NOTE 21, p. 168.—This must be regarded as mere conjecture, though stated as a fact. Even the formidable alliances against Louis XIV. in the War of the Spanish Succession were not able to prevent the French king from keeping his heir upon the Spanish throne. If the Bourbons, in spite of the allied armies with Marlborough at their head, were able to hold their position, they would hardly have done less if England had not interfered. To say that a union of the crowns “would have been impossible in the nature of things,” is to presume that the line of succession must have been just what it was. But this, of course, could not have been foreseen. If a disturbance of the balance of power ever justifies war, it did so in the case of the War of the Spanish Succession. NOTE 22, p. 168.—This statement is not quite correct. The English Plenipotentiaries at Vienna were Lord Castelreagh and Lord Wellington. Castelreagh died in 1822 and Wellington in 1852; whereas the alliance between the governments of England and France to prevent the aggressions of Russia did not occur till August, 1853. On the 12th of August Lord Aberdeen declared that the four great powers, England, France, Austria, and Prussia, were acting cordially together; but on the 20th of the same month Lord Clarendon announced that an offensive alliance had been formed between England and France. It was this alliance which made all further efforts in behalf of peace hopeless. It was the opinion not only of Cobden and Bright, but also of Disraeli and of the Tories generally, that the act which made the war inevitable was the abandonment of Austria and Prussia and the formation of this alliance with France. Such is also the opinion of Mr. Kinglake. See Hansard’s “Debates,” cxxix., 1424, 1768, and 1826; also Kinglake’s “Crimean War,” _passim_.