hoped or feared but from France. The French would again rush
forward to new invasions, and spread desolation over other countries,
and the house of Austria would be more weakened than by the loss of
many battles in its present state.

The support of the house of Austria appears not, indeed, much to
engage the attention of those by whom this motion is supported. It has
been represented as a house equally ambitious and perfidious with that
of Bourbon, and equally an enemy both to liberty and to true religion;
and a very celebrated author has been quoted to prove, that it is the
interest of the Germans themselves to see a prince at their head,
whose hereditary dominions may not incite him to exert the imperial
power to the disadvantage of the inferiour sovereigns.

In order to the consideration of these objections, it is necessary to
observe, my lords, that national alliances are not like leagues of
friendship, the consequences of an agreement of disposition, opinions,
and affections, but like associations of commerce, formed and
continued by no similitude of any thing but interest. It is not,
therefore, necessary to inquire what the house of Austria has deserved
from us or from mankind; because interest, not gratitude, engages us
to support it. It is useless to urge, that it is equally faithless and
cruel with the house of Bourbon, because the question is not whether
both shall be destroyed, but whether one should rage without control.
It is sufficient for us that their interest is opposite, and that
religion and liberty may be preserved by their mutual jealousy. And I
confess, my lords, that were the Austrians about to attain unlimited
power by the conquest or inheritance of France and Spain, it would be
no less proper to form confederacies against them.

The testimony which has been produced of the convenience of a weak
emperour, is to be considered, my lords, as the opinion of an author
whose birth and employment had tainted him with an inveterate hatred
of the house of Austria, and filled his imagination with an habitual
dread of the imperial power. He was born, my lords, in Sweden, a
country which had suffered much by a long war against the emperour; he
was a minister to the electors of Brandenburgh, who naturally looked
with envy on the superiority of Austria, and could not but wish to see
a weaker prince upon the imperial throne, that their own influence
might be greater; nor can we wonder, that a man thus born a