ce to which his talents and
bravery could contribute, without regarding by whom the government was
administered. At the general election of 1784, he sat for Yarmouth.

In 1787, Sir John Jervis was promoted to the rank of rear-admiral. At
the general election in 1790, he was returned for Wycombe, and shared
in parliament the successive defeats of his party; until, in 1793, he
was called to a nobler field, in which, unembarrassed by party, and
undegraded by Whiggism, his talents took their natural direction in
the cause of his country. It is now scarcely necessary to remark upon
the narrow system of enterprise with which England began the great
revolutionary war; nor can it now be doubted that, if the energies of
the country had been directed to meet the enemy in Europe, measureless
misfortunes might have been averted. If the succession of fleets and
armies which were wasted upon the conquest of the French West Indies,
had been employed in the protection of the feebler European states,
there can be no question that the progress of the French armies would
have been signally retarded, if invasion had not been thrown back
over the French frontier. For instance, it would have been utterly
impossible for Napoleon, in 1796, to have marched triumphantly
throughout Italy with the British fleet covering the coast, commanding
all the harbours, and ready to throw in troops in aid of the
insurrections in his rear.

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. At the close of 1793, a grand expedition against the French
Caribbee islands was resolved upon by the British cabinet; and it is a
remarkable instance of both the reputation of Sir John Jervis and the
impartiality of the great minister, that a Whig member of parliament
should have been chosen to command the naval part of the expedition.

The expedition consisted of twenty-two ships of war and six thousand
troops, the troops divided into three brigades, of which one was
commanded by the late Duke of Kent. Sir John Jervis hoisted his flag
as vice-admiral of