THE EXPANSION OF ENGLAND 255 



teenth century, which otherwise ])erplex us, were really waged to plant 

 English power permanently in America and other lands; that they 

 were not waged primarily for continental purposes, but were waged 

 for America and for the expansion of England. 



I think that Professor Seeley, with his vivid imagination, goes a 

 little too far in tliat book. He is in danger of ascribing to England 

 that which England onl}^ blundered into. He does not bring out 

 adequate!}', what I think the historical scholar must in the end de- 

 clai'e, that the wars in the eighteenth century — the wars which we 

 have named after King William, Queen Anne, and King George — 

 were not waged for America and the expansion of England. England 

 struck here and France struck here because it was a convenient way 

 in which to strike for home purposes. As a matter of fact, all these 

 colonial enterprises served for the expansion of England, and English- 

 men were carrying them out ; but the significance of America was 

 something hard to grasp by England as a nation. As we study that 

 centur}' the thing that impresses us is the indifference of England to 

 these colonies — the failure to apprehend what America meant and 

 what the possibilities of English expansion were. 



The one man of that eigliteenth century who understood in some 

 measure the meaning of that word America was William Pitt, the Earl 

 of Chatham. When he first said, in 1755, concerning the Seven Years' 

 War, that it was being waged in behalf of the desjiised and neglected 

 colonies, he said something that few men in England could even 

 understand. I have stated that I should like to see rise in the city of 

 Raleigh a monument to English colonization. We also need a mon- 

 ument to William Pitt, the first great Englishman to realize what 

 America was to he. We have, indeed, named one of our cities after 

 him, and it has become a great city. Never was a city more fortu- 

 nately named than Pittstnirg, standing on the site chosen by Wash- 

 ington himself as a key to the situation in the struggle in the West 

 in that great campaign of England for North America. 



As we go on to the next century, the most eventful year is 1750, 

 the year of the ca[)ture of Quebec by Wolfe. That event was signif- 

 icant because it settled finally that England, and not France, should 

 control this continent. When, on the evening of that September day, 

 under the stars, Wolfe and his gallant men climbed the hanks that 

 led to the heights of (Quebec — on that September night the great West, 

 the Mississippi Valley, dotted with its forts and garrisons, was in the 

 jKtssessicni of France. Tliat great country from Nova Scotia to the 



