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The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria cover

The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria

Chapter 496: SUBSIDY TO AUSTRIA.
By Edward Farr
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About This Book

The volume traces British political, parliamentary, and military developments from the accession of George III through the early nineteenth century, chronicling changes of ministry and cabinet, debates over colonial taxation and the American conflict, parliamentary controversies involving figures such as Wilkes and Warren Hastings, questions of Catholic relief and slave-trade abolition, and responses to the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, including major naval and continental campaigns, the union with Ireland, and domestic legislation on finance, civil liberties, and parliamentary reform.

SUBSIDY TO AUSTRIA.

Early in this year it became evident that, besides the United Provinces, both Prussia and Spain were on the point of breaking with the coalition, and concluding separate treaties with France: Prussia, from the mutual distrust which existed between her and Austria, and from her exhausted finances; and Spain from the recent defeats in Biscay and Catalonia. Austria remained our steadfast ally; but Austria too wanted money, and thought herself entitled to call upon England for a subsidy. On the 4th of February Pitt delivered a message from the king, intimating that a loan of nearly five millions sterling would be wanted to aid the exertions of his imperial majesty in the ensuing campaign, on the credit of the revenues arising from his hereditary dominions. Much discussion arose upon this subject. Fox said, that the recent defalcation of the King of Prussia, after he had obtained our gold, ought to operate as a caution against all advances to German princes. This was just; for the subsidy granted to the King of Prussia had been most foully applied; it had not been employed on the Rhine, or the Moselle, but on the Vistula; not against republican France, but against the Poles. Even Pitt and his supporters were forced to admit that the conduct of Prussia was bad; but they insisted that there was a wide difference in the case and conduct of Austria, whose own vital interests were dependent on the issue of this war. Austria also had shown herself sincere in the cause; her generals might have made mistakes, but she had made great and costly exertions in the common cause, and, notwithstanding failures, still remained firm. The motion for complying with the emperor’s demands was agreed to by large majorities.