The Peace of Paris

Notwithstanding all his efforts to the contrary, Bute was compelled to declare war against Spain in 1762; and a brilliant naval campaign, for which Pitt had made all the preparations, was carried on. Cuba and other islands in the West Indies were taken, Manila in the Philippine Islands was occupied ; and large amounts of Spanish treasure fell into British hands. Bute knew that he was hopelessly incompetent to conduct such a war, and in the face of these victories began to negotiate for peace. He refused longer to pay subsidies to Frederick II, whom Pitt had aided in order to fight France on the Continent as well as at sea, and he seemed ready to give up anything if only a peace could be arranged. Finally, on February 10, 1763, a treaty of peace was signed at Paris. The terms of this treaty, which were justly deemed inadequate by the British people, revealed, with startling distinctness, the expansion that had taken place, since the treaty of Utrecht, in British interests and British territory in the world beyond the seas. Great Britain came into full control in America: she received Canada, the islands of the St. Lawrence, a confirmation of her right in Nova Scotia (Acadia), the valley of the Mississippi, except New Orleans, and Florida in exchange for Cuba, which she gave back to Spain. Manila, in the Philippines, was also returned to Spain. Of the islands in the West Indies, she returned Martinique, Guadaloupe, and St. Lucia to France, and retained Tobago, St. Vincent, Dominica, and Granada. No less complete was the success in India. Though Pondicherry was restored to France, the French were to have no military control in the peninsula and were to confine their interests to a few trading stations.

The treaty of Paris, which marks the highest point of colonial power attained by Great Britain in the eighteenth century, made her the leading maritime state in the world. It roused a great deal of opposition in England, where it was deemed an insufficient compensation for Great Britain's many and brilliant victories, and greatly increased the unpopularity of Bute. But the popular verdict was not wholly just, for Great Britain gained much from the treaty and her colonial leadership was assured; moreover, the difficulties connected with the task of administering the colonies made rapid expansion dangerous; and the enormous cost of the war and the ominous increase of the national debt made peace exceedingly desirable.

Awakening of the People: The Religious Revival

Equally significant with the growth of Great Britain's colonial empire was the growth of public opinion during these years, and the gradual advance of the capitalist and working classes to a position of political importance in the kingdom. Commerce and trade had given merchants and other moneyed men a new interest in political life, and their wealth had made them already a power in the state. The middle classes, whether represented or not in parliament, were listened to more attentively than ever before by those who controlled the government. But the lower classes, who were without representation in any modern sense of the term, had hardly yet begun their political career. A great emotional force had, however, been at work among them, giving them, to an extent never understood before, a sense of unity and self-importance.

A great religious revival, which had begun in Walpole's time (1730-1740), had aroused the dull and sodden masses from the hopeless lethargy into which they had fallen, and had served as a rebuke to the indifference and intolerance of the clergy of the church of England. Though starting as a small movement among a few students at Oxford, of whom John Wesley, a wonderful preacher and organizer, his brother, Charles Wesley, and George Whitefield were the leaders, it soon spread to the laboring classes; artisans, peasants, and miners. Whitefield preached with tremendous power to crowds in the open air, appealing to their sense of sin, to their fear of the dangers that threatened their souls, and to the hope of the salvation that would follow the godly life. John Wesley preached as did Whitefield'; but, endowed as he was with a greater gift for organization, he gathered his followers into bands and societies, and gave form to that ecclesiastical system eventually known as Methodism. Though Wesley refused to separate either himself or his organization from the church of England, his followers, after his death, in 1791, broke away from the established church, and became a distinct religious body, the Methodists.

JOHN WESLEY.

From an old engraving.

Important as is the Wesleyan movement in the history of religious faith, in that it quickened the religious life of the other ecclesiastical bodies, yet of even greater importance, at the time, was its influence in stirring the lower classes to a new social and political activity. It aroused the laborer to a Dew realization of his own individuality, and made him a part of a powerful organization. It marks a turning point, therefore, in the history of English democracy.