Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3.djvu/430

422 win, and pile you lose;" or "what's yours is mine, and what's mine is my own." Now if it should happen, that in a treaty of peace some ports or towns should be yielded us for the security of our trade, in any part of the Spanish dominions, at how great a distance soever, I suppose the Dutch would go on with their boys-play, and challenge half by virtue of that article: or would they be content with military government and the revenues, and reckon them among what shall bethought necessary for their barrier?

This prodigious aiticle is introduced as subsequent to the treaty of Munster, made about the year 1648, at a time when England was in the utmost confusion, and very much to our disadvantage. Those parts in that treaty, so unjust in themselves, and so prejudicial to our trade, ought, in reason, to have been remitted, rather than confirmed upon us, for the time to come. But this is Dutch partnership; to share in all our beneficial bargains, and exclude us wholly from theirs, even from those which we have got for them.

In one part of The Conduct of the Allies, among other remarks upon this treaty, I make it a question, whether it were right, in point of policy or prudence, to call in a foreign power to be a guarantee to our succession; because by that means we put it out of the power of our legislature to alter the succession, how much soever the necessity of the kingdom may require it? To comply with the cautions of some people, I explained my meaning in the lowing