THE COALITION GOVERNMENT OF 1757.
Source.—Baron FitzMaurice's Life of William Earl of Shelburne, 1875-76. Vol. i., pp. 85-87.
[By the new Coalition] there was produced a strong Council and a strong Government. The Cabinet Council was composed of the Duke of Newcastle, Mr. Pitt, Secretary of State, Lord Keeper Henley, Lord Hardwicke, Lord Mansfield, Lord Granville, Lord Holdernesse, Lord Anson, and Lord Ligonier. There were no party politics, and consequently no difference of opinion. I have heard Lord Chatham say they were the most agreeable conversations he ever experienced. The Duke of Newcastle, a very good-humoured man, was abundantly content with the whole patronage being left to him.... Lord Hardwicke ... was kept in order by Lord Granville's wit, who took advantage of the meeting of the balance of all parties to pay off old scores, and to return all he owed to the Pelhams and the Yorkes. He had a rooted aversion to Lord Hardwicke and to all his family. I don't know precisely for what reason, but he got the secret of cowing Lord Hardwicke, whose pretensions to classical learning gave Lord Granville, who really was a very fine classical scholar, a great opportunity. To this was added his knowledge of civil law,[24] in which Lord Hardwicke was deficient, and above all, his wit; but whatever way he got the key, he used it on all occasions unmercifully. In one of the short-lived administrations at the commencement of the war, Lord Granville, who had generally dined, turned round to say, "I am thinking that all over Europe they are waiting our determination and canvassing our characters. The Duke of Newcastle, they'll say, is a man of great fortune, who has spent a great deal of it in support of the present family."[25] "Fox, they'll say, is an impudent fellow who has fought his war through the House of Commons; as for me, they know me throughout Europe, they know my talents and my character; but I am thinking they will all be asking, Qui est ce diable de Chancelier? How came he here?"
[24] In illustration of this, and as a great statesman's verdict on a great period, it seems not inappropriate to quote here the famous story of Carteret's death, as told by Robert Wood in his Essay on the Original Genius of Homer, 1776, pp. v.-vi.: "Being directed to call upon his Lordship, a few days before he died, with the preliminary articles of the Treaty of Paris, I found him so languid that I proposed postponing my business for another time; but he insisted that I should stay, saying it could not prolong his life to neglect his duty; and, repeating the following passage out of Sarpedon's speech, dwelled with particular emphasis on the third line, which recalled the distinguishing part he had taken in public affairs—Ὦ πέπον, etc. His Lordship repeated the last word [ἴομεν] several times with a calm and determined resignation; and, after a serious pause of some minutes, he desired to hear the Treaty read, to which he listened with great attention, and recovered spirits enough to declare the approbation of a dying statesman (I use his own words) on the most glorious War, and most honourable Peace, this nation ever saw."
[25] This was so true that Newcastle, after a public life of five and forty years, died £300,000 the poorer for it.—Ed.
THE ENGLISH IN INDIA (1757-1759).
I.
The Black Hole of Calcutta described by a Survivor.
Source.—A Complete History of the War in India, from the Year 1749 to the Taking of Pondicherry in 1761. Pp. 18-21.
[The nabob of Bengal marched on Calcutta, which was abandoned by the commanding officer and the principal inhabitants.] Mr. Holwell, with a few gallant friends, and the remains of a feeble garrison, bravely defended the fort to the last extremity; but it was insufficient to protect an untenable place, or to affect an ungenerous enemy. The fort was taken on the twentieth day of June, 1756, and the whole garrison, consisting of 146 persons, being made prisoners, were thrust into a dungeon, called the Black-hole, from whence Mr. Holwell, with twenty-one others, came out alive, to paint a scene of the most cruel distress, which perhaps human nature ever suffered or survived.
When he came to England, in the year 1757, he published, in a letter, an account of this shocking barbarity, in terms so pathetic and moving as cannot fail drawing pity from the most obdurate and savage breast. "Figure to yourself, says he, if possible, the situation of one hundred and forty-six wretches, exhausted by continual fatigue and action, thus crammed together, in a cube of eighteen feet, in a close sultry night in Bengal; shut up to the eastward and southward, the only quarters from whence air could come to us, by dead walls, and a door open only to the westward by two windows strongly barred within; from whence we could receive scarce any the least circulation of fresh air.