Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/92

62 fountain of law, and the source of power, honours, and offices throughout an immense territory.

Let us take, again, another and much more celebrated contemporary authority, Leibnitz, who in 1672 presented to Louis XIV his Consilium Aegyptiacum, which was a long state paper urgently advising the king to seize and annex Egypt. His main argument was that the possession of Egypt would secure to France the command of the invaluable Eastern trade, whereby she could easily ruin Holland by cutting off the sources of her wealth and naval power, and would be enabled to build up a maritime empire for herself. As Louis XIV was at that time preparing to attack the Dutch, Leibnitz pointed out that to break down their preponderance in the East Indies would be a far surer way toward subduing them than an invasion of Holland, and he proceeded to throw out some very remarkable suggestions in regard to the facility of establishing a great Asiatic dominion. No one can doubt, he says, that if the Portuguese could have employed larger forces in their earlier expeditions, they would have brought all India under their sway, for the whole of Asia is more easily conquerable than Germany; and the French king needs only the strength and riches that can be drawn from Asiatic commerce to become the supreme arbiter of European affairs.

Such views and arguments as these, emanating from men of the highest reputation and experience in commerce and politics, serve to explain what kind of prize it was over which the maritime nations of the world