Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/66

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24 ORIGIN OF THE WAR OF 1853 CHAP. IT. Instance of a wrong to which the Usage did not apply. Instance in which the Usage was applicable and was disobeyed. being expressed in arithmetic, and of being in that way made clear to even the narrowest under- standing. The principle on which the safeguard rests will not be acknowledged by all, but those who will disown it can be designated beforehand. There are many who cannot make out how society can justly be harsh upon a man for being tame under insult or injury; and the same class of moralists will encounter a like difficulty in their endeavour to understand the cogency and the worth of this Usage. Perhaps the limit to which the Usage is subject may be best shown by first giving an example of circumstances in which it fails to take practical effect. When the Republic of Cracow was abol- ished by an arrangement concerted between Rus- sia and Austria, a clear wrong was done, and France and England protested against it; but it could hardly be said that their interests were grievously affected by the change, and therefore it was not the opinion of Europe that the West- ern Powers had been guilty of a great dereliction (>t duty because on this account they declined to go to war. But as an example of circumstances in which tame acquiescence would be clearly a breach of the great Usage and a defection from the cause of nations, one may cite the conduct of Prussia in 1805 ; for when the First Napoleon suddenly came to a rupture with Austria, and broke up from his camp at Boulogne and poured his armies into Germany, advancing upon Ulm and finally upon