Commencement of Mr. Pitt's Ministry. - His Regency Bill and Fiscal Reforms.- Foreign Policy of the Minister. — Progress of our Continental Connections. - Principles of Foreign Intervention. — M. Heeren's Treatise. — Bonaparte's Continental Domination. The Balance of Power. - England's Interests identified with the Nationality and Prosperity of States. - · Dismemberment of Poland. — Inconsistency of Mr. Pitt, and his evasive Defence of Neutrality on the Aggression of the Allied Despots. - The permanent Equilibrium of Power in States incompatible with their Internal Progress. -Perversion of the Balance of Power to the Purposes of Party, unnecessary Wars, and a mischievous Diplomacy.-The Chevalier D'Eon as auxiliary to Diplomacy. -- FROM the conclusion of peace with the Americans and their continental abettors, no external cause intervened materially to obstruct the prosperous career of the country until the breaking out of the great war of 1793. After the resignation of Lord North, in 1782, party evolutions became the engrossing public topic. On the termination of the brief premiership of the Marquis of Rockingham, the king had immediately appointed the Earl of Shelburne his successor, who at once accepted the office without consulting the rest of the cabinet. Upon this the Rockingham Whigs resigned their places, either from its being a violation of party etiquette on such occasions by the new minister, or from its having thwarted the aspirations of Mr. Fox (ostensibly Lord Portland) to the premiership. Mr. Nicholls, a M. P. of the period, says the "Whigs had ceased to be a party and had become a COMMENCEMENT OF MR. PITT'S MINISTRY. 465 faction;" their efforts being directed to the attainment of no great public object, save the possession of power. The terms of the peace were the alleged reason of their hostility to the Shelburne ministry; but the substitution of themselves, combined with personal dislike of that nobleman, seem to have been the real ones. They enjoyed only for a short term the fruits of their unpopular coalition with Lord North; it proved quite as unprofitable as unprincipled. From the moment this confederacy was formed, a contemporary says, "I lost all confidence in public men. I clearly saw that they sacrificed their public principles to private pique, and their honour to their ambition." Mr. Fox's India Bill, however, was the rock on which the coalition proximately foundered. This measure was so unhappily framed that it alarmed the king for his prerogatives and municipal corporations for their chartered rights. By the coalition, and the new project of Indian government, the Whig party were divided and ruined, and their Tory colleagues wholly discredited. Dexterously availing himself of their errors, Mr. Pitt was enabled to reach the helm of power, seconded both by the court and the nation; and which he continued to hold during a memorable term of European history, with the short intermission of the peace of Amiens, till his death in 1806. The new minister was the second son of the late Earl of Chatham, and in the twenty-fourth year of his age. He had been sedulously trained in statesmanship, was master of all its arts, and aided by great natural and acquired gifts. He had the prudence of age and the knowledge of experience; was eloquent in debate, and • Recollections of the Reign of George III., H H p. 172. though himself independent of party ties, was thoroughly conversant with their tactics and those of parliament. Power was the ruling passion of his life, and, by adroitly watching opportunities, he speedily reached the summit, and may, both from public qualities and private worth, have been the fittest man to govern the realm. His elevation, like that of Lord North fourteen years previously, settled the executive of the kingdom; and supported, after his appeal to a general election, by a large parliamentary majority, left little hope to parties of undermining its stability. The domestic policy of Mr. Pitt was well calculated to assist the country in recovering from the disasters of colonial hostilities. The finances were sought to be improved by a better management of the crown lands, by the suppression of smuggling, the consolidation of taxes, and the reduction of the public debt. In dealing with the last, he shared the prevalent delusion of a faith in the miraculous liquidating powers of the compound interest accruing from a borrowed capital. In economical wisdom, however, he went beyond his contemporaries in his commercial treaty with France in 1787: it was based on those principles of a mutual interchange of benefits, which were then only beginning to be appreciated by statesmen; and the merit of the young minister was enhanced by contrast with his elders of the Opposition, who contended for the existence of a national and hereditary antagonism between France and England in place of reciprocity of interests. Upon the question of the Regency in 1788 he took the constitutional side, in accordance with the settlement of the Revolution; maintaining that the right of supplying a suspension in the royal authority devolved * Mr. Fox and Mr. Francis. Annual Register, vol. xxix. p. 67. FOREIGN POLICY OF MR. PITT. 467 on the two remaining branches of the legislature, and not, of constitutional right, on the heir apparent, though the Prince of Wales might have a prior claim. The Foreign Policy of the minister appeared most open to animadversion. It was meddling and officious; the old error of too ready interference in the quarrels of neighbouring states, and volunteering the arbitrament of their differences, which had entailed on the community such irredeemable incumbrances, was obtrusively persisted in. Intoxicated by his success, in concert with Prussia, in imposing on Holland an obnoxious stadtholder, Mr. Pitt seemed constantly on the watch for objects of foreign intervention. Proud of the vast resources he wielded, and which were in course of rapid increase by the peace, he was not only ready but impatient for combat. The affair with Spain relative to the fursettlement at Nootka Sound, and her absurd pretensions to the proprietorship of the entire west coast of America, from Cape Horn to the sixtieth degree of north latitude, might have been arranged without the parade of a costly armament. Jealousy of Russian aggrandisement formed the next pretext for vast warlike preparations, and, in grandiloquent phrases, the insignificant town of Otzakoff was magnified into the "key of Constantinople," the pivot on which turned the exact poise of the European balance of power. Fortunately, on this occasion there was no disposition in the people for hostilities, and the bellicose aspirations of the premier ended without interrupting the progress of the nation in peaceful arts. As these external aberrations of Mr. Pitt formed the most questionable parts of his early administration, it may not be an unsuitable place to advert to the leading principles upon which, from a distant period, England has ostensibly professed to govern her connections with the continent. It is an old affinity of the country; in theory it is an abstraction derived from the colonial system, but differing in this, that colonies are a reality, the other only, according to its later versions, a prestige, or influence exercised over continental affairs. It was a substantive relation during the Norman period, and under the Plantagenets ripened into a pertinacious claim to the entire realm of France in virtue of the maternal descent of Edward III. But the injurious results from the ambitious wars for the French crown, and the distractions from the twofold possessions of the barons in England and Normandy, have been previously dwelt upon. Relieved from these entanglements, English policy, during the prosperous era of the Tudors, became almost exclusively concentrated on English interests. The advent of the Reformation completed our severance, by the renunciation of all spiritual or secular allegiance to the see of Rome. From the Reformation to the Revolution the religious interest became the predominant interest of the kingdom. The throne of Queen Elizabeth was based on the Protestant faith, and she watchfully sought to strengthen her security by its maintenance both at home and abroad. It was with this aim she formed her connections on the continent; assisting the Huguenots in France, and the Netherlanders in their resistance to the bigoted yoke of Spain, by subsidies, volunteers, and every other mode short of open war. English interests were unquestionably identified with this wise policy, because they were identified with the promulgation of the Protestantism England had espoused, and which was doubtless more favourable than the adverse Roman worship to general freedom and progress. The successor of this great princess failed to tread in her steps. From the effeminacy of his character, his love of personal indulgence, or engrossment in pole |