Conceived in Liberty (141 page)

To appease Pitt’s paranoia, France had refrained from forming an alliance with Spain, but now the two harassed countries began to draw together. It was clear that Pitt would only issue outrageous demands rather than negotiate for peace. In desperation, France and Spain agreed in late August that the latter would enter the war should England permit or prolong the conflict. The maniacal Pitt, scenting plots, now broke off negotiations after France had again refused to accept his ultimatum. Pitt carried the day by threatening to resign if peace negotiations continued.

Britain now faced the problem of Spain’s entry into the war. Open were two courses: one, to resume peace negotiations, which would keep Spain out of the war; two, now demanded by Pitt, to launch aggressive war upon Spain. Indeed, Pitt, in mid-September 1761, urged an all-out surprise attack on the Spanish fleet, a violation of international law that would further alienate all European powers from Great Britain.

In all of his recent aggressive designs, Pitt had been able to carry the day over Bedford and the Whigs by maintaining the support of the Earl of Bute. But now Bute, while favoring aggression against Spain, disagreed on the timing: he wished to wait and prepare the public, and first end the war on the continent of Europe. Backed by King George, Bute refused to bow to Pitt’s threats to resign if Spain were not attacked. Pitt and Earl Temple were therefore allowed to resign on October 2.

Britain’s fanatical war leader was now out of power. But William Pitt was hardly in disgrace. It was Bute’s intention to reinstate Pitt—in a less-powerful post, of course—as soon as he had managed to make war upon Spain. Then, their common aim to aggrandize the royal prerogative and to destroy the liberal Whig party could proceed undisturbed. In the meanwhile, as a token of his esteem, Bute lavished peerages and pensions on Pitt and on his family. He also pursued a subtle form of Pittite policy without the great man’s personal participation. England was to have Pittism without Pitt.

It is impossible to penetrate the tangled thicket of British politics in the eighteenth century without grasping the crucial and fateful role played by William Pitt, soon to be made the first Earl of Chatham. From the time that
he emerged on the political scene in the late 1730s, Pitt was the decisive force in destroying the Whig equilibrium that had been established by Robert Walpole in the early decades of the century. The liberal Whig principles of peace, low taxes, and minimal government—supported by merchants and masses as against statist Tory prerogative—were shattered almost single-handedly by Pitt. Pitt was able to win over for the Tory objectives of imperial aggression and the royal prerogative, both the masses and the leading merchants and financiers. The former were carried away by chauvinist demagogy and war hysteria induced by Pitt’s charismatic oratory; the latter were joyous at the advantages to be reaped by imperial plunder and the privileges of monopoly. In this way, Pitt was able to shatter the great Whig coalition of merchant and populace, to involve England in two long, costly, impoverishing wars, and thus to pave the way for an active Tory monarch like George III to impose his rule both at home and abroad. The half-crazed man on the white horse, welding effective demagogy to special interests, William Pitt was the spearhead of the British counterrevolution.

George III’s predecessors had not been particularly concerned with exerting the royal prerogative. William III and the first two Georges were largely concerned with Continental politics, and the last two with their Hanoverian home. The Georges, indeed, generally spent at least half of each year in their beloved Hanover. But George III was determined to play a direct and decisive role in government. He was inspired to break the Whigs and to exercise his dominance by his teacher Lord Bute. Bute, in turn, was influenced in this goal by the Tory political philosopher Lord Bolingbroke and his idea of the “patriot king” smashing all political parties independent of his will, and ruling the nation without check or limit.

With Pitt out of the cabinet, his brother-in-law George Grenville, who remained in the cabinet, became leader of the House of Commons. Grenville’s brother-in-law, the Earl of Egremont, became secretary of state for the Southern Department. The great political struggle now centered on the projected war against Spain, with Bute preparing for it and Newcastle opposed and calling for a quick general peace. In plotting a war against Spain, Bute was more than fully backed by Grenville and Egremont, while Newcastle was supported by the Whigs and by Bedford.

To force Spain into war, Egremont, buttressed by Bute and Grenville, sent a series of arrogant and insulting ultimatums to Spain in the fall of 1761. Spain was ordered to agree to the forfeit of its violated rights, to the lack of any satisfaction of its grievances, and to renounce any use of force in protecting her rights—else England would go to war with Spain in retaliation for its silent “aggression.” Newcastle, Bedford, and the Whigs tried desperately to launch negotiations and avert war, but England simply fell upon Spain in January 1762, despite opposition to the last by Newcastle, Hardwicke, and Bedford.

In the meanwhile, Pitt’s acceptance of handsome pensions and perquisites had vastly alienated his support among the masses, who had thought him their champion and had valued his much paraded “honesty” and incorruptibility. To divert the attention of the masses from the mud on his halo, Pitt and Temple used Alderman Beckford’s warmongering newspaper, the
Monitor,
to urge aggression and all-out war on France and Spain, and for keeping Canada and its fishing rights—a campaign that served to push Pitt’s successors more forcefully into the attack on Spain.

The Spanish problem precipitated another pamphlet war toward the end of 1761. Israel Mauduit, now an agent of the Massachusetts Assembly, again called for peace and for keeping Guadeloupe rather than Canada. On the other hand, Bute’s agent, Charles Jenkinson, and Grenville’s agent, Alexander Wedderburn, launched a newspaper and pamphlet campaign for attacking Spain and keeping Canada—and included hints of attempts to conquer Louisiana and perhaps continue on to Cuba and the silver mines of Mexico. Newcastle was horrified at Grenville’s plans to seize Spanish America: “I see things every day worse and worse;... this itch after expeditions will exhaust our treasure.... What will become of this
poor
country, God only knows.... I never saw this nation so near its ruin, as at present.... Peace...
is the only remedy.”

At the end of February, the English conquered the French West Indian sugar island of Martinique, and this acquisition again spurred discussion of peace terms. The French were all the more eager to yield Canada but not its fishing rights, provided that the West Indies were restored. But the British war leaders Grenville and Egremont insisted on Louisiana as well. Finally, at the end of May, Newcastle, isolated in the cabinet and seeing the war expand, resigned his post as prime minister, his fellow Whigs Hardwicke and Devonshire resigning as well. In contrast to Pitt, Newcastle refused a placatory pension from the Crown. Bute had at last achieved his aim of ousting Newcastle. Bute, Grenville, and their friends now advanced in their official posts. The Whigs were now completely out of the government for the first time in forty years.

The French were now willing to cede eastern Louisiana—east of the Mississippi—in return for the West Indian islands. But the English leaders had the war bit in their teeth. Grenville, Egremont, Carteret, and even Bedford were insisting on all of Louisiana. Oddly, Bute was now leaning toward the French peace terms. Bereft of allies in concluding peace, Bute began to long for the return of the Whigs, but the Whigs were too out of sympathy with the whole policy of conquest to come to his aid. In August, the British conquered Havana and the war crowd’s appetite was whetted still more; Bedford and Halifax called for Florida, and Grenville looked to the conquest of all of Spanish America. Bute, however, was now determined on peace and brought the pliable Henry Fox to leadership of the House of Commons
in order to drive through a peace treaty. In return, Fox would be given a peerage. At the same time, Egremont and Grenville were downgraded in the cabinet. Bute and Bedford finally managed to conclude a preliminary peace on November 3; England would receive Canada, Louisbourg,
and all
of North America east of the Mississippi, including Florida, as well as three of the minor West Indian islands. France retained Guadeloupe and Martinique, as well as its precious fishing rights off Canada and Newfoundland, and it transferred New Orleans and western Louisiana to Spain in compensation for the Spanish loss of Florida. Cuba was returned to Spain, but Spain lost its fishing rights in exchange for the liquidation of English forts in Honduras. Fox skillfully drove the peace terms through Commons in December, and the final peace treaty was signed in Paris in February 1763. The long war with France was finally over, and France was now completely removed from the North American continent.

As peace finally drew near, British politics centered all the more insistently on the peace terms. In 1757, Parliament, by an oversight, had failed to continue the high tax on newspapers that it had deliberately imposed in 1711 to prevent the growth of a popular, hence an opposition, press. As a result, the press was able to grow and be supported by a wide circulation. The ouster of Newcastle and the Whigs led the Bute ministry, represented by Wedderburn, to establish the
Briton
as its mouthpiece, at the end of May 1762. Earl Temple, as a counter, set up the oppositionist
North Briton
in early June, edited by a long-time follower of his, John Wilkes.

Wilkes, a country squire hailing from a Nonconformist merchant family, was high sheriff of Buckinghamshire. Pitt opposed the new venture as too inflammatory; to Pitt, all such political writing would be “productive of mischief.” Wilkes’ audacity in editing the
North Briton
only confirmed Pitt’s hostility. Even Wilkes’ friend and backer, Temple, was generally cool to his bold policy. Temple peppered Wilkes with criticism and advice to temper his opposition, to eschew personal attacks—in short to “sail with the new current” and partake “of the court favor.” By mid-October, Temple was writing harshly to his sister, the future wife of Pitt: “Mr. Pitt and I disapprove of this paper war, and the daily abominations which are published; though, because Wilkes professes himself a friend of mine, I am ever represented infamously as a patron of what I disapprove and wish I could have put an end to.”
*
But Wilkes, on the other hand, quickly drew the support of Newcastle and the Whigs, since Wilkes ardently championed the opposition cause.

As the peace treaty became imminent, two contrasting groups made clear their opposition: the Whigs, who continued to oppose the
terms
of undue conquest in North America; and Pitt, who opposed peace
per se
as too soft on the French. The most important Whig statement was a new edition of

William Burke’s
Examination of the Commercial Principles...,
again calling for yielding Canada and the North American lands and to retain the sugar islands. Also influential was the similar
Letter to... the City of London
by George Heathcote, M.P., a radical Whig or “Commonwealthman.” Temple’s papers, taking a continued Pitt or Whig tone in opposition to the peace terms, drew down the wrath of the government, which prepared a general warrant in early November against both the
Monitor
and the
North Briton.
In a February 1763 issue of the
North Briton,
which took essentially the Newcastle-Whig line on the peace treaty, John Wilkes had denounced the ceding of the sugar islands in the West Indies, instead of the vast, expensively maintained tracts in Canada and Florida.

Henry Fox’s shrewd management of the peace treaty, however, made this suppression unnecessary, and the general warrant remained unused. William Pitt, in his speech on the treaty, raved and ranted of the absolute necessity of the destruction of France, and for that purpose of retaining the fishing monopoly. By placing his opposition in these war-mad terms, Pitt drove many of the Whigs into lukewarm support of the treaty.

At the end of December, in the “massacre of the Pelham innocents,” Fox engineered the ouster of all the Whigs holding public office, for daring to oppose the peace terms. Newcastle had always been friendly to opposition expressed by popular mobs, and he now spurred a vigorous Whig opposition to the increasingly Tory rule. John Wilkes wrote enthusiastically in the
North Briton
of December 25 that every “friend of liberty and of
revolution principles”
had been dismissed, and they must from now on depend on the people. In a six-part critique of Toryism and Tory rule, Wilkes thundered that “the Tory faction is triumphant, and the most slavish doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance is preached up by every pamphleteer and... insisted upon by an all-grasping minister.”

The Whig party was now at a fateful crossroads; it either had to go into vigorous liberal opposition to the administration, or, in effect, had to abandon all of its Whig principles and crawl back into government office. The Whigs polarized. Hardwicke, the Yorke family, and Newcastle’s nephew Charles Townshend, along with other conservatives, refused to form a vigorous opposition; whereas the more radical and principled Whigs (especially the Whig youth), headed by the Marquis of Rockingham, formed an opposition “club” with the rather worried blessing of the aging Newcastle. But the reconstituted Whig Club suffered gravely from the lack of a strong leader in the House of Commons.

For its part, the administration felt it necessary to push aggressive expansion and rule in the new American lands in order to justify its own peace terms.

*
See George Rudé,
Wilkes and Liberty
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), pp. 19–22.

With peace finally concluded and the French ousted from North America, the poor, hapless Acadian refugees in Massachusetts, totaling some nine hundred, began the dangerous and difficult trek back to their beloved Acadia. Many died along the way, but the rest settled again in Acadia. Of course, there was no thought of returning to them their old lands and property. In the final irony, the Acadians who had been sent to France remained as unwanted refugees, pushed from pillar to post for twenty years by the government.