Chapter 32
1763-1884

Conclusion

"This," said Earl Granville on his deathbed, "has been the most glorious war and the most triumphant peace that England ever knew.  " Not all were so well pleased, and many held with Pitt that the House of Bourbon should have been forced to drain the cup of humiliation to the dregs.   Yet the fact remains that the Peace of Paris marks an epoch than which none in modern history is more fruitful of grand results.   With it began a new chapter in the annals of the world.   To borrow the words of a late eminent writer, "It is no exaggeration to say that three of the many victories of the Seven Years War determined for ages to come the destinies of mankind.   With that of Rossbach began the re-creation of Germany, with that of Plassey the influence of Europe told for the first time since the days of Alexander on the nations of the East; with the triumph of Wolfe on the Heights of Abraham began the history of the United States.  ”

So far, however, as concerns the war in the Germanic countries, it was to outward seeming but a mad debauch of blood and rapine, ending in nothing but the exhaustion of the combatants.   The havoc had been frightful.   According to the King of Prussia's reckoning, 853,000 soldiers of the various nations had lost their lives, besides hundreds of thousands of non-combatants who had perished from famine, exposure, disease, or violence.   And with all this waste of life not a boundary line had been changed.   The rage of the two empresses and the vanity and spite of the concubine had been completely foiled.   Frederic had defied them all, and had come out of the strife intact in his own hereditary dominions and master of all that he had snatched from the Empress-Queen; while Prussia, portioned out by her enemies as their spoil, lay depleted indeed, and faint with deadly striving, but crowned with glory, and with the career before her which, through tribulation and adversity, was to lead her at last to the headship of a united Germany.  

Through centuries of strife and vicissitude the French monarchy had triumphed over nobles, parliaments, and people, gathered to itself all the forces of the State, beamed with illusive splendors under Louis the Great, and shone with the phosphorescence of decay under his contemptible successor; till now, robbed of prestige, burdened with debt, and mined with corruption, it was moving swiftly and more swiftly towards the abyss of ruin.  

While the war hastened the inevitable downfall of the French monarchy, it produced still more notable effects.   France under Colbert had embarked on a grand course of maritime and colonial enterprise, and followed it with an activity and vigor that promised to make her a great and formidable ocean power.   It was she who led the way in the East, first trained the natives to fight her battles, and began that system of mixed diplomacy and war which, imitated by her rival, enabled a handful of Europeans to master all India.   In North America her vast possessions dwarfed those of every other nation.   She had built up a powerful navy and created an extensive foreign trade.   All this was now changed.   In India she was reduced to helpless inferiority, with total ruin in the future; and of all her boundless territories in North America nothing was left but the two island rocks on the coast of Newfoundland that the victors had given her for drying her codfish.   Of her navy scarcely forty ships remained; all the rest were captured or destroyed.   She was still great on the continent of Europe, but as a world power her grand opportunities were gone.  

In England as in France the several members of the State had battled together since the national life began, and the result had been, not the unchecked domination of the Crown, but a system of balanced and adjusted forces, in which King, Nobility, and Commons all had their recognized places and their share of power.   Thus in the war just ended two great conditions of success had been supplied: a people instinct with the energies of ordered freedom, and a masterly leadership to inspire and direct them.  

All, and more than all, that France had lost England had won.   Now, for the first time, she was beyond dispute the greatest of maritime and colonial Powers.   Portugal and Holland, her precursors in ocean enterprise, had long ago fallen hopelessly behind.   Two great rivals remained, and she had humbled the one and swept the other from her path.   Spain, with vast American possessions, was sinking into the decay which is one of the phenomena of modern history; while France, of late a most formidable competitor, had abandoned the contest in despair.   England was mistress of the seas, and the world was thrown open to her merchants, explorers, and colonists.   A few years after the Peace the navigator Cook began his memorable series of voyages, and surveyed the strange and barbarous lands which after times were to transform into other Englands, vigorous children of this great mother of nations.   It is true that a heavy blow was soon to fall upon her; her own folly was to alienate the eldest and greatest of her offspring.   But nothing could rob her of the glory of giving birth to the United States; and, though politically severed, this gigantic progeny were to be not the less a source of growth and prosperity to the parent that bore them, joined with her in a triple kinship of laws, language, and blood.   The war or series of wars that ended with the Peace of Paris secured the opportunities and set in action the forces that have planted English homes in every clime, and dotted the earth with English garrisons and posts of trade.  

With the Peace of Paris ended the checkered story of New France; a story which would have been a history if faults of constitution and the bigotry and folly of rulers had not dwarfed it to an episode.   Yet it is a noteworthy one in both its lights and its shadows: in the disinterested zeal of the founder of Quebec, the self-devotion of the early missionary martyrs, and the daring enterprise of explorers; in the spiritual and temporal vassalage from which the only escape was to the savagery of the wilderness; and in the swarming corruptions which were the natural result of an attempt to rule, by the absolute hand of a master beyond the Atlantic, a people bereft of every vestige of civil liberty.   Civil liberty was given them by the British sword; but the conqueror left their religious system untouched, and through it they have imposed upon themselves a weight of ecclesiastical tutelage that finds few equals in the most Catholic countries of Europe.   Such guardianship is not without certain advantages.   When faithfully exercised it aids to uphold some of the tamer virtues, if that can be called a virtue which needs the constant presence of a sentinel to keep it from escaping: but it is fatal to mental robustness and moral courage; and if French Canada would fulfil its aspirations it must cease to be one of the most priest-ridden communities of the modern world.  

Scarcely were they free from the incubus of France when the British provinces showed symptoms of revolt.   The measures on the part of the mother-country which roused their resentment, far from being oppressive, were less burdensome than the navigation laws to which they had long submitted; and they resisted taxation by Parliament simply because it was in principle opposed to their rights as freemen.   They did not, like the American provinces of Spain at a later day, sunder themselves from a parent fallen into decrepitude; but with astonishing audacity they affronted the wrath of England in the hour of her triumph, forgot their jealousies and quarrels, joined hands in the common cause, fought, endured, and won.   The disunited colonies became the United States.   The string of discordant communities along the Atlantic coast has grown to a mighty people, joined in a union which the earthquake of civil war served only to compact and consolidate.   Those who in the weakness of their dissensions needed help from England against the savage on their borders have become a nation that may defy every foe but that most dangerous of all foes, herself, destined to a majestic future if she will shun the excess and perversion of the principles that made her great, prate less about the enemies of the past and strive more against the enemies of the present, resist the mob and the demagogue as she resisted Parliament and King, rally her powers from the race for gold and the delirium of prosperity to make firm the foundations on which that prosperity rests, and turn some fair proportion of her vast mental forces to other objects than material progress and the game of party politics.   She has tamed the savage continent, peopled the solitude, gathered wealth untold, waxed potent, imposing, redoubtable; and now it remains for her to prove, if she can, that the rule of the masses is consistent with the highest growth of the individual; that democracy can give the world a civilization as mature and pregnant, ideas as energetic and vitalizing, and types of manhood as lofty and strong, as any of the systems which it boasts to supplant.

The End

A concluding word from Robert J.   Kuniegel

TR AMERICAN PATRIOT hopes you enjoy our books.   Theodore Roosevelt lived his life in a manner that made government responsive to the people.   He has written how to make meaningful reform possible not only for his generation but for future generations, if we read what he has said.   We only need to interest others in reading what he has said to transform our government.  

Reading the books on TR AMERICAN PATRIOT DOT COM  and having others do the same, has the potential to develop citizens and leaders capable of transforming American politics into a system of government that will be honest, and responsive to “a square deal”.   A square deal has no special deals for the rich, the middle class, or the poor.   Our government today rewards citizens for not being productive.   It promotes entitlements under the guise of helping people, when in fact it only helps politicians to protect their own royal positions.   Policies that foster a special privileged class was the type of government policies Theodore Roosevelt fought against and won.   He was a visionary.   He knew this fight would need to be fought through the ages if we were to keep our country strong.   He was an intrepid pioneer that blazed a trail through a jungle of corrupt government, so that others might follow his proven and highly successful common sense approach toward honest government.   His fearless course helped make America a beacon of hope to all that seek justice.   His endless devotion to America helped make America a super power that no just nation has needed to fear as long as our citizens value his lofty resolute square deal policy toward our fellow citizens and those of other nations.  

Theodore Roosevelt’s greatest gift to this country is before us.   It is not in the past, if we as Americans recognize that his message is not just a story from American history pages.   His message is an example, clearly defined.   It details actions that are required if we desire to do something meaningful for our country.   Join the good fight today by becoming a member of our web site. 

David Boyd, repeating what he had read, once said, “The person we become is because of our experiences in life, the people we meet, and the books we read.  ” It is time to have others meet Theodore Roosevelt.   It is time for a Theodore Roosevelt revival, “Fear God and do your own part”.   Dare to help make Theodore Roosevelt the standard and not the exception.   America needs to adopt a wise, fearless and honest role model as the standard we revere, so that our public servants know what we expect.   The first step to honest government is no harder than setting proper standards of conduct for our public servants through the use of a proper role model.   Can you find one quality in Theodore Roosevelt that is not right in a public servant?  If you think you can, I bet your conjecture is based upon something other than truth and honest reasoning and this American would love an opportunity to debate any such conjecture.