ll its wars and all its negotiations, will
consult the short but judicious criticism of the Marquis de
Montalembert on that subject. It may be read separately from his
ingenious system of fortification and military defence, on the
practical merit of which I am unable to form a judgment.

The diplomatic politicians of whom I speak, and who formed by far the
majority in that class, made disadvantageous comparisons even between
their more legal and formalising monarchy, and the monarchies of other
states, as a system of power and influence. They observed that France
not only lost ground herself, but, through the languor and
unsteadiness of her pursuits, and from her aiming through commerce at
naval force which she never could attain without losing more on one
side than she could gain on the other, that three great powers, each
of them (as military states) capable of balancing her, had grown up on
the continent. Russia and Prussia had been created almost within
memory; and Austria, though not a new power, and even curtailed in
territory, was, by the very collision in which she lost that
territory, greatly improved in her military discipline and force.
During the reign of Maria Theresa the interior economy of the country
was made more to correspond with the support of great armies than
formerly it had been. As to Prussia, a merely military power, they
observed that one war had enriched her with as considerable a conquest
as France had acquired in centuries. Russia had broken the Turkish
power by which Austria might be, as formerly she had been, balanced in
favour of France. They felt it with pain, that the two northern powers
of Sweden and Denmark were in general under the sway of Russia; or
that, at best, France kept up a very doubtful conflict, with many
fluctuations of fortune, and at an enormous expense, in Sweden. In
Holland, the French party seemed, if not extinguished, at least
utterly obscured, and kept under by a stadtholder, leaning for support
sometimes on Great Britain, sometimes on Prussia, sometimes on both,
never on France. Even the spreading of the Bourbon family had become
merely a family accommodation; and had little effect on the national
politics. This alliance, they said, extinguished Spain by destroying
all its energy, without adding anything to the real power of France in
the accession of the forces of its great rival. In Italy, the same
family accommodation, the same national insignificance, were equa