Conceived in Liberty Volume 2 - Ludwig von Mises Institute

in order to drive through a peace treaty. In return, Fox would be given a
peerage. At the same time, Egremont and Grenville were downgraded in the
cabinet. Bute and Bedford finally managed to conclude a preliminary peace
on November 3; England would receive Canada, Louisbourg, and all of North
America east of the Mississippi, including Florida, as well as three of the
minor West Indian islands. France retained Guadeloupe and Martinique, as
well as its precious fishing rights off Canada and Newfoundland, and it
transferred New Orleans and western Louisiana to Spain in compensation for
the Spanish loss of Florida. Cuba was returned to Spain, but Spain lost its
fishing rights in exchange for the liquidation of English forts in Honduras.
Fox skillfully drove the peace terms through Commons in December, and
the final peace treaty was signed in Paris in February 1763. The long war
with France was finally over, and France was now completely removed from
the North American continent.
As peace finally drew near, British politics centered all the more insistently
on the peace terms. In 1757, Parliament, by an oversight, had failed to
continue the high tax on newspapers that it had deliberately imposed in 1711
to prevent the growth of a popular, hence an opposition, press. As a result,
the press was able to grow and be supported by a wide circulation. The
ouster of Newcastle and the Whigs led the Bute ministry, represented by
Wedderburn, to establish the Briton as its mouthpiece, at the end of May
1762. Earl Temple, as a counter, set up the oppositionist North Briton in
early June, edited by a long-time follower of his, John Wilkes.
Wilkes, a country squire hailing from a Nonconformist merchant family,
was high sheriff of Buckinghamshire. Pitt opposed the new venture as too
inflammatory; to Pitt, all such political writing would be "productive of
mischief." Wilkes' audacity in editing the North Briton only confirmed Pitt's
hostility. Even Wilkes' friend and backer, Temple, was generally cool to his
bold policy. Temple peppered Wilkes with criticism and advice to temper
his opposition, to eschew personal attacks—in short to "sail with the new
current" and partake "of the court favor." By mid-October, Temple was
writing harshly to his sister, the future wife of Pitt: "Mr. Pitt and I disapprove
of this paper war, and the daily abominations which are published;
though, because Wilkes professes himself a friend of mine, I am ever represented
infamously as a patron of what I disapprove and wish I could have
put an end to."* But Wilkes, on the other hand, quickly drew the support
of Newcastle and the Whigs, since Wilkes ardently championed the opposition
cause.
As the peace treaty became imminent, two contrasting groups made clear
their opposition: the Whigs, who continued to oppose the terms of undue
conquest in North America; and Pitt, who opposed peace per se as too soft
on the French. The most important Whig statement was a new edition of
"See George Rude, Wilkes and Liberty (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), pp. 19-22.
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