Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3.djvu/354

346 with nothing directly relating to us, excepting the last; and this, although indeed a great affront, might easily have been redressed without a war; for the French court declared they did not acknowlege the pretender, but only gave him the title of king, which was allowed to Augustus by his enemy of Sweden, who had driven him out of Poland, and forced him to acknowlege Stanislaus.

It is true indeed, the danger of the Dutch, by so ill a neighbourhood in Flanders, might affect us very much in the consequences of it; and the loss of Spain to the house of Austria, if it should be governed by French influence, and French politicks, might, in time, be very pernicious to our trade. It would therefore have been prudent, as well as generous and charitable, to help our neighbour; and so we might have done without injuring ourselves; for, by an old treaty with Holland, we were bound to assist that republick with ten thousand men, whenever they were attacked by the French; whose troops, upon the king of Spain's death, taking possession of Flanders in right of Philip, and securing the Dutch garrisons till they would acknowledge him, the States-general, by memorials from their envoy here, demanded only the ten thousand men we were obliged to give them by virtue of that treaty. And I make no doubt, but the Dutch would have exerted themselves so vigorously, as to be able, with that assistance alone, to defend their frontiers; or, if they had been forced to a peace, the Spaniards, who abhor dismembering their monarchy, would never have suffered the French to possess themselves of Flanders. At that time they had none of those endearments to each other, which this war has created; and