The arduous struggle was suspended for a short time by the peace of Ryswick. The interval between that treaty and the war of the succession enables us to judge how our ancestors acted in a very peculiar situation, which requires maxims of policy very different from those which usually govern states. The treaty which they had concluded was in truth and substance only a truce. The ambition and the power of the enemy were such as to render real peace impossible. And it was perfectly obvious that the disputed succession of the Spanish monarch would soon render it no longer practicable to preserve even the appearance of amity. It was desirable, however, not to provoke the enemy by unseasonable hostility; but it was still more desirable, it was absolutely necessary, to keep up the national jealousy and indignation against him who was soon to be their open enemy. It might naturally have been apprehended that the press might have driven into premature war a prince who, not long before, had been violently exasperated by the press of another free country. I have looked over the political publications of that time with some care, and I can venture to say that at no period were the system and projects of Louis XIV. animadverted on with more freedom and boldness than during that interval. Our ancestors and the heroic prince who governed them, did not deem it wise policy to disarm the national mind for the sake of prolonging a truce. They were both too proud and too wise to pay so great a price for so small a benefit.