Page:Letters of Junius, volume 2 (Woodfall, 1772).djvu/157

Rh the moment, when a Prince of the House of Bourbon ascended that throne, their whole system of government was inverted and became hostile to this country. Unity of possession introduced a unity of politics, and Lewis the Fourteenth had reason when he said to his grandson, The Pyrenees are removed. The History of the present century is one continued confirmation of the prophecy.

Assertion "That violence and oppression at home can only be supported by treachery and submission abroad," is applied to a free people, whose rights are invaded, not to the government of a country, where despotic, or absolute power is confessedly vested in the prince; and with this application, the assertion is true. An absolute monarch having no points to carry at home, will naturally maintain the honour of his crown in all his transactions with foreign powers. But if we could suppose the Sovereign of a free nation, possessed with a design to make himself absolute, he would be inconsistent with himself if he suffered his projects to be interrupted or embarrassed by a foreign war; unless that war tended, as in some cases it might, to promote his principal design. Of the three