It seemed but too probable that the eighteenth century would find great armies still confronting each other on the Meuse and the Rhine, industrious populations still ground down by taxation, fertile provinces still lying waste, the ocean still made impassable by corsairs, and the plenipotentiaries still exchanging notes, drawing up protocols, and w
— from The History of England, from the Accession of James II — Volume 4 by Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron