blican or monarchical, whether Protestant
or Roman Catholic, wished to see those troubles happily terminated.

The nature of the long contest between the Stuarts and their Parliaments
was indeed very imperfectly apprehended by foreign statesmen: but no
statesman could fail to perceive the effect which that contest had
produced on the balance of power in Europe. In ordinary circumstances,
the sympathies of the courts of Vienna and Madrid would doubtless have
been with a prince struggling against subjects, and especially with a
Roman Catholic prince struggling against heretical subjects: but all
such sympathies were now overpowered by a stronger feeling. The fear and
hatred inspired by the greatness, the injustice, and the arrogance of
the French King were at the height. His neighbours might well doubt
whether it were more dangerous to be at war or at peace with him. For
in peace he continued to plunder and to outrage them; and they had tried
the chances of war against him in vain. In this perplexity they looked
with intense anxiety towards England. Would she act on the principles of
the Triple Alliance or on the principles of the treaty of Dover? On that
issue depended the fate of all her neighbours. With her help Lewis might
yet be withstood: but no help could be expected from her till she was
at unity with herself. Before the strife between the throne and the
Parliament began, she had been a power of the first rank: on the day on
which that strife terminated she became a power of the first rank again:
but while the dispute remained undecided, she was condemned to inaction
and to vassalage. She had been great under the Plantagenets and Tudors:
she was again great under the princes who reigned after the Revolution:
but, under the Kings of the House of Stuart, she was a blank in the map
of Europe. She had lost one class of energies, and had not yet acquired
another. That species of force, which, in the fourteenth century had
enabled her to humble France and Spain, had ceased to exist. That
species of force, which, in the eighteenth century, humbled France and
Spain once more, had not yet been called into action. The government was
no longer a limited monarchy after the fashion of the middle ages. It
had not yet become a limited monarchy after the modern fashion. With
the vices of two different systems it had the strength of neither. The
elements of our polity, instead of combining in harmony, counteracted
and neutralised e