Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 4.djvu/190

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
182
HISTORY OF THE FOUR

Dutch, "That no extremity should make her majesty depart from insisting to have the assiento for her own subjects, and to keep Gibraltar and Port Mahon: but, if the States would agree with her upon these three heads, she would be content to reduce the trade of Spain and the West Indies, to the condition it was in under the late Catholick king Charles II."

The French were farther to be pressed, "That the pretender should be immediately sent out of that kingdom; and that the most eflectual method should be taken, for preventing the union of France and Spain under one prince."

About this time her majesty's ministers, and those of the allies at Utrecht, delivered in the several postulata or demands of their masters, to the French plenipotentiaries; which, having been since made publick, and all of them, except those of Britain, very much varying in the course of the negotiation, the reader would be but ill entertained with a transcript of them here.

Upon intelligence of the last dauphin's death, the father, son, and grandson, all of that title, dying within the compass of a year, mons. Gualtier went to France, with letters to the marquis de Torcy, to propose her majesty's expedient for preventing the union of that kingdom with Spain; which, as it was the most important article to be settled, in order to secure peace for Europe, so it was a point that required to be speedily adjusted, under the present circumstances and situation of the Bourbon family; there being only left a child of two years old, to stand between the duke of Anjou, and his succeeding to the crown of France.

Her