Yet to the middle-class England of his own
time, that unenfranchised England which had little representation in
Parliament, he was a voice, an inspiration, and a tower of strength. He
would not flatter the people; but, turning with contempt from the tricks
and devices of official politics, he threw himself with a confidence
that never wavered on their patriotism and public spirit. They answered
him with a boundless trust, asked but to follow his lead, gave him
without stint their money and their blood, loved him for his domestic
virtues and his disinterestedness, believed him even in his
self-contradiction, and idolized him even in his bursts of arrogant
passion. It was he who waked England from her lethargy, shook off the
spell that Newcastle and his fellow-enchanters had cast over her, and
taught her to know herself again. A heart that beat in unison with all
that was British found responsive throbs in every corner of the vast
empire that through him was to become more vast. With the instinct of
his fervid patriotism he would join all its far-extended members into
one, not by vain assertions of parliamentary supremacy, but by bonds of
sympathy and ties of a common freedom and a common cause.
The passion for power and glory subdued in him all the sordid parts of
humanity, and he made the power and glory of England one with his own.
He could change front through resentment or through policy; but in
whatever path he moved, his objects were the same: not to curb the power
of France in America, but to annihilate it; crush her navy, cripple her
foreign trade, ruin her in India, in Africa, and wherever else, east or
west, she had found foothold; gain for England the mastery of the seas,
open to her the great highways of the globe, make her supreme in
commerce and colonization; and while limiting the activities of her
rival to the European continent, give to her the whole world for a
sphere.
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