F PRAGMATIC SANCTION; MANNER OF THE CHIEF ARTISTS IN HANDLING
THEIR COVENANTS.

The operation once accomplished on its own Pragmatic Covenant, France
found no difficulty with the others. Everybody was disposed to eat his
Covenant, who could see advantage in so doing, after that admirable
example. The difficulty of France and Belleisle rather was, to keep
the hungry parties back: "Don't eat your Covenant TILL the proper time;
patience, we say!" A most sad Miscellany of Royalties, coming all to
the point, "Will you eat your Covenant, Will you keep it?"--and eating,
nearly all; in fact, wholly all that needed to eat.

On the first Invasion of Silesia, Maria Theresa had indignantly
complained in every Court; and pointing to Pragmatic Sanction, had
demanded that such Law of Nature be complied with, according to
covenant. What Maria Theresa got by this circuit of the Courts,
everybody still knows. Except England, which was willing, and Holland,
which was unwilling, all Courts had answered, more or less uneasily:
"Law of Nature,--humph: yes!"--and, far from doing anything, not one of
them would with certainty promise to do anything. From England alone and
her little King (to whom Pragmatic Sanction is the Palladium of Human
Freedoms and the Keystone of Nature) could she get the least help. The
rest hung back; would not open heart or pocket; waited till they
saw. They do now see; now that Belleisle has done his feat of
Covenant-eating!--

Eleven great Powers, some count Thirteen, some Twelve, [Scholl, ii. 286;
Adelung, LIST, ii. 127.]--but no two agree, and hardly one agrees with
himself;--enough, the Powers of Europe, from Naples and Madrid to Russia
and Sweden, have all signed it, let us say a Dozen or a Baker's-Dozen
of them. And except our little English Paladin alone, whose interest
and indeed salvation seemed to him to lie that way, and who needed no
Pragmatic Covenant to guide him, nobody whatever distinguished himself
by keeping it. Between December, 1740, when Maria Theresa set up her
cries in all Courts, on to April, 1741, England, painfully dragging
Holland with her, had alone of the Baker's-Dozen spoken word of
disapproval; much less done act of hindrance. Two especially (France and
Bavaria, not to mention Spain) had done the reverse, and disowned, and
declared against, Pragmatic Sanction. And after the Battle of Mollwitz,
when the "little stone" took its first leap, and set all thundering,
then came, like the in