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INTEBESTS OF GREAT BRITAIN. 439to compass its object.The maxims which sound policywould dictate in granting subsidies, have never, so far as I amaware, been made the subject of a distinct inquiry. They may,perhaps, be most correctly deduced from the expressionitself. Subsidies are succours furnished inmoney by onestate to another, principally for the purpose of defendingthe interests of that state, which are indirectlyidentifiedwith its own. This appearsto be the main point for consideration, but which immediately becomes changed whenthe defence of our own interests becomes the direct motiveof our actions. It is only in the first case that any reasonable prospect of advantage can be expected and a detailed;history of subsidies would probably lead to the conclusionthat great statesmen have pretty closely adhered to that fundamental maxim ;and that those who violate it do so totheir own cost. In an isolated case itmight certainly besometimes difficult to determine whose interests predominated ;whether those of the state that furnished the subsidies,or those of the state that received them. This, however,could never be less doubtful than in the case of the subsidies afforded by England at this period to Austria. Eventhe enemies of England did not venture to cast any imputation upon her for her conduct.The taking foreign troops into pay in order to prosecuteour own wars, is an expedient closelyallied to that of subsidies.This phenomenon, as we learn from ishistory, an immediateconsequence of the nature of great maritime and commercialstates ;where there is neither a large population, which canbe employed in land service without considerable injury tocommerce, nor indeed is land service usually considered sohonourable as in those which are peculiarly territorial states. 1But England had besides an especial reason for having recourse to this expedient, which, in her case, could not possibly have been avoided, viz. the objection of the nation toany increase of its standing army, from a fear that it wouldprove dangerous to We its liberties. need only retrace theparliamentary history of the past century, commencingwith the last quarter of it,in order to know how often,whenever an opportunity occurred, this object became the1I have already shown this at large in the instance of an ancient people,the Carthaginians, Historical Researches, African Nations.