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 become a dangerous colossus, and the Turk would be duplicated. But these were relatively remote speculations.

In his second pamphlet, and one which its comprehensiveness of view already entitles to be numbered among the notable political deliverances of its author, his thoughts are already directly turned to the West. The Confederation of the Rhine had fallen to pieces, and the eyes of the Elector of Mainz, with Boineburg once more in his secrets, had been opened by the War of Devolution to the aggressive policy of Louis XIV. But the Elector and those who thought with him were not yet willing to hurry Germany into a decision which might be fatal to her prosperity, unprepared as she was for a struggle; and the choice therefore had lain for some little time between risking all by joining the celebrated—perhaps unduly celebrated—Triple Alliance which had in a measure stayed the advance of the French arms, or playing a waiting game, and meanwhile organising resistance at home. Securitas Publica (the way of establishing the security of the German Empire) as the title of the treatise is usually cited in brief—was written in 1670–1—between two wars; and its immediate occasion was to provide a basis of discussion at an interview between the Electors of Mainz and Trier at Schwalbach, where they were to decide on the policy to be adopted by them and the Duke of Lorraine, with whom they had combined in the so-called alliance of Limburg, and who was now trembling how to save his duchy from the embraces of France. While Leibniz was in the middle of his disquisition, Marshal Crequi had overrun Lorraine and strengthened the writer s argument. In a very interesting survey of the chief states of Europe and of their relations to France, he demonstrates how the conclusion is inevitable that Louis XIV has a design upon the United Provinces; but that to join the Triple Alliance and enter upon immediate war would be perdition for Germany and more especially for the defenceless states