Spicer to be first lieutenant of the Foudroyant, with intention to
nurse him, and keep him clear of all expense." Shortly after the
Foudroyant was paid off, Sir John Jervis was united to a lady to whom
he had long been attached, the daughter of Sir Thomas Parker, Chief
Baron of the Exchequer. Every man in England, as he rises into
distinction, necessarily becomes a politician. It was the misfortune
of Sir John Jervis, and it was his only misfortune, that he was a
politician before he had risen into distinction. Having had the ill
luck to profess himself a Whig, at a period when he could scarcely
have known the nature of the connexion, he unhappily adhered to it
long after Whiggism had ceased to possess either public utility or
national respect. But his Whiggism was unconscious Toryism after all:
it was what even his biographer is forced to call it, Whig Royalism,
or pretty nearly what Blake's Republicanism was--a determination to
raise his country to the highest eminence to which his talents and
bravery could contribute, without regarding by whom the government was
administered. At the general election of 1784, he sat for Yarmouth.

In 1787, Sir John Jervis was promoted to the rank of rear-admiral. At
the general election in 1790, he was returned for Wycombe, and shared
in parliament the successive defeats of his party; until, in 1793, he
was called to a nobler field, in which, unembarrassed by party, and
undegraded by Whiggism, his talents took their natural direction in
the cause of his country. It is now scarcely necessary to remark upon
the narrow system of enterprise with which England began the great
revolutionary war; nor can it now be doubted that, if the energies of
the country had been directed to meet the enemy in Europe, measureless
misfortunes might have been averted. If the succession of fleets and
armies which were wasted upon the conquest of the French West Indies,
had been employed in the protection of the feebler European states,