swered Hawke; "I will answer for every thing. I command you to lay me along-side the French admiral." Two French ships of the line struck. Four were destroyed. The rest hid themselves in the rivers of Brittany. The year 1760 came, and still triumph followed triumph. Montreal was taken; the whole province of Canada was subjugated; the French fleets underwent a succession of disasters in the seas of Europe and America. On the continent of Europe the odds were against England. We had but one important ally, the king of Prussia, and he was attacked, not only by France, but also by Russia and Austria. Yet even on the continent the energy of Pitt triumphed over all difficulties. Vehemently as he had condemned the practice of subsidizing foreign princes, he now carried that practice further than Carteret himself would have ventured to do. The active and able sovereign of Prussia received such pecuniary assistance as enabled him to maintain the conflict on equal terms against his powerful enemies. On no subject had Pitt ever spoken with so much eloquence and ardor as on the mischiefs of the Hanoverian connection. He now declared, not without much show of reason, that it would be unworthy of the English people to suffer their king to be deprived of his electoral dominions in an English quarrel. He assured his countrymen that they should be no losers, and that he would conquer America for them in Germany. By taking this line, he conciliated the king, and lost no part of his influence with the nation. In Parliament, such was the ascendency which his eloqence, his success, his high situation, his pride, and his intrepidity had obtained for him, that he took liberties with the House of which there had been no example, and which have never since been imitated. No orator could there venture to reproach him with inconsistency. One unfortunate man made the attempt, and was so much disconcerted by the scornful demeanor of the minister that he stammered, stopped, and sat down. Even the old Tory country gentlemen, to whom the very name of Hanover had been odious, gave their hearty ayes to subsidy after subsidy. In a lively contemporary satire, much more lively, indeed, than delicate, this remarkable conversion is not unhappily described: "No more they make a fiddle-faddle 'Tis right. He can't be wrong who did it." The success of Pitt's continental measures was such as might have been expected from their vigor. When he came into power Hanover was in imminent danger; and before he had been in office three months the whole electorate was in the hands of France. But the face of affairs was speedily changed. The invaders were driven out. An army, partly English, partly Hanoverian, partly composed of soldiers furnished by the petty princes of Germany, was placed under the command of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick. The French were beaten in 1758 at Crevelt. In 1759 they received a still more complete and humiliating defeat at Minden. In the meantime the nation exhibited all the signs of wealth and prosperity. The merchants of London had never been more thriving. The importance of several great commercial and manufacturing towns, of Glasgow in particular, dates from this period. The fine inscription on the monument of Lord Chatham, in Guildhall, records the general opinion of the citizens of London, that under his administration commerce had been "united with and made to flourish by war It must be owned, however, that these signs of prosperity were in some degree delusive. Even as a war minister, Pitt is scarcely entitled to all the praise which his contemporaries lavished on him. We, perhaps from ignorance, cannot discern in his arrangements any appearance of profound or dexterous combination. Several of his expeditions, particularly those which were sent to the coast of France, were at once costly and absurd. Our Indian conquests, though they add to the splendor of the period during which he was at the head of affairs, were not planned by him. He had undoubtedly great energy, great determination, great means at his command. His temper was enterprising; and, situated as he was, he had only to follow his temper. The wealth of a rich nation, the valor of a brave nation, were ready to support him in every attempt. In one respect, however, he deserved all the praise that he has ever received. The success of our arms was, perhaps, owing less to the skill of his dispositions than to the national resources and the national spirit. But that the national spirit rose to the emergency, that the national resources were contributed with unexampled cheerfulness, this was undoubtedly his work. The ardor of his soul had set the whole kingdom on fire. It inflamed every soldier who dragged the cannon up the heights of Quebec, and every sailor who boarded the French ships among the rocks of Brittany. The minister, before he had been long in office, had imparted to the commanders whom he employed his own impetuous, adventuros, and defying character. They, like him, were disposed to risk every thing, to play double or quits to the last, to think nothing done while any thing remained undone, to fail rather than not to attempt. For the errors of rashness there might be indulgence. For over-caution, for faults like those of Lord George Sackville, there was no mercy. In other times, and against other enemies, this mode of warfare might have failed. But the state of the French government and of the French nation gave every advantage to Pitt. The fops and intriguers of Versailles were appalled and bewildered by his vigor. A panic spread through all ranks of society. Our enemies soon considered it as a settled thing that they were always to be beaten. Thus victory begot victory till, at last, wherever the forces of the two nations met, they met with disdainful confidence on the one side, and with a craven fear on the other. The situation which Pitt occupied at the close of the reign of George the Second was the most enviable ever occupied by any public man in English history. He had conciliated the king; he domineered over the House of Commons; he was adored by the people; he was admired by all Europe. He was the first Englishman of his time, and he had made England the first country in the world. The Great Commoner, the name by which he was often designated, might look down with scorn on coronets and garters. The nation was drunk with joy and pride. The Parliament was as quiet as it had been under Pelham. The o'd party distinctions were almost effaced; nor was their place yet supplied by distinctions of a still more important kind. A new generation of country squires and rectors had arisen who knew not the Stuarts. The Dissenters were tolerated; the Catholics not cruelly persecuted. The Church was drowsy and indulgent. The great civil and religious conflict which began at the Reformation seemed to have terminated in universal repose. Whigs and Tories, Churchmen and Puritans, spoke with equal reverence of the Constitution, and with equal enthusiasm of the talents, virtues, and services of the minister. A few years sufficed to change the whole aspect of affairs. A nation convulsed by faction, a throne assailed by the fiercest invective, a House of Commons hated and despised by the nation, Eng and set against Scotland, Britain set against America, a rival legislature sitting beyond the Atlantic, English blood shed by English bayonets, our armies capitulating, our conquests wrested from us, our enemies hastening to take vengeance for past humiliation, our flag scarcely able to maintain itself in our own seas, such was the spectacle which Pitt lived to see. But the history of this great revolution requires far more space than we can at present bestow. We leave the Great Commoner in the zenith of his glory. LIII. AN EMPIRE WON IN THE EAST.-MACAULAY. [It was the good fortune of Pitt that, at the beginning of his ministry, and without any direct agency of his own, a great triumph of the English arms in India came to enhance the glory of his triumphs in Europe and America. Robert Clive, who had already distinguished himself in the service of the East India Company,* was appointed governor of Fort St. David by the Company in 1757. Entering into negotiations with the disaffected subjects of the nabob, or nawab, of Bengal, he won the battle of Plassey over the native army, on the 23d of June. This victory firmly established the hitherto wavering British power in the Fast, and enabled it to enter upon the career of conquest which has since given it the whole of India.] THE nabob had feared and hated the English, even while he was still able to oppose to them their French rivals. The French were now vanquished, and he began to regard the English with still greater fear and still greater hatred. His weak and unprincipled mind oscillated between servility and insolence. One day he sent a large sum to Calcutta, as a part of the compensation due for the wrongs which he had committed. The next day he sent a present of jewels to Bussy, exhorting that distinguished officer to hasten to protect Bengal " against Clive, the daring in war, on whom," says his highness," may all bad fortune attend." He ordered his army to march against the English. He countermanded his orders. He tore Clive's letters. He then sent answers in the most florid language of compliment. He ordered Watts out of his presence, and threatened to impale him. He again sent for Watts, and begged pardon for the insult. In the mean time his wretched maladministration, his folly, his dissolute manners, and his love of the lowest company, had disgusted all classes of his subjects-soldiers, traders, civil functionaries, the proud and ostentatious Mohammedans, the * A company of London merchants who, in 1600, had acquired, by charter, a monopoly of the trade with India. |