the slightest reference to the welfare of the states so readily
parcelled and allotted; insulting to the pride of Spain, and
tending to strip that country of its hard-won conquests." The
most serious part of this charge would apply to half the treaties
which have been concluded in Europe quite as strongly as to the
Partition Treaty. What regard was shown in the Treaty of the
Pyrenees to the welfare of the people of Dunkirk and Roussillon,
in the Treaty of Nimeguen to the welfare of the people of Franche
Comte, in the Treaty of Utrecht to the welfare of the people of
Flanders, in the treaty of 1735 to the welfare of the people of
Tuscany? All Europe remembers, and our latest posterity will, we
fear, have reason to remember how coolly, at the last great
pacification of Christendom, the people of Poland, of Norway, of
Belgium, and of Lombardy, were allotted to masters whom they
abhorred. The statesmen who negotiated the Partition Treaty were
not so far beyond their age and ours in wisdom and virtue as to
trouble themselves much about the happiness of the people whom
they were apportioning among foreign rulers. But it will be
difficult to prove that the stipulations which Lord Mahon
condemns were in any respect unfavourable to the happiness of
those who were to be transferred to new sovereigns. The
Neapolitans would certainly have lost nothing by being given to
the Dauphin, or to the Great Turk. Addison, who visited Naples
about the time at which the Partition Treaty was signed, has left
us a frightful description of the misgovernment under which that
part of the Spanish Empire groaned. As to the people of Lorraine,
an union with France would have been the happiest event which
could have befallen them. Lewis was already their sovereign for
all purposes of cruelty and exaction. He had kept their country
during many years in his own hands. At the peace of Ryswick,