one for the country. Recent
precedent--that of Anson--demanded such recognition; and popular
enthusiasm would have applauded, although the full military merit of the
man could scarcely be appreciated by the standards of his generation.
That no such reward was bestowed is most probably attributable to
Hawke's own indifference to self-advancement. If demanded by him, it
could scarcely have been refused; but he never pushed his own interests.
His masculine independence in professional conduct, towards superiors
and inferiors, found its root and its reflection in personal
unconcern--as well antecedent as subsequent--about the results from his
actions to his fortunes. To do his own part to the utmost, within the
lines of the profession he knew, was his conception of duty. As he would
not meddle with the land officers' decision as to what they should or
should not do, so he left to the politicians, in whose hands the gifts
lay, to decide what they would, or should, accord to a successful
admiral. Pitt, the Great Commoner, left Hawke a commoner. Possibly he
recognized that only by stretch of imagination could Hawke be reckoned
one of the creations of a great Minister's genius.

Little remains to tell. On September 3, 1762, the admiral's flag was
hauled down for the last time. He never went to sea again. In 1766, when
Pitt came back to power as Lord Chatham, Hawke became First Lord of the
Admiralty, and so remained till 1771. It was a time of unbroken peace,
succeeding a period of continuous wars extending over a quarter of a
century; consequently there was in naval and military matters the
lassitude usual to such a period. Hawke is credited with formulating the
principle that "the British fleet could only be termed considerable in
the proportion it bore to that of the House of Bourbon;" that is, to the
combined navies of France and Spain, over which that House then reigned.
The maxim proves that he had some claim to statesmanship in his view of
affairs outside his service; and his manifested freedom from
self-seeking is the warrant that no secondary political motives would
divert his efforts from this aim. That he succeeded in the main, that he
was not responsible for the fallen condition of the fleet when war again
arose in 1778, is evidenced by a statement, uncontradicted, in the House
of Lords in 1779, that when he left office the navy had 139
ships-of-the-line, of which 81 were ready for sea.

In 1765 Hawke, who was then