brought low by a dozen more years of European war, but Philip of Anjou, the nominee and instrument of Louis XIV., at the close of the previous century, would have been a weapon pointed at the breast of free and Protestant Europe. You cannot judge of the strength or keenness of a dagger by merely estimating its power in the grasp of a failing hand. Doubtless, however, the complaints both contemporary and subsequent of the provisions of the Partition Treaty were to some extent stimulated by the circumstances of its arrangement. It is well known that William, acting as his own Foreign Minister, carried his official independence so far as to conduct the whole of the negotiations with Louis from beginning to end without any reference to, or at least any effective consultation of, a single English Minister. Somers, it is true, had been told before the King's departure for Loo that Lord Portland had been sounded by Louis with reference to an agreement with England concerning the Spanish succession; but it was not till the terms were actually arranged that William wrote to Somers for his opinion upon them, "leaving it to his judgment to whom else he might think it proper to impart them," and adding "if it be fit that this negotiation be carried on there is no time to be lost, and you will send me the full powers under the Great Seal, with the names in blank, to treat with Count Tallard." Portland at the same time communicated directly with Vernon, the then Secretary of State, whose consent was necessary to the imprint of the Great Seal; and Somers himself confided the affair to several other Ministers. But it is clear, not only from Somers's own reply to William, but generally on the face of the whole transaction, that even if the King's English Ministers had been competent to revise the agreement, their suggestions would have come too late. Somers's criticisms, though sensible in themselves, were of the most tentative character; he excuses himself indeed that his thoughts were so ill put together, and pleaded the known effect of the waters at Tunbridge Wells, where he then was, in "discomposing and disturbing the head so as almost totally to disable one from writing"; but in fact he writes with the extreme diffidence natural to the "layman" conscious of his incapacity to advise the expert. The commission of plenipotentiaries was then drawn out by Secretary Vernon with the names left in blank, and the Chancellor requested the Secretary for his warrant before affixing the Great Seal. This, however, Vernon refused to give, and Somers thereupon sealed the powers with his own hand, taking care, however, to keep the King's letter as a justification or an excuse for the act. That the whole proceeding was unconstitutional, according to the fully developed theory of the constitution, is of course obvious, and it is only a partial and not a complete defence of William's share in it that the theory in