William Pitt entered Parliament in 1735, and joined the party calling themselves the Patriots, rallying round the Prince of Wales, who was always at enmity with the King and Queen. This party naturally included any one opposed to Walpole, still the all-powerful minister at Court. The Patriots were young men, talented and vigorous, and their first signal victory was obtained when they forced Walpole into declaring war against Spain, that country, they insisted, having systematically hampered, injured, and insulted British traders, in spite of treaties and negotiations. Walpole was before all else a peace minister; but the Patriots, supported by the country, declared that war was necessary if England was to uphold her position and power on the seas, and Pitt, full of energy and eloquence, was one of the most powerful, though one of the youngest, among the Patriots. This war, as Walpole had foreseen, was but the prelude to a general disturbance; England became involved in Continental quarrels, and the Stuart party seized this opportunity of making a final, though unsuccessful attempt to place Prince Charles Edward on the throne. After nine years a treaty of peace was signed at Aix-la-Chapelle, and broadly speaking, the result of the war, so far as this country was concerned, was that we had been successful on the seas, in Canada, and in India, unsuccessful on the Continent. Walpole had resigned, Newcastle was a Prime Minister "who had neither judgment nor ability," and Pitt became more and more the ruling power. The year 1757 saw him virtually Prime Minister, and with his whole might he set himself to arouse a national spirit in England, to make the people see that our real future lay not in the Continent, but in the Colonies. "I can save this country, nobody else can," he said confidently at this time, and it was no vain boast. The years which followed were glorious years. In India, France had joined with a powerful native prince to oust the British traders, and had been utterly defeated at Plassey by the genius of Clive, who had but a handful of troops as against seventy thousand. That victory made the British masters of the whole province of Bengal, and laid the foundations of our Indian Empire. From henceforward the French power in India rapidly declined. In America an equal triumph crowned Pitt’s policy. In Wolfe he had found a man able to do in the West what Clive did in the East, and Canada became a British Colony. Wolfe himself fell in the great struggle for Quebec, as did Montcalm, his rival French general, and a monument stands in the north ambulatory of the Abbey to the memory of the gallant young leader, who died in the hour of his victory. "It is necessary to watch for a victory every morning for fear of missing one," was the remark of Walpole’s son Horace. And the nation felt that it was Pitt whose policy and whose power had made all these things possible. Parliament was