Montcalm and Wolfe | Page 6

the throne; its ascendency was now complete. The Stuarts
had received their death-blow at Culloden; and nothing was left to the
dominant party but to dispute on subordinate questions, and contend for
office among themselves. The Troy squires sulked in their
country-houses, hunted foxes, and grumbled against the reigning

dynasty; yet hardly wished to see the nation convulsed by a
counter-revolution and another return of the Stuarts.
If politics had run to commonplace, so had morals; and so too had
religion. Despondent writers of the day even complained that British
courage had died out. There was little sign to the common eye that
under a dull and languid surface, forces were at work preparing a new
life, material, moral, and intellectual. As yet, Whitefield and Wesley
had not wakened the drowsy conscience of the nation, nor the voice of
William Pitt roused it like a trumpet-peal.
It was the unwashed and unsavory England of Hogarth, Fielding,
Smollett, and Sterne; of Tom Jones, Squire Western, Lady Bellaston,
and Parson Adams; of the "Rake's Progress" and "Marriage à la Mode;"
of the lords and ladies who yet live in the undying gossip of Horace
Walpole, be-powdered, be-patched, and be-rouged, flirting at masked
balls, playing cards till daylight, retailing scandal, and exchanging
double meanings. Beau Nash reigned king over the gaming-tables of
Bath; the ostrich-plumes of great ladies mingled with the
peacock-feathers of courtesans in the rotunda at Ranelagh Gardens; and
young lords in velvet suits and embroidered ruffles played away their
patrimony at White's Chocolate-House or Arthur's Club. Vice was
bolder than to-day, and manners more courtly, perhaps, but far more
coarse.
The humbler clergy were thought--sometimes with reason--to be no fit
company for gentlemen, and country parsons drank their ale in the
squire's kitchen. The passenger-wagon spent the better part of a
fortnight in creeping from London to York. Travellers carried pistols
against footpads and mounted highwaymen. Dick Turpin and Jack
Sheppard were popular heroes. Tyburn counted its victims by scores;
and as yet no Howard had appeared to reform the inhuman
abominations of the prisons.
The middle class, though fast rising in importance, was feebly and
imperfectly represented in parliament. The boroughs were controlled by
the nobility and gentry, or by corporations open to influence or bribery.
Parliamentary corruption had been reduced to a system; and offices,

sinecures, pensions, and gifts of money were freely used to keep
ministers in power. The great offices of state were held by men
sometimes of high ability, but of whom not a few divided their lives
among politics, cards, wine, horse-racing, and women, till time and the
gout sent them to the waters of Bath. The dull, pompous, and irascible
old King had two ruling passions,--money, and his Continental
dominions of Hanover. His elder son, the Prince of Wales, was a centre
of opposition to him. His younger son, the Duke of Cumberland, a
character far more pronounced and vigorous, had won the day at
Culloden, and lost it at Fontenoy; but whether victor or vanquished,
had shown the same vehement bull-headed courage, of late a little
subdued by fast growing corpulency. The Duke of Newcastle, the head
of the government, had gained power and kept it by his rank and
connections, his wealth, his county influence, his control of boroughs,
and the extraordinary assiduity and devotion with which he practised
the arts of corruption. Henry Fox, grasping, unscrupulous, with
powerful talents, a warm friend after his fashion, and a most indulgent
father; Carteret, with his strong, versatile intellect and jovial intrepidity;
the two Townshends, Mansfield, Halifax, and Chesterfield,--were
conspicuous figures in the politics of the time. One man towered above
them all. Pitt had many enemies and many critics. They called him
ambitious, audacious, arrogant, theatrical, pompous, domineering; but
what he has left for posterity is a loftiness of soul, undaunted courage,
fiery and passionate eloquence, proud incorruptibility, domestic virtues
rare in his day, unbounded faith in the cause for which he stood, and
abilities which without wealth or strong connections were destined to
place him on the height of power. The middle class, as yet almost
voiceless, looked to him as its champion; but he was not the champion
of a class. His patriotism was as comprehensive as it was haughty and
unbending. He lived for England, loved her with intense devotion,
knew her, believed in her, and made her greatness his own; or rather, he
was himself England incarnate.
The nation was not then in fighting equipment. After the peace of
Aix-la-Chapelle, the army within the three kingdoms had been reduced
to about eighteen thousand men. Added to these were the garrisons of
Minorca and Gibraltar, and six or seven independent companies in the

American colonies. Of sailors, less than seventeen thousand were left in
the Royal Navy. Such was the condition of