seemed that vast horns and promontories ran down from all parts of his dominions towards any country whatsoever, in either hemisphere,--empire or republic, monarchy, polyarchy, or anarchy,--that he might have reasons for assaulting. Here in one moment vanished all that I had relied on for protection: distance I had relied on, and suddenly I was found in close neighborhood to my most formidable enemy. Poverty I had rolled on, and _that_ was not denied: he granted the poverty, but it was dependent on the barbarism of the Gombroonians. It seems that in the central forests of Gombroonia there were diamond mines, which my people, from their low condition of civilization, did not value, nor had any means of working. Farewell, therefore, on _my_ side, to all hopes of enduring peace, for here was established, in legal phrase, _a lien_ forever upon my island, and not upon its margin, but its very centre, in favor of any invaders better able than the natives to make its treasures available. For, of old, it was an article in my brother's code of morals, that, supposing a contest between any two parties, of which one possessed an article, whilst the other was better able to use it, the rightful property vested in the latter. As if you met a man with a musket, then you might justly challenge him to a trial in the art of making gunpowder; which if you _could_ make, and he could _not_, in that case the musket was _de jure_ yours. For what shadow of a right had the fellow to a noble instrument which he could not "maintain" in a serviceable condition, and "feed" with its daily rations of powder and shot? Still, it may be fancied that, since all the relations between us as independent sovereigns (whether of war, or peace, or treaty) rested upon our own representations and official reports, it was surely within my competence to deny or qualify as much as within his to assert. But, in reality, the _law_ of the contest between us, as suggested by some instinct of propriety in my own mind, would not allow me to proceed in such a method. What he said was like a move at chess or draughts, which it was childish to dispute. The move being made, my business was--to face it, to parry it, to evade it, and, if I could, to overthrow it. I proceeded as a lawyer who moves as long as he can, not by blank denial of facts, (or _coming to an issue_,) but by _demurring_, (_i.e._, admitting the allegations of fact, but otherwise interpreting their construction.) It was the understood necessity of the case that I must passively accept my brother's statements so far as regarded their verbal expression; and, if _I_ would extricate my poor islanders from their troubles, it must be by some distinction or evasion lying _within_ this expression, or not blankly contradicting it.