France, did not allow of an abiding
friendship. The national interest, as it was then understood, of the
one State was in antagonism to the national interest of the other. Nor
could France and England combined have kept down the growth of other
European States then rising into importance and beginning to cast their
shadows far in front of them. It seems only amusing to us now to read
of King George's directions to his minister--"To crush the Czar
immediately, to secure his ships, and even to seize his person." The
courageous and dull old King had not the faintest perception of the
part which either the Czar or the Czar's country was destined to play
in the history of Europe. At present we are all inclined, and with
some reason, to think that French statesmen, as a rule, are wanting in
a knowledge of foreign politics--in an appreciation of the relative
proportions of one force and another in the affairs of Europe outside
France. But in the days of George the First French statesmen were much
more accomplished in the knowledge of foreign politics than the
statesmen of England. There was not, probably, in George's
administration any man who had anything like the knowledge of the {164}
affairs of foreign countries which was possessed by Dubois. But it had
not yet occurred to the mind of Dubois, or the Regent, or anybody else,
that the relations of one State to another, or one people to another,
are anything more than the arrangements which various sets of
diplomatic agents think fit to make among themselves and to consign to
the formality of a treaty.

[Sidenote: 1717--Walpole bides his time]

The interest we have now in all these "understandings," engagements,
and so-called alliances is personal rather than national. So far as
England is concerned, they led to a squabble and a split in George's
administration. It would hardly be worth while to go into a minute
history of the quarrel between Townshend and Stanhope, Sunderland and
Walpole. Sunderland, a man of great ability and ambition, had never
been satisfied with the place he held in the King's administration, and
the disputes which sprang up out of the negotiations for the triple
alliance gave him an opportunity of exerting his influence against some
of his colleagues. Fresh occasion for intrigue, jealousy, and anger
was given by the desire of the King to remain during the winter in
Hanover, and his fear, on the other hand, that his son--the Prince who
was