cannot lawfully be averted by peaceable means. If nations are so
deeply interested in a question that they would be justified in
resorting to arms for the purpose of settling it, they must
surely be sufficiently interested in it to be justified in
resorting to amicable arrangements for the purpose of settling
it. Yet, strange to say, a multitude of writers who have warmly
praised the English and Dutch governments for waging a long and
bloody war in order to prevent the question of the Spanish
succession from being settled in a manner prejudicial to them,
have severely blamed those governments for trying to attain the
same end without the shedding of a drop of blood, without the
addition of a crown to the taxation of any country in
Christendom, and without a moment's interruption of the trade of
the world by land or by sea.

It has been said to have been unjust that three states should
have combined to divide a fourth state without its own consent;
and, in recent times, the partition of the Spanish monarchy which
was meditated in 1698 has been compared to the greatest political
crime which stains the history of modern Europe, the partition of
Poland. But those who hold such language cannot have well
considered the nature of the Spanish monarchy in the seventeenth
century. That monarchy was not a body pervaded by one principle
of vitality and sensation. It was an assemblage of distinct
bodies, none of which had any strong sympathy with the rest, and
some of which had a positive antipathy for each other. The
partition planned at Loo was therefore the very opposite of the
partition of Poland. The partition of Poland was the partition of
a nation. It was such a partition as is effected by hacking a
living man limb from limb. The partition planned at Loo was the