guarantees were to be respected, there was another which required our interposition. England had gauranteed the treaty of Oliva, which forbade foreign interference in the election of a king of Poland; the spirit of this guaranty, perhaps, condemned equally both parties; but not so thought the emperor, who called upon England to make good this engagement also. Although George II. refused, he procured one stipulation peculiar to this war, whereby he accomplished an object always deemed of importance to England and to her ancient ally, though he by no means satisfied the emperor. He obtained the consent of France to the neutrality of the Netherlands, and thus averted the evils and dangers of war from Holland.

The events of the Polish war were unfavourable to the emperor; who concluded, under the mediation of the maritime powers, a treaty of peace, whereby he at length obtained from France the guaranty of the Pragmatic Sanction. Stanislaus was persuaded to renounce the crown of Poland, retaining the empty title of king, with the duchies of Bar and Lorraine for his life, with reversion to France. To make way for this arrangement, the reversion of Tuscany, after the death of the then Grand Duke, was given to the house of Lorraine; and Don Carlos, so important a personage in all these arrangements, was promoted to the throne of the Two Sicilies, resigning Parma and Placentia to the emperor. The interests of England were little affected by these arrangements. If her refusal to take part in the war, and especially to give succour to Austria, did tend to lower her character in the political system, it cannot be said that she suffered anywhere through her forbearance. Prince Eugene, on the part of the emperor, made a forcible appeal to the English minister; setting forth the dangers of England from the expected aggrandizement of the house of Bourbon, and her inability to resist an invasion in favour of the Pretender, if her fleets should meet with a disaster. We are clearly of opinion that England would not have been justified in siding with the emperor, whereby she would have provoked the immediate hostility of France, for the sake of preventing the contingent aggrandizement of that power, and increased danger from future hostilities. But she would have taken this resolution of neutrality with more of credit, if not of effect, if she had not been hampered by previous and complicated engagements, which certainly exposed her to the charge. of broken faith, and desertion of her friends.

England was at last engaged in a war, which, though, in one sense, it did arise out of a treaty, was not the result of 'continental connexions or engagements. It is rather to be set down to the account of commerce. The treaty of Utrecht

had allowed to the English a limited trade to the Spanish ports in America; our merchants were in the habit of evading the limitation, and the Spaniards claimed a right of searching them at sea, to ascertain whether their trade was lawful or not. It appears now to be a fair case of doubt, but was hotly taken up in England; and, though Walpole at first put an end to the hostile discussions which occurred, by a condition which left the main question open, to be considered by commissioners, he was urged by the House of Commons to declare war, under circumstances which put his country in the wrong. This war with Spain soon merged in another, which extended over all Europe, and at last drew England out of the pacific system which she had so long pursued.

In 1740, Oct. 10, Charles VI. died, and it was to be seen whether the guaranty of the Pragmatic Sanction which he had with so much trouble obtained from almost all the powers of Europe, was now to be respected. Is it too much to say that, with the exception of England, not one power in Europe was influenced by the guaranty?

The King of Prussia began the attack upon the young Queen of Hungary, and, in utter disregard of their engagements with her father, France,* Spain, and Sardinia, as well as Bavaria, joined in the confederacy!

The honour and interest of England, according to Heeren, rendered it imperative upon her to make a vigorous effort to save Austria. Her honour was unquestionably pledged, and her ministers did therefore right in assisting the Queen. Whether our interest required this exertion, is a more doubtful question.

We

It would seem that, in those days, the people of England took an interest in foreign affairs. All writers tell us, that the nation called loudly for support to Maria Theresa. Is this interest to be ascribed to a jealous regard for public faith, to compassion or admiration excited by the young queen, or to an opinion in favour of Austrian connexion, and the balance of power? have observed elsewhere,† upon the promptitude with which our government, stimulated perhaps by the opinion of the people, announced the intention of adhering to its engagements. There appears to have been at no time an intention of departing from those engagements, but we were very unwilling to embark largely in the war, as the single ally of Austria; and the King of Prus

* Heeren appears scarcely aware that France, as well as England, hesitated about entering into this war. Fleury would willingly have avoided it, but was at last driven, not only to attack Austria, but to justify the breach of the guaranty upon the most flimsy pretexts.

Vol. xiii. p. 9.

sia was the potentate to whom Walpole looked for co-operation: that monarch-although for his own purposes, he had made the first attack upon Maria Theresa-was ready to join her against other enemies, provided that his own object was secured by the cession of Silesia; but the high-spirited Princess would not listen to these terms. Frederic, during this war, acted for himself alone. He made peace at Breslau in 1742; broke out again in 1744, upon a well-grounded apprehension of intended injuries; was again reconciled to Austria at Dresden, in 1745, while the war still raged in Europe. England at first joined in the war on the side of Austria, as an auxiliary only; and France standing in the same relation towards Bavaria, the battle of Dettingen, to which, until more recent and extensive glories drove it out of memory, Englishmen referred as one of their great battles with France, was fought while England and France were at peace together! This state of things did not last beyond 1744, when France declared war.

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It were in vain to attempt here to describe the various alliances and counter-alliances which this war occasioned; England subsidized Denmark, Sardinia,* and Hanover; and, after Prussia had for the second time retired from the contest, the war, as Heeren says, was continued three years longer by the other leading powers, with what view it is difficult to say, unless we take into account the passions which are excited by events which occurred in the interval." The balance of power in Europe was but little altered, when the war was at last concluded by the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. That treaty renounced all the principal treaties of a century preceding, commencing with that of Westphalia in 1648. England restored Cape Breton to France, and it was stipulated that all things should remain in America on the same footing as before the war. The assiento was continued for four years; an arrangement certainly not calculated to prevent hostilities. Two years afterwards an end was put to this disgraceful compact, and a commercial treaty, upon fair terms, was substituted. France restored the Netherlands to Austria, and her conquests to the United Provinces and the King of Sardinia. Elizabeth Farnese got an establishment for another son! The infant Don Philip obtained Parma and Placentia from the Emperor!

It is quite right in an historian to imagine for himself, from time to time, an existence at each period of which he tells the story, and to suppress his knowledge of subsequent events.

* Sardinia was detached from the confederacy against Austria, by the treaty of Worms, 1743.

+ Treaty of Dresden, December 14, 1745.

Still it is almost amusing to read the observations of Heeren, repeated from time to time, to the effect that, "now, at last, the continental relations of England were FIXED," or, as the phrase in the present instance is, "determinately settled." "Her newlyrevived rivalry with France had given rise to the connexion with Austria, and the duration of the latter seemed likely to be commensurate with the former."

Really, the political system had even, in 1748, existed long enough to shake the confidence of a statesman in the durability of his connexions; and, without foreseeing events exactly as they occurred, he might have guessed that something would happen to alter this now determinately fixed arrangement. Indeed, the guaranty given to Prussia of the province reluctantly ceded to her by Austria was of itself enough to put the peace in jeopardy.

Notwithstanding this guaranty, which appeared to connect England with Prussia, and though it was the opinion of some of our adepts in foreign policy that Prussia was our natural ally, the English government warmly espoused the cause of Austria in the empire; and actually subsidized many of the German princes, in order to secure to the son of Maria Theresa the reversion of the imperial dignity. With the Bavarian, the Palatine, the Saxon, and the Cologne Electors, either treaties were actually concluded, or subsidies promised, for the purpose of gaining their votes. "Whether England had any reason at all for embroiling herself so deeply in the affairs of Germany, is a question which," Heeren says, we need not here determine ;" but which we decide, without hesitation, in the negative. These things would not have been thought of under an English king. The subsidies, as might have been expected, failed in their object, and had only the effect of aggravating the discontents of the Prussian monarch, with whom England, or rather the King of England, had already some differences.

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But there were also differences with Austria, especially concerning the execution of the Barrier Treaty;* and all the subsidies which we had paid in support of her family interests failed to retain the friendship of the haughty, and perhaps wayward, Maria Theresa.

Colonial disputes placed England in a state of war with France. This war began, like the last, in America; but it was now a territorial, not a commercial question. The breach arising out of the disputed limits of Nova Scotia, and other questions

Austria was never reconciled to the provisions which placed Dutch garrisons in some of her towns.

raised in the western hemisphere, fully supports Heeren's remarks on the inconvenience attending the propinquity of continentalterritories. George II., apprehending that France would attack his paternal dominions, sought the alliance of Elizabeth of Russia, with whom he concluded a subsidiary treaty; and called upon the Empress Queen for succours stipulated in the treaty of alliance and guaranty. As is usual in such cases, Maria Theresa declined, and was moreover much offended at the demand, made at a time when she herself, as she pretended, was threatened by Prussia. In fact, France had by this time made great progress in her endeavours to separate Austria from England, which were aided by the present approximation towards a union between England and Prussia. The King of Prussia now undertook to defend Hanover, receiving from George II. a reciprocal promise of support, if Germany should be attacked. Then, and as some think, therefore, was published the famous alliance between Austria and France; with both which powers, consequently, England was soon at war. The approaches of France to Austria, and of England to Prussia, were mutual cause and effect; at least, we cannot here determine the question of precedence between them. It is enough for us, that all the speculations of English ministers, on the result of their German arrangements, were scattered to the winds. The union of the two powers," says Heeren, " mocked all calculation:" and yet what could be more natural-what indeed was more certain to happen, than that the union of any two of four great powers should bring the other two nearer together?

Austria did not at once join France in her war with England, but her neutrality did not last long. Prussia anticipated the expected attack from Austria, and England brought native as well as subsidized forces to the support of her ally.

In this war, as in that which preceded it, the separate and naval war of England (now with France, then with Spain), was merged in the continental war; and the energetic minister, who raised the spirit of England, and conducted the war while its operations were glorious, avowed it as his plan to compel France to acquiesce in the separate demands of England, by pressing her on the continent," America shall be conquered in Germany."

Our author does not miss the opportunity which this German war gives him, of boasting of the identity of interests between Hanover and England. But for Hanover, we should not have obtained the co-operation of the king of Prussia. Yet Pitt, in a speech quoted by Heeren, declared that he would not have entered into the German war, if the faith of England had not been pledged by treaty to support the King of Prussia.