Page:Hazlitt, Political Essays (1819).djvu/82

 desperate and (for some reason or other) an unequal struggle against France;—by playing at double or quits, she has just recovered from the very brink of destruction; and the keepers of our political E. O. tables treat us as traitors and miscreants, who would dissuade her from sitting down once more to finish the game, and ruin her adversary.

"—It is asked,—'Do we propose to humble France? Do we propose to destroy her? If so, we breathe eternal war; if so, we convert the aggressor into the sufferer, and transfer all the dignity and authority of justice to the enemy against whom we arm!"' [sic] Yes, against whom we arm for the avowed purpose of his destruction. From the moment that we make the destruction of an enemy (be he who he may) the indispensable condition of our safety, our destruction from that moment becomes necessary to his", and an act of self-defence. Not much liking this dilemma from which our author has more than once "struggled to get free," he in the next passage makes a wide career indeed, in order, no doubt, to return to the charge with better effect hereafter. "The question of peace or eternal war is not a naked question of right and wrong. It is a question, whose morality is determined by its reference to our preservation as a people. To such interrogatories I answer without reserve, that we ought to exact precisely that measure of humiliation from France, and that we do recommend that critical advance towards her destruction, that may combine the utmost attinaableattainable [sic] satisfaction for our past grievances with a solid protection to our future interest and welfare. From France, since the fatal battle of Hastings, what has this nation of Saxon warriors"—(We hardly know ourselves in the learned livery of Vetus's style. He himself is doubtless descended from some very old family settled here before the Conquest)—"What has this nation of Saxon warriors ever yet endured from France but injury and affliction?" Yet we have made a shift to exist as a nation under all this load of calamity. We still breathe and live notwithstanding some intervals of repose, some short resting places afforded us, before this morbid inspector