supporting the cause of the Emperor, not against the French but
against his own grandson, against the only prince who could reign
at Madrid without exciting fear and jealousy throughout all
Christendom.

While some persons accused William of breaking faith with the
House of Austria, others accused him of interfering unjustly in
the internal affairs of Spain. In the most ingenious and humorous
political satire extant in our language, Arbuthnot's History of
John Bull, England and Holland are typified by a clothier and a
linendraper, who take upon themselves to settle the estate of a
bedridden old gentleman in their neighbourhood. They meet at the
corner of his park with paper and pencils, a pole, a chain and a
semicircle, measure his fields, calculate the value of his mines,
and then proceed to his house in order to take an inventory of
his plate and furniture. But this pleasantry, excellent as
pleasantry, hardly deserves serious refutation. No person who has
a right to give any opinion at all about politics can think that
the question, whether two of the greatest empires in the world
should be virtually united so as to form one irresistible mass,
was a question with which other states had nothing to do, a
question about which other states could not take counsel together
without being guilty of impertinence as gross as that of a
busybody in private life who should insist on being allowed to
dictate the wills of other people. If the whole Spanish monarchy
should pass to the House of Bourbon, it was highly probable that
in a few years England would cease to be great and free, and that
Holland would be a mere province of France. Such a danger England
and Holland might lawfully have averted by war; and it would be
absurd to say that a danger which may be lawfully averted by war