第74章 LETTER 8(16)

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,Ipresume 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.