In spite of this great success, the ministry continued its efforts at peace, but so long as there was any hope of securing better terms by the capture of Gibraltar the French would not come to the point. Nor did the change of ministry caused by the death of Rockingham change the aspect of affairs. Gibraltar had now been three years besieged. British fleets had twice forced the blockade and relieved the garrison. General Elliot's defence was vigorous, and inspired his troops with confidence. In the last November a great sally had destroyed the greater part of the enemy's works, but now a final effort of the united house of Bourbon was to be made. De Crillon, fresh from his success at Minorca, took the command, and neglecting the attack from the land side, set his hopes on a terrific bombardment to be conducted from the sea. He constructed ten huge floating batteries, with walls of wood and iron seven feet thick, shot proof and bomb proof; a fleet of more than forty first-rates was in the harbour, and a fire from 400 pieces of artillery, in answer to which the English could produce but 100, was to annihilate the fortress. Elliot was not disheartened; trusting to the natural strength of the place in other directions, he concentrated the whole of his fire upon the terrible batteries. For a long while they seemed absolutely impenetrable, but at length the constant stream of red hot shot took effect, and at mid-day their fire slackened. Before midnight the largest of them burst into flames, and eight out of the ten were on fire during the night. The siege was over, and the fleet, which still waited in the hope of meeting Lord Howe on his arrival with a relieving squadron, was driven from the harbour by the weather before he came, so that he was able to enter and relieve the garrison unmolested.
Changed tone of French demands.
This great success, following so close upon the West Indian victory, made it plain to the allies that England was by no means so prostrate as they had imagined, and there was no longer much difficulty in settling the preliminaries of a peace. France accepted readily the offers which had been rejected in the earlier part of the year. The English ceded the little islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon in the St. Lawrence, and the African establishments of Senegal and Goree. In the West Indies everything was restored to the same condition as before the war, with the exception of Tobago, which was given to France. In the East Indies the French were permitted to retain their commercial establishments, but without military occupation. The treaty for the destruction of Dunkirk was formally given up. With these slight Terms of peace. Jan 20, 1783. concessions France had to be satisfied. Spain kept Minorca; and the Floridas were given up to her—better terms than she had a right to expect. England received in exchange the Bahamas, which she had already reconquered, and the right of cutting logwood in Honduras. Holland, with whom the English Government had in vain attempted a separate treaty, gained nothing by her rejection of those overtures, but was obliged to agree to a mutual restoration of conquests, with the exception of the seaport town of Negapatam, which remained to the English. A provisional treaty had already been made with America, by which the independence of the States was formally declared, boundaries settled, and commercial relations re-established. The only difficulty was the claim for compensation for loss of property raised by the American loyalists. This however was waived.
Death of Rockingham. Division of the Whigs.
The duty of concluding these treaties had not fallen to the same ministry as had begun them. The composition of the Rockingham ministry had not been such as to secure its stability; it consisted, as has been said, of two distinct and equally balanced parties. A rivalry between the leaders of these parties was inevitable, especially when one of them was a man so self-asserting and so conscious of his claims as Fox. United for a moment under the nominal leadership of Rockingham, a man of great influence though of slender ability, their union was at once dissolved at the death of that nobleman. Fox refused to serve under Shelburne, to whom the King at once offered the Premiership, and though several of the old ministers retained their places, the greater part followed their leader, and a split, which proved to be final, arose The Shelburne ministry. July 1782. between the two sections of the Whigs. The new ministry included, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, William Pitt, as yet but twenty-three years of age. Already his oratorical power and his aspiring genius had made him one of the first men of the House, and he was regarded as a worthy successor of Chatham. Till this period he and Fox had been on friendly terms, and usually on the same side on political questions, but he had his father's hatred of faction, or the introduction of personal motives into politics, and bitterly reproached Fox for his conduct in leaving the Government. Henceforward they were avowed opponents. Fox's own explanation of his conduct was as follows. He said that he had written by the King's orders to Mr. Grenville, then at Paris, to authorize him to offer to the American agents "to recognize the independence of the United States in the first instance, and not to reserve it as a condition of peace." At the same time an official letter, for the same purpose, was sent by the Earl of Shelburne to Sir Guy Carleton in America. Mr. Fox, suspecting that this measure though consented to in the Cabinet, had not the entire approbation of some of his colleagues, had, in order to prevent any misconception, purposely chosen the most forcible expressions that the English language could supply; and he confessed that his joy was so great on finding that the Earl of Shelburne, in the letter to Sir Guy Carleton, had repeated his very words, that he carried it immediately to the Marquis of Rockingham, and told him that their distrust and suspicions of that noble lord's intentions had been groundless, and were now done away. "Judge then," said he, "of my grief and astonishment when, during the illness of my noble friend, another language was heard in the Cabinet, and the noble Earl and his friends began to consider the above letter as containing offers only of a conditional nature, to be recalled if not accepted as the price of peace. Finding myself thus ensnared and betrayed, and all confidence destroyed, I quitted a situation in which I found I could not remain either with honour or safety."
The Whig love of office had not been satiated by an eight months' tenure of it, nor had Lord North's party taken kindly to their loss of power, and in their greedy desire for personal aggrandizement, the leaders, who a few months before were speaking of each other as the most corrupt of the human species, found it consistent with their dignity to combine to eject Lord Shelburne's Government. They chose as their test question the terms of the peace. Lord North, probably, conscientiously believed that they might have been more favourable. Fox had himself offered much larger concessions to Holland, and had not disapproved either of the American or French terms, nor did he now offer the smallest suggestion as to what better terms might have been procured. In parliamentary influence, however, the coalition was quite irresistible, and at the opening of the session in the spring Lord Shelburne found himself in a minority The coalition ministry under Portland. April 1783. upon resolutions which had been moved condemnatory of the peace. He at once resigned. After a few ineffectual struggles the King had to accept the coalition ministry. Nothing could have been more distasteful to him; he found himself suddenly robbed of the whole advantage of twenty years of political scheming; he had triumphed on the fall of the Chatham administration, and for years had been served, as he would wish to be served, by a very able, popular, upright, but obsequious minister, only now to be thrown back, apparently bound hand and foot, into the hands of the hated Whig oligarchy. His policy had produced a disastrous war, an enormous augmentation of the National Debt, and an all but universal cry for a better system of economical government and national representation; while the Whigs, taking advantage of the opportunity which the ill success of royal Government gave them, had succeeded in regaining, as it appeared, an unassailable superiority. In parliamentary influence they were overwhelming; they numbered among their party Fox and North, the two ablest debaters in the House, and Burke, the greatest orator. They had also the long official experience of Lord North's party. Against them were the few remaining members of the old Chatham party, with no influence on which to rely, and upheld almost solely by the brilliant promise of young Pitt. The nominal head of the new Government was the Duke of Portland, for, as usual with coalitions, a man of no great ability was elected as the nominal chief. Fox and North were equal Secretaries of State, Lord John Cavendish was Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Cabinet was completed by Lord Keppel, Carlisle, and Stormont. The great strength of the new ministry was speedily shown; a second Bill for parliamentary reform was rejected by the large majority of 144.
This ministry, which seemed so irresistible, was doomed to be of short duration, and the factious movement, which seemed to have thwarted for ever the policy of the King, proved in the sequel the means of establishing his policy for the rest of the reign. The cause of this sudden change of fortune was the necessity for some legislation with regard to the affairs of India, but before relating the final struggle it will be necessary to give a brief sketch of the course of events in that country.