Note 108 — Chapter IV · 1700-1755. COLLISION OF THE RIVAL COLONIES.

Smollett, III. 436.

“The French inveighed against the capture of their ships, before any declaration of war, as flagrant acts of piracy; and some neutral powers of Europe seemed to consider them in the same point of view. It was certainly high time to check the insolence of the French by force of arms; and surely this might have been as effectually and expeditiously exerted under the usual sanction of a formal declaration, the omission of which exposed the administration to the censure of our neighbors, and fixed the imputation of fraud and freebooting on the beginning of the war.”—Smollett, III. 481. See also Mahon, Hist. England, IV. 72.