noisily condemned, and for which scarcely any writer has ventured
to offer even a timid apology, but which it may perhaps not be
impossible to defend by grave and temperate argument.

It was said, when first the terms of the Partition Treaty were
made public, and has since been many times repeated, that the
English and Dutch Governments, in making this covenant with
France, were guilty of a violation of plighted faith. They had,
it was affirmed, by a secret article of a Treaty of Alliance
concluded in 1689, bound themselves to support the pretensions of
the Emperor to the Spanish throne; and they now, in direct
defiance of that article, agreed to an arrangement by which he
was excluded from the Spanish throne. The truth is that the
secret article will not, whether construed according to the
letter or according to the spirit, bear the sense which has
generally been put upon it. The stipulations of that article were
introduced by a preamble, in which it was set forth that the
Dauphin was preparing to assert by arms his claim to the great
heritage which his mother had renounced, and that there was
reason to believe that he also aspired to the dignity of King of
the Romans. For these reasons, England and the States General,
considering the evil consequences which must follow if he should
succeed in attaining either of his objects, promised to support
with all their power his Caesarean Majesty against the French and
their adherents. Surely we cannot reasonably interpret this
engagement to mean that, when the dangers mentioned in the
preamble had ceased to exist, when the eldest Archduke was King
of the Romans, and when the Dauphin had, for the sake of peace,
withdrawn his claim to the Spanish Crown, England and the United
Provinces would be bound to go to war for the purpose of