Our weather-beaten ships, I have no fear, will make their sides like a plum-pudding." "Yesterday," he says, on another occasion, "a rear-admiral and seven sail of ships put their nose outside the harbour.
If they go on playing this game, some day we shall lay salt on their tails." Hostilities at length commenced between Great Britain and Spain.

That country, whose miserable government made her subservient to France, was once more destined to lavish her resources and her blood in furtherance of the designs of a perfidious ally.

The immediate occasion of the war was the seizure of four treasure-ships by the English.

The act was perfectly justifiable, for those treasures were intended to furnish means for France; but the circumstances which attended it were as unhappy as they were unforeseen.

Four frigates had been despatched to intercept them.