Page:Karl Marx - Secret Diplomatic History of the Eighteenth Century (1899).djvu/65

 Rh the enemies of Sweden, the Czar commands our fleet, our Admiral enters into Councils of War, and is not only privy to all their designs, but together with our own Minister at Copenhagen (as the King of Denmark has himself owned it in a public declaration), pushed on the Northern Confederates to an enterprise entirely destructive to our Ally Sweden, I mean the descent designed last summer upon Schonen?

"Query II. In what manner we also must explain that passage in the first article by which it is stipulated that one Ally shall not either by themselves or any other what soever, act, treat, or endeavour anything to the loss of the other's lands and dominions; to justify in particular our leaving in the year 1715, even when the season was so far advanced as no longer to admit of our usual pretence of conveying and protecting our trade, which was then got already safe home, eight men-of-war in the Baltic, with orders to join in one line of battle with the Danes, whereby we made them so much superior in number to the Swedish fleet, that it could not come to the relief of Straelsund, and whereby we chiefly occasioned Sweden s entirely losing its German Provinces, and even the extreme danger his Swedish Majesty ran in his own person, in crossing the sea, before the surrender of the town.

"Article III. By a special defensive treaty, the Kings of Sweden and England mutually oblige themselves, 'in a strict alliance, to defend one another mutually, as well as their kingdoms, territories, provinces, states, subjects, possessions, as their rights and liberties of navigation and commerce, as well in the Northern, Deucalidonian, Western, and Britannic Sea, commonly called the Channel, the Baltic, the Sound; as also of the privileges and prerogatives of each of the Allies belonging to them, by virtue of treaties and agreements, as well as by received customs, the laws of nations, hereditary right, against any aggressors or invaders and molesters in Europe by sea or land, etc.'

"Query. It being by the law of nations an indisputable right and prerogative of any king or people, in case of a great necessity or threatening ruin, to use all such means they themselves shall judge most necessary for their pre-