great Frederick, had delivered the King of Prussia from a dangerous enemy, and promised to give him an ally equally trusty and potent.  France was exhausted, Spain discontented and angry; negotiations recommenced, on what disastrous conditions for the French colonies in both hemispheres has already been remarked; in Germany the places and districts occupied by France were to be restored; Lord Bute, like his great rival, required the destruction of the port of Dunkerque.

This was not enough for the persistent animosity of Pitt.  The preliminaries of peace had been already signed at Fontainebleau on the 3d of November, 1762:  when they were communicated to Parliament, the fallen minister, still the nation’s idol and the real head of the people, had himself carried to the House of Commons.  He was ill, suffering from a violent attack of gout; two of his friends led him with difficulty to his place, and supported him during his long speech; being exhausted, he sat down towards the end, contrary to all the usages of the House, without, however, having once faltered in his attacks upon a peace too easily made, of which it was due to him that England was able to dictate the conditions.  “It is as a maritime power,” he exclaimed, “that France is chiefly if not exclusively formidable to us;” and the ardor of his spirit restored to his enfeebled voice the dread tones which Parliament and the nation had been wont to hear “what we gain in this respect is doubly precious from the loss that results to her.  America, sir, was conquered in Germany.  Now you are leaving to France a possibility of restoring her navy.”

The peace was signed, however, not without ill humor on the part of England, but with a secret feeling of relief; the burdens which weighed upon the country had been increasing every year.  In 1762, Lord Bute had obtained from Parliament four hundred and fifty millions (eighteen million pounds) to keep up the war.  “I wanted the peace to be a serious and a durable one,” said the English minister in reply to Pitt’s attacks; “if we had increased our demands, it would have been neither the one nor the other.”

M. de Choiseul submitted in despair to the consequences of the long-continued errors committed by the government of Louis XV.  “Were I master,” said he, “we would be to the English what Spain was to the Moors; if this course were taken, England would be destroyed in thirty years from now.”  The king was a better judge of his weakness and of the general exhaustion.  “The peace we have just made is neither a good one nor a glorious one; nobody sees that better than I,” he said in his private correspondence; “but, under such unhappy circumstances, it could not be better, and I answer for it that if we had continued the war, we should have made, a still worse one next year.”  All the patriotic courage and zeal of the Duke of Choiseul, all the tardy impulse springing from the nation’s anxieties, could not suffice even to palliate the consequences of so many years’ ignorance, feebleness, and incapacity in succession.