Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3.djvu/353

Rh unsuccessful war, that ever England had been engaged in; sinking under heavy debts, of a nature and degree never heard of by us or our ancestors; the bulk of the gentry and people, heartily tired of the war, and glad of a peace, although it brought no other advantage but itself; no sudden prospect of lessening our taxes, which were grown as necessary to pay our debts, as to raise armies; a sort of artificial wealth of funds and stocks, in the hands of those, who, for ten years before, had been plundering the publick; many corruptions in every branch of our governments that needed reformation. Under these difficulties, from which, twenty years peace and the wisest management could hardly recover us, we declare war against France, fortified by the accession and alliance of those powers, I mentioned before, and which, in the former war, had been parties in our confederacy. It is very obvious, what a change must be made in the balance, by such weights taken out of our scale, and put into theirs; since it was manifest, by ten years experience, that France, without those additions of strength, was able to maintain itself against us. So that human probability ran with mighty odds on the other side; and in this case, nothing, under the most extreme necessity, should force any state to engage in a war. We had already acknowleged Philip for king of Spain; neither does the queen's declaration of war take notice of the duke of Anjou's succession to that monarchy, as a subject of quarrel, but the French king's governing it as if it were his own; his seizing Cadiz, Milan, and the Spanish Low-countries, with the indignity of proclaiming the Pretender. In all which, we charge that prince with