Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV CANADA
They seem to have lost sight of the great fundamental principle that France is chiefly if not solely to be dreaded by us in the light of a maritime and commercial power, and therefore by restoring to her all the valuable West India Islands, and by our concessions in the Newfoundland fishery, we had given to her the means of recovering her prodigious losses and of becoming once more formidable to us at sea. ?Pitt on the Preliminaries for Peace, 1762. The brilliant writer who has made the early history of North America at once a classic and a romance, has pointed out that when Pitt took office in 1756 the English conquest of Canada was no foregone conclusion.1 Some of the leading statesmen of the day questioned not only whether it were possible, but if it would be good policy, to drive the French entirely from the continent.2 Pitt had no such doubts; ten years before his first ministry he had come to the conclusion that the expulsion of the French was not only possible, but absolutely necessary, for the safety of the British colonists. Ten years of watchful observation gave his opinion the force of a verdict. Curiously enough, Pitt gained his first knowledge of Canadian affairs from the Duke of Bedford, the man who was to defeat Pitt’s designs at the moment of victory. As Paymaster of the Forces, he was brought into communication with the Duke, who was First Lord of the Admiralty from 1746 to 1748, and then Secretary of State till I75O.3 In 1746 Bedfordand Pitt were the only English ministers who seriously advocated an attack upon the commercial empire of France. When, in 1745, a handful of New England fishermen and farmers captured Louisburg, the American Dunkirk, Pitt and Bedford were thrilled,1 and the former did all in his power to persuade the D…
