act was passed which doomed him to perpetual exile; and those who had
assailed and undermined him began to struggle for the fragments of his
power.

The sacrifice of Clarendon in some degree took off the edge of the
public appetite for revenge. Yet was the anger excited by the profusion
and negligence of the government, and by the miscarriages of the late
war, by no means extinguished. The counsellors of Charles, with the fate
of the Chancellor before their eyes, were anxious for their own safety.
They accordingly advised their master to soothe the irritation which
prevailed both in the Parliament and throughout the country, and for
that end, to take a step which has no parallel in the history of the
House of Stuart, and which was worthy of the prudence and magnanimity of
Oliver.

We have now reached a point at which the history of the great English
revolution begins to be complicated with the history of foreign
politics. The power of Spain had, during many years, been declining.
She still, it is true held in Europe the Milanese and the two Sicilies,
Belgium, and Franche Comte. In America her dominions still spread, on
both sides of the equator, far beyond the limits of the torrid zone. But
this great body had been smitten with palsy, and was not only
incapable of giving molestation to other states, but could not, without
assistance, repel aggression. France was now, beyond all doubt,
the greatest power in Europe. Her resources have, since those days,
absolutely increased, but have not increased so fast as the resources
of England. It must also be remembered that, a hundred and eighty years
ago, the empire of Russia, now a monarchy of the first class, was as
entirely out of the system of European politics as Abyssinia or Siam,
that the House of Brandenburg was then hardly more powerful than the
House of Saxony, and that the republic of the United States had not
then begun to exist. The weight of France, therefore, though still very
considerable, has relatively diminished. Her territory was not in the
days of Lewis the Fourteenth quite so extensive as at present: but
it was large, compact, fertile, well placed both for attack and for
defence, situated in a happy climate, and inhabited by a brave, active,
and ingenious people. The state implicitly obeyed the direction of a
single mind. The great fiefs which, three hundred years before, had
been, in all but name, independent principalities, had been annexed to
the crown