Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3.djvu/355

Rh and whatever hatred and jealousy were natural between the two nations, would then have appeared. So that there was no sort of necessity for us to proceed farther, although we had been in a better condition. But our politicians at that time had other views; and a new war must be undertaken, upon the advice of those, who, with their partizans and adherents, were to be sole gainers by it. A grand alliance was therefore made between the Emperor, England, and the States-general: by which, if the injuries complained of from France were not remedied in two months, the parties concerned were obliged mutually to assist each other with their whole srrength.

Thus we became principal in a war in conjunction with two allies, whose share in the quarrel was beyond all proportion greater than ours. However I can see no reason, from the words of the grand alliance, by which we were obliged to make those I prodigious expenses we have since been at. By what I have always heard and read, I take the whole strength of the nation, as understood in that treaty, to be the utmost that a prince can raise annually from his subjects. If he be forced to mortgage and borrow, whether at home or abroad, it is not properly speaking his own strength, or that of the nation, but the entire substance of particular persons, which, not being able to raise out of the annual income of his kingdom, he takes upon security, and can only pay the interest. And by this method, one part of the nation is pawned to the other, with hardly a possibility left of being ever redeemed.

Surely it would have been enough for us to have suspended the payment of our debts, contracted in the