Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 4.djvu/96

88 is not to be made; and whoever compares both, will find the preliminaries to reach every point proposed in that article, which those who censured them at home, if they spoke their thoughts, did not understand: for nothing can be plainer than what the publick has often been told, "That the recovery of Spain from the house of Bourbon, was a thing never imagined when the war began, but a just and reasonable satisfaction to the emperor." Much less ought such a condition to be held necessary at present, not only because it is allowed on all hands to be impracticable; but likewise, because, by the changes in the Austrian and Bourbon families, it would not be safe: neither did those who were loudest in blaming the French preliminaries, know any thing of the advantages privately stipulated for Britain, whose interests they assured us, were all made a sacrifice to the corruption or folly of the managers; and therefore, because the opposers of peace, have been better informed by what they have since heard and seen, they have changed their battery, and accused the ministers for betraying the Dutch.

The lord Raby, her majesty's ambassador at the Hague, having made a short journey to England, where he was created earl of Strafford, went back to Holland about the beginning of October, 1711, with the above preliminaries, in order to communicate them to the pensionary, and other ministers of the States. The earl was instructed to let them know, "That the queen had, according to their desire, returned an answer to the first propositions signed by mons. Torcy, signifying, that the French offers were thought, both by her majesty and the States, neither so particular nor so full " as