ars to come.

While France was thus making overtures to England, Spain, under the
guidance of another able churchman, was seeking the same alliance and
at the same time developing her national strength with the hope of
recovering her lost Italian States. The new minister, Cardinal
Alberoni, promised Philip V. to put him in a position to reconquer
Sicily and Naples, if granted five years of peace. He worked hard to
bring up the revenues, rebuild the navy, and re-establish the army,
while at the same time promoting manufactures, commerce, and shipping,
and the advance made in all these was remarkable; but the more
legitimate ambition of Spain to recover her lost possessions, and with
them to establish her power in the Mediterranean, so grievously
wounded by the loss of Gibraltar, was hampered by the ill-timed
purpose of Philip to overthrow the regency of Orleans in France.
Alberoni was compelled to alienate France, whose sea power, as well as
that of Spain, was concerned in seeing Sicily in friendly hands, and,
instead of that natural ally, had to conciliate the maritime powers,
England and Holland. This he also sought to do by commercial
concessions; promising promptly to put the English in possession of
the privileges granted at Utrecht, concerning which Spain had so far
delayed. In return, he asked favorable action from them in Italy.
George I., who was at heart German, received coldly advances which
were unfriendly to the German emperor in his Italian dominions; and
Alberoni, offended, withdrew them. The Triple Alliance, by
guaranteeing the existing arrangement of succession to the French
throne, gave further offence to Philip V., who dreamed of asserting
his own claim. The result of all these negotiations was to bind
England and France together against Spain,--a blind policy for the two
Bourbon kingdoms.

The gist of the situation created by these different aims and
feelings, was that the Emperor of Austria and the King of Spain both
wanted Sicily, which at Utrecht had been given to the Duke of Savoy;
and that France and England both wished for peace in western Europe,
because war would give an opportunity to the malcontents in either
kingdom. The position of George, however, being more secure than that
of Orleans, the policy of the latter tended to yield to that of the
former, and this tendency was increased by the active ill-will of the
King of Spain. George, as a German, wished the emperor's success; and
the En