hat earthquake's
occurrence shaken the world that lay on the American lakes. Forty years
ago, old men talked as much of the Old French War--the Seven Years' War
of European historians--as of the War of the Revolution. It was a
contest but for the happening of which there could have been no American
Revolution, at least none of the character that now occupies so high a
place in history. Or, had it happened, and had the event been different,
our annals would have been made to read differently, and the Fourth of
July could never have become an institution. It opened well for the
French, and, had not fortune changed, the colonists, instead of looking
to Paris for aid, only a dozen years after its conclusion, might have
been ruled by proconsuls sent from that "centre of civilization," as it
delights to call itself. And even if the terms of the treaty which put
an end to that war had been a little differently arranged, England might
have triumphed in the war that she carried on against our ancestors.
Both the war itself, and the manner of concluding it, were necessary to
the creation of that American empire which, according to Earl Russell,
we are fighting to maintain,--as unquestionably we are, though not in
the ignoble sense in which the noble Earl meant that his words should be
taken and understood.

Of the many conquests which were made by the English in the Seven Years'
War, no one was more remarkable than that which placed the Havana and
its neighborhood in their hands, virtually giving them possession of the
island of Cuba; and the manner in which they disposed of their
magnificent prize, when George III. forced peace upon his unwilling
subjects, was among the causes of their failure to conquer the Thirteen
States in the War for Independence.

That England should have been favored with the opportunity to seize Cuba
was not the least singular of the incidents of a contest that was waged
wherever Christians could meet for the pious purpose of cutting one
another's throats. The English owed it to the hatred for them that was
felt by one man, who assailed them in their hour of triumph, in the hope
of gratifying his love of revenge, but who reaped only new humiliations
from his crusade. He had better luck in after days; but in 1762 he must
have entertained some pretty strong doubts as to the wisdom of hating
his neighbors, and of allowing that sentiment to get the better of his
judgment. Charles III., King of the Spains, t