partition of an ill governed empire which was not a nation. It
was such a partition as is effected by setting loose a drove of
slaves who have been fastened together with collars and
handcuffs, and whose union has produced only pain, inconvenience
and mutual disgust. There is not the slightest reason to believe
that the Neapolitans would have preferred the Catholic King to
the Dauphin, or that the Lombards would have preferred the
Catholic King to the Archduke. How little the Guipuscoans would
have disliked separation from Spain and annexation to France we
may judge from the fact that, a few years later, the States of
Guipuscoa actually offered to transfer their allegiance to France
on condition that their peculiar franchises should be held
sacred.

One wound the partition would undoubtedly have inflicted, a wound
on the Castilian pride. But surely the pride which a nation takes
in exercising over other nations a blighting and withering
dominion, a dominion without prudence or energy, without justice
or mercy, is not a feeling entitled to much respect. And even a
Castilian who was not greatly deficient in sagacity must have
seen that an inheritance claimed by two of the greatest
potentates in Europe could hardly pass entire to one claimant;
that a partition was therefore all but inevitable; and that the
question was in truth merely between a partition effected by
friendly compromise and a partition effected by means of a long
and devastating war.

There seems, therefore, to be no ground at all for pronouncing
the terms of the Treaty of Loo unjust to the Emperor, to the
Spanish monarchy considered as a whole, or to any part of that