e necessity. In face of this necessity, the Whig oligarchy,
abdicated its high function of "muddling through" the business of
government, while "an afflicted despairing nation turned to a private
gentleman of slender fortune, wanting the parade of birth and title, as
the only saviour of England." "I know," said William Pitt, "that I can
save England, and that nobody else can."

A most galling boast for both your houses of Pelham and Yorke, but a
true one. Within three years the nation was raised from the depths of
despair to the high level of its great leader's assured and arrogant
confidence. It was not by colonial systems that Pitt brought victory,
but by organizing efficiency in place of corruption and by inspiring
many men to heroic effort. Wisdom born of sympathy and common sense soon
accomplished in America what neither the bullying of Loudoun nor the New
Englander's hatred of the French could effect. In 1756 no more than five
thousand troops were raised in all New England and New York. Governor
Pownall was haggling as usual with his assembly over a levy of two
thousand men, when there arrived in Boston Pitt's order that henceforth
colonial officers should take rank with regulars, according to the date
of their commissions. The simple order was worth more than many plans of
union. The very next morning, when the dispatch was read out, the Old
Bay assembly voted the entire seven thousand men originally asked of the
Northern colonies; and during the year 1758 nearly twenty-five thousand
provincial troops were raised for the war. With this support, the
English army and fleet, for the first time ably led and efficiently
directed, soon destroyed the power of France in Canada: Louisburg was
once more captured; Crown Point and Niagara were taken; Oswego was
rebuilt; while the French, deserted by their savage allies as soon as
the English won victories, destroyed their own fort at Duquesne; and at
last the intrepid General Wolfe, fortunately aided by a strange
combination of accidents, scaled the Heights of Quebec and defeated the
army of Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham.

When the war was over and Canada no longer the menace it had been, men
without imagination, turning again to the schemes which had been laid
aside in 1756, began to devise measures for a closer supervision of the
"plantations," and for raising "a revenue in Your Majesty's dominions in
America for defraying the expenses of defending, protecting, and
se