We might
then, it is said, have increased our force with more leisure and less
inconvenience; but this is to judge only by the event. We omitted to
disturb the publick, because we did not suppose that an armament would
be necessary.
Some months afterwards, as has been told, Buccarelli, the governour of
Buenos Ayres, sent against the settlement of port Egmont a force which
ensured the conquest. The Spanish commander required the English
captains to depart, but they, thinking that resistance necessary, which
they knew to be useless, gave the Spaniards the right of prescribing
terms of capitulation. The Spaniards imposed no new condition, except
that the sloop should not sail under twenty days; and of this they
secured the performance by taking off the rudder.
To an inhabitant of the land there appears nothing in all this
unreasonable or offensive. If the English intended to keep their
stipulation, how were they injured by the detention of the rudder? If
the rudder be to a ship, what his tail is in fables to a fox, the part
in which honour is placed, and of which the violation is never to be
endured, I am sorry that the Favourite suffered an indignity, but cannot
yet think it a cause for which nations should slaughter one another.
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