1818 Aug. 28. §.4

Things as they are

§.4. Wars

1

§. -- unnecessary wars.

Of so many wars as England has been engaged in the last if not the only one which could make any pretension to the epithet of necessary, were those waged against Lewis the fourteenth of France But this were anterior to the grand epoch of epochs the birth of the National Debt.

Immediately preceding these necessary wars if such they were, behold those two wars against the Dutch, which without disguise /cloak/ or varnish exhibit war and its causes, in their genuine colours. The succeeding ones were against Lewis: these preparatory ones were with him and for him. Of these wars plunder in the one case, bribery in /the/ another were the ever[?] undisputed causes: plunder as well after the declaration of war as before declaration: for that enormous /insane and thoughtless /unlimited// transfer of the whole of the game to the gamekeepers was not as yet made: for the sake of depriving the grantees by fraud of a part of that grant which had been so madly made by law, Monarchy was not then /the Monarch had not then/ as since to engage in a course of piracy to plunder without previous declaration and with no other disguise than that afforded him by the lawyers by the phrase Droits of Admiralty, join himself to the goodly fellowship of pirates.

When at the disposal of the Monarch, on condition of his acting the part of a pirate < > millions are to be /have been/ obtained by war, can there so long as he is a man be any need of looking a jot any further for the cause of it?