During the Seven Years War, the British defeated the navies of both France and then Spain at sea and grabbed a whole lot of colonies in the process. When George III came to power, the new administration made efforts to end the war, sidelining Pitt in the process and causing his resignation. Pitt wanted another war, hoping to make more conquests. He also blasted the Treaty of Paris in the peace negotiations, claiming the British should have pushed for more territory.
What parts of the world did Pitt want to make part of the British Empire that weren't achieved in the Peace of Paris? Why did he want to continue fighting?
Pitt condemned the Treaty of Paris because Britain had given up conquests and that the Treaty gave no security from a Bourbon war of revenge. The lucrative sugar islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe, the African island of Goree and the French coastal island of Belle Île were all returned to France. Havana and Manila were returned to Spain.
Pitt argued that such favourable terms left the Bourbon powers in a position to challenge British security and conquests. He claimed that had he been in power in 1762, he would have limited the size of the French navy similar to Rome's limitations of Carthage's. Allowing France to retain her Newfoundland fisheries and the West Indian islands gave her the means to train men in naval warfare and the enormous revenue from the islands gave her money to build up her navy. Returning Goree robbed Britain of a great Atlantic trade.
As he said in the House of Commons:
Upon the whole, the terms of the proposed treaty met with his most hearty disapprobation. He saw in them the seeds of a future war. The peace was insecure, because it restored the enemy to her former greatness. The peace was inadequate, because the places gained were no equivalent for the places surrendered.
He also criticised the Treaty because it left Prussia in the lurch: England's honour was impugned by this desertion of a loyal ally. Enlightened self interest also, Pitt argued, ensured that French forces were tied up in Continental Europe rather than against Britain overseas: "America had been conquered in Germany".
During the American War of Independence, it became a commonplace to look back at Pitt's strictures with admiration of his foresight. In 1779 a combined Franco-Spanish fleet tried to invade Britain and in 1781 the French navy was instrumental in defeating Cornwallis at Yorktown.
Sources:
*Jeremy Black, Pitt the Elder (Cambridge University Press, 1992).
*Peter Douglas Brown, William Pitt, Earl of Chatham. The Great Commoner (George Allen & Unwin, 1978).
*Zenab Esmat Rashed, The Peace of Paris 1763 (Liverpool University Press, 1951).
*Brendan Simms, Three Victories and a Defeat. The Rise and Fall of the First British Empire, 1714-1783 (Allen Lane, 2007).
*Basil Williams, The Life of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham. Volume II (Longmans, Green & Co. , 1914).