"This comes of trying to conduct a war in which you have no heart or
spirit?" Burke passes severe censure even on Walpole's manner of
carrying on his opposition to the war party. "Walpole," says Burke,
"never manfully put forward the strength of his cause; he temporized;
he managed; and, adopting very nearly the sentiments of his
adversaries, he opposed their inferences. This, for a political
commander, is the choice of a weak post. His adversaries had the best
of the argument as he handled it; not as the reason and justice of his
cause enabled him to manage it." Then Burke adds this emphatic
sentence: "I say this after having seen, and with some care examined,
the original documents concerning certain important transactions of
those times; they perfectly satisfied me of the extreme injustice of
that war, and of the falsehood of the colors which, to his own ruin,
and guided by a mistaken policy, he suffered to be daubed over that
measure." To his own ruin? Yes, truly. The consequence of Walpole's
surrender was to himself and his political career fatal--irretrievable.
His wrong-doing brought its heavy punishment along with it. He has yet
to struggle for a short while against fate and his own fault; he has
still to receive a few successive humiliations before the great and
final fall. But the day of his destiny is over. For all real work his
career may be said to have closed on the day when he consented to
remain in {182} office and become the instrument of his enemies. With
that day he passed out of the real world and life of politics, and
became as a shadow among shadows.

We need not trouble ourselves much about the war with Spain. On
neither side of the struggle was anything done which calls for grave
historical notice. Every little naval success one of our admirals
accomplished in the American seas, as they were then called, was
glorified as if it had been an anticipated Trafalgar; and our admirals
accomplished blunders and failures as well as petty victories. The
quarrel very soon became swallowed up in the great war which broke out
on the death of Charles the Sixth of Spain, and the occupation of
Silesia by Frederick of Prussia. England lent a helping hand in the
great war, but its tale does not belong to English history. Two
predictions of Walpole's were very quickly realized. France almost
immediately took part with Spain, in accordance with the terms of the
Family Compact. In 1740 an organiz