inions, would have been held to inflict an injury upon
all monarchies, and to furnish their subjects with a dangerous example,
by depriving royalty of its inviolable character. In time of war, as
there was no national cause at stake, there was no attempt to rouse
national feeling. The courtesy of the rulers towards each other was
proportionate to the contempt for the lower orders. Compliments passed
between the commanders of hostile armies; there was no bitterness, and
no excitement; battles were fought with the pomp and pride of a parade.
The art of war became a slow and learned game. The monarchies were
united not only by a natural community of interests, but by family
alliances. A marriage contract sometimes became the signal for an
interminable war, whilst family connections often set a barrier to
ambition. After the wars of religion came to an end in 1648, the only
wars were those which were waged for an inheritance or a dependency, or
against countries whose system of government exempted them from the
common law of dynastic States, and made them not only unprotected but
obnoxious. These countries were England and Holland, until Holland
ceased to be a republic, and until, in England, the defeat of the
Jacobites in the forty-five terminated the struggle for the Crown. There
was one country, however, which still continued to be an exception; one
monarch whose place was not admitted in the comity of kings.

Poland did not possess those securities for stability which were
supplied by dynastic connections and the theory of legitimacy, wherever
a crown could be obtained by marriage or inheritance. A monarch without
royal blood, a crown bestowed by the nation, were an anomaly and an
outrage in that age of dynastic absolutism. The country was excluded
from the European system by the nature of its institutions. It excited a
cupidity which could not be satisfied. It gave the reigning families of
Europe no hope of permanently strengthening themselves by intermarriage
with its rulers, or of obtaining it by bequest or by inheritance. The
Habsburgs had contested the possession of Spain and the Indies with the
French Bourbons, of Italy with the Spanish Bourbons, of the empire with
the house of Wittelsbach, of Silesia with the house of Hohenzollern.
There had been wars between rival houses for half the territories of
Italy and Germany. But none could hope to redeem their losses or
increase their power in a country to which marriage