d, that the English and
Dutch Governments, in making this covenant with France, were guilty of
a violation of plighted faith. They had, it was affirmed, by a secret
article of a Treaty of Alliance concluded in 1689, bound themselves to
support the pretensions of the Emperor to the Spanish throne; and they
now, in direct defiance of that article, agreed to an arrangement by
which he was excluded from the Spanish throne. The truth is that the
secret article will not, whether construed according to the letter or
according to the spirit, bear the sense which has generally been put
upon it. The stipulations of that article were introduced by a preamble,
in which it was set forth that the Dauphin was preparing to assert by
arms his claim to the great heritage which his mother had renounced, and
that there was reason to believe that he also aspired to the dignity of
King of the Romans. For these reasons, England and the States General,
considering the evil consequences which must follow if he should succeed
in attaining either of his objects, promised to support with all their
power his Caesarean Majesty against the French and their adherents.
Surely we cannot reasonably interpret this engagement to mean that,
when the dangers mentioned in the preamble had ceased to exist, when the
eldest Archduke was King of the Romans, and when the Dauphin had, for
the sake of peace, withdrawn his claim to the Spanish Crown, England
and the United Provinces would be bound to go to war for the purpose of
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