grace, VILLIERS first duke of Buckingham, engaged his country in two mad wars at once, with the two greatest powers in Europe, because his honour had suffered a rebuff in his attempts to debauch two great foreign ladies. Europe was to be embroiled; lives, treasure, and the safety of kingdoms to be risqued and thrown away, to vindicate, forsooth, his grace's debauched honour.

CAMBYSES, to revenge an affront put upon his father, many years before, by an Egyptian king in the business of sending him a wife, involved the world in a flame of war, and at the expence, perhaps, of a million of lives, and the destruction of kingdoms, did at last heroically vindicate his father's honour and his own, upon the bones of a dead king, whom he caused to be dug up, and after many indignities, cast into the fire.

WHITE ELEPHANTS are rare in nature, and so greatly valued in the Indies that the King of Fegu, hearing that the King of Siam had got two, sent an embassy in form, to desire one of them of his royal brother at any price: but being refused, he thought his honour concerned to wage war for so great an affront. So he entered Siam with a vast army, and with the loss of five hundred thousand of his own men, and the destruction of as many of the Siamese, he made himself mafter of the elephant and retrieved his honour.

In

In short, honour and victory are generally no more than white elephants; and for white elephants the most destructive wars have been often made. What man, free, either by birth or spirit, could, without pity and contempt, behold, as in a late French reign he frequently might behold, a swarm of slavish Frenchmen, in wooden shoes, with hungry bellies, and no clothes, dancing round a may-pole, because their grand monarque, at the expence of a miltion of their money, and thirty or forty thousand, lives, had acquired a white elephant, or in other words, gained a town or victory ?

THE

Cato's Letters, v. ii, No. 43, & 57.

DR. GOLDSMITH.

HE English and French are at present engag ed in a very destructive war, have already spilled much blood, are excessively irritated, and all upon account of one fule's desiring to wear greater quantities of furs than the other.

The pretext of the war is about some lands a thousand leagues off; a country cold, desolate, and hideous; a country belonging to a people who were in possession for time immemorial, The savages of Canada claim a property in the country in dispute; they have all the pretensions which long possession can confer. Here they have reigned for ages, without rivals in

dominion, and knew no enemies but the prowling bear, or insidious tyger; their native forests produced all the necessaries of life, and they found ample luxury in the enjoyment. In this manner they might have continued to live to eternity, had not the English been informed that those countries produced furs in great abundance. From that moment the country became an object of desire; it was found that furs were things very much wanted in England; the ladies edged some of their clothes with furs, and muffs were worn both by gentlemen and ladies. In short furs were found indispensibly necessary to the happiness of the state; and the king was consequently petitioned to grant not only the country of Canada, but all the savages belonging to it, to the subjects of England, in order to have the people supplied with proper quantities of this necessary commodity.

So very reafonable a request was immediately. complied with, and large colonies were sent abroad to procure furs and take possession. The French who were equally in want of furs, (for they are as fond of muffs and tippets as the English) made the very same request to their monarch, and met with the same gracious reception from their king, who generously granted what was not his to give. Wherever the French landed, they called the country their own; and the English took possession wherever they came upon the same equitable pretensions. The harmless savages made no opposition; and could the intruders have agreed together, they might

peace

peaceably have shared this desolate country be tween them. But they quarrelled about the boundaries of their settlements, about grounds and rivers, to which neither side could show any other right than that of power, and which neither could occupy but by usurpation. Such is the contest that no honest man can heartily wish success to either party.

Citizen of the World, let. xvii.

MARSHAL BELLEISLE.

THE petty sovereignty of HERSTAL, which belonged to the King of Prussia, was by that monarch thought a dead weight, as being at too great a distance from his dominions. He thought he had found out, that this territory, as. bordering upon the country of Liege, might be of more service to the Prince, (Bishop) of that 'state; but this latter would not accept it. What does Frederick upon this occasion? Making a bad use of his superiority, and after putting in practice the most oppressive means, he at length obliges the Prince of Liege, sword-in-hand, to purchase Herstal, and to pay him double the value of it.

Polit. Teft. p. 144.

LEWIS WIS XIV. incensed against the Dutch, for having compelled him to sign the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, grown weary of the sweets of repose, and, perhaps, still more actuated with

a

a desire of filling all the universe with his fame, formed the project of conquering the united provinces. Louvois, willing to colour over this step of his master, in the sight of other nations produces in council a MEDAL that was never struck in Holland, and was not so much a reflection on Lewis as á panegyrick on Van Beuning, who had obliged that monarch to restore the Franche Comte. The council, fully convinced by so authentic a voucher, did not hesitate a minute to declare for the utter subversion of the states general, because an obscure libeller had struck, no one knew where, a medal in which Jofhua Van Beuning was represented flopping the courfe of the Sun, which Lewis XIV. had, somewhat too arrogantly, taken for his device.

1

The King dreading, with reason, the superior naval power of the Dufch, made a treaty of alliance with Charles II. of England by the interposition of MADAME, sister to that monarch, Lewis's army advanced into French Flanders, and began hostilities against the Dutch, without any previous demand of satisfaction, or authentic declaration of war. The English, on their side, sent a fleet to sea. The republic, in the greatest consternation at seeing itself on the point of being invaded, sent deputies to enquire, into the reasons that had engaged these two monarchs to arm against them. The French ministry talked of nothing but the medal and Charles's council made use of an argument too singular in its kind to be passed over unnoticed.