hich was then on the Spanish throne; and the issues to be
determined when the present king, infirm both in body and mind, should
die, were whether the new monarch was to be taken from the House of
Bourbon or from the Austrian family in Germany; and whether, in either
event, the sovereign thus raised to the throne should succeed to the
entire inheritance, the Empire of Spain, or some partition of that
vast inheritance be made in the interests of the balance of European
power. But this balance of power was no longer understood in the
narrow sense of continental possessions; the effect of the new
arrangements upon commerce, shipping, and the control both of the
ocean and the Mediterranean, was closely looked to. The influence of
the two sea powers and the nature of their interests were becoming
more evident.

It is necessary to recall the various countries that were ruled by
Spain at that time in order to understand the strategic questions, as
they may fairly be called, now to be settled. These were, in Europe,
the Netherlands (now Belgium); Naples and the south of Italy; Milan
and other provinces in the north; and, in the Mediterranean, Sicily,
Sardinia, and the Balearic Isles. Corsica at that time belonged to
Genoa. In the western hemisphere, besides Cuba and Porto Rico, Spain
then held all that part of the continent now divided among the
Spanish American States, a region whose vast commercial possibilities
were coming to be understood; and in the Asian archipelago there were
large possessions that entered less into the present dispute. The
excessive weakness of this empire, owing to the decay of the central
kingdom, had hitherto caused other nations, occupied as they were with
more immediate interests, to regard with indifference its enormous
extent. This indifference could not last when there was a prospect of
a stronger administration, backed possibly by alliances with one of
the great powers of Europe.

It would be foreign to our subject to enter into the details of
diplomatic arrangement, which, by shifting about peoples and
territories from one ruler to another, sought to reach a political
balance peacefully. The cardinal points of each nation's policy may be
shortly stated. The Spanish cabinet and people objected to any
solution which dismembered the empire. The English and the Dutch
objected to any extension of France in the Spanish Netherlands, and to
the monopoly by the French of the trade with Spanish Americ