In other words,
we were offered at the same instant a promise of faith in the future and
a proposal of perjury in the present. Those interested in human origins
may refer to an old Victorian writer of English, who, in the last and most
restrained of his historical essays, wrote of Frederick the Great, the
founder of this unchanging Prussian policy. After describing how Frederick
broke the guarantee he had signed on behalf of Maria Theresa, he then
describes how Frederick sought to put things straight by a promise that
was an insult. "If she would but let him have Silesia, he would, he said,
stand by her against any power which should try to deprive her of her other
dominions, as if he was not already bound to stand by her, or as if his new
promise could be of more value than the old one." That passage was written
by Macaulay, but so far as the mere contemporary facts are concerned it
might have been written by me.
Upon the immediate logical and legal origin of the English interest
there can be no rational debate. There are some things so simple that
one can almost prove them with plans and diagrams, as in Euclid.
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