upon, or when it was prosecuted with vigour and success. Hence, it was concluded, without reserve, if also without bitterness and the injustice of extremes, that the Government in Britain cannot guarantee with the same assurance as others the performance of its obligations; and, it was rightly contended, the consequence in respect of foreign Powers was most pernicious, It was, however, admitted that on the part of Continental Powers physical impossibilities—a total subjugation or some extreme trial and distress—might prevent the fulfilment of their obligations: 'a case which can scarcely be supposed to occur with respect to England'.[1] The capacity of Britain to endure physical strain was acknowledged to a degree that Montesquieu would have commended—that high degree which the experience of two great wars, in spite of a bitter lesson in an intervening one, seemed to have established for the people of Britain since the eulogy of her by the author of the work De l'Esprit des Lois had been published.[2] Britain's non-fulfilment of obligations to foreign Powers was to be ascribed, if not to a clear breach of political morality, at least to the character and consequences of conventions, and to conventions that had acquired the force of principles, in the ordering of her political life. The non-fulfilment of obligations by Continental Powers was to be ascribed to physical duress, to the imperious calls of nature, to which the State for its own safety, the community for the sake of bare existence, must submit.
It is instructive to observe how such a critic and apologist finds no need to condone, as though it were reprehensible, the action of Frederick II as an ally of France in the course of his Silesian Wars—and the designation of the wars is at once almost Frederick's condemnation and his defence—between 1740 and 1745. He sees in Frederick's action ground for
