ABSTRACT
War is not caused by a trifle, as Aristotle somewhere observes, but it may be started by one. The stories of Spanish arrogance in the Caribbean had long created an explosive atmosphere, when a certain Captain Jenkins fresh from the West Indies appeared before the bar of the House of Commons with a shrivelled human ear in his hand. Not content with attacking the British by land, and robbing their cargoes at sea, the Spanish hit on the device of enticing from them the Negro slaves without whom their industry could scarcely be carried on. The Spanish burnt Belize to the ground, and went off, remarking that the place was not worth occupying, as ‘it was only fit for the English‘. The Seven Years War, between England on the one hand and Spain in alliance with France on the other, began badly for England in Europe, but prospered exceedingly in the western seas.
