The powers of the North formed a system by themselves, which only partially and occasionally mixed with the general one of Europe.

Sweden had indeed taken an active and important part in the troubles of Germany before the peace of Munster; but it was only lately that Russia had risen to the situation of a considerable state, with a view to the great balance of European interests.

Two extraordinary men were at the head of these several monarchies, Peter I. and Charles XII. both for different reasons indisposed to the English government, but at that time too much ani, mated against each other, to permit the supposition that they would ever unite for the purpose of interfering in the concerns of the Southern states.

Turkey was in a situation to create a considerable diversion against the Emperor on his eastern frontiers, and was actually at war with him. But the success which attended the Austrian arms, under the command of Prince Eugene, promised a speedy termination to it.

Such was the general state of the European powers, at the time of the first enterprise of Alberoni.

I do not mention Germany, as no movement appeared among its Princes, with an exception of the Emperor, who was attacked.

The strength and the resources of the Spanish monarchy, may be considered in a four-fold view.

The military and naval force actually on foot, the amount of its disposable population, the state of its finances, and the genius and character of the people for the purposes of war.

A war had burned in the bosom of Spain, from nearly the beginning of the century, till within a few years before Alberoni was placed at the head of affairs. Philip had had to maintain his crown by force of arms. He had been by turns victorious and defeated, and necessarily must have had considerable armies on foot.

Alberoni therefore probably found the military establishment of Spain at a higher point, than if the kingdom had enjoyed perfect tranquillity.

He is said to have had at one period of his ministry, an army of eighty thousand infantry, and twenty-two thousand horse. A prodigious force before Europe had seen those myriads of soldiers, that have since been brought into the field!

But whatever might have been the effects of the war on the army, the navy certainly suffered in the course of it; indeed it was nearly destroyed. Alberoni did all he could to re-establish it. He assembled, we are told, sixty ships of the line, thirty frigates, and twenty galleys.

But a navy does not consist either in numbers of ships, or of men collected to serve on board of them. There must be naval habits, experience, hardihood, skill, and science. These can be acquired only at sea. A commercial marine is the

regular nursery for a military one. Perhaps there can be no other.*

The population of Spain, at present below the proportion of less-favoured countries, was yet lower at the period to which this history refers. It must have been diminished by the war, that was scarcely terminated, and which had extended its ravages to all the provinces.

The war, in this point of view, was injurious to the military strength of the kingdom.

If it had augmented the numbers of the army, it at the same time intercepted the supply of recruits.

Population had been for some centuries on the decline: various have been the causes assigned. The banishment of eighty thousand Jewish families by Ferdinand the Catholic, and of above ninety thousand Moors at a later period, contributed, no doubt, to this effect.

The celibacy of the clergy, the number of monasteries of both sexes, the spirit of ecclesiastical persecution; all these may be enumerated, and many more circumstances added.

But causes do not fall within the province of

But human affairs are governed by such a complicated variety of circumstances, every day producing new, or until then unperceived causes; and the thing acted upon, Man, is so different at different times, that in speculations of this kind it is extremely unsafe to conclude, because such a thing never yet happened, therefore it never can.

the historian. It is for him to deliver what he finds recorded, that the entire population of Spain did not exceed, in 1723, seven millions six hundred and twenty-five thousand souls. It was less some years earlier; so that it is probable, in the time of Alberoni's government, there were not above twelve hundred thousand persons capable of bearing arms.

The finances were in the greatest disorder. The taxes by which the revenue was raised, were for the most part injudicious, and perpetual restraints upon industry and commerce. This was the effect of a number of monopolies, possessed by the Sovereign, which indeed produced some money in their immediate operation, but were injurious to the revenue in its only legitimate source, the wealth of the people.

The taxes were farmed, and the farmers did not pay a just proportion to the government; at the same time that their rapacity carried distress and desolation through all the provinces.

That branch of the revenue which consisted in duties on imposts, payable at the ports, was defrauded by compositions made with the merchants.

By these and other abuses, the annual income, at the accession of Philip, was reduced to 416,6161. English money.

While Orri was at the head of the finances, he succeeded in remedying many of these abuses, and

by his exertions raised the income to two millions sterling.

The scheme of Macanaz, which has been mentioned, and which had for one of its objects, to check an evil that was perpetually undermining the revenue, by withdrawing the lands of the kingdom from contributing to its supply, would probably have been encouraged by Alberoni, in the situation he afterwards attained.

In the interval which elapsed between the dismissal of Orri and his elevation, the disorders which the wise administration of the former had partly banished, again appeared. The abuses in the receipt were accompanied by others equally flagrant in the expenditure.

Assignments on the provinces were a mode in which numbers of the nobility received pensions, and so much of the revenue never reached the royal coffers.

The consequence of scanty supply on one side, and waste on the other, was, that the public income, far from being able to keep pace with any extraordinary expenses, was not adequate to the ordinary expenditure of the government.

The immediate object of Alberoni was, no doubt, to procure money for the variety of expensive enterprises in which he engaged. He there. fore chiefly practised the lower and more mechanical part of the science of a financier, which con,