I observed that Spain stood in an anomalous position. Unlike a secondary state, she had nothing to apprehend on the score of her independence; unlike a first-rate one, she was engaged in no schemes against the independence of other people: that an army in Spain was consequently as needless as it was noxious. He replied, that what I said did not apply specially to Spain, and might be predicated of the whole of Europe; to which I readily assented. His Spanish self-love, for a moment alarmed, was soothed when I showed him that I was as adverse to standing armies for the internal interest of the great and preponderating States, as he could be, because of the facilities which it gave them of interfering with and oppressing the others. I pointed to this, as the master-disease of our times, and as signalized as such even in the last century, by some of the greatest men; that it feeds, as Montesquieu says, upon itself, growing by competition; and that, independently of their misuse, standing armies by their pressure must ultimately bring every one of the existing European States to the ground. Spain, separated by the Pyrenees from the rest of Europe, as she is distinct from them in ideas, could easily relieve herself; she had fewer obstacles to contend with than any other State, except England. Our whole parliamentary history had been a struggle of patriotic men against standing armies and funded debt. He himself had admitted, that one honest man might restore Spain; and how so, unless there were great abuses in practice which had not degenerated into principle? He had particularized the armies of functionaries; let him add to these this horde of two hundred thousand regulars. “Where is the man,” he said, “to do it?” I observed, that it could only be by seeing and showing what was wrong, that the man could ever be made or found to put it right. This conversation was strikingly recalled to me by a book, entitled “Political Testament of Cardinal Alberoni,” which, on my return, I found at a stall. I turned over the pages with extreme curiosity, to see if it presented any stamp of authenticity. One of the first sentences I fell upon was the following: “It is an error of this and the preceding century to think that the strength of a nation consists in the large number of regular forces kept on foot. To be convinced of the falsity of this notion, we have only to cast an eye on the wars of Europe within these four or five hundred years. As soon as an army is beaten on the frontier, the prince, whose troops are vanquished, has no other resource left but to clap up a peace: his country lies open to the enemy, and he has only cowardly burghers and disheartened peasants to oppose to veteran soldiers. He loses a whole province as soon as the capital of it surrenders. He is reduced to bury himself under the ruins of his throne, or to comply with the conditions prescribed by the conqueror.