eleven days' pay, and mobs went about, shouting, “Give us our eleven days." In 1754 Henry Pelham died. The new constitutional doctrine that England was governed by the Cabinet, and that the Cabinet could retain office irrespective of the king's goodwill if it could secure the support of Parliament, was now fully established. Books recommended for the further study of Part VIII. MACAULAY, Lord. STANHOPE, Lord. History of England. Vols. iii.-v. Reign of Anne. History of England from the Peace of Utre ht. HARROP, R. Bolingbroke. PARNELL, Colonel. War of the Spanish Succession. STEBBING, W. Peterborough. LECKY, W. E. H. History of England in the Eighteenth Century. MORLEY, J. Walpole. Vols. i. ii. BALLANTYNE, A. Lord Carteret. MAHAN, Capt. A. T. The Influence of Sea Power upon History, Chapters iv.-vii. PART IX THE FALL OF THE WHIGS AND THE RISE OF THE NEW TORYISM. 1754-1789 as well as in politics everything savouring of enthusiasm had long been scouted, and in polite society little of moral earnestness was to be found. There had, indeed, been much discussion as to the truth of Christianity, and for a long time there was a steady growth of opinion in favour of deism. Latterly, however, there had been a strong reaction in favour of Christian doctrines. Their noblest advocate, Butler, whose Analogy was published in 1736, writing as he did for educated men, appealed to the reason rather than to the heart. The task of moving the masses fell into the hands of John III. 3 C Wesley, who had in his youth striven to live a pious, beneficent life at Oxford, where he and his followers had been nicknamed Methodists. In 1738, Wesley came to believe that no real Christianity was possible without conversion, or a supernatural conviction of salvation. That which he believed he taught, and his enthusiasm gained him followers, in whom he kindled zeal equal to his own. Wesley was a minister of the Church of England, and in that Church he wished to abide; but the clergy counted him as a madman, and, in 1739, he was obliged to gather his followers elsewhere than in churches. Whitefield, a born orator, whose views were very similar to those of Wesley, preferred to preach in the open air. He stirred the hearts of immense crowds, as many as twenty thousand sometimes coming to hear him. At Kingswood, near Bristol, the colliers flocked to him in multitudes, their tears flowing down in white streaks over faces blackened with coal-dust. Wesley was, however, the organiser of the movement, and gathered into congregations those who had been converted, teaching them to confess their sins one to another, and to relate in public their spiritual experiences. There was no room for such enthusiasm in the Church of that day, and, much against his will, Wesley was compelled to organise his congregations outside the Church. What he and Whitefield did had a value, apart from their system and teaching. They reminded their generation that man has a heart as well as a head, and that the cultivation of the intellect is not all that is necessary to raise human nature above brutality; and thus they stirred to higher and purer thoughts thousands of their countrymen who were sunk in inertness and vice. As a matter of course they were persecuted, and men of intelligence and position thought it well that it should be so. 2. Fielding and Hogarth.-In literature and art, as well as in religion, a new life was making itself manifest. Fielding, in his 'Tom Jones' and 'Joseph Andrews,' has been styled the creator of the modern novel in its portraiture of living humanity. Hogarth was undoubtedly the originator of an English school of painting. Both Fielding and Hogarth were often coarse in expression, but their tendencies were moral, and their work robust and vigorous. 3. Newcastle, Pitt, and Fox. 1754-1755.-In politics, too, the time of drowsy inaction was coming to an end. "Now," said George II., when he heard of Pelham's death, "I shall have no peace." Newcastle was, indeed, appointed First Lord of the Treasury and was regarded as Prime Minister in his brother's place, but Newcastle had not his brother's capacity for business, 1754 A COMING WAR 747 and, besides that, he was not in the House of Commons. He must choose some one to lead the House of Commons, and there were three persons on whom his choice might fall: Murray, Pitt, and Henry Fox. Murray, who was the greatest lawyer of the day, had no ambition except that of becoming Chief Justice, and was disqualified by his professional turn of mind from occupying a political post. Newcastle objected to Pitt as too opinionated, whilst Fox seemed just the man to suit him. Newcastle and Fox both loved corruption, but whilst Newcastle loved it for the sake of the pleasure of exercising patronage, Fox loved it for the sake of its profits. Fox was the ablest debater of his day, and might have risen high if he had not preferred to hold unimportant but well-paid posts rather than important posts of which the pay was less. He now refused Newcastle's proposal that he should lead the House of Commons, because Newcastle insisted on keeping the secret-service money—in other words, the money spent in bribing men to vote for the government--in his own hands. Fox truly said that it was impossible for him to ask members for their votes unless he knew whether they had been bribed or not. Accordingly Newcastle appointed Sir Thomas Robinson to lead the House. Robinson was a diplomatist, who having been long absent from England, knew nothing about the ways of members. Pitt and Fox, agreeing in nothing else, joined in baiting Robinson. Whenever he made a mistake they ironically took his part on the ground that he had been so long abroad that he could not be expected to know better. Robinson threw up his post in disgust, and, in 1755, Fox abandoning the conditions on which he had formerly insisted became Secretary of State with the leadership of the House of Commons. 4. The French in America. 1754.—In 1754, when Newcastle succeeded his brother as Prime Minister, there was already danger of a war with France. In North America France possessed Louisiana, at the mouth of the Mississippi, and Canada, at the mouth of the St. Lawrence. Between the two was a vast region, at that time only inhabited by Indians, who used it for purposes of hunting, and sold furs to the French Canadians. France, which already possessed a line of scattered forts between Canada and Louisiana, claimed the whole of the region to the west of the Alleghany Mountains as her own. On the other hand, there were now thirteen English colonies, and the colonists were beginning to find their way westward over the mountains, especially at the head of the Ohio river, refusing to be penned in by the French forts beyond the Alleghanies. Between the English and the French colonists fighting began in 1754. The contest then begun was one for the possession of the basin of the Ohio, though the possession of that would ultimately bring with it the power to colonise the far vaster basin of the Mississippi and its affluents. Therein lay the answer to a further question, as yet unsuspected, whether the English or the French was to be the predominating race in America and in the world of the future. Great Britain was once more drifting into a war which, like the war with Spain in 1739, would be one for mercantile and colonial expansion. The difference was that, whereas in 1739 she was matched with the decaying monarchy of Spain, she was now matched against the vigorous monarchy of France. The Family Compact uniting Spain and France had as yet caused little real danger to England. As France ħad shown no signs of supporting Spain in America in 1739, Spain showed no signs of supporting France in 1754. 5. Newcastle's Blundering. 1754-1756.-Newcastle was not the man to conduct a great war successfully. In 1754, hearing that the French had established a fort called Fort Duquesne, at the head of the Ohio valley, he sent General Braddock from England to capture it. In 1755 Braddock, one of those brave, but unintelligent officers of whom there were many in the British service, falling into an ambuscade of French and Indians, was himself killed and his troops routed. Newcastle could not make up his mind whether to fight or not. It was finally resolved that, though war was not to be declared, Hawke was, by way of reprisal for the capture of British shipping, to seize any French ships he met with. Naturally, when Hawke carried out these instructions, the French regarded the seizure of their ships as an act of piracy. Meanwhile George II. was frightened lest Hanover should be lost if a war broke out, and, by his direction, Newcastle agreed to treaties giving subsidies to various German states and even to Russia, in return for promises to find troops for the defence of Hanover. Against this system Pitt openly declared himself. "I think," he said, "regard ought to be had to Hanover, if it should be attacked on our account; but we could not find money to defend it by subsidies, and if we could that is not the way to defend it." Behind Pitt was the rising spirit of the nation, eager to enter on a struggle for colonial empire, but not wishing to incur loss for the sake of the king's German electorate. Legge, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a close ally of Pitt, refused to give the money needed to pay a subsidy to Hesse, and both he and Pitt were dismissed from their offices. Newcastle had an overwhelming majority in both Houses, but so helpless was he that in 1756 he |