tafettes, not to speak of higher considerations, the saving
had been incalculable. For it was England's one Cause of War during the
Century we are now upon; and poor England's course, when at last driven
into it, went ambiguously circling round the whole Universe, instead of
straight to the mark. Had Oliver Cromwell lived ten years longer;--but
Oliver Cromwell did not live; and, instead of Heroic Heads, there came
in Constitutional Wigs, which makes a great difference.

"The pretensions of Spain to keep Half the World locked up in embargo
were entirely chimerical; plainly contradictory to the Laws of Nature;
and no amount of Pope's Donation Acts, or Ceremonial in Rota or
Propaganda, could redeem them from untenability, in the modern days. To
lie like a dog in the manger over South America, and say snarling, 'None
of you shall trade here, though I cannot!'--what Pope or body of Popes
can sanction such a procedure? Had England had a Head, instead of Wigs,
amid its diplomatists, England, as the chief party interested, would
have long since intimated gently to such dog in the manger: 'Dog, will
you be so obliging as rise! I am grieved to say, we shall have to do
unpleasant things otherwise. Dogs have doors for their hutches: but to
pretend barring the Tropic of Cancer,--that is too big a door for
any dog. Can nobody but you have business here, then, which is not
displeasing to the gods? We bid you rise!' And in this mode there is no
doubt the dog, bark and bite as he might, would have ended by
rising; not only England, but all the Universe being against him. And
furthermore, I compute with certainty, the quantity of fighting needed
to obtain such result would, by this mode, have been a minimum. The
clear right being there, and now also the clear might, why take refuge
in diplomatic wiggeries, in Assiento Treaties, and Arrangements which
are NOT analogous to the facts; which are but wigged mendacities,
therefore; and will but aggravate in quantity and in quality the
fighting yet needed? Fighting is but (as has been well said) a battering
out of the mendacities, pretences, and imaginary elements: well
battered-out, these, like dust and chaff, fly torrent-wise along the
winds, and darken all the sky; but these once gone, there remain the
facts and their visible relation to one another, and peace is sure.

"The Assiento Treaty being fixed upon, the English ought to have kept
it. But the English did not, in any measure; nor coul