for defence against the Turks, or for the commerce of their colonies, or for a more active communication of thought by way of the press, or lastly to resist the abuse of force in certain preponderant powers. The consequence was that these estates formed, in respect to the rest of the world, as it were a single body, in the bosom of which there existed in reality only political separations, and where the tendency to union was continually more sensible and more marked. The feeling of the relations of law rose from the private life of men to the political life of peoples. Nothing is grander, in the history of the progress of mankind, than this labour of Europe upon itself, and the developement of ideas which arose from it. Mind then acquired a power which it had lost since the time of antiquity, and very small states might, by superiority of intelligence, balance the influence which they wanted on the side of force.

Europe was thus pushed by a great community of destinies, of interests, and of opinions, towards a form of political existence which represented the confederation of civilized states of the modern world. This situation gave birth to a system of international policy, established on theories of reciprocal security, having for its object the maintenance of the independence and safety of each state. This system, which may be called European, owed its origin to facts, but it was consecrated by law. It received the sanction given by the force of things, but it obtained also the authority communicated by a powerful manifestation of public feeling. From that time there was a general system of European politics beside the special system of politics belonging to each state.

Thence sprang a law of nations, founded not only on positive treaties, but also on a general and tacit convention, of which the obligatory, though often neglected, maxims exercised a great influence on the acts of governments. Thence the intervention in the political affairs of Europe of a new power to which it was necessary to give due respect-the power of right,

the power of opinion, the power of human intelligence. The right of peoples was supported by the great principles of civil right applied to the right of nations: the right of interior liberty, the right of property or exterior independence, and the faith of conventions; and, since there was not above the peoples a superior justice which could guarantee the safety which a civil police procures in this respect to the citizens of a state, the necessity was felt of establishing and maintaining a political equilibrium of the powers, that is, a system preventive of the abuse of power, by means of the regular division of the forces of the European confederation. From this time the chief attention of the different states was directed to the defence of their independence, internal or external, against the invasions which might result from the exaggerated preponderance of a single state. The conception of this political balance, which was not entirely unknown in ancient times, did not, it is true, beget a perfect security, but it procured the greatest possible security to the nations interested, where they joined prudence and conduct to the force of right.

Under the protection of these great political acts was developed the theory of national sovereignties. By it, each state obtained the consecration of its natural right to govern itself according to its interest and its principles, while it respected the right and interest of others. It was no longer permitted to one nation to interfere in the interior affairs of another for the purpose of intermeddling with its police, with the form of its government, and with the reports between the people and the supreme power. From the domain of juridical speculation, these ideas passed into political practice, thanks to the wise and laborious diplomacy of the seventeenth century, which has transmitted to us the glorious monuments of its works in those famous treaties on which are fixed the bases of European law. But, among the principles constantly invoked in the diplomatic discussions of that time, was that of the right of acting to prevent the immoderate

aggrandizement of a single state to the risk of the general security and independence of the others. The equilibrium of powers and states has pre-occupied all men devoted to the career of politics since the middle of the sixteenth century; and, towards the end of the seventeenth, Fénélon lent to it the forms of an attractive style of writing. The danger which the liberty of Europe, or rather let us say civilization itself, ran under Charles V, has remained fixed in the memory of all.

It was believed in the seventeenth century, and even in the eighteenth, that the equilibrium of Europe ought to be established on an equality of forces and influence between Austria and France. A strict alliance of Spain with France must be the principal means of this distribution of the respective forces. But the reign of the house of Austria in the Peninsula seemed an insurmountable obstacle to this design. France tried to overcome the difficulty by marriages; we shall soon see with how little effect. Richelieu supported the league of the Protestant princes of Germany against the house of Hapsburg. The only aim of the thirty years war was to place Germany in a state of independence towards the emperor, for it was not only in the south that the preponderance of Austria had been threatening, it had excited just fears in the north. Mazarin pursued the plans of Richelieu, and he had the glory of concluding the peace of Westphalia, which terminated the war of supremacy between Austria and Germany, by the triumph of German liberty. This was the first important occasion in which the new ideas, which had prevailed in people's minds with regard to European policy, appear to have been applied. Europe had never seen negociations so great or so complicated.

It was

The Spanish branch was also attacked. ruined in the wars of the minority of Louis XIV, and the peace of the Pyrenees was forced upon it. The French frontier was carried, towards the east, to the Rhine; towards the south, to the Pyrenees; and for

tified on the north by the accession or construction of a considerable line of fortified towns. At length, Louis XIV married Maria Theresa of Austria.

Then began a new phase of the question. The Spanish branch of the house of Hapsburg was, as it were, worn out; gradually degenerated, from Charles V to Charles II, it was approaching to extinction. France, unable to reckon upon a solid friendship with Austrian Spain, carried its views towards the occupation of that kingdom, and Louis XIV, instead of limiting himself to the union of the two peoples, seemed ambitious of effecting a fusion of the two states into one single monarchy. During the fifty last years of his reign, his policy was to establish himself in Spain, entirely or partially, or at least to expel from it the house of Austria. Louis XIV was of the same opinion as the rest of Europe, that a new reunion of the Spanish monarchy to the imperial crown would have compromised the general safety. But the others feared his designs, and they saw in the adjunction of Spain to France another extreme of the question, equally threatening to the equilibrium of Europe. The essential aim therefore of the disinterested part of Europe was to avoid the reunion of Spain either to France or to Austria. The pre-eminence which France had acquired, and which Louis XIV had obtained personally by the greatness of his character and the splendour of his reign, gave, on this subject, a singular force to the apprehensions which were exaggerated by malevolence. They could not, doubtless, impose upon Spain a foreign dynasty against her free will; but they could require the separation of the Spanish and French crowns, the union of which threatened the liberty of Europe.

The maintenance of the equilibrium, which Europe often believed compromised since the peace of Westphalia, was the constant object of public attention, and all the treaties of the seventeenth century had for their object to assure the guarantee of it. To this interest of the political equilibrium was joined, at the same

epoch, an interest of commerce and riches, born of the increasing civilization of the states, and especially of the possession of the colonies of the new world. From that time the commercial interests took their place by the side of the great political interests; and for the maritime powers, such as Holland and England, they became confounded with the political interest; for, with regard to those states, riches and credit were a force which balanced the territorial powers of the kings of the continent. The commercial interest of all the states, and above all of England and Holland, complicated, therefore, the situation of affairs in Europe; it gave birth to new combinations and to unlooked-for complications; but the two interests joined constantly to hinder the reunion of the two crowns of France and Spain on the same head.

§ III. THE MARRIAGES OF LOUIS XIII AND LOUIS XIV. The great affair of the reign of Louis XIV was the succession to the crown of Spain. It was not merely an affair of family, but it was a national question for the two countries: for France, a question of security, I will say almost of political existence; for Spain, a question of independence and liberty. Spain had perhaps taken an aversion to the house of Hapsburg, which had ruined that country; but the interests of her political liberty and the independence of her crown were especially engaged. They were threatened by the various pretensions of the powers. The claims of the house of France to the succession of Spain proceeded from two sources-the marriage of Louis XIII and the marriage of Louis XIV.

At the death of Henri IV, the regent married Louis XIII to the young Infanta Anne of Austria, to consolidate the peace of Vervins and prevent the war which was on the point of breaking out between France and Spain; the Infanta was made to renounce her eventual right of succession by the contract of marriage passed the 12th of August 1612. The house of Hapsburg, which had been kept from the throne of