In India, the English "Merchant Company," chartered by Elizabeth in 1600, had expanded to a power. One of the native Princes, jealous of these foreign intruders in Bengal, and roused, it was said, by the French to expel them, committed that deed at which the world has shuddered ever since. One hundred and fifty settlers and traders, were thrust into an air-tight dungeon—in an Indian midsummer. Maddened with heat and with thirst, most of them died before morning, trampling upon each other in frantic efforts to get air and water. This is the story of the "Black Hole of Calcutta;" which led to the victories of Clive, and the establishment of English Empire in India, 1767.
Two years later a quarrel over the boundaries of their American Colonies brought the French and English into direct conflict. Gen. Wolfe, the English Commander, was killed at the moment of victory in scaling the walls of Quebec. Montcalm, the French commander, being saved the humiliation of seeing the loss of Canada (1760), by sharing the same fate.
The dream of French Empire in America was at an end; and with the cession of Florida by Spain, England was mistress of the eastern half of the Continent from Nova Scotia to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. So since the days of Elizabeth, and from seed dropped by her hand, an Eastern and a Western Empire had been added to that island Kingdom, whose highest dream had been to get back some of her lost provinces in France. Instead of that it was to be her destiny to girdle the Earth, so that the Sun in its entire course should never cease to shine upon British Dominions.
Side by side with the aspiration which uplifts a nation, there is always a tendency toward degradation, which can only be arrested by the infusion of a higher spiritual life. Strong alcoholic liquors had taken the place of beer in England (to avoid the excessive tax imposed upon it) and the grossest intemperance prevailed in the early part of this reign. John Wesley introduced a regenerative force when he went about among the people preaching "Methodism," a pure and simple religion. Not since Augustine had the hearts of men been so touched, and a new life and new spirit came into being, better than all the prosperity and territorial expansion of the time.
Walpole had passed from view long before the stirring changes we have alluded to. A new hand was guiding the affairs of State; the hand of William Pitt.
CHAPTER XII
At the close of the Seven Years' War, England had driven the French out of Canada,—her ships which had traversed the Pacific from one end to the other, (Capt. Cook) had wherever they touched, claimed islands for the Crown; she had projected into the heart of India English institutions and civilization.