at London, which
appears to have been calculated as an answer to the letter. In that
paper the king of Great Britain declared, that the overtures made by his
majesty's electoral ministers in Germany, touching the checks received
on the continent, should have no influence on his majesty as king; that
he saw, in the same light as before, the pernicious effects of the union
between the courts of Vienna and Versailles, threatning a subversion
of the whole system of public liberty, and of the independence of the
European powers; that he considered as a fatal consequence of this
dangerous connexion, the cession made by the court of Vienna of the
ports in the Netherlands to France, in such a critical situation, and
contrary to the faith of the most solemn treaties; that, whatever
might be the success of his arms, his majesty was determined to act
in constant concert with the king of Prussia in employing the most
efficacious means to frustrate the unjust and oppressive designs of
their common enemies. He concluded with assuring the king of Prussia,
that the British crown would continue to fulfil, with the greatest
punctuality, its engagements with his Prussian majesty, and to support
him with firmness and vigour. Such a representation could not fail of
being agreeable to a prince, who, at this juncture, stood in need of an
extraordinary cordial. He knew he could securely depend, not only on the
good faith of an English ministry, but also on the good plight of the
British nation, which, like an indulgent nurse, hath always presented
the nipple to her meagre German allies. Those, however, who pretended to
consider and canvas events, without prejudice and prepossession, could
not help owning their surprise at hearing an alliance stigmatized
as pernicious to the system of public liberty, and subversive of the
independence of the European powers, as they remembered that this
alliance was the effect of necessity, to which the house of Austria was
reduced for its own preservation; reduced, as its friends and partisans
affirm, by those very potentates that now reproached her with these
connexions.

{GEORGE II. 1727-1760}

DISPUTES CONCERNING THE CONVENTION OF CLOSTER-SEVEN.

His Britannic majesty was resolved that the king of Prussia should have
no cause to complain of his indifference, whatever reasons he had
to exclaim against the convention of Closter-Seven, which he did not
scruple to condemn as a very scandalous capitulat