ABSTRACT
However brilliant Pitt’s strategy and however meticulous his planning, he could have done little without England’s financial resources and her naval strength. If the war was fought for trade it was also financed by trade. Contemporaries were staggered by the large sums that somehow were raised to finance allies, equip armies and build ships, apart from the burden of paying large forces in the field and at sea. Pitt, seeing what must be done, had little patience with a cheeseparing policy. Though he abominated waste and raged with fury at any suspicion that funds were being misapplied, for his expeditions he made ruthless demands for money, which he expected Newcastle somehow to provide. For the Duke time had brought a strange reversal of roles. Once he spent on German allies money which Pelham had to find; now the business of supplying a far harder taskmaster than he had ever been fell to him. Often despairing, full of misgivings, at once frightened and petulant, somehow he found the money. Inevitably the burden lay heavily on the English people. The Land Tax stood at 4^ . in the pound, heavy duties on malt hit the mass of the people, there were taxes on houses and on windows. Over £11,000,000 was being raised from a population of between five and a half and six million, many of them desperately poor and living barely at subsistence level. The gap between expenditure and taxation was filled by loans. Had the economy not been both sound and expanding it could hardly have been done. Closely allied to Britain’s financial and economic strength was her growing naval power. An increasing population provided the necessary seamen and more men to train as shipwrights and craftsmen of every kind. New ships were built; growing invest ment in the manufacture of brass and copper and progress in the production of iron provided the munitions and the armaments. As sea power grew it became another unifying factor. Once the com mand of the seas had been gained it was possible to cut off supplies of men and munitions from France to Canada and India, to raid the
French coasts-thereby immobilizing men and relieving the pressure on Frederick II-and to acquire important French possessions both in the West Indies and on the African coast. This pressure could be kept up everywhere, so that France could never conserve her energies and concentrate them on any particular objective. In consequence, each year that the war continued England secured a tighter stranglehold.
