Below the purely legal aspect of the matter there was felt to be a momentous European question. Spain had been permitted to retain her vast and splendid dominions, because she was daily becoming weaker and more effete. The longdrawn agony of the Spanish monarchy exactly suited the plans of European statesmen, as long as Europe was in a state of transition. When the chief powers were fighting among themselves for the Low Countries and the Rhine, for the lower Danube and the Baltic, it was highly convenient that problems so grave should not be further complicated by questions of South American trade, and access to the Mediterranean. All Europe was content to leave the monopolies of Spain alone, because Spain was unable to utilise them. But towards the end of the century this feeling was passing away, and the prizes which Spain continued to hold but did not know how to use, were being eagerly and avariciously eyed from two quite different quarters. The ‘maritime nations,’ as they were called in the language of diplomacy, England and Holland, since the revolution of 1688, had succeeded in establishing on the firm basis of a close mutual alliance the superiority of their commerce to that of France. Already they shared between them the trade of the Baltic, of North America, and of the East. But from two quarters of the world they were shut out. The policy of Spain excluded them from a share in the trade with the Spanish Indies, and especially from the lucrative commerce in negroes, which was becoming of greater importance every day in those islands and districts of central America where white labour was an impossibility. The want of a harbour and naval station in the Mediterranean placed their commerce with the Levant at the mercy of pirates, and dependent on the goodwill of the southern powers. At the same time the policy of the House of Habsburg, since the peace of Westphalia, had been tending more and more in the direction of trying to secure a hold upon north Italy. While national interest and the course of events had been pushing the Austrian power further and further down the Danube at the expense of the Turks, the dynastic and personal policy of the Emperors had been rather directed to the gain of compensation upon the Po for what they had lost upon the Rhine. [Sidenote: =Importance of the European interests involved.=]