United States or Tanzania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
His first famous journey in France was made between May and November, 1787, and cost the marvellously small sum of £118 15s. 2d. His second and third French journeys were made in July, 1788, and in June, 1789. The third was the longest, and extended into 1790. Three years later Young was appointed, by Pitt, Secretary of the then Board of Agriculture.
But it was the policy of the time to pacify the merchants, whose bugbear was a negro insurrection in the West Indies; and whether the genius or the fears of Pitt gave way to the impression, the consequence was equally lamentable the mighty power of England was wasted on the capture of sugar islands, which we did not want, which we could not cultivate, and which cost the lives, by disease and climate, of ten times the number of gallant men who might have saved Europe.
With the repeal of the objectionable law the uproar in America ceased, and, amid profuse expressions of gratitude to Pitt, the Ministry, and the King, the colonists returned to their normal activities.
But only time and circumstance could evolve a strong minister. Time and circumstance at length produced the younger Pitt. But it needed the tragedy of two long wars those against the colonies and revolutionary France before the nation finally threw off the system which permitted the personal rule of George III and caused the disruption of the Empire.
A smaller army was to be sent against the French on the Great Lakes, and a larger one, under Amherst, along the line of Lake Champlain, towards Montreal. Pitt did a very bold thing when he took a young colonel and asked the king to make him a general and allow him to choose his own brigadiers and staff officers.
But it is from these too that we must date the renewal of that progressive movement in politics which had been suspended since the opening of the war. The publication of the Edinburgh Review in 1802 by a knot of young lawyers at Edinburgh marked a revival of the policy of constitutional and administrative progress which had been reluctantly abandoned by William Pitt.
"Another commission," said Jerry: "a tax upon light. Billy Pitt has the best right to it." A second glass of grog was poured out, and the bribe disappeared down Mr Byfield's gullet. "Now we'll put the light out," said one of the oldsters, covering the candlestick with a hat. "If you will put your candle into my lantern," observed the obsequious master-at-arms, "I can then report the lights out.
Pitt and Mr. Dundas, through every channel of the press, by the friends of Mr. Hastings, showed how wholly unexpected, as well as mortifying, was the desertion.
It was everywhere said with delight and admiration that the great Commoner, without any advantages of birth or fortune, had, in spite of the dislike of the Court and of the aristocracy, made himself the first man in England, and made England the first country in the world; that his name was mentioned with awe in every palace from Lisbon to Moscow; that his trophies were in all the four quarters of the globe; yet that he was still plain William Pitt, without title or ribbon, without pension or sinecure place.
But the forces of ignorance and bigotry which had been too strong for Pitt were too strong for the Grenville ministry, weakened as it was by the death of Fox at the close of the previous year.
Word Of The Day