The work may seem, at points, to treat in too large outline international changes, such as, for example, were initiated by Richelieu,[1] and to ascribe too boldly to the English Revolution important changes effected;[2] and in particular it may seem to pursue too assiduously, though with more reserve than in The Expansion of England, the quest for tendency, for some large conclusion, the formula. But it is a work unsurpassed in Britain for its suggestiveness in the realm of international policy; for its gift of relating causes to effects, motives and principles to policy and action; of relating the domestic to the foreign, the insular to the international; for its grasp of inter-connexions and inter-dependences in the causes and consequences of great events. These qualities are exhibited in the author's treatment of the dangers to Elizabethan England from the Powers of the Counter-Reformation,[3] and the winning by England of 'a self-confidence which it has never lost since'.[4] 'If the Muse is asked to say what first caused the discord
- ↑ i, pp. 357–65.
- ↑ ii, pp. 275–308, and the chapter on 'The Work of William III', In a summary statement, ii, p. 344, the author says of 'The Second Revolution' that it 'was in the first place a rising against arbitrary power, but a rising undertaken in circumstances so peculiar that it necessarily involved (1) an immediate war with France, (2) a supplementary revolution of the same kind which we call the Hanoverian Succession, (3) another great war with France and Spain, (4) a union with Scotland and at least the introduction of a new system in Ireland, (5) and as the result of all these things a great development of trade and the foundation of a Trade Empire, which brings us into a position of permanent rivalry to France and Spain henceforth united in a family policy.' See also ii, p. 308. 'The second Revolution' is 'not a single occurrence belonging to the year 1688, but a long development beginning many years before and ending considerably later than 1688.'—ii, pp. 327–8.
- ↑ i, part i, ch. iii–viii.
- ↑ i, p. 215.
the front of the stage he puts the Ministers who act in the name, or the generals who wield the force, of England, the Great Power.'
