which Walpole had disdained to practise. He at least understood
that there were certain principles in accordance with which
Ministry of Henry Pelham.
he wished to conduct public affairs, and he had driven
colleague after colleague out of office rather than allow
them to distract his method of government. Pelham
and his brother, the Thomas Pelham, duke of
Newcastle, had no principles of government whatever. They
offered place to every man of parliamentary skill or influence.
There was no opposition, because the ministers never attempted
to do anything which would arouse opposition, and because
they were ready to do anything called for by any one who had
power enough to make himself dangerous; and in 1743 they
embarked on a useless war with France in order to please the
king, who saw in every commotion on the continent of Europe
some danger to his beloved Hanover.
At most times in the history of England such a ministry
would have been driven from office by the outcry of an offended
people. In the days of the Pelhams, government was
regarded as lying too far outside the all-important
private interests of the community to make it worth
The Rebellion
of 1745.
while to make any effort to rescue it from the degradation
into which it had fallen; yet the Pelhams had not been
long in power before this serene belief that the country could
get on very well without a government in any real sense of
the word was put to the test. In 1745 Charles Edward, the
son of the Pretender, landed in Scotland. He was followed by
many of the Highland clans, always ready to draw the sword
against the constituted authorities of the Lowlands; and even
in the Lowlands, and especially in Edinburgh, he found adherents,
who still felt the sting inflicted by the suppression of the
national independence of Scotland. The British army was in as
chaotic a condition as the British government, and Charles
Edward inflicted a complete defeat on a force which met him
at Prestonpans. Before the end of the year the victor, at the
head of 5000 men, had advanced to Derby. But he found no
support in England, and the mere numbers brought against him
compelled him to retreat, to find defeat at Culloden in the
following year (1746). The war on the continent had been waged
with indifferent success. The victory of Dettingen (1743) and
the glorious defeat of Fontenoy (1745) had achieved no objects
worthy of English intervention, and the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle
put an end in 1748 to hostilities which should never have been
begun. The government pursued its inglorious career as long
as Henry Pelham lived. He had at least some share in the financial
ability of Walpole, and it was not till he died in 1754 that
the real difficulties of a system which was based on the avoidance
of difficulties had fairly to be faced.
The change which was needed was not any mere re-adjustment
of the political machine. Those who cared for religion or morality
had forgotten that man is an imaginative and emotional
being. Defenders of Christianity and of deism alike
appealed to the reason alone. Enthusiasm was treated
Moral and religious atmosphere.
Wesley and Whitefield.
as a folly or a crime, and earnestness of every kind was
branded with the name of enthusiasm. The higher order of
minds dwelt with preference upon the beneficent wisdom of the
Creator. The lower order of minds treated religion as a kind
of life assurance against the inconvenience of eternal death.
Upon such a system as this human nature was certain to revenge
itself. The preaching of Wesley and Whitefield
appealed direct to the emotions, with its doctrine of
“conversion,” and called upon each individual not
to understand, or to admire, or to act, but vividly
to realize the love and mercy of God. In all this there was
nothing new. What was new was that Wesley added an organization,
Methodism (q.v.), in which each of his followers unfolded
to one another the secrets of their heart, and became accountable
to his fellows. Large as the numbers of the Methodists ultimately
became, their influence is not to be measured by their numbers.
The double want of the age, the want of spiritual earnestness and
the want of organized coherence, would find satisfaction in many
ways which would have seemed strange to Wesley, but which
were, nevertheless, a continuance of the work which he began.
As far as government was concerned, when Henry Pelham died (1754) the lowest depth of baseness seemed to have been reached. The duke of Newcastle, who succeeded his brother, looked on the work of corruption with absolute pleasure, and regarded genius and ability as an Ministry of Newcastle. awkward interruption of that happy arrangement which made men subservient to flattery and money. Whilst he was in the very act of trying to drive from office all men who were possessed of any sort of ideas, he was surprised by a great war. In America, the French settlers in Canada and the English settlers on the Atlantic coast were falling to blows for the possession of the vast territories drained by the Ohio and its tributaries. In India, Frenchmen and Englishmen had striven during the last war for authority over the native states round Pondicherry and Madras, and the conflict threatened to break out anew. When war began in earnest, and the reality of danger came home to Englishmen by the capture of Minorca (1756), there arose a demand for a more capable government than any which Newcastle could offer. Terrified by the storm of obloquy which he aroused, he fled from office. A government was formed, of which the soul was William Pitt. Pitt was, in some sort, to the political life of Englishmen what Wesley was to their religious life. He brought no new political ideas into their minds, but he ruled them by the force of his character and the example of his purity. His weapons were trust and confidence. He appealed to the patriotism of his fellow-countrymen, to their imaginative love for the national greatness, and he did not appeal in vain. He perceived instinctively that a large number, even of those who took greedily the bribes of Walpole and the Pelhams, took them, not because they loved money better than their country, but because they had no conception that their country had any need of them at all. It was a truth, but it was not the Ministry of Pitt and Newcastle. whole truth. The great Whig families rallied under Newcastle and drove Pitt from office (1757). But if Pitt could not govern without Newcastle’s corruption, neither could Newcastle govern without Pitt’s energy. At last a compromise was effected, and Newcastle undertook the work of bribing, whilst Pitt undertook the work of governing (see Chatham, William Pitt, 1st earl of).
The war which had already broken out, the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763), was not confined to England alone. By the side of the duel between France and England, a war was going on upon the continent of Europe, in which Austria—with its allies, France, Russia and the The Seven Years’ War. German princes—had fallen upon the new kingdom of Prussia and its sovereign Frederick II. England and Prussia therefore necessarily formed an alliance. Different as the two governments were, they were both alike in recognizing, in part at least, the conditions of progress. Even in Pitt’s day England, however imperfectly, rested its strength on the popular will. Even in Frederick’s day Prussia was ruled by administrators selected for their special knowledge. Neither France nor Austria had any conception of the necessity of fulfilling these requirements. Hence the strength of England and of Prussia. The war seemed to be a mere struggle for territory. There was no feeling in either Pitt or Frederick, such as there was in the men who contended half a century later against Napoleon, that they were fighting the battles of the civilized world. There was something repulsive as well in the enthusiastic nationalism of Pitt as in the cynical nationalism of Frederick. Pitt’s sole object was to exalt England to a position in which she would fear no rival. But in so doing he exalted that which, in spite of all that had happened, best deserved to be exalted. The habits of individual energy fused together by the inspiration of patriotism conquered Canada. The unintelligent over-regulation of the French government could not maintain the colonies which had been founded in happier times. In 1758 Louisburg was taken, and the mouth of the St Lawrence guarded against France. In 1759 Quebec fell before Wolfe, who died at the moment of victory. In the same year the naval victories of Lagos and Quiberon Bay established the supremacy of the British at sea. The battle of Plassey (1757) had laid Bengal at the feet
