d pretend to have
done. They were entitled to supply Negroes, in such and such number,
annually to the Spanish Plantations; and besides this delightful branch
of trade, to have the privilege of selling certain quantities of their
manufactured articles on those coasts; quantities regulated briefly by
this stipulation, That their Assiento Ship was to be of 600 tons burden,
so many and no more. The Assiento Ship was duly of 600 tons accordingly,
promise kept faithfully to the eye; but the Assiento Ship was attended
and escorted by provision-sloops, small craft said to be of the most
indispensable nature to it. Which provision-sloops, and indispensable
small craft, not only carried merchandise as well, but went and came
to Jamaica and back, under various pretexts, with ever new supplies of
merchandise; converting the Assiento Ship into a Floating Shop, the Tons
burden and Tons sale of which set arithmetic at defiance. This was the
fact, perfectly well known in England, veiled over by mere smuggler
pretences, and obstinately persisted in, so profitable was it.
Perfectly well known in Spain also, and to the Spanish Guarda-Costas
and Sea-Captains in those parts; who were naturally kept in a perennial
state of rage by it,--and disposed to fly out into flame upon it, when a
bad case turned up! Such a case that of Jenkins had seemed to them; and
their mode of treating it, by tearing off Mr. Jenkins's Ear, proved to
be--bad shall we say, or good?--intolerable to England's thick skin; and
brought matters to a crisis, in the ways we saw."...

The Jenkins's-Ear Question, which then looked so mad to everybody, how
sane has it now grown to my Constitutional Friend! In abstruse ludicrous
form there lay immense questions involved in it; which were serious
enough, certain enough, though invisible to everybody. Half the World
lay hidden in embryo under it. Colonial-Empire, whose is it to be? Shall
Half the World be England's, for industrial purposes; which is innocent,
laudable, conformable to the Multiplication-table at least, and other
plain Laws? Or shall it be Spain's for arrogant-torpid sham-devotional
purposes, contradictory to every Law? The incalculable Yankee Nation
itself, biggest Phenomenon (once thought beautifulest) of these
Ages,--this too, little as careless readers on either side of the sea
now know it, lay involved. Shall there be a Yankee Nation, shall there
not be; shall the New World be of Spanish type, shall it be of En