ABSTRACT
The balance of power is an unintelligible jargon, invented to cover every scheme; to furnish pretexts for every act of national injustice; to lull the jealousy of the people in any emergency; or to excite their alarms upon any occasion. Now-it is useless and superfluous; an interference with the natural order of things; or an attempt to effect that which would happen at any rate. No power would have conceived that common prudence required an immediate sacrifice of peace, in order to ward off a distant peril. In the middle of the century, we indeed saw an ancient crown despoiled of its hereditary provinces; and the neighbouring states in vain attempting to crush the new-born energies of the Prussian power. The principle of the balance of power was a discovery made at the end of the fifteenth century by the Italian politicians.
