but for some ephemeral battalion which was dispersed as soon as formed, felt no sentiment of honour in their calling and deserted right and left. One consequence of this exceedingly wasteful system was that the resources of England both in money and men were exhausted before peace was made, and that the war could not have been carried on for another twelve months even if it had been necessary. But yet more fatal than this was the misfortune that the system, owing to its supposed success, received consecration from the great name of Pitt. In the bitter struggle with France which began in 1793 and ended at Waterloo I have said that France squandered men to save money, and that England squandered money to save men. The elder Pitt squandered both money and men. The conclusion of peace in 1763 found England in possession of Gibraltar and Minorca in Europe; Bermuda, the Bahamas, several West Indian Islands and practically the entire continent of North America east of the Rocky Mountains from the mouth of the St Lawrence in the north to the Lower Mississippi in the south. I omit the name of India, for that is a subject to be treated separately. The military establishment of England and Ireland for the defence of this vast Empire was fixed at about forty-five thousand men, two-thirds of them roughly speaking at home, and one-third abroad. This was neither more nor less than madness; yet nevertheless many were found, so great a man as Burke among them, to condemn the "huge increase" as they called it of the Army. But this was not the worst. Prices generally had risen and the pay of the soldier was too small for his subsistence; wherefore recruits could hardly be obtained by any shift, and the ranks of regiments were miserably empty. Reeling under the burden of the debts bequeathed by the late war, England proposed to the Colonies that they should share that burden with her. The North American provinces admitted the justice of the claim but made no effort to meet it; whereupon the British Government, after exhausting all expedients for obtaining a contribution from them, fell back upon the only possible solution of the problem--impartial taxation of all the Colonies by Act of the Imperial Parliament, with a special provision that every penny of the money so raised should be spent in the Colonies themselves. A faction in the Colonies raised a loud outcry over this; and the question, owing to mismanagement in England and to the provocative violence of the American agitators, finally issued in war between Mother-country and Colonies.