the attainment of the electoral dignity, and the securing of the English Succession—was taken without his co operation; but he laboured with the greatest zeal and the most effective application of his powers when he felt himself to be working at the same time for the advantage of the House of Hanover and for the general system of European policy which he had at heart. Thus, while he was in the service of John Frederick, I am not aware that he produced more than one political piece of any consequence—and this was the disquisition, written by him under a pseudonym of rather pedantic sound (Cæsarinus Furstenerius), on a topic which could hardly be held to be of European interest, though the original Latin version (he afterwards brought out a French replica in dialogue form) went through six editions in a single year. It treated the burning question of the right of German princes not electors (Fürsten not Kurfürsten) to send ambassadors not mere agents (legati not deputati) to congresses and conferences; but it treated this question both with a great deal of legal and historical learning, and also with a great deal of common sense—which no doubt was the novelty accounting for the success of the publication. It was, in fact, a plea for the principle that actual power should be the recognised measure of formal rights. As these were days in which princes desired to have the privileges of electors, and electors to have the title of Kings—I do not say that analogies to this tendency could not be found in later times when kings are made almost as fast as they are unmade—Leibniz s admirably stated plea cannot be said to have been inopportune.
But how wide became his range of topics, and how varied were his opportunities, when from the contentionuculæ (as he elsewhere calls them) of German domestic politics he passed into the domain of general European affairs! And here it would be quite impossible to attempt anything like a survey, or to enter upon even so much as an enumeration of the sheaves of political writings from his hand—French,
