It would have been folly after that experience to risk defeat and perhaps disaster in assailing formidable positions, effectively held and assiduously fortified.
From the little flea-like species, scarcely a tenth of an inch long, up to the great and rare but cosmopolitan Eurythenes gryllus, Lichtenstein, and the still larger Alicella gigantea, Chevreux, nearly half a foot long, captured by the prince of Monaco from a depth of 2936 fathoms, not one of these ubiquitous, uncountable hordes has ever been accused of assailing man.
Coornhert could not plead for the toleration of heretics without assailing the dominant Calvinism, and so he opposed a conditional to its unconditional predestination.
In opposing the attempt to coerce the American colonists, and in assailing the waste and corruption of Lord North's administration, as well as the undue influence of the crown, he was at one with the Rockingham Whigs.
During the first of these periods he deepened his unpopularity by assailing the undoubted prerogatives of the crown, by claiming for the House of Commons the right to override not only the king and the Lords but the opinion of the country, and by resisting a dissolution.