Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/376

Rh 356 ENGLAND [HISTORY. Ministry of New castle. Ministry of Pitt and New astle. The Seven Years* War. Weslcyans xiltimately became, their influence is not to be measured by their numbers. The double want of the age, the want of spiritual earnestness and the want of organized coherence, would find satisfaction in many ways which would have seemed strange to Wesley, but which were, nevertheless, a continuance of the work which he began. As far as Government was concerned, when Henry Pelham died (1754) the lowest depth of baseness seemed to have been reached. The duke of Newcastle, who sue ceeded his brother, looked on the work of corruption with absokite pleasure, and regarded genius and ability as an awkward interruption of that happy arrangement which made men subservient to flattery and money. Whilst he was in the very act of trying to drive from office all men who were possessed of any sort of ideas, he was surprised by a great war. In America, the French settlers in Canada and the English settlers on the Atlantic coast were falling to blows for the possession of the vast territories drained by the Ohio and its tributaries. In India, Frenchmen and Englishmen had striven during the last war for authority over the native states round Pondicherry and Madras, and the conflict threatened to break out anew. When war commenced in earnest, and the reality of danger came home to Englishmen by the capture of Minorca (1756), there arose a demand for a more capable Government than any which Newcastle could offer Terrified by the storm of obloquy which he aroused, he fled from office. A Government was formed, of which the soul was William Pitt. Pitt was, in some sort, to the political life of Eng lishmen what Wesley was to their religious life. He brought no new political ideas into their minds, but he ruled them by the force of his character and the example of his purity. His weapons were trust and confidence. He appealed to the patriotism of his fellow-countrymen, to their imaginative love for the national greatness, and he did not appeal in vain. He perceived instinctively that a large number, even of those who took greedily the bribes of Walpole and the Pelhams, took them, not because they loved money better than their country, but because they had no conception that their country had any need of them at all. It was a truth, but it was not the whole truth. The great Whig families rallied under Newcastle and drove Pitt from office (1757). But if Pitt could not govern without Newcastle s corruption, neither could Newcastle govern without Pitt s energy. At last a com promise was effected, and Newcastle undertook the work of bribing, whilst Pitt undertook the work of govern ing. The war which had already broken out, the Seven Years War (1756-1763), was not confined to England alone. By the side of the duel between France and England, a war was going on upon the Continent, in which Austria with its allies, France, Russia, and the German princes had fallen upon the new kingdom of Prussia and its sovereign Frederick II. England and Prussia, therefore, necessarily formed an alliance. Different as the two Governments were, they were both alike in recognizing, in part at least, the conditions of progress. The generations which have succeeded the generation of Pitt and Frederick have learned gradually the necessity of seeking strength from the embodiment of popular feeling in a representative assembly, and of seeking order from the organization of scientific knowledge. Even in Pitt s day England, how ever imperfectly, rested its strength on the popular will. Even in Frederick s day Prussia was ruled by adminis trators selected for their special knowledge. Neither France nor Austria had any conception of the necessity of fulfilling these requirements. Hence the strength of England and of Prussia. The war seems to be a mere struggle for territory. There is no feeling in either Pitt or Frederick, such as there was in the men who contended half a century later against Napoleon, that they were fighting the battles of the civilized world. There is some thing repulsive as well in the enthusiastic nationality of Pitt as in the cynical nationality of Frederick. Pitt s sole object was to exalt England to a position in which she might fear no rival, and might scarcely look upon a second. But in so doing he exalted that which, in spite of all that had happened, best deserved to be exalted. The habits of individual energy fused together by the inspiration of patriotism conquered Canada. The unintelligent over- regulation of the French Government could not maintain the colonies which had been founded in happier times. In 1758 Louisburg was taken, and the mouth of the St Lawrence guarded against France. In 1759 Quebec fell before Wolfe, who died at the moment of victory. In the same year the naval victories of Lagos and Quiberon Bay established the supremacy of the British at sea. The battle of Plassey (1757) had laid Bengal at the feet of Clive ; and Coote s victory at Wandewash (1760) led to the final ruin of the relics of French authority in southern India. When George II. died (1760), England was the first maritime and colonial power in the world. In George III. the king once more became an important Geo factor in English politics. From his childhood he had been JI I- trained by his mother and his instructors to regard the break ing down of the power of the great families as the task of his life. In this he was walking in the same direction as Pitt was walking. If the two men could have worked together in the same direction, England might have been spared many misfortunes. Unhappily, the king could not under stand Pitt s higher qualities, his bold confidence in the popular feeling, and his contempt for corruption and intrigue. And yet the king s authority was indispensable to Pitt, if he was to carry on his conflict against the great families with success. When the war came to an end, as it must come to an end sooner or later, Pitt s special pre dominance, derived as it was from his power of breathing a martial spirit into the fleets and armies of England, would come to an end too. Only the king, with his hold upou the traditional instincts of loyalty and the force of his still unimpaired prerogative, could, in ordinary time:;, hold head against the wealthy and influential aristocracy. Unfortunately, George III. was not wise enough to deal with the difficulty in a high-minded fashion. With a well- intentioned but narrow mind, he had nothing in him to strike the imagination of his subjects. He met influence with influence, corruption with corruption, intrigue with intrigue. Unhappily, too, his earliest relations with Pitt in volved a dispute on a point on which he was right and Pitt was wrong. In 1761 Pitt resigned oilice, because neither Pit the king nor the cabinet were willing to declare war against si S Spain in the midst of the war with France. As the war with Spain was inevitable, and as, when it broke out in the following year (1762), it was followed by triumphs for which Pitt had prepared the v:ay, the prescience of the great war-minister appeared to be fully established. But it was his love of war, not his skill in carrying it on, which was really in question. He would be satisfied with nothing short of the absolute ruin of France. He would have given England that dangerous position o&amp;gt;f supremacy which was gained for France by Lewis XIV. in the 17th century, and by Napoleon in the 19th century. He would have made his country still more haughty and arrogant than it was, till other nations rose against it, as they have three times risen against France, rather than submit to the intolerable yoke. It was a happy thing for England that peace was signed (1763). Even as it was, a spirit uf contemptuous disregard of Bt the rights of others had been roused, which would not be Gl