About this time, as is well known, the king of France dismissed Choiseul
from his employments. What effect this revolution of the French court
had upon the Spanish counsels, I pretend not to be informed. Choiseul
had always professed pacifick dispositions; nor is it certain, however
it may be suspected, that he talked in different strains to different
parties.
It seems to be almost the universal errour of historians to suppose it
politically, as it is physically true, that every effect has a
proportionate cause. In the inanimate action of matter upon matter, the
motion produced can be but equal to the force of the moving power; but
the operations of life, whether private or publick, admit no such laws.
The caprices of voluntary agents laugh at calculation. It is not always
that there is a strong reason for a great event. Obstinacy and
flexibility, malignity and kindness, give place, alternately, to each
other; and the reason of these vicissitudes, however important may be
the consequences, often escapes the mind in which the change is made.
Whether the alteration, which began in January to appear in the Spanish
counsels, had any other cause than conviction of the impropriety of
their past conduct, and of the danger of a new war, it is not easy to
decide; but they began, whatever was the reason, to relax their
haughtiness, and Mr.
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