Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3.djvu/423



MAGINE a reasonable person in China reading the following treaty, and one who was ignorant of our affairs, or our geography; he would conceive their high mightinesses the States-general, to be some vast powerful commonwealth, like that of Rome; and her majesty, to be a petty prince, like one of those to whom that republick would sometimes send a diadem for a present, when they behaved themselves well, otherwise could depose at pleasure, and place whom they thought fit in their stead. Such a man would think, that the States had taken our prince and us into their protection; and in return, honoured us so far as to make use of our troops as some small assistance in their conquests, and the enlargement of their empire, or to prevent the incursions of barbarians, upon some of their outlying provinces. But how must it sound in a European ear, that Great Britain, after maintaining a war for so many years, with so much glory and success, and such prodigious expense; after saving the Empire, Holland, and Portugal, and almost recovering Spain, should toward the close of a war enter