gh days and the
Laws of Nature; and declare for us against France, in case of the
worst. What an attempt! Imperial Majesty has no money; Imperial Majesty
remembers recent days rather, and his own last quarrel with France
(on the Polish-Election score), in which you Sea-Powers cruelly stood
neuter! One comfort, and pretty much one only, is left to a nearly
bankrupt Imperial heart; that France does at any rate ratify Pragmatic
Sanction, and instead of enemy to that inestimable Document has become
friend,--if only she be well let alone. "Let well alone," says the sad
Kaiser, bankrupt of heart as well as purse: "I have saved the Pragmatic,
got Fleury to guarantee it; I will hunt wild swine and not shadows
any more: ask me not!" And now this Herstal business; the Imperial
Dehortatoriums, perhaps of a high nature, that are like to come? More
hopeless proposition the Britannic Majesty never made than this to the
Kaiser. But he persists in it, orders Robinson to persist; knocks at the
Austrian door with one hand, at the Prussian or Anti-Austrian with
the other; and gazes, with those proud fish-eyes, into perils and
potentialities and a sea of troubles. Wearisome to think of, were
not one bound to it! Here, from a singular CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
ENGLAND, not yet got into print, are two Excerpts; which I will request
the reader to try if he can take along with him, in view of much that is
Coming:--

1. A JUST WAR.--"This War, which posterity scoffs at as the WAR OF
JENKINS'S EAR, was, if we examine it, a quite indispensable one; the
dim much-bewildered English, driven into it by their deepest instincts,
were, in a chaotic inarticulate way, right and not wrong in taking it as
the Commandment of Heaven. For such, in a sense, it was; as shall by and
by appear. Not perhaps since the grand Reformation Controversy, under
Oliver Cromwell and Elizabeth, had there, to this poor English People
(who are essentially dumb, inarticulate, from the weight of meaning
they have, notwithstanding the palaver one hears from them in certain
epochs), been a more authentic cause of War. And, what was the fatal
and yet foolish circumstance, their Constitutional Captains, especially
their King, would never and could never regard it as such; but had to be
forced into it by the public rage, there being no other method left in
the case.

"I say, a most necessary War, though of a most stupid appearance; such
the fatality of it:--begun, carried on, ended,