there should be Famine, where so much of the People’s Substance is taken away for the King’s Use, that they have not sufficient left to provide against Accidents:  where so many of the Men are taken from the Plough to serve the King in his Wars, and a great part of the Tillage is left to the weaker Hands of so many Women and Children.  Whatever was the Loss, it must undoubtedly be placed to the Account of his Ambition.

And so must also the Destruction or Banishment of 3 or 400000 of his reformed Subjects; he could have no other Reasons for valuing those Lives so very cheap, but only to recommend himself to the Bigotry of the Spanish Nation.

How should there be Industry in a Country where all Property is precarious?  What Subject will sow his Land that his Prince may reap the whole Harvest?  Parsimony and Frugality must be Strangers to such a People; for will any Man save to-day what he has Reason to fear will be taken from him to-morrow?  And where is the Encouragement for marrying?  Will any Man think of raising Children, without any Assurance of Cloathing for their Backs, or so much as Food for their Bellies?  And thus by his fatal Ambition he must have lessened the Number of his Subjects not only by Slaughter and Destruction, but by preventing their very Births, he has done as much as was possible towards destroying Posterity itself.

Is this then the great, the invincible Lewis? This the immortal Man, the tout-puissant, or the Almighty, as his Flatterers have called him?  Is this the Man that is so celebrated for his Conquests?  For every Subject he has acquired, has he not lost three that were his Inheritance?  Are not his Troops fewer, and those neither so well fed, or cloathed, or paid, as they were formerly, tho’ he has now so much greater Cause to exert himself?  And what can be the Reason of all this, but that his Revenue is a great deal less, his Subjects are either poorer, or not so many to be plundered by constant Taxes for his Use?

It is well for him he had found out a Way to steal a Kingdom; if he had gone on conquering as he did before, his Ruin had been long since finished.  This brings to my Mind a saying of King Pyrrhus, after he had a second time beat the Romans in a pitched Battle, and was complimented by his Generals; Yes, says he, such another Victory and I am quite undone.  And since I have mentioned Pyrrhus, I will end with a very good, though known Story of this ambitious mad Man.  When he had shewn the utmost Fondness for his Expedition against the Romans, Cyneas his chief Minister asked him what he proposed to himself by this War?  Why, says Pyrrhus, to conquer the Romans, and reduce all Italy to my Obedience.  What then? says Cyneas.  To pass over into Sicily, says Pyrrhus, and then all the Sicilians must be our Subjects.