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Home Foreign Affairs and the Empire, 1714-1763 Empire, 1714-1763; Part 2 |
Empire, 1714-1763; Part 2On the other hand, the rulers of Austria and Spain were dissatisfied with the Treaty of Utrecht. Our chief difficulties were with Spain. In 1718, Great Britain prevented her from obtaining possession of Sicily by demolishing her fleet off Cape Passaro (The Spanish fleet of eighteen sail was utterly destroyed by an English fleet of twenty-one sail under Admiral Byng. Part of the Spanish fleet fled, and took refuge inshore. A Captain Walton was sent with some ships in pursuit, and his dispatch announcing his success was the shortest on record. It is said to have run as follows: "Sir, we have taken and destroyed all the Spanish ships which were upon the coast: the number as per margin. Respectfully, C. Walton"); whilst, in 1725 an alliance which Spain had made with Austria, in the hope of recovering Gibraltar and Minorca, was checkmated by a counter-alliance between Great Britain and France. A few years later trade controversies with Spain became acute. The Spaniards jealously tried to exclude all other nations from trading with their enormous possessions in South America, though they failed to develop the trade on their own account. But British ships did a great deal of illicit trade with Spanish America, especially through the solitary British ship which under the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht was allowed to be sent there annually. This ship, whilst in the Spanish port, was emptied of its cargo each day, and refilled under cover of night by small boats from other ships outside the harbour.The Spaniards, not unnaturally incensed at these proceedings, had retaliated by searching on the high seas British ships whose destination might be Spanish America, and treating British sailors with great brutality. Consequently, British feeling was roused, and the politicians opposed to Walpole, then the chief minister, thinking they had got a good party cry, took care to fan the indignation. Finally, anger reached boiling point when a certain Captain Jenkins produced his ear in a bottle before the House of Commons, and asserted that it had been cut off by the Spaniards. He was asked "what his feelings were when he found himself in the hands of such barbarians", and he answered in words which were probably suggested to him beforehand, but which had the effect desired by the opposition of stimulating patriotic fervour: "1 commended my soul to my God, and my cause to my country" (It has been doubted whether Jenkins ever really lost an car at all, or, if he did, it has been asserted that he lost it in an English pillory. According to Jenkins's story, the ear had been cut off in 1731 by a ferocious Spanish captain, by name Fandino, who was himself cap-lured by a British frigate eleven years later after a desperate resistance). Walpole, unable to withstand popular opinion, after futile negotiations with Spain, declared war in 1739. |
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