e: they are
in the hands of France from Hamburg to Gibraltar. How long the new
dominion will last I cannot tell; but France the Republic has conquered
Spain, and the ruling party in that court acts by her orders and exists
by her power.

The noble writer, in his views into futurity, has forgotten to look back
to the past. If he chooses it, he may recollect, that, on the prospect
of the death of Philip the Fourth, and still more on the event, all
Europe was moved to its foundations. In the treaties of partition that
first were entered into, and in the war that afterwards blazed out to
prevent those crowns from being actually or virtually united in the
House of Bourbon, the predominance of France in Spain, and above all, in
the Spanish Indies, was the great object of all these movements in the
cabinet and in the field. The Grand Alliance was formed upon that
apprehension. On that apprehension the mighty war was continued during
such a number of years as the degenerate and pusillanimous impatience of
our dwindled race can hardly bear to have reckoned: a war equal, within
a few years, in duration, and not, perhaps, inferior in bloodshed, to
any of those great contests for empire which in history make the most
awful matter of recorded memory.

Ad confligendum venientibus undique Poenis,
Omnia cum belli trepido concussa tumultu
Horrida contremuere sub altis aetheris auris,
In dubioque fuit sub utrorum regna cadendum
Omnibus humanis esset terraque marique.--

When this war was ended, (I cannot stay now to examine how,) the object
of the war was the object of the treaty. When it was found
impracticable, or less desirable than before, wholly to exclude a branch
of the Bourbon race from that immense succession, the point of Utrecht
was to prevent the mischiefs to arise from the influence of the greater
upon the lesser branch. His Lordship is a great member of the diplomatic
body; he has, of course, all the fundamental treaties which make the
public statute law of Europe by heart: and, indeed, no active member of
Parliament ought to be ignorant of their general tenor and leading
provisions. In the treaty which closed that war, and of which it is a
fundamental part, because relating to the whole policy of the compact,
it was agreed that Spain should not give anything from her territory in
the West Indies to France. This article, apparently onerous to Spain,
was in truth highly beneficial. But, oh, the blindn