[
402]
This note and this memorial, containing the men-
ace of a Spanish war, gave
Pitt the ascendency.
To the private intercession of the king he yielded but a little, and in appearance only, on the subject of the fishery.
‘I was overruled,’ said he afterwards, ‘I was overruled, not by the foreign enemy, but by another enemy;’ and at the next council he presented his reply to
France, not for deliberation, but acceptance.
Bute dared not express dissent, and as
Bedford disavowed all responsibility and retired with indignant surprise,
Pitt, with the unanimous consent of the cabinet, returned the memorials relative to
Prussia and to Spanish affairs as wholly inadmissible; declaring that the king ‘would not suffer the disputes with
Spain to be blended in any manner whatever in the negotiations of peace between the two nations.’
On the twenty-ninth of July,
Stanley, bearing the ultimatum of
England, demanded
Canada; the fisheries, with a limited and valueless concession to the
French, and that only on the humiliating condition of reducing
Dunkirk; half the neutral islands, especially
St. Lucia and
Tobago;
Senegal and
Goree, that is, a monopoly of the slave-trade; Minorca; freedom to assist the king of-Prussia; and British ascendency in the
East Indies.
The ministers of
Spain and
Austria could not conceal their exultation.
‘My honor,’ replied
Choiseul to the
English envoy,
will be the same fifty years hence as now; I am as indifferent to my place as Pitt can be; I admit with out the least reserve the king's propensity to peace, his Majesty may sign such a treaty as England demands, but my hand shall never be to that deed.
Thackeray's Life of Chatham, II. 580.
