Everybody was disposed to eat his Covenant, who could see advantage in so doing, after that admirable example.

The difficulty of France and Belleisle rather was, to keep the hungry parties back: "Don't eat your Covenant TILL the proper time; patience, we say!" A most sad Miscellany of Royalties, coming all to the point, "Will you eat your Covenant, Will you keep it ?"--and eating, nearly all; in fact, wholly all that needed to eat.
On the first Invasion of Silesia, Maria Theresa had indignantly complained in every Court; and pointing to Pragmatic Sanction, had demanded that such Law of Nature be complied with, according to covenant.

What Maria Theresa got by this circuit of the Courts, everybody still knows.

Except England, which was willing, and Holland, which was unwilling, all Courts had answered, more or less uneasily: "Law of Nature,--humph: yes!"-- and, far from doing anything, not one of them would with certainty promise to do anything.

From England alone and her little King (to whom Pragmatic Sanction is the Palladium of Human Freedoms and the Keystone of Nature) could she get the least help.