because the evils from which they suffered had worked themselves out and had bankrupted the land in the process. For generations they could only complain, evade, revenge themselves by jests of the kind just quoted, or run away. At the close of the eighteenth century Spain was indeed one of the most beggarly countries in the world. And there was worse. During generations of conflict of wits carried on against State regulation and privileged corporations which were creatures of the government, the Spaniards, who were hampered at every turn when they worked at their trade, came to assume that the man who defrauded the State was merely acting in legitimate self-defence: he had to save himself from greedy bullies who stood over him with their 'take from that purse of yours and put into this purse of 'mine.'

Spain was, we must allow, not the only country where the evil and its consequences were to be found. We had our privileged companies, and it was not without cause that the interloper or smuggler was known as free-trader.' Colbertism went to great lengths in France. In that land also the traders' petition to be let alone moved the profound indignation of the peddling and meddling government official. The distinction of Spain is that it carried regulation, and what never fails to go with regulation-monopoly-to the furthest point it could reach, and that is the point where it ruins commerce, industry, and agriculture, and where it infects a whole race with dishonesty. The Laws of Trade with the Indies, the Mesta, and so forth, are perhaps ancient history, but their consequences remain, and the warning they have to give us is not superfluous.

DAVID HANNAY.

IT.

THE FOUR GREAT WARS

T has often been pointed out that this is the fourth time in the four hundred years of modern history that England has played the leading part in resistance to the world domination of a single State. Philip II., Louis XIV., Napoleon, and Kaiser Wilhelm are the four great ones to whom England said 'No,' each of whom, but for England, would have bestrode the narrow world like a Colossus.'

In each case the attempt was made to revive over Europe a control like that of ancient Rome, a European domination that must under modern conditions have led to an empire over the whole globe. In each case the country assailing the world's liberties relied on a newly developed system of military and administrative efficiency of its own, and on the chaotic internal condition of that continental State which should in each case have been the principal makeweight in the balance of power. In the year of the Armada, France was, owing to her wars of religion, in a condition of anarchy as hopeless as that of Russia to-day, and the Catholic League showed itself as abject towards Spain as either Lenin or the Finnish Whites towards Prussia. And if Germany in the times of Louis XIV. and Napoleon be regarded as a single country, then she, too, was as much divided against herself as France prior to Henri IV., or Russia at this moment; Bavaria, in both the eras of French conquest, threw in her lot with the national enemy.

One question was asked of every country, of every court, of every party in the known world, on the first occasion: Are you for or against Spain?' Then, twice over, 'Are you for or against France?' And now, 'Are you pro'German or anti-German?' For, in every State that made up the known comity of nations, Philip, Louis, Napoleon, and Kaiser Wilhelm had their bribers, propagandists, and terrorists-their Mendozas and their Gerards; their Jesuits and their Jacobites; their Barillons and their Portacarreros ; their Bülows and their Bernstorffs: a whole hierarchy of spies and ambassadors, hirelings and dupes, fanatics and led

captains, all studying by a thousand different methods of the day and hour to plant in distant countries the domination of the new Rome. On each occasion these methods succeeded in some countries, but roused others to fury. By these methods Philip reduced Italy, Portugal, and France of the Guises, but made all England his foe. By these methods Louis first won and then lost the Spanish inheritance. By these methods Germany has for the time conquered the Balkans and Russia, but has brought in Italy and America on our side. And on each successive crisis there has been a hero country on the continent to bear the brunt of battleHolland against Philip and Louis; Spain against Napoleon ; France against Kaiser Wilhelm; and in each case the English fleet and the English-speaking race have come to the rescue in the end.

So far there is a close parallel between those bygone times of danger-best known by their good old schoolboy names of Armada, Blenheim, Waterloo-with this affair of ours to-day; provided always that we shall end by winning the war. But there is one point on which the parallel breaks down in the Napoleonic case, though it holds good in the others. All four were struggles for the liberty of States and peoples in their internal relations against one imperial domination. But our struggle against revolutionary and Napoleonic France was not also-like our struggles against Philip, Louis, and Kaiser Wilhelm-a war for liberty and popular government against reactionary principles in the internal affairs of the States themselves.

The struggle began in 1792-3 as an attempt, doubtless largely provoked, to suffocate the French Revolution in France herself. Burke's anti-democratic crusade and Brunswick's manifesto were the starting points of the twenty years' war. Owing to the prolonged success of French arms on land, the attempt to restore the complete ancien régime in France herself failed. But in almost every other country on the continent Waterloo meant the establishment of clerical, social, and despotic reaction in their worst forms. Poland and Italy were handed back to their torturers. As regards Austria and Germany, we are fighting the results of Waterloo to-day. Waterloo was necessary-Napoleon's ambition made it so-but it was in many respects a necessary

evil; it sits heavily on Europe to-day in the form of the Prussian and Austrian State systems.

Waterloo did good to France, restoring to her a modicum of political life extinguished by Napoleon, and ending her fevered dreams of world-dominion; it did great good to England, giving her peace and prosperity for a hundred years. But it did as much harm as good to most other countries, and now it is bringing back against France and England the slave hordes of Central and Eastern Europe, organized under the despotisms which secured their position by the victory of Wellington and Blücher.

Unlike the struggle against the French Revolution and Napoleon, the struggles against Philip II. and Louis XIV. were fought against the principle of despotic authority. The victories of Drake and Marlborough preserved and fostered such popular liberty as then existed, confined mainly to England and Holland. When we fought Philip and Louis we were fighting against the Jesuits and the Catholic persecution in Europe; when we fought Napoleon we were fighting for the Jesuits and the Catholic persecution in Europe, and the Protestant persecution in Ireland. The Jesuits went down at Blenheim; they rose again at Waterloo. William the Silent, Elizabeth, and Henri IV. fought the Inquisition; William III. and Marlborough fought the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. And the Inquisition and the Revocation were the handmaids of Philip's and Louis' principle of absolutism in State Government. L'état c'est 'moi,' said Louis; but his enemy William III. made no claim to be the State, either in Holland or in England.

Philip II. was the State; Spain had no will save that one man's. But Elizabeth was not the State. She watched her people's drift of thought as carefully and shrewdly as Lincoln or President Wilson. With her ear to the ground that imperial woman survived a generation of appalling danger. Unlike Philip she had no army; unlike Philip she had a parliament instead. Her monopoly of the appearances of power was a shrewd feminine and Tudor trick. She lived on parliaments and fostered their growth; they had no place under Philip II. or Louis XIV. Elizabeth would have boxed the ears of anyone who had said she was bringing

democracy into England, but her democratic victim, Stubbs, was truly inspired when, after his hand had been cut off, he cried from the scaffold, God save the Queen.' That cry, in the English tongue, echoes down the centuries.

Philip's other great antagonist, William the Silent, went further than Elizabeth on the path of modern liberty. Prince though he was, he first acknowledged democracy; and Calvinist though he was, he first practised toleration. 'Je serai toujours populaire,' he said. 'I shall always be ' of the people's party.' After surviving the struggle with Spain, Holland, in the seventeenth century, became even more than England the hearth whence liberal and progressive ideas radiated over Europe.

If William the Silent and Elizabeth had fallen before Philip, the tender plant of democracy would never have taken root in Europe or America. And, again, if England and Holland had gone down before Louis and his henchman, James II., democracy would have lost its only footing in Europe. But, instead of that, the victories of Marlborough clouded the glory of the Sun King, and turned to naught his despotic power, till then regarded as the secret of efficiency. Despotism in Church and State appeared a thing of weakness in contrast with the England of Locke, the Revolution, and the Toleration Act. From the result of the battle of Blenheim the liberal philosophy of the French eighteenth century took its origin. If Louis had won the war of the Spanish Succession, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau would have written differently, or in vain. Louis would have proved the case for despotism and the Revocation. William and Marlborough disproved it. The philosophers did but expound the lesson of Blenheim and Ramillies to a world half convinced beforehand by the obvious decadence of despotic France.*

In the case of the wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon the issues of good and evil were more confused, and the outcome less satisfactory. When England joined

* In a most significant letter of Marlborough's, I know not why unpublished by Coxe, he proposes that one of the terms of a victorious peace should be the summons of the States General after a hundred years' interval. The proposal was only premature; they actually met in 1789.