XCVII. A POLITICAL PAUSE. Where, then, sir, is this war, which is prolific of all these horrors, to be carried? Where is it to stop? Not till we have established the house of Bourbon! Or, at least, not until we have had due "experience" of Bonaparte's intentions! And all this without an intelligible motive. All this because you may gain a better peace a year or two hence! So that we are called upon to go on merely as a speculation. We must keep Bonaparte for some time longer at war, as a state of probation! Gracious God, sir! is war a state of probation? Is peace a rash system? Is it dangerous for nations to live in amity with each other? Are your vigilance, your police your common powers of observation, to be extinguished by putting an end to the horrors of war? Cannot this state of probation be as well undergone without adding to the catalogue of human sufferings? "But we must pause!" says the honorable gentleman. What! must the bowels of Great Britain be torn out her best blood be spilled--her treasures wasted--that you may make an experiment? Put yourselves oh! that you would put yourselves on the field of battle, and learn to judge of the sort of horrors that you excite! In former wars a man might, at least, have some feeling, some interest, that served to balance, in his mind, the impressions which a scene of carnage and of death must inflict. If a man had been present at the battle of Blenheim, for instance, and had inquired the motive of the battle, there was not a soldier engaged who could not have satisfied his curiosity, and even, perhaps, allayed his feelings. They were fighting, they knew, to repress the uncontrolled ambition of the Grand Monarch. But if a man were present now at the field of slaughter, and were to inquire for what they were fighting--"Fighting!" would be the answer; "they aren't fighting; they are pausing." "Why is that man expiring? " Why is that other writhing with agony? What means this implacable fury? " The answer must be, "You are quite wrong, sir, you deceive yourself--they are not fighting, do not disturb them they are merely pausing! This man is not expiring with agony--that man is not dead he is only pausing! Lord help you, sir! they are not angry with one another; they have now no cause of quarrel; but their country thinks that there should be a pause. All that you see, sir, is nothing like fighting--there is no harm, nor cruelty, nor bloodshed in it, whatever: it is nothing more than a political pause! It is merely to try an experiment--to see whether Bonaparte will not, behave himself better than heretofore; and in the mean time we have agreed to pause in pure friendship!"