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could soothe
Florida Blanca no more.
His well-
grounded sensitiveness was inflamed, till it became a continual state of morbid irritability; and, from the time when the court of France resolved to treat with the
Americans, his prophetic fears could never for a moment be lulled to rest.
Portugal, which in the seven years war, with the aid of
England, escaped absorption by
Spain, seemed necessarily about to become an ally of the
British king.
Its harbors, during the last year of the ministry of Pombal, were shut against the vessels of the
United States; and congress, on the thirtieth of
December, 1776, resenting the insult, was willing to incur its enmity, as the price of the active friendship of
Spain.
1 But when, two months later, on the
twenty-fourth of February, 1777, the weak-minded, superstitious Maria the First succeeded to the throne, Pombal retired before reactionary imbecility.
Portugal, in exchange for a tract of land conterminous to
Brazil, withdrew from the
La Plata, and was scarcely heard of again during the war.
In the south-east of
Europe, the chief political
interest for the
United States centred in the joint rulers of the
Austrian empire.
The
Danube, first of rivers of the old world, rolled through their dominions between valleys of exuberant fertility towards the great inland sea which drains a larger surface of
Europe than the Mediterranean.
Yet the culture and commerce of the eastern lands of the crown, by which alone their house could become great, were set aside as secondary objects, so that the mighty stream flowed almost in silence towards the Euxine.