Prussian alliance; and early in February, Bedford, though a member of the cabinet, offered a resolution in the house of lords against continuing the war in Germany. In the debate, Bute did but assume an appearance of opposition, and the question was only evaded and postponed. It was evidently the royal wish to compel Frederic to the hard necessity of ceding territory to Austria. A statement was demanded of him of his idea on the subject of peace, and of his resources for holding out, as a preliminary to the renewal of the subsidy from England; but he rendered no such account, which could have been but an inventory of his weakness. The armies of Russia were encamped in East Prussia; to Gallitzin, the minister of Russia at London, Bute intimated that England would aid the emperor to retain the conquest, if he would continue to hold the king of Prussia in check. But the chivalric czar, indignant at the perfidy, enclosed Gallitzin's despatch to Frederic himself, restored to him all the conquests that had been made from his kingdom, settled with him a peace including a guarantee of Silesia, and finally transferred a Russian army to his camp. The fact that Prussia had transformed Russia from an enemy into an ally, while England had a new enemy in Spain and a dependant in Portugal, gave a plausible reason for discontinuing the grant to Prussia. Still the subsidy was promised; but "the condition of the bounty of this nation," wrote Bute, at the king's command, "is the employment of it towards the procurement of peace, not the continuance of war." "This Englishman," said Frederic, "thinks that money does every thing, and that there is no money but in England;" and, deserted by his ally, he was left to tread in solitude the paths of greatness.

1762.

During these negotiations, news reached Europe of victories in the West Indies. On the seventh of January, Monckton, with an army of twelve thousand men, assisted by Rodney and a fleet of sixteen sail of the line and thirteen frigates, appeared off Martinique ; and, at the end of five weeks, the richest and best of the French colonies, strongly guarded by natural defences, which art had improved, was forced to capitulate. Grenada, St. Lucia, St.

Vincent's, were soon after occupied; so that the outer Caribbee Islands, in the whole extent of the arc which bends from St. Domingo towards the continent of South America, were British.

These successes encouraged the king's friends to pursue their system. Newcastle, who had received "all kinds of disgusts" from his associates in the cabinet, seized the occasion of withholding the subsidy from Prussia to indulge with Bute his habit of complaint. But "the earl never requested me to continue in office," said Newcastle, "nor said a civil thing to me ;" and at last, most lingeringly, the veteran statesman resigned.

1762.

So fell the old whig aristocracy, which had so long governed England. It was false to the cause of liberty, and betrayed the man of the people, only to be requited with contumely by those who reaped benefits from its treachery. Its system of government, under its old form, could never be restored. It needed to be purified by a long conflict with the inheritors of its methods of corruption, before it could be awakened to a perception of its duty and animated to undertake the work of reform. But the power of the people was coming with an energy which it would be neither safe nor possible to neglect. Royalty itself, no less than aristocracy, was perilled. In the very days in which the English whig aristocracy was in its agony, Rousseau, the most eloquent writer of French prose, told the world that "nature makes neither princes, nor rich men, nor grandees; that "the sovereignty of the people is older than the institutions which restrain it; and that these institutions are not obligatory, but by consent." "You put trust," said he, “in the actual order of society, without reflecting that this order is subject to inevitable changes. We are approaching the state of crisis and the age of revolutions." "Were all the kings put away, they would hardly be missed, and things would go on none the worse." "I hold it impossible that the great monarchies of Europe should endure much longer."

On the retirement of Newcastle, Bute, near the end of May, transferring the seals of the northern department to George Grenville, became first lord of the treasury, the

1762.

feeblest of British prime ministers; Bedford remained privy seal; Egremont, secretary of state for the southern department and America; while Lord North retained his seat at the treasury board. Early in June, on the death of Anson, Halifax returned from Ireland to join the cabinet as first lord of the admiralty. Charles Townshend was still secretary at war, yet restless in occupying a station inferior to Grenville's.

The British army and navy had acquired a habit of victory; the British men-of-war reposed in the consciousness of maritime supremacy; and, as the hawk, from his restingplace among the clouds, gazes calmly around for his prey, their eye glanced over every ocean in search of the treasureships of Spain. "Great monarchies," Choiseul had said. in April, "spite of redoubled misfortunes, should have confidence in the solidity of their existence. If I were the master, we would stand against England as Spain did against the Moors; and, if this course were truly adopted, England would be reduced and destroyed within thirty years." But the exhausted condition of France compelled her to seek peace; in February and March, the subject had been opened for discussion through the ministers of Sardinia in London and Versailles; and, after passing April in the consideration of plans, early in May Bute was able to submit to Bedford his project. Bedford approved, and accepted the embassy to France.

"A good peace with foreign enemies," said Hutchinson, from Massachusetts, as early as March, "would enable us to make a better defence against our domestic foes." The relations of Ireland and of America to the British king and the British parliament were held to be the same. By Poyning's Act, as it was called, no bill could be accepted in Ireland, until it had been transmitted to England, and returned with the assent of the privy council. The principle had already been applied by royal instructions to particular branches of American legislation; the intention of demanding a suspending clause in every act began to be avowed.

It had been already decided that every American judge should hold his appointment at the royal pleasure. Hardy,

governor of New Jersey, having violated his instructions, by issuing a commission to judges during good behavior, was promptly dismissed; and, at the suggestion of Bute, William Franklin, the only son of the great adversary of the proprietaries of Pennsylvania, became his successor.

1762.

When New York refused to vote salaries to its chief justice, unless he should receive an independent commission, the board of trade, in June, 1762, recommended that he should have his salary from the royal quit-rents. "Such a salary," it was pleaded to the board by the chief justice himself, "could not fail to render the office of great service to his majesty, in securing the dependence of the colony on the crown, and its commerce to Great Britain." It was further hinted that it would insure judgments in favor of the crown against all intrusions upon the royal domain by the great landed proprietors of New York, and balance their power and influence in the assembly. The measure was adopted. In New York, the king instituted courts, named the judges, removed them at pleasure, fixed the amount of their salaries, and paid them independently of legislative grants. The system, established as yet in one only of the older provinces, was designed for all.

The design of raising a revenue by parliament at the peace was no longer concealed; and chastisement was prepared for Maryland and Pennsylvania, the refractory provinces which had so much tasked the attention of the great English lawyers, Mansfield, Charles Yorke, and Pratt. The king expressed what was called "just displeasure at the "obstinate" disobedience of the assembly of Maryland, and censured its members as not "animated by a sense of their duty to their king and country." The reproof was administered "not to change their opinion," but, so wrote Egremont, "that they may not deceive themselves by supposing that their behavior is not seen here in its true light.'

The reprimand of the legislature of Pennsylvania was delayed till Sir Jeffrey Amherst could report their disregard of his final appeal; and then a similar letter conveyed to them "the king's high disapprobation of their artfully evading to pay any obedience to his majesty's requisitions."

No one was more bent on reducing the colonies to implicit obedience than the blunt, humane, and honest, but

self-willed Duke of Bedford, who, on the sixth day 1762. of September, sailed for France, with full powers to negotiate a peace. Scarcely was he gone, before Egremont, desiring, like Pitt, to conduct the negotiation from ministry to ministry, limited the powers of Bedford. The angry duke remonstrated to Bute, who incurred the enmity of Egremont by promising to ask of the cabinet a restitution to Bedford of his full powers. "Are you sure of the cabinet's concurrence?" asked Rigby. "The king

will be obeyed," replied Bute," and will talk to the two secretaries on their scruples ;" and it was so. The young man of three-and-twenty subdued his two secretaries of state, secretly laughing at their displeasure and dismay. Egremont yielded, and some subjects were left at the discretion of Bedford; but Bute indirectly, through the Sardinian minister and in his own handwriting, communicated to the French ambassador the decision adopted, and even minutes of the advice given by the various members of the cabinet council, on condition that the details should be kept religiously from Spain and from the Duke of Bedford. When afterwards this perfidy became known to Bedford, it drew on Bute his implacable displeasure and contempt.

The negotiations for the peace languished, because Grimaldi, for Spain, was persuaded that the expedition of the English against Havana would be defeated; but, before the end of September, unexpected news arrived.

Havana was then, as now, the chief place in the West Indies, built on a harbor large enough to shelter all the navies of Europe, capable of being made impregnable from the sea, having docks in which ships-of-war of the first magnitude were constructed, rich from the products of the surrounding country, and the centre of the trade with Mexico. Of this magnificent city England undertook the conquest. The command of her army, in which Carleton and Howe each led two battalions, was given to Albemarle, a friend and pupil of the Duke of Cumberland. The fleet was intrusted to Pococke, already illustrious as the conqueror in two naval battles in the east.