CHAPTER XXI.
But national calamity was now to lend irresistible force to his attacks. It had been known for some time that France was meditating an attack on Gibraltar or Minorca, and in the beginning of March it became certain that Minorca was to be the object.[323] During the first week of May the Government received the news that the French had actually landed on the island. War was formally and not prematurely declared on May 18. Six weeks earlier the ill-fated Byng had sailed with a fleet to relieve the fortress. The country waited for news with bated breath. The King declared that he could neither eat nor sleep. Saunders, afterwards to be Pitt's First Lord of the Admiralty, reassured his Sovereign by saying that they should screw his heart out if Byng were not at that moment (June 7) in the harbour of Mahon.[324] Then came the news that Byng, after an indecisive engagement with the French fleet, had sailed back to Gibraltar and left Minorca to its fate. Still the nation, though raging against Byng, hoped against hope, till on July 14 the news came that Fort St. Philip, the British fort, had surrendered after a gallant defence on June 28, and that Minorca was in the hands of the French. The long-compressed anxiety exploded in a terrible outburst of wrath against Byng. Addresses poured in from every part of England demanding vengeance upon him. The unhappy Admiral was brought back to Greenwich Hospital as a prisoner to await a court-martial. But, the nation had already turned its thumb downwards. Perhaps the best idea of the popular sentiment is conveyed by the fact that Byng's brother, who went to meet the Admiral, was stricken to death by the popular fury wherever he passed; so that he fell ill at the first sight of the prisoner, and died next day in convulsions. There was no chance of a fair trial for the unhappy man. To the merchants of London bringing one of the addresses for his exemplary punishment Newcastle, not sorry to have a scapegoat, had blurted out, 'Oh! indeed he shall be tried immediately: he shall be hanged directly.' And executed he was, after an agony of eight months, in spite of justice, in spite of Pitt, who had the fine courage to support him, in deference to the nation and the King who were bent on his death. Voltaire, who had tried with real humanity to save him, sardonically described the execution in Candide, 'Dans ce pays-ci il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres,' a phrase which he appears to have borrowed from the Knights of Malta.[325]
Something less, much less than Nelson, might have saved Minorca. The truth seems to be that Byng, who was personally brave, sailed from Gibraltar with the preconceived impression that Minorca was lost, and acted throughout under this conviction, without energy or resource. So far as his countrymen, or rather, their rulers, were concerned, they had long done their best to lose it. They had, in spite of constant appeals, starved and neglected it. But there was worse than this. On one side of the mouth of the harbour of Mahon is a site easily rendered impregnable, on the other a plain which nothing can secure. John Duke of Argyle had begun a fort on the first site, but Lord Cadogan out of hatred to him, it was said, destroyed it and built Fort St. Philip at a vast expense on the second. The thing is incredible to the traveller who sees the place. If the story be true (Horace Walpole is the authority), it is on the head of Cadogan and not of Byng that should be laid the loss of Minorca, a loss which can neither be forgotten nor forgiven.
This tragic incident only touches Pitt's life in so far as it precipitated the disgrace of Newcastle. The Duke was indeed getting deeper and deeper. In May he declared that no one blamed him, for every one knew that the sea was not his province, and Fox had replied that as to public censure, his information was exactly the reverse. In September he could scarcely conceal from himself that he was being mobbed and pelted in his coach, and that his coachman was urged by the shouting crowd to drive his Grace straight to the Tower. Ballads swarmed of which the burden was, 'To the block with Newcastle and to the yard-arm with Byng.' Even the docile allegiance of the House of Commons can scarcely have allayed the veteran's rising anxiety. 'This was the year of the worst administration that I have seen in England,' says Walpole, though he was the close friend of Fox, 'for now Newcastle's incapacity was allowed full play.' Fox indeed found that he was not admitted to real confidence or to the counsels of Newcastle and Hardwicke. He was therefore in a state of swelling discontent, ready to break away at the first opportunity. He declared that he had urged that a strong squadron should be sent for the relief of the fortress during the first week of March, but was overruled. The fall of Minorca and the storm of national fury which followed increased his anxiety to be out of this disastrous Ministry. He was, we suspect, already determined not to meet Parliament again as Newcastle's talking puppet, possibly his scapegoat.
The House had risen on May 27. Two days earlier occurred an event which was to remove one of the three intellects of the Government, Fox and Hardwicke, of course, being the other two. Ryder, the Chief Justice of the King's Bench, died, and Murray at once laid claim to the succession. This demand drove Newcastle to despair. He offered Murray exorbitant and increasing terms to remain, for he regarded Murray as his sole protector in the House of Commons against his doubtful friend, Fox, and his open enemy, Pitt. But offers of the Duchy of Lancaster for life with a pension of 2000l. a year, with permission to remain Attorney-General at a salary of 7000l. a year, and a reversion of one of the Golden Tellerships of the Exchequer for his nephew Stormont, left Murray unmoved. For months the game of temptation was played. At the beginning of October the Prime Minister had raised the proposed pension to 6000l. a year. Murray remained firm. He stipulated, indeed, for more than the Chief Justiceship; he demanded a peerage as well; he would not take the one without the other; and in no case would he remain Attorney-General. We can imagine Newcastle's tears and caresses; they were in vain. Vain, too, was his attempt to fob off his rebellious subordinate with the reluctance of the King. Murray, indeed, hinted that when he became a private member of the House of Commons he might go into Opposition. We may be sure, at any rate, that he had no intention of facing an angry nation and Parliament in defence of Newcastle and the loss of Minorca. This hint probably clinched the matter. Newcastle capitulated; though, said Fox, from 'wilful trifling,' he deferred the performance of his promise as long as possible.[326] It was not till the eve of the Duke's fall that, on November 8, Murray was sworn in as Chief Justice and created a Peer as Lord Mansfield.
1756.
What glimpses are there meanwhile of Pitt? He had just got possession of Hayes, and was there in May, building and improving, as usual, but speaking brilliantly on the Militia Bill in the House, so brilliantly as to earn a patronising note of approval from Bute, beginning 'My worthy friend'; an indication that the bond between Pitt and the young Court was now close. Indeed, Pitt seems now to have been the principal adviser of that increasingly powerful connection.