indeed, their Duke had been allowed to return. But the conditions
which had been imposed on him made him a mere vassal of France.

We cannot admit that the Treaty of Partition was objectionable
because it "tended to strip Spain of hard-won conquests." The
inheritance was so vast, and the claimants so mighty, that
without some dismemberment it was scarcely possible to make a
peaceable arrangement. If any dismemberment was to take place,
the best way of effecting it surely was to separate from the
monarchy those provinces which were at a great distance from
Spain, which were not Spanish in manners, in language, or in
feelings, which were both worse governed and less valuable than
the old kingdoms of Castile and Arragon, and which, having always
been governed by foreigners, would not be likely to feel acutely
the humiliation of being turned over from one master to another.

That England and Holland had a right to interfere is plain. The
question of the Spanish succession was not an internal question,
but an European question. And this Lord Mahon admits. He thinks
that when the evil had been done, and a French prince was
reigning at the Escurial, England and Holland were justified in
attempting, not merely to strip Spain of its remote dependencies,
but to conquer Spain itself; that they were justified in
attempting to put, not merely the passive Flemings and Italians,
but the reluctant Castilians and Asturians, under the dominion of
a stranger. The danger against which the Partition Treaty was
intended to guard was precisely the same danger which afterwards
was made the ground of war. It will be difficult to prove that a
danger which was sufficient to justify the war was insufficient
to justify the provisions of the treaty. If, as Lord Mahon