John Benjamin Heath

Some Account of the Worshipful Company of Grocers of the City of London John Benjamin Heath

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1854 Excerpt: ... places; and Mr. Pitt, whose talent for the office was no longer Memoirs of the Right Honourable William Pitt, vol. i. p. 22. denied, was made, at the age of twenty-four, First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. His firmness of purpose, and uncompromising rectitude of conduct, carried him triumphantlythrough all the cabals and opposition levelled against him at the commencement of his career, and, subsequently, through the difficulties of the RegencyQuestion in 1788, and through the dangers with which the country was menaced at the period of the French revolution. What has been termed the syjietn or principle of Mr. Pitt, in commencing and continuing the war with France, cannot be better explained than in the language of Lord Grenville, who, when it was proposed to make peace with the Republican Government of France, found the propositions and explanations of the French minister to be insults rather than conceffions and apologies, and said, that his Sovereign never could discontinue his preparations for war, "while the French retained that turbulent and aggresJive spirit which threatened danger to every nation in Europe" On this principle the war was commenced, and on this principle it was supported, at a risk and at an expense beyond all precedent. Mr. Pitt, however, did not live to witness that glorious and wonderful termination, which was, at last, brought about by a continuance of the fame system he had constantly pursued; and which, finally, ended in the conquest of France, the annihilation of her armies, and the banishment of her Ruler. Mr. Pitt, after a short illness, Biographical Dictionary, vol. xxv.--Tomline's and Giffbrd's Lives of William Pitt. died, at four o'clock in the morning, on the 23d January 1806, in the 47t...