Johnson's warning, Beware of cant. In that intensely
serious century men were more occupied with the realities than the forms
of things. By encouraging rebellion in England and Ireland, by burning
so many scores of poor English seamen and merchants in fools' coats at
Seville, the King of Spain had given Elizabeth a hundred occasions for
declaring war against him. Situated as she was, with so many disaffected
Catholic subjects, she could not _begin_ a war on such a quarrel. She
had to use such resources as she had, and of these resources the best
was a splendid race of men who were not afraid to do for her at their
own risk what commissioned officers would and might have justly done had
formal war been declared, men who defeated the national enemy with
materials conquered from himself, who were devoted enough to dispense
with the personal security which the sovereign's commission would have
extended to prisoners of war, and face the certainty of being hanged if
they were taken. Yes; no doubt by the letter of the law of nations Drake
and Hawkins were corsairs of the same stuff as Ulysses, as the rovers of
Norway. But the common-sense of Europe saw through the form to the
substance which lay below it, and the instinct of their countrymen gave
them a place among the fighting heroes of England, from which I do not
think they will be deposed by the eventual verdict of history.
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