Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/566

 552 the king was still absent, caused a great panic and want of decision. Sir Edward Hawke had been dispatched with a fleet of eighteen sail in July, to intercept the return of the French fleet from Canada; and now admiral Byng, in October, was sent out with twenty-six more, but both failed in their object. Our privateer cruisers had done more execution in the West indies. They had nearly annihilated the trade of the French in those islands, and, according to Smollett, captured, before the end of the year, three hundred French vessels, and brought into the English ports eight thousand French seamen.



As the French now made vigorous preparations for war, George II., as usual, instead of feeling any fears for the English commerce or shores, began to tremble for his precious little electorate of Hanover, and put out all his energies to accomplish fresh alliances, of course at the cost of fresh subsidies to be paid by England. Hesse Cassel, the empress of Russia, and even his old enemy, Frederick of Prussia, were applied to, and engaged, by promises of English money, in defence of Hanover. George was especially afraid of Frederick, who was bound by no ties where his interest was at stake, and who, if not retained at a high rate, might fall on Hanover as he had dune on Silesia. In gaining Frederick, however, George lost his old ally, Austria, which, forgetting all past obligations, immediately made alliance with France.

When the subsidy to Hesse Cassel was sent home to receive the signatures of the cabinet, it was found to amount to an annual payment by England of one hundred and fifty thousand crowns, besides eighty crowns to every horseman, and thirty crowns to every foot soldier, when they were really called out to service. That to Russia was immensely greater; then came in prospective that to Prussia, to Saxony, to Bavaria, &c. These latter states had been feed all through the peace for doing nothing, and now demanded vastly higher terms. Such were the eternal demands of Hanover on this devoted England, without affording it a single benefit in return, except it were the pleasure of maintaining a very indifferent sort of king. Yet when the Hessian treaty was laid on the council table by the compliant Newcastle, ministers signed it without reading it, as a matter of course. Pitt and Fox, however, protested against it; and when the treasury warrants for carrying the treaty into execution were sent down to Legge,