the land, from the Rhine to the Danube; but, in the diet, their votes counted as nothing. As the people on the one side were not heard, so the imperial crown on the other brought no substantial power; and, as the hundred princes were never disposed to diminish their separate independence, the German empire was but a shadow. The princes and nobles parcelled out the land, and ruled it in severalty, with an authority which there was none to dispute, to guide, or to restrain. 1763. Nobility throughout Germany was strictly a caste, and therefore the more hateful to the educated commoner. The numerous little princes, absolute within their own narrow limits over a hopeless people, made up for the small extent of their dominions by self-adulation; and were justly described by a German poet as "demi-men, who, in perfectly serious stupidity, took themselves for beings of a higher nature." But their pride was a pride which licked the dust; "almost all of them were venal and pensionary." The United Provinces of the Netherlands, the forerunner of nations in religious tolerance, were, from the origin of their confederacy, the natural friends of intellectual freedom. Here thought ranged through the wide domain of speculative reason; here the literary fugitive found an asylum, and the boldest writings, which in other countries circulated by stealth, were openly published to the world. But, in their European relations, the Netherlands were no more a great maritime power. They had opulent free ports in the West Indies, colonies in South America, Southern Africa, and the East Indies, with the best harbor in the Indian Ocean: their paths, as of old, were on the deep, and their footsteps in many waters. Ever the champions of the freedom of the seas and of neutral flags, they knew they could prosper only through commerce, and their system of mercantile policy was liberal beyond that of every nation in Europe. Even their colonial ports were less closely shut against the traffic with other countries. This freedom bore its fruits they became wealthy beyond compare, reduced their debt, and were able so to improve their finances that their funds, bearing only two per cent interest, rose con siderably above par. But the accession of the stadholder William of Orange to the throne of England was fatal to the political weight of the Netherlands. From the rival of England, they became her ally, and almost her subordinate; and, guided by her policy, they exhausted their means in land forces and barriers against France, leaving their navy to decline. Hence arose the factions by which their councils were distracted and their strength paralyzed. The friends of the stadholder, who in 1763 was a boy of fifteen, sided with England, desired the increase of the army, were averse to expenditures for the navy, and, forfeiting the popular favor which they once enjoyed, inclined more and more towards monarchical interests. The patriots saw in their weakness at sea a state of dependence on Great Bri tain; they cherished a deep sense of the wrongs unatoned for and unavenged, which England, in the pride of strength and unmindful of treaties, had in the last war inflicted on their carrying-trade and their flag; they grew less jealous of France; they opposed the increase of the army; longed to restore the maritime greatness of their country, and, including much of the old aristocratic party among the merchants, longed to see their country thoroughly republican. 1763. The kingdom of Spain was become an absolute monarchy, with a French court and Italian ministers. "The royal power," says its apologist and admirer, "moved majestically in the orbit of its unlimited faculties." The individual to whom these prerogatives were confided was the bigoted, ignorant, kindly Charles III. A fond husband, a gentle master, really wishing well to his subjects, he had never read a book, not even in his boyhood with his teachers. He indulged systematically his passion for the chase; crossing half his kingdom to hunt a wolf, and chronicling his achievements as a sportsman. He kept the prayer-book and playthings of his childhood as amulets, and, yielding his mind to his confessors, never strayed beyond the estabished paths in politics and religion. Yet the light that shone in his time penetrated even his palace. Externally, he followed the direction of France; at home, the mildness of his nature, and some good sense, and even his timidity, 1763. made him listen to the most liberal of his ministers: so that in Spain, also, criminal law was softened, the use of torture discountenanced, and the papal power and patronage more and more restrained. The fires of the inquisition were extinguished, though its ferocity was not subdued; and even the Jesuits, as reputed apologists of resistance and regicide when kings are unjust, were on the point of being driven from the most Catholic country of Europe. Spain ranked as the fourth European power in extent of territory, the fifth in revenue, while its colonies exceeded all others of the world beside, embracing nearly all South America, except Brazil and the Guianas; all Mexico and Central America; California, which had no bounds on the north; Louisiana, which came to the Mississippi, and near its mouth beyond it; Cuba, Porto Rico, and part of Hayti; and, midway between the Pacific and the Indian Ocean, the Marianna and Philippine groups of isles: in a word, the countries richest in soil, natural products, and mines, and having a submissive population of nearly twenty millions of souls. In the midst of this unexampled grandeur of possession, Spain, which with Charles V. and Philip II. had introduced the mercantile system of restrictions, was weak and poor and wretched. It had no canals, no good roads, no manufactures. There was so little industry, or opportunity of employing capital, that, though money was very scarce, the rate of interest was as low at Madrid as in Holland. Almost all the lands were entailed in perpetuity, and were included in the immense domains of the grandees. These estates, never seen by their owners, were poorly cultivated and ill-managed; so that almost nothing fell to the share of the masses. Except in Barcelona and Cadiz, the nation presented the picture of misery and poverty. And Spain, which by its laws of navigation reserved to itself all traffic with its colonies, and desired to make the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean its own close seas, allowed but four-and-thirty vessels, some of them small ones, to engage in voyages between itself and the continent of America on the Atlantic side, and all along the Pacific; while but four others plied to and fro between Spain and the West India Isles. Having admirable harbors on every side, and a people on the coasts, especially in Biscay and Catalonia, suited to life at sea, all its fisheries, its coasting trade, its imports and exports, and all its colonies, scarcely employed sixteen thousand sailors. Such were the fruits of commercial monopoly, as illustrated by its greatest example. 1763. The political relations of Spain were analogous. From a consciousness of weakness, it leaned on the alliance with France; and the deep veneration of the Catholic king for the blood of the Bourbons confirmed his attachment to the family compact. Besides, like France, and more than France, he had griefs against England. The English, in holding the rock of Gibraltar, hurled at him a perpetual insult; England encroached on Central America; England encouraged Portugal to extend the bounds of Brazil; England demanded a ransom for the Manillas; England was always in the way, defying, subduing, overawing, sending its ships into forbidden waters, protecting its smugglers, ever ready to seize the Spanish colonies themselves. The court of Spain was so wrapt up in the worship of kingly power, that by its creed such a monarch of such an empire ought to be invincible; it dreamed of a new and more successful armada, and hid its unceasing fears under gigantic propositions of daring. But the king, chastened by experience, had all the while an unconfessed misgiving; and, slyly timid, delighted in intrigue and menace, affected to be angry at the peace, and was perpetually stimulating France to undertake a new war, of which he yet carefully avoided the outbreak. CHAPTER II. THE CONTINENT OF Europe. FRANCE. 1763. 1763. FRANCE, the "beautiful kingdom" of central Europe, was occupied by a most ingenious people, formed of blended elements, and still bearing traces not only of the Celtic but of the German race, of the culture of Rome and the hardihood of the Northmen. In the habit of analysis, it excelled all nations; its delight in logical exactness and in precision of outline and expression of thought gave the style alike to its highest efforts and to its ordinary manufactures, to its poetry and its prose, to the tragedies of Racine and the pictures of Poussin, as well as to its products of taste for daily use, and the adornment of its public squares with a careful regard to fitness and proportion. Its severe method in the pursuit of mathematical science corresponded to its nicety of workmanship in the structure of its ships-of-war, its canals, its bridges, its fortifications, and its public buildings. Light-hearted, frivolous, and vain, no people were more ready to seize a new idea, and to pursue it with rigid dialectics to all its consequences; none were so eager to fill, and as it were to burden, the fleeting moment with pleasure; and none so ready to renounce pleasure and risk life for a caprice, or sacrifice it for glory. Self-indulgent, they abounded in offices of charity. Often exhibiting heartless egoism, they were also easily inflamed with a most generous enthusiasm. Seemingly lost in profligate sensuality, they were yet capable of contemplative asceticism. To the superficial observer, they were a nation of atheists; and yet they preserved the traditions of their own Bossuet and Calvin, of Descartes and Fénelon. In this most polished and cultivated land, whose govern |