Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3.djvu/426

418 to endeavour to recover Flanders for a barrier, was understood to be the recovering of those provinces to the king of Spain; but in this treaty, the style is wholly changed: here are about twenty towns and forts of great importance, with their chattellanies and dependencies (which dependencies are likewise to be enlarged as much as possible) and the whole revenues of them to be under the perpetual military government of the Dutch, by which that republick will be entirely masters of the richest part of all Flanders; and upon any appearance of war, they may put their garrisons into any other place of the Low-countries; and farther, the king of Spain is to give them a revenue of four hundred thousand crowns a year, to enable them to maintain those garrisons.

Whv should we wonder that the Dutch are inclined to perpetuate the war, when, by an article in this treaty, the king of Spain is not to possess one single town in the Low-countries, until a peace be made? The duke of Anjou, at the beginning of this war, maintained six and thirty thousand men out of those Spanish provinces he then possessed: to which if we add the many towns since taken, which were not in the late king of Spain's possession at the time of his death, with all their territories and dependencies; it is visible what forces the States may be able to keep, even without any charge to their peculiar dominions.

The towns and chattellanies of this barrier always maintained their garrisons when they were in the hands of France; and, as it is reported, returned a considerable sum of money into the king's coffers; yet the king of Spain is obliged by this treaty (as we have