name
members of the new Board of Trade which was established in 1696 for the
regulation of commercial matters. They rejected a proposal, never
henceforth to be revived, for a censorship of the Press. But there was
no factious opposition. So strong was the Ministry that Montague was
enabled to face the general distress which was caused for the moment by
a reform of the currency, which had been reduced by clipping to far less
than its nominal value, and although the financial embarrassments
created by the currency reform hindered any vigorous measures abroad
William was able to hold the French at bay.

[Sidenote: The Spanish Succession.]

But the war was fast drawing to a close. The Catholic powers in the
Grand Alliance were already in revolt against William's supremacy as
they had been in revolt against that of Lewis. In 1696 the Pope
succeeded in detaching Savoy from the league and Lewis was enabled to
transfer his Italian army to the Low Countries. But France was now
simply fighting to secure more favourable terms, and William, though he
held that "the only way of treating with France is with our swords in
our hands," was almost as eager as Lewis for a peace. The defection of
Savoy made it impossible to carry out the original aim of the Alliance,
that of forcing France back to its position at the Treaty of Westphalia,
and a new question was drawing every day nearer, the question of the
succession to the Spanish throne. The death of the King of Spain,
Charles the Second, was now known to be at hand. With him ended the male
line of the Austrian princes who for two hundred years had occupied the
Spanish throne. How strangely Spain had fallen from its high estate in
Europe the wars of Lewis had abundantly shown, but so vast was the
extent of its empire, so enormous the resources which still remained to
it, that under a vigorous ruler men believed its old power would at once
return. Its sovereign was still master of some of the noblest provinces
of the Old World and the New, of Spain itself, of the Milanese, of
Naples and Sicily, of the Netherlands, of Southern America, of the noble
islands of the Spanish Main. To add such a dominion as this to the
dominion either of Lewis or of the Emperor would be to undo at a blow
the work of European independence which William had wrought; and it was
with a view to prevent either of these results that William resolved to
free his hands by a conclusion of the war.

[Sidenote: Peace o