ruary 1699 made the Treaty waste paper. Austria
and France were left face to face; and a terrible struggle, in which the
success of either would be equally fatal to the independence of Europe,
seemed unavoidable. The peril was the greater that the temper of both
England and Holland left William without the means of backing his policy
by arms. The suffering which the war had caused to the merchant class
and the pressure of the debt and taxation it entailed were waking every
day a more bitter resentment in the people of both countries. While the
struggle lasted the value of English exports had fallen from four
millions a year to less than three, and the losses of ships and goods at
sea had been enormous. Nor had the stress been less felt within the
realm. The revenue from the post-office, a fair index to the general
wealth of the country, had fallen from seventy-six thousand to
fifty-eight. With the restoration of peace indeed the energies of the
country had quickly recovered from the shock. In the five years after
the Peace of Ryswick the exports doubled themselves; the
merchant-shipping was quadrupled; and the revenue of the post-office
rose to eighty-two thousand pounds. But such a recovery only produced a
greater disinclination to face again the sufferings of a renewed state
of war.

[Sidenote: The second Partition Treaty.]

The general discontent at the course of the war, the general anxiety to
preserve the new gains of the peace, told alike on William and on the
party which had backed his policy. In England almost every one was set
on two objects, the reduction of taxes and the disbanding of the
standing army. The war had raised the taxes from two millions a year to
four. It had bequeathed twenty millions of debt and a fresh six millions
of deficit. The standing army was still held to be the enemy of liberty,
as it had been held under the Stuarts; and hardly any one realized the
new conditions of political life which had robbed its existence of
danger to the State. The king however resisted desperately the proposals
for its disbanding; for the maintenance of the army was all-important
for the success of the negotiations he was carrying on. But his stubborn
opposition only told against himself. Personally indeed the king still
remained an object of national gratitude; but his natural partiality to
his Dutch favourites, the confidence he gave to Sunderland, his cold and
sullen demeanour, above all his endeavours to m