ONE:The tidings of this disaster roused the people of England to a pitch of desperation. The Ministers were condemned for their gross neglect and imbecile procrastination, and Byng was execrated as a coward and a traitor. Meanwhile, the most culpable man of all, Newcastle, was trembling with terror, and endeavouring to find a scapegoat somewhere. Fox was equally trembling, lest Newcastle should make that scapegoat of him. He declared to Dodington that he had urged Newcastle to send succour to Minorca as early as Christmas, and that Cumberland had joined him in urging this, to no purpose. He asserted that Newcastle ought to answer for it. "Yes," replied Dodington, "unless he can find some one to make a scapegoat of." This was the very fear that was haunting Fox, and he hastened, in October, to the king, and resigned the seals. This was a severe blow to Newcastle, and he immediately thought of Murray to succeed him; but, unfortunately, Sir Dudley Ryder, the Lord Chief Justice, just then having died, Murray had fixed his ambition on occupying his seat on the bench. They were obliged to give it to him, with the title[123] of Mansfield, or make a mortal enemy of him. Newcastle then thought of conciliating Pitt. Pitt refused to belong to any Ministry at all in which Newcastle remained. Newcastle, in his perplexity, next tried Lord Egmont, and even old Granville, but both declined the honour; and not a man being to be found who would serve under him, he was compelled most reluctantly to resign. He had certainly presided over the destinies of the nation far too long.But the British were in no condition to take advantage of American exhaustion. At a time when the Ministry at home had obtained the most magnificent grants from Parliamentgrants for ninety thousand seamen, thirty thousand soldiers, and twenty-five millions of pounds to pay for themthere was scarcely a fleet on the American coasts, and nothing which could be called an army. Had Cornwallis been in possession of an adequate force, he would speedily have cleared all the Southern States. Wherever he came, even with his handful of men, he drove the Americans before him. He now took up his headquarters at Cross Creek, where he sought to rest his troops and recover his sick and wounded. He hoped there to establish a communication with Major Craig, who had been successfully dispatched to take possession of Wilmington, at the mouth of Cape Fear River, but this was not very practicable, and as the country about Cross Creek was destitute of the necessary supplies, Cornwallis himself descended to Wilmington, which he reached on the 7th of April. Colonel Webster and others of his wounded officers died on the march. Greene, with his fragment of an army, as badly provisioned as that of Cornwallis, followed them at a safe distance.
