e king
amounted to about L12,000. In return, between June 1 and February 16
he wrote fifty-one notes for the Court discussing the events of the
day, and exposing by degrees vast schemes of policy. When they came to
be known, half a century ago, they added immeasurably to his fame, and
there are people who compare his precepts and prescriptions with the
last ten years of Mazarin and the beginning of the Consulate, with the
first six years of Metternich or the first eight of Bismarck, or, on a
different plane, with the early administration of Chatham.

Mirabeau himself was proud of his new position, and relied on this
correspondence to redeem his good name. He was paid to be of his own
opinion. The king had gone over to him; he had changed nothing in his
views to meet the wishes of the king. His purpose throughout had been
the consolidation of representative monarchy on the ruins of
absolutism. To the king in league with privilege he was implacably
opposed. To the king divested of that complicity he was a convinced
and ardent friend.

The opportunity of proving his faith was supplied by Captain Cook. In
his last voyage the navigator visited the island since named after his
lieutenant Vancouver, and sailed into Nootka Sound, to which, in his
report, he drew the attention of the Government. Three or four years
before, the Spaniards had been there, and had taken formal possession;
and the Russians, spreading southward along the coast, acknowledged
their right, and withdrew. But the place was far north of the regions
they actually occupied; and English adventurers, with the sanction of
the Government, settled there, and opened a trade in peltry with
China. After a year or two, the Spaniards came in force, and carried
them off, with their ships and their cargoes; and claiming the entire
Pacific seaboard from Cape Horn to Alaska, they called on the English
Ministers to punish their intruding countrymen. They also equipped a
fleet of forty sail of the line, assuring the British _charge
d'affaires_ that it was only to protect themselves against the
Revolution. Pitt was not lulled by these assurances, or by the
delivery of the confiscated ships. He had authorised the proceedings
of the traders with the intention of resisting the Spanish claim
beyond the limits of effective occupation. He now demanded reparation,
and fitted out a fleet superior to that with which Nelson crushed the
combined navies of France and Spain. Under the t