t par. It was
impossible that a man who so completely mistook the nature of a contest
could carry on that contest successfully. Great as Pitt's abilities
were, his military administration was that of a driveller. He was at the
head of a nation engaged in a struggle for life and death, of a nation
eminently distinguished by all the physical and all the moral qualities
which make excellent soldiers. The resources at his command were
unlimited. The Parliament was even more ready to grant him men and money
than he was to ask for them. In such an emergency, and with such means,
such a statesman as Richelieu, as Louvois, as Chatham, as Wellesley,
would have created in a few months one of the finest armies in the
world, and would soon have discovered and brought forward generals
worthy to command such an army. Germany might have been saved by another
Blenheim; Flanders recovered by another Ramilies; another Poitiers might
have delivered the Royalist and Catholic provinces of France from a yoke
which they abhorred, and might have spread terror even to the barriers
of Paris. But the fact is, that, after eight years of war, after a vast
destruction of life, after an expenditure of wealth far exceeding the
expenditure of the American war, of the Seven Years' War, of the war
of the Austrian Succession, and of the war of the Spanish Succession,
united, the English army, under Pitt, was the laughing-stock of all
Europe. It could not boast of one single brilliant exploit. It had
never shown itself on the Continent but to be beaten, chased, forced
to re-embark, or forced to capitulate. To take some sugar island in the
West Indies, to scatter some mob of half-naked Irish peasants, such
were the most splendid victories won by the British troops under Pitt's
auspices.

The English navy no mismanagement could ruin. But during a long period
whatever mismanagement could do was done. The Earl of Chatham, without
a single qualification for high public trust, was made, by fraternal
partiality, First Lord of the Admiralty, and was kept in that great
post during two years of a war in which the very existence of the state
depended on the efficiency of the fleet. He continued to doze away and
trifle away the time which ought to have been devoted to the public
service, till the whole mercantile body, though generally disposed
to support the government, complained bitterly that our flag gave no
protection to our trade. Fortunately he was succeeded by