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During several months the contest in the House of Commons was extremely sharp. Warm debates took place on the estimates, debates still warmer on the subsidiary treaties. The government succeeded in every division; but the fame of Pitt's eloquence, and the influence of his lofty and determined character, continued to increase through the session; and the events which followed the prorogation rendered it utterly impossible for any other person to manage the Parliament or the country.

the throne? What if a hostile House of Commons should be chosen?

At length, in October, the decisive crisis came. Fox had been long sick of the perfidy and levity of Newcastle, and now began to fear that he might be made a scape-goat to save the old intriguer, who, imbecile as he seemed, never wanted dexterity where danger was to be avoided. He threw up his office. Newcastle had recourse to Murray; but Murray had now within his reach the favourite object of his ambition. The situation of Chief Justice of the King's Bench was vacant; and the attorney-general was fully resolved to obtain it, or to go into Opposition. Newcastle offered him any terms-the Duchy of Lancaster for life, a tellership of the Exchequer, any pension that he chose to ask, two thousand a year, six thousand a year. When the ministers found that Murray's mind was made up, they pressed for delay; the delay of a session, a month, a week, a

more in the House of Commons? Would he only speak in favour of the address? He was inexorable; and peremptorily said, that they might give or withhold the chief-justiceship; but that he would be attorney-general no longer.

The war began in every part of the world with events disastrous to England, and even more shameful than disastrous. But the most humiliating of these events was the loss of Minorca. The Duke of Richelieu, an old fop, who had passed his life from sixteen to sixty in seducing women, for whom he cared not one straw, landed on that island, with a French army, and succeeded in reducing it. Admiral Byng was sent from Gibraltar to throw suc-day. Would he only make his appearance once cours into Port Mahon; but he did not think fit to engage the French squadron, and sailed back without having effected his purpose. The people were inflamed to madness. A storm broke forth, which appalled even those who remembered the days of "Excise" and Newcastle contrived to overcome the prejuof "South Sea." The shops were filled with dices of the king, and overtures were made to libels and caricatures. The walls were cover- Pitt, through Lord Hardwicke. Pitt knew his ed with placards. The city of London called for power, and showed that he knew it. He devengeance, and the cry was echoed from every manded as an indispensable condition, that corner of the kingdom. Dorsetshire, Hunting-Newcastle should be altogether excluded from donshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, So- the new arrangement. mersetshire, Lancashire, Suffolk, Shropshire, The duke was now in a state of ludicrous Surrey, sent up strong addresses to the throne; distress. He ran about chattering and crying, and instructed their representatives to vote for asking advice and listening to none. In the a strict inquiry into the causes of the late dis-mean time, the session drew near. The public asters. In the great towns the feeling was as strong as in the counties. In some of the instructions it was even recommended that the supplies should be stopped.

The nation was in a state of angry and sullen despondency, almost unparalleled in history. People have, in all ages, been in the habit of talking about the good old times of their ancestors, and the degeneracy of their contemporaries. This is in general merely a cant. But in 1756 it was something more. At this time appeared Brown's "Estimate"-a book now remembered only by the allusions in Cowper's "Table Talk," and Burke's "Letters on a Regicide Peace." It was universally read, admired, and believed. The author fully convinced his readers, that they were a race of cowards and scoundrels; that nothing could save them; that they were on the point of being enslaved by their enemies, and that they richly deserved their fate. Such were the speculations to which ready credence was given, at the outset of the most glorious war in which England had ever been engaged.

Newcastle now began to tremble for his place, and for the only thing which was dearer to him than his place-his neck. The people were not in a mood to be trifled with. Their cry was for blood. For this once they might be contented with the sacrifice of Byng. But what if fresh disasters should take place? What if an unfriendly sovereign should ascend

excitement was unabated. Nobody could be found to face Pitt and Fox in the House of Commons. Newcastle's heart failed him, and he tendered his resignation.

The king sent for Fox, and directed him to form the plan of an administration in concert with Pitt. But Pitt had not forgotten old inju ries, and positively refused to act with Fox.

The king now applied to the Duke of Devonshire, and this mediator succeeded in making an arrangement. He consented to take the Treasury. Pitt became Secretary of State, with the lead of the House of Commons. The Great Seal was put into commission. Legge returned to the exchequer; and Lord Temple, whose sister Pitt had lately married, was placed at the head of the Admiralty.

It was clear from the first that this administration would last but a very short time. It lasted not quite five months; and during those five months, Pitt and Lord Temple were treated with rudeness by the king, and found but a feeble support in the House of Commons. It is a remarkable fact, that the Opposition prevented the re-election of some of the new ini. nisters. Pitt, who sat for one of the boroughs which were in the Pelham interest, found some difficulty in obtaining a seat after his acceptance of the seals. So destitute was the new government of that sort of influence without which no government could then be durable One of the arguments most frequently urged

against the Reform Bill was that, under a sys- | power and his popularity to hazard, and spoke tem of popular representation, men, whose manfully for Byng, both in Parliament and in presence in the House of Commons was ne- the royal presence. But the king was inexocessary to the conducting of public business, rable. "The House of Commons, sire," said might often find it impossible to find seats. Pitt, "seems inclined to mercy." "Sir," anShould this inconvenience ever be felt, there swered the king, "you have taught me to look cannot be the slightest difficulty in devising for the sense of my people in other places than and applying a remedy. But those who threat- the House of Commons." The saying has ened us with this evil ought to have remem- more point than most of those which are rebered that, under the old system, a great man, corded of George the Second; and, though called to power at a great crisis, by the voice sarcastically meant, contains a high and just of the whole nation, was in danger of being compliment to Pitt. excluded by an aristocratical coterie from the House, of which he was the most distinguished

ornament.

The king disliked Pitt, but absolutely hated Temple. The new Secretary of State, his majesty said, had read Vattel, and was tedious and pompous, but respectful. The First Lord of the Admiralty was grossly impertinent. Walpole tells one story, which, we fear, is much too good to be true. He assures us, that Temple entertained his royal master with an elaborate parallel between Byng's behaviour at Minorca, and his majesty's behaviour at Oudenarde. The advantage was all on the side of the admiral; and the obvious inference was, that if Byng ought to be shot, the king musi richly deserve to be hanged.

This state of things could not last. Early in April, Pitt and all his friends were turned out, and Newcastle was summoned to St. James's. But the public discontent was not extinguished. It had subsided when Pitt was called to power. But it still glowed under the embers; and it now burst at once into a flame. The stocks fell. The Common Council met. The freedom of the city was voted to Pitt. All the greatest corporate towns followed the example. "For some weeks," says Walpole, "it rained gold boxes."

The most important event of this short administration was the trial of Byng. On that subject public opinion is still divided. We think the punishment of the admiral altogether unjust and absurd. Treachery, cowardice, ignorance, amounting to what lawyers have called crassa ignorantia, are fit objects of severe penal inflictions. But Byng was not found guilty of treachery, or cowardice, or of gross ignorance of his profession. He died for doing what the most loyal subject, the most intrepid warrior, the most experienced seaman, might have done. He died for an error in judgment-an error such as the greatest commanders, Frederic, Napoleon, Wellington, have often committed, and have often acknowledged. Such errors are not proper objects of punishment, for this reason that the punishing of them tends not to prevent them, but to produce them. The dread of an ignominious death may stimulate sluggishness to exertion, may keep a traitor to his standard, may prevent a coward from leaving the ranks, but it has no tendency to bring out those qualities which This was the turning point of Pitt's life. It enable men to form prompt and judicious de- might have been expected that a man of so cisions in great emergencies. The best marks- haughty and vehement a nature, treated so unman may be expected to fail when the apple graciously by the court, and supported so enwhich is to be his mark, is set on his child's head. thusiastically by the people, would have eagerWe cannot conceive any thing more likely to ly taken the first opportunity of showing his deprive an officer of his self-possession at the power, and gratifying his resentment; for an time when he most needs it, than the know- opportunity was not wanting. The members ledge that, if the judgment of his superiors for many counties and large towns had been should not agree with his, he will be executed instructed to vote for an inquiry into the cir with every circumstance of shame. Queens, cumstances which had produced the miscar it has often been said, run far greater risk in riage of the preceding year. A motion for in childbed than private women, merely because quiry had been carried in the House of Comtheir medical attendants are more anxious. mons, without opposition; and a few days The surgeon who attended Marie Louise was after Pitt's dismissal, the investigation comaltogether unnerved by his emotions. "Com-menced. Newcastle and his colleagues obpose yourself," said Bonaparte "imagine that you are assisting a poor girl in the Fauxbourg St. Antoine." This was surely a far wiser course than that of the Eastern king in the "Arabian Nights' Entertainments," who proclaimed that the physicians who failed to cure his daughter should have their heads chopped off. Bonaparte knew mankind well; and, as he acted towards this surgeon, he acted towards his officers. No sovereign was ever so indulgent to mere errors of judgment; and it is certain that no sovereign ever had in his service so many military men fit for the highest commands.

Pitt certainly acted a brave and honest part on this occasion. He ventured to put both his

tained a vote of acquittal; but the minority was so strong, that they could not venture to ask for a vote of approbation, as they had at first intended; and it was thought by some shrewd observers, that if Pitt had exerted himself to the utmost of his power, the inquiry might have ended in a censure, if not in an impeachment.

Pitt showed on this occasion a moderation and self-government which were not habitual to him. He had found by experience, that he could not stand alone. His eloquence and his popularity had done much, very much for him. Without rank, without fortune, without borough interest, hated by the king, hated by the aristocracy, he was a person of the first

importance in the state. He had been suffered to form a ministry, and to pronounce sentence of exclusion on all his rivals-on the most powerful noblemen of the Whig party-on the ablest debater in the House of Commons. And he now found that he had gone too far. The English Constitution was not, indeed, without a popular element. But other elements generally predominated. The confidence and admiration of the nation might make a statesman formidable at the head of an Oppositionmight load him with framed and glazed parchments, and gold boxes-might possibly, under very peculiar circumstances, such as those of the preceding year, raise him for a time to power. But, constituted as Parliament then was, the favourite of the people could not depend on a majority in the people's own House. The Duke of Newcastle, however contemptible in morals, manners, and understanding, was a dangerous enemy. His rank, his wealth, his unrivalled parliamentary interest, would alone have made him important. But this was not all. The Whig aristocracy regarded him as their leader. His long possession of power had given him a kind of prescriptive right to possess it still. The House of Commons had been elected when he was at the head of affairs. The members for the ministerial boroughs had all been nominated by him. The public offices swarmed with his creatures.

Pitt desired power; and he desired it, we really believe. from high and generous motives. He was in the strict sense of the word a patriot. He had no general liberality-none of that philanthropy which the great French writers of his time preached to all the nations of Europe. He loved England as an Athenian loved the city of the Violet Crown-as a Roman loved the "maxima rerum Roma." He saw his country insulted and defeated. He saw the national spirit sinking. Yet he knew what the resources of the empire, vigorously employed, could effect; and he felt that he was the man to employ them vigorously. "My lord," he said to the Duke of Devonshire, "I am sure that I can save this country, and that nobody else can."

Desiring, then, to be in power, and feeling that his abilities and the public confidence were not alone sufficient to keep him in power against the wishes of the court and the aristocracy, he began to think of a coalition with Newcastle.

Newcastle was equally disposed to a reconciliation. He, too, had profited by his recent experience. He had found that the court and the aristocracy, though powerful, were not every thing in the state. A strong oligarchical connection, a great borough interest, ample patronage, and secret-service money, might, in quiet times, be all that a minister needed; but it was unsafe to trust wholly to such support in time of war, of discontent, and of agitation. The composition of the House of Commons was not wholly aristocratical, and whatever be the composition of large deliberative assemblies, their spirit is always in some degree popular. Where there are free debates, eloquence must have admirers, and reason

must make converts. Where there is a free press, the governors must live in constant awe of the opinions of the governed.

Thus these two men, so unlike in character, so lately mortal enemies, were necessary to each other. Newcastle had fallen in November, for want of that public confidence which Pitt possessed, and of that parliamentary support which Pitt was better qualified than any man of his time to give. Pitt had fallen in April, for want of that species of influence which Newcastle had passed his whole life in acquiring and hoarding. Neither of them hac power enough to support himself. Each of them had power enough to overturn the other Their union would be irresistible. Neither the king nor any party in the state would be able to stand against them.

Under these circumstances, Pitt was not disposed to proceed to extremities against his predecessors in office. Something, however, was due to consistency; something was neces sary for the preservation of his popularity He did little; but that little he did in such a manner as to produce great effect. He came down to the House in all the pomp of gout: his legs swathed in flannels, his arms dangling in a sling. He kept his seat through several fatiguing days, in spite of pain and languor. He uttered a few sharp and vehement sentences; but during the greater part of the discussion, his language was unusually gentle.

The

When the inquiry had terminated, without a vote either of approbation or of censure, the great obstacle to a coalition was removed. Many obstacles, however, remained. king was still rejoicing in his deliverance from the proud and aspiring minister, who had been forced on him by the cry of the nation. His majesty's indignation was excited to the highest point, when it appeared that Newcastle, who had, during thirty years, been loaded with marks of royal favour, and who had bound himself, by a solemn promise. never to coalesce with Pitt, was meditating a new perfidy. Of all the statesmen of that age, Fox had the largest share of royal favour. A coalition between Fox and Newcastle was the arrangement which the king wished to bring about. But the duke was too cunning to fall into such a snare. As a speaker in Parlia ment, Fox might perhaps be as useful to an administration as his great rival; but he was one of the most unpopular men in England. Then, again, Newcastle felt all that jealousy of Fox which, according to the proverb, generally exists between two of a trade. Fox would certainly intermeddle with that department. which the duke was most desirous to reserve entire to himself-the jobbing department. Pitt, on the other hand, was quite willing to leave the drudgery of corruption to any who might be inclined to undertake it.

During eleven weeks England remained without a ministry; and, in the mean time, Parliament was sitting, and a war was raging The prejudices of the king, the haughtiness of Pitt, the jealousy, levity, and treachery of Newcastle, delayed the settlement. Pitt knew the duke too well to trust him without security

The duke loved power too much to be inclined | amidst the roar of guns and kettledrums, and to give security. While they were haggling, the shouts of an immense multitude. Ad the king was in vain attempting to produce a dresses of congratulation came in from all the final rupture between them, or to form a go- great towns of England. Parliament met only vernment without them. At one time he ap- to decree thanks and monuments, and to beplied to Lord Waldegrave, an honest and stow, without one murmur, supplies more sensible man, but unpractised in affairs. than double of those which had been given Lord Waldegrave had the courage to accept during the war of the Grand Alliance. the Treasury, but soon found that no administration formed by him had the smallest chance of standing a single week.

At length the king's pertinacity yielded to the necessity of the case. After exclaiming with great bitterness, and with some justice, against the Whigs, who ought, he said, to be ashamed to talk about liberty, while they submitted to be the footmen of the Duke of Newcastle, he notified his submission. The influence of the Prince of Wales prevailed on Pitt to abate a little, and but a little, of his high demands; and all at once, out of the chaos in which parties had for some time been rising, falling, meeting, separating, arose a government as strong at home as that of Pelham, as successful abroad as that of Godolphin.

Newcastle took the Treasury; Pitt was Secretary of State, with the lead in the House of Commons, and the supreme direction of the war and of foreign affairs. Fox, the only man who could have given much annoyance to the new government, was silenced with the office of Paymaster, which, during the continuance of that war, was probably the most lucrative place in the whole government. He was poor, and the situation was tempting; yet it cannot but seem extraordinary, that a man who had played a first part in politics, and whose abilities had been found not unequal to that part, who had sat in the cabinet, who had led the House of Commons, who had been twice intrusted by the king with the office of forming a ministry, who was regarded as the rival of Pitt, and who at one time seemed likely to be a successful rival—should have consented, for the sake of emolument, to take a subordinate place, and to give silent votes for all the measures of a government, to the deliberations of which he was not summoned.

The first measures of the new administration were characterized rather by vigour than by judgment. Expeditions were sent against different parts of the French coast, with little success. The small island of Aix was taken, Rochefort threatened, a few ships burned in the harbour of St. Maloes, and a few guns and mortars brought home as trophies from the fortifications of Cherbourg. But, before long, conquests of a very different kind filled the kingdom with pride and rejoicing. A succession of victories, undoubtedly brilliant, and, as it was thought, not barren, raised to the highest point the fame of the minister to whom the conduct of the war had been intrusted. In July, 1758, Louisbourg fell. The whole island of Cape Breton was reduced: the fleet, to which the court of Versailles had confided the defence of French America, was destroyed. The captured standards were borne triumph from Kensington palace to the city, were suspended in St. Paul's church,

The year 1759 opened with the conquest of Goree. Next fell Guadaloupe; then Ticonderoga; then Niagara. The Toulon squadron was completely defeated by Boscawen off Cape Lagos. But the greatest exploit of the year was the achievement of Wolfe on the heights of Abraham. The news of his glorious death, and of the fall of Quebec, reached London in the very week in which the Houses met. All was joy and triumph; envy and faction were forced to join in the general applause. Whigs and Tories vied with each other in extolling the genius and energy of Pitt. His colleagues were never talked of or thought of. House of Commons, the nation, the colonies, our allies, our enemies, had their eyes fixed on him alone.

The

Scarcely had Parliament voted a monument to Wolfe, when another great event called for fresh rejoicings. The Brest fleet, under the command of Conflans, had put out to sea. It was overtaken by an English squadron, under Hawke. Conflans attempted to take shelter close under the French coast. The shore was rocky, the night was black, the wind was furious, the Bay of Biscay ran high. But Pitt had infused into every branch of the service a spirit which had been long unknown. No British seaman was disposed to err on the same side with Byng. The pilot told Hawke that the attack could not be made without the greatest danger. "You have done your duty in remonstrating," answered Hawke; "I will answer for every thing. I command you to lay me alongside the French admiral." The result was a complete victory.

The year 1760 came, and still triumph followed triumph. Montreal was taken, the whole province of Canada was subjugated; the French fleets underwent a succession of disasters in the seas of Europe and America.

In the mean time, conquests equalling in rapidity, and far surpassing in magnitude those of Cortes and Pizarro, had been achieved in the East. In the space of three years the English had founded a mighty empire. The French had been defeated in every part of India. Chandernagore had yielded to__Clive, Pondicherry to Coote. Throughout Bengal, Bahar, Orissa, and the Carnatic, the authority of the East India Company was more absolute than that of Acbar or Aurungzebe had ever been.

On the continent of Europe the odds were against England. We had but one important ally, the King of Prussia, and he was attacked, not only by France, but by Russia and Austria. Yet even on the continent the energy of Pitt triumphed over all difficulties. Vehemently as he had condemned the practice of subsidizing foreign princes, he now carried that practice farther than Carteret himself would

have ventured or would have wished to do. The active and able sovereign of Prussia received such pecuniary assistance as enabled him to maintain the conflict on equal terms against his powerful enemies. On no subject had Pitt ever spoken with so much eloquence and ardour, as on the mischiefs of the Hanoverian connection. He now declared, not without much show of reason, that it would be unworthy of the English people to suffer their king to be deprived of his electoral dominion in an English quarrel. He assured his countrymen that they should be no losers, and that he would conquer America for them in Germany. By taking this line he conciliated the king, and lost no part of his influence with the nation. In Parliament, such was the ascendency which his eloquence, his success, his high situation, his pride, and his intrepidity had obtained for him, that he took liberties with the House, of which there had been no example, and which has never since been imitated. No orator could there venture to reproach him with inconsistency. One unfortunate man made the attempt, and was so much disconcerted by the scornful demeanour of the miniser that he stammered, stopped, and sat down. Even the old Tory country gentlemen, to whom the very name of Hanover had been odious, gave their hearty ayes to subsidy after subsidy. In a lively contemporary satire, much more lively indeed than delicate, this remarkable conversion is not unhappily described.

"No more they make a fiddle-faddle
About a Hessian horse or saddle;
No more of continental measures;
No more of wasting British treasures.
Ten millions, and a vote of credit-

'Tis right. He can't be wrong who did it."

The success of Pitt's continental measures was such as might have been expected from their vigour. When he came into power, Hanover was in imminent danger; and before he had been in office three months, the whole electorate was in the hands of France. But the face of affairs was speedily changed. The invaders were driven out. An army, partly English, partly Hanoverian, partly composed of soldiers furnished by the petty princes of Germany, was placed under the command of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick. The French were beaten in 1758 at Creveldt. In 1759, they received a still more complete and humiliating defeat at Minden.

In the mean time, the nation exhibited all the signs of wealth and prosperity. The merchants of London had never been more thriving. The importance of several great commercial and manufacturing towns, Glasgow, in particular, dates from this period. The fine inscription on the monument of Lord Chatham, in Guildhall, records the general opinion of the citizens of London, that under his administration commerce had been "united with and made to flourish by war."

It must be owned, that these signs of prosperity were in some degree delusive. It must be owned, that some of our conquests were rather splendid than useful. It must be owned, that the expense of the war never enVOL. II.-31

tered into Pitt's consideration. Perhaps it would be more correct to say, that the cost of his victories increased the pride and pleasure with which he contemplated them. Unlike other men in his situation, he loved to exag gerate the sums which the nation was laying out under his direction. He was proud of the sacrifices and efforts which his eloquence and his success had induced his countrymen to make. The price at which he purchased faithful service and complete victory, though far smaller than that which his son, the most profuse and incapable of war ministers, paid for treachery, defeat, and shame, was severely felt by the nation.

Even as a war minister, Pitt is scarcely entitled to all the praise which his contemporaries lavished on him. We, perhaps from ignorance, cannot discern in his arrangements any appearance of profound or dexterous combination. Several of his expeditions, parti cularly those which were sent to the coast of France, were at once costly and absurd. Our Indian conquests, though they add to the splendour of the period during which he was at the head of affairs, were not planned by him. He had great energy, great determination, great means at his command. His temper was enterprising, and, situated as he was, he had only to follow his temper. The wealth of a rich nation, the valour of a brave nation, were ready to support him in every attempt.

In one respect, however, he deserved all the praise that he has ever received. The success of our arms was perhaps owing less to the skill of his dispositions, than to the national resources and the national spirit. But that the national spirit rose to the emergency, that the national resources were contributed with unexampled cheerfulness-this was undoubtedly his work. The ardour of his spirit had set the whole kingdom on fire. It infiamed every soldier who dragged the cannon up the heights of Quebec, and every sailor who boarded the French ships amidst the rocks of Brittany. The minister, before he had been long in office, had imparted to the commanders whom he employed his own impetuous, adventurous, and defying character. They, like him, were disposed to risk every thing, to pay double or quits to the last, to think nothing done while any thing remained, to fail rather than not to attempt.

For the errors of rashness there might be indulgence. For over-caution, for faults like those of Lord George Sackville, there was no mercy. In other times, and against other enemies, this mode of warfare might have failed. But the state of the French government and of the French nation gave every advantage to Pitt. The fops and intriguers of Versailles were appalled and bewildered by his vigour. A panic spread through all ranks of society. Our enemies soon considered it as a settled thing that they were always to be beaten. Thus victory begot victory; till, at last, wherever the forces of the two nations met, they met with disdainful confidence on the one side, and with a craven fear on the other.

The situation which Pitt occupied at the
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