Which provision-sloops, and indispensable small craft, not only carried merchandise as well, but went and came to Jamaica and back, under various pretexts, with ever new supplies of merchandise; converting the Assiento Ship into a Floating Shop, the Tons burden and Tons sale of which set arithmetic at defiance.

This was the fact, perfectly well known in England, veiled over by mere smuggler pretences, and obstinately persisted in, so profitable was it.
Perfectly well known in Spain also, and to the Spanish Guarda-Costas and Sea-Captains in those parts; who were naturally kept in a perennial state of rage by it,--and disposed to fly out into flame upon it, when a bad case turned up! Such a case that of Jenkins had seemed to them; and their mode of treating it, by tearing off Mr.Jenkins's Ear, proved to be--bad shall we say, or good ?--intolerable to England's thick skin; and brought matters to a crisis, in the ways we saw."...
The Jenkins's-Ear Question, which then looked so mad to everybody, how sane has it now grown to my Constitutional Friend! In abstruse ludicrous form there lay immense questions involved in it; which were serious enough, certain enough, though invisible to everybody.

Half the World lay hidden in embryo under it.

Colonial-Empire, whose is it to be?
Shall Half the World be England's, for industrial purposes; which is innocent, laudable, conformable to the Multiplication-table at least, and other plain Laws?
Or shall it be Spain's for arrogant-torpid sham-devotional purposes, contradictory to every Law?
The incalculable Yankee Nation itself, biggest Phenomenon (once thought beautifulest) of these Ages,--this too, little as careless readers on either side of the sea now know it, lay involved.

Shall there be a Yankee Nation, shall there not be; shall the New World be of Spanish type, shall it be of English?
Issues which we may call immense.