oked than endangered Europe. Indeed, they who will be at the
pains of seriously considering the history of that period will see that
those French politicians had some reason. They who will not take the
trouble of reviewing it through all its wars and all its negotiations
will consult the short, but judicious, criticism of the Marquis de
Montalembert on that subject. It may be read separately from his
ingenious system of fortification and military defence, on the practical
merit of which I am unable to form a judgment.

The diplomatic politicians of whom I speak, and who formed by far the
majority in that class, made disadvantageous comparisons even between
their more legal and formalizing monarchy and the monarchies of other
states, as a system of power and influence. They observed that France
not only lost ground herself, but, through the languor and unsteadiness
of her pursuits, and from her aiming through commerce at naval force
which she never could attain without losing more on one side than she
could gain on the other, three great powers, each of them (as military
states) capable of balancing her, had grown up on the Continent. Russia
and Prussia had been created almost within memory; and Austria, though
not a new power, and even curtailed in territory, was, by the very
collision in which she lost that territory, greatly improved in her
military discipline and force. During the reign of Maria Theresa, the
interior economy of the country was made more to correspond with the
support of great armies than formerly it had been. As to Prussia, a
merely military power, they observed that one war had enriched her with
as considerable a conquest as France had acquired in centuries. Russia
had broken the Turkish power, by which Austria might be, as formerly she
had been, balanced in favor of France. They felt it with pain, that the
two Northern powers of Sweden and Denmark were in general under the sway
of Russia,--or that, at best, France kept up a very doubtful conflict,
with many fluctuations of fortune, and at an enormous expense, in
Sweden. In Holland the French party seemed, if not extinguished, at
least utterly obscured, and kept under by a Stadtholder, leaning for
support sometimes on Great Britain, sometimes on Prussia, sometimes on
both, never on France. Even the spreading of the Bourbon family had
become merely a family accommodation, and had little effect oh the
national politics. This alliance, they said, exting