or thought of lessening." "The authority of all acts of parliament, which extend to the colonies, is ever acknowledged in all the courts of law, and made the rule of all judicial proceedings in the province. There is not a member of the General Court, and we know no inhabitant within the bounds of the government, that ever questioned this authority." And the principles of independence imputed to them by Loudoun they utterly disavowed. Yet the opinion in the provinces was very general, that the war was conducted by a mixture of ignorance and cowardice. They believed that they were able to defend themselves against the French and Indians without any assistance or embarrassments from England. "Oh that we had nothing to do with Great Britain for ever," was then the wish of John Adams in his heart. (1)

Everywhere the royal officers actively asserted the authority of the king and the British nation over America. Did the increase of population lead the legislatures to enlarge the representative body? The right to do so was denied, and representation was held to be a privilege conceded by the king as a boon, and limited by his will. Did the British commander believe that the French colonies, through the neutral islands, derived provisions from the continent? By his own authority he proclaimed an embargo in every American port. Did South Carolina, by its assembly, institute an artillery company? Lyttleton interposed his veto, for there should be no company formed but by the regal commission. By another act, the same assembly made provision for quartering soldiers, introducing into the law the declaratory clause, that "no soldier should ever be billeted among them.' This, also, Lyttleton negatived; and but for the conciliatory good temper of Bouquet, who commanded at Charleston, the province would have been inflamed by the peremptory order which came from Loudoun to grant billets under the act of parliament.

Thus did the government of the English aristocracy paralyze the immense energies of the British empire. In the north, Russia had been evoked from the steppes of Asia to be the arbiter of Germany. In the Mediterranean Sea, Minorca was lost; for Hanover, Cumberland had acceded to a shameful treaty of neutrality; in America,

(1) John Adams to George Alex. Otis, 19 Feb. 1822. Jay's Jay, ii. 416.

England had been driven from the valley of the Mississippi and the whole basin of the St. Lawrence, with its tributary lakes and rivers.

And yet sentence had been passed upon the monarchy of feudalism. The enthusiast Swedenborg had announced that its day of judgment was come. The English aristocracy, being defeated, summoned to their aid, not, indeed, the power of the people, but, at least, influence with the people, in the person of William Pitt. A private man in England, in middle life, with no fortune, with no party, with no strong family connections, having few votes under his sway in the House of Commons, and perhaps not one in the House of Lords,-a feeble valetudinarian, shunning pleasure and society, haughty and retired, and half his time disabled by the agonies of hereditary gout, was now the hope of the English world. Assuming power, as with the voice of an archangel, he roused the states of Protestantism to wage a war for mastery against the despotic monarchy and the institutions of the middle ages, and to secure to humanity its futurity of freedom. Protestantism is not humanity; its name implies a party struggling to throw off some burdens of the past, and ceasing to be a renovating principle when its protest shall have succeeded. It was now for the last time, as a political element, summoned to appear upon the theatre of the nations, to control their alliances, and to perfect its triumph by leaving no occasion for its reappearance in arms. Its final victorious struggle preceded the reddening in the sky of the morning of a new civilization. Its last war was first in the series of the great wars of revolution that founded for the world of mankind the power of the people.

CHAPTER XII.

THE NEW PROTESTANT POWERS AGAINST THE CATHOLIC POWERS OF THE MIDDLE AGE WILLIAM PITT'S MINISTRY.

1757.

"THE orator is vastly well provided for," thought Bedford, in 1746, on the appointment of William Pitt to a subordinate office of no political influence. "I assure your grace of my warmest gratitude," wrote Pitt himself, in 1750, to Newcastle, who falsely pretended to have spoken favourably of him to the king; and now, in defiance of Bedford and Newcastle, and the antipathy of the king, he is become the foremost man in England, received into the ministry as its "guide," because he alone was the choice of the people, and, by his greatness of soul and commanding eloquence, can restore the state.

On his dismissal in April, no man had the hardihood to accept his place. A storm of indignation burst from the nation. To Pitt and to Legge, who had also opposed the Russian treaty, London, with many other cities, voted its freedom: unexampled discontent pervaded the country. Newcastle, whose pusillanimity exceeded his vanity, dared not attempt forming a ministry; and by declining to do so, renewed his confession that the government of Great Britain could no longer be administered by a party which had for its principle to fight up alike against the king and against the people. The inebriate Granville, the president of the council, would have infused his jovial intrepidity into the junto of Fox; but Fox himself was desponding.(1) Bedford had his scheme, which he employed Rigby to establish; and when it proved impracticable, indulged himself in reproaches, and the display of anger, (2) and withdrew to Woburn Abbey. In the midst of war, the country was left to anarchy. "We are undone," said Chesterfield "at home, by our increasing expenses; abroad, by ill luck and incapacity;" the elector of Hesse, the grand duke of Brunswick, destitute of the common

(1) Walpole's Memoirs. VOL. III.

(2) Bedford Corr. ii, 245.

honesty of hirelings, were in the market to be bid for by the enemies of their lavish employer; the king of Prussia, Britain's only ally, seemed overwhelmed, Hanover reduced, and the French were masters in America. So dark an hour, so gloomy a prospect, England had not known during the century.

But the mind of Pitt always inclined to hope. "I am sure," said he to the duke of Devonshire, "I can save this country, and nobody else can." For eleven weeks England was without a ministry; so long was the agony; so desperate the resistance; so reluctant the surrender. At last the king and the aristocracy were alike compelled to recognise the ascendancy and yield to the guidance of the man whom the nation trusted and loved. Made wise by experience, and relying on his own vigour of will for a controlling_influence, he formed a ministry from many factions. Lord Anson, Hardwicke's son-in-law, took again the highest seat at the Board of the Admiralty. Fox, who had children, and had wasted his fortune, accepted the place of paymaster, which the war made enormously lucrative. Newcastle had promised Halifax a new office as third secretary of state for the colonies. I did not speak about it," was the duke's apology to him; "Pitt looked so much out of humour, I dared not." (1) And the disappointed man railed without measure at the knavery and cowardice of Newcastle. (2) But Pitt reconciled him by leaving him his old post in the Board of Trade, with all its patronage, adding the dignity of a cabinet councillor. Henley, afterwards Lord Northington, became lord chancellor, opening the way for Sir Charles Pratt to be made attorney-general; and George Grenville was treasurer of the navy. The illustrious statesman himself, the ablest his country had seen since Cromwell, whom he surpassed in the grandeur and in the integrity of his ambition, being resolved on making England the greatest nation in the world, and himself its greatest minister, took the seals of the southern department, with the conduct of the war in all parts of the globe. With few personal friends, with no considerable party, and an aversion to the exercise of patronage. he left to Newcastle the first seat at the Treasury Board, with the disposition of bishoprics, petty offices, and contracts, and the management of "all the (1) Dodington's Diary, 208.

(2) Rigby to Bedford, 18 June. 1757, in Bedford's Corr. ii. 249.

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classes of venality." (1) At that day, the goodwill of the people was, in England, the most uncertain tenure of office; for they had no strength in parliament; their favourite held his high position at the sufferance of the aristocracy. "I borrow," said Pitt, "the duke of Newcastle's majority to carry on the public business."(2) The new ministry kissed hands early in July, 1757. Sire," said the secretary, give me your confidence, and I will deserve it." "Deserve my confidence," replied the king, "and you shall have it;"(3) and kept his word. All England applauded the Great Commoner's elevation. John Wilkes, (4) then just elected member of parliament, promised "steady support to the measures" of " the ablest minister, as well as the first character of the age." Bearing a message from Leicester House, "thank God," wrote Bute, "I see you in office. If even the wreck of this crown can be preserved to our amiable young prince, it is to your abilities he must owe it. You have a soul, that, instead of sinking under adversity, will rise and grow stronger against it.'

But Pitt knew himself called to the ministry neither by the king nor by the parliament of the aristocracy, nor by Leicester House, but "by the voice of the people ;" and the affairs of the empire were now directed by a man who had demanded for his countrymen an uncorrupted representation, a prevailing influence in designating ministers, and "a supreme service" from the king. Assuming power, he bent all factions to his authoritative will, and made "a venal age unanimous." The energy of his mind was the spring of his eloquence. His presence was inspiration: he himself was greater than his speeches. Others have uttered thoughts of beauty and passion, of patriotism and courage; none by words accomplished deeds like him. His voice resounded throughout the world, impelling the servants of the British state to achievements of glory on the St. Lawrence and along the Ganges. Animated by his genius, a corporation for trade did what Rome had not dreamed of, and a British merchant's clerk made conquests as rapidly as other men make journeys, resting his foot in permanent triumph where Alexander of Macedon had faltered. Ruling with unbounded authority the

(1) Almon's Biographical Anecdotes, iii. 362.
(2) Harris's Life of Hardwicke, iii. 450.

(3) Almon's Anecdotes, i. 229. (4) Chatham Corr. i, 240.