nsee_ which may
fasten or loosen the ambiguous expression he had so cautiously and so
finely inlaid in his mosaic of treachery. A scene of this nature I draw
out of "Mesnager's Negociation with the Court of England." When that
secret agent of Louis the Fourteenth was negotiating a peace, an
insuperable difficulty arose respecting the acknowledgment of the
Hanoverian succession. It was absolutely necessary, on this delicate
point, to quiet the anxiety of the English public and our allies; but
though the French king was willing to recognise Anne's title to the
throne, yet the settlement in the house of Hanover was incompatible with
French interests and French honour. Mesnager told Lord Bolingbroke that
"the king, his master, would consent to any such article, _looking the
other way, as might disengage him from the obligation of that
agreement_, as the occasion should present." This ambiguous language was
probably understood by Lord Bolingbroke: at the next conference his
lordship informed the secret agent "that the queen could not admit of
any _explanations, whatever her intentions might be_; that the
_succession_ was settled by act of parliament; that as to the private
sentiments of the queen, or of any about her, he could say nothing."
"All this was said with such an air, as to let me understand that he
gave a _secret assent_ to what I had proposed, &c.; but he desired me to
drop the discourse." Thus two great negotiators, both equally urgent to
conclude the treaty, found an insuperable obstacle occur, which neither
could control. Two honest men would have parted; but the "skilful
confounder of words," the French diplomatist, hit on an expedient; he
wrote the words which afterwards appeared in the preliminaries, "That
Louis the Fourteenth will acknowledge the Queen of Great Britain in that
quality, as also _the succession of the crown according to the_ PRESENT
SETTLEMENT." "The English agent," adds the Frenchman, "would have had me
add--_on the house of Hanover_, but this I entreated him not to desire
of me." The term PRESENT SETTLEMENT, then, was that article which was
LOOKING THE OTHER WAY, _to disengage his master from the obligation of
that agreement_, as occasion should present! that is, that Louis the
Fourteenth chose to understand by the PRESENT SETTLEMENT the _old one_,
by which the British crown was to be restored to the Pretender! Anne and
the English nation were to understand it in their own sense--as the _new