Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3.djvu/400

392 prerogative, to resettle the minds of those princes in the alliance, who are alarmed at the consequences of this turn of affairs, occasioned by the emperor's death? We are assured it never will. Do we then imagine that those princes who dread the overgrown power of the Austrian, as much as that of the Bourbon family, will continue in our alliance, upon a system contrary to that which they engage with us upon? For instance: what can the duke of Savoy expect in such a case? Will he have any choice left him, but that of being a slave and a frontier to France; or a vassal, in the utmost extent of the word, to the imperial court? Will he not therefore, of the two evils, choose the least; by submitting to a master who has no immediate claim upon him, and to whose family he is nearly allied; rather than to another, who has already revived several claims upon him, and threatens to revive more?

Nor are the Dutch more inclined than the rest of Europe, that the empire and Spain should be united in king Charles, whatever they may now pretend. On the contrary, it is known to several persons, that upon the death of the late emperor Joseph, the States resolved that those two powers should not be joined in the same person; and this they determined as a fundamental maxim by which they intended to proceed. So that Spain was first given up by them; and since they maintain no troops in that kingdom, it should seem that they understand the duke of Anjou to be lawful monarch.

Thirdly, Those who are against any peace without Spain, if they be such as no way find their vate