TWO:Meanwhile, Florida Blanca had planned the capture of Minorca. He prevailed on France, though with difficulty, to assist. The Duke de Crillon, a Frenchman, was made commander of the expedition, and on the 22nd of July the united fleets of France and Spain sailed out of Cadiz Bay, and stretched out into the ocean, as if intending to make a descent on England. The main part of the fleet did, in fact, sail into the English Channel. But they did not venture to attack Admiral Darby, and contented themselves with picking up a number of merchant vessels; and again dissensions and disease breaking out, this great fleet separated, and each nation returned to its respective ports, without effecting anything worthy of such an armament. But a lesser portion of this fleet, on coming out of harbour, carrying eight thousand troops, stores, and ordnance, had passed through the Straits of Gibraltar, and[285] appeared suddenly before Port Mahon. On the 19th of August the troops were landed near Port Mahon, and, being favoured by the inhabitants, once under the sway of Spain, and good Catholics, they soon invested the fort, and compelled General Murray, who formerly so bravely defended Quebec, to retire to Fort St. Philip, leaving the town of Port Mahon in their possession. Despite the resolute defence of his men, Murray was forced to surrender the island.Britain was anxiously appealed to for aid; but Pitt, who had raised so powerful an armament to check the attacks of Russia on Turkey, was not disposed to denounce the attempts of Russia on Poland. He might be blamed for refraining from exerting the moral power of Britain in condemnation of the unprincipled aggression of Russia, but he could not be expected to take arms in defence of Poland, so far removed from the influence of a maritime nation. Colonel Gardiner, our Minister at Warsaw, was instructed by our Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Lord Grenville, to express a friendly interest towards Poland, but to take care to avoid raising hopes of assistance. The Poles, repelled by Prussia and Austria, and finding no warmth of sympathy in the agent of Britain, dispatched Count Bukaty in June to London to plead for aid. But Pitt was cold and immovable, though he saw with regret that the absorption of this large country, in the centre of Europe, would formidably increase that preponderance of Russia, which he had attempted to prevent when there was a question of the absorption of Turkey. He adopted an attitude of strict neutrality. No motion condemnatory of Russia's grasping schemes was made in Parliament; it seemed to Britain a matter of no moment that one of the chief nations of Europe should be torn in pieces by rapacious Powers, contrary to all moral and international law. The Whigs, those warm advocates of revolution and of popular freedom, were dumb. In fact, what could they say? Fox and his admirers had all along been lauding the Russian Empress as one of the greatest, ablest, and most innocent of monarchs, simply in opposition to Pitt and his endeavours to repress her schemes of aggrandisement. Fox had even sent Mr. Adair as his emissary to St. Petersburg, to congratulate her on her successes, and to assure her of the admiration of Englishmen. Such are the perversities into which men are driven by party spirit! At this very moment Fox and the Whigs were flattering and patting Catherine on the back, when her bandit armies had already their feet on the doomed soil of Poland, and they were still applauding the Revolutionists of France, when they were already beyond the Rhine, on that crusade of conquest which plunged Europe into more than twenty years of the most horrible bloodshed. They saw all this when too late. For the present, what was done for Poland was to call a meeting at the Mansion House and open a subscription for the suffering Poles.
TWO:In these unfortunate circumstances, Charles Townshend, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, proposed the annual rate for the land-tax. He called for the amount of four shillings in the pound, the rate at which it had stood during the war; but he promised next year to reduce it to three. The country gentlemen grumbled, representing that in years of peace it was commonly reduced to three and sometimes to two. Grenville saw his advantagehis great opponent away and the landholders ready to rebeland he moved that, instead of next year, the reduction should take place immediately. Dowdeswell supported him, and the amendment was carried by two hundred and six votes against a hundred and eighty-eight. The Opposition was astonished at its own success, and yet it need not have been; they who had to vote were chiefly land-owners, and men who did not like taxing themselves. As Lord Chesterfield observed, "All the landed gentlemen had bribed themselves with this shilling in the pound."
