and this very wantonness of curiosity, which the examples and precepts
we commonly meet with are calculated to flatter and indulge. We must neither
dwell too long in the dark, nor wander about till we lose our way in the
light. We are too apt to carry systems of philosophy beyond all our ideas,
and systems of history beyond all our memorials. The philosopher begins with
reason, and ends with imagination. The historian inverts this order: he begins
without memorials, and he sometimes ends with them. This silly custom is
so prevalent among men of letters who apply themselves to the study of history,
and lias so much prejudice and so much authority on the side of it, that
your lordship must give me leave to speak a little more particularly and
plainly than I have done, in favor of common sense against an absurdity which
is almost sanctified.




Reflections on the State of Ancient History




The nature of man, and the constant course of human affairs, render it
impossible that the first ages of any new nation which forms itself, should
afford authentic materials for history. We have none such concerning the
originals of any of those nations that actually subsist, Shall we expect
to find them concerning the originals of nations dispersed, or extinguished,
two or three thousand years ago? If a thread of dark and uncertain traditions,
therefore, is made, as it commonly is, the introduction to history, we should
touch it lightly, and run swiftly over it, far from insisting on it, either
as authors or readers. Such introductions are at best no more than fanciful
preludes, that try the instruments, and precede the concert. He must be void
of judgment, and taste, one would think, who can take the first for true
history, or the last for true harmony. And yet so it has been, and so it
is, not in Germany and Holland alone; but in Italy, in France, and in England,
where genius has abounded, and taste has been long refined. Our great scholars
have dealt and deal in fables at least as much as our poets, with this difference
to the disadvantage of the former, to whom I may apply the remarks as justly
as Seneca applied it to the dialecticians -- "tristius inepti sunt.
Illi ex professio lasciviunt; hi agere seipsos aliquid existimant,"
Learned men, in learned and inquisitive ages, who possessed many advantages
that we have not, and among others that of being placed so many centuries
nearer the original truths that are the objects of so much laborious search,
despaired of finding them, and gave fair warning to posterity, if posterity
would have taken it. The ancient geographers, as Plutarch says in the life
of Theseus, when they laid down in their maps the little extent of sea and
land that was known to them, left great spaces void. In some of these spaces
they wrote, Here are sandy deserts, in others, Here are impassable marshes,
Here is a chain of inhospitable mountains, or Here is a frozen ocean. Just
so both he and other historians, when they related fabulous originals, were
not wanting to set out the bounds beyond which there was neither history
nor chronology. Censorinus has preserved the distinction of three eras established
by Varro. This learned Roman antiquary did not determine whether the first
period had any beginning, but fixed the end of it at the first, that is,
according to him, the Ogygian, deluge; which he placed, I think, some centuries
more backward than Julius Africanus thought fit to place it afterwards. To
this era of absolute darkness he supposed that a kind of twilight succeeded,
from the Ogygian deluge to the Olympic era, and this he called the fabulous
age. From this vulgar era when Coraebus was crowned victor, and long after
the true era when these games were instituted by Iphitus, the Greeks pretend
to be able to digest their history with some order, clearness, and certainty.
Varro therefore looked on it as the break of day, or the beginning of the
historical age. He might do so the rather, perhaps, because he included by
it the date he likewise fixed, or, upon recollection, that the elder Cato
had fixed, of the foundation of Rome within the period from which he supposed
that historical truth was to be found. But yet most certain it is, that the
history and chronology of the ages that follow are as confused and uncertain,
as the history and chronology of those which immediately precede this era.




I. The State of Ancient Profane History




The Greeks did not begin to write in prose till Pherecides of Syros introduced
the custom: and Cadmus Milesius was their first historian. Now these men
flourished long after the true, or even the vulgar Olympic era; for Josephus
affirms, and in this he has great probability on his side, that Cadmus Milesius,
and Acusilaus Argivus, in a word, the oldest historians in Greece, were very
little more ancient than the expedition of the Persians against the Greeks.
As several centuries passed between the Olympic era and these first historians,
there passed likewise several more between these and the first Greek chronologers.
Timaeus about the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and Eratosthenes about that
of Ptolemy Evergetes, seem first to have digested the events recorded by
them, according to the Olympiads. Precedent writers mentioned sometimes the
Olympiads; but this rule of reckoning was not brought into established use
sooner. The rule could not serve to render history more clear and certain
till it was followed: it was not followed till about five hundred years after
the Olympic era. There remains therefore no pretence to place the beginning
of the historical age so high as Varro placed it, by five hundred years.




Hellanicus indeed and others pretended to give the originals of cities
and governments, and to deduce their narrations from great antiquity. Their
works are lost, but we can judge how inconsiderable the loss is, by the writings
of that age which remain, and by the report of those who had seen the others.
For instance, Herodotus was cotemporary with Hellanicus. Herodotus was inquisitive
enough in all conscience, and proposed to publish all he could learn of the
antiquities of the Ionians, Lydians, Phrygians, Egyptians, Babylonians, Medes,
and Persians: that is, of almost all the nations who were known in his time
to exist. If he wrote Assyriacs, we have them not: but we are sure that this
word was used proverbially to signify fabulous legends; soon after his time,
and when the mode of publishing such relations and histories prevailed among
the Greeks.




In the nine books we have, he goes back indeed almost to the Olympic era,
without taking notice of it however; but he goes back only to tell an old
woman's tale, of a king who lost his crown for showing his wife naked to
his favorite; and from Candaules and Gyges he hastens, or rather he takes
a great leap, down to Cyprus.




Something like a thread of history of the Medes and then of the Persians,
to the flight of Xerxes, which happened in his own time, is carried on. The
events of his own time are related with an air of history. But all accounts
of the Greeks as well as the Persians, which precede these, and all the accounts
which he gives occasionally of other nations, were drawn up most manifestly
on broken, perplexed, and doubtful scraps of tradition. He had neither original
records, nor any authentic memorials to guide him, and yet these are the
sole foundations of true history. Herodotus flourished, I think, little more
than half a century, and Xenophon little more than a whole century, after
the death of Cyrus: and yet how various and repugnant are the relations made
by these two historians, of the birth, life, and death of this prince? If
more histories had come down from these ages to ours, the uncertainty and
inutility of them all would be but the more manifest. We should find that
Acusilaus rejected the traditions of Hesiod, that Hellanicus contradicted
Acusilaus, that Ephorus accused Hellanicus, that Timaeus accused Ephorus,
and all posterior writers Timaeus. This is the report of Josephus. But, in
order to show the ignorance and falsehood of all those writers through whom
the traditions of profane antiquity came to the Greeks, I will quote to your
lordship a much better authority than that of Josephus; the authority of
one who had no prejudice to bias him, no particular cause to defend, nor
system of ancient history to establish, and all the helps, as well as talents,
necessary to make him a competent judge. The man I mean is Strabo.




Speaking of the Massagetae in his eleventh book, he writes to this effect:
that no author had given a true account of them, though several had written
of the war that Cyrus waged against them; and that historians had found as
little credit in what they had related concerning the affairs of the Persians,
Medes, and Syrians: that this was due to their folly; for observing that
those who wrote fables professedly were held in esteem, these men imagined
they should render their writings more agreeable, if, under the appearance
and pretence of true history, they related what they had neither seen nor
heard from persons able to give them true information; and that accordingly
their only aim had been to dress up pleasing and marvellous relations: that
one may better give credit to Hesiod and Homer, when they talk of their heroes,
nay, even to dramatic poets, than to Ctesias, Herodotus, Hellanicus, and
their followers: that it is not safe to give credit even to the greatest
part of the historians who wrote concerning Alexander; since they too, encouraged
by the greater reputation of this conqueror, by the distance to which he
carried his arms, and by the difficulty of disproving what they said of actions
performed in regions so remote, were apt to deceive: that indeed when the
Roman empire on one side, and the Parthian on the other, came to extend themselves,
the truth of things grew to be better known.




You see, my lord, not only how late profane history began to be written
by the Greeks, but how much later it began to be written with any regard
to truth; and consequently what wretched materials the learned men, who arose
after the age of Alexander, had to employ, when they attempted to form. systems
of ancient history and chronology. We have some remains of that laborious
compiler Diodorus Siculus, but do we find in him any thread of ancient history,
I mean, that which passes for ancient in his time? what complaints, on the
contrary, does he not make of former historians? how frankly does he confess
the little and uncertain light he had to follow in his researches? Yet Diodorus,
as well as Plutarch, and others, had not only the older Greek historians,
but the more modern antiquaries, who pretended to have searched into the
records and registers of nations, even at that time renowned for their antiquity.
Berosus, for instance, and Manetho, one a Babylonian and the other an Egyptian
priest, had published the antiquities of their countries in the time of the
Ptolemys. Berosus pretended to give the history of four hundred and eighty
years. Pliny, if I remember right, for I say this on memory, speaks to this
effect in the sixth book of his Natural History: and if it was so, these
years were probably years of Nabonassar. Manetho began his history, God knows
when, from the progress of Isis, or some other as well ascertained period.
He followed the Egyptian tradition of dynastics of gods and demi-gods; and
derived his anecdotes from the first Mercury, who had inscribed them in sacred
characters, on antediluvian pillars, antediluvian at least according to our
received chronology, from which the second Mercury had transcribed them,
and inserted them into his works. We have not these antiquities; for the
monk of Viterbo was soon detected: and if we had them, they would either
add to our uncertainty, and increase the chaos of learning, or tell us nothing
worth our knowledge. For thus I reason. Had they given particular and historical
accounts conformable to the scriptures of the Jews, Josephus, Julius Africanus,
and Eusebius would have made quite other extracts from their writings, and
would have altered and contradicted them less. The accounts they give, therefore,
were repugnant to sacred writ, or they were defective: they would have established
Pyrrhonism, or have balked our curiosity.




II. Of Sacred History




What memorials therefore remain to give us light into the originals of
ancient nations, and the history of those ages, we commonly call the first
ages? The Bible, it will be said; that is, the historical part of it in the
Old Testament. But, my lord, even these divine books must be reputed insufficient
to the purpose, by every candid and impartial man who considers either their
authority as histories, or the matter they contain. For what are they? and
how come they to us? At the time when Alexander carried his arms into Asia,
a people of Syria, till then unknown, became known to the Greeks: this people
had been slaves to the Egyptians, Assyrians, Medes, and Persians, as the
several empires prevailed: ten parts in twelve of them had been transplanted
by ancient conquerors, and melted down and lost in the east, several ages
before the establishment of the empire that Alexander destroyed: the other
two parts had been carried captive to Babylon a little before the same era.
This captivity was not indeed perpetual, like the other; but it lasted so
long, and such circumstances, whatever they were, accompanied it, that the
captives forgot their country, and even their language, the Hebrew dialect
at least and character: and a few of them only could be wrought upon, by
the zeal of some particular men, to return home, when the indulgence of the
Persian monarchs gave them leave to rebuild their city and to repeople their
ancient patrimony. Even this remnant of the nation did not continue long
entire. Another great transmigration followed; and the Jews, that settled
under the protection of the Ptolemys, forgot their language in Egypt, as
the forefathers of these Jews had forgot theirs in Chaldea. More attached
however to their religion in Egypt, for reasons easy to be deduced from the
new institutions that prevailed after the captivity among them, than their
ancestors had been in Chaldea, a version of their sacred writings was made
into Greek at Alexandria, not long after the canon of these scriptures had
been finished at Jerusalem; for many years could not intervene between the
death of Simon the Just, by whom this canon was finished, if he died during
the reign of Ptolemy Soter, and the beginning of this famous translation
under Ptolemy Philadelphus. The Hellenist Jews reported as many marvellous
things to authorise, and even to sanctify this translation, as the other
Jews had reported about Esdras who began, and Simon the Just who finished,
the canon of their scriptures. These holy romances slid into tradition, and
tradition became history: the fathers of our Christian church did not disdain
to employ them. St. Jerome, for instance, laughed at the story of the seventy-two
elders, whose translations were found to be, upon comparison, word for word
the same, though made separately, and by men who had no communication with
one another. But the same St. Jerome, in the same place, quotes Aristeas,
one of the guard of Ptolemy Philadelphus, as a real personage.




The account pretended to be written by this Aristeas, of all that passed
relating to the translation, was enough for his purpose. This he retained,
and he rejected only the more improbable circumstances, which had been added
to the tale, and which laid it open to most suspicion. In this he showed
great prudence; and better judgment, than that zealous, but weak apologist
Justin, who believed the whole story himself, and endeavored to impose it
on mankind.




Thus you see, my lord, that when we consider these books barely as histories,
delivered to us on the faith of a superstitious people, among whom the custom
and art of pious lying prevailed remarkably, we may be allowed to doubt whether
greater credit is to be given to what they tell us concerning the original,
compiled in their own country and as it were out of the sight of the rest
of the world; than we know, with such a certainty as no scholar presumes
to deny, that we ought to give to what they tell us concerning the copy?




The Hellenist Jews were extremely pleased, no doubt, to have their scriptures
in a language they understood, and that might spread the fame of their antiquity,
and do honor to their nation, among their masters the Greeks. But yet we
do not find that the authority of these books prevailed, or that even they
were much known among the pagan world. The reason of this cannot be, that
the Greeks admired nothing that was not of their own growth, "sua tantum
mirantur": for, on the contrary, they were inquisitive and credulous
in the highest degree, and they collected and published at least as many
idle traditions of other nations, as they propagated of their own. Josephus
pretended that Theopompus, a disciple of Isocrates being about to insert
in his history some things he had taken out of holy writ, the poor man became
troubled in mind for several days: and that having prayed to God, during
an intermission of his illness, to reveal to him the cause of it, he learned
in his sleep that this attempt was the cause; upon which he quitted the design
and was cured. If Josephus had been a little more consistent than he is very
often, such a story as this would not have been told by one, who was fond,
as Jews and Christians in general have been, to create an opinion that the
Gentiles took not their history alone, but their philosophy and all their
valuable knowledge, from the Jews. Notwithstanding this story, therefore,
which is told in the fifteenth book of the Jewish antiquities, and means
nothing, or means to show that the divine providence would not suffer anecdotes
of sacred to be mingled with profane history; the practice of Josephus himself,
and of all those who have had the same design in view, has been to confirm
the former by the latter, and at any rate to suppose an appearance at least
of conformity between them. We are told Hecateus Abderita, for there were
two of that name, wrote a history favorable to the Jews: and, not to multiply
instances, though I might easily do it, even Alexander Polyhistor is called
in. He is quoted by Josephus, and praised by Eusebius as a man of parts and
great variety of learning. His testimony, about the deluge and tower of Babel,
is produced by St. Cyril in his first book against Julian: and Justin the
apologist and martyr, in his exhortation to the Greeks, makes use of the
same authority, among those that mention Moses as a leader and prince of
the Jews. Though this Polyhistor, if I remember right what I think I have
met with in Suidas, spoke only of a woman he called Moso, "cujus scriptum
est lex Hebraeorum." Had the Greek historians been conformable to the
sacred, I cannot see that their authority, which was not cotemporary, would
have been of any weight. They might have copied Moses, and so they did Ctesias.
But even this was not the case: whatever use a particular writer here and
there might make occasionally of the scriptures, certain it is that the Jews
continued to be as much despised, and their history to be as generally neglected,
nay almost as generally unknown, for a long time at least after the version
was made at Alexandria, as they had been before. Apion, an Egyptian, a man
of much erudition, appeared in the world some centuries afterwards. He wrote,
among other antiquities, those of his own country: and as he was obliged
to speak very often of the Jews, he spoke of them in a manner neither much
to their honor, nor to that of their histories. He wrote purposely against
them: and Josephus attempted afterwards, but Apion was then dead, to refute
him. Apion passed, I know, for a vain and noisy pedant; but he passed likewise
for a curious, a laborious, and a learned antiquary. If he was cabalistical,
or superstitious, Josephus was at least as much so as he: and if he flattered
Caligula, Josephus introduced himself to the court of Nero and the favor
of Poppaea, by no very honorable means, under the protection of Aliturus
a player, and a Jew; to say nothing of his applying to Vespasian the prophecies
concerning the Messiah, nor of his accompanying Titus to the siege of Jerusalem.




In short, my lord, the Jewish history never obtained any credit in the
world, till Christianity was established. The foundations of this system
being laid partly in these histories, and in the prophecies joined to them
or inserted in them, Christianity has reflected back upon them an authority
which they had not before, and this authority has prevailed wherever Christianity
has spread. Both Jews and Christians hold the same books in great veneration,
whilst each condemns the other for not understanding, or for abusing them.
But I apprehend that the zeal of both has done much hurt, by endeavoring
to extend their authority much farther than is necessary for the support
perhaps of Judaism, but to be sure of Christianity. I explain myself, that
I may offend no pious ear.




Simon, in the preface of his critical history of the Old Testament, cites
a divine of the faculty of Paris, who held that the inspirations of the authors
of those books, which the church receives as the word of God, should be extended
no farther than to matters purely of doctrine, or to such as have a near
and necessary relation to these; and that whenever these authors wrote on
other subjects, such as Egyptian, Assyrian, or other history, they had no
more of the divine assistance than any other persons of piety. This notion
of inspirations that came occasionally, that illuminated the minds and guided
the hands of the sacred penmen while they were writing one page, and restrained
their influence while the same authors were writing another, may be cavilled
against: and what is there that may not? But surely it deserves to be treated
with respect, since it tends to establish a distinction between the legal,
doctrinal, or prophetical parts of the Bible, and the historical: without
which distinction it is impossible to establish the first, as evidently and
solidly as the interests of religion require: at least it appears impossible
to me, after having examined and considered, as well as I am able, all the
trials of this kind that have been made by subtile as well as learned men.
The Old is said to be the foundation of the New, and so it is in one sense:
the system of religion contained in the latter, refers to the system of religion
contained in the former, and supposes the truth of it. But the authority
on which we receive the books of the New Testament, is so far from being
founded on the authority of the Old Testament, that it is quite independent
on it; the New being proved, gives authority to the Old, but borrows none
from it; and gives this authority to the particular parts only. Christ came
to fulfil the prophecies; but not to consecrate all the written, any more
than the oral, traditions of the Jews. We must believe these traditions as
far as they relate to Christianity, as far as Christianity refers to them,
or supposes them necessary; but we can be under no obligation to believe
them any farther, since without Christianity we should be under no obligation
to believe them at all.




It hath been said by Abbadie, and others, "That the accidents which
have happened to alter the texts of the Bible, and to disfigure, if I may
say so, the Scriptures in many respects, could not have been prevented without
a perpetual standing miracle, and that a perpetual standing miracle is not
in the order of Providence." Now I can by no means subscribe to this
opinion. It seems evident to my reason that the very contrary must be true;
if we suppose that God acts towards men according to the moral fitness of
things: and if we suppose that he acts arbitrarily, we can form no opinion
at all. I think that these accidents would not have happened, or that the
Scriptures would have been preserved entirely in their genuine purity notwithstanding
these accidents, if they had been entirely dictated by the Holy Ghost: and
the proof of this probable proposition, according to our clearest and most
distinct ideas of wisdom and moral fitness, is obvious and easy. But these
Scriptures are not so come down to us: they are come down broken and confused,
full of additions, interpolations, and transpositions, made we neither know
when, nor by whom; and such, in short, as never appeared on the face of any
other book, on whose authority men have agreed to rely.




This being so, my lord, what hypothesis shall we follow? Shall we adhere
to some such distinction as I have mentioned? Shall we say, for instance,
that the Scriptures were written originally by the authors to whom they are
vulgarly ascribed, but that these authors wrote nothing by inspiration, except
the legal, the doctrinal, and the prophetical parts, and that in every other
respect their authority is purely human, and therefore fallible? Or shall
we say that these histories are nothing more than compilations of old traditions,
and abridgments of old records, made in later times, as they appear to every
one who reads them without prepossession, and with attention? Shall we add,
that which ever of these probabilities be true, we may believe, consistently
with either, notwithstanding the decision of any divines, who know no more
than you or I, or any other man, of the order of Providence, that all those
parts and passages of the Old Testament, which contain prophecies, or matters
of law or doctrine, and which were from the first of such importance in the
designs of Providence to all future generations, and even to the whole race
of mankind, have been from the first the peculiar care of Providence? Shall
we insist that such particular parts and passages, which are plainly marked
out and sufficiently confirmed by the system of the Christian revelation,
and by the completion of the prophecies, have been preserved from corruption
by ways impenetrable to us, amidst all the changes and chances to which the
books wherein they are recorded have been exposed; and that neither original
writers, nor later compilers, have been suffered to make any essential alterations,
such as would have falsified the law of God and the principles of the Jewish
and Christian religions, in any of these divine fundamental truths? Upon
such hypotheses, we may assert without scruple, that the genealogies and
histories of the Old Testament are in no respect sufficient foundations for
a chronology from the beginning of time, nor for universal history. But then
the same hypotheses will secure the infallibility of scripture authority
as far as religion is concerned. Faith and reason may be reconciled a little
better than they commonly are. I may deny that the Old Testament is transmitted
to us under all the conditions of an authentic history, and yet be at liberty
to maintain that the passages in it which establish original sin, which seem
favorable to the doctrine of the Trinity, which foretell the coming of the
Messiah, and all others of similar kind, are come down to us as they were
originally dictated by the Holy Ghost.




In attributing the whole credibility of the Old Testament to the authority
of the New, and in limiting the authenticity of the Jewish Scriptures to
those parts alone that concern law, doctrine, and prophecy, by which their
chronology and the far greatest part of their history are excluded, I will
venture to assure your lordship that I do not assume so much, as is assumed
in every hypothesis that affixes the divine seal of inspiration to the whole
canon; that rests the whole proof on Jewish veracity; and that pretends to
account particularly and positively for the descent of these ancient writings
in their present state.




Another reason, for which I have insisted the rather on the distinction
so often mentioned, is this. I think we may find very good foundation for
it even in the Bible: and though this be a point very little attended to,
and much disguised, it would not be hard to show, upon great inducements
of probability, that the law and the history were far from being blended
together as they now stand in the Pentateuch, even from the time of Moses
down to that of Esdras. But the principal and decisive reason for separating
in such manner the legal, doctrinal, and prophetical parts, from the historical,
is the necessity of leaving some rule to go by: and, I protest, I know of
none that is yet agreed upon. I content myself, therefore, to fix my opinion
concerning the authority of the Old Testament in this manner, and carry it
thus far only. We must do so, or we must enter into that labyrinth of dispute
and contradiction, wherein even the most orthodox Jews and Christians have
wandered so many ages, and still wander. It is strange, but it is true; not
only the Jews differ from the Christians, but Jews and Christians both differ
among themselves, concerning almost every point that is necessary to be certainly
known and agreed upon, in order to establish the authority of books which
both have received already as authentic and sacred. So that whoever takes
the pains to read what learned men have written on this subject, will find
that they leave the matter as doubtful as they took it up. Who were the authors
of these Scriptures, when they were published, how they were composed and
preserved, or renewed, to use a remarkable expression of the famous Huet
in his Demonstration; in fine, how they were lost during the captivity, and
how they were retrieved after it, are all matters of controversy to this
day.




It would be easy for me to descend into a greater detail, and to convince
your lordship of what I have been saying in general by an induction of particulars,
even without any other help than that of a few notes which I took when I
applied myself to this examination, and which now lie before me. But such
a digression would carry me too far: and I fear that you will think I have
said already more than enough upon this part of my subject. I go on, therefore,
to observe to your lordship, that if the history of the Old Testament was
as exact and authentic, as the ignorance and impudence of some rabbies have
made them assert that it is; if we could believe with them that Moses wrote
every syllable in the Pentateuch as it now stands, or that all the Psalms
were written by David: nay, if we could believe, with Philo and Josephus,
that Moses wrote the account of his own death and sepulchre, and made a sort
of funeral panegyric on himself, as we find them in the last chapter of Deuteronomy.
Yet still would I venture to assert, that he who expects to find a system
of chronology, or a thread of history, or sufficient materials for either,
in the books of the Old Testament, expects to find what the authors of these
books, whoever they were, never intended. They are extracts of genealogies,
not genealogies: extracts of histories, not histories. The Jews themselves
allow their genealogies to be very imperfect, and produce examples of omissions
and errors in them, which denote sufficiently that these genealogies are
extracts, wherein every generation in the course of descent is not mentioned.
I have read somewhere, perhaps in the works of St. Jerome, that this father
justifies the opinion of those who think it impossible to fix any certain
chronology on that of the Bible: and this opinion will be justified still
better, to the understanding of every man who considers how grossly the Jews
blunder whenever they meddle with chronology. for this plain reason, because
their Scriptures are imperfect in this respect, and because they rely on
their oral, to rectify and supply their written, traditions: that is, they
rely on traditions compiled long after the canon of their Scriptures, but
deemed by them of equal antiquity and authority. Thus, for instance, Daniel
and Simon the Just, according to them, were members at the same time of the
great synagogue which began and finished the canon of the Old Testament,
under the presidency of Esdras. This Esdras was the prophet Malachi. Darius
the son of Hystaspes was Artaxerxes Longimanus; he was Ahasuerus, and he
was the same Darius whom Alexander conquered. This may serve as a sample
of Jewish chronology, formed on their Scriptures which afford insufficient
lights, and on their traditions which afford false lights, We are indeed
more correct, and come nearer to the truth in these instances, perhaps in
some others, because we make use of profane chronology to help us. But profane
chronology is itself so modern, so precarious, that this help does not reach
to the greatest part of that time to which sacred chronology extends; that
when it begins to help, it begins to perplex us too; and finally, that even
with this help we should not have had so much as the appearance of a complete
chronological system, and the same may be said of universal history, if learned
men had not proceeded very wisely, on one uniform maxim, from the first ages
of Christianity, when a custom of sanctifying profane learning, as well as
profane rites, which the Jews had imprudently laid aside, was taken up by
the Christians. The maxim I mean is this, that profane authority be admitted
without scruple or doubt, whenever it says, or whenever it can be made to
say, if not "totidem verbis," yet "totidem syllabis,"
or "totidem literis," at least, or whenever it can be made by any
interpretation to mean, what confirms, or supplies in a constant manner,
the holy writ; and that the same authority be rejected, when nothing of this
kind can be done, but the contradiction or inconsistency remains irreconcilable.
Such a liberty as this would not be allowed in any other case; because it
supposes the very thing that is to be proved. But we see it taken, very properly
to be sure, in favor of sacred and infallible writing, when they are compared
with others.




In order to perceive with the utmost evidence, that the scope and design
of the author or authors of the Pentateuch, and of the other books of the
Old Testament, answer as little the purpose of antiquaries, in history, as
in chronology, it will be sufficient briefly to call to mind the sum of what
they relate, from the creation of the world to the establishment of the Persian
empire. If the antediluvian world continued one thousand six hundred and
fifty-six years, and if the vocation of Abraham is to be placed four hundred
and twenty-six years below the deluge, these twenty centuries make almost
two-thirds of the period mentioned: and the whole history of them is comprised
in eleven short chapters of Genesis; which is certainly the most compendious
extract that ever was made. If we examine the contents of these chapters,
do we find anything like an universal history, or so much as an abridgment
of it? Adam and Eve were created, they broke the commandment of God, they
were driven out of the garden of Eden, one of their sons killed his brother,
but their race soon multiplied and peopled the earth, What geography now
have we, what history of this antediluvian world? Why, none. The sons of
God, it is said, lay with the daughters of men, and begot giants, and God
drowned all the inhabitants of the earth, except one family. After this we
read that the earth was repeopled; but these children of one family were
divided into several languages, even whilst they lived together, spoke the
same language, and were employed in the same work. Out of one of the countries
into which they dispersed themselves, Chaldea, God called Abraham sometime
afterwards, with magnificent promises, and conducted him to a country called
Canaan. Did this author, my lord, intend an universal history? Certainly
not. The tenth chapter of Genesis names indeed some of the generations descending
from the sons of Noah, some of the cities founded, and some of the countries
planted by them. But what are bare names, naked of circumstances, without
descriptions of countries, or relations of events? They furnish matter only
for guess and dispute; and even the similitude of them, which is often used
as a clue to lead us to the discovery of historical truth, has notoriously
contributed to propagate error, and to increase the perplexity of ancient
tradition. These imperfect and dark accounts have not furnished matter for
guess and dispute alone; but a much worse use has been made of them by Jewish
rabbies, Christian fathers, and Mahometan doctors, in their profane extensions
of this part of the Mosaic history. The creation of the first man is described
by some, as if, Preadamites, they had assisted at it. They talk of his beauty
as if they had seen him, of his gigantic size as if they had measured him,
and of his prodigious knowledge as if they had conversed with him. They point
out the very spot where Eve laid her head the first time he enjoyed her.
They have minutes of the whole conversation between this mother of mankind,
who damned her children before she bore them, and the serpent. Some are positive
that Cain quarreled with Abel about a point of doctrine, and others affirm
that the dispute rose about a girl. A great deal of such stuff may be easily
collected about Enoch, about Noah, and about the sons of Noah; but I waive
any farther mention of such impertinences as Bonzes or Talapoins would almost
blush to relate. Upon the whole matter, if we may guess at the design of
an author by the contents of his book, the design of Moses, or of the author
of the history ascribed to him, in this part of it, was to inform the people
of Israel of their descent from Noah by Sem, and of Noah's from Adam by Seth;
to illustrate their original; to establish their claim to the land of Canaan,
and to justify all the cruelties committed by Joshua in the conquest of the
Canaanites, in whom, says Bochart, "the prophecy of Noah was completed,
when they were subdued by the Israelites, who had been so long slaves to
the Egyptians."




Allow me to make, as I go along, a short reflection or two on this prophecy,
and the completion of it, as they stand recorded in the Pentateuch, out of
many that might be made. The terms of the prophecy then are hot very clear:
and the curse pronounced in it contradicts all our notions of order and of
justice. One is tempted to think, that the patriarch was still drunk; and
that no man in his senses could hold such language, or pass such a sentence.
Certain it is, that no writer but a Jew could impute to the economy of Divine
Providence the accomplishment of such a prediction, nor make the Supreme
Being the executor of such a curse.




Ham alone offended; Canaan was innocent; for the Hebrew and other doctors
who would make the son an accomplice with his father, affirm not only without,
but against the express authority of the text. Canaan was however alone cursed:
and he became, according to his grandfather's prophecy, "a servant of
servants"; that is, the vilest and worst of slaves (for I take these
words in sense, if not the most natural, the most favorable to the prophecy,
and the least absurd) to Sem, though not to Japhet, when the Israelites conquered
Palestine; to one of his uncles, not to his brethren. Will it be said --
it has been said -- that where we read Canaan we are to understand Ham, whose
brethren Sem and Japhet were? At this rate, we shall never know what we read:
as these critics never care what they say. Will it be said -- this has been
said too -- that Ham was punished in his posterity, when Canaan was cursed,
and his descendants were exterminated? But who does not see that the curse,
and the punishment, in this case, fell on Canaan and his posterity, exclusively
of the rest of the posterity of Ham; and were therefore the curse and punishment
of the son, not of the father, properly? The descendants of Mesraim, another
of his sons, were the Egyptians: and they were so far from being servants
of servants to their cousins the Semites, that these were servants of servants
to them, during more than fourscore years. Why the posterity of Canaan was
to be deemed an accursed race, it is easy to account; and I have mentioned
it just now. But it is not so easy to account, why the posterity of the righteous
Sem, that great example of filial reverence, became slaves to another branch
of the family of Ham.




It would not be worth while to lengthen this tedious letter, by setting
down any more of the contents of the history of the Bible. Your lordship
may please to call the substance of it to your mind, and your native candor
and love of truth will oblige you then to confess, that these sacred books
do not aim, in any part of them, at any thing like universal chronology and
history. They contain a very imperfect account of the Israelites themselves;
of their settlement in the land of promise, of which, by the way, they never
had entire, and scarce ever peaceable possession; of their divisions, apostasies,
repentances, relapses, triumphs, and defeats, under the occasional government
of their judges, and under that of their kings; of the Galilean and Samaritan
captivities, into which they were carried by the kings of Assyria, and of
that which was brought on the remnant of this people when the kingdom of
Judah was destroyed by those princes who governed the empire founded on the
union of Nineveh and Babylon. These things are all related, your lordship
knows, in a very summary and confused manner: and we learn so little of other
nations by these accounts, that if we did not borrow some light from the
traditions of other nations, we should scarce understand them. One particular
observation, and but one, I will make, to show What knowledge in the history
of mankind, and in the computation of time, may be expected from these books.
The Assyrians were their neighbors, powerful neighbors, with whom they had
much and long to do. Of this empire, therefore, if of any thing, we might
hope to find some satisfactory accounts. What do we find? The Scripture takes
no notice of any Assyrian kingdom, till just before the time when profane
history makes that empire to end. Then we hear of Phul, of Teglath-Phalasser,
who was perhaps the same person, and of Salmanaser, who took Samaria in the
twelfth of the era of Nabonasser, that is, twelve years after the Assyrian
empire was no more. Senacherib succeeds to him, and Asserhaddon to Senacherib.
What shall we say to this apparent contrariety? If the silence of the Bible
creates a strong presumption against the first, may not the silence of profane
authority create some against the second Assyrian monarchs? The pains that
are taken to persuade, that there is room enough between Sardanapalus and
Cyrus for the second, will not resolve the difficulty. Something much more
plausible may be said, but even this will be hypothetical, and liable to
great contradiction. So that upon the whole matter, the Scriptures are so
far from giving us light into general history, that they increase the obscurity
even of those parts to which they have the nearest relation. We have therefore
neither in profane nor in sacred authors such authentic, clear, distinct,
and full accounts of the originals of ancient nations, and of the great events
of those ages that are commonly called the first ages, as deserve to go by
the name of history, or as afford sufficient materials for chronology and
history.




I might now proceed to observe to your lordship how this has happened,
not only by the necessary consequences of human nature, and the ordinary
course of human affairs, but by the policy, artifice, corruption, and folly
of mankind. But this would be to heap digression upon digression, and to
presume too much on your patience. I shall therefore content myself to apply
these reflections on the state of ancient history to the study of history,
and to the method to be observed in it; as soon as your lordship has rested
yourself a little after reading, and I after writing so long a letter.




LETTER 4




I. That There is in History Sufficient Authenticity to Render it
Useful, notwithstanding All Objections to the Contrary. II. Of the Method
and Due Restrictions to be Observed in the Study of it.




Whether the letter I now begin to write will be long or short, I know
not: but I find my memory is refreshed, my imagination warmed, and matter
flows in so fast upon me, that I have not time to press it close. Since therefore
you have provoked me to write, you must be content to take what follows.




I have observed already that we are apt naturally to apply to ourselves
what has happened to other men, and that examples take their force from hence;
as well those which history, as those which experience, offers to our reflection.
What we do not believe to have happened, therefore, we shall not thus apply:
and for want of the same application, such examples will not have the same
effect. Ancient history, such ancient history as I have described, is quite
unfit therefore in this respect to answer the ends that every reasonable
man should propose to himself in this study; because such ancient history
will never gain sufficient credit with any reasonable man. A tale well told,
or a comedy or a tragedy well wrought up, may have a momentary effect upon
the mind, by heating the imagination, surprising the judgment, and affecting
strongly the passions. The Athenians are said to have been transported into
a kind of martial phrensy by the representation of a tragedy of Aeschylus,
and to have marched under this influence from the theatre to the plains of
Marathon. These momentary impressions might be arranged, for aught I know,
in such manner as to contribute a little, by frequent repetitions of them,
towards maintaining a kind of habitual contempt of folly, detestation of
vice, and admiration of virtue in well-policed commonwealths. But then these
impressions cannot be made, nor this little effect be wrought, unless the
fables bear an appearance of truth. When they bear this appearance, reason
connives at the innocent fraud of imagination; reason dispenses, in favor
of probability, with those strict rules of criticism that she has established
to try the truth of fact: but, after all, she receives these fables as fables;
and as such only she permits imagination to make the most of them. If they
pretended to be history, they would be soon subjected to another and more
severe examination. What may have happened, is the matter of an ingenious
fable: what has happened, is that of an authentic history: the impressions
which one or the other makes are in proportion. When imagination grows lawless
and wild, rambles out of the precincts of nature, and tells of heroes and
giants, fairies and enchanters, of events and of phenomena repugnant to universal
experience, to our clearest and most distinct ideas, and to all the known
laws of nature, reason does not connive a moment; but, far f rom receiving
such narrations as historical, she rejects them as unworthy to be placed
even among the fabulous. Such narrations therefore cannot make the slightest
momentary impressions on a mind fraught with knowledge, and void of superstition.
Imposed by authority, and assisted by artifice, the delusion hardly prevails
over common sense; blind ignorance almost sees, and rash superstition hesitates:
nothing less than enthusiasm and phrensy can give credit to such histories,
or apply such examples. Don Quixote believed; but even Sancho doubted.




What I have said will not be much controverted by any man who has read
Amadis of Gaul, or has examined our ancient traditions without prepossession.
The truth is, the principal difference between them seems to be this. In
Amadis of Gaul, we have a thread of absurdities that are invented without
any regard to probability, and that lay no claim to belief: ancient traditions
are a heap of fables, under which some particular truths, inscrutable, and
therefore useless to mankind, may lie concealed; which have a just pretence
to nothing more, and yet impose themselves upon us, and become, under the
venerable name of ancient history, the foundations of modern fables, the
materials with which so many systems of fancy have been erected.




But now, as men are apt to carry their judgments into extremes, there
are some that will be ready to insist that all history is fabulous, and that
the very best is nothing better than a probable tale, artfully contrived,
and plausibly told, wherein truth and falsehood are indistinguishably blended
together. All the instances, and all the common-place arguments, that Bayle
and others have employed to establish this sort of Pyrrhonism, will be quoted:
and from thence it will be concluded, that if the pretended histories of
the first ages, and of the originals of nations, be too improbable and too
ill vouched to procure any degree of belief, those histories that have been
written later, that carry a greater air of probability, and that boast even
cotemporary authority, are at least insufficient to gain that degree of firm
belief, which is necessary to render the study of them useful to mankind.
But here that happens which often happens: the premises are true, and the
conclusion is false; because a general axiom is established precariously
on a certain number of partial observations. This matter is of consequence;
for it tends to ascertain the degrees of assent that we may have to history.




I agree, then, that history has been purposely and systematically falsified
in all ages, and that partiality and prejudice have occasioned both voluntary
and involuntary errors, even in the best. Let me say without offence, my
lord, since I may say it with truth and am able to prove it, that ecclesiastical
authority has led the way to this corruption in all ages, and all religions.
How monstrous were the absurdities that the priesthood imposed on the ignorance
and superstition of mankind in the Pagan world, concerning the originals
of religions and governments, their institutions and rites, their laws and
customs? What opportunities had they for such impositions, whilst the keeping
the records and collecting the traditions was in so many nations the peculiar
office of this order of men? A custom highly extolled by Josephus, but plainly
liable to the grossest frauds, and even a temptation to them. If the foundations
of Judaism and Christianity have been laid in truth, yet what numberless
fables have been invented to raise, to embellish, and to support these structures,
according to the interest and taste of the several architects? That the Jews
have been guilty of this will be allowed: and, to the shame of Christians,
if not of Christianity, the fathers of one church have no right to throw
the first stone at the fathers of the other. Deliberate, systematical lying
has been practised and encouraged from age to age; and among all the pious
frauds that have been employed to maintain a reverence and zeal for their
religion in the minds of men, this abuse of history has been one of the principal
and most successful: an evident, an experimental proof, by the way, of what
I have insisted upon so much, the aptitude and natural tendency of history
to form our opinions, and to settle our habits. This righteous expedient
was in so much use and repute in the Greek church, that one Metaphrastus
wrote a treatise on the art of composing holy romances: the fact, if I remember
right, is cited by Baillet, in his book of the lives of the saints. He and
other learned men of the Roman church have thought it of service to their
cause, since the resurrection of letters, to detect some impostures, and
to depose, or to unniche, according to the French expression, now and then
a reputed saint; but they seem in doing this to mean more than a sort of
composition: they give up some fables that they may defend others with greater
advantage, and they make truth serve as a stalking-horse to error. The same
spirit that prevailed in the eastern church, prevailed in the western, and
prevails still. A strong proof of it appeared lately in the country where
I am. A sudden fury of devotion seized the people of Paris for a little priest,l
undistinguished during his life, and dubbed a saint by the Jansenists after
his death. Had the first minister been a Jansenist, the saint had been a
saint still. All France had kept his festival: and since there are thousands
of eye-witnesses ready to attest the truth of all the miracles supposed to
have been wrought at his tomb, notwithstanding the discouragement which these
zealots have met with from the government; we may assure ourselves, that
these silly impostures would have been transmitted, in all the solemn pomp
of history, from the knaves of this age to the fools of the next.




This lying spirit has gone forth from ecclesiastical to other historians:
and I might fill many pages with instances of extravagant fables that have
been invented in several nations, to celebrate their antiquity, to ennoble
their originals, and to make them appear illustrious in the arts of peace
and the triumphs of war. When the brain is well heated, and devotion or vanity,
the semblance of virtue or real vice, and, above all, disputes and contests,
have inspired that complication of passions we term zeal, the effects are
much the same, and history becomes very often a lying panegyric or a lying
satire; for different nations or different parties in the same nation, belie
one another without any respect for truth, as they murder one another without
any regard to right or sense of humanity. Religious zeal may boast this horrid
advantage over civil zeal, that the effects of it have been more sanguinary,
and the malice more unrelenting. In another respect they are more alike,
and keep a nearer proportion: different religions have not been quite so
barbarous to one another as sects of the same religion; and, in like manner,
nation has had better quarter from nation, than party from party. But in
all these controversies, men have pushed their rage beyond their own and
their adversaries' lives: they have endeavored to interest posterity in their
quarrels, and by rendering history subservient to this wicked purpose, they
have done their utmost to perpetuate scandal, and to immortalise their animosity.
The heathen taxed the Jews even with idolatry: the Jews joined with the heathen
to render Christianity odious: but the church, who beat them at their own
weapons during these contests, has had this further triumph over them, as
well as over the several sects that have arisen within her own pale; the
works of those who have written against her have been destroyed, and whatever
she advanced, to justify herself and to defame her adversaries, is preserved
in her annals, and the writings of her doctors.




The charge of corrupting history, in the cause of religion, has been always
committed to the most famous champions, and greatest saints of each church;
and, if I was not more afraid of tiring, than of scandalising your lordship,
I could quote to you examples of modern churchmen who have endeavored to
justify foul language by the New Testament, and cruelty by the Old; nay,
what is execrable beyond imagination, and what strikes horror into every
mind that entertains due sentiments of the Supreme Being, God himself has
been cited for rallying and insulting Adam after his fall. In other cases
this charge belongs to the pedants of every nation, and the tools of every
party. What accusations of idolatry and superstition have not been brought,
and aggravated against Mahometans? Those wretched Christians who returned
from those wars, so improperly called the holy wars, rumored these stories
about the West; and you may find, in some of the old chroniclers and romance
writers, as well as poets, the Saracens called Paynims; though surely they
were much further off from any suspicion of polytheism, than those who called
them by that name. When Mahomet the Second took Constantinople in the fifteenth
century, the Mahometans began to be a little better, and but a little better
known, than they had been before, to these parts of the world. But their
religion, as well as their customs and manners, was strangely misrepresented
by the Greek refugees that fled from the Turks: and the terror and hatred
which this people had inspired by the rapidity of their conquests, and by
their ferocity, made all these misrepresentations universally pass for truths.
Many such instances may be collected from Maraccio's refutation of the Koran,
and Relandus has published a very valuable treatise on purpose to refute
these calumnies, and to justify the Mahometans. Does not this example incline
your lordship to think, that the heathens and the Arians, and other heretics,
would not appear quite so absurd in their opinions, nor so abominable in
their practice, as the orthodox Christians have represented them; if some
Relandus could arise, with the materials necessary to their justification
in his hands? He who reflects on the circumstances that attended letters,
from the time when Constantine instead of uniting the characters of emperor
and sovereign pontiff in himself when he became Christian, as they were united
in him and all the other emperors in the Pagan system of government, gave
so much independent wealth and power to the clergy, and the means of acquiring
so much more: he who carries these reflections on through all the latter
empire, and through those ages of ignorance and superstition, wherein it
was hard to say which was greatest, the tyranny of the clergy or the servility
of the laity: he who considers the extreme severity, for instance of the
laws made by Theodosius in order to stifle every writing that the orthodox
clergy, that is, the clergy then in fashion disliked; or the character and
influence of such a priest as Gregory called the great, who proclaimed war
to all heathen learning in order to promote Christian verity; and flattered
Brunehault, and abetted Phocas: he who considers all these things, I say,
will not be at a loss to find the reasons why history, both that which was
written before, and a great part of that which has been written since the
Christian era, is come to us so imperfect and so corrupt.




When the imperfection is due to a total want of memorials, either because
none were originally written, or because they have been lost by devastations
of countries, extirpations of people, and other accidents in a long course
of time; or because zeal, malice, and policy have joined their endeavors
to destroy them purposely; we must be content to remain in our ignorance,
and there is no great harm in that. Secure from being deceived, I can submit
to be uninformed. But when there is not a total want of memorials, when some
have been lost or destroyed, and others have been preserved and propagated,
then we are in danger of being deceived: and therefore he must be very implicit
indeed who receives for true the history of any religion or nation, and much
more that of any sect or party, without having the means of confronting it
with some other history. A reasonable man will not be thus implicit. He will
not establish the truth of history on single, but on concurrent testimony.
If there be none such, he will doubt absolutely: if there be a little such,
he will proportion his assent or dissent accordingly. A small gleam of light,
borrowed from foreign anecdotes, serves often to discover a whole system
of falsehood: and even they who corrupt history frequently betray themselves
by their ignorance or inadvertency. Examples whereof I could easily produce.
Upon the whole matter, in all these cases we cannot be deceived essentially,
unless we please; and therefore there is no reason to establish Pyrrhonism,
that we may avoid the ridicule of credulity.




In all other cases, there is less reason still to do so; for when histories
and historical memorials abound, even those that are false serve to the discovery
of the truth. Inspired by different passions, and contrived for opposite
purposes, they contradict; and contradicting, they convict one another. Criticism
separates the ore from the dross, and extracts from various authors a series
of true history, which could not have been found entire in any one of them,
and will command our assent, when it is formed with judgment, and represented
with candor. If this may be done, as it has been done sometimes, with the
help of authors who wrote on purpose to deceive; how much more easily, and
more effectually may it be done, with the help of those who paid a greater
regard to truth? In a multitude of writers there will be always some, either
incapable of gross prevarication from the fear of being discovered, and of
acquiring infamy whilst they seek for fame; or else attached to truth upon
a nobler and surer principle. It is certain that these, even the last of
them, are fallible. Bribed by some passion or other, the former may venture
now and then to propagate a falsehood, or to disguise a truth; like the painter
that drew in profile, as Lucian says, the picture of a prince that had but
one eye. Montagne objects to the memorials of Du Bellay, that though the
gross of the facts be truly related, yet these authors turned every thing
they mentioned to the advantage of their master, and mentioned nothing which
could not be so turned. The old fellow's words are worth quoting. "De
contourner le jugement des évenemens souvent contre raison à
notre avantage, et diobmetre tout ce quiil y a de chatouilleux en la vie
de leur maistre, ils en font mestier." These, and such as these, deviate
occasionally and voluntarily from truth; but even they who are attached to
it the most religiously may slide sometimes into involuntary error. In matters
of history we prefer very justly cotemporary authority; and yet cotemporary
authors are the most liable to be warped from the straight rule of truth,
in writing on subjects which have affected them strongly, "et quorum
pars magna fuerunt." I am so persuaded of this from what I have felt
in myself, and observed in others, that if life and health enough fall to
my share, and I am able to finish what I meditate, a kind of history, from
the late queen's accession to the throne, to the peace of Utrecht, there
will be no materials that I shall examine more scrupulously and severely,
than those of the time when the events to be spoken of were in transaction.
But though the writers of these two sorts, both of whom pay as much regard
to truth as the various infirmities of our nature admit, are fallible; yet
this fallibility will not be sufficient to give color to Pyrrhonism. Where
their sincerity as to fact is doubtful, we strike out truth by the confrontation
of different accounts: as we strike out sparks of fire by the collision of
flints and steel. Where their judgments are suspicious of partiality, we
may judge for ourselves; or adopt their judgments, after weighing them with
certain grains of allowance. A little natural sagacity will proportion these
grains according to the particular circumstances of the authors, or their
general characters; for even these influence. Thus Montagne pretends, but
he exaggerates a little, that Guicciardin no where ascribes any one action
to a virtuous, but every one to a vicious principle. Something like this
has been reproached to Tacitus: and, notwithstanding all the sprightly loose
observations of Montagne in one of his essays, where he labors to prove the
contrary, read Plutarch's comparisons in what languages you please, I am
of Bodin's mind, you will perceive they were made by a Greek. In short, my
lord, the favorable opportunities of corrupting history have been often interrupted,
and are now over in so many countries, that truth penetrates even into those
where lying continues still to be part of the policy ecclesiastical and civil;
or where, to say the best we can say, truth is never suffered to appear,
till she has passed through hands, out of which she seldom returns entire
and undefiled.




But it is time I should conclude this head, under which I have touched
some of those reasons that show the folly of endeavoring to establish universal
Pyrrhonism in matters of history, because there are few histories without
some lies, and none without some mistakes; and that prove the body of history
which we possess, since ancient memorials have been so critically examined,
and modern memorials have been so multiplied, to contain in it such a probable
series of events, easily distinguishable from the improbable, as force the
assent of every man who is in his senses, and are, therefore, sufficient
to answer all the purposes of the study of history. I might have appealed,
perhaps, without entering into the argument at all, to any man of candor,
whether his doubts concerning the truth of history have hindered him from
applying the examples he has met with in it, and from judging of the present,
and sometimes of the future, by the past? Whether he has not been touched
with reverence and admiration, at the virtue and wisdom of some men, and
of some ages; and whether he has not felt indignation and contempt for others?
Whether Epaminondas or Phocion, for instance, the Decii, or the kipios, have
not raised in his mind a flame of public spirit, and private virtue? and
whether he has not shuddered with horror at the proscriptions of Marius and
Sylla, at the treachery of Theosotus and Achillas, and at the consummate
cruelty of an infant king?, 'Quis non contra Marii arma, et contra Sylla
proscriptionem concitatur? Quis non Theodoto, et Achilla, et ipsi puero,
non puerile auso facinus, infestus est?" If all this be a digression,
therefore, your lordship will be so good as to excuse it.




II. Of the Method and Due Restrictions to be Observed in the Study
of It




What has been said concerning the multiplicity of histories, and of historical
memorials, wherewith our libraries abound since the resurrection of letters
happened, and the art of printing began, puts me in mind of another general
rule, that ought to be observed by every man who intends to make a real improvement,
and to become wiser as well as better, by the study of history. I hinted
at this rule in a former letter, where I said that we should neither grope
in the dark, nor wander in the light. History must have a certain degree
of probability and authenticity, or the examples we find in it would not
carry a force sufficient to make due impressions on our minds, nor to illustrate
nor to strengthen the precepts of philosophy and the rules of good policy.
But besides, when histories have this necessary authenticity and probability,
there is much discernment to be employed in the choice and the use we make
of them. Some are to be read, some are to be studied; and some may be neglected
entirely, not only without detriment, but with advantage. Some are the proper
objects of one man's curiosity, some of another's, and some of all men's;
but all history is not an object of curiosity for any man. He who improperly,
wantonly, and absurdly makes it so, indulges a sort of canine appetite: the
curiosity of one, like the hunger of the other, devours ravenously and without
distinction whatever falls in its way. but neither of them digests. They
heap crudity upon crudity, and nourish and improve nothing but their distemper.
Some such characters I have known, though it is not the most common extreme
into which men are apt to fall. One of them I knew in this country. He joined,
to a more than athletic strength of body, a prodigious memory; and to both
a prodigious industry. He had read almost constantly twelve or fourteen hours
a day, for five-and-twenty or thirty years; and had heaped together as much
learning as could be crowded into a head. In the course of my acquaintance
with him, I consulted with him once or twice, not oftener; for I found this
mass of learning of as little use to me as to the owner. The man was communicative
enough: but nothing was distinct in his mind. How could it be otherwise?
he had never spared time to think, all was employed in reading. His reason
had not the merit of common mechanism. When you press a watch or pull a clock,
they answer your question with precision; for they repeat exactly the hour
of the day, and tell you neither more nor less than you desire to know. But
when you asked this man a question, he overwhelmed you with pouring forth
all that the several terms or words of your question recalled to his memory:
and if he omitted any thing, it was that very thing to which the sense of
the whole question should have led him and confined him. To ask him a question,
was to wind up a spring in his memory, that rattled on with vast rapidity,
and confused noise, till the force of it was spent: and you went away with
all the noise in your ears, stunned and uninformed. I never left him that
I was not ready to say to him, "Dieu vous fasse la grace de devenir
moins savant!" a wish that La Mothe le Vayer mentions upon some occasion
or other, and that he would have done well to have applied himself upon many.




He who reads with discernment and choice, will acquire less learning,
but more knowledge: and as this knowledge is collected with design, and cultivated
with art and method, it will be at all times of immediate and ready use to
himself and others,




Thus useful arms in magazines we place,

All rang'd in order; and disposed with grace:

Nor thus alone the curious eye to please;

But to be found, when need requires, with ease.




You remember the verses, my lord, in our friend's Essay on Criticism,
which was the work of his childhood almost; but is such a monument of good
sense and poetry as no other, that I know, has raised in his riper years.




He who reads without this discernment and choice, and, like Bodin's pupil,
resolves to read all, will not have time, no, nor capacity neither, to do
any thing else. He will not be able to think, without which it is impertinent
to read; nor to act, without which it is impertinent to think. He will assemble
materials with much pains, and purchase them at much expense, and have neither
leisure nor skill to frame them into proper scantlings, or to prepare them
for use. To what purpose should he husband his time, or learn architecture?
he has no design to build. But then to what purpose all these quarries of
stone, all these mountains of sand and lime, all these forests of oak and
deal? "Magno impendio temporum, magna alienarum aurium molestia, laudatio
haec constat, O hominem literatum! Simus hoc titulo rusticiore contenti,
O virum bonum!" We may add, and Seneca might have added in his own style,
and according to the manners and characters of his own age, another title
as rustic, and as little in fashion, "O virum sapientia sua simplicem,
et simplicitate sua sapientem? O virum utilem sibi, suis, reipublica, et
humano generi!" I have said perhaps already, but no matter, it cannot
be repeated too often, that the drift of all philosophy, and of all political
speculations, ought to be the making us better men, and better citizens.
Those studies, which have no intention towards improving our moral characters,
have no pretence to be styled philosophical. "Quis est enim," says
Tully in his Offices, "qui nullis officii praeceptis, tradendis, philosophum
se audeat dicere?" Whatever political speculations, instead of preparing
us to be useful to society, and to promote the happiness of mankind, are
only systems for gratifying private ambition, and promoting private interests
at the public expense; all such, I say, deserve to be burnt, and the authors
of them to starve, like Machiavel, in a jail.




LETTER 5




I. The Great Use of History, Properly So Called, As Distinguished
from the Writings of Mere Annalists and Antiquaries. II. Greek and Roman
Historians. III. Some Idea of a Complete History. IV. Further Cautions to
be Observed in This Study, and the Regulation of it According to the Different
Possessions, and Situations of Men; Above all, the Use to Made of it (1)
By Divine, and (2) By Those who are Called to the Service of their Countries.




I remember my last letter ended abruptly, and a long interval has since
passed: so that the thread I had then spun has slipt from me. I will try
to recover it, and to pursue the task your lordship has obliged me to continue.
Besides the pleasure of obeying your orders, it is likewise of some advantage
to myself, to recollect my thoughts, and resume a study in which I was conversant
formerly. For nothing can be more true than that saying of Solon reported
by Plato, though censured by him, impertinently enough in one of his wild
books of laws; "Assidue addiscens, ad senium venio." The truth
is, the most knowing man, in the course of the longest life, will have always
much to learn, and the wisest and best much to improve. This rule will hold
in the knowledge and improvement to be acquired by the study of history.
and therefore even he who has gone to this school in his youth, should not
neglect it in his age. "I read in Livy," says Montagne, "what
another man does not: and Plutarch read there what I do not." Just so
the same man may read at fifty what he did not read in the same book at five
and twenty: at least I have found it so, by my own experience, on many occasions.




By comparing, in this study, the experience of other men and other ages
with our own, we improve both: we analyse, as it were, philosophy. We reduce
all the abstract speculations of ethics, and all the general rules of human
policy, to their first principles. With these advantages every man may, though
few men do, advance daily towards those ideas, those increated essences a
Platonist would say, which no human creature can reach in practice, but in
the nearest approaches to which the perfection of our nature consists; because
every approach of this kind renders a man better, and wiser, for himself,
for his family, for the little community of his own country, and for the
great community of the world. Be not surprised, my lord, at the order in
which I place these objects. Whatever order divines and moralists, who contemplate
the duties belonging to these objects, may place them in, this is the order
they hold in nature: and I have always thought that we might lead ourselves
and others to private virtue, more effectually by a due observation of this
order, than by any of those sublime refinements that pervert it.




Self-love but serves the virtuous wind to wake;

As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake.

The centre mov'd, a circle straight succeeds;

Another still, and still another spreads;

Friend, parent, neighbor, first it will embrace,

His country next, and next all human race.




So sings our friend Pope, my lord, and so I believe. So I shall prove
too, if I mistake not, in an epistle I am about to write to him, in order
to complete a set that were written some years ago.




A man of my age, who returns to the study of history, has no time to lose,
because he has little to live: a man of your lordship's age has no time to
lose, because he has much to do. For different reasons therefore the same
rules will suit us. Neither of us must grope in the dark, neither of us must
wander in the light. I have done the first formerly a good deal; "ne
verba mihi darentur; ne aliquid esse, in hac recondita antiquitatis scientia,
magni ac secreti boni judicaremus." If you take my word, you will throw
none of your time away in the same manner: and I shall have the less regret
for that which I have misspent, if I persuade you to hasten Sown from the
broken traditions of antiquity, to the more entire as well as more authentic
histories of ages more modern. In the study of these we shall find wany a
complete series of events, preceded by a deduction of their immediate and
remote causes, related in their full extent, and accompanied with such a
detail of circumstances, and characters, as may transport the attentive reader
back to the very time, make him a party to the councils, and an actor in
the whole scene of affairs. Such draughts as these, either found in history
or extracted by our own application from it, and such alone, are truly useful.
Thus history becomes what she ought to be, and what she has been sometimes
called, "magistra vita," the mistress, like philosophy, of human
life. If she is not this, she is at best "nuntia vetustatis," the
gazette of antiquity, or a dry register of useless anecdotes. Suetonius says
that Tiberius used to inquire of the grammarians, "qua mater Hecuba?
quod Achilles nomen inter virgines fuisset? quid Syrenes cantare sint solita?"
Seneca mentions certain Greek authors, who examined very accurately whether
Anacreon loved wine or women best, whether Sappho was a common whore, with
other points of equal importance; and I make no doubt but that a man, better
acquainted than I have the honor to be with the learned persons of our own
country, might find some who have discovered several anecdotes, concerning
the giant Albion, concerning Samothes the son, or Brito the grandson of Japhet,
and concerning Brutus who led a colony into our island after the siege of
Troy, as the others repeopled it after the deluge. But ten millions of such
anecdotes as these, though they were true; and complete authentic volumes
of Egyptian or Chaldean, of Greek or Latin, of Gallic or British, of French
or Saxon records, would be of no value in my sense because of no use towards
our improvement in wisdom and virtue; if they contained nothing more than
dynasties and genealogies, and a bare mention of remarkable events in the
order of time, like journals, chronological tables, or dry and meagre annals.




I say the same of all those modern compositions in which we find rather
the heads of history, than any thing that deserves to be called history.
Their authors are either abridgers or compilers. The first do neither honor
to themselves, nor good to mankind; for surely the abridger is in a form
below the translator; and the book, at least the history, that wants to be
abridged, does not deserve to be read. They have done anciently a great deal
of hurt by substituting many a bad book in the place of a good one; and by
giving occasion to men, who contented themselves with extracts and abridgments,
to neglect, and through their neglect, to lose the invaluable originals:
for which reason I curse Constantine Porphyrogenetes as heartily as I do
Gregory. The second are of some use, as far as they contribute to preserve
public acts, and dates, and the memory of great events. But they who are
thus employed have seldom the means of knowing those private passages on
which all public transactions depend, and as seldom the skill and the talents
necessary to put what they do know well together: they cannot see the working
of the mine, but their industry collects the matter that is thrown out. It
is the business, or it should be so, of others to separate the pure ore from
the dross, to stamp it into coin, and to enrich, not encumber mankind. When
there are none sufficient to this task, there may be antiquaries, and there
may be journalists or annalists, but there are no historians.




It is worth while to observe the progress that the Romans and the Greeks
made towards history. The Romans had journalists or annalists from the very
beginning of their state. In the sixth century, or very near it at soonest,
they began to have antiquaries, and some attempts were made towards writing
of history. I call these first historical productions attempts only or essays:
and they were no more, neither among the Romans, nor among the Greeks. "Graeci
ipsi sic initio scriptitarunt ut noster Cato, ut Pictor, ut Piso. "It
is Antony, not the triumvir, my lord, but his grandfather the famous orator,
who says this in the second book of Tully De Oratore,' he adds afterwards,
"Itaque qualis apud Graecos Pherecydes, Hellanicus, Acusilaus, aliique
permulti, talis noster Cato, et Pictor, et Piso." I know that Antony
speaks here strictly of defect of style and want of oratory. They were, "tantummodo
narratores, non exornatores," as he expresses himself: but as they wanted
style and skill to write in such a manner as might answer all the ends of
history, so they wanted materials. Pherecydes wrote something about Iphigenia,
and the festivals of Bacchus. Hellanicus was a poetical historian, and Acusilaus
graved genealogies on plates of brass. Pictor, who is called by Livy "scriptorum
antiquissimus," published, I think, some short annals of his own time.
Neither he nor Piso could have sufficient materials for the history of Rome;
nor Cato, I presume, even for the antiquities of Italy. The Romans, with
the other people of that country, were then just rising out of barbarity,
and growing acquainted with letters; for those that the Grecian colonies
might bring into Sicily, and the southern parts of Italy, spread little,
or lasted little, and made in the whole no figure. And whatever learning
might have flourished among the ancient Etrurians, which was perhaps at most
nothing better than augury, and divination, and superstitious rites, which
were admired and cultivated in ignorant ages, even that was almost entirely
worn out of memory. Pedants, who would impose all the traditions of the four
first ages of Rome, for authentic history, have insisted much on certain
annals, of which mention is made in the very place I have just now quoted.
"Ab initio rerum Romanarum," says the same interlocutor, "usque
ad P. Mucium pontificem maximum, res omnes singulorum annorum mandabat literis
pontifex maximus, efferebatque in album, et proponebat tabulam domi, potestas
ut esset populo cognoscendi; idemque etiam nunc annales maximi nominantur."
But, my lord, be pleased to take notice, that the very distinction I make
is made here between a bare annalist and a historian: "erat historia
nihil aliud," in these early days, "nisi annalium confectio."
Take notice likewise, by the way, that Livy, whose particular application
it had been to search into this matter, affirms positively that the greatest
part of all public and private monuments, among which he specifies these
very annals, had been destroyed in the sack of Rome by the Gauls: and Plutarch
cites Clodius for the same assertion, in the life of Numa Pompilius. Take
notice, in the last place, of that which is more immediately to our present
purpose. These annals could contain nothing more than short minutes or memorandums
hung up in a table at the pontiff's house, like the rules of the game in
the billiard-room, and much such history as we have in the epitomes prefixed
to the books of Livy or of any other historian, in lapidary inscriptions,
or in some modern almanacs. Materials for history they were no doubt, hut
scanty and insufficient; such as those ages could produce when writing and
reading were accomplishments so uncommon, that the praetor was directed by
law, "clavum pangere," to drive a nail into the door of a temple,
that the number of years might be reckoned by the number of nails. Such in
short as we have in monkish annalists, and other ancient chroniclers of nations
now in being: but not such as can entitle the authors of them to be called
historians, nor can enable others to write history in that fulness in which
it must be written to become a lesson of ethics and politics. The truth is,
nations, like men, have their infancy: and the few passages of that time,
which they retain, are not such as deserved most to be remembered; but such
as, being most proportioned to that age, made the strongest impressions on
their minds. In those nations that preserve their dominion long, and grow
up to manhood, the elegant as well as the necessary arts and sciences are
improved to some degree of perfection; and history, that was at first intended
only to record the names, or perhaps the general characters of some famous
men, and to transmit in gross the remarkable events of every age to posterity,
is raised to answer another, and a nobler end.




II. Thus it happened among the Greeks, but much more among the Romans,
notwithstanding the prejudices in favor of the former, even among the latter.
I have sometimes thought that Virgil might have justly ascribed to his countrymen
the praise of writing history better, as well as that of affording the noblest
subjects for it, in those famous verses, where the different excellences
of the two nations are so finely touched: but he would have weakened perhaps
by lengthening, and have flattened the climax. Open Herodotus, you are entertained
by an agreeable story-teller, who meant to entertain, and nothing more. Read
Thucydides or Xenophon, you are taught indeed as well as entertained: and
the statesman or the general, the philosopher or the orator, speaks to you
in every page. They wrote on subjects on which they were well informed, and
they treated them fully: they maintained the dignity of history, and thought
it beneath them to vamp up old traditions, like the writers of their age
and country, and to be the trumpeters of a lying antiquity. The Cyropaedia
of Xenophon may be objected perhaps; but if he gave it for a romance, not
a history, as he might for aught we can tell, it is out of the case: and
if he gave it for a history, not a romance, I should prefer his authority
to that of Herodotus, or any other of his countrymen. But however this might
be, and whatever merit we may justly ascribe to these two writers, who were
almost single in their kind, and who treated but small portions of history;
certain it is in general, that the levity as well as loquacity of the Greeks
made them incapable of keeping up to the true standard of history: and even
Polybius and Dionysius of Halicarnassus must bow to the great Roman authors.
Many principal men of that commonwealth wrote memorials of their own actions
and their own times: Sylla, Caesar, Labienus, Pollio, Augustus, and others.
What writers of memorials, what compilers of the materia historica were these?
What genius was necessary to finish up the pictures that such masters had
sketched? Rome afforded men that were equal to the task. Let the remains,
the precious remains, of Sallust, of Livy, and of Tacitus, witness this truth.
When Tacitus wrote, even the appearances of virtue had been long proscribed,
and taste was grown corrupt as well as manners. Yet history preserved her
integrity and her lustre. She preserved them in the writings of some whom
Tacitus mentions, in none perhaps more than his own; every line of which
outweighs whole pages of such a rhetor as Famianus Strada. I single him out
among the moderns, because he had the foolish presumption to censure Tacitus,
and to write history himself: and your lordship will forgive this short excursion
in honor of a favorite author.




What a school of private and public virtue had been opened to us at the
resurrection of learning, if the latter historians of the Roman commonwealth,
and the first of the succeeding monarchy, had come down to us entire? The
few that are come down, though broken and imperfect, compose the best body
of history that we have, nay the only body of ancient history that deserves
to be an object of study. It fails us indeed most at that remarkable and
fatal period, where our reasonable curiosity is raised the highest. Livy
employed five and forty books to bring his history down to the end of the
sixth century, and the breaking out of the third Punic war: but he employed
ninety-five to bring it down from thence to the death of Drusus; that is,
through the course of one hundred and twenty or thirty years. Apian, Dion
Cassius, and others, nay even Plutarch included, make us but poor amends
for what is lost of Livy. Among all the adventitious helps by which we endeavor
to supply this loss in some degree, the best are those which we find scattered
up and down in the works of Tully. His orations, particularly, and his letters,
contain many curious anecdotes and instructive reflections, concerning the
intrigues and machinations that were carried on against liberty, from Catiline's
conspiracy to Caesar's. The state of the government, the constitution and
temper of the several parties, and the characters of the principal persons
who figured at that time on the public stage, are to be seen there in a stronger
and truer light than they would have appeared perhaps if he had written purposely
on this subject, and even in those memorials which he somewhere promises
Atticus to write. "Excudam aliquod Heraclidium opus, quod lateat in
thesauris tuis". He would hardly have unmasked in such a work, as freely
as in familiar occasional letters, Pompey, Cato, Brutus, nay himself; the
four men of Rome, on whose praises he dwelt with the greatest complacency.
The age in which Livy flourished abounded with such materials as these: they
were fresh, they were authentic; it was easy to procure them, it was safe
to employ them. How he did employ them in executing the second part of his
design, we may judge by his execution of the first: and, I own to your lordship,
I should be glad to exchange, if it were possible, what we have of this history
for what we have not. Would you not be glad, my lord, to see, in one stupendous
draught, the whole progress of that government from liberty to servitude?
the whole series of causes and effects, apparent and real, public and private?
those which all men saw, and all good men lamented and opposed at the time;
and those which were so disguised to the prejudices, to the partialities
of a divided people, and even to the corruption of mankind, that many did
not, and that many could pretend they did not, discern them, till it was
too late to resist them? I am sorry to say it, this part of the Roman story
would be not only more curious and more authentic than the former, but of
more immediate and more important application to the present state of Britain.
But it is lost: the loss is irreparable, and your lordship will not blame
me for deploring it.




III. They who set up for scepticism may not regret the loss of such a
history: but this I will be bold to assert to them, that a history must be
written on this plan, and must aim at least at these perfections, or it will
answer sufficiently none of the intentions of history. That it will not answer
sufficiently the intention I have insisted upon in these letters, that of
instructing posterity by the example of former ages, is manifest: and I think
it is as manifest, that a history cannot be said even to relate faithfully,
and inform us truly that does not relate fully, and inform us of all that
is necessary to make a true judgment concerning the matters contained in
it. Naked facts, without the causes that produced them, and the circumstances
that accompanied them, are not sufficient to characterise actions or counsels.
The nice degrees of wisdom and of folly, of virtue and of vice, will not
only be undiscoverable in them; but we must be very often unable to determine
under which of these characters they fall in general. The sceptics I am speaking
of are therefore guilty of this absurdity: the nearer a history comes to
the true idea of history, the better it informs and the more it instructs
us, the more worthy to be rejected it appears to them. I have said and allowed
enough to content any reasonable man about the uncertainty of history. I
have owned that the best are defective, and I will add in this place an observation
which did not, I think, occur to me before. Conjecture is not always distinguished
perhaps as it ought to be; so that an ingenious writer may sometimes do very
innocently, what a malicious writer does very criminally as often as he dares,
and as his malice requires it: he may account for events, after they have
happened, by a system of causes and conduct that did not really produce them,
though it might possibly or even probably have produced them. But this observation,
like several others, becomes a reason for examining and comparing authorities,
and for preferring some, not for rejecting all. Davila, a noble historian
surely, and one whom I should not scruple to confess equal in many respects
to Livy, as I should not scruple to prefer his countryman Guicciardin to
Thucydides in every respect; Davila, my lord, was accused, from the first
publication of his history, or at least was suspected, of too much refinement
and subtlety, in developing the secret motives of actions, in laying the
causes of events too deep, and deducing them often through a series of progression
too complicated, and too artistly wrought. But yet the suspicious person
who should reject this historian upon such general inducements as these,
would have no grace to oppose his suspicions to the authority of the first
duke of Epernon, who had been an actor, and a principal actor too, in many
of the scenes that Davila recites. Girard, secretary to this duke, and no
contemptible biographer, relates, that this history came down to the place
where the old man resided in Gascony, a little before his death; that he
read it to him, that the duke confirmed the truth of the narrations in it,
and seemed only surprised by what means the author could be so well informed
of the most secret councils and measures of those times.




IV. I have said enough on this head, and your lordship may be induced,
perhaps, by what I have said, to think with me, that such histories as these,
whether ancient or modern, deserve alone to be studied. Let us leave the
credulous learned to write history without materials, or to study those who
do so; to wrangle about ancient traditions, and to ring different changes
on the same set of bells. Let us leave the sceptics, in modern as well as
ancient hi story, to triumph in the notable discovery of the ides of one
month mistaken for the calends of another, or in the various dates and contradictory
circumstances which they find in weekly gazettes and monthly mercuries. Whilst
they are thus employed, your lordship and I will proceed, if you please,
to consider more closely, than we have yet done, the rule mentioned above;
that, I mean, of using discernment and choice in the study of the most authentic
history, that of not wandering in the light, which is as necessary as that
of not groping in the dark.




Man is the subject of every history; and to know him well, we must see
him and consider him, as history alone can present him to us, in every age,
in every country, in every state, in life and in death. History, therefore,
of all kinds, of civilised and uncivilised, of ancient and modern nations,
in short, all history that descends to a sufficient detail of human actions
and characters, is useful to bring us acquainted with our species, nay, with
ourselves. To teach and to inculcate the general principles of virtue, and
the general rules of wisdom and good policy, which result from such details
of actions and characters, comes for the most part, and always should come,
expressly and directly into the design of those who are capable of giving
such details and, therefore, whilst they narrate as historians, they hint
often as philosophers; they put into our hands, as it were, on every proper
occasion, the end of a clue, that serves to remind us of searching, and to
guide us in the search of that truth which the example before us either establishes
or illustrates. If a writer neglects this part, we are able, however, to
supply his neglect by our own attention and industry: and when he gives us
a good history of Peruvians or Mexicans, of Chinese or Tartars, of Muscovites
or Negroes, we may blame him, but we must blame ourselves much more, if we
do not make it a good lesson of philosophy. This being the general use of
history, it is not to be neglected. Every one may make it, who is able to
read and reflect on what he reads, and every one who makes it will find in
his degree, the benefit that arises from an early acquaintance contracted
in this manner with mankind. We are not only passengers or sojourners in
this world, but we are absolute strangers at the first step we make in it.
Our guides are often ignorant, often unfaithful. By this map of the country,
which history spreads before us, we may learn, if we please, to guide ourselves.
In our journey through it, we are beset on every side. We are besieged, sometimes
even in our strongest holds. Terrors and temptations, conducted by the passions
of other men, assault us: and our own passions, that correspond with these,
betray us. History is a collection of the journals of those who have travelled
through the same country, and been exposed to the same accidents: and their
good and their ill success are equally instructive. In this pursuit of knowledge
an immense field is opened to us: general histories, sacred and profane;
the histories of particular countries, particular events, particular orders,
particular men; memorials, anecdotes, travels. But we must not ramble in
this field without discernment or choice, nor even with these must we ramble
too long.




As to the choice of authors, who have written on all these various subjects,
so much has been said by learned men concerning all those that deserve attention,
and their several characters are so well established, that it would be a
sort of pedantic affectation to lead your lordship through so voluminous,
and at the same time so easy, a detail. I pass it over therefore in order
to observe, that as soon as we have taken this general view of mankind, and
of the course of human affairs in different ages and different parts of the
world, we ought to apply, and, the shortness of human life considered, to
confine ourselves almost entirely in our study of history, to such histories
as have an immediate relation to our professions, or to our rank and situation
in the society to which we belong. Let me instance in the profession of divinity,
as the noblest and the most important.




(1) I have said so much concerning the share which divines of all religions
have taken in the corruption of history, that I should have anathemas pronounced
against me, no doubt, in the east and the west, by the dairo, the mufti,
and the pope, if these letters were submitted to ecclesiastical censure;
for surely, my lord, the clergy have a better title, than the sons of Apollo,
to be called "genus irritabile vatum." What would it be, if I went
about to show, how many of the Christian clergy abuse, by misrepresentation
and false quotation, the history they can no longer corrupt? And yet this
task would not be, even to me, an hard one. But as I mean to speak in this
place of Christian divines alone, so I mean to speak of such of them particularly
as may be called divines without any sneer; of such of them, for some such
I think there are, as believe themselves, and would have mankind believe;
not for temporal but spiritual interest, not for the sake of the clergy,
but for the sake of mankind. Now it has been long matter of astonishment
to me, how such persons as these could take so much silly pains to establish
mystery on metaphysics, revelation on philosophy, and matters of fact on
abstract reasoning? A religion founded on the authority of a divine mission,
confirmed by prophecies and miracles, appeals to facts: and the facts must
be proved as all other facts that pass for authentic are proved; for faith
so reasonable after this proof, is absurd before it. If they are thus proved,
the religion will prevail without the assistance of so much profound reasoning:
if they are not thus proved, the authority of it will sink in the world even
with this assistance. The divines object in their disputes with atheists,
and they object very justly, that these men require improper proofs; proofs
that are not suited to the nature of the subject, and then cavil that such
proofs are not furnished. But what then do they mean, to fall into the same
absurdity themselves in their disputes with theists, and to din improper
proofs in ears that are open to proper proofs? The matter is of great moment,
my lord, and I make no excuse for the zeal which obliges me to dwell a little
on it. A serious and honest application to the study of ecclesiastical history,
and every part of profane history and chronology relative to it, is incumbent
on such reverend persons as are here spoken of, on a double account: because
history alone can furnish the proper proofs, that the religion they teach
is of God; and because the unfair manner, in which these proofs have been
and are called furnished, creates prejudices, and gives advantages against
Christianity that require to be removed. No scholar will dare to deny, that
false history, as well as sham miracles, has been employed to propagate Christianity
formerly: and whoever examines the writers of our own age, will find the
same abuse of history continued. Many and many instances of this abuse might
be produced. It is grown into custom, writers copy one another, and the mistake
that was committed, or the falsehood that was invented by one, is adopted
by hundreds.




Abbadie says in his famous book, that the Gospel of St. Matthew is cited
by Clemens, bishop of Rome, a disciple of the apostles; that Barnabas cites
it in his epistle; that Ignatius and Polycarp receive it; and that the same
fathers, that give testimony for Matthew, give it likewise for Mark. Nay
your lordship will find, I believe, that the present bishop of London, in
his third pastoral letter, speaks to the same effect. I will not trouble
you nor myself with any more instances of the same kind. Let this, which
occurred to me as I was writing, suffice. It may well suffice; for I presume
the fact advanced by the minister and the bishop is a mistake. If the fathers
of the first century do mention some passages that are agreeable to what
we read in our evangelists, will it follow that these fathers had the same
gospels before them? To say so is a manifest abuse of history, and quite
inexcusable in writers that knew, or should have known, that these fathers
made use of other gospels, wherein such passages might be contained, or they
might be preserved in unwritten tradition. Besides which, I could almost
venture to affirm that these fathers of the first century do not expressly
name the gospels we have of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. To the two reasons
that have been given why those who make divinity their profession, should
study history, particularly ecclesiastical history, with an honest and serious
application; in order to support Christianity against the attacks of unbelievers,
and to remove the doubts and prejudices that the unfair proceedings of men
of their own order have raised in minds candid but not implicit, willing
to be informed but curious to examine; to these, I say, we may add another
consideration that seems to me of no small importance. Writers of the Roman
religion have attempted to show, that the text of the holy writ is on many
accounts insufficient to be the sole criterion of orthodoxy: I apprehend
too that they have shown it. Sure I am that experience, from the first promulgation
of Christianity to this hour, shows abundantly with how much ease and success
the most opposite, the most extravagant, nay, the most impious opinions,
and the most contradictory faiths, may be founded on the same text; and plausibly
defended by the same authority. Writers of the reformed religion have erected
their batteries against tradition; and the only difficulty they had to encounter
in this enterprise lay in levelling and pointing their cannon so as to avoid
demolishing, in one common ruin, the traditions they retain, and those they
reject. Each side has been employed to weaken the cause and explode the system
of his adversary: and, whilst they have been so employed, they have jointly
laid their axes to the root of Christianity: for thus men will be apt to
reason upon what they have advanced. "If the text has not that authenticity,
clearness, and precision which are necessary to establish it as a divine
and a certain rule of faith and practice; and if the tradition of the church,
from the first ages of it till the days of Luther and Calvin, has been corrupted
itself, and has served to corrupt the faith and practice of Christians; there
remains at this time no standard at all of Christianity. By consequence,
either this religion was not originally of divine institution, or else God
has not provided effectually for preserving the genuine purity of it, and
the gates of hell have actually prevailed, in contradiction to his promise,
against the church." The best effect of this reasoning that can be hoped
for, is, that men should f all into theism, and subscribe to the first proposition;
he must be worse than an atheist who can affirm the last. The dilemma is
terrible, my lord. Party zeal and private interest have formed it: the common
interest of Christianity is deeply concerned to solve it. Now, I presume,
it can never be solved without a more accurate examination, not only of the
Christian but of the Jewish system, than learned men have been hitherto impartial
enough and sagacious enough to take, or honest enough to communicate. Whilst
the authenticity and sense of the text of the bible remain as disputable,
and whilst the tradition of the church remains as problematical, to say no
worse, as the immense labors of the Christian divines in several communions
have made them appear to be; Christianity may lean on the civil and ecclesiastical
power, and be supported by the forcible influence of education: but the proper
force of religion, that force which subdues the mind, and awes the conscience
by conviction, will be wanting.




I had reason, therefore, to produce divinity, as one instance of those
professions that require a particular application to the study of some particular
parts of history; and since I have said so much on the subject in my zeal
for Christianity, I will add this further. The resurrection of letters was
a fatal period: the Christian system has been attacked, and wounded too,
very severely since that time. The defence has been better made indeed by
modern divines, than it had been by ancient fathers and apologists. The moderns
have invented new methods of defence, and have abandoned some posts that
were not tenable: but still there are others, in defending which they lie
under great disadvantages. Such are various facts, piously believed in former
times, but on which the truth of Christianity has been rested very imprudently
in more enlightened ages; because the falsity of some, and the gross improbability
of others are so evident, that, instead of answering the purpose for which
they were invented, they have rendered the whole tenor of ecclesiastical
history and tradition precarious, ever since a strict but just application
of the rules of criticism has been made to them. I touch these things lightly;
but if your lordship reflects upon them, you will find reason perhaps to
think as I do, that it is high time the clergy in all Christian communions
should join their forces, and establish those historical facts, which are
the foundations of the whole system, on clear and unquestionable historical
authority, such as they require in all cases of moment from others; reject
candidly what cannot be thus established; and pursue their inquiries in the
same spirit of truth through all the ages of the church; without any regard
to historians, fathers, or councils, more than they are strictly entitled
to on the face of what they have transmitted to us, on their own consistency,
and on the concurrence of other authority. Our pastors would be thus, I presume,
much better employed than they generally are. Those of the clergy who make
religion merely a trade, who regard nothing more than the subsistence it
affords them, or in higher life the wealth and power they enjoy by the means
of it, may say to themselves, that it will last their time, or that policy
and reason of state will preserve the form of a church when the spirit of
religion is extinct. But those whom I mentioned above, those who act for
survival not temporal ends, and are desirous that men should believe and
practise the doctrines of Christianity, as well as go to church and pay tithes,
will feel and own the weight of such considerations as these; and agree,
that however the people have been, and may be still amused, yet Christianity
has been in decay ever since the resurrection of letters; and that it cannot
be supported as it was supported before the era, nor by any other way than
that which I propose, and which a due application to the study of history,
chronology, and criticism, would enable our divines to pursue, no doubt,
with success.




I might instance, in other professions, the obligations men lie under
of applying themselves to certain parts of history, and I can hardly forbear
doing it in that of the law. in its nature the noblest and most beneficial
to mankind, in its abuse and debasement the most sordid and the most pernicious.
A lawyer now is nothing more, I speak of ninety-nine in a hundred at least,
to use some of Tully's words, "nisi legulcius quidam cautus, et acutus
praeco actionum, cantor formularum, auceps syllabarum." But there have
been lawyers that were orators, philosophers, historians: there have been
Bacons and Clarendons, my lord. There will be none such any more, till, in
some better age, true ambition or the love of fame prevails over avarice;
and till men fund leisure and encouragement to prepare themselves for the
exercise of this profession, by climbing up to the "vantage ground,"
so my Lord Bacon calls it, of science; instead of grovelling all their lives
below, in a mean but gainful application to all the little arts of chicane.
Till this happen, the profession of the law will scarce deserve to be ranked
among the learned professions: and whenever it happens, one of the vantage
grounds, to which men must climb, is metaphysical, and the other historical
knowledge. They must pry into the secret recesses of the human heart, and
become well acquainted with the whole moral world, that they may discover
the abstract reason of all laws: and they must trace the laws of particular
states, especially of their own, from the first rough sketches to the more
perfect draughts; from the first causes or occasions that produced them,
through all the effects, good and bad, that they produced. But I am running
insensibly into a subject, which would detain me too long from one that relates
more immediately to your lordship, and with which I intend to conclude this
long letter.




2. I pass from the consideration of those professions to which particular
parts or kinds of history seem to belong: and I come to speak of the study
of history, as a necessary means to prepare men for the discharge of that
duty which they owe to their country, and which is common to all the members
of every society that is constituted according to the rules of right reason,
and with a due regard to the common good. I have met, in St. Real's works,
or some other French book, with a ridicule cast on private men who make history
a political study, or who apply themselves in any manner to affairs of state.
But the reflection is too general. In governments so arbitrary by their constitution,
that the will of the prince is not only the supreme, but the sole law, it
is so far from being a duty, that it may be dangerous, and must be impertinent
in men, who are not called by the prince to the administration of public
affairs, to concern themselves about it, or to fit themselves for it. The
sole vocation there is the favor of the court; and whatever designation God
makes by the talents he bestows, though it may serve, which it seldom ever
does, to direct the choice of the prince, yet I presume that it cannot become
a reason to particular men, or create a duty on them, to devote themselves
to the public service. Look on the Turkish government. See a fellow taken,
from rowing in a common passage-boat, by the caprice of the prince: see him
invested next day with all the power the soldans took under the caliphs,
or the mayors of the palace under the successors of Clovis: see a whole empire
governed by the ignorance, inexperience, and arbitrary will of this tyrant,
and a few other subordinate tyrants, as ignorant and unexperienced as himself.
In France indeed, though an absolute government, things go a little better.
Arts and sciences are encouraged, and here and there an example may be found
of a man who has risen by some extraordinary talents, amidst innumerable
examples of men who have arrived at the greatest honors and highest posts
by no other merit than that of assiduous fawning, attendance, or of skill
in some despicable puerile amusement: in training wasps, for instance, to
take regular flights like hawks, and stoop at flies. The nobility of France,
like the children of tribute among the ancient Saracens and modern Turks,
are set apart for wars. They are bred to make love, to hunt, and to fight:
and, if any of them should acquire knowledge superior to this, they would
acquire that which might be prejudicial to themselves, but could not become
beneficial to their country. The affairs of state are trusted to other hands.
Some have risen to them by drudging long in business: some have been made
ministers almost in the cradle: and the whole power of the government has
been abandoned to others in the dotage of life. There is a monarchy, an absolute
monarchy too, I mean that of China, wherein the administration of the government
is carried on, under the direction of the prince, ever since the dominion
of the Tartars has been established, by several classes of Mandarins, and
according to the deliberation and advice of several orders of councils: the
admission to which classes and orders depends on the abilities of the candidates,
as their rise on them depends on the behavior they hold, and the improvements
they make afterwards. Under such a government, it is neither impertinent
nor ridiculous, in any of the subjects who are invited by their circumstances,
or pushed to it by their talents, to make the history of their own and of
other countries a political study, and to fit themselves by this and all
other ways for the service of the public. It is not dangerous neither; or
an honor, that outweighs the danger, attends it; since private men have a
right by the ancient constitution of this government, as well as councils
of state, to represent to the prince the abuses of his administration. But
still men have not there the same occasion to concern themselves in the affairs
of the state, as the nature of a free government gives to the members of
it. In our own country, for in our own the forms of a free government at
least are hitherto preserved, men are not only designed for the public service
by the circumstances of their situation, and their talents, all which may
happen in others: but they are designed to it by their birth in many cases,
and in all cases they may dedicate themselves to this service, and take,
in different degrees some share in it; whether they are called to it by the
prince or no. In absolute governments, all public service is to the prince,
and he nominates all those that serve the public. In free governments, there
is a distinct and a principal service due to the state. Even the king, of
such a limited monarchy as ours, is but the first servant of the people.
Among his subjects, some are appointed by the constitution, and others are
elected by the people, to carry on the exercise of the legislative power
jointly with him, and to control the executive power independently on him.
Thus your lordship is born a member of that order of men, in whom a third
part of the supreme Power of the government resides: and your right to the
exercise of the power belonging to this order not being yet opened, you are
chosen into another body of men, who have different power and a different
constitution, but who possess another third part of the supreme legislative
authority, for as long a time as the commission or trust delegated to them
by the people lasts. Freemen, who are neither horn to the first, nor elected
to the last, have a right however to complain, to represent, to petition,
and, I add, even to do more in cases of the utmost extremity. For sure there
cannot be a greater absurdity, than to affirm, that the people have a remedy
in resistance, when their prince attempts to enslave them; but that they
have none, when their representatives sell themselves and them.




The sum of what I have been saying is, that, in free governments, the
public service is not confined to those whom the prince appoints to different
posts in the administration under him; that there the care of the state is
the care of multitudes; that many are called to it in a particular manner
by their rank, and by other circumstances of their situation; and that even
those whom the prince appoints are not only answerable to him, but, like
him, and before him, to the nation, for their behavior in their several posts.
It can never be impertinent nor ridiculous therefore in such a country, whatever
it might be in the abbot of St. Real's, which was Savoy I think; or in Peru,
under the Incas, where, Garcilasso de la Vega says, it was lawful for none
but the nobility to study -- for men of all degrees to instruct themselves
in those affairs wherein they may be actors, or judges of those that act,
or controllers of those that judge. On the contrary, it is incumbent on every
man to instruct himself, as well as the means and opportunities he has permit,
concerning the nature and interests of the government, and those rights and
duties that belong to him, or to his superiors, or to his inferiors. This
in general; but in particular it is certain that the obligations under which
we lie to serve our country increase, in proportion to the ranks we bold,
and the other circumstances of birth, fortune, and situation that call us
to this service; and, above all, to the talents which God has given us to
perform it.




It is in this view, that I shall address to your lordship whatever I have
further to say on the study of history.




LETTER 6




From What Period Modern History is Peculiarly Useful to the Service
of our Country, Viz.; From the End of the Fifteenth Century to the Present.
The Division of This into Three Particular Periods: In Order to a Sketch
of the History and State of Europe from that Time.




Since then you are, my lord, by your birth, by the nature of our government,
and by the talents God has given you, attached for life to the service of
your country; since genius alone cannot enable you to go through this service
with honor to yourself and advantage to your country, whether you support
or whether you oppose the administrations that arise; since a great stock
of knowledge, acquired betimes and continually improved, is necessary to
this end; and since one part of this stock must be collected from the study
of history, as the other part is to be gained by observation and experience;
I come now to speak to your lordship of such history as has an immediate
relation to the great duty and business of your life, and of the method to
be observed in this study. The notes I have by me, which were of some little
use thus far, serve me no farther, and I have no books to consult. No matter;
I shall be able to explain my thoughts without their assistance, and less
liable to be tedious. I hope to be as full and as exact on memory alone,
as the manner in which I shall treat the subject requires me to be.




I say, then, that however closely affairs are linked together in the progression
of governments, and how much soever events that follow are dependent on those
that precede, the whole connection diminishes to sight as the chain lengthens;
till at last it seems to be broken, and the links that are continued from
that point bear no proportion nor any similitude to the former. I would not
be understood to speak only of those great changes that are wrought by a
concurrence of extraordinary events: for instance, the expulsion of one nation,
the destruction of one government, and the establishment of another: but
even of those that are wrought in the same governments and among the same
people, slowly and almost imperceptibly, by the necessary effects of time,
and flux condition of human affairs. When such changes as these happen in
several states about the same time, and consequently affect other states
by their vicinity, and by many different relations which they frequently
bear to one another; then is one of those periods formed, at which the chain
spoken of is so broken as to have little or no real or visible connection
with that which we see continue. A new situation, different from the former,
begets new interests in the same proportion of difference; not in this or
that particular state alone, but in all those that are concerned by vicinity
or other relations, as I said just now, in one general system of policy.
New interests beget new maxims of government, and new methods of conduct.
These, in their turns, beget new manners, new habits, new customs. The longer
this new constitution of affairs continues, the more will this difference
increase: and although some analogy may remain long between what preceded
and what succeeds such a period, yet will this analogy soon become an object
of mere curiosity, not of profitable inquiry. Such a period therefore is,
in the true sense of the words, an epocha or an era, a point of time at which
you stop, or from which you reckon forward. I say forward; because we are
not to study in the present case, as chronologers compute, backward. Should
we persist to carry our researches much higher, and to push them even to
some other period of the same kind, we should misemploy our time; the causes
then laid having spent themselves, the series of effects derived from them
being over, and our concern in both consequently at an end. But a new system
of causes and effects, that subsists in our time, and whereof our conduct
is to be a part, arising at the last period, and all that passes in our time
being dependent on what has passed since that period, or being immediately
relative to it, we are extremely concerned to be well informed about all
these passages. To be entirely ignorant about the ages that precede this
era would be shameful. Nay, some indulgence may be had to a temperate curiosity
in the review of them. But to be learned about them is a ridiculous affectation
in any man who means to be useful to the present age. Down to this era let
us read history: from this era, and down to our time, let us study it.




The end of the fifteenth century seems to be just such a period as I have
been describing, for those who live in the eighteenth, and who inhabit the
western parts of Europe. A little before, or a little after this point of
time, all those events happened, and all those revolutions began, that have
produced so vast a change in the manners, customs, and interests of particular
nations, and in the whole policy, ecclesiastical and civil, of these parts
of the world. I must descend here into some detail, not of histories, collections,
or memorials; for all these are well enough known: and though the contents
are in the heads of few, the books are in the hands of many. But instead
of showing your lordship where to look, I shall contribute more to your entertainment
and instruction, by marking out, as well as my memory will serve me to do
it, what you are to look for, and by furnishing a kind of clue to your studies.
I shall give, according to custom, the first place to religion.




A View of the Ecclesiatical Government of Europe from the Beginning
of the Sixteenth Century




Observe then, my lord, that the demolition of the papal throne was not
attempted with success till the beginning of the sixteenth century. If you
are curious to cast your eyes back, you will find Berenger in the eleventh,
who was soon silenced; Arnoldus in the same, who was soon hanged; Valdo in
the twelfth, and our Wickliff in the fourteenth, as well as others perhaps
whom I do not recollect. Sometimes the doctrines of the church were alone
attacked; and sometimes the doctrine, the discipline, and the usurpations
of the pope. But little fires, kindled in corners of a dark world, were soon
stifled by that great abettor of Christian unity, the hangman. When they
spread and blazed out, as in the case of the Albigeois and of the Hussites,
armies were raised to extinguish them by torrents of blood; and such saints
as Dominic, with the crucifix in their hands, instigated the troops to the
utmost barbarity. Your lordship will find that the church of Rome was maintained
by such charitable and salutary means, among others, till the period spoken
of; and you will be curious, I am sure, to inquire how this period came to
be more fatal to her than any former conjuncture. A multitude of circumstances,
which you will easily trace in the histories of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, to go no further back, concurred to bring about this great event:
and a multitude of others, as easy to be traced, concurred to hinder the
demolition from becoming total, and to prop the tottering fabric. Among these
circumstances, there is one less complicated and more obvious than others,
which was of principal and universal influence. The art of printing had been
invented about forty or fifty years before the period we fix: from that time,
the resurrection of letters hastened on apace; and at this period they had
made great progress, and were cultivated with great application. Mahomet
the Second drove them out of the east into the west; and the popes proved
worse politicians than the mufties in this respect. Nicholas the Fifth encouraged
learning and learned men. Sixtus the Fourth was, if I mistake not, a great
collector of books at least: and Leo the Tenth was the patron of every art
and science. The magicians themselves broke the charm by which they had bound
mankind for so many ages: and the adventure of that knight-errant, who, thinking
himself happy in the arms of a celestial nymph, found that he was the miserable
slave of an infernal bag, was in some sort renewed. As soon as the means
of acquiring and spreading information grew common, it is no wonder that
a system was unravelled, which could not have been woven with success in
any ages, but those of gross ignorance, and credulous superstition. I might
point out to your lordship many other immediate causes, some general like
this that I have mentioned, and some particular. The great schism, for instance,
that ended in the beginning of the fifteenth century, and in the council
of Constance, had occasioned prodigious scandal. Two or three vicars of Christ,
two or three infallible heads of the church roaming about the world at a
time, furnished matter of ridicule as well as scandal: and whilst they appealed,
for so they did in effect, to the laity, and reproached and excommunicated
one another, they taught the world what to think of the institution, as well
as exercise of the papal authority. The same lesson was taught by the council
of Pisa, that preceded, and by that of Basle, that followed the council of
Constance. The horrid crimes of Alexander the Sixth, the saucy ambition of
Julius the Second, the immense profusion and scandalous exactions of Leo
the Tenth; all these events and characters, following in a continued series
from the beginning of one century, provided the way for the revolution that
happened in the beginning of the next. The state of Germany, the state of
England, and that of the North, were particular causes in these several countries,
of this revolution. Such were many remarkable events that happened about
the same time, and a little before it, in these and in other nations; and
such were likewise the characters of many of the princes of that age, some
of whom favored the reformation, like the elector of Saxony, on a principle
of conscience; and most of whom favored it, just as others opposed it, on
a principle of interest. This your lordship will discover manifestly to have
been the case; and the sole difference you will find between Henry the Eighth
and Francis the First, one of whom separated from the pope, as the other
adhered to him, is this: Henry the Eighth divided, with the secular clergy
and his people, the spoil of the pope, and his satellites, the monks; Francis
the First divided, with the pope, the spoil of his clergy, secular and regular,
and of his people. With the same impartial eye that your lordship surveys
the abuses of religion, and the corruptions of the church as well as court
of Rome, which brought on the reformation at this period; you will observe
the characters and conduct of those who began, who propagated, and who favored
the reformation: and from your observation of these, as well as of the unsystematical
manner in which it was carried on at the same time in various places, and
of the want of concert, nay even of charity, among the reformers, you will
learn what to think of the several religions that unite in their opposition
to the Roman, and yet hate one another most heartily; what to think of the
several sects that have sprouted, like suckers, from the same great roots;
and what the true principles are of protestant ecclesiastical policy. This
policy had no being till Luther made his establishment in Germany; till Zwinglius
began another in Switzerland, which Calvin carried on, and, like Americus
Vesputius who followed Christopher Columbus, robbed the first adventurer
of his honor; and till the reformation in our country was perfected under
Edward the Sixth and Elizabeth. Even popish ecclesiastical policy is no longer
the same since that era. His holiness is no longer at the head of the whole
western church: and to keep the part that adheres to him, he is obliged to
loosen their chains, and to lighten his yoke. The spirit and pretensions
of his court are the same, but not the power. He governs by expedient and
management more, and by authority less. His decrees and his briefs are in
danger of being refused, explained away, or evaded, unless he negotiates
their acceptance before he gives them, governs in concert with his flock,
and feeds his sheep according to their humor and interest. In short, his
excommunications, that made the greatest emperors tremble, are despised by
the lowest members of his own communion; and the remaining attachment to
him has been, from this era, rather a political expedient to preserve an
appearance of unity, than a principle of conscience; whatever some bigotted
princes may have thought, whatever ambitious prelates and hireling scribblers
may have taught, and whatever a people, worked up to enthusiasm by fanatical
preachers, may have acted. Proofs of this would be easy to draw, not only
from the conduct of such princes as Ferdinand the First and Maximilian the
Second, who could scarce be esteemed papists though they continued in the
pope's communion; but even from that of princes who persecuted their protestant
subjects with great violence. Enough has been said, I think, to show your
lordship how little need there is of going up higher than the beginning of
the sixteenth century in the study of history, to acquire all the knowledge
necessary at this time in ecclesiastical policy, or in civil policy as far
as it is relative to this. Historical monuments of this sort are in every
man's hand, the facts are sufficiently verified, and the entire scenes lie
open to our observation: even that scene of solemn refined banter exhibited
in the council of Trent, imposes on no man who reads Paolo, as well as Pallavicini,
and the letters of Vargas.




A View of the Civil Government of Europe in the Beginning of the
Sixteenth Century




I. In France




A very little higher need we go, to observe those great changes in the
civil constitutions of the principal nations of Europe, in the partition
of power among them, and by consequence in the whole system of European policy,
which have operated so strongly for more than two centuries, and which operate
still. I will not affront the memory of our Henry the Seventh so much as
to compare him to Louis the Eleventh: and yet I perceive some resemblance
between them; which would perhaps appear greater, if Philip of Commines had
written the history of Henry as well as that of Louis; or if my Lord Bacon
had written that of Louis as well as that of Henry. This prince came to the
crown of England a little before the close of the fifteenth century: and
Louis began his reign in France about twenty years sooner. These reigns make
remarkable periods in the histories of both nations. To reduce the power,
privileges, and possessions of the nobility, and to increase the wealth and
authority of the crown, was the principal object of both. In this their success
was so great, that the constitutions of the two governments have had, since
that time, more resemblance, in name and in form than in reality, to the
constitutions that prevailed before. Louis the Eleventh was the first, say
the French, "qui mit les rois hors de page." The independency of
the nobility had rendered the state of his predecessors very dependent, and
their power precarious. They were the sovereigns of great vassals; but these
vassals were so powerful that one of them was sometimes able, and two or
three of them always, to give law to the sovereign. Before Louis came to
the crown, the English had been driven out of their possessions in France,
by the poor character of Henry the Sixth, the domestic troubles of his reign,
and the defection of the house of Burgundy from this alliance, much more
than by the ability of Charles the Seventh, who seems to have been neither
a greater hero nor a greater politician than Henry the Sixth; and even than
by the vigor and union of the French nobility in his service. After Louis
came to the crown, Edward the Fourth made a show of carrying the war again
into France; but he soon returned home and your lordship will not be at a
loss to find much better reasons for his doing so, in the situation of his
affairs and the characters of his allies, than those which Philip of Commines
draws from the artifice of Louis, from his good cheer, and his pensions.
Now from this time our pretensions on France were in effect given up: and
Charles the Bold, the last prince of the house of Burgundy, being killed,
Louis had no vassal able to molest him. He re-united the Dutchy of Burgundy
and Artois to his crown, he acquired Provence by gift, and his son Brittany
by marriage: and thus France grew, in the course of a few years, into that
great and compact body which we behold at this time. The history of France
before his period is, like that of Germany, a complicated history of several
states and several interests; sometimes concurring like members of the same
monarchy, and sometimes warring on one another. Since this period, the history
of France is the history of one state under a more uniform and orderly government;
the history of a monarchy wherein the prince is possessor of some, as well
as lord of all the great fieffes: and, the authority of many tyrants centering
in one, though the people are not become more free, yet the whole system
of domestic policy is entirely changed. Peace at home is better secured,
and the nation grown fitter to carry war abroad. The governors of great provinces
and of strong fortresses have opposed their king, and taken arms against
his authority and commission since that time: but yet there is no more resemblance
between the authority and pretensions of these governors, or the nature and
occasions of these disputes, and the authority and pretensions of the vassals
of the crown in former days, or the nature and occasions of their disputes
with the prince and with one another, than there is between the ancient and
the present peers of France. In a word, the constitution is so altered, that
any knowledge we can acquire about it in the history that precedes this period,
will serve to little purpose in our study of the history that follows it,
and to less purpose still in assisting us to judge of what passes in the
present age. The kings of France since that time, more masters at home, have
been able to exert themselves more abroad: and they began to do so immediately;
for Charles the Eighth, son and successor of Louis the Eleventh, formed great
designs of foreign conquests, though they were disappointed by his inability,
by the levity of the nation, and by other causes. Louis the Twelfth and Francis
the First, but especially Francis, meddled deep in the affairs of Europe:
and though the superior genius of Ferdinand called the Catholic, and the
star of Charles the Fifth prevailed against them, yet the efforts they made
show sufficiently how the strength and importance of this monarchy were increased
in their time. From whence we may date likewise the rivalship of the house
of France, for we may reckon that of Valois and that of Bourbon as one upon
this occasion, and the house of Austria; that continues at this day, and
that has cost so much blood and so much treasure in the course of it.




II. In England




Though the power and influence of the nobility sunk in the great change
that began under Henry the Seventh in England, as they did in that which
began under Louis the Eleventh in France; yet the new constitutions that
these changes produced were very different. In France the lords alone lost,
the king alone gained; the clergy held their possessions and their immunities,
and the people remained in a state of mitigated slavery. But in England the
people gained as well as the crown. The commons had already a share in the
legislature; so that the power and influence of the lords being broke by
Henry the Seventh, and the property of the commons increasing by the sale
that his son made of church-lands, the power of the latter increased of course
by this change in a constitution, the forms whereof were favorable to them.
The union of the roses put an end to the civil wars of York and Lancaster,
that had succeeded those we commonly call the barons' wars, and the humor
of warring in France, that had lasted near four hundred years under the Normans
and Plantagenets, for plunder as well as conquest, was spent. Our temple
of Janus was shut by Henry the Seventh. We neither laid waste our own nor
other countries any longer: and wise laws and a wise government changed insensibly
the manners, and gave a new turn to the spirit of our people. We were no
longer the freebooters we had been. Our nation maintained her reputation
in arms whenever the public interest or the public authority required it;
but war ceased to be, what it had been, our principal and almost our sole
profession. The arts of peace prevailed among us. We became husbandmen, manufacturers,
and merchants, and we emulated neighboring nations in literature. It is from
this time that we ought to study the history of our country, my lord, with
the utmost application. We are not much concerned to know with critical accuracy
what were the ancient forms of our parliaments, concerning which, however,
there is little room for dispute from the reign of Henry the Third at least;
nor in short the whole system of our civil constitution before Henry the
Seventh, and of our ecclesiastical constitution before Henry the Eighth.
But he who has not studied and acquired a thorough knowledge of them both,
from these periods down to the present time, in all the variety of events
by which they have been affected, will be very unfit to judge or take care
of either. Just as little are we concerned to know, in any nice detail, what
the conduct of our princes, relatively to our neighbors on the continent,
was before this period, and at a time when the partition of power and a multitude
of other circumstances rendered the whole political system of Europe so vastly
different from that which has existed since. But he who has not traced this
conduct from the period we fix, down to the present age, wants a principal
part of the knowledge that every English minister of state should have. Ignorance
in the respects here spoken of is the less pardonable, because we have more,
and more authentic, means of information concerning this, than concerning
any other period. Anecdotes enow to glut the curiosity of some persons, and
to silence all the captious cavils of others, will never be furnished by
any portion of history; nor indeed can they according to the nature and course
of human affairs: but he who is content to read and observe, like a senator
and a statesman, will find in our own and in foreign historians as much information
as he wants, concerning the affairs of our island, her fortune at home and
her conduct abroad, from the fifteenth century to the eighteenth. I refer
to foreign historians as well as to our own, for this series of our own history;
not only because it is reasonable to see in what manner the historians of
other countries have related the transactions wherein we have been concerned,
and what judgment they have made of our conduct, domestic and foreign, but
for another reason likewise. Our nation has furnished as ample and as important
matter, good and bad, for history, as any nation under the sun: and yet we
must yield the palm in writing history most certainly to the Italians and
to the French, and, I fear, even to the Germans. The only two pieces of history
we have, in any respect to be compared with the ancient, are, the reign of
Henry the Seventh by my lord Bacon, and the history of our civil wars in
the last century by your noble ancestor my lord chancellor Clarendon. But
we have no general history to be compared with some of other countries: neither
have we, which I lament much more, particular histories, except the two I
have mentioned, nor writers of memorials, nor collectors of monuments and
anecdotes, to vie in number or in merit with those that foreign nations can
boast; from Commines, Guicciardin, Du Bellay, Paola, Davila, Thuanus, and
a multitude of others, down through the whole period that I propose to your
lordship. But although this be true, to our shame; yet it is true likewise
that we want no necessary means of information. They lie open to our industry
and our discernment. Foreign writers are for the most part scarce worth reading
when they speak of our domestic affairs; nor are our English writers for
the most part of greater value when they speak of foreign affairs. In this
mutual defect, the writers of other countries are, I think, more excusable
than ours: for the nature of our government, the political principles in
which we are bred, our distinct interests as islanders, and the complicated
various interests and humors of our parties, all these are so peculiar to
ourselves, and so different from the notions, manners, and habits of other
nations, that it is not wonderful they should be puzzled, or should fall
into error, when they undertake to give relations of events that result from
all these, or to pass any judgment upon them. But as these historians are
mutually defective, so they mutually supply each other's defects. We must
compare them therefore, make use of our discernment, and draw our conclusions
from both. If we proceed in this manner, we have an ample fund of history
in our power, from whence to collect sufficient authentic information; and
we must proceed in this manner, even with our own historians of different
religions, sects, and parties, or run the risk of being misled by domestic
ignorance and prejudice in this case, as well as by foreign ignorance and
prejudice in the other.




III. In Spain and the Empire




Spain figured little in Europe till the latter part of the fifteenth century;
till Castile and Arragon were united by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella;
till the total expulsion of the Moors, and till the discovery of the West
Indies. After this, not only Spain took a new form, and grew into immense
power; but, the heir of Ferdinand and Isabella being heir likewise of the
houses of Burgundy and Austria, such an extent of dominion accrued to him
by all these successions, and such an addition of rank and authority by his
election to the empire, as no prince had been master of in Europe from the
days of Charles the Great. It is proper to observe here how the policy of
the Germans altered in the choice of an emperor; because the effects of this
alteration have been great. When Rodolphus of Hapsburg was chose in the year
one thousand two hundred and seventy, or about that time, the poverty and
the low estate of this prince, who had been marshal of the court to a king
of Bohemia, was an inducement to elect him. The disorderly and lawless state
of the empire made the princes of it in those days unwilling to have a more
powerful head. But a contrary maxim took place at this era. Charles the Fifth
and Francis the First, the two most powerful princes of Europe, were the
sole candidates; for the elector of Saxony, who is said to have declined,
was rather unable to stand in competition with them: and Charles was chosen
by the unanimous suffrages of the electoral college, if I mistake not. Another
Charles, Charles the Fourth, who was made emperor illegally enough on the
deposition of Louis of Bavaria, and about one hundred and fifty years before,
seems to me to have contributed doubly to establish this maxim; by the wise
constitutions that he procured to pass, that united the empire in a more
orderly form and better system of government; and by alienating the imperial
revenues to such a degree, that they were no longer sufficient to support
an emperor who had not great revenues of his own. The same maxim and other
circumstances have concurred to keep the empire in this family ever since,
as it had been often before; and this family having large dominions in the
empire, and larger pretensions, as well as dominions, out of it, the other
states of Europe, France, Spain and England particularly, have been more
concerned since this period in the affairs of Germany, than they were before
it: and by consequence the history of Germany, from the beginning of the
sixteenth century, is of importance, and a necessary part of that knowledge
which your lordship desires to acquire.




The Dutch commonwealth was not formed till near a century later. But as
soon as it was formed, nay even whilst it was forming, these provinces, that
were lost to observation among the many that composed the dominions of Burgundy
and Austria, became so considerable a part of the political system of Europe,
that their history must be studied by every man who would inform himself
of this system.




Soon after this state had taken being, others of a more ancient original
began to mingle in those disputes and wars, those councils, negotiations,
and treaties, that are to be the principal objects of your lordship's application
in the study of history. That of the northern crowns deserves your attention
little, before the last century. Till the election of Frederic the First
to the crown of Denmark, and till that wonderful revolution which the first
Gustavus brought about in Sweden, it is nothing more than a confused rhapsody
of events, in which the great kingdoms and states of Europe neither had any
concern, nor took any part. From the time I have mentioned, the northern
crowns have turned their counsels and their arms often southwards, and Sweden
particularly, with prodigious effect.




To what purpose should I trouble your lordship with the mention of histories
of other nations? They are either such as have no relation to the knowledge
you would acquire, like that of the Poles, the Muscovites, or the Turks;
or they are such as, having an occasional or a secondary relation to it,
fall of course into your scheme; like the history of Italy for instance,
which is sometimes a part of that of France, sometimes of that of Spain,
and sometimes of that of Germany. The thread of history that you are to keep,
is that of the nations who are and must always be concerned in the same scenes
of action with your own. These are the principal nations of the west. Things
that have no immediate relation to your own country, or to them, are either
too remote, or too minute, to employ much of your time: and their history
and your own is, for all your purposes, the whole history of Europe.




The two great powers, that of France and that of Austria, being formed,
and a rivalship established by consequence between them; it began to be the
interest of their neighbors to oppose the strongest and most enterprising
of the two, and to be the ally and friend of the weakest. From hence arose
the notion of a balance of power in Europe, on the equal poise of which the
safety and tranquility of all must depend. To destroy the equality of this
balance has been the aim of each of these rivals in his turn: and to hinder
it from being destroyed, by preventing too much power from falling into one
scale, has been the principle of all the wise councils of Europe, relatively
to France and to the house of Austria, through the whole period that began
at the era we have fixed, and subsists at this hour. To make a careful and
just observation, therefore, of the rise and decline of these powers, in
the two last centuries, and in the present; of the projects which their ambition
formed; of the means they employed to carry these projects on with success;
of the means employed by others to defeat them; of the issue of all these
endeavors in war and in negotiation; and particularly, to bring your observations
home to your own country and your own use, of the conduct that England held,
to her honor or dishonor, to her advantage or disadvantage, in every one
of the numerous and important conjunctures that happened-ought to be the
principal subject of your lordship's attention in reading and reflecting
on this part of modern history.




Now to this purpose you will find it of great use, my lord, when you have
a general plan of the history in your mind, to go over the whole again in
another method; which I propose to be this. Divide the entire period into
such particular periods as the general course of affairs will mark out to
you sufficiently, by the rise of new conjunctures, of different schemes of
conduct, and of different theatres of action. Examine this period of history
as you would examine a tragedy or a comedy; that is, take first the idea
or a general notion of the whole, and after that examine every act and every
scene apart. Consider them in themselves, and consider them relatively to
one another. Read this history as you would that of any ancient period; but
study it afterwards, as it would not be worth your while to study the other;
nay as you could not have in your power the means of studying the other,
if the study was really worth your while. The former part of this period
abounds in great historians: and the latter part is so modern, that even
tradition is authentic enough to supply the want of good history, if we are
curious to inquire, and if we hearken to the living with the same impartiality
and freedom of judgment as we read the dead; and he that does one, will do
the other. The whole period abounds in memorials, in collections of public
acts and monuments, of private letters, and of treaties. All these must come
into your plan of study, my lord: many may not be read through, but all to
be consulted and compared. They must not lead you, I think, to your inquiries,
but your inquiries must lead you to them. By joining history and that which
we call the materia historica together in this manner, and by drawing your
information from both, your lordship will acquire not only that knowledge,
which many have in some degree, of the great transactions that have passed,
and the great events that have happened in Europe during this period, and
of their immediate and obvious causes and consequences; but your lordship
will acquire a much superior knowledge, and such a one as very few men possess
almost in any degree, a knowledge of the true political system of Europe
during this time. You will see it in its primitive principles, in the constitutions
of governments, the situations of countries, their national and true interests,
the characters and the religion of people, and other permanent circumstances.
You will trace it through all its fluctuations, and observe how the objects
vary seldom, but the means perpetually, according to the different characters
of princes and of those who govern; the different abilities of those who
serve; the course of accidents, and a multitude of other irregular and contingent
circumstances.




The particular periods into which the whole period should be divided,
in my opinion, are these. (1) From the fifteenth to the end of the sixteenth
century. (2) From thence to the Pyrenean treaty. (3) From thence down to
the present time.




Your lordship will find this division as apt and as proper, relatively
to the particular histories of England, France, Spain, and Germany, the principal
nations concerned, as it is relatively to the general history of Europe.




The death of queen Elizabeth, and the accession of king James the First,
made a vast alteration in the government of our nation at home, and in her
conduct abroad, about the end of the first of these periods. The wars that
religion occasioned, and ambition fomented in France, through the reigns
of Francis the Second, Charles the Ninth, Henry the Third, and a part of
Henry the Fourth, ended: and the furies of the league were crushed by this
great prince, about the same time. Phillip the Second of Spain marks this
period likewise by his death, and by the exhausted condition in which he
left the monarchy he governed: which took the lead no longer in disturbing
the peace of mankind, but acted a second part in abetting the bigotry and
ambition of Ferdinand the Second and the Third. The thirty years war that
devasted Germany did not begin till the eighteenth year of the seventeenth
century, but the seeds of it were sowing some time before, and even at the
end of the sixteenth. Ferdinand the First and Maximilian had shown much lenity
and moderation in the disputes and troubles that arose on account of religion.
Under Rodolphus and Matthias, as the succession of their cousin Ferdinand
approached, the fires that were covered began to smoke and to sparkle: and
if the war did not begin with this century, the preparation for it, and the
expectation of it did.




The second period ends in one thousand six hundred and sixty, the year
of the restoration of Charles the Second to the throne of England; when our
civil wars, and all the disorders which Cromwell's usurpation had produced,
were over; and therefore a remarkable point of time, with respect to our
country. It is no less remarkable with respect to Germany, Spain, and France.




As to Germany; the ambitious projects of the German branch of Austria
had been entirely defeated, the peace of the empire had been restored, and
almost a new constitution formed, or an old one revived, by the treaties
of Westphalia; nay the imperial eagle was not only fallen, but her wings
were clipped.




As to Spain; the Spanish branch was fallen as low twelve years afterwards,
that is, in the year one thousand six hundred and sixty. Philip the Second
left his successors a ruined monarchy. He left them something worse; he left
them his example and his principles of government, founded in ambition, in
pride, in ignorance, in bigotry, and all the pedantry of state. I have read
somewhere or other, that the war of the Low Countries alone cost him, by
his own confession, five hundred and sixty-four millions, a prodigious sum
in what species soever he reckoned. Philip the Third and Philip the Fourth
followed his example and his principles of government, at home and abroad.
At home, there was much form, but no good order, no economy, nor wisdom of
policy in the state. The church continued to devour the state, and that monster
the inquisition to dispeople the country, even more than perpetual war, and
all the numerous colonies that Spain had sent to the West Indies: for your
lordship will find that Philip the Third drove more than nine hundred thousand
Moriscoes out of his dominions by one edict, with such circumstances of inhumanity
in the execution of it, as Spaniards alone could exercise, and that tribunal,
who had provoked this unhappy race to revolt, could alone approve. Abroad,
the conduct of these princes was directed by the same wild spirit of ambition:
rash in undertaking though slow to execute, and obstinate in pursuing though
unable to succeed, they opened a new sluice to let out the little life and
vigor that remained in their monarchy. Philip the Second is said to have
been piqued against his uncle Ferdinand, for refusing to yield the empire
to him on the abdication of Charles the Fifth. Certain it is, that as much
as he loved to disturb the peace of mankind, and to meddle in every quarrel
that had the appearance of supporting the Roman and oppressing every other
church, he meddled little in the affairs of Germany. But, Ferdinand and Maximilian
dead, and the offspring of Maximilian extinct, the kings of Spain espoused
the interests of the other branch of their family, entertained remote views
of ambition in favor of their own branch, even on that side, and made all
the enterprises of Ferdinand of Gratz, both before and after his elevation
to the empire, the common cause of the house of Austria. 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 at the treaty of Munster; but they would not forego their
usurped claim on Portugal, and they persisted to carry on singly the war
against France. Thus they were reduced to such a lowness of power as can
hardly be parallelled in any other case: and Philip the Fourth was obliged
at last to conclude a peace, on terms repugnant to his inclination, to that
of his people, to the interest of Spain, and to that of all Europe, in the
Pyrenean treaty.




As to France, this era of the entire fall of the Spanish power is likewise
that from which we may reckon that France grew as formidable, as we have
seen her, to her neighbors, in power and pretensions. Henry the Fourth meditated
great designs, and prepared to act a great part in Europe in the very beginning
of this period, when Ravaillac stabbed him. His designs died with him, and
are rather guessed at than known; for surely those which his historian Perefixe
and the compilers of Sully's memorials ascribe to him, of a Christian commonwealth
divided into fifteen states, and of a senate to decide all differences, and
to maintain this new constitution of Europe, are too chimerical to have been
really his: but his general design of abasing the house of Austria, and establishing
the superior power in that of Bourbon, was taken up, about twenty years after
his death, by Richelieu, and was pursued by him and by Mazarin with so much
ability and success, that it was effected entirely by the treaties of Westphalia
and by the Pyrenean treaty; that is, at the end of the second of those periods
I have presumed to propose to your lordship.




When the third, in which we now are, will end, and what circumstances
will mark the end of it, I know not; but this I know, that the great events
and revolutions, which have happened in the course of it, interest us still
more nearly than those of the two precedent periods. I intended to have drawn
up an elenchus or summary of the three, but I doubted, on further rejection,
whether my memory would enable me to do it with exactness enough: and I saw
that, if I was able to do it, the deduction would be immeasurably long. Something
of this kind, however, it may be reasonable to attempt, in speaking of the
last period: which may hereafter occasion a further trouble to your lordship.




But to give some breathing time, I will postpone it at present, and am
in the meanwhile,




My lord, yours, &c.




LETTER 7




A Sketch of the State of History of Europe, From the Pyranean Treaty
in One Thousand Six Hundred and Fifty-Nine, to the Year One Thousand Six
Hundred and Eighty-Eight




The first observation I shall make on this third period of modern history
is, that as the ambition of Charles the Fifth, who united the whole formidable
power of Austria in himself, and the restless temper, the cruelty and bigotry
of Philip the Second, were principally objects of the attention and solicitude
of the councils of Europe, in the first of these periods; and as the ambition
of Ferdinand the Second, and the Third, who aimed at nothing less than extirpating
the protestant interest, and under that pretence subduing the liberties of
Germany, were objects of the same kind in the second: so an opposition to
the growing power of France, or to speak more properly, to the exorbitant
ambition of the house of Bourbon, has been the principal affair of Europe,
during the greatest part of the present period. The design of aspiring to
universal monarchy was imputed to Charles the Fifth, as soon as he began
to give proofs of his ambition and capacity. The same design was imputed
to Louis the Fourteenth, as soon as he began to feel his own strength, and
the weakness of his neighbors. Neither of these princes as induced, I believe,
by the flattery of his courtiers; or the apprehension of his adversaries,
to entertain so chimerical a design as this would have been, even in that
false sense wherein the word universal is so often understood: and I mistake
very much if either of them was of a character, or in circumstances, to undertake
it. Both of them had strong desires to raise their families higher, and to
extend their dominions farther; but neither of them had that bold and adventurous
ambition which makes a conqueror and a hero. These apprehensions, however,
were given wisely, and taken usefully. They cannot be given nor taken too
soon when such powers as these arise; because when such powers as these are
besieged as it were early, by the common policy and watchfulness of their
neighbors. each of them may in his turn of strength sally forth, and gain
a little ground; but none of them will be able to push their conquest far;
and much less to consummate the entire projects of their ambition. Besides
the occasional opposition that was given to Charles the Fifth by our Henry
the Eighth, according to the different moods of humor he was in; by the popes,
according to the several turns of their private interest; and by the princes
of Germany, according to the occasions or pretences that religion or civil
liberty furnished; he had from his first setting out a rival and an enemy
in Francis the First, who did not maintain his cause "in forma pauperis,"
if I may use such an expression: as we have seen the house of Austria sue,
in our days, for dominion at the gate of every palace in Europe. Francis
the First was the principal in his own quarrels, paid his own armies, fought
his own battles; and though his valor alone did not hinder Charles the Fifth
from subduing all Europe, as Bayle, a better philologer than politician,
somewhere asserts, but a multitude of other circumstances easily to be traced
in history; yet he contributed by his victories, and even by his defeats,
to waste the strength and cheek the course of that growing power. Louis the
Fourteenth had no rival of this kind in the house of Austria, nor indeed
any enemy of this importance to combat, till the prince of Orange became
King of Great Britain: and he had great advantages in many other respects,
which it is necessary to consider in order to make a true judgment on the
affairs of Europe from the year one thousand six hundred and sixty. You will
discover the first of these advantages, and such as were productive of all
the rest, in the conduct of Richelieu and of Mazarin. Richelieu formed the
great design, and laid the foundations: Mazarin pursued the design, and raised
the superstructure. If I do not deceive myself extremely, there are few passages
in history that deserve your lordship's attention more than the conduct that
the first and greatest of these ministers held, in laying the foundations
I speak of you will observe how he helped to embroil affairs on every side,
and to keep the house of Austria at bay as it were; how he entered into the
quarrels of Italy against Spain, into that concerning the Valteline, and
that concerning the succession of Mantua; without engaging so deep as to
divert him from another great object of his policy, subduing Rochelle and
disarming the Huguenots. You will observe holy he turned himself after this
was done, to stop the progress of Ferdinand in Germany. While Spain fomented
discontents at the court and disorders in the kingdom of France, by all possible
means, even by taking engagements with the Duke of Rohan; and for supporting
the protestants; Richelieu abetted the same interest in Germany against Ferdinand;
and in the Low Countries against Spain. The emperor was become almost the
master in Germany. Christian the Fourth, King of Denmark, had been at the
head of a league, wherein the United Provinces, Sweden, and Lower Saxony
entered, to oppose his progress: but Christian had been defeated by Tilly
and Valstein, and obliged to conclude a treaty at Lubec, where Ferdinand
gave him the law. It was then that Gustavus Adolphus, with whom Richelieu
made an alliance, entered into this war, and soon turned the fortune of it.
The French minister had not yet engaged his master openly in the war; but
when the Dutch grew impatient, and threatened to renew their truce with Spain,
unless France declared; when the king of Sweden was killed, and the battle
of Nordlingen lost; when Saxony had turned again to the side of the emperor,
and Brandenburg and so many others had followed this example, that Hesse
almost alone persistence in the Swedish alliance: then Richelieu engaged
his master, and profited of every circumstance which the conjuncture afforded,
to engage him with advantage. For, first, he had a double advantage by engaging
so late: that of coming fresh into the quarrel against a wearied and almost
exhausted enemy; and that of yielding to the impatience of his friends, who,
pressed by their necessities and by the want they had of France, gave this
minister an opportunity of laying those claims and establishing those pretensions,
in all his treaties with Holland, Sweden and the princes and states of the
empire, on which he had projected the future aggrandisement of France. The
manner in which he engaged, and the air that he gave to his engagement, were
advantages of the second sort, advantages of reputation and credit; yet were
these of no small moment in the course of the war, and operated strongly
in favor of France as he designed they should, even after his death, and
at and after the treaties of Westphalia. He varnished ambition with the most
plausible and popular pretences. The elector of Treves had put himself under
the protection of France: and, if I remember right, he made this step when
the emperor could not protect him against the Sivedes, whom he had reason
to apprehend. No matter, the governor of Luxemburg was ordered to surprise
Treves and to seize the elector. He executed his orders with success, and
carried this prince prisoner into Brabant. Richelieu seized the lucky circumstance;
he reclaimed the elector: and, on the refusal of the cardinal infant, the
war was declared. France, you see, appeared the common friend of liberty,
the defender of it in the Low Countries against the king of Spain, and in
Germany against the emperor, as well as the protector of the princes of the
empire, many of whose states had been illegally invaded, and whose persons
were no longer safe from violence even in their own palaces. All these appearances
were kept up in the negotiations at Munster, where Mazarin reaped what Richelieu
had sowed. The demands that France made for herself were very great; but
the conjuncture was favorable, and she improved it to the utmost. No figure
could be more flattering than hers at the head of these negotiations; nor
more mortifying than the emperor's through the whole course of the treaty.
The princes and states of the empire had been treated as vassals by the emperor:
France determined them to treat with him on this occasion as sovereigns,
and supported them in this determination. Whilst Sweden seemed concerned
for the protestant interest alone, and showed no other regard, as she had
no other alliance; France affected to be impartial alike to the protestant
and to the papist and to have no interest at heart but the common interest
of the Germanic body. Her demands were excessive, but their were to be satisfied
principally out of the emperor's patrimonial dominions. It had been the art
of her ministers to establish this general maxim on many particular experiences,
that the grandeur of France was a real, and would be a constant security
to the rights and liberties of the empire against the emperor: and it is
no wonder therefore, this maxim prevailing, injuries, resentments, and jealousies
being fresh on one side, and services, obligations, and confidence on the
other, that the Germans were not unwilling France should extend her empire
on this side of the Rhine whilst Sweden did the same on this side of the
Baltic. These treaties, and the immense credit and influence that France
had acquitted by them in the empire, put it out of the power of one branch
of the house of Austria to return the obligations of assistance to the other,
in the war that continued between France and Spain, till the Pyrenean treaty.
By this treaty the superiority of the house of Bourbon over the house of
Austria was not only completed and confirmed but the great design of uniting
the Spanish and the French monarchies under the former was laid.




The third period therefore begins by a great change of the balance of
power in Europe, and by the prospect of one much greater and more fatal.
Before I descend into the particulars I intend to mention, of the course
of affairs, and of the political conduct of the great powers of Europe in
this third period; give me leave to cast my eyes once more back on the second.
The reflection I am going to make seems to me important, and leads to all
that is to follow.




The Dutch made their peace separately at Munster with Spain, who acknowledged
then the sovereignty and independency of their commonwealth. The French,
who had been, after our Elizabeth, their principal support, reproached them
severely for this breach of faith. They excused themselves in the best manner,
and by the best reasons, they could. All this your lordship will find in
the monuments of that time. But I think it not improbable that they had a
motive you will not find there, and which it was not proper to give as a
reason or excuse to the French. Might not the wise men amongst them consider
even when, besides the immediate advantages that accrued by this treaty to
their Commonwealth, that the imperial power was fallen; that the power of
Spain was vastly reduced; that the house of Austria was nothing more than
the shadow of a great name, and that the house of Bourbon was advancing,
by large strides, to a degree of power as exorbitant, and as formidable as
that of the other family had been in the hands of Charles the Fifth, of Philip
the Second, and lately of the two Ferdinands. Might they not foresee, even
then, what happened in the course of very few years, when they were obliged,
for their own security, to assist their old enemies the Spaniards against
their old friends the French. I think they might. Our Charles the First was
no great politician, and yet he seemed to discern that the balance of power
was turning in favor of France, some years before the treaties of Westphalia.
He refused to be neuter, and threatened to take part with Spain, if the French
pursued the design of besieging Dunkirk and Graveline, according to a concert
taken between them and the Dutch, and in pursuance of a treaty for dividing
the Spanish Low Countries, which Richelieu had negotiated. Cromwell either
did not discern this turn of the balance of power, long afterwards when it
was much more visible; or, discerning it, he was induced by reasons of private
interest to act against the general interest of Europe. Cromwell joined with
France against Spain, and though he got Jamaica and Dunkirk, he drove the
Spaniards into a necessity of making a peace with France, that has disturbed
the peace of the world almost fourscore years, and the consequences of which
have well nigh beggared in our times the nation he enslaved in his. There
is a tradition, I have heard it from persons who lived in those days, and
I believe it came from Thurloe, that Cromwell was in treaty with Spain, and
ready to turn his arms against France when he died. If this fact was certain,
as little as I honor his memory, I should have some regret that he died so
soon. But whatever his intentions were, we must charge, the Pyrenean treaty,
and the fatal consequences of it, in great measure to his account. The Spaniards
abhorred the thought of marrying their Infanta to Louis the Fourteenth. It
was on this point that they broke the negotiation Lionne had begun: and your
lordship will perceive, that if they resulted it afterwards, and offered
the marriage they had before rejected, Cromwell's league with France was
a principal inducement to this alteration of their resolutions.




The precise point at which the scales of power turn, like that of the
solstice in either tropic, is imperceptible to common observation: and, in
one case as in the other, some progress must be make in the new direction,
before the change is perceived. They who are in the sinking scale, for in
the political balance of power, unlike to all others, the scale that is empty
sinks, and that which is fill rises; they who are in the sinking scale do
not easily come off from the habitual prejudices of superior wealth, of power,
or skill, or courage, nor from the confidence that these prejudices inspire.
They who are in the rising scale do not immediately feel their strength,
nor assume that confidence in it which successful experience gives them afterwards.
They who are the most concerned to watch the variations of this balance,
misjudge often in the same manner, and from the same prejudices. They continue
to dread a power no longer able to hurt them, or they continue to have no
apprehensions of a power that grows daily more formidable. Spain verified
the first observation at the end of the second period, when, proud and poor,
and enterprising and feeble, she still thought herself a match for France.
France verified the second observation at the beginning of the third period,
when the triple alliance stopped the progress of progress of her arms, which
alliances much more considerable were not able to effect afterwards. The
other principal powers of Europe, in their turns, have verified the third
observation in both its parts, through the whole course of this period.




When Louis the Fourteenth took the administration of affairs into his
own hands, about the year one thousand six hundred and sixty, he was in the
prime of his age, and had, what princes seldom have, the advantages of youth
and those of experience together. Their education is generally bad; for which
reason royal birth, that gives a right to the throne among other people,
gave all absolute exclusion from it among the Mamalukes. His was, in all
respects, except one, as bad as that of other princes. He jested sometimes
on his own ignorance; and there were other defects in his character, owing
to his education, which he did not see. But Mazarin had initiated him betimes
in the mysteries of his policy. He had seen a great part of those foundations
laid, on which he was to raise the fabric of his future grandeur: and as
Mazarin finished the work that Richelieu began, he had the lessons of one,
and the examples of both, to instruct him. He had acquired habits of secrecy
and method, in business; of reserve, discretion, decency, and dignity, in
behaviour. If he was not the greatest king, he was the best actor of majesty
at least, that ever filled a throne. He by no means wanted that courage which
is commonly called bravery, though the want of it was imputed to him in the
midst of his greatest triumphs: nor that other courage, less ostentatious
and more rarely found, calm, steady, persevering resolution; which seems
to arise less from the temper of the body, and is therefore called courage
of the mind. He had them both most certainly, and I could produce unquestionable
anecdotes in proof. He was, in one word, much superior to any prince with
whom he had to do, when he began to govern, He was surrounded with great
captains bred in former wars, and with great ministers bred in the same school
as himself. They who had worked under Mazarin worked on the same plan under
him; and as they had the advantages of genius and experience over most of
the ministers of other countries, so they had another advantage over those
who were equal or superior to them: the advantage of serving a master whose
absolute power was established; and the advantage of a situation wherein
they might exert their whole capacity without contradiction; over that, for
instance, wherein your lordship's great grandfather was placed, at the same
time, in England, and John de Wit in Holland. Among these ministers, Colbert
must be mentioned particularly upon this occasion; because it was he who
improved the wealth and consequently the power of France extremely, by the
order he put into the finances, and by the encouragement he gave to trade
and manufactures. The soil, the climate, the situation of France, the ingenuity,
the industry, the vivacity of her inhabitants are such; she has so little
want of the product of other countries, and other countries have so many
real or imaginary wants to be supplied by her; that when she is not at war
with all her neighbors, when her domestic quiet is preserved and any tolerable
administration of government prevails, she must grow rich at the expense
of those who trade, and even of those who do not often a trade, with her.
Her baubles, her modes, the follies and extravagances of her luxury, cost
England, about the time we are speaking of, little less than eight hundred
thousand pounds sterling a year, and other nations in their proportions.
Colbert made the most of all these advantageous circumstances, and whilst
he filled the national spunge, he taught his successors how to squeeze it;
a secret that he repented having discovered, they say, when he saw the immense
sums that were necessary to supply the growing magnificence of his master.




This was the character of Louis the Fourteenth, and this was the state
of his kingdom at the beginning of the present period. If his power was great
his pretensions were still greater. He had renounced, and the Infanta with
his consent had renounced, all right to the succession of Spain, in the strongest
terms that the precautions of the councils of Madrid could contrive. No matter;
he consented to these renunciations, but your lordship will and by the letters
of Mazarin, and by other memorials. that he acted on the contrary principle,
from the first, which he avowed soon afterwards. Such a power, and such pretensions,
should have given, one would think, an immediate alarm to the rest of Europe.
Philip the Fourth was broken and decayed, like the monarchy he governed.
One of his sons died, as I remember, during the negotiations that preceded
the year one thousand six hundred and sixty: and the survivor, who was Charles
the Second, rather languished, than lived, from the cradle to the grave.
So dangerous a contingency, therefore, as the union of the two monarchies
of France and Spain, being in view forty years together; one would imagine,
that the principal powers of Europe had the means of presenting it constantly
in view during the same time. But it was otherwise. France acted very systematically
from the year one thousand six hundred and sixty, to the death of king Charles
the Second of Spain. She never lost sight of her great object, the succession
to the whole Spanish monarchy; and she accepted the will of the king of Spain
in favor of the Duke of Anjou. As she never lost sight of her great object
during this time, so she lost no opportunity of increasing her power, while
she waited for that of succeeding in her pretensions. The two branches of
Austria were in no condition of making a considerable opposition to her designs
and attempts. Holland, who of all other powers was the most concerned to
oppose them, was at that time under two influences that hindered her from
pursuing her true interest. Her true interest was to have used her utmost
endeavors to unite closely and intimately with England on the restoration
of king Charles. She did the very contrary. John de Wit, at the head of the
Louvestein faction, governed. The interest of his party was to keep the house
of Orange down: he courted therefore the friendship of France, and neglected
that of England. The alliance between our nation and the Dutch was renewed,
I think, in one thousand six hundred and sixty-two; but the latter had made
a defensive league with France a little before, on the supposition principally
of a war with England. The war became inevitable very soon. Cromwell had
chastised them for their usurpations in trade, and the outrages and cruelties
they had committed; but he had not cured them. The same spirit continued
in the Dutch, the same resentments in the English: and the pique of merchants
became the pique of nations. France entered into the war on the side of Holland;
but the little assistance she gave the Dutch showed plainly enough that her
intention was to make these two powers waste their strength against one another;
whilst she extended her conquests in the Spanish Low Countries. Her invasion
in these provinces obliged De Wit to change his conduct. Hitherto he had
been attached to France in the closest manner, had led his republic to serve
all the purposes of France, and had renewed with th marshal d'Estrades a
project of dividing the Spanish Netherlands between France and Holland, that
had been taken up formerly, when Richelieu made use of it to flatter their
ambition, and to engage them to prolong the war against Spain. A project
not unlike to that which was held out to them by the famous preliminaries,
and the extravagant barrier-treaty, in one thousand seven hundred and nine;
and which engaged them to continue a war on the principle of ambition, into
which they had entered with more reasonable and more moderate views.




As the private interests of the two De Wits hindered that commonwealth
from being on her guard, as early as she ought to have been, against France,
so the mistaken policy of the court of England, and the short views, and
the profuse temper of the prince who governed, gave great advantages to Louis
the Fourteenth in the pursuit of his designs. He bought Dunkirk: and your
lordship knows how great a clamor was raised on that occasion against your
noble ancestor; as if he alone had been answerable for the measure, and his
interest had been concerned in it. I have heard our late friend Mr. George
Clarke quote a witness, who was quite unexceptionable, but I cannot recall
his name at present, who, many years after all these transactions, and the
death of my lord Clarendon, affirmed, that the earl of Sandwich had owned
to him, that he himself gave his opinion, among many others, officers, and
ministers, for selling Dunkirk. Their reasons could not be good, I presume
to say; but several, that might be plausible at that time, are easily guessed.
A prince like king Charles, who would have made as many bad bargains as any
young spendthrift, for money, finding himself thus backed, we may assure
ourselves, was peremptorily determined to sell: and whatever your great grandfather's
opinion was, this I am able to pronounce upon my own experience, that his
treaty for the sale is no proof he was of opinion to sell. When the resolution
of selling was once taken, to whom could the sale be made? To the Dutch;
No. This measure would have been at least as impolitic, and, in that moment,
perhaps more odious than the other. To the Spaniards? They were unable to
buy: and, as low as their power was sunk, the principle of opposing it still
prevailed. I have sometimes thought that the Spaniards, who were forced to
make peace with Portugal, and to renounce all claim to that crown, four or
five years afterwards, might have been induced to take this resolution then;
if the regaining Dunkirk without any expense had been a condition proposed
to them; and that the Portuguese, who, notwithstanding their alliance with
England and the indirect succors that France afforded them, were little able,
after the treaty especially, to support a war against Spain, might have been
induced to pay the price of Dunkirk, for so great an advantage as immediate
peace with Spain, and the extinction of all foreign pretences on their crown.
But this speculation concerning events so long ago passed is not much to
the purpose here. I proceed therefore to observe, that notwithstanding the
sale of Dunkirk, and the secret leanings of our court to that of France,
yet England was first to take the alarm, when Louis the Fourteenth invaded
the Spanish Netherlands in one thousand six hundred and sixty-seven: and
the triple alliance was the work of an English minister. It was time to take
this alarm; for from the moment that the king of France claimed a right to
the county of Burgundy, the duchy of Brabant, and other portions of the Low
Countries that devolved on his queen by the death of her father Philip the
Fourth, he pulled off the mask entirely. Volumes were written to establish,
and to refute this supposed right. Your lordship no doubt will look into
a controversy that has employed so many pens and so many swords; and I believe
you will think it was sufficiently bold in the French, to argue from customs,
that regulated the course of private successions in certain provinces, to
a right of succeeding to the sovereignty of those provinces: and to assert
the divisibility of the Spanish monarchy, with the same breath with which
they asserted the indivisibility of their own; although the proofs in one
case were just as good as the proofs in the other, and the fundamental law
of inadvisability was at least as good a law in Spain, as either this or
the Salique law was in France. But however proper it might be for the French
and Austrian pens to enter into long discussions, and to appeal, on this
great occasion, to the rest of Europe; the rest of Europe had a short objection
to make to the plea of France, which no sophisms. no quirks of law could
evade. Spain accepted the renunciations as real security: France gave them
as such to Spain, and in effect to the rest of Europe. If they had not been
given, and thus taken, the Spaniards would not have married their Infanta
to the king of France, whatever distress they might have endured by the prolongation
of the war. These renunciations were renunciations of all rights whatsoever
to the whole Spanish monarchy, and to every part of it. The provinces claimed
by France at this time were parts of it. To claim them, was therefore to
claim the whole; for if the renunciations were no bar to the rights accruing
to Mary Theresa on the death of her father Philip the Fourth, neither could
they be any to the rights that would accrue to her and her children, on the
death of her brother Charles the Second: an unhealthful youth, and who at
this instant was in immediate danger of dying; for to all the complicated
distempers he brought into the world with him, the small-pox was added. Your
lordship sees how the fatal contingency of uniting the two monarchies of
France and Spain stared mankind in the face; and yet nothing, that I can
remember, was done to prevent it: not so much as a guaranty given, or a declaration
made to assert the validity of these renunciations, and for securing the
effect of them. The triple alliance indeed stopped the progress of the French
arms, and produced the treaty of Aix la Chapelle. But England, Sweden, and
Holland, the contracting powers in this alliance, seemed to look, and probably
did look, no farther. France kept a great and important part of what she
had surprised or ravished, or purchased; for we cannot say with any propriety
that she conquered: and the Spaniards were obliged to set all they saved
to the account of gain. The German branch of Austria had been reduced very
low in power and in credit under Ferdinand the Third, by the treaties of
Westphalia, as I have said already. Louis the Fourteenth maintained, during
many years, the influence these treaties had given him among the princes
and states of the empire. The famous capitulation made at Frankfort on the
election of Leopold, who succeeded Ferdinand about the year one thousand
six hundred and fifty-seven, was encouraged by the intrigues of France: and
the power of France was looked upon as the sole power that could ratify and
secure effectually the observation of the conditions then made. The league
of the Rhine was not renewed, I believe, after the year one thousand six
hundred and sixty-six; but though this league was not renewed, yet some of
these princes and states continued in their old engagements with France:
whilst others took new engagements on particular occasions, according as
private and sometimes very paltry interests, and the emissaries of France
in all their little courts, disposed them. In short, the princes of Germany
showed no alarm at the growing ambition and power of Louis the Fourteenth,
but contributed to encourage one, and to confirm the other. In such a state
of things the German branch was little able to assist the Spanish branch
against France, either in the war that eluded by the Pyrenean treaty, or
in that we are speaking of here, the short war that began in one thousand
six hundred and sixty-seven, and was ended by the treaty of Aix la Chapelle
in one thousand six hundred and sixty-eight. But it was not this alone that
disabled the emperor from acting with vigor in the cause of his family then,
nor that has rendered the house of Austria a dead weight upon all her allies
ever since. Bigotry, and its inseparable companion, cruelty, as well as the
tyranny and avarice of the court of Vienna, created in those days, and has
maintained in ours, almost a perpetual diversion of the imperial arms from
an effectual opposition to France. I mean to speak of the troubles in Hungary.
Whatever they became in their progress, they were caused originally by the
usurpations and persecutions of the emperor: and when the Hungarians were
called rebels first, they were called so for no other reason than this, that
they would not be slaves. The dominion of the emperor being less supportable
than that of the Turks, this unhappy people opened a door to the latter to
infest the empire, instead of making their country what it had been before,
a barrier against the Ottoman power. France became a sure, though secret
ally of the Turks, as well as the Hungarians, and has found her account in
it, by keeping the emperor in perpetual alarms on that side, while she was
ravaged the empire and the Low countries on the other. Thus we saw, thirty-two
years ago, the arms of France and Bavaria in possession of Passau, and the
malcontents of Hungary in the suburbs of Vienna. In a word, when Louis the
Fourteenth made the first essay of his power, by the war of one thousand
six hundred and sixty-seven, and sounded, as it were, the councils of Europe
concerning his pretensions on the Spanish succession, he found his power
to be great beyond what his neighbors, or even he perhaps thought it: great
by the wealth, and greater by the united spirit of his people; greater still
by the ill policy and divided interests that governed those who had a superior
common interest to oppose him. He found that the members of the triple alliance
did not see, or seeing did not think proper to own that they saw, the injustice,
and the consequence of his pretensions. They contented themselves to give
to Spain an act of guaranty for securing the execution of the treaty of Aix
la Chapelle. He knew even then how in the guaranty would be observed by two
of them at least, by England and by Sweden. The treaty itself was nothing
more than a composition between the bully and the bullied. Tournay, and Lisle,
and Doway, and other places that I have forgot, were yielded to him: and
he restored the county of Burgundy, according to the option that Spain made
against the interest and the expectation too of the Dutch, when an option
was forced upon her. The king of Spain compounded for his possession: but
the emperor compounded at the same time for his succession, by a private
eventual treaty of partition, which the commander of Gremonville and the
count of Aversberg signed at Vienna. The same Leopold, who exclaimed so loudly,
in one thousand six hundred and ninety-eight, against any partition of the
Spanish monarchy, and refused to submit to that which England and Holland
had then made, made one himself in one thousand six hundred and sixty-eight,
with so little regard to these two powers, that the whole ten provinces were
thrown into the lot of France.




There is no room to wonder if such experience as Louis the Fourteenth
had upon this occasion, and such a face of affairs in Europe, raising his
hopes, raised his ambition: and if, in making peace at Aix la Chapelle, he
meditated a new war, the war of one thousand six hundred and seventy-two;
the preparations he made for it, by negotiations in all parts, by alliances
wherever he found ingression, and by the increase of his forces, were equally
proofs of ability, industry, and power. I shall not descend into these particulars:
your lordship will find them pretty well detailed in the memorials of that
time. But one of the alliances he made I must mention, though I mention it
with the utmost regret and indignation. England was fatally engaged to act
a part in this conspiracy against the peace and the liberty of Europe, nay,
against her own peace and her own liberty; for a bubble's part it was, equally
wicked and impolitic. Forgive the terms I use, my lord: none can be too strong.
The principles of the triple alliance, just and wise, and worthy of a king
of England, were laid aside. Then, the progress of the French arms was to
be checked, the ten provinces were to be saved, and by saving them the barrier
of Holland was to be preserved. Now, we joined our counsels and our arms
to those of France, in a project that could not be carried on at all, as
it was easy to foresee, and as the event showed, unless it was carried on
against Spain, the emperor, and most of the princes of Germany, as well as
the Dutch; and which could not be carried on successfully, without leaving
the ten provinces entirely at the mercy of France, and giving her pretence
and opportunity of ravaging the empire, and extending her conquests on the
Rhine. The medal of Van Beuninghen, and other pretences that France took
for attacking the states of the Low countries, were ridiculous. They imposed
on no one: and the true object of Louis the Fourteenth was manifest to all.
But what could a king of England mean? Charles the Second had reasons of
resentment against the Dutch, and just ones too no doubt. Among the rest,
it was not easy for him to forget the affront he had suffered, and the loss
he had sustained, when, depending on the peace that was ready to be signed,
and that was signed in Breda in July he neglected to fit out his fleet; and
when that of Holland; commanded by Ruyter, with Cornelius de Wit on board
as deputy or commissioner of the states, burnt his ships at Chatham in June.
The famous perpetual edict, as it was called, but did not prove in the event,
against the election of a stadtholder, which John de Wit promoted, carried,
and obliged the Prince of Orange to swear to maintain a very few days after
the conclusion of the peace at Breda, might be another motive in the breast
of king Charles the Second: as it was certainly a pretence of revenue on
the Dutch, or at least on the De Wits and the Louvestein faction, that ruled
almost despotically in that commonwealth. But it is plain that nether these
reasons, nor others of a more ancient date, determined him to this alliance
with France; since he contracted the triple alliance within four or five
months after the two events, I have mentioned, happened. What then did he
mean? Did he mean to acquire one of the seven provinces, and divide them,
as the Dutch had twice treated for the division of the ten, with France?
I believe not; but this I believe, that his inclinations were favorable to
the popish interest in general, and that he meant to make himself more absolute
at home; that he thought it necessary to this end to humble the Dutch, to
reduce their power, and, perhaps, to change the form of their government;
to deprive his subjects of the correspondence with a neighboring protestant
and free state, and of all hope of succor and support from thence in their
opposition to him; in a word to abet the designs of France on the continent,
that France might abet his designs on his own kingdom. This, I say, I believe;
and this I should venture to affirm, if I had in my hands to produce, and
was at liberty to quote, the private relations I have read formerly, drawn
up by those who were no enemies to such designs, and on the authority of
those who were parties to them. But whatever king Charles the Second meant,
certain it is, that his conduct established the superiority of France in
Europe.




But this charge, however, must not be confined to him alone. Those who
were nearer the danger, those who were exposed to the immediate attacks of
France, and even those who were her rivals for the same succession, having
either assisted her, or engaged to remain neuters, a strange fatality prevailed,
and produced such a conjuncture as can hardly be parallelled in history.
Your lordship will observe with astonishment, even in the beginning of the
year one thousand six hundred and seventy-two, all the neighbors of France,
acting as if they had nothing to fear from her, and some as if they had much
to hope, by helping her to oppress the Dutch and sharing with her the spoils
of that commonwealth. "Delenda est Carthago" was the cry in England,
and seemed too a maxim on the continent.




In the course of the same year, you will observe that all these powers
took the alarm, and began to unite in opposition to France. Even England
thought it time to interpose in favor of the Dutch. The consequences of this
alarm, of this sudden turn in the policy of Europe, and of that which happened,
by the massacre of the De Wits, and the elevation of the prince of Orange,
in the government of the seven provinces, saved these provinces, and stopped
the rapid progress of the arms of France. Louis the Fourteenth indeed surprised
the seven provinces in this war, as he had surprised the ten in that of one
thousand six hundred and sixty-seven, and ravaged defenceless countries with
armies sufficient to conquer them, if they had been prepared to resist. In
the war of one thousand six hundred and seventy-two, he had little less than
one hundred and fifty thousand men on foot, besides the bodies of English,
Swiss, Italians, and Swedes, that amounted to thirty or forty thousand more.
With this mighty force he took forty places in forty days, imposed extravagant
conditions of peace, played the monarch a little while at Utrecht; and as
soon as the Dutch recovered from their consternation, and, animated by the
example of the Prince of Orange and the hopes of succor, refused these conditions,
he went back to Versailles, and left his generals to carry on his enterprise:
which they did with so little success, that Grave and Maestricht alone remained
to him of all the boasted conquests he had made; and even these he offered
two years afterwards to restore, if by that concession he could have prevailed
on the Dutch at that time to make peace with him. But they were not yet disposed
to abandon their allies; for allies now they had. The emperor and the king
of Spain had engaged in the quarrel against France, and many of the princes
of the empire had done the same. Not all. The Bavarian continued obstinate
in his neutrality, and, to mention no more, the Swedes made a great diversion
in favor of France in the empire; where the Duke of Hanover abetted their
designs as much as he could, for he was a zealous partisan of France, though
the other princes of his house acted for the common cause. I descend into
no more particulars. The war that Louis the Fourteenth kindled by attacking
in so violent a manner the Dutch commonwealth, and by making so arbitrary
an use of his first success, became general, in the Low Countries, in Spain,
in Sicily, on the upper and lower Rhine, in Denmark, in Sweden, and in the
provinces of Germany belonging to these two crowns; on the Mediterranean,
the Ocean, and the Baltic. France supported this war with advantage on every
side: and when your lordship considers in what manner it was carried on against
her, you will not be surprised that she did so. Spain had spirit, but too
little strength to maintain her power in Sicily, where Messina had revolted;
to defend her frontier on that side of the Pyrenees; and to resist the great
efforts of the French in the Low Countries. The empire was divided; and,
even among the princes who acted against France, there was neither union
in their councils, nor concert in their projects, nor order in preparations,
nor vigor in execution: and, to say the truth, there was not, in the whole
confederacy, a man whose abilities could make him a match for the Prince
of Condé or the Marshal of Turenne; nor many who were in any degree
equal to Luxemburg, Crequi, Schomberg, and other generals of inferior note,
who commanded the armies of France. The emperor took this very time to make
new invasions on the liberties of Hungary, and to oppress his protestant
subjects. The Prince of Orange alone acted with invincible firmness, like
a patriot, and a hero. Neither the seductions of France nor those of England,
neither the temptations of ambition nor those of private interest, could
make him swerve from the true interest of his country, nor from the common
interest of Europe. He had raised more sieges, and lost more battles, it
was said, than any general of his age had done. Be it so. But his defeats
were manifestly due in a great measure to circumstances independent on him:
and that spirit, which even these defeats could not depress, was all his
own. He had difficulties in his own commonwealth; the governors of the Spanish
Low Countries crossed his measure sometimes; the German allies disappointed
and broke them often: and it is not improbable that he was frequently betrayed.
He was so perhaps even by Souches, the imperial general; a Frenchman according
to Bayle, and a pensioner of Louvois according to common report, and very
strong appearances, He had not yet credit and authority sufficient to make
him a centre of union to a whole confederacy, the soul that animated and
directed so great a body.




He came to be such afterwards; but at the time spoken of, he could not
take so great a part upon him. No other prince or general was equal to it:
and the consequences of this defect appeared almost in every operation. France
was surrounded by a multitude of enemies, all intent to demolish her power.
But, like the builders of Babel, they spoke different languages: and as those
could not build, these could not demolish, for want of understanding one
another. France improved this advantage by her arms, and more by her negotiations.
Nimeguen was, after Cologne, the scene of these. England was the mediating
power, and I know not whether our Charles the Second did not serve her purposes
more usefully in the latter, and under the character of mediator, than he
did or could have done by joining his arms to hers, and acting as her ally,
The Dutch were induced to sign a treaty with him, that broke the confederacy,
and gave great advantage to France: for the purport of it was to oblige Spain
to make peace on a plan to be proposed to them, and no mention was made in
it of the other allies that I remember. The Dutch were glad to get out of
an expensive war. France promised to restore Maestricht to them, and Maestricht
was the only place that remained unrecovered of all they had lost. They dropped
Spain at Nimeguen, as they had dropped France at Munster; but many circumstances
concurred to give a much worse grace to their abandoning of Spain, than to
their abandoning of France. I need not specify them. This only I would observe:
when they made a separate peace at Munster, they left an ally who was in
condition to carry on the war alone with advantage, and they presumed to
impose no terms upon him: when they made a separate peace at Nimeguen, they
abandoned an ally who was in no condition to carry on the war alone, and
who was reduced to accept whatever terms the common enemy prescribed. In
their great distress in one thousand six hundred and seventy-three, they
engaged to restore Maestricht to the Spaniards as soon as it should be retaken:
it was not retaken, and they accepted it for themselves as the price of the
separate peace they made with France, The Dutch had engaged farther, to make
neither peace nor truce with the king of France, till that prince consented
to restore to Spain all he had conquered since the Pyrenean treaty. But far
from keeping this promise in any tolerable degree, Louis the Fourteenth acquired,
by the plan imposed on Spain at Nimeguen, besides the county of Burgundy,
so many other countries and towns on the side of the ten Spanish provinces,
that these, added to the places he kept of those which had been yielded to
him by the treaty of Aix la Chapelle (for some of little consequence he restored)
put into his hands the principal strength of that barrier, against which
we goaded ourselves almost to death in the last great war; and made good
the saying of the Marshal of Schomberg, that to attack this barrier was to
take the beast by his horns. I know very well what may be said to excuse
the Dutch. The emperor was more intent to tyrannise his subjects on one side,
than to defend them on the other. He attempted little against France, and
the little he did attempt was ill-ordered, and worse executed. The assistance
of the princes of Germany was often uncertain, and always expensive. Spain
was already indebted to Holland for great sums; greater still must be advances
to her if the war continued: and experience showed that France was able,
and would continue, to prevail against her present enemies. The triple league
had stopped her progress, and obliged her to abandon the county of Burgundy;
but Sweden was now engaged in the war on the side of France, as England had
been in the beginning of it: and England was now privately favorable to her
interests, as Sweden had been in the beginning of it. The whole ten provinces
would have been subdued in the course of a few campaigns more: and it was
better for Spain and the Dutch too, that part should be saved by accepting
a sort of composition, than the whole be risked by refusing it. This might
be alleged to excuse the conduct of the States General, in imposing hard
terms on Spain; in making none for their other allies; and in signing alone:
by which steps they gave France an opportunity that she improved with great
dexterity of management, the opportunity of treating with the confederates
one by one, and of beating them by detail in the cabinet, if I may so say,
as she had often done in the field. I shall not compare these reasons, which
were but too well founded in fact, and must appear plausible at least, with
other considerations that might be, and were at the time, insisted upon.
I confine myself to a few observations, which every knowing and impartial
man must admit. Your lordship will observe, first, that the fatal principle
of compounding with Louis the Fourteenth, from the time that his pretensions,
his power, and the use he made of it, began to threaten Europe, prevailed
still more at Nimeguen than it had prevailed at Aix: so that although he
did not obtain to the full all he attempted, yet the dominions of France
were by common consent, on every treaty, more and more extended; her barriers
on all sides were more and more strengthened; those of her neighbors were
more and more weakened; and that power, which was to assert one day, against
the rest of Europe, the pretended rights of the house of Bourbon to the Spanish
monarchy, was more and more established, and rendered truly formidable in
such hands at least, during the course of the first eighteen years of the
period. Your lordship will please to observe, in the second place, that the
extreme weakness of one branch of Austria, and the miserable conduct of both;
the poverty of some of the princes of the empire, and the disunion, and to
speak plainly, the mercenary policy of all of them; in short, the confined
views, the false notions, and, to speak as plainly of my own as of other
nations, the iniquity of the councils of England, not only hindered the growth
of this power from being stopped in time, but nursed it up into strength
almost insuperable by any future confederacy. A third observation is this:
If the excuses made for the conduct of the Dutch at Nimeguen are not sufficient,
they too must come in for their share in this condemnation, even after the
death of the De Wits; as they were to be condemned most justly, during the
administration, for abetting and favoring France. If these excuses, grounded
on their inability to pursue any longer a war, the principal profit of which
was to accrue to their confederates, for that was the case after the year
one thousand six hundred and seventy-three, or one thousand six hundred and
seventy-four, and the principal burden of which was thrown on them by their
confederates; if these are sufficient, they should not have acted, for decency's
sake as well as out of good policy, the part they did act in one thousand
seven hundred and eleven, and one thousand seven hundred and twelve, towards
the late queen, who had complaints of the same kind, in a much higher degree
and with circumstances much more aggravating, to make of them, of the emperor,
and of all the princes of Germany; and who was far from treating them and
their other allies, at that time, as they treated Spain and their other allies
in one thousand six hundred and seventy-eight. Immediately after the Dutch
had made their peace, that of Spain was signed with France. The emperor's
treaty with this crown and that of Sweden was concluded in the following
year: and Louis the Fourteenth being now at liberty to assist his ally whilst
he had tied up the powers with whom he had treated from assisting theirs,
he soon forced the king of Denmark ind the elector of Brandenburg to restore
all they had taken from the Swedes, and to conclude the peace of the north.
In all these treaties he gave the law, and he was now at the highest point
of his grandeur. He continued at this point for several years, and in this
height of his power he prepared those alliances against it, under the weight
of which he was at last well nigh oppressed; and might have been reduced
as low as the general interest of Europe required, if some of the causes,
which worked now, had not continued to work in his favor, and if his enemies
had not proved, in their turn of fortune, as insatiable as prosperity had
rendered him.




After he had made peace with all the powers with whom he had been in war,
he continued to vex both Spain and the empire, and to extend his conquests
in the Low Countries, and on the Rhine, both by the pen and the sword. He
erected the chambers of Metz and of Brisach, where his own subjects were
prosecutors, witnesses, and judges all at once. Upon the decisions of these
tribunals, he seized into his own hands, under the notion of dependencies
and the pretence of reunions, whatever towns or districts of country tempted
his ambition, or suited his conveniency. and added, by these and by other
means, in the midst of peace, more territories to those the late treaties
had yielded to him, than he could have got by continuing the war. He acted
afterwards, in the support of all this, without any bounds or limits. His
glory was a reason for attacking Holland in one thousand six hundred and
seventy-two, and his conveniency a reason for many of the attacks he made
on others afterwards. He took Luxemburg by force; he stole Strasburg; he
bought Casal: and, whilst he waited the opportunity of acquiring to his family
the crown of Spain, he was not without thoughts, nor hopes perhaps, of bringing
into it the imperial crown likewise. Some of the cruelties he exercised in
the empire may be ascribed to his disappointment in this view: I say some
of them, because in the war that ended by the treaty of Nimeguen, he had
already exercised many. Though the French writers endeavor to slide over
them, to palliate them, and to impute them particularly to the English that
were in their service; for even this one of their writers has the front to
advance: let these cruelties, unheard of among civilised nations, must be
granted to have been ordered by the counsels, and executed by the arms of
France, in the Palatinate, and in other parts.




If Louis the Fourteenth could have contented himself with the acquisitions
that were confirmed to him by the treaties of one thousand six hundred and
seventy-eight, and one thousand six hundred and seventy-nine, and with the
authority and reputation which he then gained; it is plain that he would
have prevented the alliances that were afterwards formed against him, and
that he might have regained his credit amongst the princes of the empire,
where he had one family alliance by the marriage of his brother to the daughter
of the elector Palatine, and another by that of his soil to the sister of
the elector of Bavaria; where Sweden was closely attached to him, and where
the same principles of private interest would have soon attached others as
closely. He might have remained not only the principal, but the directing
power of Europe, and have held this rank with all the glory imaginable, till
the death of the king of Spain, or some other object of great ambition, had
determined him to act another part. But instead of this, he continued to
vex and provoke all those who were, unhappily for them, his neighbors, and,
that in many instances, for trifles. All example of this kind occurs to me.
On the death of the Duke of Deux Ponts, he seized that little inconsiderable
duchy, without any regard to the indisputable right of the king of Sweden,
to the services that crown had rendered him, or to the want he might have
of that alliance hereafter. The consequence was, that Sweden entered with
the emperor, the king of Spain, the elector of Bavaria, and the States General,
into the alliance of guaranty, as it was called, about the year one thousand
six hundred and eighty-three, and into the famous league of Augsburg, in
one thousand six hundred and eighty-six.




Since I have mentioned this league, and since we may date from it a more
general, and more concerted opposition to France, than there had been before;
give me leave to recall some of the reflections that have presented themselves
to my mind, in considering what I have read, and what I have heard related,
concerning the passages of that time. They will be of use to form our judgment
concerning later passages. If the king of France became an object of aversion
on account of any invasions he made, any deviations from public faith, any
barbarities exercised where his arms prevailed, or the persecution of his
protestant subjects; the emperor deserved to be such an object, at least
as much as he, on the same accounts. The emperor was so too but with this
difference relatively to the political system of the west: the Austrian ambition
and bigotry exerted themselves in distant countries, whose interests were
not considered as a part of this system; for otherwise there would have been
as much reason for assisting the people of Hungary and of Transylvania against
the emperor, as there had been formerly for assisting the people of the seven
united provinces against Spain, or as there had been lately for assisting
them against France; but the ambition and bigotry of Louis the Fourteenth
were exerted in the Low Countries, on the Rhine, in Italy, and in Spain,
in the very midst if this system, if I may say so, and with success that
could not fail to subvert it in time. The power of the house of Austria,
that had been feared too long, was feared no longer: and that of the house
of Bourbon, by having been feared too late, was now grown terrible. The emperor
was so intent on the establishment of his absolute power in Hungary, that
he exposed the empire doubly to desolation and ruin for the sake of it. He
left the frontier almost quite defenceless on the side of the Rhine, against
the inroads and ravages of France: and by showing no mercy to the Hungarians,
nor keeping any faith with them, he forced that miserable people into alliances
with the Turks, who invaded the empire, and besieged Vienna. Even this event
had no effect upon him. Your lordship will find, that Sobieski, king of Poland,
who had forced the Turks to raise the siege, and had fixed the imperial crown
that tottered on his head, could not prevail on him to take those measures
by which alone it was possible to cover the empire, to secure the king of
Spain, and to reduce that power who was probably one day to dispute with
him this prince's succession. Tekeli and the malcontents made such demands
as none but a tyrant could refuse, the preservation of their ancient privileges,
liberty of convenience, the convocation of a free diet or parliament, and
others of less importance. All was in vain. The war continued with them,
and with the Turk, and France was left at liberty to push her enterprises,
almost without opposition, against Germany and the Low Countries. The distress
in both was so great, that the States General saw no other expedient for
stopping the progress of the French arms, than a cessation of hostilities,
or a truce of twenty years; which they negotiated, and which was accepted
by the emperor and the king of Spain, on the terms that Louis the Fourteenth
thought fit to offer. By these terms he was to remain in full and quiet possession
of all he had acquired since the years one thousand six hundred and seventy-eight,
and one thousand six hundred and seventy-nine; among which acquisitions that
of Luxemburg and that of Strasburg were comprehended. The conditions of this
truce were so advantageous to France, that all her intrigues were employed
to obtain a definitive treaty of peace upon the same conditions. But this
was neither the interest nor the intention of the other contracting powers.
The imperial arms had been very successful against the Turks. This success,
as well as the troubles that followed upon it in the Ottoman armies, and
at the Porte, gave reasonable expectation of concluding a peace on that side:
and, this peace concluded, the emperor, and the empire, and the king of Spain
would have been in a much better posture to treat with France. With these
views, that were wise and just, the league of Augsburg was made between the
emperor, the kings of Spain and Sweden as princes of the empire, and the
other circles and princes. This league was purely defensive. An express article
declared it to be so: and as it had no other regard, it was not only conformable
to the laws and constitutions of the empire, and to the practice of all nations,
but even to the terms of the act of truce so lately concluded. This pretence,
therefore, for breaking the truce, seizing the electorate of Cologne, invading
the Palatinate, besieging Philipsburg, and carrying unexpected and undeclared
war into the empire could not be supported: nor is it possible to read the
reasons published by France at this time, and drawn from her fears of the
imperial power, without laughter. As little pretence was there to complain,
that the emperor refused to convert at once the truce into a definitive treaty;
since if he had done so, he would have confirmed in a lump, and without any
discussion, all the arbitrary decrees of those chambers, or courts, that
France had erected to cover her usurpation; and would have given up almost
a sixth part of the provinces of the empire, that France one way or other
had possessed herself of. The pretensions of the Duchess of Orleans on the
succession of her father, and her brother, which were disputed by the then
elector Palatine, and were to be determined by the laws and customs of the
empire, afforded as little pretence for beginning this war, as any of the
former allegations. The exclusion of the Cardinal of Fursteilburg, who had
been elected to the archbishopric of Cologne, was capable of being aggravated:
but even in this case his most Christian majesty opposed his judgment and
his authority against the judgment and authority of that holy father, whose
eldest son he was proud to be called. In short, the true reason why Louis
the Fourteenth began that cruel war with the empire two years after he had
concluded a cessation of hostilities for twenty was this: he resolved to
keep what he had got; and, therefore, he resolved to encourage the Turks
to continue the war. He did this effectually, by invading Germany at the
very instant when the Sultan was suing for peace. Notwithstanding this, the
Turks were in treaty again the following year: and good policy should have
obliged the emperor, since he could not hope to carry on this war and that
against France, at the same time, with vigor and effect, to conclude a peace
with the least dangerous enemy of the two. The decision of his disputes with
France could not be deferred, his designs against the Hungarians were in
part accomplished, for his son was declared king, and the settlement of that
crown in his family was made; and the rest of these, as well as those that
he formed against the Turks, might be deferred. But the councils of Vienna
judged differently, and insisted even at this critical moment on the most
exorbitant terms; on some of such a nature, that the Turks showed more humanity
and a better sense of religion in refusing, than they in asking them. Thus
the war went on in Hungary, and proved a constant diversion in favor of France,
during the whole course of that which Louis the Fourteenth began at time;
for the treaty of Carlowitz was posterior to that of Ryswic. The empire,
Spain, England, and Holland engaged in the war with France: and on them the
emperor left the burden of it. In the short war of one thousand six hundred
and sixty-seven, he was not so much as a party, and instead of assisting
the king of Spain, which it must be owned, he was in no good condition of
doing, he bargained for dividing that prince's succession, as I have observed
above. In the war of one thousand six hundred and seventy-two he made some
feeble efforts. In this of one thousand six hundred and eighty-eight he did
still less: and in the war which broke out at the beginning of the present
century he did nothing, at least after the first campaign in Italy, and after
the engagements that England and Holland took by the grand alliance. In a
word, from the time that an opposition to France became a common cause in
Europe, the house of Austria has been a clog upon it in many instances, and
of considerable assistance to it in none. The accession of England to this
cause, which was brought about by the revolution of one thousand six hundred
and eighty-eight, might have made amends, and more than amends, one would
think, for this defect, and have thrown superiority of power and of success
on the side of the confederates, with whom she took part against France.
This, I say, might be imagined, without over-rating the power of England,
or undervaluing that of France; and it was imagined at that time. How it
proved otherwise in the event; how France came triumphant out of the war
that ended by the treaty of Ryswic, and though she gave up a great deal,
yet preserved the greatest and the best part of her conquests and acquisitions
made since the treaties of Westphalia, and the Pyrenees; how she acquired,
by the gift of Spain, that whole monarchy for one of her princes, though
she had no reason to expect the least part of it without a war at one time,
nor the great lot of it even by a war at any time; in short, how she wound
up advantageously the ambitious system she had been fifty years in weaving;
how she concluded a war, in which she was defeated on every side, and wholly
exhausted, with little diminution of the provinces and barriers acquired
to France, and with the quiet possession of Spain and the Indies to a prince
of the house of Bourbon: all this, my lord, will be the subject of your researches,
when you come down to the latter part of the last period of modern history.




LETTER 8




The Same Subject Continued from the Year One Thousand Six Hundred
and Eighty-Eight




Your lordship will find, that the objects proposed by the alliance of
one thousand six hundred and eighty-nine, between the emperor and the States,
to which England acceded, and which was the foundation of the whole confederacy
then formed, were no less than to restore all things to the terms of the
Westphalian and Pyrenean treaties, by the war; and to preserve them in that
state, after the war, by a defensive alliance and guatanty of the same confederate
powers against France. The particular as well as general meaning of this
engagement was plain enough: and if it had not been so, the sense of it would
have been sufficiently determined, by that separate article, in which England
and Holland obliged themselves to assist the "house of Austria, in taking
and keeping possession of the Spanish monarchy,whenever the case should happen
of the death of Charles the Second, without lawful heirs." This engagement
was double, and thereby relative to the whole political system of Europe,
alike affected by the power and pretensions of France. Hitherto the power
of France had been alone regarded, and her pretensions seemed to have been
forgot; or to what purpose should they have been remembered, whilst Europe
was so unhappily constituted, that the states at whose expense she increased
her power, and their friends and allies, thought that they did enough upon
every occasion if they made some tolerable composition with her? They who
were not in circumstances to, refuse confirming present, were little likely
to take effectual measures against future usurpations. But now, as the alarm
was greater than ever, by the outrages that France had committed, and the
intrigues she had carried on; by the little regard she had shown to public
faith. and by the airs of authority she had assumed twenty years together:
so was the spirit against her raised to an higher pitch, and the means of
reducing her power, or at least of checking it, were increased. The princes
and states who had neglected or favored the growth of this power, which all
of them had done in their turns, saw their error; saw the necessity of repairing
it, and saw that unless they could check the power of France, by uniting
a power superior to hers, it would be impossible to hinder her from succeeding
in her great designs on the Spanish succession. The court of England had
submitted, not many years before, to abet her usurpations, and the king of
England had stooped to be her pensioner. But the crime was not national.
On the contrary, the nation had cried out loudly against it, even whilst
it was committing: and as ever the abdication of king James, and the elevation
of the prince of Orange to the throne of England happened, the nation engaged
with all imaginable zeal in the common cause of Europe, to reduce the exorbitant
power of France, to prevent her future and to revenge her past attempts;
for even a spirit of revenge prevailed, and the war was a war of anger as
well as of interest.




Unhappily this zeal was neither well conducted, nor well seconded. It
was zeal without success in the first of the two wars that followed the year
one thousand six hundred and eighty-eight; and zeal without knowledge, in
both of them. I enter into no detail concerning the events of these two wars.
This only I observe on the first of them, that the treaties of Ryswic were
far from answering the ends proposed and the engagements taken by the first
grand alliance. The power of France, with respect to extent of dominions
and strength of barrier, was not reduced to the terms of the Pyrenean treaty,
no not to those of the treaty of Nimeguen. Lorrain was restored indeed with
very considerable reserves, and the places taken or usurped on the other
side of the Rhine: but then Strasburg was yielded up absolutely to France
by the emperor, and by the empire. The concessions to Spain were great, but
so were the conquests and the encroachments made upon her by France, since
the treaty of Nimeguen: and she got little at Ryswic, I believe nothing more
than she had saved at Nimeguen before. All these concessions, however, as
well as the acknowledgment of king William, and others made by Louis the
Fourteenth after he had taken Ath and Barcelona, even during the course of
the negotiations, compared with the losses and repeated defeats of the allies
and the ill state of the confederacy, surprised the generality of mankind,
who had not been accustomed to so much moderation and generosity on the part
of this prince. But the pretensions of the house of Bourbon on the Spanish
succession remained the same. Nothing had been done to weaken them; nothing
was prepared to oppose them: and the opening of this succession was visibly
at hand; for Charles the Second had been in immediate danger of dying about
this time. His death could not be a remote event: and all the good queen's
endeavors to be got with child had proved ineffectual. The league dissolved,
all the forces of the confederates dispersed, and many disbanded; France
continuing armed, her forces by sea and land increased and held in readiness
to act on al sides, it was plain that the confederates had failed in the
first object of the grand alliance, that of reducing the power of France;
by succeeding in which alone they could have been able to keep the second
agreement, that of securing the succession of Spain to the house of Austria.





After the peace, what remained to be done; in the whole nature of things
there remained but three. To abandon all care of the Spanish succession was
one; to compound with France upon this succession was another; and to prepare,
like her, during the interval of peace, to make an advantageous war whenever
Charles the Second should die, was a third. Now the first of these was to
leave Spain, and, in leaving Spain, to leave all Europe in some sort at the
mercy of France; since whatever disposition the Spaniards should make of
their crown, they were quite unable to support it against France; since the
emperor could do little without his allies; and since Bavaria, the third
pretender, could do still less, and might find, in such a case, his account
perhaps better in treating with the house of Bourbon than with that of Austria.
More needs not be said on this head; but on the other two, which I shall
consider together, several facts are proper to be mentioned, and several
reflections necessary to be made. 




We might have counter-worked, no doubt, in their own methods of policy,
the councils of France, who made peace to dissolve the confederacy, and great
concessions, with very suspicious generosity, to gain the Spaniards: we might
have waited, like them, that is in arms, the death of Charles the Second,
and have fortified in the mean time the dispositions of the king, the court
and people of Spain, against the pretensions of France: we might have made
the peace, which was made some time after that, between the emperor and the
Turks, and have obliged the former at any rate to have secured the peace
of Hungary, and to have prepared, by these and other expedients, for the
war that would inevitably break out on the death of the king of Spain. 




But all such measures were rendered impracticable, by the emperor chiefly.
Experience had shown, that the powers who engaged in alliance with him must
expect to take the whole burden of his cause upon themselves; and that Hungary
would maintain a perpetual diversion in favor of France, since he could not
resolve to lighten the tyrannical yoke he had established in that country
and in Transylvania, nor his ministers to part with the immense confiscations
they had appropriated to themselves. Past experience showed this: and the
experience that followed confirmed it very fatally. But further; there was
not only little assistance to be expected from him by those who should engage
in his quarrel: he did them hurt of another kind, and deprived them of many
advantages by false measures of policy and unskilful negotiations. Whilst
the death of Charles the Second was expected almost daily, the court of Vienna
seemed to have forgot the court of Madrid, and all the pretensions on that
crown. When the Count d'Harrach was sent thither, the imperial councils did
something worse. The king of Spain was ready to declare the archduke Charles
his successor; he was desirous to have this young prince sent into Spain:
the bent of the people was in favor of Austria, or it had been so, and might
have been easily turned the same way again: at court no cabal was yet formed
in favor of Bourbon, and a very weak intrigue was on foot in favor of the
electoral prince of Bavaria. Not only Charles might have been on the spot
ready to reap the succession, but a German army might have been there to
defend it; for the court of Madrid insisted on having twelve thousand of
these troops, and, rather than not have them, offered to contribute to the
payment of them privately. because it would have been too unpopular among
the Spaniards, and too prejudicial to the Austrian interest, to have had
it known that the emperor declined the payment of a body of his own troops
that were demanded to secure the monarchy to his son. These proposals were
half refused, and half evaded: and in return to the offer of the crown of
Spain to the archduke, the imperial councils asked the government of Milan
for him. They thought it a point of deep policy to secure the Italian provinces,
and to leave to England and Holland the care of the Low Countries, of Spain,
and the Indies. By declining these proposals the house of Austria renounced
in some sort the whole succession: at least she gave England and Holland
reasons, whatever engagements these powers had taken, to refuse the harder
task of putting her into possession by force; when she might, and would not,
procure to the English and Dutch, and her other allies, the easier task of
defending her in this possession. 




I said that the measures mentioned about were rendered impracticable,
by the emperor chiefly, because they were rendered so likewise by other circumstances
at the same conjuncture. A principal one I shall mention, and it shall be
drawn from the state of our own country, and the disposition of our people.
-- Let us take this up from king William's accession to our crown. During
the whole progress that Louis the Fourteenth made towards such exorbitant
power, as gave him well-grounded hopes of acquiring at last to his family
the Spanish monarchy, England had been either an idle spectator of all that
passed on the Continent, or a faint and uncertain ally against France, or
a warm and sure ally on her side, or a partial mediator between her and the
powers confederated in their common defence. The revolution produced as great
a change in our foreign conduct, as in our domestic establishment: and our
nation engaged with great spirit in the war of one thousand six hundred and
eighty-eight. But then this spirit was rash, presumptuous, and ignorant,
ill conducted at home, and ill seconded abroad: all which has been touched
already. We had waged no long wars on the Continent, nor been very deeply
concerned in foreign confederacies, since the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
The history of Edward the Third, however, and of the first twelve or fifteen
years of Henry the Sixth might have taught us some general but useful lessons,
drawn from remote times, but applicable to the present. So might the example
of Henry the Eighth, who squandered away great sums for the profit of talking
a town, or the honor of having an emperor in his pay; and who divided afterwards
by treaty the kingdom of France between himself and Charles the Fifth, with
success so little answerable to such an undertaking, that it is hard to believe
his imperial and English majesty were both in earnest. If they were so, they
were both the bubbles of their presumption. But it seems more likely that
Henry the Eighth was bubbled on this occasion by the great hopes that Charles
held out to flatter his vanity: as he had been bubbled by his father-in-law
Ferdinand, at the beginning of his reign, in the war of Navarre. But these
reflections were not made, nor had we enough considered the example of Elizabeth
the last of our princes who had made any considerable figure abroad, and
from whom we might have learned to act with vigor, but to engage with caution,
and always to proportion our assistance according to our abilities, and the
real necessities of our allies. The frontiers of France were now so fortified,
her commerce and her naval force were so increased, her armies were grown
so numerous, her troops were so disciplined, so inured to war, and so animated
by a long course of successful campaigns, that they who looked on the situation
of Europe could not fail to see how difficult the enterprise of reducing
her power was become. difficult as it was, we were obliged, on every account
and by reasons of all kinds, to engage in it: but then we should have engaged
with more forecast, and have conducted ourselves in the management of it,
not with less alacrity and spirit, but with more order, more economy, and
a better application of our efforts. But they who governed were glad to engage
as at any rate; and we entered on this great scheme of action, as our nation
is too apt to do, hurried on by the ruling passion of the day. I have been
told by several, who were on the stage of the world at this time, that the
generality of our people believed, and were encouraged to believe, the war
could not be long, if the king was vigorously supported: and there is a humdrum
speech of a speaker of the house of commons, I think, who humbly desired
his majesty to take this opportunity of reconquering his ancient duchy of
Aquitain. We were soon awakened from these gaudy dreams. In seven or eight
years no impression had been made on France, that was besieged as it were
on every side: and after repeated defeats in the Low Countries, where king
William laid the principal stress of the war, his sole triumph was the retaking
Namur, that had been taken by the French a few years before. Unsustained
by success abroad, we are not to wonder that the spirit flagged at home;
nor that the discontents of those who were averse to the established government,
uniting with the far greater number of those who disliked the administration,
inflamed the general discontents of the nation, oppressed with taxes, pillaged
by usurers, plundered at sea, and disappointed at land. As we run into extremes
always, some would have continued this war at any rate, even at the same
rate, but it was not possible they should prevail in such a situation of
affairs, and such a disposition of minds. -- They who not by the war, and
made immense fortunes by the necessities of the public, were not so numerous
nor so powerful, as they have been since. The moneyed interest was not yet
a rival able to cope with the landed interest, either in the nation or in
parliament. The great corporations that had been erected more to serve the
turn of party, than for any real national use, aimed indeed even then at
the strength and influence which they have since acquired in the legislature;
but they had not made the same progress by promoting national corruption,
as they and the court have made since. In short, the other extreme prevailed.
The generality of people grew as fond of getting out of the war, as they
had been of entering into it: and thus far perhaps, considering how it had
been conducted, they were not much to be blamed. But this was not all; for
when king William had made the peace, our martial spirit became at once so
pacific, that we seemed resolved to meddle no more in the affairs of the
continent, at least to employ our arms no more in the quarrels that might
arise there: and accordingly we reduced our troops in England to seven thousand
men. 




I have sometimes considered, in reflecting on these passages, what I should
have done, if I had sat in parliament at that time; and have been forced
to my own self, that I should have voted for disbanding the army then, as
I voted in the following parliament for censuring the partition treaties.
I am forced to own this, because I remember how imperfect my notions were
of the situation of Europe in that extraordinary crisis, and how much I saw
the true interest of my own country in a half-light. But, my lord, I own
it with some shame; because in truth nothing could be more absurd than the
conduct we held. What! because we had not reduced the power of France by
the war, nor excluded the house of Bourbon from the Spanish succession, nor
compounded with her upon it by the peace; and because the house of Austria
had not helped herself nor put it into our power to help her with more advantage
and better prospect of success -- were we to leave that whole succession
open to the invasions of France, and to suffer even the contingency to subsist,
of seeing those monarchies united? What! because it was become extravagant,
after the trials so lately made, to think ourselves any longer engaged by
treaty, or obliged by good policy, to put the house of Austria in possession
of the whole Spanish monarchy, and to defend her in this possession by force
of arms, were we to leave the whole at the mercy of France? If we were not
to do so, if we were not to do one of the three things that I said above
remained to be done, and if the emperor put it out of our power to do another
of them with advantage; were we to put it still more out of our power, and
to wait unarmed for the death of the king of Spain? In awe, if we had not
the prospect of disputing with France, so successfully as we might have had
it, the Spanish succession, whenever it should be open; were we not only
to show by disarming, that we would not dispute it at all, but to censure
likewise the second of the three things mentioned above, and which king William
put in practice, the compounding with France, to prevent if possible a war,
in which we were averse to engage? 




Allow me to push these reflections a little further, and to observe to
your lordship, that if the proposal of sending the archduke into Spain had
been accepted in time by the imperial court, and taken effect and become
a measure of the confederacy, that war indeed would have been protracted;
but France could not have hindered the passage of this prince and his German
forces: and our fleet would have been better employed in escorting them,
and in covering the coasts of Spain and of the dominions of that crown both
in Europe and in America, than it was in so many unmeaning expeditions from
the battle of La Hogue to the end of the war. France indeed would have made
her utmost efforts to have had satisfaction on her pretensions, as ill founded
as they were. She would have ended that war, as we began the next, when we
demanded a reasonable satisfaction for the emperor: and though I think that
the allies would have had in very many respects, more advantage in defending
Spain, than in attacking France; yet, upon a supposition that the defence
would have been as ill conducted as the attack was, and that by consequence,
whether Charles the Second had lived to the conclusion of this war, or had
died before it, the war must have ended in some partition or other; this
partition would have been made by the Spaniards themselves. They had been
forced to compound with France on her former pretensions, and they must and
they would have compounded on these, with an Austrian prince on the throne,
just as they compounded, and probably much better than they compounded, on
the pretensions we supported against them, when they had a prince of Bourbon
on their throne. France would not have distressed the Spaniards, nor have
overrun their monarchy, if they had been united; and they would have been
united in this case, and supported by the whole confederacy; as we distressed
both France and them, over run their monarchy in one hemisphere, and might
have done so in both, when they were disunited, and supported by France alone.
France would not have acted, in such negotiations, the ridiculous part which
the emperor acted in those that led to the peace of Utrecht, nor have made
her bargain worse by neglecting to make it in time. But the war ending as
it did, though I cannot see how king William could avoid leaving the crown
of Spain and that entire monarchy at the discretion of Louis the Fourteenth,
otherwise than by compounding to prevent a new war he was in no sort prepared
to make; yet it is undeniable, that by consenting to a partition of their
monarchy, he threw the Spaniards into the arms of France. The first partition
might have taken place, perhaps, if the electoral prince of Bavaria had lived,
whom the French and Spaniards too would have seen much more willingly than
the archduke on the throne of Spain. For among all the parties into which
that court was divided in one thousand six hundred and ninety-eight, when
this treaty was made, that of Austria was grown the weakest, by the disgust
taken at a German queen, and at the rapacity and insolence of her favorites.
The French were looked upon with esteem and kindness at Madrid; but the Germans
were become, or growing to be, objects of contempt to the ministers, and
of aversion to the people. The electoral prince died in one thousand six
hundred and ninety-nine. The star of Austria, so fatal to all those who were
obstacles to the ambition of that house, prevailed; as the elector expressed
himself in the first pangs of his grief. The state of things changed very
much by this death. The archduke was to have Spain and the Indies, according
to a second partition: and the Spaniards, who had expressed great resentment
at the first, were pushed beyond their bearing by this. They soon appeared
to be so; for the second treaty of partition was signed in March one thousand
seven hundred; and the will was made, to the best of my remembrance, in the
October following. I shall not enter here into many particulars concerning
these great events. They will be related faithfully, and I hope fully explained,
in a work which your lordship may take the trouble very probably of perusing
some time or other, and which I shall rather leave, than give to the public.
-- Something however must be said more, to continue and wind up this summary
of the latter period of modern history. 




France then saw her advantage, and improved it no doubt, though not in
the manner, nor with the circumstances, that some living scribblers of memorials
and anecdotes have advanced. She had sent one of the ablest men of her court
to that of Madrid, the marshal of Harcourt, and she had stipulated in the
second treaty of partition, that the archduke should go neither into Spain
nor the duchy of Milan, during the life of Charles the Second. She was willing
to have her option between a treaty and a will. By the acceptation of the
will, all king William's measures were broke. He was unprepared for war as
much as when he made these treaties to prevent one; and if he meant in making
them, what some wise, but refining men have suspected, and what I confess
I see no reason to believe, only to gain time by the difficulty of executing
them, and to prepare for making war, whenever the death of the king of Spain
should alarm mankind, and rouse his own subjects out of their inactivity
and neglect of foreign interests; if so, he was disappointed in that too;
for France took possession of the whole monarchy at once, and with universal
concurrence, at least without opposition or difficulty, in favor of the duke
of Anjon. By what has been observed, or hinted rather very shortly, and I
fear a little confusedly, it is plain that reducing the power of France,
and securing the whole Spanish succession to the house of Austria, were two
points that king William, at the head of the British and Dutch commonwealths
and of the greatest confederacy Europe had seen, was obliged to give up.
All the acquisitions that France cared to keep for the maintenance of her
power were confirmed to her by the treaty of Ryswic: and king William allowed,
indirectly at least, the pretensions of the house of Bourbon to the Spanish
succession, as Louis the Fourteenth allowed, in the same manner, those of
the house of Austria, by the treaties of partition. Strange situation! in
which no expedient remained to prepare for an event, visibly so near, and
of such vast importance as the death of the king of Spain, but a partition
of his monarchy, without his consent, or his knowledge! If king William had
not made his partition, the emperor would have made one, and with as little
regard to trade, to the barrier of the seven provinces, or to the general
system of Europe, as had been showed by him when he made the private treaty
with France already mentioned, in one thousand six hundred and sixty-eight.
The ministers of Vienna were not wanting to insinuate to those of France
overtures of a separate treaty, as more conducive to their common interests
than the accession of his imperial majesty to that of partition. But the
councils of Versailles judged very reasonably, that a partition made with
England and Holland would be more effectual than any other, if a partition
was to take place: and that such a partition would be just as effectual as
one made with the emperor, to furnish arguments to the emissaries of France,
and motives to the Spanish councils, if a will in favor of France could be
obtained. I repeat it again; I cannot see what king William could do in such
circumstances as he found himself in after thirty years struggle, except
what he did: neither can I see how he could do what he did, especially after
the resentment expressed by the Spaniards, and the furious memorial presented
by Canales on the conclusion of the first treaty of partition, without apprehending
that the consequence would be a will in favor of France. He was in the worst
of all political circumstances, in that wherein no one good measure remains
to be taken; and out of which he left the two nations, at the head of whom
he had been so long, to fight and negotiate themselves and their confederates,
as well as they could. 




When this will was made and accepted, Louis the Fourteenth had succeeded,
and the powers in opposition to him had failed, in all the great objects
of interest and ambition, which they had kept in sight for more than forty
years; that is from the beginning of the present period. The actors changed
their parts in the tragedy that followed. The power, that had so long and
so cruelly attacked, was now to defend, the Spanish monarchy: and the powers
that had so long defended, were now to attack it. -- Let us see how this
was brought about: and that we may see it the better, and make a better judgment
of all that passed from the death of Charles the Second to the peace of Utrecht,
let us go back to the time of his death, and consider the circumstances that
formed this complicated state of affairs, in three views; a view of right,
a view of policy, and a view of power. 




The right of succeeding to the crown of Spain would have been undoubtedly
in the children of Maria Theresa, that is, in the house of Bourbon; if this
right had not been barred by the solemn renunciations so often mentioned.
The pretensions of the house of Austria were founded on these renunciations,
on the ratification of them by the Pyrenean treaty, and the confirmation
of them by the will of Philip the Fourth. The pretensions of the house of
Bourbon were founded on a supposition, it was indeed no more, and a vain
one too, that these renunciations were in their nature null. On this foot
the dispute of right stood during the life of Charles the Second, and on
the same it would have continued to stand even after his death, if the renunciations
had remained unshaken; if his will, like that of his father, had confirmed
them, and had left the crown, in pursuance of them to the house of Austria.
But the will of Charles the Second, annulling these renunciations, took away
the sole foundation of the Austrian pretensions; for, however this act might
be obtained, it was just as valid as his father's, and was confirmed by the
universal concurrence of the Spanish nation to the new settlement he made
of that crown. Let it be, as I think it ought to be, granted, that the true
heirs could not claim against renunciations that were, if I may so say, conditions
of their birth: but Charles the Second had certainly as good a right to change
the course of succession agreeably to the order of nature and the constitution
of that monarchy, after his true heirs were born, as Philip the Fourth had
to change it, contrary to this order and this constitution, before they were
born, or at any other time. -- He had as good a right, in short, to dispense
with the Pyrenean treaty, and to set it aside in this respect, as his father
had to make it: so that the renunciations being annulled by that party to
the Pyrenean treaty who had exacted them, they could be deemed no longer
binding, by virtue of this treaty, on the party who had made them. The sole
question that remained therefore between these rival houses, as to right,
was this, whether the engagements taken by Louis the Fourteenth in the partition
treaties obliged him to adhere to the terms of the last of them in all events,
and to deprive his family of the succession which the king of Spain opened,
and the Spanish nation offered to them; rather than to depart from a composition
he had made, on pretensions that were disputable then, but were now out of
dispute; it may be said, and it was said, that the treaties of partition
being absolute, without any condition or exception relative to any disposition
the king of Spain had made or might make of his succession, in favor of Bourbon
or Austria; the disposition made by his will, in favor of the Duke of Anjon,
could not affect the engagements so lately taken by Louis the Fourteenth
in these treaties, nor dispense with a literal observation of them. This
might be true, on strict principles of justice; but I apprehend that none
of these powers, who exclaimed so loudly against the perfidy of France in
this use, would have been more scrupulous in a parallel case. The maxim,
"summum jus est summa injuria," would have been quoted, and the
rigid letter of treaties would have been softened by an equitable interpretation
of their spirit and intention. His imperial majesty, above all, had not the
least color of right to exclaim against France on this occasion; for in general
if his family was to be stripped of all the dominions they have acquired
by breach of faith, and means much worse than the acceptation of the will,
even allowing all the invidious circumstances imputed to the conduct of France
to be true, the Austrian family would sink from their present grandeur to
that low state they were in two or three centuries ago. In particular, the
emperor, who had constantly refused to accede to the treaties of partition,
or to submit to the dispositions made by them, had not the least plausible
pretence to object to Louis the Fourteenth, that he departed from them. Thus,
I think, the right of the two houses stood on the death of Charles the Second.
The right of the Spaniards, an independent nation, to regulate their own
succession, or to receive the prince whom their dying monarch had called
to it; and the right of England and Holland to regulate this succession,
to divide and parcel out this monarchy in different lots, it would be equally
foolish to go about to establish. One is too evident, the other too absurd,
to admit of any proof. But enough has been said concerning right, which was
in truth little regarded by any of the parties concerned immediately or remotely
in the whole course of these proceedings. Particular interests were alone
regarded, and these were pursued as ambition, fear, resentment, and vanity
directed: I mean the ambition of the two houses contending for superiority
of power: the fear of England and Holland lest this superiority should become
too great in either; the resentment of Spain at the dismemberment of that
monarchy projected by the partition treaties; and the vanity of that nation,
as well as of the princes of the house of Bourbon: for as vanity mingled
with resentment to make the will, vanity had a great share in determining
the acceptation of it.




Let us now consider the same conjuncture in a view of policy. The policy
of the Spanish councils was this. They could not brook that their monarchy
should be divided: and this principle is expressed strongly in the will of
Charles the Second, where he exhorts his subjects not to suffer any dismemberment
or diminution of a monarchy founded by his predecessors with so much glory.
Too weak to hinder this dismemberment by their own strength, too well apprised
of the little force and little views of the court of Vienna, and their old
allies having engaged to procure this dismemberment even by force of arms:
nothing remained for them to do upon this principle, but to detach France
from the engagements of the partition treaties, by giving their whole monarchy
to a prince of the house of Bourbon. As much as may have been said concerning
the negotiations of France to obtain a will in her favor, and yet to keep
in reserve the advantages stipulated for her by the partition treaties if
such a will could not be obtained, and though I am persuaded that the marshal
of Harcourt, who helped to procure this will, made his court to Louis the
Fourteenth as much as the marshal of Tallard, who negotiated the partitions;
yet it is certain that the acceptation of the will was not a measure definitively
taken at Versailles when the king of Spain died. The alternative divided
those councils, and, without entering at this time into the arguments urged
on each side, adhering to the partitions seemed the cause of France, accepting
the will that of the house of Bourbon. 




It has been said by men of great weight in the councils of Spain, and
was said at that time by men as little fond of the house of Bourbon, or of
the French nation, as their fathers had been, that if England and Holland
had not formed a confederacy and begun a war, they would have made Philip
the Fifth as Spaniard as any of the preceding Philips, and not have good
a endured the influence of French councils in the administration of their
government: but that we threw them entirely into the hands of France when
we began the war, because the fleets and armies of this crown being necessary
to their defence, they could not avoid submitting to this influence as long
as the same necessity continued; and, in fact, we have seen that the influence
lasted no longer. But notwithstanding this, it must be confessed, that a
war was unavoidable. The immediate securing of commerce and of barriers,
the preventing an union of the two monarchies in some future time, and the
preservation of a certain degree at least of equality in the scales of power,
were points too important to England, Holland, and the rest of Europe, to
be rested on the moderation of French, and the vigor of Spanish councils,
under a prince of the house of France. If satisfaction to the house of Austria,
to whose rights England and Holland showed no great regard whilst they were
better founded than they were since the will, had been alone concerned; a
drop of blood spilt, or five shillings spent in the quarrel, would have been
ton much profusion. But this was property the sale into which it became the
common interest to throw all the weight that could be taken out of that of
Bourbon. And therefore your lordship will find, that when negotiations with
d'Avaux were set on foot in Holland to prevent a war, or rather on our part
to gain time to prepare for it, in which view the Dutch we had both acknowledged
Philip king of Spain; the great article we insisted on was, that reasonable
satisfaction should be given the emperor, upon his pretensions founded on
the treaty of partition. We could do no otherwise; and France who offered
to make the treaty of Ryswic the foundation of that treaty, could do no otherwise
than refuse to consent that the treaty of partition should be so, after accepting
the will, and thereby engaging to oppose all partition or dismemberment of
the Spanish monarchy. I should mention none of the other demands of England
and Holland, if I could neglect to point out to your lordship's observation,
that the same artifice was employed at this time, to perplex the more a negotiation
that could not succeed on other accounts, as we saw employed in the course
of the war, by the English and Dutch ministers, to prevent the success of
negotiations that might, and ought to have succeeded. The demand I mean is
that of "a liberty not only to explain the terms proposed, but to increase
or amplify them, in the course of the negotiation." I do not remember
the words, but this is the sense, and this was the meaning of the confederates
in both cases. 




If the former, king William was determined to begin the war by all the
rules of good policy; since be could not obtain, nay since France could not
grant in that conjuncture, nor without being forced to it by a war, what
he was obliged by these very rules to demand. He intended therefore nothing
by this negotiation, if it may be called such, but to preserve forms and
appearances, and perhaps, which many have suspected, to have time to prepare,
as I hinted just now, both abroad and at home. Many things concurred to favor
his preparations abroad. The alarm, that had been given by the acceptation
of the will, was increased by every step that France made to secure the effect
of it. Thus, for instance, the surprising and seizing the Dutch troops, in
the same night, and at the same hour, that were dispersed in the garrisons
of the Spanish Netherlands, was not excused by the necessity of securing
those places to the obedience of Philip, nor softened by the immediate dismission
of those troops. The impression it made was much the same as those of the
surprises and seizures of France in former usurpations. No one knew then,
that the sovereignty of the ten provinces was to be yielded up to the elector
of Bavaria; and every one saw that there remained no longer any barrier between
France and the seven provinces. At home, the disposition of the nation was
absolutely turned to a war with France, on the death of king James the Second,
by the acknowledgment Louis the Fourteenth made of his son as king of England.
I know what was been said in excuse of this measure, taken, as I believe,
on female importunity; but certainly without any regard to public faith,
to the true interest of France in those circumstances, or to the true interest
of the prince thus acknowledged, in any. it was said, that the treaty of
Ryswic obliged his most Christian majesty only not to disturb king William
in his possession, he slight, without any violation of it, have acknowledged
this prince as king of England; according to the political casuistry of the
French, and the example of France, who finds no fault with the powers that
treat with the kings of England, although the kings of England retain the
title of kings of France; as well as the example of Spain, who makes no complaints
that other states treat with the kings of France, although the kings of France
retain the title of Navarre. But besides that the examples are not apposite,
because no other powers acknowledge in form the king of England to be king
of France, nor the king of France to be king of Navarre; with what face could
the French excuse this measure? Could they excuse it by urging that they
adhered to the strict letter of one article of the treaty of Ryswic, against
the plain meaning of that very article, and against the whole tenor of that
treaty; in the same breath with which they justified the acceptation of the
will, by pretending they adhered to the supposed spirit and general intention
of the treaties of partition, in contradiction to the letter, to the specific
engagements, and to the whole purport of those treaties? This part of the
conduct of Louis the Fourteenth may appear justly the more surprising, because
in most other parts of his conduct at the same time, and in some to his disadvantage,
he acted cautiously, endeavored to calm the minds of his neighbors, to reconcile
Europe to his grandson's elevation, and to avoid all show of beginning hostilities.





Though king William was determined to engage in a war with France and
Spain, yet the same good policy, that determined him to engage, determined
him not to engage too deeply. The engagement taken in the grand alliance
of one thousand seven hundred and one is, "To procure an equitable and
reasonable satisfaction to his imperial majesty for his pretension to the
Spanish succession; and sufficient security to the king of England, and the
States General, for their dominions, and for the navigation and commerce
of their subjects, and to prevent the union of the two monarchies of France
and Spain." As king of England, as stadtholder of Holland, he neither
could, nor did engage any further. It may be disputed perhaps among speculative
politicians, whether the balance of power in Europe would have been better
preserved by that scheme of partition, which the treaties, and particularly
the last of them, proposed, or by that which the grand alliance proposed
to be the object of the war? I think there is little room for such a dispute,
as I shall have occasion to say hereafter more expressly. In this place I
shall only say, that the object of this war, which king William meditated,
and queen Anne waged, was a partition, by which a prince of the house of
Bourbon, already acknowledged by its and the Dutch as king of Spain, was
to be left on the throne of that dismembered monarchy. The wisdom of those
councils saw that the peace of Europe might be restored and secured on this
foot, and that the liberties of Europe would be in no danger. 




The scales of the balance of power will never be exactly poised, nor in
the precise point of equality either discernible or necessary to be discerned.
It is sufficient in this, as in other human affairs, that the deviation be
not too great. Some there will always be. A constant attention to these deviations
is therefore necessary. When they are little, their increase may be easily
prevented by early care and the precautions that good policy suggests. But
when they become great for want of this care and these precautions, or by
the force of unforeseen events, more vigor is to be exerted, and greater
efforts to be made. But even in such cases, much reflection is necessary
on all the circumstances that form the conjuncture; lest, by attacking with
ill success, the deviation be confirmed, and the power that is deemed already
exorbitant become more so; and lest, by attacking with good success, whilst
one scale is pillaged, too much weight of power be thrown into the other.
In such cases, he who has considered, in the histories of former ages, the
strange revolutions that time produces, and the perpetual flux and reflux
of public as well as private fortunes, of kingdoms and states as well as
of those who govern or are governed in them, will incline to think, that
if the scales can be brought back by a war, nearly, though not exactly, to
the point they were at before this great deviation from it, the rest may
be left to accidents, and to the use that good policy is able to make of
them.




When Charles the Fifth was at the height of his power, and in the zenith
of his glory, when a king of France and a pope were at once his prisoners;
it must be allowed, that, his situation and that of his neighbors compared,
they had as much at least to fear from him and from the house of Austria,
as the neighbors of Louis the Fourteenth had to fear from him and from the
house of Bourbon, when, after all his other success, one of his grandchildren
was placed on the Spanish throne. And yet among all the conditions of the
several leagues against Charles the Fifth, I do not remember that it was
ever stipulated, that "no peace should be made with him as long as he
continued to be emperor and king of Spain; nor as long as any Austrian prince
continued capable of uniting on his head the imperial and Spanish crowns."




If your lordship makes the application, you will find that the difference
of some circumstances does not hinder this example from being very apposite
and strong to the present purpose. Charles the Fifth was emperor and king
of Spain; but neither was Louis the Fourteenth king of Spain, nor Philip
the Fifth king of France. That had happened in one instance, which it was
apprehended might happen in the other. It had happened, and it was reasonably
to be apprehended that it might happen again, and that the Imperial and Spanish
crowns might continue, not only in the same family, but on the same heads;
for measures were taken to secure the succession of both to Philip the son
of Charles. We do not find however that any confederacy was formed, any engagement
taken, nor any war made, to remove or prevent this great evil. The princes
and states of Europe contented themselves to oppose the designs of Charles
the Fifth, and to check the growth of his power occasionally, and as interest
invited, or necessity forced them to do; not constantly. They did perhaps
too little against him, and sometimes too much for him; but if they did too
little of one kind, time and accident did the rest. Distinct dominions, and
different pretensions, created contrary interests in the house of Austria:
and on the abdication of Charles the Fifth, his brother succeeded, not his
son, to the empire. The house of Austria divided into a German and a Spanish
branch: and if the two branches came to have a mutual influence on one another,
and frequently a common interest, it was not till one of them had fallen
from grandeur, and till the other was rather aiming at it, than in possession
of it. In short, Philip was excluded from the imperial throne by so natural
a progression of causes and effects, arising not only in Germany but in his
own family, that if a treaty had been made to exclude him from it in favor
of Ferdinand, such a treaty might have been said very probably to have executed
itself.




The precaution I have mentioned, and that was neglected in this case without
any detriment to the common cause of Europe, was not neglected in the grand
alliance of one thousand seven hundred and one. For in that, one of the ends
proposed by the war is, to obtain an effectual security against the contingent
union of the crowns of France and Spain. The will of Charles the Second provides
against the same contingency. and this great principle, of preventing too
much dominion and power from falling to the lot of either of the families
of Bourbon or Austria, seemed to be agreed on all sides; since in the partition-treaty
the same precaution was taken against a union of the Imperial and Spanish
crowns. King William was enough piqued against France. His ancient prejudices
were strong and well founded. He had been worsted in war, overreached in
negotiation, and personally affronted by her. England and Holland were sufficiently
alarmed and animated, and a party was not wanting even in our island, ready
to approve any engagements he would have taken against France and Spain,
and in favor of the house of Austria; though we were less concerned, by any
national interest, than any other power that took part in the war, either
then, or afterwards. But this prince was far from taking a part beyond that
which the particular interest of England and Holland, and the general interest
of Europe, necessarily required. Pique must have no more a place than affection,
in deliberations of this kind. To have engaged to dethrone Philip, out of
resentment to Louis the Fourteenth, would have been a resolution worthy of
Charles the Twelfth, king of Sweden, who sacrificed his country, his people,
and himself at last, to his revenge. To have engaged to conquer the Spanish
monarchy for the house of Austria, or to go, in favor of that family, one
step beyond those that were necessary to keep this house on a foot of rivalry
with the other, would have been, as I have hinted, to act the part of a vassal,
not of an ally. The former pawns his state, and ruins his subjects, for the
interest of his superior lord, perhaps for his lord's humor, or his passion:
the latter goes no further than his own interests carry him; nor makes war
for those of another, nor even for his own, if they are remote and contingent,
as if he fought pro aris et focis, for his religion, his liberty, and his
property. Agreeably to these principles of good policy, we entered into the
war that began on the death of Charles the Second: but we soon departed from
them, as I shall have occasion to observe in considering the state of things,
at this remarkable conjuncture, in a view of strength.




Let me recall here what I have said somewhere else. They who are in the
sinking scale of the balance of power do not easily, nor soon, come off from
the habitual prejudices of superiority over their neighbors, nor from the
confidence that such prejudices inspire. From the year one thousand six hundred
and sixty-seven, to the end of that century, France had been constantly in
arms, and her arms had been successful. She had sustained a war, without
any confederates, against the principal powers of Europe confederated against
her, and had finished it with advantage on every side, just before the death
of the king of Spain. She continued armed after the peace, by sea and land.
She increased her forces, whilst other nations reduced theirs; and was ready
to defend, or to invade her neighbors whilst, their confederacy being dissolved,
they were in no condition to invade her, and in a bad one to defend themselves.
Spain and France had now one common cause. The electors of Bavaria and Cologne
supported it in Germany: the Duke of Savoy was an ally, the Duke of Mantua
a vassal of the two crowns in Italy. In a word, appearances were formidable
on that side: and if a distrust of strength, on the side of the confederacy,
had induced England and Holland to compound with France for a partition of
the Spanish succession, there seemed to be still greater reason for this
distrust after the acceptation of the will, the peaceable and ready submission
of the entire monarchy of Spain to Philip, and all the measures taken to
secure him in this possession. Such appearances might well impose. They did
so on many, and on none more than on the French themselves, who engaged with
great confidence and spirit in the war; when they found it, as they might
well expect it would be, unavoidable. The strength of France however, though
great, was not so great as the French thought it, nor equal to the efforts
they undertook to make. Their engagement, to maintain the Spanish monarchy
entire under the dominion of Philip, exceeded their strength. Our engagement,
to procure some outskirts of it for the house of Austria, was not in the
same disproportion to our strength. If I speak positively on this occasion,
yet I cannot be accused of presumption; because, how disputable soever these
points might be when they were points of political speculation, they are
such no longer, and the judgment I make is dictated to me by experience.
France threw herself into the sinking scale, when she accepted the will.
Her scale continued to sink during the whole course of the war, and might
have been kept by the peace as low as the true interest of Europe required.
What I remember to have heard the Duke of Marlborough say, before he went
to take on him the command of the army in the Low Countries in one thousand
seven hundred and two, proved true. The French misreckoned very much, if
they made the same comparison between their troops and those of the enemies,
as they had made in precedent wars. Those that had been opposed to them,
in the last, were raw for the most part when it began, the British particularly:
but they had been disciplined, if I may say so, by their defeats. They were
grown to be veteran at the peace of Ryswic, and though many had been disbanded,
yet they had been disbanded lately: so that even these were easily formed
anew, and the spirit that had been raised continued in all. Supplies of men
to recruit the armies were more abundant on the side of the confederacy,
than on that of the two crowns: a necessary consequence of which it seemed
to be, that those of the former would grow better, and those of the latter
worse, in a long, extensive, and bloody war. I believe it proved so; and
if my memory does not deceive me, the French were forced very early to send
recruits to their armies, as they send slaves to their galleys. A comparison
between those who were to direct the councils, and to conduct the armies
on both sides, is a task it would become me little to undertake. The event
showed, that if France had had her Condé, her Turenne, or her Luxemburg,
to oppose to the confederates; the confederates might have opposed to her,
with equal confidence, their Eugene of Savoy, their Marlborough, or their
Starenberg. But there is one observation I cannot forbear to make. The alliances
were concluded, the quotas were settled, and the season for taking the field
approached, when king William died. The event could not fail to occasion
some consternation on one side, and to give some hopes on the other; for,
notwithstanding the ill success with which he made war generally, he was
looked upon as the sole centre of union that could keep together the great
confederacy then forming: and how much the French feared, from his life,
had appeared a few years before, in the extravagant and indecent joy they
expressed On a false report of his death. A short time showed how vain the
fears of some, and the hopes of others were. By his death, the Duke of Marlborough
was raised to the head of the army, and indeed of the confederacy: where
he, a new, a private man, a subject, acquired by merit and by management
a more deciding influence, than high birth, confirmed authority, and even
the crown of Great Britain, had given to king William. Not only all the parts
of that vast machine, the grand alliance, were kept more compact and entire;
but a more rapid and vigorous motion was given to the whole: and, instead
of languishing or disastrous campaigns, we saw every scene of the war full
of action. All those wherein he appeared, and many of those wherein he was
not then an actor, but abettor however of their action, were crowned with
the most triumphant success. I take with pleasure this opportunity of doing
justice to that great man, whose faults I knew, whose virtues I admired;
and whose memory, as the greatest general and as the greatest minister that
our country or perhaps any other has produced, I honor. But besides this,
the observation I have made comes into my subject, since it serves to point
out to your lordship the proof of what I said above, that France undertook
too much, when she undertook to maintain the Spanish monarchy entire in the
possession of Philip: and that we undertook no more than what was proportionable
to our strength, when we undertook to weaken that monarchy by dismembering
it, in the hands of a prince of the house of Bourbon, which we had been disabled
by ill fortune and worse conduct to keep out of them. It may be said that
the great success of the confederates against France proves that their generals
were superior to hers, but not that their forces and their national strength
were so; that with the same force with which she was beaten, she might have
been victorious; that if she had been so, or if the success of the war had
varied, or been less decisive against her in Germany, in the Low Countries,
and in Italy, as it was in Spain, her strength would have appeared sufficient,
and that of the confederacy insufficient. Many things may be urged to destroy
this reasoning: I content myself with one. France could not long have made
even the unsuccessful efforts she did make, if England and Holland had done
what it is undeniable they had strength to do; if besides pillaging, I do
not say conquering, the Spanish West Indies, they had hindered the French
from going to the South Sea; as they did annually during the whole course
of the war without the least molestation, and from whence they imported into
France in that time as much silver and gold as the whole species of that
kingdom amounted to. With this immense and constant supply of wealth France
was reduced in effect to bankruptcy before the end of the war. How much sooner
must she have been so, if this supply had been kept from her? The confession
of France herself is on my side. She confessed her inability to support what
she had undertaken, when she sued for peace as early as the year one thousand
seven hundred and six. She made her utmost efforts to answer the expectation
of the Spaniards, and to keep their monarchy entire. When experience had
made it evident that this was beyond her power, she thought herself justified
to the Spanish nation, in consenting to a partition, and was ready to conclude
a peace with the allies on the principles of their grand alliance. But as
France seemed to flatter herself, till experience made her desirous to abandon
an enterprise that exceeded her strength; you will find, my lord, that her
enemies began to flatter themselves in their turn, and to form designs and
take engagements that exceeded theirs. Great Britain was drawn into these
engagements little by little; for I do not remember any parliamentary declaration
for continuing the war till Philip should be dethroned, before the year one
thousand seven hundred and six: and then such a declaration was judged necessary
to second the resolution of our ministers and our allies, in departing from
the principle of the grand alliance, and in proposing not only the reduction
of the French, but the conquest of the Spanish monarchy, as the objects of
the war. This new plan had taken place, and we had begun to act upon it,
two years before, when the treaty with Portugal was concluded, and the archduke
Charles, now emperor, was sent into Portugal first, and into Catalonia afterwards,
and was acknowledged and supported as king of Spain.




When your lordship peruses the anecdotes of the times here spoken of,
and considers the course and event of the great war which broke out on the
death of the king of Spain, Charles the Second, and was ended by the treaties
of Utrecht and Radstat; you will find, that in order to form a true judgment
on the whole, you must consider very attentively the great change made by
the new plan that I have mentioned; and compare it with the plan of the grand
alliance, relatively to the general interest of Europe, and the particular
interest of your own country. It will not, because it cannot, be denied,
that all the ends of the grand alliance might have been obtained by a peace
in one thousand seven hundred and six. I need not recall the events of that,
and the precedent years of the war. Not only the arms of France had been
defeated on every side, but the inward state of that kingdom was already
more exhausted than it had ever been. She went on indeed, but she staggered
and reeled under the burden of the war. Our condition, I speak of Great Britain,
was not quite so bad: but the char ge of the war increased annually upon
us. It was evident that this charge must continue to increase, and it was
no less evident that our nation was unable to bear it without falling soon
into such distress, and contracting such debts, as we have seen and felt,
and still feel. The Dutch neither restrained their trade, nor overloaded
it with taxes. They soon altered the proportion of their quotas, and were
deficient even after this alteration in them. But, however, it must be allowed,
that they exerted their whole strength; and they and we paid the whole charge
of the war. Since therefore by such efforts as could not be continued any
longer, without oppressing and impoverishing these nations to a degree that
no interest except that of their very being, nor any engagement of assisting
an alliance totis viribus can require, France was reduced, and all the ends
of the war were become attainable; it will be worth your lordship's while
to consider, why the true use was not made of the success of the confederates
against France and Spain, and why a peace was not concluded in the fifth
year of the war. When your lordship considers this, you will compare in your
thoughts what the state of Europe would have been, and that of your own country
might have been, if the plan of the grand alliance had been pursued; with
the possible as well as certain, the contingent as well as necessary, consequences
of changing this plan in the manner it was changed. You will be of opinion,
I think, and it seems to me, after more than twenty years of recollection,
re-examination, and reflection, that impartial posterity must be of the same
opinion; you will be of opinion, I think, that the war was wise and just
before the change, because necessary to maintain that equality among the
powers of Europe on which the public peace and common prosperity depends:
and that it was unwise and unjust after this change, because unnecessary
to this end, and directed to other and to contrary ends. You will be guided
by undeniable facts to discover, through all the false colors which have
been laid, and which deceived many at the time, that the war, after this
change, became a war of passion, of ambition, of avarice, and of private
interest; the private interest of particular persons and particular states;
to which the general interest of Europe was sacrificed so entirely, that
if the terms insisted on by the confederates has been granted, nay if even
those which France was reduced to grant, in one thousand seven hundred and
ten, had been accepted, such a new system of power would have been created
as might have exposed the balance of this power to deviations, and the peace
of Europe to troubles, not inferior to those that the war was designed; when
it began, to prevent. Whilst you observe this in general, you will find particular
occasion to lament the fate of Great Britain, in the midst of triumphs that
have been sounded so high. She had triumphed indeed to the year one thousand
seven hundred and six inclusively: but what were her triumphs afterwards?
What was her success after she proceeded on the new plan? I shall say something
on that head immediately. Here let me only say, that the glory of taking
towns, and winning battles, is to be measured by the utility that results
from those victories. Victories, that bring honor to the arms, may bring
shame to the councils, of a nation. To win a battle, to take a town, is the
glory of a general, and of an army. Of this glory we had a very lar ge share
in the course of the war. But the glory of a nation is to proportion the
end she proposes, to her interest and her strength; the means she employs,
to the ends she proposes, and the vigor she exerts, to both. Of this glory,
I apprehend, we have had very little to boast at any time, and particularly
in the great conjuncture of which I am speaking. The reasons of ambition,
avarice, and private interest, which engaged the princes and states of the
confederacy to depart from the principles of the grand alliance, were no
reasons for Great Britain. She neither expected nor desired any thing more
than what she might have obtained by adhering to those principles. What hurried
our nation, then, with so much spirit and ardor, into those of the new plan?
Your lordship will answer this question to yourself, I believe, by the prejudices
and rashness of party; by the influence that the first successes of the confederate
arms gave to our ministers; and the popularity that they gave, if I may say
so, to the war; by ancient and fresh resentments, which the unjust and violent
usurpations, in short the whole conduct of Louis the Fourteenth for forty
years together, his haughty treatment of other princes and states, and even
the style of his court, had created; and, to mention no more, by a notion,
groundless but prevalent, that he was and would be master as long as his
grandson was king of Spain, and that there could be no effectual measure
taken, though the grand alliance supposed that there might, to prevent a
future union of the two monarchies, as long as a prince of the house of Bourbon
sat on the Spanish throne. That such a notion should have prevailed, in the
first confusion of thoughts which the death and will of Charles the Second
produced, among the generality of men, who saw the fleets and armies of France
take possession of all the parts of the Spanish monarchy, is not to be wondered
at by those that consider how ill the generality of mankind are informed,
how incapable they are of judging, and yet how ready to pronounce judgment;
in fine, how inconsiderately they follow one another in any popular opinion
which the heads of party broach, or to which the first appearances of things
have given occasion. But, even at this time, the councils of England and
Holland did not entertain this notion. They acted on quite another, as might
be shown in many instances, if any other besides that of the grand alliance
was necessary. When these councils therefore seemed to entertain this notion
afterwards, and acted and took engagements to act upon it, we must conclude
that they had other motives. They could not have these; for they knew, that
as the Spaniards had been driven by the two treaties of partition to give
their monarchy to a prince of the house of Bourbon, so they were driven into
the arms of France by the war that we made to force a third upon them. If
we acted rightly on the principles of the grand alliance, they acted rightly
on those of the will: and if we could not avoid making an offensive war,
at the expense of forming and maintaining a vast confederacy, they could
not avoid purchasing the protection and assistance of France in a defensive
war, and especially in the beginning of it, according to what I have somewhere
observed already, by yielding to the authority and admitting the influence
of that court in all the affairs of their government. Our ministers knew
therefore, that if any inference was to be drawn from the first part of this
notion, it was for shortening, not prolonging, the war; for delivering the
Spaniards as soon as possible from habits of union and intimacy with France;
not for continuing them under the same necessity, till by length of time
these habits should be confirmed. As to the latter part of this notion, they
knew that it was false, and silly. Garth, the best natured ingenious wild
man I ever knew, might be in the right, when he said, in some of his poems




An Austrian prince alone

Is fit to nod upon a Spanish throne.




The setting an Austrian prince upon it was, no doubt, the surest expedient
to prevent a union of the two monarchies of France and Spain; just as setting
a prince of the house of Bourbon on that throne was the surest expedient
to prevent a union of the Imperial and Spanish crowns. But it was equally
false to say, in either case, that this was the sole expedient. It would
be no paradox, but a proposition easily proved, to advance, that if these
unions had been effectually provided against, the general interest of Europe
would have been little concerned whether Philip or Charles had nodded at
Madrid. It would be likewise no paradox to say, that the contingency of uniting
France and Spain under the same prince appeared more remote, about the middle
of the last great war, when the dethronement of Philip in favor of Charles
was made a condition of peace sine qua non than the contingency of a union
of the Imperial and Spanish crowns. Nay, I know not whether it would be a
paradox to affirm, that the expedient that was taken, and that was always
obvious to be taken, of excluding Philip and his race from the succession
of France, by creating an interest in all the other princes of the blood,
and by consequence a party in France itself, for their exclusion, whenever
the case should happen, was not in its nature more effectual than any that
could have been taken: and some must have been taken, not only to exclude
Charles from the empire whenever the case should happen that happened soon,
the death of his brother Joseph without issue male, but his posterity likewise
in all future vacancies of the imperial throne. The expedient that was taken
against Philip at the treaty of Utrecht, they who opposed the peace attempted
to ridicule; but some of them have had occasion since that time to see, though
the case has not happened, how effectual it would have been if it had: and
he, who should go about to ridicule it after our experience, would only make
himself ridiculous. Notwithstanding all this, he who transports himself back
to that time, must acknowledge, that the confederated powers in general could
not but be of Garth's mind, and think it more agreeable to the common interest
of Europe, that a branch of Austria, than a branch of Bourbon, should gather
the Spanish succession, and that the maritime powers, as they are called
impertinently enough with respect to the superiority of Great Britain, might
think it was for their particular interest to have a prince, dependent for
some time at least on them, king of Spain, rather than a prince whose dependence,
as long as he stood in any, must be naturally on France. I do not say, as
some have done, a prince whose family was an old ally, rather than a prince
whose family was an old enemy; because I lay no weight on the gratitude of
princes, and am as much persuaded that an Austrian king of Spain would have
made us returns of that sort in no other proportion than of his want of us,
as I am that Philip and his race will make no other returns of the same sort
to France. If this affair had been entire, therefore, on the death of the
king of Spain; if we had made no partition, nor he any will, the whole monarchy
of Spain would have been the prize to be fought for: and our wishes, and
such efforts as we were able to make, in the most unprovided condition imaginable,
must have been on the side of Austria. But it was far from being entire.
A prince of the house of Austria might have been on the spot, before the
king of Spain died, to gather his succession; but instead of this, a prince
of the house of Bourbon was there soon afterwards, and took possession of
the whole monarchy, to which he had been called by the late king's will,
and by the voice of the Spanish nation. The councils of England and Holland
therefore preferred very wisely, by their engagements in the grand alliance,
what was more practicable though less eligible, to what they deemed more
eligible, but saw become by the course of events, if not absolutely impracticable,
yet an enterprise of more length, more difficulty, and greater expense of
blood and treasure, than these nations were able to bear. or than they ought
to bear, when their security and that of the rest of Europe might be sufficiently
provided for at a cheaper rate. If the confederates could not obtain, by
the force of their arms, the ends of the war, laid down in the grand alliance,
to what purpose would it be to stipulate for more? And if they were able
to obtain these, it was evident that, whilst they dismembered the Spanish
monarchy, they must reduce the power of France. This happened; the Low Countries
were conquered; the French were driven out of Germany and Italy: and Louis
the Fourteenth, who had so long and so lately set mankind at defiance, was
reduced to sue for peace. If it had been granted him in one thousand seven
hundred and six, on what foot must it have been granted? The allies had already
in their power all the states that were to compose the teasonable satisfaction
for the emperor. I say, in their power. because though Naples and Sicily
were not actually reduced at that time, yet the expulsion of the French out
of Italy, and the disposition of the people of these kingdoms, considered,
it was plain the allies might reduce them when they pleased. The confederate
arms were superior till then in Spain, and several provinces acknowledged
Charles the Third. If the rest had been yielded to him by treaty, all that
the new plan required had been obtained. If the French would not yet have
abandoned Philip, as we had found that the Castilians would not even when
our army was at Madrid, all that the old plan, the plan of the grand alliance
required, had been obtained; but still France and Spain had given nothing
to purchase a peace, and they were in circumstances, not to expect it without
purchasing it. They would have purchased it, my lord: and France, as well
as Spain, would have contributed a larger share of the price, rather than
continue the war, in her exhausted state. Such a treaty of peace would have
been a third treaty of partition indeed, but vastly preferable to the two
former. The great objection to the former was drawn from that considerable
increase of dominion, which the crown of France, and not a branch of the
house of Bourbon, acquired by them. I know what may be said speciously enough
to persuade, that such an increase of dominion would not have augmented,
but would rather have weakened the power of France, and what examples may
be drawn from history to countenance such an opinion. I know likewise, that
the compact figure of France, and the contiguity of all her provinces, make
a very essential part of the force of her monarchy. Had the designs of Charles
the Eighth, Louis the Twelfth, Francis the First, and Henry the Second, succeeded,
the dominions of France, would have been more extensive, and I believe the
strength of her monarchy would have been less. I have sometimes thought that
even the loss of the battle of St. Quentin, which obliged Henry the Second
to recall the Duke of Guise with his army out of Italy, was in this respect
no unhappy event. But the reasoning which is good, I think, when applied
to those times, will not hold when applied to ours, and to the case I consider
here; the state of France, the state of her neighbors, and the whole constitution
of Europe being so extremely different. The objection therefore to the two
treaties of partition had a real weight. The power of France, deemed already
exorbitant, would have been increased by this accession of dominion in the
hands of Louis the Fourteenth: and the use he intended to make of it, by
keeping Italy and Spain in awe, appears in the article that gave him the
ports on the Tuscan coast, and the province of Guipuscoa. This king William
might, and, I question not, did see; but that prince might think too, that
for this very reason Louis the Fourteenth would adhere, in all events, to
the treaty of partition: and that these consequences were more remote, and
would be less dangerous, than those of making no partition at all. The partition,
even the worst that might have been made, by a treaty of peace in one thousand
seven hundred and six, would have been the very reverse of this. France would
have been weakened, and her enemies strengthened, by her concessions on the
side of the Low Countries, of Germany and Savoy. If a prince of her royal
family had remained in possession of Spain and the West Indies, no advantage
would have accrued to her by it, and effectual bars would have been opposed
to an union of the two monarchies. The house of Austria would have had a
reasonable satisfaction for that shadow of right, which a former partition
gave her. She had no other after the will of Charles the Second: and this
may be justly termed a shadow, since England, Holland, and France could confer
no real right to the Spanish succession, nor to any part of it. She had declined
acceding to that partition, before France departed from it, and would have
preferred the Italian provinces, without Spain and the West Indies, to Spain
and the West Indies without the Italian provinces. The Italian provinces
would have fallen to her share by this partition. The particular demands
of England and Holland would have suffered no difficulty, and those that
we were obliged by treaty to make for others would have been easy to adjust.
Would not this have been enough, my lord, for the public security, for the
common interest, and for the glory of our arms? To have humbled and reduced,
in five campaigns, a power that had disturbed and insulted Europe almost
forty years; to have restored, in so short a time, the balance of power in
Europe to a sufficient point of equality, after it had been more than fifty
years, that is from the treaty of Westphalia, in a gradual deviation from
this point; in short to have retrieved, in one thousand seven hundred and
six, a game that was become desperate at the beginning of the century. To
have done all this, before the war had exhausted our strength, was the utmost
sure that any man could desire who intended the public good alone: and no
honest reason ever was, nor ever will be given, why the war was protracted
any longer; why we neither made peace after a short, vigorous, and successful
war, nor put it entirely out of the power of France to continue at any rate
a long one. I have said, and it is true, that this had been entirely out
of her power, if we had given greater interruption to the commerce of Old
and New Spain, and if we had hindered France from importing annually, from
the year one thousand seven hundred and two, such immense treasures as she
did import by the ships she sent, with the permission of Spain, to the South
Sea. It has been advanced, and it is a common opinion, that we were restrained
by the jealousy of the Dutch from making use of the liberty given by treaty
to them and us, and which, without his imperial majesty's leave, since we
entered into the war, we might have taken, of making conquests in the Spanish
West Indies. Be it so. But to go to the South Seas, to trade there if we
could, to pillage the West Indies without making conquests if we could not,
and, whether we traded or whether we pillaged, to hinder the French from
trading there; was a measure that would have given, one ought to think, no
jealousy to the Dutch, who might, and it is to be supposed would, have taken
their part in these expeditions; or if it had given them jealousy, what could
they have replied when a British minister had told them, "That it little
became them to find fault that we traded with or pillaged the Spaniards in
the West Indies to the detriment of our common enemy, whilst we connived
at them who traded with this enemy to his and their great advantage, against
our remonstrances, and in violation of the condition upon which we had given
the first augmentation of our forces in the Low Countries?" We might
have pursued this measure notwithstanding any engagement that we took by
the treaty with Portugal, if I remember that treaty right: but instead of
this, we wasted our forces, and squandered millions after millions in supporting
our alliance with this crown, and in pursuing the chimerical project which
was made the object of this alliance. I call it chimerical, because it was
equally so, to expect a revolution in favor of Charles the Third on the slender
authority of such a trifler as the admiral of Castile; and, when this failed
us, to hope to conquer Spain by the assistance of the Portuguese, and the
revolt of the Catalans. Yet this was the foundation upon which the new plan
of the war was built, and so many ruinous engagements were taken.




The particular motives of private men, as well as of princes and states,
to protract the war, are partly known, and partly guessed, at this time.
But whenever that time comes, and I am persuaded it will come, when their
secret motives, their secret designs, and intrigues, can be laid open, I
presume to say to your lordship that the most confused scene of iniquity,
and folly, that it is possible to imagine, will appear. In the mean while,
if your lordship considers only the treaty of barrier, as my lord Townshend
signed it, without, nay in truth, against orders; for the Duke of Marlborough,
though joint plenipotentiary, did not: if you consider the famous preliminaries
of one thousand seven hundred and nine, which we made a mock-show of ratifying,
though we knew that they would not be accepted; for so the Marquis of Torcy
had told the pensionary before he left the Hague, as the said Marquis has
assured me very often since that time: if you inquire into the anecdotes
of Gertruydenberg, and if you consult other authenic papers that are extant,
your lordship will see the policy of the new plan, I think, in this light.
Though we had refused, before the war began, to enter into engagements for
the conquest of Spain, yet as soon as it began, when the reason of things
was still the same, for the success of our first campaign cannot be said
to have altered it, we entered into these very engagements. By the treaty
wherein we took these engagements first, Portugal was brought into the grand
alliance; that is, she consented to employ her formidable forces against
Philip, at the expense of England and Holland, provided we would debar ourselves
from making any acquisitions, and the house of Austria promised, that she
should acquire many important places in Spain, and an immense extent of country
in America. By such bargains as this, the whole confederacy was formed, and
held together. Such means were indeed effectual to multiply enemies to France
and Spain; but a project so extensive and so difficult as to make many bargains
of this kind necessary, and necessary for a great number of years, and for
a very uncertain event, was a project into which, for this very reason, England
and Holland should not have entered. It is worthy your Observation, my lord,
that these bad bargains would not have been continued, as they were almost
to our immediate ruin, if the war had not been protracted under the pretended
necessity of reducing the whole Spanish monarchy to the obedience of the
house of Austria. Now, as no other confederate except Portugal was to receive
his recompense by any dismemberment of dominions in Old or New Spain, the
engagements we took to conquer this whole monarchy had no visible necessary
cause, but the procuring the accession of this power, that was already neuter,
to the grand alliance. This accession, as I have said before, served only
to make us neglect immediate and certain advantages, for remote and uncertain
hopes; and choose to attempt the conquest of the Spanish nation at our own
vast expense, whom we might have starved, and by starving reduced both the
French and them, at their expense.




I called the necessity of reducing the whole Spanish monarchy to the obedience
of the house of Austria, a pretended necessity: and pretended it was, not
real, without doubt. But I am apt to think your lordship may go further,
and find some reasons to suspect, that the opinion itself of this necessity
was not very real, in the minds of those who urged it: in the minds I would
say of the able men among them; for that it was real in some of our zealous
British politicians, I do them the justice to believe. Your lordship may
find reasons to suspect perhaps, that this opinion was set up rather to occasion
a diversion of the forces of France, and to furnish pretences for prolonging
the war for other ends.




Before the year one thousand seven hundred and ten, the war was kept alive
with alternate success in Spain; and it may be said, therefore, that the
design of conquering this kingdom continued, as well as the hopes of succeeding.
But why then did the States General refuse, in one thousand seven hundred
and nine, to admit an article in the barrier treaty, by which they would
have obliged themselves to procure the whole Spanish monarchy to the house
of Austria, when that zealous politician my Lord Townshend pressed them to
it? If their opinion of the necessity of carrying on the war, till this point
could be obtained, was real; why did they risk the immense advantages given
them with so much profuse generosity by this treaty, rather than consent
to an engagement that was so conformable to their opinion?




After the year one thousand seven hundred and ten, it will not be said,
I presume, that the war could be supported in Spain with any prospect of
advantage on our side. We had sufficiently experienced how little dependence
could be had on the vigor of the Portuguese; and how firmly the Spanish nation
in general, the Castilians in particular, were attached to Philip. Our armies
had been twice at Madrid, this prince had been twice driven from his capital,
his rival had been there, none stirred in favor of the victorious, all wished
and acted for the vanquished. In short, the falsehood of all those lures,
by which we had been enticed to make war in Spain, had appeared sufficiently
in one thousand seven hundred and six; but was so grossly evident in one
thousand seven hundred and ten, that Mr Craggs, who was sent towards the
end of that year by Mr Stanhope into England, on commissions which he executed
with much good sense and much address, owned to me, that in Mr Stanhope's
opinion, and he was not apt to despond of success, especially in the execution
of his own projects, nothing could be done more in Spain, the general attachment
of the people to Philip, and their aversion to Charles considered: that armies
of twenty or thirty thousand men might walk about that country till dooms
day, so he expressed himself, without effect: that wherever they came, the
people would submit to Charles the Third out of terror, and as soon as they
were gone, proclaim Philip the Fifth again out of affection: that to conquer
Spain required a great army; and to keep it, a greater. Was it possible,
after this, to think in good earnest of conquering Spain, and could they
be in good earnest who continued to hold the same language, and to insist
on the same measures? Could they be so in the following year, when the emperor
Joseph died? Charles was become then the sole surviving male of the house
of Austria, and succeeded to the empire as well as to all the hereditary
dominions of that family. Could they be in earnest who maintained, even in
this conjuncture, that "no peace could be safe, honorable, or lasting,
so long as the kingdom of Spain and the West Indies remained in the possession
of any branch of the house of Bourbon?" Did they mean that Charles should
be emperor and king of Spain? In this project they would have had the allies
against them. Did they mean to call the Duke of Savoy to the crown of Spain,
or to bestow it on some other prince? In this project they would have had
his imperial majesty against them. In either case the confederacy would have
been broken: and how then would they have continued the war? Did they mean
nothing, or did they mean something more than they owned, something more
than to reduce the exorbitant power of France, and to force the whole Spanish
monarchy out of the house of Bourbon?




Both these ends might have been obtained at Gertruydenberg. Why were they
not obtained? Read the preliminaries of one thousand seven hundred and nine,
which were made the foundation of this treaty. Inform yourself of what passed
there, and observe what followed. Your lordship will remain astonished. I
remain so every time I reflect upon them, though I saw these things at no
very great distance, even whilst they were in transaction; and though I know
most certainly that France lost, two years before, by the little skill and
address of her principal minister, in answering overtures made during the
siege of Lisle by a principal person among the allies, such an opportunity,
and such a correspondence, as would have removed some of the obstacles that
lay now in her way, have prevented others, and have procured her peace. An
equivalent for the thirty-seventh article of the preliminaries, that is,
for the cession of Spain and the West Indies, was the point to be discussed
at Gertruydenberg. Naples and Sicily, or even Naples and Sardinia would have
contented the French, at least they would have accepted them as the equivalent.
Buys and Vanderdussen, who treated with them, reported this to the ministers
of the allies: and it was upon this occasion that the Duke of Marlborough,
as Buys himself told me, took immediately the lead, and congratulated the
assembly on the near approach of a peace; said, that since the French were
in this disposition, it was time to consider what further demands should
be made upon them, according to the liberty reserved in the preliminaries;
and exhorted all the ministers of the allies to adjust their several ulterior
pretensions, and to prepare their demands.




This proceeding, and what followed, put me in mind of that of the Romans
with the Carthaginians. The former were resolved to consent to no peace till
Carthage was laid in ruins. They set a treaty however on foot, at the request
of their old enemy, imposed some terms, and referred them to their generals
for the rest. Their generals pursued the same method, and, by reserving still
a right of making ulterior demands, they reduced the Carthaginians at last
to the necessity of abandoning their city, or of continuing the war after
they had given up their arms, their machines, and their fleet, in hopes of
peace.




France saw the snare, and resolved to run any risk rather than to be caught
in it. We continued to demand, under pretence of securing the cession of
Spain and the West Indies, that Louis the Fourteenth should take on him to
dethrone his grandson in the space of two months; and if he did not effect
it in that time, that we should be at liberty to renew the war without restoring
the places that were to be put into our hands according to the preliminaries;
which were the most important places France possessed on the side of the
Low Countries. Louis offered to abandon his grandson; and, if he could not
prevail on him to resign, to furnish money to the allies, who might at the
expense of France force him to evacuate Spain. The proposition made by the
allies had an air of inhumanity: and the rest of mankind might be shocked
to see the grandfather obliged to make war on his grandson. But Louis the
Fourteenth had treated mankind with too much inhumanity in his prosperous
days, to have any reason to complain even of this proposition. His people,
indeed, who are apt to have great partiality for their kings, might pity
his distress. This happened, and he found his account in it. Philip must
have evacuated Spain, I think, notwithstanding his own obstinacy, the spirit
of his queen, and the resolute attachment of the Spaniards, if his grandfather
had insisted, and been in earnest to force him. But if this expedient was,
as it was, odious, why did we prefer to continue the war against France and
Spain, rather than accept the other? why did we neglect the opportunity of
reducing, effectually and immediately, the exorbitant power of France, and
of rendering the conquest of Spain practicable? both which might have been
brought about, and consequently the avowed ends of the war might have been
answered, by accepting the expedient that France offered. "France,"
it was said, "was not sincere: she meant nothing more than to amuse,
and divide." This reason was given at the time; but some of those who
gave it then, I have seen ashamed to insist on it since. France was not in
a condition to act the part she had acted in former treaties: and her distress
was no bad pledge of her sincerity on this occasion. But there was a better
still. The strong places that she must have put into the hands of the allies,
would have exposed her, on the least breach of faith, to see, not her frontier
alone, but even the provinces that lie behind it, desolated: and prince Eugene
might have had the satisfaction, it is said, I know not how truly, he desired,
of marching with the torch in his hand to Versailles.




Your lordship will observe, that the conferences at Gertruydenberg ending
in the manner they did, the inflexibility of the allies gave new life and
spirit to the French and Spanish nations, distressed and exhausted as they
were. The troops of the former withdrawn out of Spain, and the Spaniards
left to defend themselves as they could, the Spaniards alone obliged us to
retreat from Madrid, and defeated us in our retreat. But your lordship may
think perhaps, as I do, that if Louis the Fourteenth had bound himself by
a solemn treaty to abandon his grandson, had paid a subsidy to dethrone him,
and had consented to acknowledge another king of Spain, the Spaniards would
not have exerted the same zeal for Philip; the actions of Almenara and Saragossa
might have been decisive, and those of Brihuega and Villa Viciosa would not
have happened. After all these events, how could any reasonable man expect
that a war should be supported with advantage in Spain, to which the court
of Vienna had contributed nothing from the first, scarce bread to their archduke;
which Portugal waged faintly and with deficient quotas; and which the Dutch
had in a manner renounced, by neglecting to recruit their forces? How was
Charles to be placed on the Spanish throne, or Philip at least to be driven
out of it? By the success of the confederate arms in other parts. But what
success, sufficient to this purpose, could we expect? This question may be
answered best, by showing what success we had.




Portugal and Savoy did nothing before the death of the emperor Joseph;
and declared in form, as soon as he was dead, that they would carry on the
war no longer to set the crown of Spain on the head of Charles, since this
would be to fight against the very principle they had fought for. The Rhine
was a scene of inaction. The sole efforts, that were to bring about the great
event of dethroning Philip, were those which the Duke of Marlborough was
able to make. He took three towns in one thousand seven hundred and ten,
Aire, Methune, and St. Venant: and one, Bouchain, in one thousand seven hundred
and eleven. Now this conquest being in fact the only one the confederates
made that year, Bouchain may be said properly and truly to have cost our
nation very near seven millions sterling: for your lordship will find, I
believe, that the charge of the war for that year amounted to no less. It
is true that the Duke of Marlborough had proposed a very great project, by
which incursions would have been made during the winter into France; the
next campaign might have been opened early on our side; and several other
great and obvious advantages might have been obtained: but the Dutch refused
to contribute, even less than their proportion, for the queen had offered
to take the deficiency on herself, to the expense of barracks and forage;
and disappointed by their obstinacy the whole design.




We were then amused with visionary schemes of marching our whole army,
in a year or two more, and after a town or two more were taken, directly
to Paris, or at least in the heart of France. But was this so easy or so
sure a game? The French expected we would play it. Their generals had visited
the several posts they might take, when our army should enter France, to
retard, to incommode, to distress us in our march, and even to make a decisive
stand and to give us battle. I take what I say here from indisputable authority,
that of the persons consulted and employed in preparing for this great distress.
Had we been beaten, or had we been forced to retire towards our own frontier
in the Low Countries, after penetrating into France, the hopes on which we
protracted the war would have been disappointed, and, I think, the most sanguine,
would have then repented refusing the offers made at Gertruydenberg. But
if we had beaten the French, for it was scarcely lawful in those days of
our presumption to suppose the contrary; would the whole monarchy of Spain
have been our immediate and certain prize? Suppose, and I suppose it on good
grounds, my lord, that the French had resolved to defend their country inch
by inch, and that Louis the Fourteenth had determined to retire with his
court to Lyons or elsewhere, and to defend the passage of the Loire, when
he could no longer defend that of the Seine, rather than submit to the terms
imposed on him: what should we have done in this case? Must we not have accepted
such a peace as we had refused; or have protracted the war till we had conquered
France first, in order to conquer Spain afterwards? Did we hope for revolutions
in France? We had hoped for them in Spain: and we should have been bubbles
of our hopes in both. That there was a spirit raised against the government
of Louis the Fourteenth, in his court, nay, in his family, and that strange
schemes of private ambition were formed and forming there, I cannot doubt:
and some effects of this spirit produced perhaps the greatest mortifications
that he suffered in the latter part of his reign.




A light instance of this spirit is all I will quote at this time. I supped,
in the year one thousand seven hundred and fifteen, at a house in France,
where two persons, of no small figure, who had been in great company that
night, arrived very late. The conversation turned on the events of the precedent
war, and the negotiations of the late peace. In the process of the conversation
one of them broke loose, and said, directing his discourse to me, "Vous
auriez pu nous écraser dans ce tems-là: pourquoi ne l'avez-vous
pas fait?" I answered him coolly, "Par ce que dans ce tems-là
nous n'avons plus craint vôtre puissance." This anecdote, too
trivial for history, may find its place in a letter, and may serve to confirm
what I have admitted, that there were persons even in France, who expected
to find their private account in the distress of their country. But these
persons were a few men of wild imaginations and strong passions, more enterprising
than capable, and of more name than credit. In general the endeavors of Louis
the Fourteenth, and the sacrifices he offered to make in order to obtain
a peace, had attached his people more than ever to him: and if Louis had
determined not to go any farther than he had offered at Gertruydenberg, in
abandoning his grandson, the French nation would not have abandoned him.




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 I
rather 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. I say at home and abroad:
because it is not less true, that they have sacrificed the wealth of their
country to the forming and maintaining a party at home, than that they have
done so to the forming and maintaining, beyond all pretences of necessity,
alliances abroad. These general assertions may be easily justified without
having recourse to private anecdotes, as your lordship will find when you
consider the whole series of our conduct in the two wars; in that which preceded,
and that which succeeded immediately the beginning of the present century,
but above all in the last of them. In the administrations that preceded the
revolution, trade had flourished, and our nation had grown opulent: but the
general interest of Europe had been too much neglected by us; and slavery,
under the umbrage of prerogative, had been well-nigh established among us.
In those that have followed, taxes upon taxes, and debts upon debts, have
been perpetually accumulated, till a small number of families have grown
into immense wealth, and national beggary has been brought upon us; under
the specious pretence of supporting a common cause against France, reducing
her exorbitant power, and poising that of Europe more equally in the public
balance: laudable designs no doubt, as far as they were real, but such as,
being converted into mere pretences, have been productive of much evil; some
of which we feel and have long felt, and some will extend its consequences
to our latest posterity. The reign of prerogative was short: and the evils
and the dangers, to which we were exposed by it, ended with it. But the reign
of false and squandering policy has lasted long, it lasts still, and will
finally complete our ruin. Beggary has been the consequence of slavery in
some countries: slavery will be probably the consequence of beggary in ours;
and if it is so, we know at whose door to lay it. If we had finished the
war in one thousand seven hundred and six, we should have reconciled, like
a wise people, our foreign and our domestic interests as nearly as possible:
we should have secured the former sufficiently, and not have sacrificed the
later as entirely as we did by the prosecution of the war afterwards. You
will not be able to see without astonishment, how the charge of the war increased
yearly upon us from the beginning of it; nor how immense a sum we paid in
the course of it to supply the deficiencies of our confederates. Your astonishment,
and indignation too, will increase when you come to compare the progress
that was made from the year one thousand seven hundred and six exclusively,
with the expense of more than thirty millions, I do not exaggerate though
I write upon memory, that this progress cost us to the year one thousand
seven hundred and eleven inclusively Upon this view your lordship will be
persuaded that it was high time to take the resolution of making peace, when
the queen thought fit to change her ministry towards the end of the year
one thousand seven hundred and ten. It was high time indeed to save our country
from absolute insolvency and bankruptcy, by putting an end to a scheme of
conduct, which the prejudices of a party, the whimsy of some particular men,
the private interest of more, and the ambition and avarice of our allies,
who had been invited as it were to a scramble by the preliminaries of one
thousand seven hundred and nine, alone maintained. The persons, therefore,
who came into power at this time, hearkened, and they did well to hearken,
to the first overtures that were made them. The disposition of their enemies
invited them to do so, but that of their friends, and that of a party at
home who had nursed, and been nursed by the war, might have deterred them
from it; for the difficulties and dangers to which they must be exposed in
carrying forward this great work, could escape none of them. In a letter
to a friend, it may be allowed me to say, that they did not escape me: and
that I foresaw, as contingent but not improbable events, a good part of what
has happened to me since. Though it was a duty, therefore, that we owed to
our country, to deliver her from the necessity of bearing any longer so unequal
a part in so unnecessary a war, yet Was there some degree of merit in performing
it. I think so strongly in this manner, I am so incorrigible, my lord, that
if I could be placed in the same circumstances again, I would take the same
resolution, and act the same part. Age and experience might enable me to
act with more ability, and greater skill; but all I have suffered since the
death of the queen should not hinder me from acting. Notwithstanding this,
I shall not be surprised if you think that the peace of Utrecht was not answerable
to the success of the war, nor to the efforts made in it. I think so myself,
and have always owned, even when it was making and made, that I thought so.
Since we had committed a successful folly, we ought to have reaped more advantage
from it than we did: and, whether we had left Philip, or placed another prince
on the throne of Spain, we ought to have reduced the power of France, and
to have strengthened her neighbors much more than we did. We ought to have
reduced her power for generations to come, and not to have contented ourselves
with a momentary reduction of it. France was exhausted to a great degree
of men and money, and her government had no credit: but they, who took this
for a sufficient reduction of her power, looked but a little way before them,
and reasoned too superficially. Several such there were however; for as it
has been said, that there is no extravagancy which some philosopher or other
has not maintained, so your experience, young as you are, must have shown
you, that there is no absurd extreme, into which our party politicians of
Great Britain are not prone to fall, concerning the state and conduct of
public affairs. But if France was exhausted, so were we, and so were the
Dutch. Famine rendered her condition much more miserable than ours, at one
time, in appearance and in reality too. But as soon as this accident, that
had distressed the French and frightened Louis the Fourteenth to the utmost
degree, and the immediate consequences of it were over; it was obvious to
observe, though few made the observation, that whilst we were unable to raise
in a year, by some millions at least, the expenses of the year, the French
were willing and able to bear the imposition of the tenth, over and above
all the other taxes that had been laid upon them. This observation had the
weight it deserved; and surely it deserved to have some among those who made
it, at the time spoken of, and who did not think that the war was to be continued
as long as a parliament could be prevailed on to vote money. But supposing
it to have deserved none, supposing the power of France to have been reduced
as low as you please, with respect to her inward state, yet still I affirm,
that such a reduction could not be permanent, and was not therefore sufficient.
Whoever knows the nature of her government, the temper of her people, and
the natural advantages she has in commerce over all the nations that surround
her, knows that an arbitrary government, and the temper of her people enable
her on particular occasions to throw off a load of debt much more easily,
and with consequences much less to be feared, than any of her neighbors can:
that although in the general course of things, trade be cramped and industry
vexed by this arbitrary government, yet neither one nor the other is oppressed;
and the temper of the people, and the natural advantages of the country,
are such, that how great soever her distress be at any point of time, twenty
years of tranquillity suffice to re-establish her affairs, and to enrich
her again at the expense of all the nations of Europe. If any one doubts
of this, let him consider the condition in which this kingdom was left by
Louis the Fourteenth: the strange pranks the late Duke of Orleans played,
during his regency and administration, with the system of public revenue,
and private property: and then let him tell himself that the revenues of
France, the tenth taken off, exceed all the expenses of her government by
many millions of livres already, and will exceed them by many more in another
year.




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:
and I remember with how much inward impatience I assisted at conferences
held with him concerning quotas for renewing the war in Spain, in the very
same room, at the Cockpit, where the queen's ministers had been told in plain
terms, a little before, by those of other allies, "that their masters
would not consent that the Imperial and Spanish crowns should unite on the
same head." That the Dutch were not averse to all treaty, but meant
none wherein Great Britain was to have any particular advantage, will appear
from this; that their minister declared himself ready and authorised to stop
the opposition made to the queen's measures, by presenting a memorial, wherein
he would declare, "that his masters entered into them, and were resolved
not to continue the war for the recovery of Spain, provided the queen would
consent that they should garrison Gibraltar and Port Mahon jointly with us,
and share equally the Assiento, the South Sea ship, and whatever should be
granted by the Spaniards to the queen and her subjects." That the whigs
engaged in this league with foreign powers against their country, as well
as their queen, and with a phrensy more unaccountable than that which made
and maintained the solemn league and covenant formerly, will appear from
this; that their attempts were directed not only to wrest the negotiations
out of the queen's hands, but to oblige their country to carry on the war,
on the same unequal foot that had cost her already about twenty millions
more than she ought to have contributed to it. For they not only continued
to abet the emperor, whose inability to supply his quota was confessed; but
the Dutch likewise, after the States had refused to ratify the treaty their
minister signed at London towards the end of the year one thousand seven
hundred and eleven, and by which the queen united herself more closely than
ever to them; engaging to pursue the war, to conclude the peace, and to guaranty
it, when concluded, jointly with them; "provided they would keep the
engagements they had taken with her, and the conditions of proportionate
expense under which our nation had entered into the war." Upon such
schemes as these was the opposition to the treaty of Utrecht carried on:
and the means employed, and the means projected to be employed, were worthy
of such schemes; open, direct, and indecent defiance of legal authority,
secret conspiracies against the state, and base machinations against particular
men, who had no other crime than that of endeavoring to conclude a war, under
the authority of the queen, which a party in the nation endeavored to prolong
against her authority. Had the good policy of concluding the war been doubtful,
it was certainly as lawful for those, who thought it good, to advise it,
as it had been for those who thought it bad, to advise the contrary: and
the decision of the sovereign on the throne ought to have terminated the
contest. But he who had judged by the appearances of things on one side,
at that time, would have been apt to think, that putting an end to the war,
or to Magna Charta, was the same thing; that the queen on the throne had
no right to govern independently of her successor; nor any of her subjects
a right to administer the government under her, though called to it by her,
except those whom she had thought fit to lay aside. Extravagant as these
principles are, no other could justify the conduct held at that time by those
who opposed the peace: and as I said just now, that the phrensy of this league
was more unaccountable than that of the solemn league and covenant, I might
have added, that it was not very many degrees less criminal. Some of these,
who charged the queen's ministers, after her death, with imaginary treasons,
had been guilty during her life of real treasons: and I can compare the folly
and violence of the spirit that prevailed at that time, both before the conclusion
of the peace, and, under pretence of danger to the succession, after it,
to nothing more nearly than to the folly and violence of the spirit that
seized the tories soon after the accession of George the First. The latter
indeed, which was provoked by unjust and impolitic persecution, broke out
in open rebellion. The former might have done so, if the queen had lived
a little longer. But to return.




The obstinate adherence of the Dutch to this league, in opposition to
the queen, rendered the conferences of Utrecht, when they were opened, no
better than mock conferences. Had the men who governed that commonwealth
been wise and honest enough to unite, at least then, cordially with the queen,
and, since they could not hinder a congress, to act in concert with her in
it; we should have been still in time to maintain a sufficient union among
the allies, and a sufficient superiority over the French. All the specific
demands that the former made, as well as the Dutch themselves, either to
incumber the negotiation, or to have in reserve, according to the artifice
usually employed on such occasions, certain points from which to depart in
the course of it with advantage, would not have been obtained: but all the
essential demands, all in particular that were really necessary to secure
the barriers in the Low Countries and of the four circles against France,
would have been so. For France must have continued, in this case, rather
to sue for peace, than to treat on an equal foot. The first dauphin, son
of Louis the Fourteenth, died several months before this congress began:
the second dauphin, his grandson, and the wife and the eldest son of this
prince, died, soon after it began, of the same unknown distemper, and were
buried together in the same grave. Such family misfortunes, following a long
series of national misfortunes, made the old king, though he bore them with
much seeming magnanimity, desirous to get out of the war at any tolerable
rate, that he might not run the risk of leaving a child of five years old,
the present king, engaged in it. The queen did all that was morally possible,
except giving up her honor in the negotiation, and the interests of her subjects
in the conditions of peace, to procure this union with the States General.
But all she could do was vain; and the same phrensy that had hindered the
Dutch from improving to their and to the common advantage the public misfortunes
of France, hindered them from improving to the same purposes the private
misfortunes of the house of Bourbon. They continued to flatter themselves
that they should force the queen out of her measures, by their intrigues
with the party in Britain who opposed these measures, and even raise an insurrection
against her. But these intrigues, and those of prince Eugene, were known
and disappointed; and Monsieur Buys had the mortification to be reproached
with them publicly, when he came to take leave of the lords of the council,
by the Earl of Oxford; who entered into many particulars that could not be
denied, of the private transactions of this sort, to which Buys had been
a party, in compliance with his instructions, and, as I believe, much against
his own sense and inclinations. As the season for taking the field advanced,
the league proposed to defeat the success of the congress by the events of
the campaign. But instead of defeating the success of the congress, the events
of the campaign served only to turn this success in favor of France. At the
beginning of the year, the queen, and the States, in concert, might have
given the law to friend and foe, with great advantage to the former; and
with such a detriment to the later, as the causes of the war rendered just,
the events of it reasonable, and the objects of it necessary. At the end
of the year, the allies were no longer in a state of giving, nor the French
of receiving the law; and the Dutch had recourse to the queen's good offices,
when they could oppose and durst insult her no longer. Even then, these offices
were employed with zeal, and with some effect, for them.




Thus the war ended, much more favorably to France than she expected, or
they who put an end to it designed. The queen would have humbled and weakened
this power. The allies who opposed her would have crushed it, and have raised
another as exorbitant on the ruins of it. Neither one nor the other succeeded,
and they who meant to ruin the French power, preserved it, by opposing those
who meant to reduce it.




Since I have mentioned the events of the year one thousand seven hundred
and twelve, and the decisive turn they gave to the negotiations in favor
of France, give me leave to say something more on this subject. You will
find that I shall do so with much impartiality. The disastrous events of
this campaign in the Low Countries, and the consequences of them have been
imputed to the separation of the British troops from the army of the allies.
The clamor against this measure was great at that time, and the prejudices
which this clamor raised are great still among some men. But as clamor raised
these prejudices, other prejudices gave birth to this clamor: and it is no
wonder they should do so among persons bent on continuing the war; since
I own very freely, that when the first step that led to this separation came
to my knowledge, which was not an hour, by the way, before I wrote by the
queen's order to the Duke of Ormond, in the very words in which the order
was advised and given, "that he should not engage in any siege, nor
hazard a battle, till further order," I was surprised and hurt. So much,
that if I had had an opportunity of speaking in private to the queen, after
I had received Monsieur De Torcy's letter to me on the subject, and before
she went into the council, I should have spoken to her, I think, in the first
heat, against it. The truth is, however, that the step was justifiable at
that point of time in every respect, and therefore that the consequences
are to be charged to the account of those who drew them on themselves, not
to the account of the queen, nor of the minister who advised her. The step
was justifiable to the allies surely, since the queen took no more upon her,
no not so much, by far, in making it, as many of them had done by suspending,
or endangering, or defeating operations in the heat of the war, when they
declined to send their troops, or delayed the march of them, or neglected
the preparations they were obliged to make, on the most frivolous pretences.
Your lordship will find in the course of your inquiries many particular instances
of what is here pointed out in general. But I cannot help descending into
some few of those that regard the emperor and the States General, who cried
the loudest and with the most effect, though they had the least reason, on
account of their own conduct, to complain of the queen's. With what face
could the emperor, for instance, presume to complain of the orders sent to
the Duke of Ormond? I say nothing of his deficiencies, which were so great,
that he had at this very time little more than one regiment that could be
said properly to act against France and Spain at his sole charge; as I affirmed
to prince Eugene before the lords of the council, and demonstrated upon paper
the next day. I say nothing of all that preceded the year one thousand seven
hundred and seven, on which I should have much to say. But I desire your
lordship only to consider, what you will find to have passed after the famous
year one thousand seven hundred and six. Was it with the queen's approbation,
or against her will, that the emperor made the treaty for the evacuation
of Lombardy, and let out so great a number of French regiments time enough
to recruit themselves at home, to march into Spain, and to destroy the British
forces at Almanza? Was it with her approbation, or against her will, that,
instead of employing all his forces and all his endeavors, to make the greatest
design of the whole war, the enterprise on Toulon, succeed, he detached twelve
thousand men to reduce the kingdom of Naples, that must have fallen of course?
and that an opportunity of ruining the whole maritime force of France, and
of ruining or subduing her provinces on that side, was lost, merely by this
unnecessary diversion, and by the conduct of prince Eugene, which left no
room to doubt that he gave occasion to this fatal disappointment on purpose,
and in concert with the court of Vienna?




Turn your eyes, my lord, on the conduct of the States, and you will find
reason to be astonished at the arrogance of the men who governed in them
at this time, and who presumed to exclaim against a queen of Great Britain,
for doing what their deputies had done more than once in that very country,
and in the course of that very war. In the year one thousand seven hundred
and twelve, at the latter end of a war, when conferences for treating a peace
were opened, when the least sinister event in the field would take off from
that superiority which the allies had in the congress, and when the past
success of the war had already given them as much of this superiority as
they wanted, to obtain a safe, advantageous, honorable, and lasting peace,
the queen directed her general to suspend till further order the operations
of her troops. In one thousand seven hundred and three, in the beginning
of a war, when something was to be risked or no success to be expected, and
when the bad situation of affairs in Germany and Italy required, in a particular
manner, that efforts should be made in the Low Countries, and that the war
should not languish there whilst it was unsuccessful everywhere else; the
Duke of Marlborough determined to attack the French, but the Dutch deputies
would not suffer their troops to go on; defeated his design in the very moment
of its execution, if I remember well, and gave no other reason for their
proceeding than that which is a reason against every battle, the possibility
of being beaten. The circumstance of proximity to their frontier was urged,
I know, and it was said, that their provinces would be exposed to the incursions
of the French if they lost the battle. But besides other answers to this
vain pretence, it was obvious that they had ventured battles as near home
as this would have been fought, and that the way to remove the enemy farther
off was by action, not inaction. Upon the whole matter, the Dutch deputies
stopped the progress of the confederate army at this time, by exercising
an arbitrary and independent authority over the troops of the States. In
one thousand seven hundred and five, when the success of the preceding campaign
should have given them an entire confidence in the Duke of Marlborough's
conduct, when returning from the Moselle to the Low Countries, he began to
make himself and the common cause amends, for the disappointment which pique
and jealousy in the Prince of Baden, or usual sloth and negligence in the
Germans, had occasioned just before, by forcing the French lines; when he
was in the full pursuit of this advantage, and when he was marching to attack
an enemy half defeated, and more than half dispirited; nay when he had made
his dispositions for attacking, and part of his troops had passed the Dyle
the deputies of the States once more tied up his hands, took from him an
opportunity too fair to be lost; for these, I think, were some of the terms
of his complaint: and in short the confederacy received an affront at least;
where we might have obtained a victory. Let this that has been said serve
as a specimen of the independency on the queen, her councils, and her generals,
with which these powers acted in the course of the war; who were not ashamed
to find fault that the queen, once, and at the latter end of it, presumed
to suspend the operations of her troops till farther order. But be it that
they foresaw what this farther end would be. They foresaw then, that as soon
as Dunkirk should be put into the queen's hands, she would consent to a suspension
of arms for two months, and invite them to do the same. Neither this foresight,
nor the strong declaration which the Bishop of Bristol made by the queen's
order at Utrecht, and which showed them that her resolution was taken not
to submit to the league into which they had entered against her, could prevail
on them to make a right use of these two months, by endeavoring to renew
their union and good understanding with the queen; though I can say with
the greatest truth, and they could not doubt of it at the time, that she
would have gone more than half-way to meet them, and that her ministers would
have done their utmost to bring it about. Even then we might have resumed
the superiority we began to lose in the congress; for, the queen and the
States uniting, the principal allies would have united with them: and, in
this case, it would have been so much the interest of France to avoid any
chance of seeing the war renewed, that she must, and she would, have made
sure of peace, during the suspension, on much worse terms for herself and
for Spain, than she made it afterwards. But the prudent and sober states
continued to act like forward children, or like men drunk with resentment
and passion; and such will the conduct be of the wisest governments in every
circumstance, where a spirit of faction and of private interest prevails,
among those who are at the head, over reason of state. After laying aside
all decency in their behavior towards the queen, they laid aside all caution
for themselves. They declared "they would carry on the war without her."
Landrecy seemed, in their esteem, of more importance than Dunkirk; and the
opportunity of wasting some French provinces, or of putting the whole event
of the war on the decision of another battle, preferable to the other measure
that lay open to them; that, I mean, of trying, in good earnest, and in an
honest concert with the queen, during the suspension of arms, whether such
terms of peace, as sought to satisfy them and the other allies, might not
be imposed on France.




If the confederate army had broke into France, the campaign before this,
or in any former campaign; and if the Germans and the Dutch had exercised
then the same inhumanity, as the French had exercised in their provinces
in former wars; if they had burnt Versailles, and even Paris, and if they
had disturbed the ashes of the dead princes that repose at St. Denis, every
good man would have felt the horror, that such cruelties inspire: no man
could have said that the retaliation was unjust. But in one thousand seven
hundred and twelve, it was too late, in every respect, to meditate such projects.
If the French had been unprepared to defend their frontier, either for want
of means, or in a vain confidence that the peace would be made, as our king
Charles the Second was unprepared to defend his coast at the latter end of
his first war with Holland, the allies might have played a sure game in satisfying
their vengeance on the French, as the Dutch did on us in one thousand six
hundred and sixty-seven; and imposing harder terms on them, than those they
offered, or would have accepted. But this was not the case. The French army
was, I believe, more numerous than the army of the allies, even before separation,
and certainly in a much better condition than two or three years before,
when a deluge of blood was spilt to dislodge them, for we did no more, at
Malplaquet. Would the Germans and the Dutch have found it more easy to force
them at this time, than it was at that? Would not the French have fought
with as much obstinacy to save Paris, as they did to save Mons? and, with
all the regard due to the Duke of Ormond, and to prince Eugene, was the absence
of the Duke of Marlborough of no consequence? Turn this affair every way
in your thoughts, my lord, and you will find that the Germans and the Dutch
had nothing in theirs, but to break, at any rate, and at any risk, the negotiations
that were begun, and to reduce Great Britain to the necessity of continuing,
what she had been too long, a province of the confederacy. A province, indeed,
and not one of the best treated; since the confederates assumed a right of
obliging her to keep her pacts with them, and of dispensing with their obligations
to her; of exhausting her, without rule, or proportion, or measure, in the
support of a war, to which she alone contributed more than all of them, and
in which she had no longer an immediate interest, nor even any remote interest
that was not common, or with respect to her, very dubious; and, after all
this, of complaining that the queen presumed to hearken to overtures of peace,
and to set a negotiation on foot, whilst their humor and ambition required
that the war should be prolonged for an indefinite time, and for a purpose
that was either bad or indeterminate.




The suspension of arms, that began in the Low Countries, was continued,
and extended afterwards by the act I signed at Fontainebleu. The fortune
of the war turned at the same time; and all those disgraces followed, which
obliged the Dutch to treat, and to desire the assistance of the queen, whom
they had set at defiance so lately. The assistance they had, as effectually
as it could be given in the circumstances to which they had reduced themselves,
and the whole alliance: and the peace of Great Britain, Portugal, Savoy,
Prussia, and the States General, was made, without his Imperial majesty's
concurrence, in the spring of one thousand seven hundred and thirteen; as
it might have been made, much more advantageously for them all, in that of
one thousand seven hundred and twelve. Less obstinacy on the part of the
states, and perhaps more decisive resolutions on the part of the queen, would
have wound up all these divided threads in one, and have finished this great
work much sooner and better. I say, perhaps more decisive resolutions on
the part of the queen, because although I think that I should have conveyed
her orders for signing a treaty of peace with France, before the armies took
the field, much more willingly, than I executed them afterwards in signing
that of the cessation of arms; yet I do not presume to decide, but shall
desire your lordship to do so, on a review of all circumstances, some of
which I shall just mention.




The league made for protracting the war having opposed the queen to the
utmost of their power, and by means of every sort, from the first appearance
of a negotiation; the general effect of this violent opposition, on her and
her ministers, was, to make them proceed by slower and more cautious steps;
the particular effect of it was, to oblige them to open the eyes of the nation,
and to inflame the people with a desire of peace, by showing, in the most
public and solemn manner, how unequally we were burdened, and how unfairly
we were treated by our allies. The first gave an air of diffidence and timidity
to their conduct, which encouraged the league, and gave vigor to the opposition.
The second irritated the Dutch particularly; for the emperor and the other
allies had the modesty at least not to pretend to bear any proportion in
the expense of the war: and thus the two powers, whose union was the most
essential, were the most at variance, and the queen was obliged to act in
a closer concert with her enemy who desired peace, than she would have done
if her allies had been less obstinately bent to protract the war. During
these transactions, my Lord Oxford, who had his correspondences apart, and
a private thread of negotiation always in his hands, entertained hopes that
Philip would be brought to abandon Spain in favor of his father-in-law, and
to content himself with the states of that prince, the kingdom of Sicily,
and the preservation of his right of succession to the crown of France. Whether
my lord had any particular reasons for entertaining these hopes, beside the
general reasons founded on the condition of France, on that of the Bourbon
family, and on the disposition of Louis the Fourteenth, I doubt very much.
That Louis, who sought, and had need of seeking peace, almost at any rate,
and who saw that he could not obtain it, even of the queen, unless Philip
abandoned immediately the crown of Spain, or abandoned immediately, by renunciation
and a solemn act of exclusion, all pretension to that of France; that Louis
was desirous of the former, I cannot doubt. That Philip would have abandoned
Spain, with the equivalents that have been mentioned, or either of them,
I believe likewise, if the present king of France had died, when his father,
mother, and eldest brother did; for they all had the same distemper. But
Louis would use no violent means to force his grandson; the queen would not
continue the war to force him; Philip was too obstinate, and his wife too
ambitious, to quit the crown of Spain, when they had discovered our weakness,
and felt their own strength in that country, by their success in the campaign
of one thousand seven hundred and ten: after which my Lord Stanhope himself
was convinced that Spain could not be conquered, nor kept, if it was conquered,
without a much greater army than it was possible for us to send thither.
In that situation it was wild to imagine, as the Earl of Oxford imagined,
or pretended to imagine, that they would quit the crown of Spain, for a remote
and uncertain prospect of succeeding to that of France, and content themselves
to be, in the mean time, princes of very small dominions. Philip, therefore,
after struggling long that he might not be obliged to make his option till
the succession of France lay open to him, was obliged to make it, and made
it for Spain. Now this, my lord, was the very crisis of the negotiation;
and to this point I apply what I said above of the effect of more decisive
resolutions on the part of the queen. It was plain, that, if she made the
campaign in concert with her allies, she could be no longer mistress of the
negotiations, nor have almost a chance for conducting them to the issue she
proposed. Our ill success in the field would have rendered the French less
tractable in the congress: our good success there would have rendered the
allies so. On this principle the queen suspended the operations of her troops,
and then concluded the cessation.




Compare now the appearances and effect of this measure, with the appearances
and effect that another measure would have had. In order to arrive at any
peace, it was necessary to do what the queen did, or to do more: and, in
order to arrive at a good one, it was necessary to be prepared to carry on
the war, as well as to make a show of it: for she had the hard task upon
her, of guarding against her allies, and her enemies both. But in that ferment,
when few men considered any thing coolly, the conduct of her general, after
he took the field, though he covered the allies in the siege of Quesnoy,
corresponded ill, in appearance, with the declarations of carrying on the
war vigorously, that had been made, on several occasions, before the campaign
opened. It had an air of double dealing; and as such it passed among those,
who did not combine in their thoughts all the circumstances of the conjuncture,
or who were infatuated with the notional necessity of continuing the war.
The clamor could not have been greater, if the queen had signed her peace
separately: and, I think, the appearances might have been explained as favorably
in one case, as in the other. From the death of the emperor Joseph, it was
neither our interest, nor the common interest, well understood, to set the
crown of Spain on the present emperor's head. As soon therefore as Philip
had made his option, and if she had taken this resolution early, his option
would have been sooner made, I presume that the queen might have declared,
that she would not continue the war an hour longer to procure Spain for his
Imperial majesty; that the engagements, she had taken whilst he was archduke,
bound her no more; that, by his accession to the empire, the very nature
of them was altered; that she took effectual measures to prevent, in any
future time, an union of the crowns of France and Spain, and, upon the same
principle, would not consent, much less fight, to bring about an immediate
union of the Imperial and Spanish crowns; that they, who insisted to protract
the war, intended this union; that they could intend nothing else, since
they ventured to break with her, rather than to treat, and were so eager
to put the reasonable satisfaction, that they might have in every other case
without hazard, on the uncertain events of war; that she would not be imposed
on any longer in this manner, and that she had ordered her ministers to sign
her treaty with France, on the surrender of Dunkirk into her hands; that
she pretended not to prescribe to her allies; but that she had insisted,
in their behalf, on certain conditions, that France was obliged to grant
to those of them, who should sign their treaties at the same time as she
did, or who should consent to an immediate cessation of arms, and during
the cessation treat under her mediation. There had been more frankness, and
more dignity in this proceeding, and the effect must have been more advantageous.
France would have granted more for a separate peace, than for a cessation:
and the Dutch would have been more influenced by the prospect of one, than
of the other; especially since this proceeding would have been very different
from theirs at Munster, and at Nimeguen, where they abandoned their allies,
without any other pretence than the particular advantage they found in doing
so. A suspension of the operations of the queen's troops, nay a cessation
of arms between her and France, was not definitive; and they might, and they
did, hope to drag her back under their, and the German yoke. This therefore
was not sufficient to check their obstinacy, nor to hinder them from making
all the unfortunate haste they did make to get themselves beaten at Denain.
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.
Indeed it never could; too much time having been lost in waiting for the
option of Philip, and the suspension and cessation having been brought before
the council rather as a measure taken, than a matter to be debated. If your
lordship, or any one else should judge, that, in such circumstances as those
of the confederacy in the beginning of one thousand seven hundred and twelve,
the latter measure ought to have been taken, and the Gordian knot to have
been cut rather than to suffer a mock treaty to languish on, with so much
advantage to the French as the disunion of the allies gave them; in short,
if slowness, perplexity, inconsistency, and indecision should be objected,
in some instances, to the queen's councils at that time; if it should be
said particularly, that she did not observe the precise moment when the conduct
of the league formed against her, being exposed to mankind, would have justified
any part she should have taken (though she declared, soon after the moment
was passed, that this conduct had set her free from all engagements) and
when she ought to have taken that of drawing, by one bold measure, her allies
out of the war, or herself out of the confederacy, before she lost her influence
on France: if all this should be objected, yet would the proofs brought to
support these objections show, that we were better allies than politicians;
that the desire the queen had to treat in concert with her confederates,
and the resolution she took not to sign without them, made her bear what
no crowned head had ever borne before; and that where she erred, she erred
principally by the patience, the compliance, and the condescension she exercised
towards them, and towards her own subjects in league with them. Such objections
as these may lie to the queen's conduct, in the course of this great affair;
as well as objections of human infirmity to that of the persons employed
by her in the transactions of it; from which neither those who preceded,
nor those who succeeded, have, I presume, been free. But the principles on
which they proceeded were honest, the means they used were lawful, and the
event they proposed to bring about was just. Whereas the very foundation
of all the opposition to the peace was laid in injustice and folly: for what
could be more unjust, than the attempts of the Dutch and the Germans, to
force the queen to continue a war for their private interest and ambition,
the disproportionate expense of which oppressed the commerce of her subjects,
and loaded them with debts for ages yet to come? a war, the object of which
was so changed, that from the year one thousand seven hundred and eleven
she made it not only without any engagement, but against her own, and the
common interest? What could be more foolish; you will think that I soften
the term too much, and you will be in the right to think so: what could be
more foolish, than the attempt of a party in Britain, to protract a war so
ruinous to their country, without any reason that they durst avow, except
that of wreaking the resentments of Europe on France, and that of uniting
the Imperial and Spanish crowns on an Austrian head? one of which was to
purchase revenge at a price too dear; and the other was to expose the liberties
of Europe to new dangers, by the conclusion of a war which had been made
to assert and secure them.




I have dwelt the longer on the conduct of those who promoted, and of those
who opposed, the negotiations of the peace made at Utrecht, and on the comparison
of the measure pursued by the queen with that which she might have pursued,
because the great benefit we ought to reap from the study of history, cannot
be reaped unless we accustom ourselves to compare the conduct of different
governments, and different parties, in the same conjunctures, and to observe
the measures they did pursue, and the measures they might have pursued, with
the actual consequences that followed one, and the possible, or probable
consequences, that might have followed the other. By this exercise of the
mind, the study of history anticipates, as it were, experience, as I have
observed in one of the first of these letters, and prepares us for action.
If this consideration should not plead a sufficient excuse for my prolixity
on this head, I have one more to add that may. A rage of warring possessed
a party in our nation till the death of the late queen: a rage of negotiating
has possessed the same party of men, ever since. You have seen the consequences
of one: you see actually those of the other. The rage of warring confirmed
the beggary of our nation, which began as early as the revolution; but then
it gave, in the last war, reputation to our arms, and our councils too. For
though I think, and must always think, that the principle, on which we acted
after departing from that laid down in the grand alliance of one thousand
seven hundred and one, was wrong; yet must we confess that it was pursued
wisely, as well as boldly. The rage of negotiating has been a chargeable
rage likewise, at least as chargeable in its proportion. Far from paying
our debts, contracted in war, they continue much the same, after three and
twenty years of peace. The taxes that oppress our mercantile interest the
most are still in mortgage; and those that oppress the landed interest the
most, instead of being laid on extraordinary occasions, are become the ordinary
funds for the current service of every year. This is grievous, and the more
so to any man, who has the honor of his country, as well as her prosperity
at heart, because we have not, in this case, the airy consolation we had
in the other. The rage of negotiating began twenty years ago, under pretence
of consummating the treaty of Utrecht: and, from that time to this, our ministers
have been in one perpetual maze. They have made themselves and us, often,
objects of aversion to the powers on the continent: and we are become at
last objects of contempt, even to the Spaniards. What other effect could
our absurd conduct have? What other return has it deserved? We came exhausted
out of long wars and, instead of pursuing the measures necessary to give
us means and opportunity to repair our strength and to diminish our burdens,
our ministers have acted, from that time to this, like men who sought pretences
to keep the nation in the same exhausted condition, and under the same load
of debt. This may have been their view perhaps; and we could not be surprised
if we heard the same men declare national poverty necessary to support the
present government, who have so frequently declared corruption and a standing
army to be so. Your good sense, my lord, your virtue, and your love of your
country, will always determine you to oppose such vile schemes, and to contribute
your utmost towards the cure of both these kinds of rage; the rage of warriors,
without any proportionable interest of our own, for the ambition of others;
and the rage of negotiating, on every occasion, at any rate, without a sufficient
call to it, and without any part of that deciding influence which we ought
to have. Our nation inhabits an island, and is one of the principal nations
of Europe; but to maintain this rank, we must take the advantages of this
situation, which have been neglected by us for almost half a century: we
must always remember, that we are not part of the continent, but we must
never forget that we are neighbors to it. I will conclude, by applying a
rule, that Horace gives for the conduct of an epic or dramatic poem, to the
part Great Britain ought to take in the affairs of the continent, if you
allow me to transform Britannia into a male divinity, as the verse requires.




Nec Deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus

Inciderit.




If these reflections are just, and I should not have offered them to your
lordship had they not appeared both just and important to my best understanding,
you will think that I have not spent your time unprofitably in making them,
and exciting you by them to examine the true interest of your country relatively
to foreign affairs; and to compare it with these principles of conduct, that,
I am persuaded, have no other foundation than party designs, prejudices,
and habits; the private interest of some men, and the ignorance and rashness
of others.




My letter is grown so long that I shall say nothing to your lordship at
this time concerning the study of modern history, relatively to the interests
of your country in domestic affairs; and I think there will be no need to
do so at any other. The History of the rebellion by your great grandfather,
and his private memorials, which your lordship has in manuscript, will guide
you surely as far as they go: where they leave you, your lordship must not
expect any history; for we have more reason to make this complaint, "abest
enim historia literis nostris," than Tully had to put it into the mouth
of Atticus, his first book of laws. But where history leaves you, it is wanted
least: the traditions of this century, and the latter end of the last, are
fresh. Many, who were actors in some of these events, are alive; and many
who have conversed with those that were actors in others. The public is in
possession of several collections and memorials, and several there are in
private hands. You will want no materials to form true notions of transactions
so recent. Even pamphlets, written on different sides and on different occasions
in our party disputes, and histories of no more authority than pamphlets,
will help you to come at truth. Read them with suspicion, my lord, for they
deserve to be suspected; pay no regard to the epithets given, nor to the
judgments passed; neglect all declamation, weigh the reasoning, and advert
to fact. With such precautions, even Burnet's history may be of some use.
In a word, your lordship will want no help of mine to discover, by what progression
the whole constitution of our country, and even the character of our nation,
has been altered: nor how much a worse use, in a national sense, though a
better in the sense of party politics, the men called Whigs have made of
long wars and new systems of revenue, since the revolution; than the men
called tories made, before it, of long peace, and stale prerogative. When
you look back three of four generations ago, you will see that the English
were a plain, perhaps a rough, but a good-natured hospitable people, jealous
of their liberties, and able as well as ready to defend them, with their
tongues, their pens, and their swords. The restoration began to turn hospitality
into luxury, pleasure into debauch, and country peers and country commoners
into courtiers and men of mode. But whilst our luxury was young, it was little
more than elegance: the debauch of that age was enlivened with wit, and varnished
over with gallantry. The courtiers and the men of mode knew what the constitution
was, respected it, and often asserted it. Arts and sciences flourished, and,
if we grew more trivial, we were not become either grossly ignorant, or openly
profligate. Since the revolution, our kings have been reduced indeed to a
seeming annual dependence on parliament; but the business of parliament,
which was esteemed in general a duty before, has been exercised in general
as a trade since. The trade of parliament, and the trade of funds, have grown
universal. Men, who stood forward in the world, have attended to little else.
The frequency of parliaments, that increased their importance, and should
have increased the respect for them, has taken off from their dignity: and
the spirit that prevailed, whilst the service in them was duty, has been
debased since it became a trade. Few know, and scarce any respect, the British
constitution: that of the Church has been long since derided; that of the
State as long neglected; and both have been left at the mercy of men in power,
whoever those men were. Thus the Church, at least the hierarchy, however
sacred in its origin or wise in its institution, is become a useless burden
on the state: and the state is become, under ancient and known forms, a new
and undefinable monster; composed of a king without monarchical splendor,
a senate of nobles without aristocratical independency, and a senate of commons
without democratical freedom. In the mean time, my lord, the very idea of
wit, and all that can be called taste, has been lost among the great; arts
and sciences are scarce alive; luxury has been increased but not refined;
corruption has been established, and is avowed. When governments are worn
out, thus it is: the decay appears in every instance. Public and private
virtue, public and private spirit, science and wit, decline all together.




That you, my lord, may have a long and glorious share in restoring all
these, and in drawing our government back to the true principles of it, I
wish most heartily. Whatever errors I may have committed in public life,
I have always loved my country: whatever faults may be objected to me in
private life. I have always loved my friend; whatever usage I have received
f rom my country, it shall never make me break with her: whatever usage I
have received from my friends, I shall never break with one of them, while
I think him a friend to my country. These are the sentiments of my heart.
I know they are those of your lordship's: and a communion of such sentiments
is a tie that will engage me to be, as long as I live,




My lord,




Your most faithful servant.