Page:Life of William Shelburne (vol 2).djvu/446

410 ing classes obtaining their legitimate share of the increased prosperity of the country, and though the King could assure Parliament that the revenue was highly productive, and that the national industry had been extended, wages in Wiltshire were seven shillings a week, and the poor, so Lord Lansdowne told the House of Lords, were actually starving, and to a certain extent in consequence of the very laws intended for their relief. Taxation was steadily increasing, and it was a mere question of time how soon it would affect the industrial enterprise of the country. And for whose interests, Lord Lansdowne asked, were all these sacrifices incurred, these taxes raised, and these tyrannical laws passed? It was in order to please a Coalition, the objects of the members of which were inconsistent with each other and with the interests of England. The event soon proved the correctness of Lord Lansdowne's estimate of the character of the rulers of the Continent.

The Austrian minister Thugut told Mr. Grenville that what the King of Prussia wanted was not to crush the Revolution but to conquer Poland without the loss of a man, and in reward to receive from England a pension of a million and a half per annum. He forgot however to add that the chief object of his own Imperial master was to get possession of Bavaria and annex Alsace. When these were the motives of the principal European belligerents, it became only a question of time how soon the Coalition would break up. Prussia, being determined that Austria should not become too powerful in Germany, began by withdrawing the greater part of her troops from the Rhine, while those which remained behind, owing to the mysterious character of their movements, were a source of danger rather than of assistance to their allies. Pitt attempted to stimulate their ardour with fresh subsidies. "It was absurd," Lord Lansdowne said, "to suppose that we could dictate to, and manage the King of Prussia, as we would the Margrave of Baden and his paltry 800 men.