he reigning
house; the Old Pretender had lost all interest in public affairs, and
his son, Charles Edward, was a confirmed drunkard, and had alienated his
friends by his disreputable life. Englishmen were determined not to have
another Roman catholic king, and they were too proud of their country
willingly to accept as their king a prince who was virtually a foreigner
as well as a papist, and whose cause had in past years been maintained
by the enemies of England. It is true that their last two kings had been
foreigners, but this was so no longer; their new king had been born and
brought up among them and was an Englishman to the backbone. He
succeeded an old king of coarse manners and conversation and of openly
immoral life, and his youth and the respectability of his morals added
to the pleasure with which his people greeted him as a sovereign of
their own nation.

National feeling was growing in strength; it had been kindled by Pitt,
and fanned into a flame by a series of victories which were largely due
to the inspiration of his lofty spirit. He had raised Great Britain from
a low estate to a height such as it had never reached before. The French
power had been overthrown in North America and the dominion of Canada
had been added to the British territories. In India the victories of
Clive and his generals were soon to be crowned by the fall of
Pondicherry, and French and Dutch alike had already lost all chance of
successfully opposing the advance of British rule by force of arms.
Great Britain had become mistress of the sea. Her naval power secured
her the possession of Canada, for her ships cut off the garrison of
Montreal from help by sea; it sealed the fate of the French operations
in India, for D'Ache was forced to withdraw his ships from the
Coromandel coast and leave Lally without support. In the West Indies
Guadeloupe had fallen, and in Africa Goree. In every quarter the power
of France was destroyed, her colonies were conquered, her ships captured
or driven from the sea.

The naval supremacy of England is attested, strange as it seems at first
sight, by her losses in merchant shipping, which were far heavier than
those of France, more than 300 in 1760, more than 800 in 1761, for many
English merchantmen were at sea while the French dared not send out
their merchant ships for fear of capture. Nor was this all, for the ruin
of the commerce of France led the shipowners of St. Malo to fit out many
of their shi