To Pitt also the news of Nelson's triumph brought intense relief. The disappearance of Bonaparte's armada after the capture of Malta had caused much concern. True, Naples, which was thought to be his objective, was safe; but Ireland and Portugal were deemed in jeopardy. No one at Whitehall anticipated the seizure of Malta and Egypt, still less the emergence of plans for a French conquest of India. A tone of anxiety pervades Pitt's letter of 22nd August to his mother: "The account of Bonaparte's arrival at Alexandria is, I am afraid, true; but it gives us no particulars, and leaves us in entire suspense as to Nelson."[505] All the greater, then, was the relief on 2nd October, when tidings of Aboukir at last arrived.
Further, there were signs of a Russo-French war. The romantic nature of the Czar was fired by the hope of acquiring Malta. At Ancona, early in 1797, Bonaparte had intercepted a Russian envoy bearing offers of alliance to the Knights of the Order of St. John; and their expulsion by the French at Midsummer 1798 seemed to Paul a personal affront. Some of the Knights proceeded to St. Petersburg and claimed his protection. The affairs of the Order became his most cherished concern; and on 24th July Sir Charles Whitworth, British ambassador at that Court, reported that Russia would now become a principal in the war against France, her aim being the re-establishment of peace on safe and honourable terms, but not the restoration of the French monarchy, on which Catharine had insisted. With this declaration the British and Austrian Cabinets were in full accord; and thus at last there was a hope of framing a compact Coalition. Fortunate was it that Bonaparte's seizure of Malta incensed Paul against France; for, early in August, the Swiss thinker, Laharpe, tutor of the future Czar Alexander I, brought tempting offers from Paris, with a view to the partition of the Turkish Empire.[506] That glittering prize was finally to captivate the fancy of Paul; but for the present he spurned the offer as degrading.
Nevertheless, the news of Aboukir did not wholly please him. For, while rejoicing at the discomfiture of the French atheists, he saw in Nelson's victory a sign of England's appropriation of Malta. In truth, that island now became the central knot of far-reaching complications. Formerly the bulwark of Christendom against the infidels, it now sundered European States.[507] So doubtful was the attitude of Paul and Francis that Pitt, in October 1798, twice wrote despondingly as to any definite decision on their part. All that was clear was their inordinate appetite for subsidies. These he of course withheld, knowing full well that neither would Paul tolerate for long the presence of the French at Malta, nor Francis their occupation of Switzerland. In any case he resolved not to give more than £2,000,000 to the two Empires for the year 1799.[508] For the time his hope lay only in the exertions of England, Europe being meantime "left to its fate." In order to humour the Czar, who was about to become Grand Master of the Knights of St. John, Grenville, on 23rd November, wrote to assure his Government that England renounced all aims of conquest in the Adriatic, or of the possession of Malta.
At the close of the year Pitt proudly displayed the inexhaustible resources of Great Britain. His Budget speech of 3rd December 1798 marks an epoch in economic history, alike for the boldness of the underlying conception and the statesmanlike assessment of the national resources. Well might Mallet du Pan declare that the speech surpassed all previous efforts in its illuminating exposition of a nation's finance. As appeared in our survey of the Budget of 1797, Pitt then sought to meet the year's expenses within the year. To a generation accustomed to shift present burdens on to its successors the proposal seemed Quixotic; and Fox blamed him for not adopting this device. Pitt held to his plan, and outlined a ten per cent. tax upon income. Having failed to gain the requisite tenth by means of the Assessed Taxes, he proposed to raise it by methods which even the shirkers could with difficulty circumvent.
In order to lay a first rough actuarial basis for his Income Tax, he made a careful study of the nation's resources in the autumn of 1798. The results he summarized in an interesting statement. There were available at that time only rough estimates, even as to the area of cultivated land and its average rental. Relying upon Davenant, King, Adam Smith, Arthur Young, and Middleton, he estimated the area at 40,000,000 acres, and the average rental at 15s. an acre. He prudently fixed the taxable value at 12s. 6d. an acre. The yearly produce of mines, timber, and canal shares he assessed at £3,000,000. He reckoned house rent at double that sum, and the earnings of the legal profession at one half of it. Half a million he deemed well within the total of doctors' fees. He assessed the incomes derived from the British West Indies at £4,000,000, and those from the rest of the world at £1,000,000, a highly suggestive estimate. Tithes were reckoned at £4,000,000; annuities from the public funds at £12,000,000; the same sum for profits derived from foreign commerce; and £28,000,000 for the profits of internal trade, whether wholesale or retail. Fixing the rental of land at £6,000,000, he computed the total national income as £102,000,000, which should therefore yield not less than £10,000,000 a year. He proposed to safeguard the collection by imposing an oath at the declaration of income, and enjoining absolute secrecy on the Crown commissioners. The new tax, beginning from April 1799, would take the place of the Assessed Taxes. As will appear in a later chapter, the new impost did not yield the amount which Pitt expected; but the failure was probably due to defects in the methods of collection. Pitt further proposed to set aside £1,200,000 for the Sinking Fund.
His purpose in making this prodigious effort was to inspirit other nations to similar patriotic exertions. He pointed out with pride that after nearly six years of war British exports and imports exceeded those of any year of peace. Thus, far from declining in strength and prowess, as croakers averred, England had never shone so transcendently in the arts of peace and the exploits of war, a prodigality of power which presaged the vindication of her own rights and of the liberties of Europe.
What was the new Europe which Pitt sought to call to being? The question is of deep interest, not only as a psychological study, but as revealing glimpses of British policy in the years 1814–15. The old order having been rudely shaken in Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Italy, Pitt sought to effect a compromise between the claims of tradition and those of expediency. It being of paramount importance to safeguard Europe against France, Pitt and Grenville insisted on the limitation of that Power within its old boundaries, and the complete independence of Switzerland and Holland. That of the Kingdom of Sardinia afterwards figured in their stipulations. But one significant change now appears. The restoration of Austrian rule at Brussels being impracticable, it was suggested that the Belgic Provinces should go to the Prince of Orange when restored to his rights at The Hague. In the desperate crisis of 1805, as we shall see, Pitt sought to allure Prussia by offering Belgium to her; but that was a passing thought soon given up. The other solution of the Netherlands Question finally prevailed, thanks to the efforts of Pitt's pupil, Castlereagh, in 1814. The Foreign Office did not as yet aim at the retention of the Cape of Good Hope and Ceylon as a set off to British efforts for the Dutch and their acquisition of Belgium; but this thought was already taking shape. The barrier against French aggressions in the south-east was to be found in the reconstituted Kingdom of Sardinia, the House of Savoy rendering in that quarter services similar to the House of Orange in Flanders and Brabant. In other respects the British Cabinet favoured Austria's plans of aggrandisement in Italy as enhancing her power in a sphere which could not arouse the jealousy of Prussia. The aims of Berlin not being known, except that the restoration of the House of Orange was desired, Pitt and Grenville remained silent on that topic.[509]
The question whether the peoples concerned would submit to this under-girding of the European fabric did not trouble them. They saw only the statics of territories; they had no conception of the dynamics of nations. A future in which Nationality, triumphant in Italy and Germany, would bring about a Balance of Power far more solid than any which their flying buttresses could assure, was of course entirely hidden from them. But they failed to read the signs of the times. The last despairing efforts of the Poles, and the levée en masse of the French people, now systematized in the Conscription Law of 5th September 1798, did not open their eyes to the future. For they were essentially men of the Eighteenth Century; and herein lay the chief cause of their failure against Revolutionary France. They dealt with lands as with blocks. She infused new energy into peoples.