occasional causes-as, national prosperity, or the reverse, plenty or scarcity of money, quantity of public debt. On this variation is founded the practice of stock-jobbing; that is, either buying and selling actual property in the public funds, which is a lawful speculation, or gaming and wagering on the price of stock, which is an illicit though common practice. The practice of stockjobbing, even by the transference of actual property, far more by gaming on that which is fictitious, is prejudicial to commerce and manufactures, by engrossing a great part of the national wealth, repressing industry, encouraging fraud, and often tempting to the most treacherous and dangerous devices for raising and sinking the funds.

SECTION XXVII.

HISTORY OF FRANCE UNDER LOUIS XIII.

1. FRANCE, which under Henry IV. had risen from a state of miserable anarchy to high prosperity and splendour, sunk, upon his death, into weakness, faction, and disorder. Mary of Medicis, regent in the minority of her son Louis XIII., a weak woman, and of restless ambition, disgusted the nobility by her partiality for her Italian courtiers. Concini (a Florentine), her first minister, created Marshal d'Ancre, became so universally odious that he was openly murdered in the Louvre, and his body torn to pieces (1617). The queen was removed from Paris, and kept for two years a prisoner at Blois, till relieved by the Duke d'Epernon, to serve his own purposes of ambition. The queen's party (the Protestant) was at war with that of her son, and the whole kingdom in a state of anarchy. [The Protestants, headed by Rohan and Soubise, gained such important advantages, that the king was glad to agree to a pacification, and to confirm the edict of Nantes, which guaranteed religious toleration (1622).]

2. The genius of Cardinal Richelieu, who was now brought into power (1624) by Mary of Medicis, soon effected a wonderful change. He reconciled the mother and her son, soothed the contending factions; and, on the king's assuming the government, directed every public measure, to the complete re-establishment of the power and dignity of the monarchy. The party of the Calvinists, alienated by persecution, attempted to throw off their allegiance, and establish an independent state, of which Rochelle should be the capital. Richelieu bargained with the Dutch to furnish a fleet for subduing their Protestant brethren; and the Dutch now fought as keenly for the Catholic religion as they had lately done for the Protestant. The English sent a fleet to the aid of the Rochellois, who for a year maintained a most obstinate siege against the French troops commanded by the cardinal in person. They were at length forced to surrender; and Rochelle,

and all the other Protestant cities of France, were stripped of their privileges, and had their fortifications destroyed. Thus Calvinism was effectually crushed in France (1629).

3. Louis XIII., though a weak prince, saw his advantage in entering into all the great designs of his minister. Richelieu influenced the politics of all Europe. The power of Austria was attacked in Germany, Flanders, Spain, and Italy; and the talents of the minister were equally displayed in active war, in foreign negotiation, and in his domestic arrangements. Yet at this very time a formidable cabal was undermining him. Mary of Medicis was jealous of the man she had raised; and the Duke of Orleans, the king's brother, sought to supplant him in his power. Richelieu, with astonishing intrepidity of mind, repressed this conspiracy. Fortified by the king's authority, he seized the Marshall de Marillac, one of his most dangerous enemies, at the head of his army, and tried and put him to death by a lawless stretch of power. Orleans, apprehensive of a similar fate, fled the kingdom; and Mary of Medicis, arrested and removed from court, ended her career of ambition in voluntary exile at Brussels. Orleans, supported by the Duke de Montmorenci, attempted a rebellion; but their army was defeated, and Montmorenci executed for treason. The queen had taken part with the enemies of the cardinal. He imprisoned her confessor, seized and examined her papers; and the queen, Anne of Austria, was very near sharing the fate of Mary of Medicis.

4. Amidst all this turbulence both of foreign war and state cabal, Richelieu cultivated the pursuits of literature, encouraged the sciences, instituted the French Academy (1635), and composed pieces for the theatre. The administration of Richelieu, though turbulent from faction and civil war, was, on the whole, extremely glorious for France; and the seeds were sown of the splendour of that monarchy in the succeeding age of Louis XIV. The death of this great minister (1642) was soon after followed by that of his sovereign, Louis XIII. (1643.)

SECTION XXVIII.

SPAIN UNDER PHILIP III. AND PHILIP IV.-CONSTITUTION OF PORTUGAL AND OF SPAIN.

1. FROM the death of Philip II. (1598), Spain declined in power, and, notwithstanding her great sources of wealth, the national finances were in the utmost disorder. Philip III. was forced to conclude a peace with the Dutch (and acknowledge their independence, 1609), and to restore to the house of Nassau its confiscated estates. With a weak and despicable policy, he expel

led from his kingdom all the Moors (about 600,000 crossing over into Africa), who were the most industrious of its inhabitants (1610); and this depopulation, joined to that already produced by her American colonies, rendered Spain a lifeless and enervated mass.

2. The national weakness and its disorders increased under Philip IV., who, equally spiritless as his father, was implicitly ruled by his minister Olivarez, as the former had been by the Duke of Lerma. His reign was one continued series of miscarriages and defeats. The Dutch seized Brazil; the French invaded Artois; Catalonia revolted to France; and Portugal shook off its yoke, and became an independent kingdom (1640).

3. No revolution was ever effected with such ease and celerity as that of Portugal. The people were disgusted with the rigorous and impolitic administration of Olivarez. The Duke of Braganza, descended from the ancient kings of Portugal, had at this time the command of the army. Instigated by the ambition of his duchess, and seeing the spirit of the nation favourable to his views, he caused himself to be proclaimed king at Lisbon (as John IV.) The Spanish guards were attacked and routed, and the chief partisans of the government put to death by the populace. All the principal towns followed the example of the capital, and soon after all, the foreign settlements. From that era (1640), Portugal became an independent sovereignty, after having been for sixty years an appanage of the kingdom of Spain. 4. The government of Portugal approached to an absolute monarchy. The consent of the states, or Cortes, consisting of clergy, nobility, and commons, was formerly necessary to the imposition of taxes, and the settlement of the succession to the crown. But this assembly, never convoked but by the royal mandate, was rarely summoned. The ordinary business of government was transacted by the king and his counsel of state, which was appointed by himself. The crown's revenue arose from its domains, including the family estates of Braganza, from the duties on exports and imports, from the taxes, and from a stated proportion of the gold brought from Brazil. The state of the commerce and manufactures of Portugal was extremely low; and, though favoured by soil and climate, the agriculture of the kingdom was much neglected.

5. The reigns of Philip III. and IV. of Spain (1598—1665), though an era of national humiliation, derived some small lustre from the state of literature. Dramatic composition, poetry, and romance, and even history, were cultivated with great success. But these are in some sort the amusements of indolence; and this was the predominant character of the people. This character may have arisen from two sources: the torrent of wealth poured in from America retarded, in the lower classes, domestic industry and manufactures, while it increased the pride of the gentry, and made them disdain all occupation; and the despotism of the

government was strongly repressive of all enterprise and activity in the people.

6. The constitution of Spain, of which the sovereignty was in ancient times elective, was then that of an absolute monarchy. The crown is hereditary; though at different times, as in 1619 and 1713, there has been a new limitation made by the monarch of the succession. The Cortes, or states of the kingdom, limited in former times the power of the sovereign; but Charles V. reduced their authority to nothing, by depriving the nobility and clergy of their seat in those assemblies; the remaining members, the deputies of the towns, being entirely under the control of the monarch. The king's council, or Conseja Real, was the organ of government; but there was no department of the state which had any constitutional power to regulate the will of the prince.

SECTION XXIX.

AFFAIRS OF GERMANY, FROM THE ABDICATION OF CHARLES V. TO THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA.

1. To preserve the connection of the affairs of Germany with those of the other kingdoms of Europe, we must look back to the period of the abdication of Charles V. (1558), when the em pire was distracted both by the political factions and quarrels of its independent princes, and the contending sects of the Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists. His brother, Ferdinand I., attempted to reconcile these factions, and unite the three religions; but in vain. Maximilian II. had still less power to effect this object than his predecessor; nor was the face of affairs at all changed during the succeeding reigns of Rodolph II. and his brother Matthias. A civil war (between the Catholic and Protestant leagues) of thirty years' duration reduced the empire to extremity (1618-48). On the death of Matthias, the Protestant states of Bohemia, who had suffered under the government, annulled the election of his cousin, Ferdinand II., a zealous Catholic, and conferred their crown on the Elector Palatine (son-in-law of James I. of England), 1619; and the emperor, in revenge, deprived him both of his crown and his electorate (1621). [He treated the Bohemians as a conquered people, deprived the Protestants of their religious liberties, and even of their rights as citizens. He even went so far as to deny them the liberty of making testaments, or contracting legal marriages. All their ministers, without exception, were banished the kingdom; and by an edict in 1627, all Protestants who persisted in their opinions were ordered to quit the kingdom within six months. 30,000 of the best families in the kingdom, of whom 185 were nobility, removed to the neighbouring states of Saxony, Prussia, &c.]

2. The Protestant cause was declining fast in Germany, and everything seemed to indicate success to the schemes of Ferdinand for its entire annihilation, when it received new vigour from the intervention of Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden (1630). This great prince defeated the imperial generals, and carried the Protestant banners triumphantly through Germany. The emperor was completely humbled, and the Elector Palatine on the eve of restoration to his dominions, when the heroic Gustavus was slain in the battle of Lutzen (1632). The war was successfully prosecuted by the Swedish generals; while Cardinal Richelieu harassed the two branches of the house of Austria in Germany and Spain, which were attacked at once by France, Sweden, Holland, and Savoy.

3. In the succeeding reign of Ferdinand II., the Protestants of Germany found the most active support both from the Swedes and the French; and the emperor being forced to conclude the peace of Westphalia (1648), these powers dictated its terms. [By_this_celebrated treaty, all the princes of the empire had confirmed to them the free exercise of their territorial rights, in matters ecclesiastical and political, in their dominions, in their rights of regality, and in the possession of all these together, without molestation on any pretence whatever.] The Swedes were indemnified for the charges of the war, and acquired Pomerania, Stettin, Wismar, &c., and their sovereign the dignity of prince of the empire; the Palatine family was restored to its chief possessions; the king of France made landgrave of Alsace; and an equal establishment decreed of the three religions. This salutary peace laid the foundation of the system of "the balance of power," and of the future greatness and prosperity of the German empire.

SECTION XXX.

FRANCE UNDER LOUIS XIV.

1. On the death of Louis XIII. (1663), his son, Louis XIV., succeeded to the throne, in the fifth year of his age. Europe, as we have seen, was in a most turbulent state; and France, under the administration of Richelieu, acted a conspicuous part in exciting those general commotions. The queen-mother, Anne of Austria, appointed regent by the states, chose for her minister the Cardinal Mazarin, an Italian, and from that circumstance odious to the people. The Spaniards, taking advantage of the king's minority, and the popular discontents, made an attack on Champagne; but they were defeated in a series of engagements by the great Condé; and the Marshal de Turenne shared with him the palm of glory. The peace of Westphalia composed these differences.

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