Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/103

 A RETROSPECTIVE ENQUIRY. 59 lay in the acquisition of ' islands,' were busily importuning the Minister — some, for instance, entreating him to accept the proffered Corsica, others bent on Minorca, and others again on Malta, whilst yet others again in design tran- scended ocean expanses, pointing out the diminu- tive speck which marked Teneriffe on the charts, and maintaining that our people were for some reason bound as mariners to go out and seize the lone rock. Much more wondrous, however, than the number and variety of these counsels was the fact that every one of them had in turn such strong sway as to make Pitt give it effect : {^^) and not now, even now, have I yet filled the curious list; for — worst of all — in those days came sons of Mammon intent upon what were then called ' Sugar Islands ; ' and, the grossest of the tempters prevailing, troops bitterly needed elsewhere were from time to time hurried off to die of yellow fever in the West Indies. Such of these repeated aggressions as pointed at colonies belonging to France or the nations she drew in her wake, were a mere bringing in of the spoils which our Navy had substantially won by acquiring dominion at sea ; for the task of the soldier, when employed on such service, was only, if so one may speak, to go and pick up the small whelps which the sailor had cut off from their dams ; but other attacks aiming higher were delivered in Europe against either the enemy's territories, or those he grasped as his own ; and these not only, all of them, failed one after another, but failed sometimes under CHAP. IV.