William Pitt the Younger Quotes
These ministers will destroy the empire they were called upon to save, before the indignation of a great and suffering people can fall upon their heads, in the punishment which they deserve. I affirm the war to have been a most accursed, wicked, barbarous, cruel, unnatural, unjust, and diabolical-war.
Earlier, his father had also castigated the ministers over their inept hard-line handling of the American Revolution. See {641505} .
William Pitt, 1759-1806, British Prime Minister, (Elected at 24 as the youngest British Prime Minister. Son of William Pitt), Criticism of the government and their hard line handling of the American Revolution, Quoted in William Smyth, Lectures on Modern History, published 1854
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This quotation is interesting for two reasons. First, this is one of the most severe criticisms of a cabinet and ministers in English history. The second reason of interest is that it was these same ministers who made the policies and the decisions that would bring on the American Revolution. Were it not for the incompetence, there might not be a United States today. Pitt’s son later also castigated the ministers. See {641503}.
At that time, Russia and Germany were autocracy, and the ruler could simply take the English money and force the soldiers to fight in a war they had not stake in nor understood.
Hobson, like Mark Twain in America, was a major critic of imperialism.
This speech was officially prepared and read to the six Indian tribes of the Iroquois Nation. The purpose was to persuade the Iroquois Indians to stay neutral (see {583726}) in the coming conflict with England. The Iroquois had traditionally traded peaceably with the colonists and on many occasions the colonists and the Iroquois had fought against the French and other Indians. Unfortunately, a Mohawk chief, Joseph Brant, had traveled to England and been educated there. He, following the conventional wisdom of the day persuaded most of the Iroquois tribes to join the obvious winner—England—and fight on their side. Only the Oneida tribe resisted Brant’s advice, and joined the revolutionists. The result was a civil, fratricidal war of not only white, but also the Iroquois Indians who had been at peace with each other since any could remember. When the colonists won, the Oneida were warmly embraced and participated in New York and other colonial life and activities. The relationship was so good that a little over 200 years later the average earnings of the Indian in New York State exceeded that of the average white man. The other 5 Iroquois tribes however were attacked and driven out of their traditional territories and they fled with Joseph Brant to English Canada where they have not yet fully recovered their important place in the society.
Ministers refers to the Government Ministers, not to clergy.
Burke was one of the many members of the English Parliament who were opposed to a hard line in America in the beginning of the American Revolution and favored withdrawal after the hostilities began. The hard liners won un England and America was lost.
Howe had written Franklin attempting to stave off a American break with England. Franklin, with the approval of the Continental Congress, replied.
There was continuing tension between England, the Colonial Governors of South Africa and the Boers. Immigrant settlers to South Africa from Holland. The Boers were very uneducated and not steeped in democratic government. They wanted to enslave and sieze the land of the Black residents. Under English law, the Blacks were also English subjects. The Boers insisted that any interference in their persecution and enslavery of the Blacks was oppression just as the Southern American Whites saw Reconstruction defense of the Blacks as oppression to them. The classic question is: “Is it oppression to stop people from opressiong others?”
A Cossack revolt had broken out in 1707 and was put down by the Czar’s forces. He then issued what might be one of the first official orders for genocide. Few Cossacks survived.
The Parliament was debating the reaction to the Stamp Act by the American Colonies. One of the members, reflecting a majority view, asked sarcastically when the American Colonies had been emancipated so that they could make their own independent decisions. Pitt then hit this one out of the park by reversing the question.
Barre, who had served as an officer in North American fighting with the Americans against the French, was a major opponent of the Stamp Act and other efforts to tax the American colonies. In the debate one of his opponents referred the American colonies as “planted by the care of England” and “nourished” by the mother country’s care. Barre was imprisoned in the Tower of London for a while for his vigorous defense of the American colonists.
Beaumarchais served the French King Louis XVI as a spy and advisor on foreign affairs. He was instrumental in influencing the French King and his government to tilt in favor of the American Revolutionaries.
He was acting as French Foreign Secretary at the time.
See {636935}for the policy decision that triggered this order.
during and after the American Revolution
- Born: May 28, 1759
- Died: January 23, 1806
- Nationality: British
- Profession: Leader
William Pitt the Younger was a prominent British Tory statesman of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He became the youngest prime minister of Great Britain in 1783 at the age of 24 and the first prime minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland as of January 1801. He left office in March 1801, but served as prime minister again from 1804 until his death in 1806. He was also Chancellor of the Exchequer for all of his time as prime minister. He is known as "the Younger" to distinguish him from his father, William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, who is customarily referred to as "William Pitt the Elder" (or less commonly, simply "Chatham") and had previously served as prime minister.
