Peace was voted notwithstanding. Lord Bute had felt the need of support in the House of Commons against the thundering eloquence of Pitt. He had called Henry Fox, who lacked neither adroit eloquence nor insidious manipulations. His personal experience had taught him to judge men severely. The aged Lord Grey was asked in our time who was the last English minister susceptible of being corrupted. He unhesitatingly answered, "Lord Holland."
England had achieved a glorious peace. She was fatigued from her long efforts, and resolved henceforward to leave to the continental powers the care of settling their own quarrels. Austria and Prussia alone were left, the first to enter the lists, the only nations which retained a serious interest in the questions in dispute. Frederick the Great had based new hopes on the young czar, and a caprice of fortune had robbed him of his support. Catherine II., Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst, was on bad terms with her husband. She took advantage of the indiscretions of Peter III. to excite a military insurrection against him. He was deposed, and shortly after died in his prison. Catherine was proclaimed sovereign in his place. The new sovereign was bold, ambitious, and as unscrupulous in her greed for power as in her private life. She remained neutral between Prussia and Austria. The states were at the end of their resources, the population decimated. In ten years Berlin had lost a tenth of her population, and thirty thousand of her inhabitants owed their subsistence to public charity. The two sovereigns agreed to an interchange of conquests. { 262} All this disturbance and all this suffering ended for Germany in the maintenance of the _statu quo_. France was exhausted, deprived of her most flourishing colonies, degraded in her own eyes as well as in those of Europe. She had dragged Spain along in her misfortune. England alone emerged triumphant and aggrandized with booty. She had gained forever the Empire of India, and for some years at least almost the whole of civilized America obeyed her laws. She had gained what we had lost, not by the superiority of her arms, nor even of her generals, but by the natural and innate force of a free people skillfully and nobly governed.