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 ¬said, " could it possibly happen, that with so celebrated a constitution as he himself had described, and when the people had obtained so complete a controul over the public counsels, they should have suffered so unjust and ruinous a war to be so long persisted in, contrary to their most manifest interests, and in the face of the most enlightened opinions?" ¬" The answer to your question," replied my friend, " involves one of the most curious and extraordinary changes that has ever taken place in the political history of any nation. In the earlier periods of that of Armata, though the sovereigns had more power, and the people's re- presentatives were comparatively nothing jn the balance, the Hesperian war could not have been carried on. The delegates of the people would have strenuously opposed it in every stage of its disastrous progress — the whole na- tion would have upheld them, and the govern- ment even, if not subdued, would have been overawed and checked in its impolitic course ; ¬but ¬ ¬but