As things stand at present, war and peace are bound
together like the vicissitudes of day and night, of Castor and Pollux.
It matters little which bucket of the two is going up at the moment,
which going down. Both are steadfastly tied by a system of alternations
to a revolving wheel; and a new war as certainly becomes due during the
evolutions of a tedious peace, as a new peace may be relied on during
the throes of a bloody war, to tranquillize its wounds. Consequently,
when the arrogant Louvois carried a war to the credit of his own little
account on the national leger of France, this coxcomb well knew that a
war was at any rate due about that time. Really, says he, I must find
out some little war to exhaust the _surplus_ irritability of this
person, or he'll be the death of me. But irritable or not irritable,
with a puppy for his minister or not, the French king would naturally
have been carried headlong into war by the mere system of Europe,
within a very few months. So much had the causes of complaint
reciprocally accumulated. The account must be cleansed, the court roll
of grievances must be purged. With respect to the two English ladies
again, it is still more evident that they could not have _caused_
a war by pulling caps with each other, since the grounds of every war,
what had caused it, and prolonged it, was sure to be angrily reviewed
by Parliament at each annual exposition of the Finance Minister's
Budget.
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