and convulsions of our age.  If Europe does not conceive the independence and the equilibrium of the Empire to be in the very essence of the system of balanced power in Europe, and if the scheme of public law, or mass of laws, upon which that independence and equilibrium are founded, be of no leading consequence as they are preserved or destroyed, all the politics of Europe for more than two centuries have been miserably erroneous.

[Sidenote:  Prussia and Emperor.]

If the two great leading powers of Germany do not regard this danger (as apparently they do not) in the light in which it presents itself so naturally, it is because they are powers too great to have a social interest.  That sort of interest belongs only to those whose state of weakness or mediocrity is such as to give them greater cause of apprehension from what may destroy them than of hope from anything by which they may be aggrandized.

As long as those two princes are at variance, so long the liberties of Germany are safe.  But if ever they should so far understand one another as to be persuaded that they have a more direct and more certainly defined interest in a proportioned mutual aggrandizement than in a reciprocal reduction, that is, if they come to think that they are more likely to be enriched by a division of spoil than to be rendered secure by keeping to the old policy of preventing others from being spoiled by either of them, from that moment the liberties of Germany are no more.

That a junction of two in such a scheme is neither impossible nor improbable is evident from the partition of Poland in 1773, which was effected by such a junction as made the interposition of other nations to prevent it not easy.  Their circumstances at that time hindered any other three states, or indeed any two, from taking measures in common to prevent it, though France was at that time an existing power, and had not yet learned to act upon a system of politics of her own invention.  The geographical position of Poland was a great obstacle to any movements of France in opposition to this, at that time, unparalleled league.  To my certain knowledge, if Great Britain had at that time been willing to concur in preventing the execution of a project so dangerous in the example, even exhausted as France then was by the preceding war, and under a lazy and unenterprising prince, she would have at every risk taken an active part in this business.  But a languor with regard to so remote an interest, and the principles and passions which were then strongly at work at home, were the causes why Great Britain would not give France any encouragement in such an enterprise.  At that time, however, and with regard to that object, in my opinion, Great Britain and France had a common interest.

[Sidenote:  Possible project of the Emperor and king of Prussia.]