[Sidenote: 1758-1805—Nelson]
The British admirals are the heroes of the dying eighteenth century. "Admirals all, they said their say, the echoes are rising still"—in the words of Henry Newbolt's gallant song. "Admirals all, they went their way to the haven under the hill." Dundonald was called, and finely called, the last of the sea-kings; but they were all true kinsmen of the Vikings, the admirals who were famous figures in Dundonald's fiery youth and famous memories in Dundonald's noble age. And as the admirals were, so were the captains, so were the men. Fearney sticking the surrendered swords in a sheaf under his arm; Walton calmly informing his superior that "we have taken or destroyed all the Spanish ships on this coast: number as per margin," are typical figures in a tradition of a courage so superlative that Admiral Sir Robert Calder, who fought very gallantly and took two ships, was tried by court-martial and severely reprimanded for not having destroyed the French fleet. The age of George the Third would be memorable, if it were memorable for nothing else, for the deeds and the glories of the great sea fights and the great sea fighters who saved England from invasion, knocking the tall ships of France to pieces, taking monstrous odds with alacrity, eager to engage in all weathers and under all conditions, cheerfully converting what seemed an impossible task into not merely a feasible but an easy piece of business. There are some sea battles of that time, fought out in storm and darkness, which read in the tamest statement with the pomp and beauty of the most majestic music. The names of the great admirals must always be dear to English ears, must always sound sweet on English lips. St. Vincent, Collingwood, Howe, Duncan, the noble list proceeds, each name illuminated with its only splendid story of desperate enterprise and deathless honor, till the proudest name of all is reached, {337} and praise itself seems to falter and fall off before the lonely grandeur of Nelson. Never was a little life filled with greater achievements; never was a little body more compact of the virtues that make great captains and brave men. The life that began in the September of 1758 and that ended in the October of 1805 holds in the compass of its forty-seven years the epitome of what England meant for Englishmen in the days of its greatest peril and its greatest glory. Magnificent, magniloquent, turbulent, it is starred with glowing phrases as thickly as with glowing deeds. "Fear! I never saw fear: what is it?" "A peerage, or Westminster Abbey;" the immortal signal; the famous saying off Copenhagen: "It is warm work; this day will be the last to many of us, but I would not be elsewhere for thousands;" the pathos of the dying lover: "Let my dear Lady Hamilton have my hair;" and the pride of the dying hero: "Thank God, I have done my duty"—all these things are the splendid ornaments of a splendid career; they gleam on his story as his stars and orders gleamed upon his breast when the "Victory" renewed her name. With the battle of Trafalgar and the destruction of the allied French and Spanish fleets Napoleon's dream of England's conquest came to an end. The result was bought at a great price, the price of Nelson's life. But Nelson had done his work, and done it well. He saved his country; he had deserved well of his countrymen; he summed in himself all the qualities that made the English sailor the idol of his people and the terror of his foes.
While Nelson still lived and conquered, there came a check to the troubled supremacy of Pitt. In 1801—when the memories of the battle of the Nile and the defence of Acre were still fresh in men's thoughts, and Napoleon had been for a year First Consul—Pitt, baffled by circumstances, surrendered to mediocrity and Addington was Prime Minister in his place. For three disastrous years Addington was permitted to prove his incompetency, till in 1804 Pitt, as the only possible man, came back to power to face a Napoleon more menacing than ever, a Napoleon now, in that same year, crowned and triumphant as {338} Emperor of the French. England was Mistress of the Seas, but Napoleon was Master of Europe. Pitt's health was fading swiftly; he watched with despair the progress of his enemy. Ulm came, and Austerlitz, and Austerlitz struck Pitt at the heart.
The closing hours of Pitt's career were as troubled and as gloomy as its dawn had been radiant and serene. It may have cost him little to be reconciled with the pompous mediocrity of Addington, and thereby to placate the King. His nature could afford to be magnanimous to the ungrateful incompetency that was able only in betrayal. It need not have given a pang to that proud and lonely spirit to welcome into the Cabinet the Earl of Buckinghamshire, who had wedded the one fair woman whose heart Pitt had won and lost. But the anguish of his soul was wrung into expression by the fall of Dundas. He had loved Dundas, who was now Lord Melville, long and well. Lord Melville's conduct as Treasurer to the Navy provoked from the Opposition a series of condemnatory resolutions. In spite of all that Pitt could do, the resolutions were supported by many of his followers, by many of his friends, by one friend conspicuous among all, by Wilberforce. The division was neck and neck, 216 to 216; the Speaker, "white as a sheet," gave the casting vote against Dundas which stabbed Pitt to the core. Whether it were or no, as Wilberforce maintained, a "false principle of honor" which led the great minister to support Melville, Pitt felt the blow as he had felt nothing before and was to feel but one thing again. Pitt pulled his little cocked hat over his forehead to hide his tears. One brutal adversary, Sir Thomas Mostyn, raised the wild yell of triumph that denotes to huntsmen the death of the fox. Another savage, Colonel Wardle, urged his friends to come and see "how Billy looked after it." But the young Tory gentlemen rallied around their hero. They made a circle of locked arms, and with looks and words that meant swords they kept the aggressors off. In their midst Pitt moved unconsciously out of the House—a broken-hearted man.
[Sidenote: 1806—Death of Pitt]
The heart of Pitt was allowed to feel one pulse of pride {339} and pleasure before it ceased to beat. Pitt shared in the triumph of Trafalgar; he made his best and noblest appearance in public; made his last most splendid speech: "Europe is not to be saved by any single man," he said to those who saluted him at the Guildhall as the savior of Europe. "England has saved herself by her exertions, and will, I trust, save Europe by her example." A few weeks later, in the December of 1805, Pitt was at Bath, when a courier brought him the news of the battle of Austerlitz. The news practically killed him. He had long been ailing grievously. Sir Walter Farquhar's account of Pitt's health, lately made public by Lord Rosebery, proves that the body which cased that great spirit was indeed a ruined body. Grief and anxiety had stamped lines of care and sorrow upon his face, which gave it what Wilberforce afterwards called "the Austerlitz look." The phrase is famous and admirable, if not exactly accurate as used by Wilberforce, for Lord Stanhope shows that Wilberforce never saw Pitt after the battle of Austerlitz was fought. With the Austerlitz look on his face, Pitt travelled to London, to the villa now known as Bowling Green House at Putney. With the Austerlitz look on his face he surrendered himself to the care of his niece, Lady Hester Stanhope, who afterwards lived eccentric and died lonely in the East, a kind of desert queen. With the Austerlitz look on his face he bade that niece roll up the map of Europe: "It will not be wanted these ten years." With the Austerlitz look on his face he died on January 23, 1806.
England, that had lost in three months Nelson and Pitt, was to lose a third great man in only eight months more. Pitt's body lay in Westminster; Pitt's Ministry was dissipated into air; Pitt's great opponent was called to the office for the last time, and for a very short time. Fox, as we are told by his biographer, Lord Russell, never felt personal enmity to Pitt. He said, with generous truth, that he never gave a vote with more satisfaction than his vote in support of the motion to pay Pitt's debts and to settle pensions on his nieces. He could not and did not indorse the proposal to confer honor on the memory of Mr. Pitt {340} as an "excellent statesman." He was ready to take office in the Ministry of All the Talents that Lord Grenville gathered together. He became Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House of Commons.
Fox, in office as out of office, had three great questions closely at heart: the treatment of Catholics, peace with France, and the Slave Trade. But Fox in office was obliged to face and recognize the difficulties, the solution of these questions. He admitted, reluctantly, the inadvisability of pressing the Catholic claims at a time when such pressure would prove destructive alike to the claims and to the Ministry that maintained them. He admitted, reluctantly, that the prospect of peace with France was very far from hopeful. He still dreamed of a speedy abolition of the Slave Trade, and to this end he attended Parliament too persistently in defiance of the warnings of his failing health. He was tapped for dropsy; his condition grew worse; in the evening of September 13, 1806, he died. He was the greatest liberal of his age; the greatest friend of liberty. The Irish poet bade the Irish banshee wail for him on whose burning tongue, truth, peace, and freedom hung.
Fox was not long dead when the Ministry of All the Talents found itself in direct collision with its royal master. It had ventured to suggest that it should be permitted to Catholics and to Dissenters to serve the King and the country in the Army and Navy. This small concession was too vast for the bigotry of George. He would have none of it, and the obsequious Ministry consented to abandon the measure. This was not enough for George. He wanted to extract from the Ministry a formal promise in writing that it would never submit to the sovereign any measure that involved, or was in any way connected with, concessions to the Catholics. The Ministry was not obsequious to that ignoble degree. It refused to bind itself by any such degrading pledge; and, in consequence, it was turned out of office, and the Duke of Portland and Mr. Perceval reigned in its stead. The Ministry of All the Talents had lived neither a long nor a useful life.
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