In the meantime, the nation exhibited all the signs of wealth and prosperity.  The merchants of London had never been more thriving.  The importance of several great commercial and manufacturing towns, of Glasgow in particular, dates from this period.  The fine inscription on the monument of Lord Chatham, in Guildhall records the general opinion of the citizens of London, that under his administration commerce had been “united with and made to flourish by war?”

It must be owned that these signs of prosperity were in some degree delusive.  It must be owned that some of our conquests were rather splendid than useful.  It must be owned that the expense of the war never entered into Pitt’s consideration.  Perhaps it would be more correct to say that the cost of his victories increased the pleasure with which he contemplated them.  Unlike other men in his situation, he loved to exaggerate the sums which the nation was laying out under his direction.  He was proud of the sacrifices and efforts which his eloquence and his success had induced his countrymen to make.  The price at which he purchased faithful service and complete victory, though far smaller than that which his son, the most profuse and incapable of war ministers, paid for treachery, defeat, and shame, was long and severely felt by the nation.

Even as a war minister, Pitt is scarcely entitled to all the praise which his contemporaries lavished on him.  We, perhaps from ignorance, cannot discern in his arrangements any appearance of profound or dexterous combination.  Several of his expeditions, particularly those which were sent to the coast of France, were at once costly and absurd.  Our Indian conquests, though they add to the splendour of the period during which he was at the head of affairs, were not planned by him.  He had undoubtedly great energy, great determination, great means at his command.  His temper was enterprising; and, situated as he was, he had only to follow his temper.  The wealth of a rich nation, the valour of a brave nation, were ready to support him in every attempt.

In one respect, however, he deserved all the praise that he has ever received.  The success of our arms was perhaps owing less to the skill of his dispositions than to the national resources and the national spirit.  But that the national spirit rose to the emergency, that the national resources were contributed with unexampled cheerfulness, this was undoubtedly his work.  The ardour of his soul had set the whole kingdom on fire.  It inflamed every soldier who dragged the cannon up the heights of Quebec, and every sailor who boarded the French ships among the rocks of Brittany.  The Minister, before he had been long in office, had imparted to the commanders whom he employed his own impetuous, adventurous, and defying character They, like him, were disposed to risk everything, to play double or quits to the last, to think nothing done while anything remained undone, to fail rather than