Untitled - 24grammata.com

POLITICAL CONSEQUENCESof almost all the powers of Europe was thereby wholly altered ;and this change, joined to the mediocrity of talentdisplayed by most of the regents and ministers who immediately succeeded, caused an uncertainty in general politicswhich, from 1720 to 1740, was not unlike that which characterized the first sixteen yearsof the sixteenth century.There was the same abundance, and the same change of alliances and counter-alliances France united itself withEngland, and Austria made the recognition of the Pragmaticsanction the chief objectof her policy! But in all this religion had no share; the hereditary enmity of France andEngland seemed to be lost in their alliance and a; tradingcompany to the East Indies was considered of far higher importance than any theological dispute. To put"an end tothese continual changes in the politics of Europe there waswanted the genius of some great man, who should possesssufficient independence to act for himself, and sufficientstrength to make his plans effective. This want was suppliedby Frederic II. The treaty of Breslau (1742) laid thefoundation of a new system for the maintenance of thebalance of political power in Europe, of which Prussia andAustria were the chief members, while France, by sidingfirst with the one and then with the other, degraded herselfto the rank of a second-rate power.The difference in religion between the two monarchieshad, however, no influence in this; even in the Germanempire, where the irritation of the two partieswas mostlikely to continue, it gradually disappeared and ; every thingwent to prove that religion had lost itspower as a spring ofaction in politics,and could be misapplied for the purposesof faction at utmost only in a nation which, like that of thePoles, had taken no real share in the beneficial progress ofpolitical knowledge.It thus became possible that Europe should be shaken bya new and mighty revolution, in which religion had no further share than that the necessity of its existence in the different states became the more evident, the greater the effortswhich were made to destroyit. And finally, that verycountry, among the foremost of whose ancient constitutionalmaintenance ofprinciples was that of the greatest possiblereligious equality among its classes, when it was lately en-