the opinion of William.  That he thoroughly understood the politics of Europe is as certain as that jealousy of the greatness of France was with him a passion, a ruling passion, almost an infirmity.  Before we blame him, therefore, for making large concessions to the power which it was the chief business of his life to keep within bounds, we shall do well to consider whether those concessions may not, on close examination, be found to be rather apparent than real.  The truth is that they were so, and were well known to be so both by William and by Lewis.

Naples and Sicily formed indeed a noble kingdom, fertile, populous, blessed with a delicious climate, and excellently situated for trade.  Such a kingdom, had it been contiguous to Provence, would indeed have been a most formidable addition to the French monarchy.  But a glance at the map ought to have been sufficient to undeceive those who imagined that the great antagonist of the House of Bourbon could be so weak as to lay the liberties of Europe at the feet of that house.  A King of France would, by acquiring territories in the South of Italy, have really bound himself over to keep the peace; for, as soon as he was at war with his neighbours, those territories were certain to be worse than useless to him.  They were hostages at the mercy of his enemies.  It would be easy to attack them.  It would be hardly possible to defend them.  A French army sent to them by land would have to force its way through the passes of the Alps, through Piedmont, through Tuscany, and through the Pontifical States, in opposition probably to great German armies.  A French fleet would run great risk of being intercepted and destroyed by the squadrons of England and Holland.  Of all this Lewis was perfectly aware.  He repeatedly declared that he should consider the kingdom of the Two Sicilies as a source, not of strength, but of weakness.  He accepted it at last with murmurs; he seems to have intended to make it over to one of his younger grandsons; and he would beyond all doubt have gladly given it in exchange for a thirtieth part of the same area in the Netherlands.15 But in the Netherlands England and Holland were determined to allow him nothing.  What he really obtained in Italy was little more than a splendid provision for a cadet of his house.  Guipuscoa was then in truth the price in consideration of which France consented that the Electoral Prince of Bavaria should be King of Spain and the Indies.  Guipuscoa, though a small, was doubtless a valuable province, and was in a military point of view highly important.  But Guipuscoa was not in the Netherlands.  Guipuscoa would not make Lewis a more formidable neighbour to England or to the United Provinces.  And, if the Treaty should be broken off, if the vast Spanish empire should be struggled for and torn in pieces by the rival races of Bourbon and Habsburg, was it not possible, was it not probable, that France might lay her iron grasp, not on Guipuscoa alone, but on Luxemburg