arriage-settlements, entails, and testaments,
that the proprietorship of most of the great realms in Christendom was
matter of fierce legal dispute. Lawsuits, which in chancery could last
for centuries before a settlement of the various claims was made, might
have infinitely enriched the gentlemen of the long robe and reduced all
the parties to beggary, had there been any tribunal but the battle-field
to decide among the august litigants. Thus the King of Great Britain
claimed the legal proprietorship and sovereignty of Brittany, Normandy,
Anjou, Gascony, Calais, and Boulogne in France, besides the whole kingdom
by right of conquest. The French king claimed to be rightful heir of
Castile, Biscay, Guipuscoa, Arragon, Navarre, nearly all the Spanish
peninsula in short, including the whole of Portugal and the Balearic
islands to boot. The King of Spain claimed, as we have seen often enough,
not only Brittany but all France as his lawful inheritance. Such was the
virtue of the prevalent doctrine of proprietorship. Every potentate was
defrauded of his rights, and every potentate was a criminal usurper. As
for the people, it would have excited a smile of superior wisdom on
regal, legal, or sacerdotal lips, had it been suggested that by any
possibility the governed could have a voice or a thought in regard to the
rulers whom God in His grace had raised up to be their proprietors and
masters.

The army of Spain was sunk far below the standard at which it had been
kept when it seemed fit to conquer and govern the world. Neither by Spain
nor Italy could those audacious, disciplined, and obedient legions be
furnished, at which the enemies of the mighty despot trembled from one
extremity of earth to the other. Peculation, bankruptcy, and mutiny had
done their work at last. We have recently had occasion to observe the
conduct of the veterans in Flanders at critical epochs. At this moment,
seventy thousand soldiers were on the muster and pay roll of the army
serving in those provinces, while not thirty thousand men existed in the
flesh.

The navy was sunk to fifteen or twenty old galleys, battered, dismantled,
unseaworthy, and a few armed ships for convoying the East and West
Indiamen to and from their destinations.

The general poverty was so great that it was often absolutely impossible
to purchase food for the royal household. "If you ask me," said a cool
observer, "how this great show of empire is maintained, when the funds
ar