THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

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The
AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Boo\s by RICHARD B. MORRIS

STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN LAW

THE ERA OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

GOVERNMENT AND LABOR IN EARLY AMERICA

A TREASURY OF GREAT REPORTING (with Louis L. Snyder)

FAIR TRIAL

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN HISTORY

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION: A SHORT HISTORY

ALEXANDER HAMILTON AND THE FOUNDING OF THE NATION

THE SPIRIT OF 'SEVENTY-SIX (with Henry Stecie Commager)

GREAT PRESIDENTIAL DECISIONS

THE NEW WORLD

THE MAKING OF A NATION

The
AMERICAN REVOLUTION

by George Otto Trevelyan

A condensation into one volume

of the original six-volume work.

Edited, arranged, and with an introduction and notes

by Richard B. Morris

Gouverneur Morris Professor of History,
Columbia University

DAVID McKAY COMPANY, INC New York

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

COPYRIGHT 1899, 1903, 1905, 1907, 1912, 1914 BY LONGMANS, GREEN & CO.

COPYRIGHT RENEWED 1931, 1932, 1934, 1939, I94I

BY CHARLES PHILIP TREVELYAN,
GEORGE MACAULAY TREVELYAN AND ROBERT CALVERLEY TREVELYAN

COPYRIGHT © 1964 BY RICHARD B. MORRIS

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce

this book, or parts thereof, in any form, except for

the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 63-19340

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

VAN REES PRESS • NEW YORK

This edition is inscribed to
HENRY STEELE COMMAGER

FRIE3STJD, CO-WORK.ER, AND EXE3VCPLAR OF THE

GREAT TRADITION THAT UNITES THE

ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES

CONTENTS

Chapter I

THE BRITISH POLICY TOWARDS AMERICA
THE SOCIAL CONDITION OF GREAT BRITAIN
AND THE COLONIES

Chapter II 57

THE MILITARY OCCUPATION OF BOSTON
THE DIFFICULTIES CONNECTED WITH TRADE
AND REVENUE BECOME ACUTE

Chapter III 88

THE STATE OF POLITICAL PARTIES AT WESTMINSTER
FRANKLIN AND THE LETTERS

Chapter IV 116

THE PENAL LAWS

THEIR RECEPTION IN AMERICA

Chapter V 143

THE KING AND LORD CHATHAM
FOX COMES TO THE FRONT
THE AMERICAN FISHERIES

Chapter VI 165

HOSTILITIES BECOME IMMINENT
LEXINGTON

Chapter VII 194

WASHINGTON

vii

Chapter VIII 198

FEARS FOR ENGLISH LIBERTY

THE NEWSPAPERS

NORTH AND SOUTH BRITAIN

Chapter IX 231

THE CITY OF LONDON

NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE

THE NATION AND THE WAR

Chapter X 259

THE TALK OF MEN
CONTEMPORARY HISTORIANS
THE PAMPHLETEERS
THE "CALM ADDRESS"

Chapter XI

EUROPEAN PUBLIC OPINION
CHOISEUL

VERGENNES
TURGOT

Chapter XII 322

BEAUMARCHAIS
FREDERIC OF PRUSSIA
FRANKLIN IN PARIS
THE FRENCH TREATIES

Chapter XIII

THE KING'S POLICY
PERSONAL GOVERNMENT
LORD CHATHAM
THE SEVENTH OF APRIL

Chapter XIV

FOX AND THE FRENCH WAR
THE HABITS OF SOCIETY
PERSONAL POPULARITY OF FOX

viii

Chapter XV 418

BURKE AND THE INDIANS
THE POWER OF THE CROWN
BURKE AND BRISTOL

Chapter XVI 456

THE LEAGUE OF NEUTRALS
THE PLIGHT OF THE NATION

Chapter XVII 472

THE COUNTY ASSOCIATIONS
THE LORDS LIEUTENANTS

Chapter XVIII 493

FOX AND ADAM

ECONOMICAL REFORM

THE DUNNING RESOLUTION

Chapter XIX 517

THE GORDON RIOTS
THE GENERAL ELECTION

Chapter XX 542

THE BEGINNING OF THE END
THE TWENTY-SEVENTH OF MARCH

Index 565

IX

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

1 HEODORE ROOSEVELT, who made no secret of his conviction
that history should be "literature of a very high type," considered his
friend Sir George Otto Trevelyan to be "one of the few blessed ex-
ceptions to the rule that the readable historian is not truthful." Ac-
knowledging the receipt of one of the volumes of Trevelyan's magnum
opus, The American Revolution, the American President wrote the
British author: "I look forward to reading it as eagerly as any girl
ever looks forward to reading the last volume of a favorite novel."

Although two generations and two world wars have intervened
between the original publication of Trevelyan's six-volume account of
The American Revolution and its present reissue in abridged form,
and although literary tastes have altered and historical scholarship
ripened, The American Revolution still casts its spell over the reader
as it did in TJR.'s day. Despite all that has been written since this
monumental study was first conceived, no other volumes have suc-
ceeded in capturing as faithfully the drama, the wit, and the manners
of the generation that governed and lost the first British Empire. No-
where else will one find a more sympathetic treatment of the British
opponents of King and Ministry, whose stand may be said to have
turned a revolution in America into a civil war in England.

To say that the publication of Trevelyan's The American Revolu-
tion marked an international event in history and belles lettres, would
scarcely be doing full justice to the work's impact. It was something
more than absorbing reading on a topic of mutual interest to English-
men and Americans. It constituted a bridge to renewed understanding
between the British and American peoples, thrown up at a time when

xi

a great diplomatic rapprochement between the two nations was in the
course o£ being cemented.

The decade following the year 1897, during which the volumes of
The American Revolution made their appearance, was crucial both
for Great Britain and America. Germany, Continental behemoth, sud-
denly loomed large on the world horizon, threatening Britain's naval
and maritime supremacy as well as the European balance of power so
delicately reassembled by the old Congress of Vienna. Almost over-
night British anger against the United States, fanned to a white flame
by President Grover Cleveland's flamboyant intervention in the bound-
ary dispute between Venezuela and England, had been deflected
against Kaiser Wilhelm II for his gratuitous expression of sympathy
for the Boers with whom the British were then warring. The War
with Spain created a new empire for America. With enlarged over-
seas responsibilities for Americans came a growing awareness of im-
perial problems, and a more open-minded attitude toward the British
Empire, old or new.

That historic and lasting entente with England, then inaugurated,
found reflection on this side of the Atlantic in more dispassionate writ-
ing by historians. The old British Empire was treated with greater
objectivity, even open sympathy, the causes of the American Revolu-
tion were reexamined in a less partisan atmosphere, and even the long-
maligned Loyalists received their due. Reflections of this renunciation
of the older chauvinism as well as a more balanced treatment of an
ancient quarrel were found in the historical works of such writers as
Moses Coit Tyler, George Louis Beer, Sydney George Fisher, Claude
Halstead Van Tyne, Herbert L. Osgood, and Charles M. Andrews.
Similarly, in England, where the American Revolution understandably
had never been a popular literary or historical subject, the reading
public had been put into a more receptive and tolerant frame of mind
by the immensely popular History of England in the Eighteenth Cen-
tury, by W.EH. Lecky, written from the point of view of an unrecon-
structed Whig.

That Sir George Otto Trevelyan's The American Revolution joined
literary artistry with political intention was no happy accident. Such a
combination of objectives came perhaps naturally to one who was both
a Macaulay and a Trevelyan, and who was reared in an atmosphere
where letters and learning were inseparably related to the career of
politics. Trevelyan's mother was Hannah More Macaulay, and he
himself was born in 1838 at Rothley Temple, in Leicestershire, where
xii

Thomas Babington Macaulay, his "Uncle Tom," had first seen the light
of day thirty-eight years before. George's father, Charles Trevelyan,
came of a wealthy and prominent country family from Cornwall.
Charles's courtship of Hannah More Macaulay began in Calcutta in
1834, when he was in the Indian service.

Macaulay has described Sir George's father as "judicious and hon-
est," a man without small talk, "full of schemes of moral and political
improvements," his zeal boiling over "in all his talk." Even in court-
ship, so Macaulay reported, his topics were "steam navigation, the edu-
cation of the natives, the equalization of the sugar duties, the substitu-
tion of the Roman for the Arabic alphabet in the Oriental languages."
While this approach might have repelled most other girls, not so
Hannah More Macaulay, long accustomed herself to serious talk. A
man of rugged integrity and moral purpose, Sir Charles left his stamp
on both the Home and Indian Civil Service. In the home in which
George Otto spent his childhood, the ideals of a reforming public
servant were respected as well as cherished.

It was young George's good fortune that his bachelor Uncle Tom
lived with the Trevelyans and contributed to making theirs one of the
more book-loving households of England. To keep up with Macaulay's
historical and literary allusions and his encyclopedic range of interests,
the youngster was driven to solid reading, much of it historical. Both
Macaulay and his brother-in-law advocated civil service reform, and
the evangelical faith shared by Trevelyans and Macaulays heightened
the reformist zeal of George's family.

Harrow, followed by Trinity College, Cambridge, offered scope for
George Otto Trevelyan's literary talents. It is perhaps idle now to
speculate on the direction his early career might have taken had he
won the fellowship to which his academic distinction seemed to entitle
him. When his candidacy proved unsuccessful, he snatched at the op-
portunity to go out to India as private secretary to his father, who was
returning to that country to serve as financial member of the Coun-
cil. From India, George sent back a vivid account of the Anglo-Indian
world immediately after the Mutiny, published both in magazine and
book form.

Trevelyan had now seen politics at firsthand and found it to his
taste. On his return to England, he won a seat in the House of Com-
mons in the election .of 1865, running as a Liberal member from Tyne-
mouth. Then, from 1868 until 1886, he represented the Scottish Border
Boroughs. It was during his first election campaign that he met Car-

xiii

oline Philips, daughter of a Lancashire merchant and politician. It was
a headlong courtship, but Caroline's rich uncle, who still held his
younger brother in leading strings, vetoed the marriage. He aspired
high for his niece. Nothing less than a peer was acceptable.

The disheartened suitor, like so many Englishmen before him,
turned to the Continent to find distraction. He arrived in Italy at the
very moment when Garibaldi was invading Roman territory. His
meeting with the Italian liberator, with whom he traveled as far as
Florence, left an indelible impression upon him. Years later, he acted
as cicerone to his talented son George Macaulay Trevelyan. The son
later told how his father took him to the Janiculum, where, "among
the vineyards that lay around the Porta San Pancrazio, he told me the
story of Garibaldi's defense of the Roman Republic, which I had never
heard before." One day the son would immortalize these events in an
exciting series of books dealing with Garibaldi and the Risorgimento.
Trevelyan's courtship had a happy ending. After two years, Caroline's
uncle yielded to her pleadings. The wedding took place in September,
1869, and a long and devoted marriage ensued.

It has been in the tradition of British statesmen, from Disraeli to
Sir Winston Churchill, to devote whatever leisure the public will
afford to creative and historical writing. Disraeli's triumph in 1874
gave active Liberals like Trevelyan some enforced leisure. During the
six years when he was a member of the opposition, Trevelyan wrote
his Life of Macaulay and his Early History of Charles James Fox.
Then, with Gladstone's return to power, Trevelyan's literary career
was put aside in the public interest. On May 6, 1882, Lord Frederick
Cavendish, the newly appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, was as-
sassinated in Dublin's Phoenix Park. To fill the vacant post Gladstone
promptly picked Trevelyan. When the new Chief Secretary arrived
in Dublin, terrorists still roved with knives about the city's streets.
Hatred and distrust had reached an almost incredible pitch in the
countryside. Stoutly seconding the efforts of Ireland's Viceroy, Lord
Spencer, Trevelyan was determined that law and order must be re-
established, but he harbored no illusions that surface obedience held
any promise of a genuine solution of this tortured issue. A Cabinet
post m 1884 was Trevelyan's reward for his arduous services in Ire-
land As Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, an office "without
portfolio Trevelyan boasted that he appointed the first laboringman
ever to become a justice of the peace in England. Following the elec-
tion of 1% Trevelyan became Secretary for Scotland in the new Glad-

xiv

stone Ministry and devoted himself to ending the agrarian grievances
of the Scottish Highland tenantry. However, his career in Ireland had
left him disenchanted about the merits of Gladstone's Home Rule
proposals, and on that issue he left the Cabinet. One might have pre-
dicted that a reformer and humanitarian of the stripe of Trevelyan
would not make a congenial bedfellow to a motley collection of Con-
servatives and Unionists. He soon returned to the Liberal camp and
even accepted Home Rule for Ireland. Once more, with the Liberals
in office between 1892 and 1895, Trevelyan served as Gladstone's Secre-
tary of State for Scotland.

When, in 1897, Trevelyan resigned his seat in the House of Com-
mons to devote himself anew to historical writing, it was generally
believed that he would now complete his Life of Charles James Fox.
Why a man of Trevelyan's standards and gifts should have already
devoted so much attention to a politician whose name was a byword
for opportunism and amorality may be difficult at this distance to
fathom. Trevelyan saw Fox through rosy-hued spectacles. For him he
was always the dashing clubman diverting that London society for
which the historian had the keenest affection. The fact of the matter
is, though, that Trevelyan never carried Fox's biography beyond 1774,
the year when the rising young orator, dismissed from the North
Ministry, turned away from his old political associates, ultimately to
embrace reform and to make himself a hero to the masses and a
darling of the Whigs. "Sick of a prison house whose secrets had so
early been familiar to him," Trevelyan, ending on a stout Whiggish
note, tells us how Fox "dissolved his partnership with Sandwich and
Wedderburn, and united himself to Burke, and Chatham, and Savile
in their crusade against the tyranny which was trampling out English
liberty in the colonies, and the corruption which was undermining it
at home." One might almost have been listening to Burke or Savile or
Dunning thundering their denunciations of Crown and Ministry be-
fore a spellbound House of Commons, and indeed a good deal of the
rhetoric of Trevelyan's political idols brushed off on Trevelyan the
historian.

A far nobler theme than the life of Charles James Fox cried out
for treatment in the grand manner and offered Trevelyan at last full
scope for his literary talents. This was the great struggle for American
independence acted out on a world stage. Trevelyan courageously ini-
tiated this study when he was already fifty-nine years of age and did
not complete it until he was seventy-six. Reverting in title if not in

xv

full treatment to his original theme, Trevelyan called his last two
volumes George the Third and Charles James Fox, but, as his subtitle
revealed, they were in fact his concluding volumes on the American
Revolution. In his six-volume account of the War for Independence,
Trevelyan dealt full justice to the Patriot cause while at the same time
making clear that large numbers of the British people were neither
responsible for the measure of coercion that brought on the war nor for
needlessly prolonging the conflict once it had begun. The American
Revolution proved absorbing reading. Its diverting pages captured a
frivolous and venal society, a corrupt political system, and a stubborn
and myopic King— all set off against an idyllic if not overidealized pic-
ture of American society. It was truly a work in the great Whig tra-
dition, one that Macaulay himself would have applauded unreservedly.

If the work of the historian is part science, part art, it can only be
executed in depth if the historian himself possesses judgment, or, as
George Macaulay Trevelyan once put it, if the historian is also a phi-
losopher "who has the right kind of bias." It is the virtue of George
Otto Trevelyan that he never concealed his bias. With Lord Acton,
he would have insisted that his historical bias was for the moral law,
impartially applied. It is this certainty of conviction in matters of
morality, more fitting to the days of Queen Victoria than to those of
George III, which finds expression on every page of The American
Revolution. To Trevelyan there was right and wrong, black and white,
and, as his son observed, "he did not take much account of nuances."
If the Patriots in his pages emerge perhaps too pure and undefiled,
and the North Ministry is painted with colors a bit too deep-dyed as
a collection of rogues, scoundrels, and dunderheads; if Whigs on both
sides of the great ocean are portrayed as engaged in fighting for a
concept of the British Constitution which the King and his supporters,
with some justice, considered archaic, the sense of drama is heightened
by these contrasts, and it is left for others to set the balance true.

The American Revolution made its appearance on both sides of the
Atlantic at a time when historical scholarship, trained in the new
scientific methodology and nurtured in graduate seminars, was begin-
ning to eschew rhetoric or even any pretense to literary style, and a rift
was deepening between academicians and popularizers. The aim of the
new scholarship was nothing more nor less than complete objectivity
and absolute detachment. Hence, American scholars could be expected
to greet this admittedly popular multivolume contribution to their own
history with mixed feelings. They found in The American Revolution

xvi

the same charm, the same wealth of allusions, the same extraordinary
capacity for coining epigrams, as in Trevelyan's earlier studies of
Macaulay and Fox. Frederick Jackson Turner recognized the "im-
portant popular influence" that the work was certain to exert and
hailed it as "the most effective presentation of the fact that the struggle
for independence was in truth a phase of a struggle between two great
English parties, fought out on both sides of the water: in the mother
country in the forum, in the colonies on the field of battle." On the
other hand, Turner gently chided Trevelyan for showing a lack of
discrimination between the different geographical sections of America,
for overstressing the democratic tendencies of New England and min-
imizing the aristocratic atmosphere prevailing in other sections. Other
reviewers also questioned whether Trevelyan knew the America of
Washington and Hancock as well as he did the London of Fox
and Burke. Nor did the value of the book for American readers rest
upon its narration of military campaigns. It was generally agreed by
American reviewers that the work's chief interest and significance lay
in its masterly treatment of English politics.

While conceding that in no previous systematic history of the Revo-
lution had as much attention been paid to the character of the Amer-
ican soldier and to the system and leadership under which he fought
as in Trevelyan's account, Herbert L. Osgood felt that the work lacked
balance, that it failed to pay attention to administrative and constitu-
tional issues, to treat adequately the collapse of royal power in the
various colonies, and the rise of new Revolutionary governments. In
short, it was the consensus of the American reviewers that, rather than
offering a systematic or rounded history of the War of the Revolution,
Trevelyan's work was a collection of suggestive essays or studies on
important social and military aspects of the struggle, frankly partisan,
but written with grace and power, even bearing a striking resemblance
to the style and plan of Macaulay's great history of England.

In England, Henry James hailed the artistry of The American Revo-
lution as installments appeared. "The American, the Englishman, the
artist, and the critic in me," he wrote Sir George, "to say nothing of
the friend — all drink you down in a deep draught, each in turn feeling
that he is more deeply concerned." James went on to point out that it
was "this literary temper" of the work, "this beautiful quality of com-
position, and feeling of the presentation, grasping reality all the whole,
and controlling and playing with detail — it is this in our chattering and
slobbering day that gives me the sense of the ampler tread and deeper

xvii

voice of the man— in fact of his speaking in his own voice at all, or
moving with his own step. You will make my own country people
touch as with reverence the hem of his garment." What James con-
fessed that he envied most was Trevelyan's "method," his being able
"to see so many facts and yet to see them each, imaged, and related,
and lighted as a painter sees the objects, together before his canvas.
They become, I mean, so amusingly concrete and individual for you;
but that is just the unscrutable luxury of your book."

For most of the British reading public, on the other hand, parts of
The American Revolution must have come as a great shock. They were
unaccustomed to admiring, even affectionate, portraits of the leaders
who had rebelled against their King. They would hardly expect one
of their own writers to offer so discerning an analysis of the function-
ing of the rebel Congress that their King had so long refused to recog-
nize, to encounter so sympathetic a treatment of colonial grievances, or
to find the activities of the North Ministry scored as a series of muffed
opportunities.

Accordingly, one would expect some revisionist judgments of Trevel-
yan's work to appear from time to time. More recently in the wake of
the massive assault on the Whig interpretation of history led by Sir
Lewis Namier and his disciples have come some modifications of
Trevelyan's analysis of the British Constitutional and party systems.
Since Trevelyan's day, scholars have subjected to microscopic examina-
tion the Constitutional structure of England in the reign of George
III. Their conclusions have relevance to what was the nub of Trevel-
yan's argument— namely, that the system of corruption developed to a
high degree under George III had resulted in subverting the original
Constitution. Namier, while conceding that George III may have been
more active as an election manager than his grandfather, insists that
the difference was one of degree only. He argues that at the beginning
of the reign of George III the right of the King to choose whatever
ministers he wished stood uncontested, and that while there was a
Whig and Tory mentality in 1760, the party system did not exist,
merely political faction. Both the two-party system, as we know it,
and the principle of Cabinet responsibility postdate the American
Revolution.

The Namierites would not deny the existence of influence, even of

corruption. Through its system of patronage the Crown controlled

the disposal of numerous posts, and admittedly its influence was there

to be reckoned with. In fact, unless you were a member sitting for a

xviii

private or pocket borough you could not be wholly free of it. Instead
of stigmatizing corruption as undermining the Constitution, which
was how Burke as well as Trevelyan viewed it, Sir Lewis Namier
would accept these traditional corrupt practices as "a mark of English
freedom and independence, for no one bribes where he can bully."

On this conflict the revisionists pass no moral judgment unlike their
Whig-minded predecessors of Victorian and Edwardian times. They
have been content with minute studies into the origins and background
of members of Parliament and the disposal of patronage. Their critics
feel that in following their close and tortuous course one may well
lose sight of the great political principles around which the various
Whig factions rallied, and fail to recognize that what contemporaries
thought the British Constitution really was has perhaps more relevance
for the years of the American Revolution than what the principal
actors should have thought had they known what we know today.

It is the great virtue of George Otto Trevelyan '$ The American
Revolution that, while he was not prepared to do the kind of extra-
ordinary digging that Sir Lewis Namier did in unearthing so many
new facts about the election of 1761 or Richard Pares, Herbert Butter-
field, John Brooke, and Ian R. Christie have prosecuted for the years
that followed, or Sir Keith Feiling has assembled to illuminate the path
taken by the second Tory party, he never took his eye off the main road.
He never for a moment lets the reader forget the great principles that
animated Burke and Fox and Rockingham and Shelburne, as well as
Franklin, and John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. He elevates the
civil war among Englishmen above the level of a petty family quarrel
and shows its profound implications for America, for the empire, and
for the world.

Trevelyan in this work has given us so very much in richness of de-
tail and vigor of interpretation that it is perhaps ungenerous to express
regret that he did not tell us even more, that he did not pursue the
story of the peacemaking after Yorktown, so extraordinary an oppor-
tunity for his epigrammatic flashes and keen insights. Instead, he is
content to end on a note of high optimism, with the King thwarted
and the North Ministry unseated. Early in February of 1782, Lord
North introduced his last budget and asked for another enormous war
loan. His action evoked this incisive comment from Trevelyan:

The war in Europe had gone against us; the attitude of the
Northern Powers was hostile and minatory; and, after Yorktown,

xix

all prospect of recovering our rebellious Colonies by arms was
further off than ever. Such were the circumstances under which
if the King had his way, England was never to make peace with
America as long as the Chancellor of the Exchequer could nego-
tiate a loan on the money-market. Our people had come to regard
the Cabinet as the shareholders of a coal-mine on the sea-coast,
when the water which floods the galleries begins to taste of salt,
would regard a board of Directors who persisted in trying to pump
out the German Ocean. Parliament at last took the matter into
its own hands, and stopped the Ministers in their mad career. It
was not a day too soon for the interests of the Treasury. Lord
Sheffield,-the friend of Gibbon, a staunch adherent of Lord
North, and a specialist in the statistics of foreign and colonial
commerce,~reckoned that the increase of the National Debt en-
tailed on Great Britain by the American war, and by the wars
arising out of it, amounted to forty-five times the average annual
value of British exports to the American colonies during the six
years that preceded the military occupation of Boston. That is the
measure, as expressed in arithmetical figures, of the foresight and
capacity displayed by George the Third and his chosen servants.

Having rid the country of the North Ministry, whose blunder-
ing ineptitude he had spelled out for us in six volumes, Trevelyan
was understandably buoyant about the Rockingham Ministry that suc-
ceeded it. It was this Ministry that initiated the peace talks that finally
brought a long world war to an end. What we do not learn from these
pages, though, because the story stops short of the event, is that the
refusal of Trevelyan's hero, Charles James Fox, to serve under the Earl
of Shelburne when the Marquis of Rockingham died after only a
few months in office, splintered the reform coalition. Our author ends
too soon to let us in on the fact that, by joining forces with his political
enemy Lord North, Fox, more out of spite than in deference to the
public good, had formed a preposterous combination to bring down his
abler, if politically maladroit, rival. The North-Fox coalition was the
most egregious blunder of Charles James Fox's career, and its con-
sequences were equally fateful for the Whig cause in England. Ahead
lay years of uninterrupted Tory rule under the brilliant leadership of
the younger Pitt.

The note of triumph upon which Trevelyan ends his great work is
for him as deeply personal as it was for the Whig leaders of that day
xx

who thought they had retrieved Constitutional victory from military
disaster. To dispel the illusion would be both uncharitable and anti-
climactic. "And thus," our author concludes, "the Ministers who had
brought our country down from the heights of glory and prosperity to
the Valley of the Shadow of Disaster, at length were expelled from
office, and were succeeded by a Government pledged to restore the
independence of Parliament, to re-establish the naval supremacy of
Great Britain, to pacify Ireland, and to end the quarrel with America."

In the preparation of this one-volume abridgment of The American
Revolution, the editor has endeavored to include the more original and
enticing sections of the multivolume work and to sacrifice those seg-
ments that now, in the light of critical judgments and more recent
literature, seem expendable. The Early History of Charles James Fox,
which takes that statesman down to the year 1774, has been excluded.
It is affectionate biography. It is penetrating social history, but it has
little or nothing to do with the coming of the American Revolution.
Fox and the world in which he shone are superbly drawn for us when
the young orator reemerges as an opposition leader, and that account
has been preserved. Most of the military treatment has been excised.
The reader can find most of these events treated more succinctly and
with greater depth in other readily available books on the Revolution.
The editor has tried to keep the focus on politics, manners, and
ideas, the areas where Trevelyan's master touch is most apparent and
wherein he is generally considered to have made his most enduring
contribution.

One might begin the American Revolution with the Writs of As-
sistance Case, or Parson's Cause, or the Sugar Act of 1764, or the Tea
Act of '73. Trevelyan has picked as good a beginning as any one —
the fall of Rockingham's first Ministry after the apparent reconciliation
of Colonies and Mother Country resultant upon the repeal of the
Stamp Act. Soon Charles Townshend, that "master of the revels in
the House of Commons," gratuitously raises the issue of taxation with-
out representation all over again, this time with the passage of his
notorious customs duties.

The American Revolution evokes memorable moments in a great
struggle for independence, fought by Patriots on this side of the At-
lantic with the covert and in some cases avowed support of sympa-
thizers in Great Britain. It nails to the canvas some extraordinary
personalities. It captures the social and political scene in the Age of
George III with grace, wit, and penetration. We are transported in

xxi

time to a day when it was the mark of a fashionable Whig, as Horace
Walpole put it, to live at Brooks's, "where politics were sown, and in
the House of Commons, where the crop came up." At Brooks s,
Charles James Fox might usually be found, and there gentlemen were
welcome to go on losing as long as the most sanguine of their ad-
versaries were willing to trust them." "A statesman of the Georgian
era," Trevelyan pointed out in his Charles James Fox, "was sailing on
a sea of claret from one comfortable official haven to another, at a
period of life when a political apprentice in the reign of Victoria is
not yet out of his indentures."

Some of these statesmen— little people as Lewis Namier saw them,
chosen "by a dark fate" to play a role beyond their comprehension— we
meet at close range in these pages. We observe the operations of Lord
Weymouth, Secretary of State for the Northern Department, a man
entrusted with half the work done later by the whole Foreign Office
and with the undivided charge of the internal administration of ^ the
kingdom, who somehow managed to booze till daylight and doze into
the afternoon. We meet the avaricious Rigby, Paymaster of the Forces,
reputed to have made twenty thousand a year during the whole time
the war lasted, and yet never knowing what it was to be solvent. "A
Government whose mainstay in Parliament was the Right Honourable
Richard Rigby," Trevelyan instructs us, "and whose tactics were set-
tled for it by an inner Cabinet of Bedfords, sitting over their burgundy
in Lord Sandwich's parlour at the Admiralty, was not likely to ob-
serve the laws of fair play in dealing with the reputation of a political
adversary." Of the pensioned pamphleteers who fought the battles of
the Ministry by libeling the opposition, Trevelyan's severest epithets
are reserved for John Shebbeare. "His first literary effort was a lam-
poon on the surgeon from whom he had received a medical education;
and his last was entitled The Polecat Detected*; which was a libel
and not (as might have been supposed), an autobiography."

With pardonable British bias, Trevelyan describes for us the trans-
actions by which Beaumarchais furnished arms, clothing, and other
supplies to the Americans, and relates the subsequent negotiations lead-
ing to the Franco-American alliance. He finds it an absorbing story
of French duplicity and fatuity, followed by retribution. "That million
of francs," Sir George tells us, "by the judicious and timely disburse-
ments of which the French Ministry had hoped to inflict a mortal in-
jury on the British power with small cost and danger to themselves,
had grown before the affair was finally settled, into a war expenditure
xxii

of something very near a milliard and a quarter; and the royal govern-
ment of France, which had stooped to such unroyal practices, was
submerged in an ocean of bankruptcy where it was destined miserably
to perish. That was what came of an attempt to fight England on
the cheap."

Reading the lively pages of The American Revolution afresh is
guaranteed to raise questions perhaps quite different from the issues
stirred up by the work's original publication. Britons have become
reconciled to seeing vast segments of their historic empire gain their
independence. Contrariwise, Americans, what with the shrinkage of
the old empires, the nationalist strivings of submerged peoples, and
the constant strains and stresses of the Cold War, have become ac-
customed to shouldering burdens whose magnitude would have stag-
gered the imagination of Americans of Trevelyan's day and totally
swamped earlier national budgets. Carrying such enormous responsi-
bilities for lands and peoples so very remote, we cannot fail to sympa-
thize with Englishmen of George Ill's day, struggling under their
vast and intricate burdens of empire. Then, too, America's support for
the national aspirations of colonial peoples brings home with spe-
cial timeliness today the issues of the first great war for colonial
independence.

Finally, the English-speaking people on both sides of the Atlantic
might well reflect on their good fortune that decision-making is no
longer confined to a privileged class, as it was in England in the days
of George III, and that at long last that community of interest that
binds America and England may be proof against divisive forces not
unlike those which contributed to the shattering of the first British
Empire.

RICHARD B. MORRIS
Columbia University
December, 1963

xxni

The
AMERICAN REVOLUTION

CHAPTER I

THE BRITISH POLICY TOWARDS AMERICA.
THE SOCIAL CONDITION OF GREAT BRITAIN
AND THE COLONIES

J.N the spring of 1766 a new chapter o£ peace and good- will, — the
first, as it seemed, of many fair volumes, — had opened before the de-
lighted eyes of all true fellow-countrymen on either side of the At-
lantic. "We should find it hard," so writes an excellent and learned
author,1 "to overstate the happiness which, for a few weeks, filled the
hearts of the American people at the news that the detested Stamp Act
had been repealed. As, in 1765, through the bond of a common fear,
the thirteen colonies had been brought for the first time into some sort
of union, so, in 1766, that union was for a while prolonged through the
bond of a common joy. Certainly, never before had all these American
communities been so swept by one mighty wave of grateful enthusiasm
and delight."

No citizen of America, who recollected anything, forgot how and
where he heard the glad tidings. Her history, for a year to come, reads
like the golden age. Philadelphia waited for the fourth of June in order
to celebrate the King's Birthday and the repeal of the Stamp Act to-
gether. Toasts were drunk to the Royal Family, to Parliament, and to
"our worthy and faithful agent, Dr. Franklin." Franklin, determined
that his family should rejoice in real earnest, sent his wife and daughter
a handsome present of satins and brocades, to replace the clothes of their
own spinning which they had worn while the crisis lasted and while all
good patriots refused to buy anything that had come from British ports.
John Adams kept the occasion sadly. "A duller day than last Monday,
when the Province was in a rapture for the repeal of the Stamp Act, I

1 Professor Tyler, of Cornell University. His Literary History of the American Revo-
lution is a remarkable specimen of the historical faculty and descriptive power which
have been expended by Americans on particular features in that great panorama.

do not remember to have passed. My wife, who had long depended
on going to Boston, and my little babe, were both very ill of an whoop-
ing-cough ." But, in his view, the great concession had done its work
thoroughly and finally. In November, 1766, after six months' observa-
tion of its effects, he wrote: "The people are as quiet and submissive to
Government as any people under the sun; as little inclined to tumults,
riots, seditions, as they were ever known to be since the first founda-
tion of the Government. The repeal of the Stamp Act has composed
every wave of popular disorder into a smooth and peaceful calm."

The mother-country had erred, had suffered, had repented, xand had
now retrieved her fault. Parliament, at the instance of Lord Rocbing-
ham and his colleagues, embodied in a statute the assertion of its own
right to make laws binding on the colonies in all cases whatsoever; and
then it repealed the Stamp Act, as a practical admission that the right
in question should be exercised only in cases where the colonies did not
object. The proceeding was intensely English; but unfortunately it
lacked the most important condition of a great English compromise,
for it was not accepted by the beaten party. George Grenville, the par-
ent of the Stamp-duty, and reputed to be the greatest living master of
finance, bitterly resented the reversal of his policy; and he spoke the
views of a very powerful minority of the Commons. In the other
House a Protest was carefully drawn with the purpose of defying and
insulting what was then the unanimous opinion of Americans. It was
signed by a body of lay peers, respectable at any rate in numbers, and
by five bishops, who wrote their names between those of Sandwich
and Weymouth like men so sure of their cause that there was no need
to be nice about their company. Warburton of Gloucester, the ablest
and by far the most distinguished among them, has left on record his
own view of the duty of a father of the Church when dealing with
affairs of State; and the theory which satisfied him was good enough
for his brethren. "Let us private men," he wrote, when already a
bishop, "preserve and improve the little we have left of private virtue;
and, if one of those infected with the influenza of politics should ask
me, 'What then becomes of your public virtue?' I would answer him
with an old Spanish proverb: 'The King has enough for us all.' "

The King's idea of public virtue at this memorable conjuncture was
notorious everywhere, and talked about freely by every one except by
the Ministers, who, from the unfortunate obligations of their position,
were bound to pretend to believe the Royal word. The course of action
which alone could secure peace and welfare to his Empire had in him

an opponent "more resolute and bitter even than Grenville. No Pro-
test, phrased decorously enough to be admitted upon the Journals of
the House of Lords, could have adequately expressed the sentiments of
George the Third towards his subjects beyond the water. On their ac-
count the dislike which he had all along entertained for his Ministers
had deepened into busy and unscrupulous hostility. He looked upon
the conciliation of America, which those Ministers had effected, as an
act of inexpiable disloyalty to the Crown. He thwarted them by an
intrigue which has acquired a shameful immortality from the literary
ability of a statesman who suffered from it, and of historians who have
recounted it. How, during the debates on the Stamp Act, the King,
acting through the King's Friends, harassed and hampered the King's
Ministers, is told by Burke in the "Thoughts on the Discontents," and
by Macaulay in the second Essay on Chatham; and seldom or never
did either of them write more pointedly and powerfully. The process
is concisely described by Mr. Lecky, in the twelfth chapter of his His-
tory. "When the measure was first contemplated, two partisans of Bute
came to the King, offering to resign their places, as they meant to op-
pose the repeal, but they were told that they might keep their places
and vote as they pleased. The hint was taken, and the King's friends
were among the most active, though not the most conspicuous, oppo-
nents of the Ministers."

When, in spite of his efforts, the work of pacification was accom-
plished, George the Third never forgave his wise and faithful servants
for having saved him from himself. Determined to punish, he fell dili-
gently to the task of finding an instrument; and he soon was able to
place his hand on a noble weapon, which he used with remarkable
skill in a very bad cause. The love of Britain for Pitt was not stronger
than the aversion with which, in life, and after death, he was regarded
by Britain's sovereign. But at this crisis the great Commoner was rec-
ommended to the Royal notice by the circumstance, which was unhap-
pily notorious, that he looked coldly upon the men whom George the
Third hated. As soon as the King was sure of Pitt, he got quit of
Rockingham. Under cover of a name which has elevated and adorned
the annals of our Parliament, was formed a bad and foolish administra-
tion which woefully misdirected our national policy. That tissue of
scrapes and scandals which marked their conduct of home affairs be-
longs to a period when Chatham was no longer in office; but the most
disastrous and gratuitous of their blunders abroad dates from the time
when he still was nominally Prime Minister. On the second of June,

3

1767, a series of Resolutions were passed in Committee of Ways and
Means, imposing duties upon a number of commodities admitted into
the British colonies and plantations in America; and it was the seven-
teenth of these Resolutions which provided "That a duty of yl. per
pound-weight avoirdupois be laid upon all tea imported into the said
colonies and plantations."

It is a measure of the greatness of Chatham that, citizen and subject
as he was, his opinions and predilections, nay his very moods and preju-
dices, affected the general course of events as deeply as it has ever or
anywhere been affected by the character of the most powerful mon-
archs who have had an absolute hold on the resources and policy of a
State. Just as the history of Germany would have run in other channels
if Frederic the Great had not been King of Prussia at the death of the
Emperor Charles the Sixth; just as Spain would have been spared un-
told calamities if any one but Napoleon had been on the throne of
France when Ferdinand quarrelled with his father; so the fortunes
of the English-speaking world would have looked very different in the
retrospect if only Chatham had been in the mind to act cordially with
the right men at the right moment. With Rockingham as his second in
command, — with Lord John Cavendish, or Dowdeswell, or, still better,
with Burke as his Chancellor of the Exchequer,— he might have lin-
gered in the retirement to which his shattered health inclined him
without detriment to the public interest or to his own fame. But with
Grafton dispensing the patronage, and holding Cabinets in his absence,
and with Charles Townshend master of the revels in the House of Com-
mons, the step was taken, and taken in the name of Chatham, which
in one day reversed the policy that he had nearest at heart, and undid
the work of which he was most justly proud. The Boston massacre;
the horrors of the Indian warfare; the mutual cruelties of partisans in
the Carolinas; Saratoga and Yorktown; the French war; the Spanish
war; the wholesale ruin of the American loyalists; the animosity to-
wards Great Britain which for so long afterwards coloured the foreign
policy of the United States; — all flowed in direct and inevitable se-
quence from that fatal escapade. Among the bright possibilities of
history, very few can be entertained with better show of reason than a
belief that the two nations might have kept house together with com-
fort, and in the end might have parted friends, if the statesman whom
both of them equally revered and trusted would have thrown in his
lot with that English'party which, almost to a man, shared his wise
4

views in regard to the treatment of our colonies, and sympathised with
the love which he bore their people.

The first cardinal mistake had now been made, and the next was not
long in coming. British politicians had much else to talk of; and the
hardworking, quiet-living British people, after the Stamp Act was re-
pealed, had returned to their business, and put America out of their
thoughts, as they supposed, for ever. They were not prepared for the
instant and bewildering sensation which the news of what had been
done at Westminster produced across the ocean. For the colonists, one
and all, irrespective of class, creed, and calling, it was indeed a rude
awakening. In the assurance that past scores were now wiped out, they
had settled themselves down to the sober enjoyment of a victory which
seemed the more secure because all concerned had their part in it; for
if America had carried her point, England had conquered herself. And
now, without warning, without fresh reason given, the question was
reopened by the stronger of the two parties under circumstances which
to the weaker portended ruin. The situation was far more ominous
than if the Stamp-duty had been left where it was. Parliament, by re-
pealing the Act, had publicly recognised and admitted that the claim
to tax America was one to which America would never submit; and
now, a twelvemonth afterwards, that claim was revived on a larger
scale, and with a deliberation which showed that this time England
meant business. It was impossible for the colonists, — who were all, in
a sort, politicians, one as much as another, — to understand that the
great mass of Englishmen attended seldom and little to a matter which
for themselves was everything; which had exclusively occupied their
minds and consumed their energies during six and thirty busy and
anxious months; and which, almost against their will, had taught them
to feel as a nation, to meet in general council, and to plan combined
action.

But if America did not take sufficient account of the indifference
and ignorance of England as a whole, her instinct told her, and told her
rightly, that great men behind the scenes, before they raised the stand-
ard of British supremacy, had counted the cost, and were now fighting
to win. Awed by the suddenness and magnitude of the peril, the colo-
nial leaders acted with circumspection and rare self-control. Abstaining
themselves, and with notable success restraining their followers, from
the more violent courses which had marked the campaign against the
Stamp Act, they undertook the task of appealing to the good sense and

5

the friendliness of the British people. John Dickinson of Pennsylvania,
so true to England that he lost all heart for politics when the time came
that he could no longer be true to England without being disloyal to
America, put the case against the Revenue Acts with conclusive force,
and in attractive shape. His "Farmer's Letters" having done their
work at home, were published by Franklin in London, were translated
into French, and were read by everybody in the two capitals of civilisa-
tion who read anything more serious than a play-bill. The members
of the Massachusetts Assembly resolutely and soberly assumed the re-
sponsibility of giving an official voice to the grievances of America.
They explained their contention in a letter which their agent in Eng-
land was directed to lay before the British Cabinet; and they transmit-
ted a Petition to the King, recounting the early struggles of their col-
ony, its services to the Empire, the rights and privileges with which it
had been rewarded, and its recent intolerable wrongs. The language
used was manly, simple, and even touching, if anything could have
touched him whom they still tried to regard as the father of his people.
The documents were written in draft by Samuel Adams; and one of
them, at least, was revised no less than seven times in full conclave with
the object of excluding any harsh or intemperate expression. And then
they prepared themselves for the very worst; because, though they fain
would hope against hope, they only too well knew that the worst
would come. They addressed a circular letter to the other representative
Assemblies on the American continent, urging them to take such steps,
within the limits of the Constitution, as would strengthen the hands of
a sister colony which had done its duty, according to its light, in the
presence of a great emergency, and which now ventured freely to make
known its mind to them upon a common concern.

It was all to no purpose. Their Petition was thrown aside unan-
swered, much as if they had been a meeting of heritors in Scotland who
had passed a resolution calling for the repeal of the Act of Union dur-
ing the hours which ought to have been spent on parish business. But
as Regards the circular letter, even that parallel could not hold; for no
Minister would have treated the humblest local body in any of the three
Kingdoms in the style which the Secretary of State employed in deal-
ing with the senates of America. Lord Hillsborough informed the Gov-
ernor of Massachusetts that her representatives must rescind the reso-
lution on which the circular letter was based, or be sent back to their
homes then and there. The Assemblies of the twelve other colonies
were enjoined, in so many words, to take no notice of the appeal from

Boston, and to treat it with the contempt which it deserved, on pain,
in their case likewise, of an immediate prorogation or dissolution. Such
a message could bring only one answer from men who had our blood
in their veins, and in whose village schools our history was taught as
their own. Junius, no blind partisan of the Americans, wrote of them
with force and truth. "They have been driven into excesses little short
of rebellion. Petitions have been hindered from reaching the Throne;
and the continuance of one of the principal Assemblies rested upon an
arbitrary condition, which, considering the temper they were in, it was
impossible they should comply with." At Boston, in the fullest House
that had ever met, ninety-two members, as against seventeen, flatly de-
clined to withdraw the letter. The Assemblies of the other colonies
stood stoutly by their fugleman, and faced, and in some cases paid, the
threatened penalty.

In one city and another, from New York to Charleston, the language
which had been familiar under the Stamp Act again was heard. The
Sons of Liberty began to stir. The glorious majority was celebrated by
processions with ninety-two torches, and banquets with an almost in-
terminable list of toasts. Above all, a combination against the use of
British manufactures once more was openly talked of; and the young
ladies looked out their spinning-wheels, and the young gentlemen re-
flected ruefully that the weather was already warm for home-made
linsey-woolsey. Boston itself, all things considered, was tranquil almost
to tameness, in spite of sore provocation. But it fell about that the
captain of a frigate, which mounted guard over the town, had taken
advantage of his station at the mouth of the harbour to intercept and
impress New England sailors as they returned home from sea. During
the height of his unpopularity a boat's-crew from his ship, on an al-
leged breach of the revenue laws, seized a sloop which, to make the
matter worse, was owned by a prominent patriot, and was called "The
Liberty." A disturbance ensued far less serious than the magistrates of
Sunderland and Hartlepool, and every North of England port which
possessed a custom-house and was visited by a pressgang, in those
rough times were accustomed to deal with as part of the year's work.
But the English Ministers were sore and nervous. The mildest whisper
of a non-importation agreement, and the most distant echo of a revenue
riot, so long as they came from beyond the Western waters, awoke
reminiscences which were too much for their temper and their equa-
nimity. The King, especially, had Boston on the brain. To this day
there are some among her sons who can forgive his memory for any-

7

thing rather than for the singular light in which he persisted in regard-
ing their classic city. To his eyes the capital of Massachusetts was a cen-
tre of vulgar sedition, bristling with Trees of Liberty and strewn with
brickbats and broken glass; where his enemies went about clothed in
homespun, and his friends in tar and feathers.

Whatever his view might be, George the Third was now well able
to impose it on the Ministry. Chatham had retired, and the Duke of
Grafton, who was not master of his colleagues, held the office of First
Lord of the Treasury. The Bedfords by this time had contrived to
establish themselves solidly in the Government, and were always at
hand to feed the flame of the King's displeasure. They eagerly repre-
sented to him that his authoriy had been trifled with long enough, and
promised that five or six frigates and one strong brigade would soon
bring not only Massachusettes, but the whole American continent, to
reason. Lord Shelburne, to his infinite credit, fought the battle of sense
and humanity singlehanded within the Cabinet, and stoutly declared
that he would be no party to despatching for service on the coast of
New England a cutter or a company in addition to the force that was
there already. Franklin, whom Shelburne admired and believed in,
had reminded the House of Commons that a regiment of infantry
could not oblige a man to take stamps, or drink tea, if he chose to do
without; and had expressed it as his opinion that, if troops were sent
to America, they would not find a rebellion, although they would be
only too likely to make one.2 But Franklin's wit had too much wisdom
in it for George the Third, and for such of his counsellors as knew
what advice was expected of them. The Bedfords carried the day, and
Shelburne resigned office. Early in October, 1768, eight ships of war
lay in Boston harbour. Their loaded broadsides commanded a line of
wharves a great deal more tranquil than was the quay of North Shields
during one of the periodical disputes between the keelmen and the
coal-shippers. Cannon and infantry were landed, and the men were
marched on to the Common with drums beating and colours flying,
and sixteen rounds of ball-cartridge in their pouches. The first con-
tingent consisted of two battalions, and the wing of another; and sub-
sequent reinforcements increased the garrison until Boston contained
at least one red-coat for every five of the men, women, and children
who made up the total of her seventeen thousand inhabitants.

2 Examination of Dr. Benjamin Franklin before the House in Committee. The Par-
liamentary History of England, vol. xiv., p. 147.

8

So the second stage was reached in the downward course. How
serious a step it was, how absolutely irretrievable except on the condi-
tion of being retracted forthwith, is now a commonplace of history.
But its gravity was acknowledged at the time by few Englishmen and
those who were specially responsible for the conduct of affairs were
blind amidst the one-eyed. It is not too much to say that, among our
own people of every degree, the governing classes understood America
the least. One cause of ignorance they had in common with others of
their countrymen. We understand the Massachusetts of 1768 better
than it was understood by most Englishmen who wrote that date at
the head of their letters. For when the question is that of getting to
know what the world outside Europe was like four generations ago,
distance of time is less of an obstacle to us, in an age when all read,
than was distance of space to our ancestors before the days of steam
and telegraph. A man bound for New York, as he sent his luggage on
board at Bristol, would willingly have compounded for a voyage last-
ing as many weeks as it now lasts days. When Franklin, still a youth,
went to London to buy the press and types by which he hoped to found
his fortune, he had to wait the best part of a twelvemonth for the one
ship which then made an annual trip between Philadelphia and the
Thames. When, in 1762, already a great man, he sailed for England in
a convoy of merchantmen, he spent all September and October at
sea, enjoying the calm weather, as he always enjoyed everything; din-
ing about on this vessel and the other; and travelling "as in a moving
village, with all one's neighbours about one." Adams, during the height
of the war, hurrying to France in the finest frigate which Congress
could place at his disposal, — and with a captain who knew that, if he
encountered a superior force, his distinguished guest did not intend to
be carried alive under British hatches, — could make no better speed
than five and forty days between Boston and Bordeaux. Lord Carlisle,
carrying an olive-branch the prompt delivery of which seemed a mat-
ter of life and death to the Ministry that sent him out, was six weeks
between port and port, tossed by gales which inflicted on his brother
Commissioners agonies such as he forbore to make a matter of joke
even to George Selwyn. General Riedesel, conducting the Brunswick
troops to fight in a bad quarrel which was none of theirs, counted three
mortal months from the day when he stepped on deck at Stade in the
Elbe to the day when he stepped off it at Quebec in the St. Lawrence.
If such was the lot of plenipotentiaries on mission and of generals in
command, it may be imagined how humbler individuals fared, the

9

duration of whose voyage concerned no one but themselves. Waiting
weeks on the wrong side of the water for a full complement of passen-
gers, and weeks more for a fair wind; — and then beating across in a
badly found tub, with a cargo of millstones and old iron rolling about
below; — they thought themselves lucky if they came into harbour a
month after their private stores had run out, and carrying a budget of
news as stale as the ship's provisions.3

Whatever else got across the Atlantic under such conditions, fresh
and accurate knowledge of what people on the opposite coast thought,
and how they lived, most assuredly did not. War is a great teacher of
geography. The ideas about men, laws, and localities in the United
States, which were current here until Lee's Virginian campaigns and
Sherman's March to Savannah, the Proclamation of Freedom, and the
re-election of Lincoln, came successively to enlighten us, were vague
and distorted even in an era of ocean steamers. But those ideas were
tame and true as compared to the images which floated across the
mental vision of our grandfather's grandfather whenever he took the
trouble to think about the colonies. The hallucinations of the British
mind, practical even in its fantasies, assumed the shape of fabulous
statistics which went to show that America, unless her commercial am-
bition was kept tight in hand, would overset the intentions of Provi-
dence by ceasing to supply her wants exclusively from Britain. "The
great defect here," Franklin wrote from London, "is in all sorts of
people a want of attention to what passes in such remote countries as
America; an unwillingness to read anything about them if it appears
a little lengthy, and a disposition to postpone the consideration even of
the things they know they must at last consider, so that they may have
time for what more immediately concerns them, and withal enjoy their
amusements, and be undisturbed in the universal dissipation." 4 They
read as little as they could help and, when they did read, they were
informed by the debates in Parliament that the farmers and backwoods-
men of the West, if they were permitted to manufacture in iron, in
cotton, and in wool, and to export the produce of their labour all the
world over, would speedily kill the industries of Leeds and Manchester
and Sheffield. And they learned from the newspapers, for whom Niag-
ara and the Rapids did not exist, that the interests of Newfoundland

» Among accounts of such voyages, none are more life-like than those which may
be found in Davis's Travels in America, published in 1803; an exquisitely absurd book,
which the world to the diminution of its gaiety has forgotten.

4 Letter to Samuel Cooper. London, July 7, 1773.

10

were threatened by a scheme for the establishment of a cod and whale
fishery in Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. That was the sort of stuff,
said Franklin, which was produced for the amusement of coffee-house
students in politics, and was the material for "all future Livys, Rapins,
Robertsons, Humes, and Macaulays who may be inclined to furnish
the world with that rara avis, a true history." 5

Over and above the misconceptions which prevailed in other quar-
ters, Ministers of State were under a disadvantage peculiar to them-
selves. While other Englishmen were ignorant, they were habitually
misinformed. In recent years the nation has more than once learned
by bitter experience the evils which arise from bad advice sent home
by administrators on the spot, whether they be dull people who cannot
interpret what is passing around them, or clever people with a high-
flying policy of their own. But the Colonial Governors and High Com-
missioners of our own times have been men of good, and sometimes of
lofty, character; whereas the personages upon whose reports Lord
Hillsborough and Lord Dartmouth had to depend for forming their
notions of the American population, and in accordance with whose
suggestions the course taken at an emergency by the British Cabinet
was necessarily shaped, were in many cases utterly unworthy of their
trust. Among them were needy politicians and broken stockjobbers
who in better days had done a good turn to a Minister, and for whom
a post had to be found at times when the English public departments
were too full, or England itself was too hot, to hold them. There re-
mained the resource of shipping them across the Atlantic to chaffer for
an increase of salary with the assembly of their colony, and to pester
their friends at home with claims for a pension which would enable
them to revisit London without fear of the Marshalsea. They took
small account socially of the plain and shrewd people amongst whom
their temporary lot was thrown; and they were the last to understand
the nature and motives of that moral repugnance with which their
superciliousness was repaid.

On the Secretary of State's list there were better men than these, who
unfortunately were even worse governors. It so happened that in critical
places, and at moments which were turning-points of history, the high-
est post in the colony was more often than not occupied by some man

5 Letter of May, 1765, to the editor of a newspaper, under the signature of "A
Traveller." Mrs. Catharine Macaulay, author of The History of England from the
Accession of James the First to that of the Brunswick, Line, was then much in vogue
among the Whigs. They were rather at a loss for an historian of their own, to set
against the Jacobitism of David Hume.

II

of energy and industry, who in personal conduct was respectable ac-
cording to the standard then ruling in the most easy branch of a public
service nowhere given to austerity. But they were not of an intellectual
capacity equal to a situation which would have tried the qualities of a
Turgot. They moved in an atmosphere such that perverted public spirit
was more dangerous than no public spirit at all. A great man would
have sympathised with the aspirations of the colonists; a lazy man
would have laughed at and disregarded them; but, (by a tendency
which is irresistible in times of unrest and popular discontent,) a nar-
row and plodding man is the predestined enemy of those whom it is
his vocation to govern. Exactly in proportion as people are keen to
detect their rights, and formidable to insist on having them, a governor
of this type is certain to distrust their aims, to disapprove their meth-
ods, and bitterly to dislike their turn of character. In his eyes, the
rough and ready incidents that accompany the spread of political
excitement in a young community are so many acts of treason against
his office, which he is always apt to magnify. His self-respect is
wounded; his sense of official tradition is honestly shocked; and, while
the people are intent upon what they regard as a public controversy,
he is sure to treat the whole matter as a personal conflict between
himself and them.

Such a man, in such a state of mind and temper, makes it his duty,
and finds it his consolation, to pour out his griefs and resentments in
the correspondence which he carries on with his official superiors. It
is the bare truth that his own Governors and Lieutenant-Governors
wrote King George out of America. The stages of the process are
minutely recorded by an analytic philosopher who enjoyed every facil-
ity for conducting his observations. "Their office," wrote Franklin,
"makes them insolent; their insolence makes them odious; and, being
conscious that they are hated, they become malicious. Their malice
urges them to continual abuse of the inhabitants in their letters to
administration, representing them as disaffected and rebellious, and,
(to encourage the use of severity,) as weak, divided, timid, and cow-
ardly. Government believes all; thinks it necessary to support and
countenance its officers. Their quarrelling with the people is deemed
a mark and consequence of their fidelity. They are therefore more
highly rewarded, and this makes their conduct still more insolent
and provoking."

It was a picture painted from life, in strong but faithful colours. The
letters of Bernard, the Governor of Massachusetts, contained the germ
12

of all the culpable and foolish proceedings which at the long last
alienated America. As far back as the year 1764 he wrote a memo-
randum in which he urged the Cabinet to quash the Charters of the
colonies. Throughout the agitation against the Stamp-duty he studi-
ously exaggerated the turbulence of the popular party, and underrated
their courage and sincerity. "The people here," he wrote, in January,
1766, "talk very high of their power to resist Great Britain; but it is
all talk. New York and Boston would both be defenceless to a royal
fleet. I hope that New York will have the honour of being subdued
first." When, to his chagrin, the obnoxious tax was abolished, Bernard
set himself persistently to the work of again troubling the quieted
waters. He proposed, in cold blood, during the interval between the
repeal of the Stamp Act and the imposition of the Tea-duty, that Mas-
sachusetts should be deprived of her Assembly. When the new quarrel
arose, he lost no chance of stimulating the fears of the Court, and
flattering its prejudices. He sent over lists of royalists who might be
nominated to sit as councillors in the place of the ejected representa-
tives, and lists of patriots who should be deported to England, and
there tried for their lives. He called on the Bedfords for troops as often
and as importunately as ever the Bedfords themselves had called for
trumps when a great stake was on the card-table. He advised that the
judges and the civil servants of Massachusetts should be paid by the
Crown with money levied from the colony. He pleaded in secret that
the obnoxious taxes should never, and on no account, be repealed or
mitigated; while in a public despatch he recommended that a petition
from the Assembly, praying for relief from these very taxes, should
be favourably considered. For this plot against the liberties of America
was carried on out of the view of her people. Amidst the surprise and
dismay inspired by each successive stroke of severity with which they
were visited, the colonists did not recognise, and in some cases did not
even suspect, the hand of their own paid servants, who were for ever
professing to mediate between them and their angry sovereign. Since
Machiavelli undertook to teach the Medici how principalities might be
governed and maintained, no such body of literature was put on paper
as that in which Sir Francis Bernard, (for his services procured him a
baronetcy,) instructed George the Third and his Ministers in the art
of throwing away a choice portion of a mighty Empire.

But in order to comprehend a policy which lay so far outside the
known and ordinary limits of human infatuation, it must never be for-

13

gotten that there was a deeper and a more impassable gulf than the
Atlantic between the colonists and their rulers. If Cabinet Ministers at
home had known the Americans better, they would only have loved
them less. The higher up in the peerage an Englishman stood, and the
nearer to influence and power, the more unlikely it was that he would
be in sympathy with his brethren across the seas, or that he would be
capable of respecting their susceptibilities, and of apprehending their
virtues, which were less to his taste even than their imperfections. It is
unnecessary to recapitulate any portion of the copious mass of evidence,
drawn from their own mouths, and those of their boon companions
and confederates, by aid of which a description— and the accuracy of it
no one has thought fit to impugn— has been given of the personal
habits and the public morality prevalent among those statesmen whom
the majority in Parliament supported, and in whom the King reposed
his confidence.6 How they drank and gamed; what scandalous modes
of life they led themselves, and joyously condoned in others; what they
spent and owed, and whence they drew the vast sums of money by
which they fed their extravagance, may be found in a hundred histories
and memoirs, dramas, novels, and satires. But the story is nowhere re-
corded in such downright language, and with so much exuberance of
detail, as in the easy mutual confidences of the principal actors; if,
indeed, that can be called a confidence which the person concerned
would have told with equal freedom and self-complacency to any man,
—and, it must be confessed, to many women,— as long as the hearers
were of his own rank, and belonged to his own party.

These folk were the product of their age, which in its worst aspect,
resembled nothing that England has known before or since. The stern
heroes who waged the great civic contest of the seventeenth century,
and who drew their strength from the highest of all sources, had been
succeeded by a race who in private very generally lived for enjoyment,
and in Parliament fought for their own hand. The fibre of our public
men had long been growing dangerously lax, and at length temptation
came in irresistible force. The sudden wealth which poured into Eng-
land after Chatham had secured her predominance in both hemispheres
brought in its train a flood of extravagance and corrupton, and occa-
sioned grave misgivings to those who were proud of her good name,
and who understood her real interests. There was now, however, in
store for our country a severe and searching lesson, the direct con-
sequence of her faults, and proportioned to their magnitude, but by

6 Chapter III. of the Early History of Charles James Fox.

14

which as a nation she was capable of profiting. She escaped the fate
of other world-wide empires by the noble spirit in which she accepted
the teaching of disaster. From the later years of the American war
onwards there set in a steady and genuine reformation in personal and
^political morals which carried her safe, strong, and pure through the
supreme ordeal of the wrestle with Napoleon.

But nothing is more certain than that there was a period when Eng-
lishmen who had studied the past, and who watched the present, recog-
nised, most unwillingly, a close parallel between their own country
and the capital of the ancient world at the time when the Provinces lay
helpless and defenceless at the disposal of the Senate. They read their
Gibbon with uneasy presentiments, and were not disposed to quarrel
with satirists who found in London and Bath much the same material
as Rome and Baiae had afforded to Juvenal. Smollett, though by prefer-
ence he drew from ugly models, depicted things as he saw them, and
not as he imagined them. Those scenes of coarseness and debauchery,
of place-hunting and bribery, of mean tyranny and vulgar favouritism,
which make his town-stories little short of nauseous, and give to his
sea-stories their unpleasing but unquestionable power, were only the
seamy side of that tapestry on which more fashionable artists recorded
the sparkling follies and splendid jobbery of their era. Great in describ-
ing the symptoms, Smollett had detected the root of the disease, as is
shown in his description of the throng of visitors who came to drink
the Bath waters. "All these absurdities," he wrote, "arise from the gen-
eral tide of luxury, which hath overpowered the nation, and swept
away all, even the dregs of the people. Clerks and factors from the
East Indies, loaded with the spoils of plundered provinces; planters,
negro-drivers, and hucksters from our American plantations, enriched
they know not how; agents, commissaries, and contractors, who have
fattened in two successive wars on the blood of the nation; usurers,
brokers, and jobbers of every kind; men of low birth and no breeding,
have found themselves suddenly translated to a state of affluence un-
known to former ages."7

Other writers, who were not professional cynics, and who observed
mankind with no inclination to make the worst of what they saw, were
all in the same story. Home Tooke pronounced that English manners
had not changed by degrees, but of a sudden; and he attributed it
chiefly to our connection with India that luxury and corruption had
flowed in, "not as in Greece, like a gentle rivulet, but after the manner

7 Humphrey Clinker. The letter from Bath of April 23.

15

of a torrent." 8 On such a point no more unimpeachable witnesses can
be found than those American Tories who sacrificed their homes, their
careers, and their properties for love of England, and for the duty
which they thought that they owed her. These honest men were
shocked and pained to find that in passing from the colonies to the
mother-country they had exchanged an atmosphere of hardihood, sim-
plicity, and sobriety for what seemed to them a perpetual cyclone of
prodigality and vice. Their earlier letters, before they had grown ac-
customed to a state of manners which they never could bring them-
selves to approve, breathe in every paragraph disappointment and
disillusion.9 The blemishes on the fair fame of England, which these
unhappy children of her adoption discovered late in life, were familiar
to her native sons from the time when they first began to take account
of what was going on around them. Churchill's denunciations of the
rake, the gamester, and the duellist in high places of trust and power
read to us now like the conventional invective of satire; but in his own
generation they were true to the life and the letter. And Cowper, whose
most halting verse had a dignity and sincerity which must ever be
wanting to Churchill's bouncing couplets, made it a complaint against
his country

That she is rigid in denouncing death

On petty robbers, and indulges life

And liberty, and oft-times honour too,

To peculators of the public gold:

That thieves at home must hang, but he that puts

Into his overgorged and bloated purse

The wealth of Indian provinces, escapes.10

By whatever channels money flowed into the country, it was in the
nature of things that those who were the strongest should get the most.
The people of birth and fashion, who as a class were always in power,

8 Memoirs of John Home Too^e, vol. ii., p. 488.

9 Samuel Curwen, for instance, who left Salem in Massachusetts for London in May,
I775> writes in July of the same year: "The dissipation, self-forgetfulness, and vicious
indulgences of every kind which characterise this metropolis are not to be wondered at.
The unbounded riches of many afford the means of every species of luxury, which,
(thank God,) our part of America is ignorant of." And again in the following August:
"You will not wonder at the luxury, dissipation, and profligacy of manners said to
reign in this capital, when you consider that the temptations to indulgence, from the
lowest haunts to the most elegant and expensive rendezvous of the noble and polished
world, are almost beyond the power of number to reckon up."

10 Book I. of The

16

had no mind to be outbid and outshone by the nabobs, and army con-
tractors, and West Indian planters who were pushing to the front in
parliament and in society. In order to hold their own against the new
men in wealth, and in all that wealth brings, they had one resource,
and one only. The opinion of their set forbade them to engage in trade;
and, apart from any question of sentiment, their self-indulgent habits
unfitted them for the demands of a genuine business life, which were
more severe then than now. The spurious business which a gentleman
may do in his off hours with no commercial training, no capital, and
no risk except to honour, was unknown in those primitive days. In the
eighteenth century the City did not care to beg or to buy any man's
name, unless he gave with it the whole of his time and the whole of his
credit. But a great peer had small cause to regret that the gates of com-
merce were barred to him and his, as long as he could help himself out
of the taxes, and help himself royally; for, in that paradise of privilege,
what an individual received from the public was in proportion to the
means which he possessed already. Horace Walpole, who lived very
long and very well on sinecures which were waiting for him when he
came of age, said that there was no living in England under twenty
thousand a year. "Not that that suffices; but it enables one to ask for
a pension for two or three lives."

A nobleman with a large supply of influence to sell, who watched
the turn of the market, and struck in at the right moment, might make
the fortune of his family in the course of a single week. "To-morrow,"
Rigby wrote to the Duke of Bedford in September, 1766, "Lord Hert-
ford kisses hands for Master of the Horse. Lord Beauchamp is made
Constable of Dublin Castle for life in the room of an old Mr. Hatton.
Lord Hertford gives Mr. Hatton a thousand pounds to quit his em-
ployment, which was five hundred a year. A thousand more is added,
and Lord Beauchamp has got it for his life. There is another job done
for another son in a Custom-house place, which will be a thousand a
year more. In short, what with sons and daughters, and boroughs, and
employments of all kinds, I never heard of such a trading voyage as his
Lordship's has proved." Rigby himself — whose stock-in-trade was an
effrontery superior to the terrors of debate, a head of proof in a drink-
ing bout, and an undeniable popularity with all circles whose good-
will was no compliment—was Master of the Rolls in Ireland, or rather
out of Ireland, for life. In addition, he enjoyed for the space of four-
teen years the vast and more than questionable emoluments of a Pay-
master of the Forces who was without a conscience, and with a good

17

friend at the Treasury. A balance of eleven hundred thousand pounds
of public money stood in his name at the bank, the interest on which
went to him, or rather to his creditors; for he lived and died insolvent.
To this day the nation has against him a bad debt of a large amount, in
the sense, that is, 'in which a traveller whose purse has been taken has a
bad debt against a highwayman.

The increasing luxury and the rise in the standard of living, which
drove great men into these raids on the Exchequer, at the same time
provided the means of gratifying, if not of satisfying, their rapacity.
New offices were created out of the superfluities of the revenue; and, as
each year went round, those which already existed became better worth
having. The receipts of the Customs and the Excise together under
Lord North were double what they had been under Sir Robert Wai-
pole. The profits of patent places, which were received in fees or in
percentages, mounted steadily upwards as the business which passed
through the hands of the holder, or of his humble and poorly paid
subordinates, grew in importance and in volume. The Usher of the
Exchequer saw his gains, in the course of one generation, grow from
nine hundred to eighteen hundred, and from eighteen hundred to four
thousand two hundred pounds a year. The spread of commerce, the
rush of enterprise, brought causes into the Courts, and private Bills on
to the table of Parliament, in numbers such that many a post, which
twenty years before had been regarded as a moderate competence for
life, now enabled its occupier to entertain the ambition of founding a
family out of the tribute which he levied from litigants and promoters.

The domestic history of the epoch clearly shows that every noble,
and even gentle, household in the kingdom claimed as the birthright of
its members that they should live by salary. The eldest son succeeded
to the estate, the most valuable part of which, more productive than
a coal-mine or a slate-quarry, was some dirty village which returned a
member for each half-score of its twenty cottages. The second son was
in the Guards. The third took a family living, and looked forward to
holding at least a Canonry as well. The fourth entered the Royal Navy;
and those that came after, (for fathers of all ranks did their duty by
the State, whose need of men was then at the greatest,) joined a march-
ing regiment as soon as they were strong enough to carry the colours.
And as soldiers and sailors, whatever might be the case in other de-
partments, our ancestors gave full value for their wages. From the day
when Rodney broke the line off Dominica, back to the day when de
Grammont did not break the line at Dettingen, a commission in the
18

British army or navy was no sinecure. Our aristocracy took the lion's
share, but they played the lion's part. The sons and grandsons of the
houses of Manners and Keppel did not do their work in the field and
on the quarter-deck by proxy. Killed in Germany, killed in America,
killed in the Carnatic with Laurence, killed on the high seas in an
action of frigates, drowned in a transport, died of wounds on his way
home from the West Indies,— such entries, coming thick and fast over
a period of forty years, during which we were fighting for five and
twenty, make the baldest record of our great families a true roll of
honour.

Whether they lived on their country or died for her, the members of
our ruling class were an aristocracy; State-paid, as far as they earned
money at all; seldom entering the open professions; and still further
removed from the homely and laborious occupations on which the
existence of society is founded. But they governed the Empire, and,
among other parts of the Empire, those great provinces in North
America which were inhabited by a race of men with whom, except
their blood and language, they had little in common. Burke, who told
the House of Commons that he had taken for some years a good deal
of pains to inform himself on the matter, put the white population in
the colonies at not less than two millions, which was something be-
tween a fourth and a fifth of the population of Great Britain. The
outposts of that army of pioneers were doing battle with the wilder-
ness along an ever-advancing frontier of eighteen hundred miles from
end to end. In the Southern States, where life was cruelly rough for the
poorer settlers, and where the more wealthy landowners depended on
the labour of negroes, society was already constituted after a fashion
which differed from anything that was to be seen in New England,
or in Old England either. But the great majority of the colonists were
gathered together, though not very near together, in settled districts,
with a civilisation and a type of character of their own such as the
world had never before witnessed.

The French nobles, who brought their swords and fortunes to the
assistance of the Revolution in America, opened their eyes on the morn-
ing after their arrival upon a state of things which closely resembled
the romantic ideal then fashionable in Parisian circles. But for a cer-
tain toughness and roughness, of undoubted English origin, which the
young fellows began to notice more when they had learned to speak
English better, the community in which they found themselves seemed,

19

in their lively and hopeful eyes, to have been made to order out of the
imagination of Rousseau or of Fenelon. They were equally delighted
with the external aspect and the interior meaning of the things around
them. The Comte de Segur had seen peasants at the opera; before he
wrote his Memoirs he had lived to see the extemporised villages which
the loyalty and gallantry of Prince Potemkin constructed and decorated
at each stage of the Empress Catherine's famous voyage through her
Southern dominions; but in his long and chequered existence he met
with nothing which so pleased him as what he espied along the high
roads of Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. "Sometimes," he
wrote, "in the midst of vast forests, with majestic trees which the axe
had never touched, I was transported in idea to the remote times when
the first navigators set their feet on that unknown hemisphere. Some-
times I was admiring a lovely valley, carefully tilled, with the meadows
full of cattle; the houses clean, elegant, painted in bright and varied
colours, and standing in little gardens behind pretty fences. And then,
further on, after other masses of woods, I came to populous hamlets,
and towns where everything betokened the perfection of civilisation, —
schools, churches, universities. Indigence and vulgarity nowhere; abun-
dance, comfort, and urbanity everywhere. The inhabitants, each and all,
exhibited the unassuming and quiet pride of men who have no master,
who see nothing above them except the law, and who are free from the
vanity, the servility, and the prejudices of our European societies. That
is the picture which, throughout my whole journey, never ceased to
interest and surprise me."

It is a scene depicted by a foreigner and an enthusiast, who had no
mind to observe faults. But de Segur and his comrades, though they
were young when they visited America, recorded or reprinted their
impressions of it after an experience of men and cities such as falls to
the lot of few. Lafayette, whatever might be the misfortunes of his
middle life, had sooner or later seen a great deal of the world under the
pleasant guise which it presents to the hero of a perpetual ovation. Mat-
thieu Dumas, who, before he was Lieutenant-General of the armies of
King Louis the Eighteenth, served Napoleon long and faithfully, had
marched, and fought, and administered all Europe over in the train of
the most ubiquitous of conquerors. And yet, after so much had been
tried and tasted, the remote and ever-receding picture of their earliest
campaign stood out as their favourite page in the book of memory.
They liked the country, and they never ceased to love the people. They
could not forget how, in "one of those towns which were soon to be
20

cities, or villages which already were little towns," they would alight
from horseback in a street bright with flowers and foliage. They would
lift the knocker of shining brass which pleased eyes accustomed at home
to the shabbiness and misery of most houses below the rank of a palace
guarded by a gigantic Swiss porter, whose duty it was to usher in the
high-born and suppress the humble visitor. Behind the door, gay with
paint which never was allowed to lose its gloss, they were sure to meet
with a hospitality that knew no respect of persons. "Simplicity of man-
ners," said Lafayette, "the desire to oblige, and a mild and quiet equality
are the rule everywhere. The inns are very different from those of
Europe. The master and mistress sit down with you, and do the hon-
ours of an excellent dinner; and, when you depart, there is no bargain-
ing over the bill. If you are not in the mind to go to a tavern, you can
soon find a country-house where it is enough to be a good American in
order to be entertained as in Europe we entertain a friend."

Those were not the manners of Europe, and it is to be feared that to
a special degree they were not then the manners of Great Britain. The
wife of General Riedesel passed across our island on her way to rejoin
her husband in Canada, and share his dangers in the field. In London
she was exposed to every form of molestation, from curiosity to gross
incivility, on the part of the idlers and loungers. It was enough for them
that she was foreign; and they did not trouble themselves to ask whether
or not she was connected with a foreigner who had left his country in
order to fight their country's battles. At Bristol she went out walking
under the escort of the Mayor's niece, in a favourite dress which she had
brought with her from Germany. A mob of more than a hundred sail-
ors gathered round, pointing at her with their fingers, and shouting to
her an epithet which is the most cruel insult that can be offered to a
woman. The poor lady was so horrified that, though she could ill afford
the loss, she gave her gown away.

Nor, on the point of international hospitality, was there much to
choose between town and country. Herr Moritz of Berlin, who ven-
tured on a walking tour up the valley of the Thames towards the
close of the American war, found that a clergyman and man of letters,
presumed by the public to go afoot because he could not afford to ride,
must still expect as scurvy entertainment as in the days of Joseph
Andrews. This gentleman in the course of his first stage between
London and Oxford complained that, when he rested in the shade by
the road-side with a book in his hand, he excited in the passers-by a

21

sort of contemptuous pity, which women expressed by the exclamation
of "Good God Almighty!" and men by something stronger. In Wind-
sor he was turned away from the door of one inn, and sworn at to his
face at another. At the taverns along the Henley road he was denied a
lodging, and did not dare even to ask for one in the town itself. The
village of Nuneham refused him a bed, a supper, and even a crust of
bread with his ale. When he penetrated further into the heart of the
country, he was hissed through the streets of Burton, where he had
hoped to stay the night; and at Matlock he was most churlishly ^ treated
because, from ignorance of English customs, he omitted to drink the
health of the company. "They showed me into the kitchen," he says on
another occasion, "and set me down to sup at the same table with some
soldiers and the servants. I now, for the first time, found myself in one
of those kitchens which I had so often read of in Fielding's fine novels,
and which certainly give one, on the whole, a very accurate idea of
English manners. While I was eating, a postchaise drove up, and in a
moment the whole house was set in motion, in order to receive, with all
due respect, guests who were supposed to be persons of consequence.
The gentlemen, however, called for nothing but a couple of pots of
beer, and then drove away again. The people of the house behaved to
them with all possible attention, because they came in a postchaise."
Herr Moritz everywhere was struck by the different welcome vouch-
safed to those whom the innkeepers styled "Sir," and those who, like
himself and humbler people, were addressed as "Master."

Mathieu Dumas saw the difference between English and American
manners. "In spite," he says, "of the resemblance in language, in cos-
tume, in customs, in religion, and in the principles of government, a
distinct national character is forming itself. The colonists are milder
and more tolerant, more hospitable, and in general more communica-
tive than the English. The English, in their turn, reproach them with
levity and too keen a taste for pleasure." But the contrast was not with
England alone among European nations; and the cause lay deep in the
favourable conditions of life which prevailed in the New World, and
were wanting to the Old. "An observer," wrote de Segur, "fresh from
our magnificent cities, and the airs of our young men of fashion, —
who has compared the luxury of our upper classes with the coarse dress
of our peasants, and the rags of our innumerable poor, — is surprised,
on reaching the United States, by the entire absence of the extremes
both of opulence and misery. All Americans whom we met wore

22

clothes of good material. Their free, frank, and familiar address,
equally removed from uncouth discourtesy and from artificial polite-
ness, betokened men who were proud of their own rights and respected
those of others."

On a question of manners there is no appeal from the judgment of
people who came from the very centre of that combination of culture
and talent with rank and breeding which marked French society in the
age preceding the Revolution. Lafayette had been a Black Musketeer
while still a schoolboy, and had refused a post in a royal household
when he married at what was then, for a scion of the French nobility,
the mature age of sixteen. But his independence was not to his disad-
vantage, and the world of fashion made all the more of him on account
of the flavour of elegant republicanism which hung about him. De
Segur, when in garrison, served in a regiment containing such sub-
lieutenants as the Prince de Lambesc, Master of the Horse of France,
and the son of the Due de Fleury, who was the First Gentleman of
the Chamber. In Paris he had been honoured by the intimacy of Mar-
montel and d'Alembert. And yet Lafayette and de Segur joined in
testifying that they never met truer gentlemen than their hosts in the
New England villages, and than their brethren in arms who sat round
the frugal table of General Washington.

The character which they admired was home-grown, but it bore
transportation well. The American qualities of that plain and strong
generation did not require American surroundings to set them off to
advantage. John Adams began life as a rural schoolmaster, and con-
tinued it as a rural lawyer. He never saw anything which Lord Ches-
terfield or Madame du DefFand would have recognised as society, until
he dined with Turgot to meet a member of the family of de Roche-
foucauld. He learned French as he went along, and at the bottom
of his heart had no great love or respect for Frenchmen. But soon after
he began his sojourn in France, he became at home in the diplomatic
world; and before long he had acquired there a commanding influence,
which proved to be of inestimable value to his country. Franklin in
London had no official position except that of agent for a colonial
Assembly, and no previous knowledge of English society except what
he had picked up as a youth, working for a printer, and lodging in
Little Britain at three and sixpence a week. And yet he was welcomed
by all, of every rank, whom he cared to meet, and by some great people
with whose attentions, and with a good deal of whose wine, he would

23

have willingly dispensed.11 When he took up his abode in Paris, he
continued to live as he had lived in Philadelphia till the age o£ seventy,
—talking his usual talk, and dressed in sober broadcloth. And yet he
became the rage, and set the fashion, in circles which gave undisputed
law to the whole of polite Europe in matters where taste and behaviour
were concerned.

Successes of this nature, however remarkable, may, in the case of
Franklin and Adams, be pardy accounted for by reasons which hold
good in all times and in all companies. The hero, as Emerson says, is
suffered to be himself; and society does not insist on his conforming
to the usages which it imposes on the rank and file of its members.
But the honest people who gave a bed and a supper to the young
French colonel at every stopping place between Delaware Bay and
West Point were not all of them heroes or sages; and the agreeable
impression which they produced upon their foreign guests must be
explained by other causes. The fact is that travellers from the countries
of continental Europe found in America exactly what they had been
searching after eagerly, and with some sense of disappointment, in
England. Anglomania was then at its height; and the noblest form of
that passion led men to look for, and imitate, the mode of life which
must surely, (so they hoped and argued,) be the product of such laws
and such freedom as ours. Of simplicity and frugality, of manliness
and independence, o£ religious conviction and sense of duty, there was
abundance in our island, if they had known where to seek it. In every
commercial town from Aberdeen to Falmouth, and on many a coun-
tryside, the day's work was being done by men of the right stamp,
with something of old manners, but of solid modern knowledge; close
attendants at church, or, in more cases still, at chapel; writing without
effort and pretension a singularly clear and vigorous English, and
making the money which they spent, and a good deal more, by their
own labour and their own enterprise. From them came Howard and
Raikes, Arkwright and Wedgwood, Watt and Brindley. For them
Wesley and John Newton preached, and Adam Smith and Arthur
Young wrote. Intent on their business, they yet had time to spare

11 "We have lost Lord Clare from the Board of Trade," Franklin wrote in July, 1768.
ccHe took me home from Court the Sunday before his removal, that I might dine with
him, as he said, alone, and talk over American affairs. He gave me a great deal of
flummery; saying that, though at my Examination I answered some of his questions a
little pertly, yet he liked me for the spirit I showed in defence of my country. At part-
ing, after we had drunk a bottle and a half of claret each, he hugged and kissed me,
protesting that he had never in his life met with a man he was so much in love with.'*

24

for schemes of benevolence and general utility; and they watched
the conduct of State affairs with deep and growing interest, and with
indignation which was mostly silent. For their opportunity was not
yet; and they were creating and maturing quietly, and as it were
unconsciously, that public opinion of their class which grew in strength
during the coming fifty years, and then for another fifty years
was destined to rule the country. They were the salt of the earth
in those days of corruption; but they were not the people whom a gen-
tleman from Versailles, visiting London with letters of introduction
from the Due de Choiseul or the Chevalier de Boufflers, would be
very likely to meet. They lived apart from high society, and did not
copy its habits or try to catch its tone; nor did they profess the theory
of an equality which, as their strong sense told them, they could not
successfully assert in pratice. Preserving their self-respect, and keeping
within their own borders, they recognised that the best of the world,
whether they liked it or not, was made for others. However little they
might care to put the confession into words, they acted, and wrote,
and spoke as men aware that the government of their nation was in
the hands of an aristocracy to which they themselves did not belong.

It was far otherwise in America. The people in the settled districts
had emerged from a condition of cruel hardship to comfort, security,
and as much leisure as their temperament, already the same as now,
would permit them to take. Their predecessors had fought and won
their battle against hunger and cold and pestilence, against savage
beasts and savage men. As time went on, they had confronted and
baffled a subtler and more deadly adversary in the power of the later
Stuarts. As soon as the exiles had conquered from the wilderness a
country which was worth possessing, the statesmen of the Restoration
stepped in to destroy their liberties, to appropriate their substance, and
to impose on them the form of Church government to escape from
which they had crossed the ocean. Those varied and protracted strug-
gles had left a mark in the virile and resolute temper of the existing
generation, in their readiness to turn a hand to any sort of work on
however sudden an emergency, and in their plain and unpretentious
habits. But there was nothing uncivilised or unlettered about them. In
their most bitter straits, while the existence of the community was still
at hazard, the founders of the colony had taken measures for securing
those supreme benefits to the individual which in their eyes were the
true end and object of all combined human effort. By the time they
had reaped their fifth harvest on the shores of the Massachusetts Bay,

25

they had established a public school at Cambridge; and the next year it
was raised to the dignity of a college, with a library and something of
an endowment. Again a twelvemonth, and the first sheet was drawn
from beneath a New England printing-press; and eight years later on,
in 1647, it was ordered that every township, "after the Lord hath in-
creased them to the number of fifty householders, shall appoint one
within their towns to teach all such children as shall resort to him to
write and read; and where any town shall increase to the number of
one hundred families, they shall set up a grammar school, the masters
thereof being able to instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for
the university."

Not otherwise did the Scottish statesmen of 1696 read their duty,
with great results to the future of their people, ancient and immovable
as were the limits by which that future was circumscribed and con-
fined. But the lawgivers of the Puritan colonies had a blank parch-
ment before them, and they were equal to the task of ruling the lines
along which the national character was to run. The full fruit of their
work was seen four generations afterwards in the noble equality of
universal industry, and of mutual respect, which prevailed among a
population of whom none were idle and none were ignorant. "There,"
wrote de Segur, "no useful profession is the subject of ridicule or con-
tempt. Idleness alone is a disgrace. Military rank and public employ-
ment do not prevent a person from having a calling of his own. Every
one there is a tradesman, a farmer, or an artisan. Those who are less
well off,— the servants, labourers, and sailor—unlike men of the lower
classes in Europe, are treated with a consideration which they merit by
the propriety of their conduct and their behaviour. At first I was sur-
prised, on entering a tavern, to find it kept by a captain, a major, or a
colonel, who was equally ready to talk, and to talk well, about his
campaigns, his farming operations, or the market he had got for his
produce or his wares. And I was still more taken aback when—after I
had answered the questions put to me about my family, and had in-
formed the company that my father was a General and a Minister of
State— they went on to inquire what was his profession or his business."
^ There could be no personal sympathy, and no identity of public
views, between the governors in Downing Street and the governed in
Pennsylvania and New England. On the one hand was a common-
wealth containing no class to which a man was bound to look up, and
none on which he was tempted to look down, where there was no
source of dignity except labour, and no luxury but a plenty which was
26

shared by all. On the other hand was a ruling caste, each member of
which, unless by some rare good fortune, was taught by precept and
example, from his schooldays onwards, that the greatest good was to
live for show and pleasure; that the whole duty of senatorial man was
to draw as much salary as could be got in return for as little work as
might be given for it; and that socially and politically the many were
not to be reckoned as standing on a level with the few. The muniment-
rooms of our old families are rich in curious notices of the educational
conditions under which British statesmen of that day formed their
earliest ideas of the social relations that ought to exist between man
and man. Among them is a story dating from the time when the
memory of Charles Fox was still fresh at Eton. One George Harlow,
in January, 1779, thus wrote from the Queen's Palace to Sir Michael
de Fleming.

"Give me leave to call to your remembrance an adventure which
happened about 13 or 14 years ago at Windsor. Myself and a friend
went from Richmond lodge to Windsor to see the Castle. We dined
at the Swan Inn, and looking out of the window we saw a number
of Eton scholars coming over the bridge, and, as they passed the win-
dow, you, Sir Michael, was pleased peremptory to demand my name,
and I not being acquainted with the manners of Eton scholars, and
likewise stranger to your quality, refused to satisfy your curiosity, on
which you and I believe a score of your schoolfellows jumped in at the
window, and threatened destruction to us, if we did not resolve you.
My friend told you his name, but before I had time to reflect you took
up my whip, and with the butt end of it levelled a blow at my head,
the marks of which I now carry, which stunned me for some minutes.
When I recovered you was standing before me, and told me I was not
hurt but that I bled damnably. However you obliged me to tell my
name, which done you swore I was a good fellow, and offered me any
recompense for my broken head, and said you was sorry for what had
happened. I was lately telling this story to a friend who advised me to
make myself known, not doubting but you would use your interest to
remove me to a place of less confinement than I have at present in
his Majesty's household. If I should be so happy as to meet your
favour, and succeed, I shall for ever remember you and the adventure
at Windsor with pleasure, and consider my scar as the promoter of my
happiness."

At the period to which the above story refers the great public school
of England was passing through a singular phase of its history. The

27

stern and often cruel education of the seventeenth century was obsolete,
and had been succeeded by a laxity of manners to which the finishing
touch was put by Lord Holland. In the course of a tour on the Con-
tinent, Charles Fox had been inducted by his father into the practice of
pleasant vices; and, on their return to England, he went back to Eton
with unlimited money, and the tastes of a rake and a gambler. Nature
had endowed the boy with qualities which dazzled and bewitched his
comrades, and excused him in the eyes of his superiors. His influence
in the school was unbounded. Lord Shelburne gave it as his opinion
that the great change for the worse which had taken place among the
youth of the upper classes dated from the time that the Foxes were pre-
dominant at Eton. It was the exaggerated statement of one who was
no friend to the family; for it left out of sight the consideration that,
bad as Lord Holland's conduct was, others than he were responsible for
the morality of the school. Charles Fox would have followed a better
path if it had been pointed out by instructors whom he loved and rev-
erenced. And, at the very worst, a few private interviews with a strong-
willed and stout-armed headmaster should have convinced the most
precocious scapegrace that Eton was not Spa or Paris.

But discipline, in any true sense of the word, there was none. Clever
boys learned to write Latin, as it was learned nowhere else. That, to
the end of his days, was the persuasion of Charles Fox; and his own
productions go to prove it, even in the judgment of those whose alle-
giance is due to other nurseries of classical culture. His school exercises,
both in prose and metre, are marked by a facility of handling, and a
sense of personal enjoyment on the part of the writer, which are not
always perceptible in the exquisite imitations of Greek and Roman
poets composed by the scholars of a later time. Nor did Latin verse
comprise all that was to be learned at Eton. The authorities were provi-
dent enough to teach elocution to lads not a few of whom inherited,
as part of their patrimony, the right of sitting for a borough, or the
obligation of standing for a county. But there the duty of a teacher
towards his pupils, as he himself read it, ended. The boys feared the
masters less than the masters feared the boys, and with good cause; for
the doctrine of non-resistance was not popular among these Whigs of
sixteen, and an Eton rebellion was a very serious matter. How agree-
ably a youth, who had a tolerant tutor and a festive dame, might pass
the later years of his school life is narrated in a letter written in the
summer quarter of 1767. "I believe Mr. Roberts is fixed upon to be my
tutor, who is the only man in the place I have any regard for. I sin-
28

cerely think him the most sensible man I ever came near in my life,
and has behaved himself so good natured to me all through the Re-
move that I shall always have a very great regard for him. Mrs. Stur-
gess is very good natured to the boys, and behaves herself very freely
amongst us; now and then gives a bottle of wine or a bowl of punch
which she makes very good. I always wish your company to partake.
In short we are very happy. I take no other amusement here but tennis,
never enter the billiard rooms. Hulse is our best player. He was to play
a set with a gentleman last week for twenty guineas, but the gentle-
man was afraid to play him." 12

The senators of the future, when they left school for college, found
themselves in a place where boundless indulgence was shown towards
the frailties of the powerful and the high born. The Duke of Grafton,
in 1768, was in the very depths of a scandal of which Junius took care
that all the world should be cognisant; and in the course of that very
year his Grace was unanimously chosen as Chancellor for the University
of Cambridge. The Earl of Sandwich had already run a dead heat for
the High Stewardship of the same educational body. The University
was saved from the ineffaceable disgrace which would have attended his
success by the votes of the country clergy, among whom his opponent
Lord Hardwicke, a nobleman of blameless character, most fortunately
had, as we are told, "much connection." 13 Gibbon, in three out of his
six autobiographies, has related how the fourteen months which he
spent at Oxford were totally lost for every purpose of study and im-
provement, at a college where the dull and deep potations of the fel-
lows excused the brisk intemperance of youth, and the velvet cap of a
Gentleman Commoner was the cap of liberty. His account of Mag-
dalen is illustrated by the experience of Lord Malmesbury, who states
in less finished phrases that the life among his own set at Merton was a
close imitation of high life in London. Fox was at Hertford College,
where he read hard; and where, poor fellow, he would have gladly
remained to read if his father had not drawn him back again into the
vortex of idleness and dissipation. Dr. Newcome, the Vice-Principal,

12 The quotations relating to Eton are from the Historical Manuscripts Commission,
Twelfth Report, Appendix, Part VII. A picturesque account of a school riot, which
•occurred there just after the close of the American war, is given in the Fourteenth Re-
port, Appendix, Part I.

13 Sandwich likewise, in the course of time, established a connection with the clergy
of a sort peculiar to himself. The Rev. Mr, Hackman, who wanted to marry one of his
mistresses, was hanged for murdering her; and the Rev. Dr. Dodd, who was hanged
for forgery, according to Walpole had married another.

29

wrote to Charles that, in the absence of the one industrious under-
graduate, all pretence of mathematical lectures had been abandoned for
the others. After such a preliminary training a young man of fortune
was started on the grand tour, to be initiated in the freemasonry of
luxury and levity which then embraced the whole fashionable society of
Europe. If he was his own master he travelled alone, or with a band of
congenial companions. If his father was alive, he made his voyage
under the ostensible superintendence of a tutor, whom he had either
subjugated or quarrelled with, by the time the pair had traversed one
or two foreign capitals. A youth so spent was a bad apprenticeship for
the vocation of governing with insight and sympathy remote colonies
inhabited by a hardy, a simple, and a religious people.

That the pictures drawn in these pages are not over-coloured will be
admitted by those who compare the correspondence of George the
Third and Lord North with Washington's confidential letters, or the
Last Journals of Horace Walpole with the diary of John Adams; —
by those who contrast the old age of Lord Holland and of Franklin,
or turn from the boyhood and youth of Charles Fox and Lord Carlisle
to the strait and stern upbringing of the future liberators, creators, and
rulers of America. A reader of our race may well take pride in the
account which the founders of the great Republic have given of them-
selves in documents sometimes as litde intended for publication as
were the confidences of George Selwyn and the Duke of Queensberry.
There he may see the records of their birth, their nurture, and their
early wresding with the world. There he may admire the avidity with
which, while they worked for their daily bread, they were snatching
on every side at scraps of a higher education, and piecing them to-
gether into a culture admirably suited to the requirements of the high
affairs of administration, and diplomacy, and war to which their des-
tiny on a sudden was to call them. But though they had larger minds
and stronger wills than the common, their lot was the same as the
enormous majority of their countrymen in the Northern colonies; and
their story, as far as their circumstances and chances in life were con-
cerned, is the story of all.

The father of John Adams was a labouring farmer, who wrought
hard to live, and who did much public work for nothing. His eminent
son put on record that "he was an officer of militia, afterwards a deacon
of the church, and a Selectman of the town; almost all the business
of the town being managed by him in that department for twenty
30

years together; a man of strict piety, and great integrity; much es-
teemed and beloved, wherever he was known, which was not far, his
sphere of life not being extensive." He left behind him property valued
at thirteen hundred pounds, and he had made it a prime object to give
the most promising of his children that college education which he
himself had missed. In those last particulars, and in much else, he was
just such another as the father of Thomas Carlyle; but there was this
difference, that the elder John Adams, with his hard hands and his
few score pounds a year, lived in a society where a man knew his own
worth, and claimed and took the place which was due to him.14 Pro-
genitor of a long line of Presidents and Ambassadors, the old Select-
man of Braintree town held his head as erect in every presence as did
any of his descendants. His son, a generation further removed from
the depressing influences of the old world, and driven by the irresistible
instinct of a strong man born on the eve of stirring times, prepared
himself diligently for a high career with a noble indifference to the
million and one chances that were against his attaining it. While teach-
ing in a grammar school, for the wages of a day labourer, he bound
himself to an attorney, and studied hard in his remnants of leisure. For
a while his prospects seemed to him doleful enough. "I long," he
wrote, "to be a master of Greek and Latin. I long to prosecute the
mathematical and philosophical sciences. I long to know a little of
ethics and moral philosophy. But I have no books, no time, no friends.
I must therefore be contented to live and die an ignorant obscure
fellow."

A man who rails in that strain against his own deficiencies is seldom
long in mending them. John Adams read greedily, whenever he could
lay his hand on those literary works which possessed sufficient weight
and momentum to have carried them across the seas and into Massa-
chusetts,— Bacon and Bolingbroke, Bentley and Tillotson and Butler;
as well as Sydenham and Boerhaave, and a whole course of medical
and surgical authorities which were lent him by a physician in whose
house he was lodging. After two years of this training he became a

14 "Even for the mere clothes-screens of rank my father testified no contempt. Their
inward claim to regard was a thing which concerned them, not him. I love to figure
him addressing those men with bared head by the title of Tour Honour,' with a man-
ner respectful but unembarrassed; a certain manful dignity looking through his own
fine face, with his noble grey head bent patiently to the alas! unworthy." — Reminis-
cences of James Carlyle, p. 16. The beautiful passage, (towards the end of the litde
biography,) which begins "he was born and brought up the poorest" might, even to
the figure of old Mr. Carlyle's fortune, have been written word for word about the
father of John Adams.

31

lawyer, settled himself at Braintree, and the very next morning fell
to work upon his Justinian. In 1759, while still three and twenty, he
rewrote for his own guidance the fable of the choice of Hercules, with
girls, guns, cards, and violins on the one side, and Montesquieu and
Lord Hale's "History of the Common Law" on the other. A list of the
books which he had mastered, and which he planned to master, proves
that his thoughts travelled far above the petty litigation of county
and township. The field of study most congenial to him lay amidst
those great treatises on natural law and civil law which were the proper
nourishment for men who had the constitution of an empire latent in
their brains. According to his own estimate he was a visionary and a
trifler,— too proud to court the leaders of the local Bar, and too fine to
gossip himself into the good graces of local clients. But his comrades,
who knew him as the young know the young, had to seek beyond
eighteen hundred years of time, and twice as many miles of space, for
an historical character with whom to compare him. Jonathan Sewall,
the close ally and generous rival of his early days, — who in later years
justified his Christian name by an affection and fidelity proof against
the strain of a difference of opinion concerning that Revolution which
ruined the one friend and raised the other to the first place in the
State, — consoled John Adams in his obscurity by a parallel with no less
a jurist than Cicero. "Who knows," Sewall wrote, "but in future ages,
when New England shall have risen to its intended grandeur, it shall
be as carefully recorded that Adams flourished in the second century
after the exodus of its first settlers from Great Britain, as it now is that
Cicero was born in the six hundred and forty-seventh year after the
building of Rome?"15

Such are the day-dreams of five and twenty, and seldom have they
resulted in as notable a fulfilment. John Adams was the first who
reached his goal of those young Americans whose aspirations, trivial
only to the ignoble, have afforded to a great master the theme for some
of his most musical sentences. "The youth, intoxicated with his admira-
tion of a hero, fails to see that it is only a projection of his own soul
which he admires. In solitude, in a remote village, the ardent youth
loiters and mourns. With inflamed eye, in this sleeping wilderness, he
has read the story of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, until his fancy has
brought home to the surrounding woods the faint roar of cannonades
in the Milanese, and marches in Germany. He is curious concerning
that man's day. What filled it? The crowded orders, the stern deci-

15 Sewall to Adams, isth Feb., 1760.
32

sions, the foreign despatches, the Castilian etiquette. The soul answers:
'Behold his day here! In the sighing of these woods, in the quiet of
these grey fields, in the cool breeze that sings out of these northern
mountains; in the hopes of the morning, the ennui of the noon, and
sauntering of the afternoon; in the disquieting comparisons; in the re-
grets at want of vigour; in the great idea, and the puny execution; —
behold Charles the Fifth's day; another yet the same; behold Chat-
ham's, Hampden's, Bayard's, Alfred's, Scipio's, Pericles's day — day
of all that are born of women.' " 16

• The young man's outward environment was in strange contrast to
the ideas on which his fancy fed. For many years to come his life was
like a sonnet by Wordsworth done into dry and rugged prose. Slowly,
with immense exertions of mind and body, he built up a leading prac-
tice in the scattered and remote court-houses of the rural districts. He
pursued his livelihood through a continuous course of rudest travel.
Side by side with passages of keen political disquisition and high-
minded personal introspection his journal tells the plain pleasant nar-
rative of his humble adventures; — how he was soaked in the rain, and
pinched by cold, and sent miles out of his way by a swollen ford, and
lost for hours amidst the interminable forests; where he slept, or tried
to sleep, after a hard day's journey, and with what tiresome company
he had to share his bedroom; where he "oated," and where the best
he could do for his little mare was to set her loose, up to her shoulders
in grass, in a roadside meadow; and how he reached a friend's house
at a quarter after twelve in the day, just as they had got their Indian
pudding, and their pork and greens, upon the table. Occupied as he
was in maintaining his family, Adams never shrank from his turn of
public duty. He was surveyor of the highways of Braintree, and a very
good surveyor; and, rising in due course through the official hierarchy,
he became assessor and overseer of the poor, and Selectman, as his
father before him. In 1768 he removed to Boston, which then was just
of a size with the Boston in Lincolnshire of the present day. To his
younger eyes it had seemed a mighty capital, full of distractions and
temptations; and the time never came when he felt at home in a town,
or indeed anywhere except among the sea-breezes and the pine-forests
of "still, calm, happy Braintree." "Who can study," he wrote, "in Bos-
ton streets? I cannot raise my mind above this crowd of men, women,
beasts, and carriages, to think steadily. My attention is solicited every
moment by some new object of sight, or some new sound, A coach,

16 Emerson's oration at Dartmouth College, July, 1838.

33

cart, a lady, or a priest may at any time disconcert a whole page of
excellent thoughts." But his position as a lawyer, and the grave aspect
of national affairs, — on which his opinions, rarely and modestly ex-
pressed, were universally known, and carried unusual weight, — made it
his duty to establish himself in the neighbourhood o£ the superior
courts, and in the political centre of the colony which was soon to
become, for years together, the political battle-ground of the Empire,
Jonathan Sewall, who already was Attorney-General of Massachu-
setts, was commissioned by the Governor to offer Adams the post of
Advocate-General in the Court of Admiralty. It was, as he records, a
well-paid employment, a sure introduction to the most profitable busi-
ness in the province, and a first step on the ladder of favour and pro-
motion. But Charles Townshend's new custom duties were by this time
in operation; and Adams, in firm but respectful terms, replied that in
the unsettled state of the country he could not place himself under an
obligation of gratitude to the Government. Four years afterwards he
computed his worldly wealth, and found that, after paying two hun-
dred and fifty pounds towards the purchase of his house in town, and
after acquiring twenty acres of salt-marsh in the country, he was worth
three hundred pounds in money. He was seven and thirty. It was the
age at which Thurlow and Wedderburn reached the rank of Solicitor-
General; and at which Charles Yorke thought himself ill-used because
he had been nothing higher than Attorney-General. "This," Adams
wrote, "is all that my most intense application to study and business has
been able to accomplish; an application that has more than once been
very near costing me my life, and that has so greatly impaired my
health. Thirty-seven years, more than half the life of man, are run out.
The remainder of my days I shall rather decline in sense, spirit, and
activity. My season for acquiring knowledge is past, and yet I have my
own and my children's fortunes to make." That was the reward which
hitherto had fallen to the share of one who became the ruler of the
United States long before George the Third had ceased to rule the
United Kingdom, and who survived until his own son asked for his
blessing on the day when he, in his turn, was chosen to fill the same
exalted office.

There was another celebrated colonist whose youth had been fostered

at a greater distance still from the lap of luxury. The inventory of the

effects owned by the great great grandfather of John Adams showed

that there had been a silver spoon in the family four generations back.

34

But Franklin ate his breakfast with pewter out of earthenware until,
when he was already a mature householder, his wife bought him a
China bowl and a silver spoon, on the ground that her husband de-
served to live as handsomely as any of his neighbours. If he inherited
no plate, he derived a more valuable legacy from his ancestors, who
in their history and their qualities were worthy forerunners of the
most typical American that ever lived. England in the seventeenth
century gave, or rather thrust upon, the New World much of what
was staunch and true, and much also of what was quick-witted and
enterprising, in her population. The Franklins, a Northamptonshire
clan of very small freeholders, among whom the trade of blacksmith
was as hereditary as in an Indian caste, were good Protestants in the
worst of times. During the reign of Queen Mary the head of the
household kept his English Bible fastened with tapes beneath the seat
of a stool, and read it aloud with the stool reversed between his knees,
while a child stood in the doorway to give the alarm in case an ap-
paritor from the spiritual court was seen in the street. Benjamin Frank-
lin's father was a stout and zealous nonconformist; and when con-
venticles were forbidden in England by laws cruelly conceived and
rigorously enforced, he carried his wife and children to Massachusetts
in order that they might enjoy the exercise of their religion in freedom.
He set up at Boston first as a dyer, and then as a maker of soap and
candles. The family character was marked by native ingenuity and
homely public spirit. One of Franklin's uncles invented a shorthand
of his own. Another, who remained at home in Northamptonshire,
taught himself law; filled local offices of importance; was prime mover
in all useful undertakings in town and county; and was long remem-
bered in his village as a benefactor, an adviser, and (by the more
ignorant) as a reputed conjurer. He set on foot a subscription to pro-
vide a set of chimes, which his nephew heard with satisfaction three-
quarters of a century afterwards; and he discovered a simple effective
method of saving the common lands from being drowned by the river.
"If Franklin says he knows how to do it, it will be done," was a phrase
which had passed into a proverb for the neghbourhood. He died four
years to a day before his brother's famous child was born. "Had he
died four years later," it was said, "one might have supposed a
transmigration."

Benjamin Franklin had a right to be proud of the mental gifts which
were born within him, when he looked back from the height of his
fame to the material circumstances which surrounded him on his en-

35

trance into this world. Seldom did any man who started with as little
accomplish so much, if we except certain of the august self-seekers in
history whose career was carved out at a great cost of human life and
human freedom. He had a year at a grammar-school, and a year at
a commercial school; and then he was taken into the family business,
and set to serve at the counter and run on errands. He disliked the life;
and his father, who feared that he would break loose and go to sea,
gravely took him a round of the shops in Boston, and showed him
joiners, bricklayers, turners, braziers, and cutlers at their work, in order
that, with knowledge of what he was about, he might choose his call-
ing for himself. The boy, who was twelve years old, everywhere
learned something which he never forgot, and which he turned to
account in one or another of the seventy years that were before him.
The combined good sense of parent and child led them to decide on
the trade of a printer. He was bound apprentice, and from this time
forward he read the books which passed under his hand. Others, which
he loved better, he purchased to keep; dining, a joyful anchorite, on a
biscuit or a handful of raisins, in order that he might spend his savings
on his infant library. He gave himself a classical education out of an
odd volume of the "Spectator," re-writing the papers from memory,
and correcting them by the original; or turning the tales into verse,
and back again into prose. He taught himself arithmetic thoroughly,
and learned a little geometry and a little navigation; both of which
in after days he made to go a long way, and put to great uses.

But, above all, he trained himself as a logician; making trial of many
successive systems with amazing zest, until he founded an unpreten-
tious school of his own in which his pre-eminence has never been
questioned. He traversed with rapidity all the stages in the art of rea-
soning, from the earliest phase, when a man only succeeds in being
disagreeable to his fellows, up to the period when he has become a
proficient in the science of persuading them. He began by arguing to
confute, "souring and spoiling the conversation," and making enemies,
instead of disciples, at every turn. "I had caught this," he wrote, "by
reading my father's books of dispute on religion. Persons of good
sense, I have since observed, seldom fall into it, except lawyers, univer-
sity men, and generally men of all sorts who have been bred at Edin-
burgh." He next lighted upon a copy of Xenophon's "Memorabilia,"
and, captivated by the charms of the Socratic dialogue, he dropped the
weapons of abrupt contradiction and positive assertion, and put on
the humble inquirer. He grew very expert in drawing people into con-
36

cessions, the consequences of which they did not foresee, — especially
people who were not familiar with Shaftesbury's "Characteristics" and
Collins's "Discourse on Free Thinking." From his own study of those
works he had derived conclusions which made it safer for him to
proselytise the Boston of that day by a process of suggestion and in-
duction rather than by dogmatic exposition. At length he found that
his friends grew wary, and would hardly reply to the most common
question without asking first what he intended to infer from the an-
swer. Then he once more changed his style of conversation, and this
time for good. Keeping nothing of his former method except the habit
of expressing himself "with modest diffidence," he refrained altogether
from the words "certainly," and "undoubtedly," and from the air of
aggressive superiority which generally accompanies them. The phrases
with which he urged his point, and seldom failed to carry it, were "I
conceive," or "I apprehend," or "It appears to me," or "It is so, if I am
not mistaken." He made it a practice, likewise, to encourage his inter-
locutors to think that the opinion which he aimed at instilling into
them was theirs already. If, as he pleased himself with believing, he
had learned these arts from Socrates, the teaching of the Academy had
for once borne an abundant crop of Baconian fruit; for it would be
hard to name a man who, over so long a space of time as Franklin,
ever talked so many people into doing that which was for their own
improvement and advantage.

The theatre of his beneficent operations was not his native city.
Boston, in common with the world at large, gathered in due time
some of the crumbs which fell from the table of his inventiveness; but
she very soon lost the first claim upon one who was as clever a son
as even she ever produced. At the age of seventeen Franklin walked
into the capital of Pennsylvania, his pockets stuffed with shirts and
stockings, but empty of money; carrying a roll under each arm, and
eating as he went along. The expansive possibilities of an American's
career may be traced in every page of his early story. The intimate
companions of his poverty, young as he, made their way in the world
soon and far. One, who went to England, got himself into a couplet
of the "Dunciad"; wrote a History of William the Third which was
praised by Charles Fox; and extracted from the Earl of Bute a pension
twice as large as Dr. Johnson's. Another became an eminent lawyer,
and died rich while he and Franklin were still below middle age. The
two friends had agreed that the one who left the earth first should

37

afterwards pay a visit to the other; but the ghost had yet to be found
which had the courage to present itself to Franklin.

He worked hard, and lived very hardly indeed in Philadelphia, and
in London for a while, and in Philadelphia again. At the end of ten
years he was securely settled in business as a stationer and master-
printer, and the owner of a newspaper which soon became an excellent
property, and which bore the trace of his hand in every corner of its
columns.17 By a miracle of industry and thrift, he had paid out his
first partners, and paid off his borrowed capital. It was no longer neces-
sary for him to breakfast on gruel, and sup on half an anchovy and a
slice of bread; to be at work when his neighbours returned at night
from the club, and at work again before they rose in the morning;
to wheel the paper for his Gazette home through the streets on a bar-
row, and to take neither rest nor recreation except when a book "de-
bauched" him from his labours. From the moment that he had set his
foot firmly on the path of fortune, he threw his vast energy, his auda-
cious creativeness, his dexterity in the management of his fellow-
creatures, and a good portion of his increased though still slender sub-
stance, into the service of his adopted city. One scheme followed hard
upon another; each of them exactly suited to local wants which Frank-
lin was quick to discern, and to a national taste with which he was
entirely in sympathy. By the end of a quarter of a century Philadelphia
lacked nothing that was possessed by any city in England, except a
close corporation and a bull-ring, and enjoyed in addition a complete
outfit of institutions which were eagerly imitated throughout the
Northern colonies.

Franklin's first project was a book-club; the mother, to use his own
words, of those subscription libraries which perceptibly raised the stand-
ard of American conversation, "and made tradesmen and farmers as
intelligent as the gentry of other countries." Then came, in rapid suc-
cession, a volunteer fire company; a paid police-force; a public hospital;
a Philosophical Society; an Academy, which he lived to see develop
itself into the University of Philadelphia; and a paper currency which,
with his stern views on private and public credit, he fortunately for
him did not live to see at the height of its notoriety in the shape of the

17 The following advertisement appears in the Pennsyhanian Gazette, for June 23rd,
!737: "Taken out of a pew in the church, some months since, a Common Prayer Book,
bound in red, gilt, and lettered D. F. on each cover. The person who took it is desired
to open it and read the eighth Commandment, and afterwards return it into the same
pew again; upon which no further notice will be taken." D. F. stands for Deborah
Franklin.

38

memorable Pennsylvanian Bonds. He turned his attention successfully
to the paying and scavenging of the highways. When the city was first
lighted, he designed the form of street-lamp which has long been in
universal use wherever Anglosaxons now burn gas or once burned oil.
He invented a hot-stove for sitting-rooms, and refused a patent for it,
on the ground that he himself had profited so much by the discoveries
of others that he was only too glad of an opportunity to repay his debt,
and to repay it in a shape so peculiarly acceptable to his country-
women. Whitefield, whom everybody except the clergy wished to hear,
had been refused the use of the existing pulpits. Franklin, as his contri-
bution to the cause of religion, promoted the building of a spacious
meeting-house, vested in trustees, expressly for the use of any preacher
of any denomination who might desire to say something to the people
of Philadelphia.

In 1744, on the breaking out of war with France, Franklin excited
the patriotism of Pennsylvania by voice and pen, and directed it into
the practical channel of enrolling a State militia, and constructing a
battery for the protection of the river. He raised the requisite funds by
a lottery in which he was artful enough to induce the members of the
Society of Friends to take tickets, knowing well that, without their
support, no scheme appealing to the purse would be very productive in
Philadelphia. In order to arm his embrasures, he applied to Governor
Clinton of New York for cannon, who met him with a flat refusal.
But Franklin sate with him over his Madeira until, as the bumpers
went round, his Excellency consented to give six guns, then rose to
ten, and ended by contributing to the defence of the Delaware no less
than eighteen fine pieces, with carriages included. Eleven years after-
wards, when Braddock marched to the attack of Fort Duquesne,
Franklin, by the earnest request of the general, and at formidable risk
to his own private fortune, organised the transport and commissariat
with an ability and a foresight in marked contrast to the military con-
duct of the ill-fated expedition. In the terrible panic which ensued
when the news of the disaster reached Philadelphia, the authorities of
the colony,— catching at the hope that, as he understood everything
else, there was at least a chance of his understanding how to fight, —
entrusted him with the defence of the North-West frontier against the
imminent peril of an Indian invasion. He levied and commanded a
respectable force, and threw up a line of forts, the planning and build-
ing of which gave him the most exquisite satisfaction; and, on his
return home, he accepted the highest tide of a true American by be-

39

coming a Colonel of Militia, and was greeted by his regiment with a
salvo of artillery which broke several glasses of the electrical apparatus
that had already made his name famous throughout the entire scientific
world.

There were few military posts with regard to which Franklin, if he
was not competent to fill them himself, could not give a useful hint to
their holder. The chaplain of his troops complained that the men would
not attend public worship. The commanding officer accordingly sug-
gested that the chaplain should himself serve out the rum when prayers
were over; "and never," said Franklin, "were prayers more generally
and punctually attended. I think this method preferable to the punish-
ment inflicted by some military laws for non-attendance on divine
service." Wherever he went, and whatever he was engaged upon, he
was always calculating, and never guessing. When he built his forts,
he soon noticed that two men cut down a pine of fourteen inches in
diameter in six minutes, and that each pine made three palisades
eighteen feet in length. When he was collecting money for his battery,
he satisfied himself, by means of an intricate computation, that out of
every twenty-two Quakers only one sincerely disapproved of participa-
tion in a war of defence. And on an evening when Whitefield was de-
livering a sermon from the top of the Court-House steps, Franklin
moved about in the crowd, and measured distances, until he had ascer-
tained that the human voice, or at any rate Whitefield's voice, could
be heard by more than thirty thousand people. "This," he said, "recon-
ciled me to the newspaper accounts of his having preached to twenty-
five thousand people in the fields, and to the history of generals
haranguing whole armies, of which I had sometimes doubted."

His growing reputation brought him important public employment,
though not any great amount of direct public remuneration. He was
chosen Clerk of the Pennsylvanian Assembly in 1736, and next year he
was placed at the head of the Pennsylvanian Post Office. As time went
on, the British Government, finding that the postal revenue of the
colonies had fallen to less than nothing, appointed Franklin Joint Post-
master-General of America, with a colleague to help him. The pair
were to have six hundred pounds a year between them, if they could
make that sum out of the profits of the office. For four years the balance
was against them; but at the end of that time the department, man-
aged according to the precepts of "The Way to Wealth" in Poor Rich-
ard's Almanac, began to pay, and paid ever better yearly, until it
yielded the Crown a net receipt three times as large as that of the Post
40

Office in Ireland. So much he did for himself, and so much more he
was enabled to do for others, by a strict obedience to the promptings
of a mother-wit which, in great things as in small, was all but infallible,
and by a knowledge of human nature diplomatic even to the verge of
wiliness. When he had a project on foot, he would put his vanity in the
back-ground, and would represent the matter as the plan of a number
of friends, who had requested him to go about and recommend it to
public favour and support. To conciliate an enemy, if all other means
failed, he would beg of him a trifling service, which in decency could
not be refused; relying on the maxim that "He who has once done you
a kindness will be more ready to do you another than he whom you
have yourself obliged." For the furtherance of all his undertakings, he
had a powerful instrument in a newspaper as respectable as it was
readable; which, with a fine prescience of the possible dangers of a free
press to America, and not to America alone, he steadily refused to make
the vehicle of scurrilous gossip and personal detraction. By such arts as
these he fulfilled to the letter the augury of his good old father, who
in past days loved to remind him that a man diligent in his calling
should stand before Kings, and not before mean men. "I did not think,"
said Franklin, "that I should ever literally stand before Kings, which,
however, has since happened; for I have stood before five, and even
had the honour of sitting down with one, the King of Denmark, to
dinner."

Franklin had the habit, which was the basis of his originality, of
practising himself what he preached to others. He kept his accounts in
morals as minutely as in business matters. He drew up a catalogue of
twelve virtues which it was essential to cultivate, commencing with
Temperance and ending with Chastity; to which at a subsequent pe-
riod a Quaker friend, who knew him well, advised him to add
Humility. "My intention," he wrote, "being to acquire the habitude of
those virtues, I judged it would be well not to distract my attention
by attempting the whole at once, but to fix it on one of them at a
time; and, when I should be master of that, then to proceed to an-
other, till I should have gone through the thirteen. And, as the previous
acquisition of some might facilitate the acquisition of certain others,
I arranged them with that view." By the time he became Joint Post-
master-General of America, he had made his ground sure enough to
justify him in relaxing his vigilance, though he carried his little book
on all his voyages as a precaution and a reminder. The Joint Post-
master-General of England, who was no other than the Earl of Sand-

41

wich, would not have got very far along the list of virtues, at whichever
end he had begun.

The leaders of thought in America, and those who in coming days
were the leaders of war, had all been bred in one class or another of
the same severe school. Samuel Adams, who started and guided New
England in its resistance to the Stamp Act, was a Calvinist by con-
viction. The austere purity of his household recalled an English home
in the Eastern Counties during the early half of the seventeenth cen-
tury. He held the political creed of the fathers of the colony; and it
was a faith as real and sacred to him as it had been to them. His
fortune was small. Even in that city of plain living, men blamed him
because he did not take sufficient thought for the morrow. But he had
a pride which knew no shame in poverty, and an integrity far su-
perior to its temptations. Alexander Hamilton, serving well and faith-
fully, but sorely against the grain, as a clerk in a merchant's office, had
earned and saved the means of putting himself, late in the day, to
college. Jefferson, who inherited wealth, used it to obtain the highest
education which his day and his country could provide; entered a pro-
fession; and worked at it after such a fashion that by thirty he was
the leading lawyer of his colony, and that no less a colony than Vir-
ginia. The future warriors of the Revolution had a still harder appren-
ticeship. Israel Putnam had fought the Indians and the French for a
score of years, and in a score of battles; leading his men in the dress
of a woodman, with firelock on shoulder and hatchet at side; a powder
horn under his right arm, and a bag of bullets at his waist; and, (as
the distinctive equipment of an officer,) a pocket compass to guide
their marches through the forest. He had known what it was to have
his comrades scalped before his eyes, and to stand gashed in the face
with a tomahawk, and bound to the trunk of a tree, with a torture-
fire crackling about him. From adventures which, in the back settle-
ments, were regarded merely as the harder side of a farmer's work, he
would go home to build fences with no consciousness of heroism, and
still less with any anticipation of the world-famous scenes for his part
in which these experiences of the wilderness were training them.
Nathaniel Greene, the ablest of Washington's lieutenants,— of those at
any rate who remained true to their cause from first to last,-— was one
of eight sons, born in a house of a single story. His father combined
certain humble trades with the care of a small farm, and, none the less
or the worse on account of his week-day avocations, was a preacher of
42

the gospel "The son," Mr. Bancroft tells us, "excelled in diligence and
manly sports. None of his age could wrestle, or skate, or run better
than he, or stand before him as a neat ploughman and skilful me-
chanic." Under such literary and scientific guidance as he could find
among his neighbours, he learned geometry, and its application to the
practical work of a new country. He read poetry and philosophy, as
they are read by a man of many and great thoughts, whose books
are few but good. Above all, he made a special study of Plutarch and
of Caesar, — authors who, whether in a translation, or in the original
Greek and Latin, never give out their innermost meaning except to
brave hearts on the eve of grave events.18

Meantime the military chief upon whom the main weight of respon-
sibility was to rest had been disciplined for his career betimes. At an
age when a youth of his rank in England would have been shirking a
lecture in order to visit Newmarket, or settling the colour of his first
lace coat, Washington was surveying the valleys of the Alleghany
Mountains. He slept in all weathers under the open sky; he swam his
horses across rivers swollen with melted snow; and he learned, as
sooner or later a soldier must, to guess what was on the other side of
the hill, and to judge how far the hill itself was distant. At nineteen
he was in charge of a district on the frontier; and at twenty-two he
fought his first battle, with forty men against five and thirty, and won
a victory, on its own small scale, as complete as that of Quebec. The
leader of the French was killed, and all his party shot down or taken.
It was an affair which, coming at one of the rare intervals when the
world was at peace, made a noise as far off as Europe, and gained for
the young officer in London circles a tribute of hearty praise, with its
due accompaniment of envy and misrepresentation. Horace Walpole
gravely records in his Memoirs of George the Second that Major Wash-
ington had concluded the letter announcing his success with the words:
"I heard the bullets whistle, and, believe me, there is something charm-
ing in the sound." Of course there was nothing of the sort in the
despatch, which in its business-like simplicity might have been written
by Wellington at six and forty. Many years afterwards a clergyman,
braver even than Washington, asked him if the story was true. "If I
said so," replied the General, "it was when I was young."

18 Those who read or write about the American Revolution must feel it almost an
impertinence to define their obligations to Mr. Bancroft, and to specify the items of the
debt which they owe him. His History of the United States of America supplies a vast
mass of detail, illuminated by a fine spirit of liberty, which is inspired indeed by
patriotism, but is not bounded in its scope by any limitations of country or of century.

43

But his was a fame which struck its roots deepest in discouragement,
and even in defeat; and that unwelcome feature in his destiny he soon
had cause to recognise. He came from the ambuscade in front of Fort
Duquesne with thirty men alive out of his three companies of Vir-
ginians; with four shot-holes in his coat; and a name for coolness and
conduct which made him the talk of the whole empire, and the pride
of the colony that bore him. During the three coming years, as Com-
mander in Chief of her forces, he did his utmost to keep her borders
safe and her honour high. For himself it was a season of trial, sore to
bear, but rich in lessons. The Governor of Virginia grudged him rank
and pay, and stinted him in men and means; lost no opportunity of
reminding him that he was a provincial and not a royal officer; and
made himself the centre of military intrigues which gave Washington
a foretaste of what he was to endure at the hands of Charles Lee, and
Gates, and Benedict Arnold in the darkest hours of his country's his-
tory. But a time came when William Pitt, who understood America,
was in a position to insist on fair play and equal treatment to the
colonists who were supporting so large a share in the burdens and
dangers of the war. Under his auspices Washington directed the ad-
vanced party of an expedition which placed the British flag on Fort
Duquesne, and performed the last offices to the mortal remains of those
British soldiers who had perished in the woods which covered the ap-
proaches to the fatal stronghold. After this success, which made his
native province as secure from invasion as Somersetshire, the young
man retired into private life, with no recompense for his services ex-
cept the confidence and gratitude of his fellow-citizens. He had re-
ceived a practical education in the science of generalship such as few
except born princes have ever acquired by six and twenty, combined
with a mental and moral drilling more indispensable still to one whose
military difficulties, however exceptionally arduous, were the smallest
part of the ordeal laid up for him in the future.

Such were the men who had been reluctantly drawn by their own
sense of duty, and by the urgent appeals of friends and neighbours,
into the front rank of a conflict which was none of their planning.
Some of them were bred in poverty, and all of them lived in tranquil
and modest homes. They made small gains by their private occupa-
tions, and did much public service for very little or for nothing, and
in many cases out of their own charges. They knew of pensions and
sinecures only by distant hearsay; and ribands or tides were so much
44

outside their scope that they had not even to ask themselves what
those distinctions were worth. Their antecedents and their type of
character were very different from those of any leading Minister in
the British Cabinet; and they were likely to prove dangerous customers
when the one class of men and of ideas was brought into collision with
the other. While Washington and the Adamses led laborious days, the
English statesmen who moulded the destinies of America into such
an unlooked-for shape were coming to the front by very different
methods. They had for the most part trod an easier though a more
tortuous path to place and power; or rather to the power of doing as
their monarch bade them. George the Third's system of personal gov-
ernment had long become an established fact, and the career of an
aspirant to office under that system was now quite an old story. "A
young man is inflamed with the love of his country. Liberty charms
him. He speaks, writes, and drinks for her. He searches records, draws
remonstrances, fears Prerogative. A secretary of the Treasury waits on
him in the evening. He appears next morning at a minister's levee.
He goes to Court, is captivated by the King's affability, moves an
address, drops a censure on the liberty of the press, kisses hands for a
place, bespeaks a Birthday coat, votes against Magna Charta, builds a
house in town, lays his farms into pleasure-grounds under the inspec-
tion of Mr. Brown, pays nobody, games, is undone, asks a reversion
for three lives, is refused, finds the constitution in danger, and becomes
a patriot once more." 19 That passage would be no libel if applied to
all except a few members of the Government; — a Government which
was controlled by the Bedfords, and advised on legal questions by
Wedderburn, whose creed was self-interest; and which was soon to be
advised on military questions by Lord George Germaine, who had
forfeited his reputation by refusing to bring forward the cavalry at
Minden. It was a cruel fate for a country possessing statesmen like
Chatham and Burke, a jurist like Camden, and soldiers with the un-
stained honour and solid professional attainments of Conway and
Barre. With such talents lying unemployed, and such voices crying un-
heeded, the nation was precipitated into a gratuitous and deplorable
policy by men who did not so much as believe in the expediency of the
course which they were pursuing. To the worse, and unfortunately
the abler, section of the Ministry, the right and wrong of the question
mattered not one of the straws in which their champagne bottles were
packed; while the better of them, knowing perfectly well that the

Spectator. Number None, written by Nobody. Sunday, January ipth, 1772.

45

undertaking on which they had embarked was a crime and a folly,
with sad hearts and sore consciences went into the business, and some
of them through the business, because the King wished it.

And yet, of all the political forces then in existence, the King's in-
fluence was the very last which ought to have been exerted against the
cause of concord. He might well have been touched by the persistence
with which his American subjects continued to regard him as standing
towards them in that relation which a sovereign "born and bred a
Briton" should of all others prefer. A law-respecting people, who did
not care to encroach on the privileges of others, and liked still less to
have their own rights invaded, they were slow to detect the tricks
which of recent years had been played with the essential doctrines of
the English Constitution. When the home Government ill used them,
they blamed the Ministry, and pleased themselves by believing that
the King, if he ever could contemplate the notion of stretching his
prerogative, would be tempted to do so for the purpose of protecting
them. George the Third was the object of hope and warm devotion in
America at the moment when, in the City of London, and among the
freeholders of the English counties, he was in the depths of his un-
popularity. In the April of 1768 the King, if he had listened to any
adviser except his own stout heart, would not have ventured to show
himself outside his palace. His Lord Steward was exchanging blows
with the angry Liverymen at the doors of the Presence Chamber, and
the Grand Jury of Middlesex was refusing to return the rioters for
trial. Junius could not attack the Crown too ferociously, or flatter
Wilkes too grossly, to please the public taste. But in that very month
Franklin, writing to a Pennsylvanian correspondent a sentiment with
which almost every Pennsylvanian would have concurred, expressed
his conviction that some punishment must be preparing for a people
who were ungratefully abusing the best constitution, and the best mon-
arch, any nation was ever blessed with. A year afterwards, in the letter
which conveyed to his employers in America the unwelcome intelli-
gence that the House of Commons had refused to repeal Townshend's
custom-duties, Franklin carefully discriminated between the known ill-
will entertained by Parliament towards the colonies, and the presumed
personal inclinations of the King. "I hope nothing that has happened,
or may happen, will diminish in the least our loyalty to our sovereign
or affection for this nation in general. I can scarcely conceive a King of
better dispositions, or more exemplary virtues, or more truly desirous
of promoting the welfare of all his subjects. The body of this people,

too, is of a noble and generous nature, loving and honouring the spirit
of liberty, and hating arbitrary power of all sorts. We have many, very
many, friends among them." Six years afterwards, when the first blood
had been shed, — when George the Third was writing to his Minister to
express his delight at the cruel laws that were passed against the col-
onists, and his discontent with every English public man who still
regarded his brethren across the water with friendly, or even tolerant,
feelings, — this letter, with others from the same hand, was seized by a
British officer in Boston, and sent to London to be submitted to his
Majesty's inspection. With what sensations must he then have read the
evidence of a love and a loyalty which by that time were dead for ever!
Franklin, in the passage which has been quoted, did well to give the
British people their share in the good-will which America felt towards
the British sovereign. The colonists were favourably disposed to George
the Third not only for himself, or for his supposed self, but because he
was the great representative of the mother-country, — the figurehead of
the stately ship which so long had carried the undivided fortunes of
their race. They loved the King because they dearly loved the name,
the associations, the literature, the religious faith, the habits, the sports,
the art, the architecture, the scenery, the very soil, of his kingdom.
That love was acknowledged in pathetic language by men who had
drawn their swords against us because, willing to owe everything else
to England, they did not recognise her claim to measure them out their
portion of liberty. The feeling entertained towards her by some of the
best of those who were forced by events to enroll themselves among
her adversaries is well exemplified by the career and the writings of
Alexander Garden. Born in South Carolina, he had been sent to Eu-
rope for his education. When he came to man's estate, he defied a
loyalist father in order to fight for the Revolution under Nathaniel
Greene and Henry Lee. In his later years he collected an enormous
multitude of personal anecdotes relating to the great struggle, told with
transparent fidelity, but infused with no common dose of that bom-
bastic element which in our generation has died out from American
literature, but not before it has made for itself an imperishable name.
"One truth,'* (so Garden wrote in his better and less ornate style,)
"comes home to the recollection of every man who lived in those days.
The attachment to England was such that to whatever the colonists
wished to affix the stamp of excellence the tide of 'English' was always
given. To reside in England was the object of universal desire, the
cherished hope of every bosom. It was considered as the delightful

47

haven, where peace and happiness were alone to be looked for. A
parent sending his sons to Eton or Westminster would say: 'I am send-
ing my sons home for their education.' If he himself should cross the
Atlantic, though but for a summer season, to witness their progress, he
would say, 'I am going home to visit my children.' "

The esteem and veneration of America had been concentrated all
the more upon the throne itself, because there were very few British
statesmen whose names were household words in the colonies. The
difficulties of locomotion were still so great that not one rural constitu-
ent out of a hundred in England had ever heard his member speak
in Parliament. It was hard enough for a Yorkshireman or a Cornish-
man to feel much enthusiasm for orators reported after the meagre and
whimsical fashion then in vogue, by which editors hoped to baffle or
conciliate the Government censors. But his ignorance was enlighten-
ment compared with the bewilderment of a New Englander who read
in the "Gentleman's Magazine" of four months back how the Nardac
Poltrand had moved an address in the House of Hurgoes, complaining
of the injuries sustained by Lilliputian subjects trading in Columbia;
and how the Hurgo Ghewor, (in an harangue continued from the last
number of the Magazine,) had replied that ungrounded jealousy of
Blefuscu had already cost the Treasury of Lilliput no less than five
hundred thousand sprugs. About any individual Right Honourable
gentleman or Lord Temporal the colonists knew little, and cared less;
and their only concern with Lords Spiritual was to insist, obstinately
and most successfully, that they should keep themselves on their own
side of the Atlantic. But at last a man arose whose deeds spoke for
him, and the fragments of whose eloquence were passed far and wide
from mouth to ear, and did not lose the stamp of their quality in the
carrying. With his broad heart, his swift perception, and his capacious
intellect, Chatham knew America, and he loved her; and he was
known and loved by her in return. He had done more for her than
any ruler had done for any country since William the Silent saved
and made Holland; and she repaid him with a true loyalty. When the
evil day came, it was to Chatham that she looked for the good offices
which might avert an appeal to arms. When hostilities had broken
out, she fixed on him her hopes of an honourable peace. And when he
died, — in the very act of confessing her wrongs, though of repudiating
and condemning the establishment of that national independence on
which her own mind was by that time irrevocably set, — she refused

to allow that she had anything to forgive him, and mourned him as
a father of her people.

His name recalled proud memories, in whatever part of the colonies
it was spoken. Throughout a splendid and fruitful war Americans,
under his guidance, had fought side by side with Englishmen as com-
patriots rather than as auxiliaries. They had given him cheerfully, in
men, in money, and in supplies, whatever he had asked to aid the na-
tional cause and secure the common safety. On one single expedition
nine thousand provincials had marched from the Northern districts
alone. The little colony of Connecticut had five thousand of her citi-
zens under arms. Massachusetts raised seven thousand militia-men,
and taxed herself at the rate of thirteen shillings and fourpence in the
pound of personal income. New Jersey expended during every year
of the war at the rate of a pound a head for each of her inhabitants.
That was how the French were cleared from the great Lakes, and from
the valley and the tributaries of the Ohio. That was how Ticonderoga
and Crownpoint fell, and the way was opened for the siege of Quebec
and the conquest of the French Dominion. What they had done be-
fore, the colonists were willing and ready to do again, if they were
allowed to do it in their own fashion. In every successive war with a
foreign enemy England would have found America's power to assist
the mother-country doubled, and her will as keen as ever. The colonies
which, for three livelong years between the spring of 1775 and the
spring of 1778, held their own against the unbroken and undiverted
strength of Britain, would have made short work of any army of
invasion that the Court of Versailles, with its hands full in Europe,
could have detached to recover Canada or to subdue New England.
Armed vessels in great number would have been fitted out by a
patriotism which never has been averse to that enticing form of specu-
lation, and would have been manned by swarms of handy and hardy
seamen, who in war-time found privateering safer work than the
fisheries, and vastly more exciting. The seas would have been made so
hot by the colonial corsairs that no French or Spanish trader would
have shown her nose outside the ports of St. Domingo or Cuba except
under an escort numerous enough to invite the grim attentions of a
British squadron. But it was a very different matter that America
should be called upon to maintain a standing army of royal troops, at
a moment when not a grain of our powder was being burned in anger
on the surface of the globe; and that those troops should be quartered
permanently within her borders, and paid out of American taxes which

49

the British Parliament had imposed, exacted by tax-gatherers commis-
sioned by the British Ministry. It is hard to understand how any set of
statesmen, who knew the methods which Chatham had employed with
brilliant success, should have conceived the design of using German
mercenaries and Indian savages to coerce English colonists into de-
fending the Empire in exact accordance with the ideas which happened
to find favour in Downing Street.

So great was the value of America for fighting purposes. But,
in peace and war alike, her contribution to the wealth, the power,
the true renown of England, exceeded anything which hitherto had
marked the mutual relations of a parent State with a colony; and that
contribution was growing fast. Already the best of customers, she took
for her share more than a fourth part of the sixteen million pounds'
worth in annual value at which the British exports were then com-
puted; and no limit could be named to the expansion of a trade
founded on the wants of a population which had doubled itself within
a quarter of a century, and whose standard of comfort was rising even
more rapidly than its numbers. But the glory which was reflected on
our country by her great colony was not to be measured by tons of
goods or thousands of dollars. All who loved England wisely, dwelt
with satisfaction upon the prosperity of America. It was to them a
proud thought that so great a mass of industry, such universally dif-
fused comfort, so much public disinterestedness and private virtue,
should have derived its origin from our firesides, and have grown up
under our aegis. The Revolutionary war, like all civil wars, changed
many things and troubled many waters. It must be accounted a mis-
fortune that American society and the American character were not
allowed to develop themselves in a natural and unbroken growth from
the point which they had reached at the close of the first century
and a half of their history. At the end of the protracted conflict be-
tween the Stuarts and the party which stood for English liberty, Eng-
lishmen were very different from what they had been when it began.
That difference was not in all respects for the better, as is shown by a
comparison between the biographies of our public men, and the records
of our country houses, at the one period and the other. And in like
manner the mutual hatred felt, and the barbarities inflicted and suf-
fered, by partisans of either side in Georgia and the Carolinas between
1776 and 1782 left behind them in those regions habits of lawlessness
and violence evil traces of which lasted into our lifetime. As for the
50

Northern States, it was a pity that the wholesome and happy conditions
of existence prevailing there before the struggle for Independence were
ever disturbed; for no change was likely to improve them. If the King,
as a good shepherd, was thinking of his flock and not of himself, it is
hard to see what he hoped to do for their benefit. All they asked of
him was to be let alone; and with reason; for they had as just cause
for contentment as the population of any ideal State from More's
Utopia downwards. And, indeed, the American colonists had the best
in the comparison, for there existed among them a manliness, a self-
reliance, and a spirit of clear-sighted conformity to the inexorable laws
of the universe, which are not to be found in the romances of optimism.
"I have lately," wrote Franklin, "made a tour through Ireland and
Scodand. In those countries a small part of the society are landlords,
great noblemen, and gentlemen, extremely opulent, living in the high-
est affluence and magnificence. The bulk of the people are tenants,
extremely poor, living in the most sordid wretchedness, in dirty hovels
of mud and straw, and clothed only in rags. I thought often of the
happiness of New England, where every man is a freeholder, has
a vote in public affairs, lives in a tidy warm house, has plenty of good
food and fuel, with whole clothes from head to foot, the manufacture
perhaps of his own family."20

It was no wonder that they were freeholders, when real property
could be bought for little in the cultivated parts of New England, and
for next to nothing in the outlying districts. Land was no dearer as the
purchaser travelled southwards. There is in existence an amusing series
of letters from a certain Alexander Mackrabie in America to his
brother-in-law in England: and that brother-in-law knew a good letter
from a dull one, inasmuch as he was Philip Francis. In 1770 Mackrabie
wrote from Philadelphia to ask what possessed Junius to address the
King in a letter "past all endurance," and to inquire who the devil
Junius was. He sweetened the alarm which he unconsciously gave to
his eminent correspondent by offering him a thousand good acres in
Maryland for a hundred and thirty pounds, and assuring him that
farms on the Ohio would be "as cheap as stinking mackerel."21
Colonists whose capital consisted in their four limbs, especially if they
were skilled mechanics, had no occasion to envy people who could buy
land, or who had inherited it. Social existence in America was pro-

20 Benjamin Franklin to Joshua Badcock, London, 13 January, 1772.

21 Memoirs of Sir Philip Francis, vol. i., p. 439.

foundly influenced by the very small variation o£ income, and still
smaller of expenditure, at every grade of the scale. The Governor of a
great province could live in style in his city house and his country
house, and could keep his coach and what his guests called a genteel
table, on five hundred pounds a year, or something like thirty shillings
for each of his working days. A ship's carpenter, in what was for
America a great city, received five and sixpence a day, including the
value of his pint of rum, the amount of alcohol contained in which
was about an equivalent to the Governor's daily allowance of Madeira.
The Rector of Philadelphia Academy, who taught Greek and Latin,
received two hundred pounds a year; the Mathematical Professor a
hundred and twenty-five pounds; and the three Assistant Tutors sixty
pounds apiece; — all in local currency, from which about forty per cent,
would have to be deducted in order to express the sums in English
money. In currency of much the same value a house carpenter or a
bricklayer earned eight shillings a day, which was as much as a Mathe-
matical Professor, and twice as much as an Assistant Tutor.22

All lived well. All had a share in the best that was going; and the
best was far from bad. The hot buckwheat cakes, the peaches, the great
apples, the turkey or wild-goose on the spit, and the cranberry sauce
stewing in the skillet, were familiar luxuries in every household. Au-
thoritative testimony has been given on this point by Brillat Savarin,
in his "Physiologic de Gout,"— the most brilliant book extant on that
which, if mankind were candid, would be acknowledged as the most
universally interesting of all the arts. When he was driven from his
country by the French Revolution, he dined with a Connecticut yeo-
man on the produce of the garden, the farmyard, and the orchard.
There was "a superb piece of corned beef, a stewed goose, and a
magnificent leg of mutton, with vegetables of every description, two
jugs of cider, and a tea-service," on the table round which the illus-
trious epicure, the host, and the host's four handsome daughters were
sitting. For twenty years and thirty years past such had been the Sun-
day and holiday fare of a New England freeholder; except that in 1774
a pretty patriot would as soon have offered a guest a cup of vitriol as
a cup of tea. A member of what in Europe was called the lower class

22 The salaries are mentioned in various letters of Franklin. The wages he quotes
from Adam Smith, who, says his biographer, "had been in the constant habit of hearing
much about the American colonies and their affairs, during his thirteen years in Glas-
gow, from the intelligent merchants and returned planters of the city." — Rac's Life of
Adam Smith, p. 266.

had in America fewer cares, and often more money, than those who,
in less favoured lands, would have passed for his betters. His children
were taught at the expense of the township; while a neighbour who
aspired to give his son a higher education was liable to be called on to
pay a yearly fee of no less than a couple of guineas. And the earner of
wages was emancipated from the special form of slavery which from
very early days had established itself in the Northern States, — the
tyranny exercised over the heads of a domestic establishment by those
whom they had occasion to employ.23

Equality of means, and the total absence of privilege, brought about
their natural result in the ease, the simplicity, the complete freedom
from pretension, which marked the intercourse of society. The great
had once been as the least of their neighbours, and the small looked
forward some day to be as the best of them. James Putnam, the ablest
lawyer in all America, loved to walk in the lane where, as a child of
seven years old, he drove the cows to pasture. Franklin, when a poor
boy, living on eighteen pence a week, was sought, and almost courted,
by the Governor of Pennsylvania and the Governor of New York.
Confidence in a future which never deceived the industrious showed
itself in early marriages; and early marriages brought numerous,
healthy, and welcome children. There was no searching of heart in an
American household when a new pair of hands was born into the
world. The first Adams who was a colonist had eight sons, with what-
ever daughters heaven sent him; his eldest son had a family of twelve,
and his eldest son a family of twelve again. Franklin had seen thirteen
of his own father's children sitting together round the table, who all
grew up, and who all in their turn were married. "With us," he wrote,
"marriages are in the morning of life; our children are educated and
settled in the world by noon; and thus, our own business being done,
we have an afternoon and evening of cheerful leisure to ourselves."

The jolly relative of Philip Francis took a less cheerful view of the
same phenomenon. "The good people," he wrote, "are marrying one
another as if they had not a day to live. I allege it to be a plot that

28 "You can have no idea," Mackrabie wrote to Francis in 1769, "of the plague we
have with servants on this side the water. If you bring over a good one he is spoilt
in a month. Those from the country are insolent and extravagant. The imported Dutch
are to the last degree ignorant and awkward.'* The rest of the observations made by this
rather narrow-minded Briton upon the other nationalities which supplied the household
service of America had better be read in the original book, if they arc read at all. —
Memoirs of Sir Philip Francis, vol. i., p. 435.

53

the ladies, (who are all politicians in America), are determined to raise
young rebels to fight against old England." Throughout the colonies
the unmarried state was held in scanty honour. Bachelors, whether in
the cities or villages, were poorly supplied with consolations and dis-
tractions. The social resources of New York, even for a hospitably
treated stranger, were not inexhaustible. "With regard," Mackrabie
complained, "to the people, manner, living, and conversation, one day
shows you as much as fifty. Here are no diversions at all at present.
I have gone dining about from house to house, but meet with the same
dull round of topics everywhere: — lands, Madeira wine, fishing parties,
or politics. They have a vile practice here of playing back-gammon, a
noise which I detest, which is going forward in the public coffee-
houses from morning till night, frequently ten or a dozen tables at
a time. I think a single man in America is one of the most wretched
beings I can conceive." The taverns in country districts were uncom-
fortable, and, as centres of relaxation and sociable discourse, unlovely.
Adams, who had put up at a hundred of them, complained that a
traveller often found more dirt than entertainment and accommoda-
tion in a house crowded with people drinking flip and toddy, and
plotting to get the landlord elected to a local office at the next town's
meeting.

In a new country the graces and amenities, — and all the provisions
for material, intellectual, and what little there may be of artistic pleas-
ure,—-are within the home, and not outside it. Women in America
were already treated with a deference which was a sign of the part
they played in the serious affairs of life. They had not to put up with
the conventional and over-acted homage which in most European
countries was then the substitute for their due influence and their true
liberty. Married before twenty, and generally long before twenty, they
received in the schoolroom an education of the shortest, and something
of the flimsiest. To work cornucopias and Birds of Paradise in coloured
wools, to construct baskets of ornamental shells, and to accompany a
song on the virginals, the spinet, or the harpsichord, were the accom-
plishments which an American girl had time to learn, and could find
instructors to teach her. But, like the best women in every generation
before our own, their most valuable attainments were those which, in
the intervals of domestic cares, they taught themselves with a favourite
author in their hand, and their feet on the fender. In their literary
preferences they were behindhand in point of time; but it was not to

54

their loss. John Quincy Adams, the second President of his race, relates
how lovingly and thoroughly his mother knew her Shakespeare and
her Milton, her Dry den, her Pope, and her Addison; and how, when
she was in need of a quotation tinctured with modern ideas of liberty,
she had recourse to Young and Thomson. He well remembered the
evening when the cannon had fallen silent on Bunker's Hill, and Mas-
sachusetts began to count her losses. A child of eight, he heard Mrs.
Adams apply to Joseph Warren, their family friend and family physi-
cian, the lines, — mannered indeed, and stilted, but not devoid of solemn
and sincere feeling,— which Collins addressed to the memory of a
young officer who had been killed at Fontenoy.

But we need not go to sons and husbands for our knowledge of
what the matrons of the Revolution were. The gentlemen of France
who came to the help of America, were quick to discern the qualities
which dignified and distinguished her women; and it is to the credit
of the young fellows that they eagerly admired an ideal of conduct
which might have been supposed to be less to the taste of a soldier of
passage than that which they had left behind them at Paris. It is diffi-
cult to believe that the Knight-errants of the war of Independence, each
of them the soul of chivalry, belonged to the same nation as certain
swashbucklers of Napoleon who, after trailing their sabres over Europe,
confided to the chance reader of their autobiographies their personal
successes, real or pretended, among beautiful and unpatriotic women
in the countries which they had visited as invaders. After their return
home Lafayette and de Segur, courageous in the drawing-room as in
the field, openly proclaimed and steadfastly maintained that in the
beauty, elegance, and talent of its ladies Boston could hold its own with
any capital city, that of France included. De Segur, in particular, as-
tonished and charmed his hearers by his description of a community
where what passed as gallantry in Paris was called by a very plain
name indeed; where women of station rode, drove, and walked un-
attended both in town and country; where girls of sixteen trusted
themselves to the escort of a guest who yesterday had been a stranger,
and talked to him as frankly and as fast as if he had been a cousin
or a brother; and, above all, where a young Quakeress who, in her
white dress and close muslin cap, looked, (though he did not tell her
so,) like a nymph rather than a mortal, lectured him on having
deserted his wife and children to pursue the wicked calling of a sol-
dier, and sternly rejected the plea that he had severed himself from all

55

that he held most dear in order to fight for the liberty of her country.24
After the war was over, he embodied his experience and his observa-
tions in a series of predictions concerning the future of the United
States. He clearly foresaw that the question whether the South and
North were to part company would one day arise in a formidable
shape. He foretold that wealth would bring luxury, and luxury cor-
ruption. But with regard to that private morality which, of all that he
found in America, he approved the most, he did not venture on a spe-
cific prophecy. "I shall be told," he wrote, "that America will not al-
ways preserve these simple virtues and these pure manners; but if she
preserves them only for a century, that at any rate will be a century
gained.'*

24 Voltaire, an old friend of de Segur's mother, in half a dozen sentences full of
wisdom and good feeling, and turned as only he could turn them, had given him his
literary blessing, and the advice to keep to prose. That advice was religiously followed
by a family which handed down through three generations, in unbroken succession from
father to son, the good traditions of the memoir-writer. There is an extraordinary like-
ness, in form and substance, between the writing of the father, who served in the Amer-
ican war, and afterwards became French ambassador to Russia; of the son, who told
the story of Austerlitz and the retreat from Moscow; and of the grandson, author of
the Life of Count Rostopchine. Which of the three wrote best is a problem of the sort
that to those who love books will always remain the idlest of questions.

CHAPTER II

THE MILITARY OCCUPATION OF BOSTON.
THE DIFFICULTIES CONNECTED WITH
TRADE AND REVENUE BECOME ACUTE

was the country, and such the people, on which the British
Cabinet now tried the experiment of carrying through a political policy
by the pressure of an armed force. They were blind to the truth which
Byron, a genuine statesman, expressed in the sentence, "The best
prophet of the future is the past." For that experiment had never suc-
ceeded when an English-speaking population was made the subject
of it. It had been tried under the Commonwealth when the Major-
Generals administered England and the Journal of George Fox, read
side by side with Hudibras, proves that the saints liked being ruled by
saints in red coats almost as little as did the sinners. It had been tried
after the Restoration, when the Stuarts espoused the cause of the Bish-
ops as against the Scotch Covenanters; and the result was, over the
whole of the south of Scotland, to kill the cause of the Bishops and of
the Stuarts too. And in 1688 the wrath and terror which the mere
threat of coercion by an Irish army excited throughout the kingdom
did much to ruin James the Second, as it had ruined his father be-
fore him.

Now the same remedy, fatal always to the physician, was applied to
a case that differed from those which preceded it only in being more
hopelessly unsuited to such a treatment. The character, the circum-
stances, and the history of the inhabitants of New England made it
certain that they would feel the insult bitterly and resent it fiercely. It
was a measure out of which, from the very nature of it, no good could
be anticipated; and it may well be doubted whether the authors of it,
in their heart of hearts, expected or desired that any good should come.
The crime of Massachusetts was that she refrained from buying British
goods, and that she had petitioned the Crown in respectful terms.

57

Fifty regiments could not oblige her to do the one, or make her think
that she had been wrong in having done the other. And, in truth, the
action of the British Government was intended to punish, and not to
persuade. It was a device essentially of the same sinister class as the
Dragonnades which preceded the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes;
less trenchant, indeed, in its operation, owing to the difference in type
of the instruments employed; for British soldiers were too good to be
set to such work, and far too manly and kind-hearted to do it effica-
ciously. But the motives that suggested and brought about the military
occupation of Boston showed poorly, in one important respect, even by
the side of those which actuated Louis the Fourteenth and his clerical
advisers. In both cases there was ruffled pride, the determination at all
costs to get the upper hand, and want of sympathy which had deep-
ened down into estrangement and positive ill-will. But the French
monarch at least believed that, by making his subjects miserable in this
world, he would possibly save their souls in the next, and would un-
doubtedly cleanse his dominions from the stain of heresy; whereas the
quarrel between George the Third and his people beyond the sea was
of the earth, earthy. As the Elizabethan poet had said in good prose:
"Some would think the souls of princes were brought forth by some
more weighty cause than those of meaner persons. They are deceived;
there's the same hand to them; the like passions sway them. The same
reason that makes a vicar go to law for a tithe-pig, and undo his neigh-
bours, makes them spoil a whole province, and batter down goodly
cities with the cannon."1

The King was determined to stand on his extreme rights; and he
met his match in the Americans. In their case he had to do with
people accurately and minutely acquainted with what was due to them
and from them, and little likely to miss, or refrain from pressing to the
utmost, any single point which told in their favour. Burke was in-
formed by an eminent bookseller that in no branch of his business,
after tracts of popular devotion, were so many volumes exported to the
colonies as those which related to the law. Nearly as many copies
of Blackstone's Commentaries had been sold in America as in Eng-
land. So eager were the colonists to read our treatises on jurisprudence
that they had fallen into the way of reprinting them across the At-
lantic; a habit, it must be allowed, which they soon applied on a
generous scale to more attractive classes of literature. Burke had ob-
served and investigated America with the same passionate curiosity

1 Webster's Duchess of Malf, Act ii., Scene I.

58

that he subsequently bestowed upon India, He arrived at the conclu-
sion that a circumstance which made against peace, unless the British
Government reverted to the paths of caution, was to be found in the
addiction of the colonists to the study of the law. "This study," he
said, "renders men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack,
ready in defence, full of resources. In other countries the people, more
simple, and of a less mercurial cast, judge of an ill principle in govern-
ment only by an actual grievance; there they anticipate the evil, and
judge of the pressure of the grievance by the badness of the principle.
They augur misgovernment at a distance, and snuff the approach of
tyranny in every tainted breeze."2

The times were such that the lawyers in America, like all other
men there, had to choose their party. In the Government camp were
those favoured persons whom the Crown regularly employed in court;
and those who held, or looked to hold, the posts of distinction and
emolument with which the colonies abounded. For the Bar in Amer-
ica, as in Ireland and Scotland to this day, was a public service as
well as a profession. But, with these exceptions, most lawyers were
patriots; for the same reason that, (as the royal Governors com-
plained,) every patriot was, or thought himself, a lawyer. The rights
and liberties of the province had long been the all-pervading topic of
conversation in Massachusetts. There were few briefs for a learned
gentleman who, in General Putnam's tavern or over Mr. Hancock's
dining-table, took the unpopular side in an argument; especially if he
did not know how to keep those who came to him for advice on the
safe side of a penal statute. "Look into these papers," said an English
Attorney-General in 1768, "and see how well these Americans are
versed in the Crown law. I doubt whether they have been guilty of
an overt act of treason, but I am sure that they have come within a
hair's breadth of it."3 Leading merchants, who were likewise emi-
nently respectable smugglers on an enormous scale, were the best
clients of a Boston advocate. Their quarrels with the Commissioners
of Revenue brought him large fees, and coveted opportunities for a
display of eloquence. His wits as a casuist were sharpened by a life-time
of nice steering among the intricacies of the commercial code; and the
experience which he thence gained taught him as a politician to assume
higher ground, and to demand that trade should be as free and open

2 Mr. Burke's Speech on moving his Resolution for Conciliation with the Colonies.

3 Bancroft's History, Epoch HI., chapter 37.

59

to British subjects in the New World as it was to those in the Old.4
His public attitude was stiffened by the recollection of a threat which
had been levelled against his private interests. A secondary, but an
evident and even confessed, object of the Stamp Act had been to im-
pose a prohibitory tax upon the manufacture of legal documents, and
thereby to injure the practice, and pare away the gains, of those
unofficial lawyers among whom were to be found the most skilful and
stubborn opponents of the Government,

Already the commercial prosperity of the mother-country was griev-
ously impaired. The colonists had met Charles Townshend's policy by
an agreement not to consume British goods; and the value of such
goods exported to New England, New York, and Pennsylvania fell
in a single year from i,330,ooo/ to 4oo,ooo/. Washington, when he sent
his annual order for a supply of European commodities to London,
enjoined his correspondent to forward none of the articles unless the
offensive Act of Parliament was in the meantime repealed. Less scrupu-
lous patriots found reason to wish that they had followed his example.
Mackrabie relates how two Philadelphians had sent over for a Cheshire
cheese and a hogshead of English Entire Butt. "These delicacies hap-
pened unfortunately to have been shipped from Europe after the Reso-
lutions on this side had transpired, and in consequence the Committee
took the liberty to interfere. The purchasers made a gallant stand, but
their opposition was in vain. They cursed and swore, kicked, and
cuffed, and pulled noses; but the catastrophe was that the prisoners
were regaled with the cheese and porter. They have sent away a ship
loaded with malt to-day. Nobody could either buy or store it." The
phraseology of the movement against taxation without representation
appeared in odd places. A mechanic, whose shop had been broken
open, advertised a reward for the apprehension of the thief, and re-
minded his fellow-citizens how hard it was for a man to part with his
own property without his own consent. It is curious to note that Gren-
ville, as the father of the Stamp Act, till his death, and long after it,
came in for much of the discredit which properly belonged to Charles
Townshend. "I would not as a friend," Mackrabie wrote from Phila-
delphia, "advise Mr. George Grenville to come and pass a summer in
North America. It might be unsafe." This was in 1768. But as late as

4 These are the words of Mr. Sabine in his Historical Essay at the commencement
of his two volumes on the American Loyalists. His description of the opinions prevalent
in the several professions at the commencement of the Revolution is amusing and
instructive.

60

1773 Burke, who, of all people, had been asked by a friend in Virginia
to send him out a clever lad accustomed to ride light weights, wrote
to Lord Rockingham: "If poor George Grenville was alive, he would
not suffer English jockeys to be entered outwards without bond and
certificate: or at least he would have them stamped or excised, to bear
the burdens of this poor oppressed country, and to relieve the landed
interest." Ten years later the poets of Brooks's Club were still sing-
ing of

Grenville's fondness for Hesperian gold;

And Grenville's friends, conspicuous from afar,

In mossy down incased and bitter tar.

All the British regiments which had ever sailed from Cork or
Portsmouth could not force Americans to purchase British merchan-
dise. Nor was it possible that the presence of troops, under a free consti-
tution such as Massachusetts still enjoyed, should do anything towards
the better government of the colony, or the solution of the difficulties
which had arisen between the Assembly and the Crown. One function
the soldiers might be called upon to discharge; and it was evidently
in the minds of the Cabinet which sent them out. As soon as the news
of their arrival at Boston had reached London, the supporters of the
Ministry, in manifest concert with the Treasury Bench, moved an
address to the King praying that persons who, in the view of the
Governor of Massachusetts, had committed, or had failed to disclose,
acts of treason might be brought over to England and tried under a
statute of Henry the Eighth. The Ministers themselves moved resolu-
tions framed with the object of indicating for the Governor's guidance
that, in the action which the Assembly of the colony had taken, and in
the votes which it had passed, treason had already been committed. Such
a proposal was shocking to many independent members of Parliament,
and most of all to those who knew by experience what a serious mat-
ter a voyage from America was, even in a case where there would be
little prospect indeed of a return journey. Thomas Pownall, who had
governed Massachusetts strongly and discreetly during Pitt's great war,
was earnest in his remonstrances; and his views were enforced by
Captain Phipps, afterwards Lord Mulgrave, a competent and experi-
enced navigator. They commented forcibly on the cruelty and in-
justice of dragging an individual three thousand miles from his family,
his friends, and his business, "from every assistance, countenance, com-
fort, and counsel necessary to support a man under such trying circum-

61

stances," in order that, with the Atlantic between him and his own
witnesses, he might be put to peril of his life before a panel of twelve
Englishmen, in no true sense of the word his peers. Of those jurymen
the accused person would not possess the personal knowledge which
alone could enable him to avail himself of his right to challenge; while
they on their side would infallibly regard themselves as brought to-
gether to vindicate the law against a criminal of whose guilt the re-
sponsible authorities were fully assured, but who would have been
dishonestly acquitted by a Boston jury. All this was said in the House
of Commons, and listened to most unwillingly by the adherents of the
Ministry, who after a while drowned argument by clamour. A large
majority voted to establish what was, for all intents and purposes, a new
tribunal, to take cognisance of an act which, since it had been commit-
ted, had been made a crime by an ex post facto decree. Parliament had
done this in a single evening, without hearing a tittle of evidence, and,
(after a not very advanced stage in the proceedings,) without consent-
ing to hear anything or anybody at all. But a House of Commons,
which had so often dealt with Wilkes and the Middlesex electors, had
got far beyond the point of caring to maintain a judicial temper over
matters affecting the rights, the liberty, and now at last the lives of
men.5

That which was the sport of a night at Westminster was something
very different to those whom it most concerned at Boston. The chiefs
of the popular party saw the full extent of their danger in a moment.
They already had done what placed their fortunes, and in all probabil-
ity their very existence, at the mercy of the Governor; and, whether the
blow fell soon, or late, or not at all, their peace of mind was gone. To
poor men, as most of them were, transportation to England at the best
meant ruin. Their one protection, the sympathy of their fellow-citizens,
was now powerless to save them. Time was when Governor Bernard
would have thought twice before he laid hands on the leaders of public
opinion in a country where the arm of authority was strong only when
it had public opinion with it. He was not likely to forget how, when

6 The Government were in a bad House of Commons mess. They could not produce
a copy of the alleged treasonable Resolution of the Massachusetts Assembly, on which
their own proposals were founded. Governor Pownall, backed by Burke, denied that
such a Resolution was in existence. "The chorus-men, who at proper times call for the
question, helped them out at this dead lift, by an incessant recitative of the words,
'Question, question, question.' At length, at four o'clock in the morning, the whole
House in confusion and laughing, the Resolutions and addresses were agreed to." Such
is the account given, in expressive but not very official language, in the Parliamentary
History for the 26th of January, 1769.

62

the populace were hanging the Boston stamp distributor in effigy, the
civil power requested that the Militia might be called out by beat of
drum, and how the colonel replied that his drummers were in the
mob. To arrest Samuel Adams and John Hancock, even with their
own concurrence, by the aid of such peace officers as cared to respond
to a summons, was in the view of the Governor a sufficiently arduous
undertaking. And when the time for their deportation came, it would
have been a more serious business still to march them, through streets
crowded with angry patriots, down to a wharf over the edge of which
the crews of half a hundred coasting vessels would have tossed the
constables, and the sheriff too, with as little scruple as they would have
run a cargo of sugar on a dark night into a creek of Rhode Island. But
the troops had come, and the ships which had brought them were
never likely to be far away; and that difficulty was a thing of the
past. With a quay commanded by the cannon of men-of-war, and a
harbour alive with their armed boats, and with a forest of bayonets on
land, there would be no fear of a rescue or even of a riot. All promi-
nent opponents of the Government henceforward lived in the knowl-
edge that their fate was at the arbitrary disposal of one whom, as an
officer of the State, they had braved and baffled; and who insisted on
regarding them, each and all, as his private enemies. The revival of the
old Tudor statute, which kept a halter suspended over the neck of
every public man whom the people of Massachusetts followed and
trusted, was a device as provocative, and in the end proved to be as
foolish and as futile, as the operation which in the story of our great
civil contest is called, not very accurately, the arrest of the five
members.

From the day that the troops landed all chance of a quiet life, for
those who valued it, was over and done with. John Adams, who was
intent on making a livelihood and who, to use his own words, had
very little connection with public affairs, and hoped to have less, ob-
served with disapproval that endeavours were being systematically pur-
sued "by certain busy characters to kindle an immortal hatred between
the inhabitants of the lower class and the soldiers." But the fact was
that every class, without any prompting from above or below, had its
own reasons for disliking the military occupation of their city. Boston
was a non-official community, where no man was under orders, and
where every man worked every day and all day to get his bread by
supplying, in one shape or another, the natural wants and requirements

63

of the society in which he lived. But now the whole place was invaded
by officialism in its most uncompromising and obtrusive form. For
every two civilians there was at least one wearer of a uniform, whose
only occupations were to draw his pay, to perform his routine duties,
and to obey some one who was placed above him. Boston was Whig;
and the army, from top to bottom, with few exceptions, was ultra-
Tory. Charles Lee, who had served with distinction up to the rank of
colonel in a royal regiment, — and with whom royal officers lived, and
always continued to live, on free and equal terms, — remembered an
occasion when a clever and spirited subaltern inveighed against David
Hunje jis a champion of divine right and absolute monarchy. The
young man wais taEeh-to""tSsk by a veteran who rebuked him for speak-
ing with irreverence of Charles the First, and, with more loyalty than
logic, pronounced that such sentiments were indecent and ungrateful
in those who ate the King's bread.6 That was the creed of the mess-
room; ominous enough in the days of a sovereign who, now that the
Stuarts were no longer a danger to himself, was only too ready to take
them for his model.

The social tone of military circles was even more uncongenial to the
atmosphere of Boston than their political opinions. That tone has been
changing for the better ever since, and never so quickly and so steadily
as during the period which covers the career of those who now com-
mand our brigades. The British officer of this generation is a picked
man to begin with. He enters the army at an age when he has already
laid the ground of a liberal education, and in after life he never misses
an opportunity of perfecting his professional acquirements. In Indian
and colonial service he gains a large and even cosmopolitan view of
affairs and men, while he has always present to his mind the obligation
to maintain the credit of the country abroad by his personal conduct
and demeanour. And, when employed at home, he is accustomed to act
with the Militia and Volunteers; to take a share in the work of their
organisation and their discipline; to recognise their merits; and to
make full allowance for deficiencies from which citizen soldiers can
never be exempt in peace, or in the first campaign of a war.

It was a different story with an officer whose lot was cast in the
third quarter of the eighteenth century. When on active service in
Germany every one, against whom or by whose side he fought, was a
regular soldier; and, in the case of our Prussian allies, a regular of the
regulars. When he returned to England, to quarters in a Cathedral

6 Memoirs of Major-General Lee. Dublin, 1792. Page 101.

64

town, (or, if a guardsman, to his lodging in St. James's Street,) he
moved in social circles where no single person pursued any one of
those work-a-day trades and callings which in New England ranked
for as good as the best. With such a training and such associations, a
man who possessed no more than the average share of good sense and
good feeling cared little for colonial opinion, whether civil or military,
and seldom went the right way to conciliate it. Pitt did his best to cor-
rect what was amiss; and, when he could lay his hand on a general of
the right sort, he did much. Young Lord Howe, who led the advance
against Ticonderoga in 1758, — and who in truth, as long as he was
alive, commanded the expedition, — tried hard to break down the bar-
rier between the two sections of his army by precept, and by his fine
example. But when he was shot dead, skirmishing with Israel Put-
nam's Rangers in front of his own regiment, the Fifty-fifth of the line,
he left no one behind him, south of the St. Lawrence, who had the
capacity or inclination to carry out the great Minister's wise and large
policy. The relations of royal and provincial officers became anything
but fraternal, and the rank and file of the American companies were
only too ready to espouse the quarrel of their leaders. American colo-
nels, during the Ticonderoga campaign, complained that they were
hardly ever summoned to a council of war, and that, until the orders
came out, they knew no more of what was to be done than the ser-
jeants. The men of an American regiment, which was stationed on the
Hudson, conceived themselves affronted by an English captain, and
nearly half the corps disbanded itself and marched off home. An Eng-
lish Quartermaster-General, great in nothing but oaths,— whom his
own Commander-in-Chief described as a very odd man, with whom
he was sorry to have any concern, — was told by a Virginian colonel
that he would rather break his sword than serve with him any longer.
These incidents, when brooded over in winter quarters, engendered a
dissatisfaction which found vent in a heated newspaper controversy
between London and Boston.

Mr. Parkman, in his fascinating story of "Montcalm and Wolfe,"
as elsewhere throughout his writings, preserves a carefully measured
impartiality of praise and blame towards English and French, regular
soldiers and colonial levies, and even Indians; though it cannot be
said these last gain, either as men or warriors, by an unvarnished
description. He thus speaks about the British officers: "Most of them
were men of family, exceedingly prejudiced and insular, whose knowl-
edge of the world was limited to certain classes of their own country-

65

men, and who looked down on all others, whether foreign or domes-
tic. Towards the provincials their attitude was one of tranquil su-
periority, though its tranquillity was occasionally disturbed by what
they regarded as absurd pretensions on the part of the colony officers.
The provincial officers, on the other hand, and especially those of
New England, being no less narrow and prejudiced, filled with a
sensitive pride and a jealous local patriotism, and bred up in a lofty
appreciation of the merits and importance of their country, regarded
British superciliousness with a resentment which their strong love for
England could not overcome." 7 There were faults on both sides. But
the British officers had the most to give; and, if they had cordially and
cheerfully taken their cue from spirits as finely touched as those of
Wolfe and Howe, their advances towards intimacy with their Amer-
ican comrades would have been eagerly met and ther friendship
warmly valued.

If there was so little sense of fellowship between the regular army
and the colonists during the Seven Years' War, when they were
serving together in the field against a common adversary, it may well
be believed that in 1772 and 1773 things did not go pleasantly in the
streets of Boston. The garrison was there, in order to remind the city
that Britain's arm was long and heavy and that her patience was ex-
hausted. It was a situation without hope from the very first; for it
gave no opportunity for the play of kindly impulses, and was only too
certain to bring into prominence the least estimable persons on either
side. There were men of refinement and good education in the British
regiments, and on the staff, more especially among those of older
standing, who would gladly have employed their social gifts to miti-
gate the asperity of politics. There were, as the sequel proved, some of
all ranks and ages who had studied the case of the colonists closely
enough to question and condemn the action of their own Government.
And there were veterans who had fought the enemies of their country
bravely all the world over, without being able to hate them, and who
were still less inclined to be harsh towards those whom they regarded
as her erring children. But the winter of discontent was so severe that
Uncle Toby himself could not have melted the ice in a Boston parlour.
The men of the popular party, and the women quite as rigidly, set
their faces like flint against any show of civility, or the most remote
approach to familiarity. The best among the officers, forbidden by self-
respect to intrude where they were not welcome, retired into the back-

7Parkman*s Montcalm and Wolfe, chapter xxi.

66

ground, and left the field clear for the operations of certain black-
sheep of the mess-room, whom the citizens, in the humour which
then prevailed, came not unnaturally to look upon as representatives
of British character and conduct.

That sort of military man, as readers of the English classics know,
appeared frequently in the dramas and novels of the eighteenth cen-
tury; where his self-sufficiency and impertinence were unsparingly
castigated, although he was sometimes endowed with a sprighdiness of
which in real life little trace could be found. The recruiting officer who
travelled with Mr. Spectator on his return from the visit to Sir Roger
de Coverley; the ensign who insulted Tom Jones; the captain whom
Roderick Random met in the Bath coach, — were of a type which long
ago became extinct in our army. But of old days that type was much
in evidence, as many a quiet and inoffensive person everywhere, but es-
pecially in the colonies, knew to his cost. For, when these gentlemen
disported themselves in American society, they were in the habit of
parading a supreme disdain for every one who did not wear a uniform.
To all such they applied indiscriminately the name of "Mohairs," an
epithet which still rankled in the mind of many a brave man after he
had worn to tatters more than one uniform while fighting against the
cause to which the services of these reprobates were so great a dis-
credit and so small a gain.8 In undisturbed times, and in cities against
which the Government that employed them did not bear a grudge.,
their contempt for civilians found expression in acts of buffoonery, the
victims of which were cautiously but not always judiciously chosen.
A Philadelphian writer of the period relates the feats of a pair of
officers who made themselves notorious by a series of practical jokes,
marked with scanty fun and great impudence, and directed against
citizens of pacific appearance and occupations. At length the worst of
the two happened to mistake his man, and received a lesson which he
was not likely soon to forget.

The nature of such pranks, when their perpetrators were sober, give
some faint indication of what they permitted themselves in their hours
of conviviality; for those were days when to drink more than was good
for him, — or indeed more than would have been good for himself
and his neighbours on either side of him, — was a duty which no one
could decline except a man of unusual resolution, or of a grade in the
army higher than any which these worthies were ever likely to attain.
Mackrabie, who between 1768 and 1770 was made much at home in

8 Garden's Revolutionary Anecdotes.

67

the garrisons of America, was very candid in keeping his brother-in-
law informed of the price which he paid for the privilege. "We have
been most hospitably and genteelly entertained," he writes from Fort
Pitt, (as Fort Duquesne had been styled ever since it fell into British
hands,) "and allowing for the politesse a la militaire which obliges us
to compound for being un feu enivrts at least once a day, we pass our
time most agreeably." On the fourth of June at New York he anticipates
that the General, as a matter of course, will make all the officers in the
town drunk at his house in honour of the King's birthday. In another
letter he gives a description of serenading, as practised in Philadelphia.
"The manner is as follows. We with four or five young officers of the
regiment in barracks drink as hard as we can, to keep out the cold,
and about midnight sally forth, attended by the band,— horns, clarinets,
hautboys, and bassoons,— -march through the streets, and play under
the window of any lady you choose to distinguish, which they esteem
a high compliment." In 1770, when feeling was already so hot that a
good Englishman should have been careful to evince his loyalty to the
King by courtesy and forbearance towards the King's subjects, he was
invited to join in celebrating St. George's Day at a banquet attended
by all the native-born Englishmen in the city. "We should have had,"
he writes, "the Governor at our head, but that the party was only
proposed two days before. However, we met at a tavern, stuffed roast
beef and plum pudding, and got drunk, pour I'honneur de St. George;
wore crosses, and finished the evening at the play-house, where we
made the people all chorus !God save the King,' and 'Rule Britannia,'
and 'Britons strike home,' and such like nonsense, and, in short, con-
ducted ourselves with aU the decency and confusion usual on such

occasions." 9

Those manners, unrebuked and even tacitly encouraged in high
military quarters, were not likely to win back the affections of a com-
munity which still walked in the footsteps of its early founders. Mr.
Thomas Hollis,— a learned English antiquary, and an enterprising art-
collector, with the success which falls to him who is early in that field,
—had been a munificent benefactor to American colleges, and most
of all to Harvard. He maintained with the leading scholars and divines
of America very close relations of friendship, of good offices, and,
whenever the opportunity offered itself, of hospitality. Indeed, his posi-
tion in reference to New England was very much that of the Proxenus

9Mackrabie to Francis, Fort Pitt, I4th July, 1770; New York, 4th June, 1768; Phila-
delphia, Qth March, 1768; Philadelphia, 24th April, 1770.

68

of a foreign State in the cities of ancient Greece. He knew the colonists
of old; and, if the Ministry had consulted him, he could have put them
into communication with informants and advisers of a higher stamp
than the broken-down office-holders and subsidised news-writers who
were their confidential correspondents across the ocean. "The people of
Boston and Massachusetts Bay," so Hollis wrote within a month of
the day that the troops sailed for America, "are, I suppose, take them
as a body, the soberest, most knowing, virtuous people at this time
upon earth. All of them hold Revolution principles, and were to a
man, till disgusted by the Stamp Act, the staunchest friends to the
house of Hanover." There was a seriousness, he went on to say, in their
conversation and deportment which in the more ribald public prints
had obtained for them the appellation of Boston Saints; and, like the
saints of old, they now had a taste of persecution. Although physical
cruelty was absent, they endured something of martyrdom in the moral
repugnance created by the license and the rioting with which their
much-enduring town was thenceforward flooded. It is not difficult to
imagine the feelings of a quiet family, who had never heard music
outside the chapel of their own connection, when they were treated to a
military serenade after the style of Philadelphia; knowing only too well
that, if the ladies of the house were suspected of liking the entertain-
ment, they would wake up some morning to find their front door
tarred and feathered.

For they were not all saints in Boston. In the alleys which ran down
to the water-side there were as rough men of their hands as in any
seaport in the world; ardent patriots all of them, (with the exception
of a very few who took excellent care to keep their sentiments to
themselves,) and vigilant censors and guardians, after their own fash-
ion, of the patriotism of others. Unfortunately these were the inhab-
itants of Boston who came most closely and frequently in contact with
the rank and file' of the British army. It was a pity that there should
have been so deep and impassable a gulf of misunderstanding between
two sets of people who had much in common, whose interests were in
no point adverse, and whose attitude of reciprocal enmity was imposed
upon them from above. None who are widely read in military mem-
oirs,— and there is no nation more rich in the journals of privates and
non-commissioned officers than our own,-— can doubt that the men of
Minden, like the men of Salamanca and Vittoria, were as honest,
humane, and (under the ordinary temptations and trials of military
life) as well-conducted soldiers as ever carried a sick comrade's knap-

69

sack or shared their rations with a starving peasant. But they knew
very well that their presence in Boston was not meant as a delicate
attention to the city, and that to make themselves disagreeable to its
citizens was part of the unwritten order of the day. Any compunction
that they might have harboured was soon extinguished by the in-
exorable hostility which met them at every step, and hemmed them in
from every quarter. If they had been a legion of angels under Gabriel
and Michael they would have been just as much and as little beloved
in Fish Street or in Battery Marsh. Their good qualities were denied
or travestied, their faults spied out and magnified. Men who during
Pitt's war never tired of standing treat with soldiers, now talked of
them as idle drunkards. If they civilly passed the time of day to a
woman, she drew herself aside with a shudder. The very colour of
the cloth in which, in order that America might be safe and great,
Englishmen had struggled through the surf at Louisburg, and scram-
bled up the heights of Abraham, was made for them a by-word and
a reproach. No single circumstance was employed with such great
injustice, but so much effect, to excite disgust and derision as one con-
dition in their professional existence which, poor fellows, was no fault
of theirs. The custom of flogging, (and that punishment, in the case of
a heavy sentence, might well mean death by the most horrible of tor-
tures,) revolted, sometimes beyond all power of repression, the hu-
manity of the populations among whom our troops were quartered,
and of the allies with whom they served. This feeling was strong in
America, where the sense of personal dignity and inviolability was
more deeply rooted than in Europe; and it found expression in a
savage nickname which, as the event showed, a man with a loaded
musket in his hand, all the more because he was respectable, might
find himself unable tamely to endure.10

10 During the later period of the war a young colonist, hardly more than a boy,
deserted from Colonel Tarleton's corps in the royal army. He was sentenced to a thou-
sand lashes, and died under them. On one occasion an American sentinel saw a red coat
on the opposite bank of a river and gave the alarm. On closer inspection it was dis-
covered to be the cast-off uniform of a British soldier, who had been flogged with such
severity that "his lacerated back would admit of no covering."

The shock to the popular sentiment became more intense, as time went on, both at
home and on the Continent. During the war with Napoleon a battalion which had suf-
fered terribly from illness in the West Indies, and was going out to suffer terribly at
Walcheren, was quartered at Ripon in Yorkshire. A soldier was severely flogged. Several
of his comrades fainted in the ranks; and the inhabitants, who had with difficulty been
restrained by a cordon of sentries from rushing in upon the scene of execution, pelted
the regiment on the way back to barracks. After Salamanca, as an episode of the trium-
phal entry into Madrid, a culprit received eight hundred lashes, inflicted by the strongest

70

Boston through its constituted authorities met the invasion with
passive, but most effective and irritating, resistance. The Colonels
called upon the Council to house and feed their men, and were re-
minded that under the statute the city was not bound to provide quar-
ters or supplies until the barracks in the Castle were full; and the
Council and the Colonels alike knew that the regiments had been
sent, not to defend the Castle, but to occupy and annoy the city. Gen-
eral Gage, the Commander-in-Chief in America, came on from New
York to find his soldiers sleeping in tents on the Common, with a
New England winter rapidly approaching. He tried his best to insist
that billets should be found for them; but the law was against him,
in a country where, as he sulkily remarked, the law was studied by
everybody. There was nothing for it but to hire private houses at
exorbitant rates, and supply the wants of the troops through the agency
of the Commissariat and at the expense of the British Treasury.

The soldiers were now in the heart of the town, with nothing to do
except to clean their accoutrements, to mount guard in public places
which, before they came, had been as peaceful as Berkeley Square, and
to pick quarrels with the townsmen, who on their side were not slow
to take up the challenge. Every man fought his hardest with the
weapons which were most familiar to him. Samuel Adams argued in
a series of published letters that it was illegal in time of peace, with-
out the consent of Parliament, to keep up a standing army; and that
Americans, who were not represented in Parliament, were therefore
suffering under a military tyranny. British officers spoke and wrote
their minds about the treatment to which they had been subjected in
consequence of the hostility of the citizens, and the Grand Jury found
bills against them for slandering the city of Boston. A captain, who
bade his men remember, if a hand were laid on them, that they wore
side-arms, and that side-arms were meant for use, was called upon to
answer before the tribunals for the words which he had uttered, Hum-
bler and ruder people in either camp followed the lead of their superi.

drummers and buglers in the brigade. The people of the city crowded about the suf-
ferer, and would have loaded him with money if he had been allowed to take it. A
German rifleman in the British service has left an account of the operations near Alicante
in 1813. "The inhabitants," he says, "had never had an opportunity of witnessing an
English military punishment, and the flogging of an artilleryman made a considerable
impression on them. They cut down the fig-tree to which he had been tied, and even
grubbed up the roots."

American Anecdotes, vol. i., pp. 74 and 399. The Vicissitudes of a Soldier's Life, by
John Green, late of the 68th Durham Light Infantry, chapters ii. and x. Adventures oj
a Young Riflemtn, London, 1826, chapter viii.

71

ors; and during eighteen months insult and provocation were rife in
the air, and the street was seldom free for long together from rough
play which at any moment might turn into bloody work. On the
evening of the 5th of March, 1770, there came a short and sharp col-
lision between a handful of soldiers and a small crowd, voluble in
abuse, and too free with clubs and snowballs. There was a sputter of
musketry, and five or six civilians dropped down dead or dying. That
was the Boston massacre. The number of killed was the same as, half
a century afterwards, fell in St. Peter's Fields at Manchester. It was not
less certain that American Independence must result from the one
catastrophe than that English Parliamentary Reform would result from
the other; and in each case the inevitable consequence took just the
same period of time to become an accomplished fact of history.

It would be as idle to apportion the shares of blame among the im-
mediate actors in the miserable business as to speculate on the amount
of the responsibility for an explosion which attached itself to an ar-
tilleryman whose officer had sent him into a magazine to fill cartridges
by the light of an open candle. Of the high parties concerned, the
popular leaders hastened to put themselves in the right, and to prove
that the extemporised statesmanship of plain folk might be better than
anything which Privy Councillors, and Lord Chancellors present and
expectant, had to show. Their first care was to get the soldiers out of
the town; and for this humane and public-spirited object they availed
themselves deftly, and most justifiably, of the apprehension aroused in
the minds of the British authorities by an outburst of wrath such as no
American city had hitherto witnessed. All that night the drums were
rolling, and the bells clashing, and the streets resounding with the cry
of "Town-born, turn out, turn out!" The population was on foot,
armed and angry; and no one went home to bed until the troops had
been ordered back to barracks, and the captain who had commanded
the party of soldiers in the fatal affray was in custody of the Sheriff,
and under examination before the magistrates. Next morning there
was a public meeting, attended by almost every able-bodied man in
Boston, and by the first comers of the multitudes which all day long
streamed in from the surrounding country. There was no bloodshed,
no outrage, no violence even of language. After a prayer for the divine
blessing, at which any opponent who liked was at liberty to laugh, a
committee of citizens was gravely chosen, and charged with the duty
of providing, according to the best of their judgment, for the com-
mon safety. Samuel Adams, Warren, and Hancock, with their col-
72

leagues, on the one side, and the Lieutenant-Governor surrounded by
his Council and the chief officers of the Army and Navy on the other,
talked it out through the livelong day. There were adjournments for
the purpose of affording the representatives of the Crown an oppor-
tunity to confer privately among themselves, and of enabling the dele-
gates to make their report to the people, who sate in continuous
session, or stood over the whole space between their own hall of meet-
ing and the State-house in vast and ever-increasing numbers. It was a
hard tussle; but fresh arguments, which required no marshalling or
commenting, were coming in from the neighbouring townships by
hundreds every hour. The ominous prospect of the night which was
likely to follow such a day clenched the discussion; and just before
dark a promise was given that the whole military force should be
removed to the Castle, and three miles of salt water should be placed
between the troops and the townspeople.

Danger to public peace was for the moment averted; but there still
remained a matter which touched the public reputation. The soldiers
who had pulled the triggers were to be tried for their lives; and Cap-
tain Preston, who had ordered them to fire without the sanction of a
civil magistrate, would have been in peril even if local opinion had
been neutral or quiescent. Moved by a happy inspiration he applied to
John Adams and Josiah Quincy to defend him. Quincy was a young
man, eloquent for liberty, who had begun to play a great part when
his career was cut short by death at the exact point when the war of
words passed into the war of bullets.11 His father, whom he loved and
respected, wrote to dissuade him from accepting the brief, in terms of
vehement remonstrance. The reply, it has been truly said, was in the
vein which sometimes raises the early annals of the American Revolu-
tion above the ordinary level of history. "To inquire my duty," the
son wrote, "and to do it, is my aim. I dare affirm that you and this
whole people will one day rejoice that I became an advocate for the
aforesaid criminals, charged with the murder of our fellow-citizens."
Adams, some years the older, and with more to lose, had the watchful
and jealous eyes of an exasperated people fixed on him with concen-
trated intensity. Long afterwards, at the age of eighty-two, he wrote
in answer to the inquiry of a friend: "Nothing but want of interest
and patronage prevented me from enlisting in the army. Could I
have obtained a troop of horse or a company of foot, I should in-

11 Adams heard the news of Josiah Quincy's death on the soth April, 1775, eleven
days after Lexington.

73

fallibly have been a soldier. It is a problem in my mind, to this day,
whether I should have been a coward or a hero." As far as physical
danger went he showed, on more than one occasion, that he could
not resist the temptation of a fight even at times when his first duty
towards his country was to keep himself alive and whole. And as re-
gards moral courage, no finer proof was ever given than when he
undertook the defence of Captain Preston, and secured a verdict of
acquittal by the exercise of an enormous industry and the display of
splendid ability.

A trial so conducted, and with such a result, was a graceful and a
loyal act on the part of the colony; and the mother-country should
not have been behindhand to meet it in the same spirit. The moment
was eminently favourable for a complete and permanent reconcilia-
tion. On the very day that the shots were fired at Boston Lord North,
as Chancellor of the Exchequer, rose in the House of Commons to
move the repeal of the duties levied in America under Charles Towns-
hend's Act, with the solitary exception of the duty upon tea. The
maintenance of that impost had caused a division of opinion in the
Cabinet, as acute and defined as ever took place without then and
there breaking up a Ministry. The Duke of Grafton, who still was the
titular Head of the Government, had only just arrived at the age when
the modern world begins to look for discretion in a public man. His
fatal luck had made him Prime Minister at thirty, with the training
of a London rake, and married most unhappily, though not worse
than he at the time deserved. He had been a novice in statecraft under
a royal master who had a policy, while he himself had none. For the
crown of his misfortune, his faults and follies were denounced to his
contemporaries, and blazoned forth for the wonder of posterity, by
two past masters in the art of invective. Grafton's critic in Parliament
was Edmund Burke, the greatest man of letters who has given all his
best literary powers to politics. And in the public press he was assailed
by Junius, as keen a politician as ever employed literature for the in-
strument of his righteous indignation.

The lesson was sharp. Grafton had taken it to heart, and was now
intent on shaking off his old self and doing what he could to redeem
his unhappy past. His reputation in the eyes of history was already
beyond mending. Burke and Junius had seen to that. But it was open
for him to clear his conscience, and he now took the first step towards
that end, the importance of which he was man enough to estimate at

74

its true value. He earnestly recommended the Cabinet to sacrifice a
trumpery tax which brought into the Treasury a net income of three
hundred pounds. The retention of it cost the country directly at least
five thousand times as much money on account of die refusal on the
part of the colonies to purchase British products; and indirecdy — in
the shape of distrust and ill-will, scandals and disturbances, military
preparations and national dangers — an account was being run up on
the wrong side of the ledger, the ultimate total of which no man could
calculate. He was supported by every member of the Cabinet whose
character stood high, or who had served with distinction in civil life,
in the field, or on deep water. Lord Camden was with Grafton and so
were General Conway and Lord Granby. The famous admiral, Sir Ed-
ward Hawke, kept away by illness, would otherwise have voted on the
same side. Against him were the Lords Rochford, and Gower, and
Weymouth, and Hillsborough, — a list of personages who, (except that
some of them were noted as hard-livers in a generation when such
pre-eminence was not easily won,) have been preserved from oblivion
by the mischief which on this unique occasion they had the opportunity
of doing. Shelburne had already been driven from the Ministry, or
Grafton would have carried the day; but the casting vote now lay
with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and he gave his voice for
retaining the tax out of deference to the King, and against his own
view of his own duty.

George the Third had dictated North's line of action; but North had
to explain it himself in Parliament. On the necessity of reconciling
America he spoke cogently, and with a depth of feeling which im-
pressed his audience. Then he approached the ungracious part of his
task, and defended the continuation of the Tea-duty perfunctorily and
far from persuasively. Conway argued for the repeal of the entire Act,
as did Barre and Sir William Meredith. All men of sense were united
in thinking that it was the occasion for a complete and final settlement,
and not for a compromise. George Grenville exposed in trenchant
terms the folly and inconsequence of a course for which, though he
was regarded on both sides of the ocean as the apostle of colonial
taxation, he flatly refused to stultify himself by voting. At one moment
it looked as if the House of Commons. would take the matter into its
own hands, and would inflict on the Ministers a defeat most accept-
able to all members of the Government who had any notion how to
govern. But, when the division came, the Tea-duty was retained by a

75

majority of sixty-two. The King's friends had been duly warned, and
primed, and mustered to do the King's work; and never did they more
richly earn the unanimity of condemnation which has been awarded
to them by historians whose verdict has weight and whose names are
held in honour.

The concession was partial and grudging; but the good effect which
even so it produced showed that a frank and complete renunciation
of claims which were hateful to America and worse than unprofitable
to England would have reunited the two countries in sincere and
lasting friendship. New York, which had observed her engagement to
exclude British goods more faithfully than any other colony, and whose
trade had suffered in proportion, now withdrew from the agreement,
and sent orders home for all sorts of merchandise, except tea. On New
Year's day, 1771, Dr. Cooper wrote to Franklin from Boston: "You will
hear, before this reaches you, of the acquittal of Captain Preston and
the soldiers concerned in the action of the 5th of March. Instead of
meeting with any unfair or harsh treatment, they had every advantage
that could possibly be given them in a court of justice. The agreement
of the merchants is broken. Administration has a fair opportunity of
adopting the mildest and most prudent measures respecting the col-
onies, without the appearance of being threatened and drove." At home
the Ministry would have been cordially supported in a policy of in-
dulgence and consideration by the commercial men of the entire King-
dom. And with good reason; for the very best which possibly could be
done for British commerce was to leave well alone. Jealousy of Amer-
ica was the sentiment of politicians who thought that they understood
trade better than the traders themselves, and was not shared by men
who knew business from the inside, and who lived by the pursuit of it.
Burke was a man of business in every respect, except that he applied
his knowledge and insight to the profit of the nation instead of his
own. It had been finely said that he worked as hard and as continu-
ously at commercial questions as if 'he was to receive a handsome per-
centage on the commerce of the whole Empire. He now replied with
crushing force to the chief of the amateur economists whose happiness
was poisoned by the fear of American competition. "He tells us that
their seas are covered with ships, and their rivers floating with com-
merce. This is true; but it is with our ships that the seas are covered,
and their rivers float with British commerce. The American merchants
are our factors; all in reality, most even in name." According to

76

Burke,12 the Americans traded, navigated, and cultivated with English
capital, working for the profit of Englishmen, and taking nothing for
themselves, "except the peculium, without which even slaves will not
labour."

In the production and fabrication of goods it was not a question
of rivalry, but of a practical monopoly for British mills and foundries
which nothing could break down; unless the meddling of British
public men should irritate the colonists into taking measures to supply
their own wants by their own industry. The colonies, according to
Franklin, possessed no manufactures of any consequence. "In Massa-
chusetts a little coarse woollen only, made in families for their own
wear. Glass and linen have been tried, and failed. Rhode Island, Con-
necticut, and New York much the same. Pennsylvania has tried a
linen manufactory, but it is dropped, it being imported cheaper. There
is a glass house in Lancaster County, but it makes only a little coarse
ware for the country neighbours. Maryland is clothed all with English
manufactures. Virginia the same, except that in their families they
spin a little cotton of their own growing. South Carolina and Georgia
none. All speak of the dearness of labour, that makes manufactures
impracticable." That was the state of things before the non-importation
agreement. After it had been in force a year, a single town in Massa-
chusetts had made eighty thousand pairs of women's shoes, and was
sending them to the Southern colonies, and even to the West Indies.13
Franklin never wearied of preaching that advantageous circumstances
will always secure and fix manufactures, so long as things are al-
lowed to take and keep their natural course. "Sheffield," he exclaimed,
"against all Europe these hundred years past!" And it would have
been Sheffield and Manchester and Burslem and Birmingham against
all Europe, and against all America too, long enough for every liv-
ing manufacturer who had his wits about him to make his fortune,
if only George the Third and his Ministers had known when and
where it was wise to do nothing. The satisfaction with which Eng-
lishmen, who had a business connection with America, regarded a sit-

12 Observations on a late publication intitled "The Present State of the Nation" 1769.
The motto to Burke's pamphlet, taken from Ennius, was happily chosen.

"O Tite, si quid ego adjuvero, curamque levasso,
Quae nunc te coquit, et versat sub pectore fixa,
Ecquid erit pretii?"
Titus was Mr. George Grenville.

13 Franklin Correspondence, March 13, 1768, and August 3, 1769.

77

nation which, as far as their own interests were concerned, nothing
could improve, was clearly indicated by the dead silence into which
on this side of the Atlantic the American controversy had fallen.
During the whole of 1771, and the two following years, no debate on
any matter connected with that question is reported in the Parliamen-
tary History of England.14 The Historical Summary in the "Annual
Register" for 1773 gives to America less than a single column of
printed matter. In the Historical Summary for 1775 American affairs
fill a hundred and forty-two out of a hundred and fifty-eight pages.

It was not otherwise beyond the water. The colonies generally acqui-
esced in an arrangement under which they enjoyed present tranquillity,
even though it was founded on the admission of a principle containing
the germ of future discord. New England was no exception. <cThe
people," wrote Mr. Johnson of Connecticut, a trustworthy and cool-
headed servant of the public, "appear to be weary of their altercations
with the mother-country. A little discreet conduct on both sides would
perfectly re-establish that warm affection and respect towards Great
Britain for which this country was once so remarkable." Even with
regard to Massachusetts the Governor, who made the worst of every-
thing, reported in September, 1771, that there was a disposition to let
the quarrel subside.

But one perennial source of discomfort and disorder remained in
full operation. The Revenue laws were in those days ill obeyed and
worse liked all the Empire over; and it was extremely difficult to en-
force them. Communication by land and sea was not on system, and
traffic and travel were conducted along numerous and ever-varying
channels by the agency of rough and ready men. The police was in-
sufficient and badly organised; and, above all, the State, when demand-
ing its dues, had the mass of the community against it. From the peers
and members of Parliament who walked ashore at Dover, with three
embroidered suits of silk and satin worn one inside another, down to
the poor wives in the Kent and Sussex villages who drank their smug-
gled Dutch tea laced with smuggled French brandy, the Custom-
house had no partisans, and few contributors except under stern
compulsion. Nobody had a good word for it except honest or timid
traders whose market was spoiled by illicit dealing; or moralists who
preached abstinence from smuggling as a counsel of protection, the

14 In the session of 1772, (to be quite accurate,) during the progress of the Annual
Mutiny Bill through the House of Commons a few words were said about Court Mar-
tials in America.

78

observance of which placed a man out of the reach of temptation to
graver crimes. The position is clearly laid down by Franklin. "There
are those in the world who would not wrong a neighbour, but make
no scruple of cheating the King. The reverse, however, does not hold;
for whoever scruples cheating the King will certainly not wrong his
neighbour."

In the three kingdoms practice was everywhere lax; while in many
districts the population lived by smuggling as generally, and almost
as openly, as Lancashire lived by spinning. The Mr. Holroyd, who was
afterwards Lord Sheffield, complained to Arthur Young in 1771 that
want of hands cramped the agriculture of Sussex. "All the lively able
young men are employed in smuggling. They can have a guinea a
week as riders and carriers without any risk. Therefore it is not to
be expected that they will labour for eight shillings." Lord Holland's
country seat lay between Broadstairs and Margate, across the top of a
pathway which led from the beach of a convenient inlet between two
chalk headlands. A party of coastguardsmen inhabit the house, now
that they are less wanted. According to George Selwyn, all Lord Hol-
land's servants were professed smugglers; and Selwyn's own servant
made a profit by taking contraband goods off their hands. Lord
Carlisle sate on a special Commission as the representative of his coun-
try at a moment when she was going into war with half the civilised
world because the Americans would not pay the Tea-duty. Not many
years before his Lordship's town-mansion had been beset by Custom-
house officers. It appeared that Lady Carlisle's chairman, like the rest
of his fraternity, used to employ his leisure, when the London season
was over and he was no longer on duty between the poles, in landing
tea surreptitiously from the ships in the riven15 Lord Dartmouth had
a correspondent in Cornwall who from time to time gave him infor-
mation about what was going on in a part of the world which lay
a great deal nearer home than the shores of Maine and New Hamp-
shire. "I am concerned in the wine trade," this gentleman wrote, "and
between myself and partners we have a considerable capital in the
trade; but on account of the smuggling on every side of us, and our
rivals in trade doing such things as I trust our consciences ever will
start back from with abhorrence, we hardly make common interest of
our money." Lisbon wine, he goes on to say, which no honest mer-
chant could import at less than four shillings a gallon, was sold

15 Historical Manuscripts Commission. Fifteenth Report, Appendix, Part VI. Pp. 273
and 297 of the Carlisle Papers.

79

throughout the county for half a crown. Rum, which had paid duty,
did not reimburse the importer at less than nine shillings; but every-
body who wanted to drink it was able to buy it at five. The tobac-
conists would purchase with circumstances of great ostentation one
pound of duty-paid tobacco, and under cover of that transaction would
sell twenty pounds which had been smuggled over from Guernsey.

The officers of the Revenue were overmatched by sea and land.
Sixty horses, each carrying a hundredweight and a half of tea, had
been seen traversing Cornwall in bright moonlight to supply the wants
of Devonshire. When conveying their goods across country the con-
traband traders did the law so much compliment as to confine their
operations to the night; but any hour of the day was a business hour
for the large Irish wherries, (as they then were called,) which infested
the Cornish coast. A Revenue cutter stationed to the south of Tintagel
Head was chased by one of these smugglers. The King's vessel took
refuge in Padstow harbour, and her adversary hung out a flag, and
fired a salvo of seven guns in honour of the victory. That was the
condition of an English county which had forty-four representatives
in Parliament to look after its interests and its proprieties. It was almost
Pharisaical for Ministers, with such a state of things at their own
doors, to maintain that public morality demanded of them to set fleets
and armies in motion because trie Revenue was defrauded, and its
officers flouted, in half-settled regions on the outskirts of the Empire.16

It undoubtedly was the case that in America, and most of all in
New England, enmity to the claims of the Revenue was active and
universal. The origin of that enmity lay far back in history. It has
been observed by a writer, who knew his subject well, that the part
which the merchants and shipowners of the Northern colonies played
in the contest with the home Government has been understated both
as regards the importance of their action and the breadth and justice
of the motives by which it was inspired.17 They had been born into
the inheritance of a cruel wrong, which was more deeply felt as the
forces that govern trade came to be better understood, and in some
cases were for the first time discovered. Cromwell, with an insight be-
yond his age, had refused to swathe and swaddle the infant commerce
of America; and under the Commonwealth that commerce grew fast

16 William Rawlins to the Earl of Dartmouth, August 26, 1765, from St. Columb.
Again, from the same to the same, April 24, 1775, from Padstow. Historical Manuscripts
Commission. Fifteenth Report, Appendix, Part I.

17 Loyalists of the American Revolution, by Lorenzo Sabine, vol. i., pp. 3 to 14.

80

towards prosperous maturity. But a Stuart was no sooner on the throne
than the British Parliament entered on a course of selfish legislation
which killed the direct maritime trade between our dependencies and
foreign ports, and (to borrow the words of an eminent historian)
deliberately crushed every form of colonial manufacture which could
possibly compete with the manufactures of England.18

The traditional resentment against such injustice kept alive by the
continuing and ever-increasing material injury which it inflicted, ar-
rayed men of all classes, creeds, and parties in opposition to the inter-
ests of the Exchequer, and to the officers by whom these interests were
guarded. A gentleman of New York says in a letter written shortly
after the American Revolution broke out: "I fix all the blame of these
proceedings on the Presbyterians. You would ask whether no Church
of England people were among them. Yes, there were; to their eternal
shame be it spoken. But in general they were interested either as smug-
glers of tea, or as being overburdened with dry goods they knew not
how to pay for." 19 Thomas Hancock — the uncle of John Hancock, to
whom, oblivious of political divergences, he left most of his property —
was an ardent royalist and a declared Tory. He was reputed to be
worth that comfortable amount of money which his contemporaries,
in the phrase used by Pope and Arbuthnot, still called a plum. Han-
cock had made the better part of his fortune by importing contraband
tea from Holland, and supplying it to the mess-tables of the army and
navy. Considering that it was to people holding his political opinions
that the Crown lawyers would resort if they had occasion to pack a
jury, it is not difficult to compute their chances of securing a con-
viction on a charge of evading the Revenue. Whenever a gauger or
tide-waiter was found tripping, the Court-house overflowed in every
quarter wtih triumphant emotion. About the period of Preston's trial,
John Adams argued a suit for a penalty against a Custom-house officer
for taking greater fees than those allowed by law; and, in his own
estimation, he argued it very indifferently. He won his case; and in
the enthusiasm of the moment, somewhat to his amusement and yet
more to his disgust, he was overwhelmed with assurances that he had

18 Mr. Lecky, in the twelfth chapter of his History, treats of the commercial rela-
tions between England and the American colonies. Within the compass of four pages
he gives a description of their character and consequences which is clear, full, and
unanswerable.

19 American Archives, prepared and published under authority of an Act of Congress.
The letter is dated May 31, 1774.

81

outdone all his own previous efforts, and would thenceforward rank as
an equal of the greatest orator that ever spoke in Rome or Athens.

For ten years past, ever since George Grenville's influence began to
be felt in the distant parts of the Empire, the claims of the Revenue
had been enforced with unwonted rigour, which in the summer of
1771 assumed an aggressive and exasperating character. Sandwich, who
had succeeded Hawke at the Admiralty, had appointed an officer with
his own surname, and (as it is superfluous to state) of his own party,
to command the powerful squadron now stationed in American waters.
Admiral Montagu, who came fresh from hearing the inner mind of
the Bedfords as expressed in the confidence of the punch-bowl, was
always ready to make known his opinion of New England and its
inhabitants in epithets which, on a well-ordered man-of-war, were
seldom heard abaft the mast. In comparison with him, (so it was said,)
an American freeholder living in a log-house twenty feet square, was a
well-bred and polite man. To make matters worse, the Admiral's lady
was as much too fine as the Admiral himself was coarse. "She is very
full," wrote Adams, "of her remarks at the assembly and the concert.
'Can this lady afford the jewels and dresses she wears?' 'Oh, that my
son should come to dance with a mantua-maker!'" Between them
they encouraged, in those officers whom their example swayed, a tone
of arrogance and incivility foreign indeed to a noble service.20

The Navy, like every profession, has its bad bargains; and the lieu-
tenant in command of the schooner Gaspee, which was watching the
coast of Rhode Island, set himself to the task of translating the lan-
guage used on the quarter-deck of the flagship into overt acts. He
stopped and searched vessels without adequate pretext, seized goods
illegally, and fired at the market boats as they entered Newport har-
bour. He treated the farmers on the islands much as the Saracens in
the middle ages treated the coast population of Italy, cutting down

20 The Admiral's appearance was milder than his language. Philip Freneau, in a
satirical Litany, prayed to be delivered

"From groups at St. James's, who slight our petitions,

And fools that are waiting for further submissions;

From a nation whose manners are rough and abrupt;

From scoundrels and rascals whom gold can corrupt;

From pirates sent out by command of the King

To murder and plunder, but never to swing;

From hot-headed Montagu, mighty to swear,

The little fat man with his pretty white hair."

It was believed in America that Sandwich and the Admiral were brothers. The story, in
that shape, has got into history.

82

their trees for fuel, and taking their sheep when his crew ran short of
fresh meat. The injured parties made their voices heard; and the case
was laid before the Admiral, who approved the conduct of his sub-
ordinate officer, and announced that, as sure as any people from
Newport attempted to rescue a vessel, he would hang them as pirates.
It was a foolish answer as addressed to men who were not long-
suffering, nor particular as to their methods of righting a grievance.
The Admiral's allusion to the gallows, and possibly the character of
Lieutenant Dudingston's depredations, put them in mind of an old
proverb; and they resolved that, if it came to a hanging matter, it
should be for a sheep, and not for a lamb. At the first convenient
opportunity they boarded the royal schooner, set the crew on shore,
and burned the vessel to the water's edge. A terrible commotion fol-
lowed. Thurlow, in his capacity as Attorney-General, denounced the
crime as of a deeper dye than piracy, and reported that the whole
business was of five times the magnitude of the Stamp Act. By a royal
order in council the authorities of Rhode Island were commanded to
deliver the culprits into the hands of the Admiral, with a view to
their being tried in London. But before the crew of a Providence fish-
ing-boat could be arraigned at the Old Bailey, and hanged in chains in
the Essex marshes, they had first to be got out of Narragansett Bay;
and Stephen Hopkins, the old Chief Justice of Rhode Island, refused
to lend his sanction to their arrest in face of the destiny which awaited
them. Admiral Montagu himself, right for once, acknowledged that
British Acts of Parliament — at any rate such Acts as the revived statute
of Henry the Eighth — would never go down in America unless forced
by the point of the sword. And the estimable and amiable Dartmouth,
who now was Secretary of the Colonies, contrived to hush up a diffi-
culty which, as he was told by a wise and friendly correspondent, if it
had been pressed to an extreme issue "would have set the continent
into a fresh flame." 21

It was too much to expect that Sandwich and Thurlow would sit
quiet under, their defeat. There was no use in having the law, good
or bad, on their side if those who interpreted and administered it in
America were independent of their influence and dictation. But the
members of that Cabinet were never slow to make up a prescription
for anything which they regarded as a disease in the body politic; and,
as usual, they tried it first on Massachusetts. It was arranged that her

21 Dartmouth Correspondence, August 29, 1772, and June 16, 1773. Historical Man-
uscripts Commission. Fourteenth Report, Appendix, Part X.

83

judges should henceforward have their salaries paid by the Crown, and
not by the Colony. Samuel Adams discerned the threatening nature of
the proposal itself, and foresaw all the perils involved in the principle
which lay beneath it. At his instigation the patriots of Boston invited
all the townships of the province to establish Committees of Corre-
spondence for the purpose of guarding their chartered rights, and ad-
jured every legislative body throughout America to aid them in repel-
ling an invasion which, if it succeeded in their own case, undoubtedly
would be directed in turn against all their neighbours. Massachusetts
rose to the call; and the Assembly of Virginia, with the political in-
stinct which seldom misled it, took prompt and courageous action.
But in other quarters the response was neither hearty nor universal.
The spirit which had defeated the Stamp Act could not be aroused at
short notice and on a partial issue: and friends and adversaries alike
knew that the threatened colony, if things came to the worst, must be
prepared to rely mainly upon herself.

There was, however, good reason to doubt whether the mother-
country was in the temper to fight so paltry a matter to such a bitter
end. England, outside Parliament and within it, was tired of bullying
and coercing men who after all were Englishmen, whose case rested
on honoured English precedents, and was asserted and maintained by
honest English methods. Never was a community, (as the men of
Massachusetts pathetically complained,) so long and so pitilessly as-
sailed with malicious abuse as theirs had been during the past two
years by enemies in London and within their own borders. The reac-
tion now set in; and a large and increasing section of the English
nation watched with respect, and often with sympathy, -ajc£sistance
conducted on strict constitutional lines., to Jthal -which, evcji^as se,en
from England, looked very like a deliberate system of small-minded
ancl vexatious tyranny. In July, 1773, Franklin addressed ~a letter from
London to Thomas Gushing, then Speaker of the Massachusetts As-
sembly. "With regard," he said, "to the sentiments of people in general
here concerning America, I must say that we have among them many
friends and well-wishers. The Dissenters are all for us, and many of
the merchants and manufacturers. There seems to be, even among the
country gentlemen, a growing sense of our importance, a disapproba-
tion of the harsh measures with which we have been treated, and a
wish that some means might be found of perfect reconciliation."

Under such circumstances it would have seemed impossible that a
Ministry could rise to such a height of perverted ingenuity as to de-

liver Massachusetts from her isolation; to unite all the colonies in sud-
den, hot, and implacable disaffection towards the Crown; and to drive
them into courses which would shock the pride and alienate the good-
will of England. But even that feat proved to be within the resources
of statesmanship. Foremost among the questions of the day at West-
minster was the condition of the East India Company, which now
stood on the verge of bankruptcy. The home Government came for-
ward handsomely with a large loan on easy terms, and a pledge not to
insist on an annual tribute of four hundred thousand pounds which
India had somehow contrived to pay, in spite of her deficits, into the
British exchequer. But, over and above these palliatives, the Cabinet
had at its disposal the means of relieving the famous Corporation from
all its embarrassments. There lay stored in the warehouses tea and
other Indian goods to the value of four millions, which had been in
course of accumulation ever since the Company, not by its own fault,
had lost a most promising customer. The American colonies, making
a protest against the fiscal wrongs in a form which had its attractions
for a thrifty people, had supplied themselves with smuggled tea from
France, Denmark, Sweden, and especially from Holland; and those
foreign merchants who had been tempted into the trade soon learned
to accompany their consignments of tea with other sorts of Oriental
produce. The Custom-house officers reckoned that Indian goods, which
paid nothing to the Treasury and brought no profit to the Company,
found their way into America to the amount of half a million in money
every twelvemonth.

The opportunity was golden, and without alloy. If Ministers could
bring themselves to adopt the suggestion made by the East Indian Di-
rectors, and advise a willing House of Commons to repeal the Tea-
duty, they would, by one and the same straightforward and easy
operation, choke up the underground channels along which com-
merce had begun to flow, pacify the colonies, and save the East India
Company. The demand of the American market for tea was already
enormous. The most portable and easily prepared of beverages, it was
then used in the backwoods of the West as lavishly as now in the
Australian bush. In more settled districts the quantity absorbed on all
occasions of ceremony is incredible to a generation which has ceased to
rejoice and to mourn in large companies and at great cost. The legis-
lative assembly of more than one colony had passed sumptuary laws to
keep the friends of the deceased from drinking his widow and orphans
out of house and home; and whatever the gentlemen, who drove and

85

rode into a funeral from thirty miles round, were in the habit of
drinking, the ladies drank tea. The very Indians, in default of some-
thing stronger, took it twice a day;22 and however much attached
they might be to their Great Father beyond the water, it must not be
supposed that they made special arrangements in order to ensure that
he had been paid his dues on the article which they consumed. If only
the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with a few heartfelt sentences of
frank retractation and cordial welcome, had thrown completely open
the door of the Custom-house which already was ajar, all would have
been well, then and thereafter. Before Parliament was many sessions
older America, (after a less questionable fashion than the expression,
when used in an English budget speech, usually implies,) would have
drunk the East India Company out of all its difficulties.

A course which went direct to the right point was not of a nature
to find favour with George the Third and his Ministers. They adopted
by preference a plan under which the East India Company was al-
lowed a drawback of the whole Tea-duty then payable in England,
while the Exchequer continued to claim the threepence on the pound
which was paid, (or, to speak more exactly, left unpaid,) in America.
Their object was such that every one who ran a boatload of smuggled
goods between Penobscot Bay and the mouth of the Savannah River
could read. This wise scheme, (so Franklin put it,) was to take off as
much duty in England as would make the Company's tea cheaper in
America than any which foreigners could supply; and at the same
time to maintain the duty in America, and thus keep alive the right of
Parliament to tax the colonies. "They have no idea," he wrote, "that
any people can act from any other principle but that of interest; and
they believe that threepence in a pound of tea, of which one does not
perhaps drink ten pounds in a year, is sufficient to overcome all the
patriotism of an American."

They were not long in finding out their mistake. The King, (so
North stated,) meant to try the question with America; and arrange-
ments were accordingly made which, whatever else may be said of
them, undoubtedly accomplished that end. In the autumn of 1773
ships laden with tea sailed for the four principal ports on the Atlantic
seaboard, and agents or consignees of the East India Company were
appointed by letter to attend their arrival in each of the four towns.
The captain of the vessel despatched to Philadelphia found such a re-
ception awaiting him that he sailed straight back to England. Boston

22 Dartmouth Correspondence, January 19, 1773.

86

gratified the curiosity of an energetic patriot who expressed a wish to
see whether tea could be made with salt water. At Charlestown the
cargo was deposited in a damp cellar, where it was spoiled as effectu-
ally as if it had been floating on the tide up and down the channel
between James Island and Sullivan's Island. And, when New York
learned that the tea-ships allotted to it had been driven by a gale
off the coast, men scanned the horizon, like the garrison of London-
derry watching for the English fleet in Lough Foyle, in their fear lest
fate should rob them of their opportunity of proving themselves not
inferior in mettle to the Bostonians. The great cities, to which all the
colonies looked as laboratories of public opinion and theatres of political
action, had now deliberately committed themselves to a policy of illegal
violence which could not fail to wound the self-respect of the English
people, and make Parliament, for many a long and sad year to come,
an obedient instrument in the hands of men resolved at all hazards to
chastise and humble America.

CHAPTER III

THE STATE OF POLITICAL PARTIES AT WESTMINSTER.
FRANKLIN AND THE LETTERS

1 HE news from Boston came upon the mother-country in the pro-
voking shape of a disagreeable surprise. For the ordinary English
citizen it was news indeed. He had heard how at Philadelphia, on
the 4th of June, 1766,— the first King's birthday which followed the
repeal of the Stamp Act,— the healths of George the Third and Doc-
tor Franklin had been drunk in public at the same table. From that
moment he had reposed in a serene conviction that the American
difficulty, for his own lifetime at all events, was over and done with.
He took it for granted that the mob in New England was in the
habit of hunting Custom-house officers, just as a Londoner, in the days
before railroads, lived in the belief that the mob in the manufactur-
ing districts of Lancashire was always breaking frames. He was aware
that the troops had shot some townspeople in the streets of Boston.
He was equally aware that, not many months before, the Footguards
had shot some Wilkites in the Borough of Southwark; and the one
occurrence had to his mind no deeper and more permanent signifi-
cance than the other. The last serious fact connected with America
which had come to his knowledge was that Parliament had gone a
great deal more than half way to meet the wishes of the colonies,
had removed all but a mere fraction of the unpopular duties, and had
made an arrangement with the East India Company by which the
colonists would thenceforward drink tea much cheaper than he could
drink it himself. And now, as a recognition of her patience and self-
control, and as a reply to her friendly advances, England was slapped
in her smiling face with a zest and vigour which sent a thrill of exul-
tation through all, in any quarter of the world, who envied her and
wished her ill. It was true that close and dispassionate investigation
would show that, for the treatment which she had received, she had
88

herself, or rather her chosen governors, to thank. But the first effect
of an insult is not to set Englishmen computing and weighing what
they have done to deserve it; and the national indignation, in heat
and unanimity, hardly fell short of that which was in our time aroused
throughout the Northern States of America by the bombardment of
Fort Sumter.

The country was in a temper for any folly which its rulers would
allow it to commit; and unfortunately the crisis had come just when
the system of personal government had reached the culminating point
of success towards which the King had long been working. JEvery
particle of independence, and of wisdom which dared to assert itself
had at last been effectually eliminated from the Cabinet. Administra-
tive experience was to be found there, and some forethought and cir-
cumspection, and plenty of timidity; but those Ministers who were
afraid of strong courses stood in much greater terror of their strong
monarch. The men who in March, 1770, had pronounced themselves
against the retention of the Tea-duty were no longer in a position to
warn or to advise him. The Duke of Grafton, after the humiliating
defeat which on that occasion he suffered, lost no time in surrendering
to Lord North the first place in the Government. He consented indeed,
at the instance of the King, to keep the Privy Seal. But he consulted
his own dignity by refusing to sit as a subordinate in a Cabinet which,
while he was still Prime Minister, had overruled him in the case of a
decision second in importance to none which any Cabinet was ever
called on to take.

Conway and Sir Edward Hawke had retired from office; and
Granby had met, in mournful fashion, death which he had gaily con-
fronted on many a disputed field. Though four generations have come
and gone, an English reader learns with something of a personal
shock that there was a dark side to that brilliant career. Posterity re-
members him as the Master-General of the Ordnance, and Com-
mander-in-Chief of the army, whom no officer envied; the statesman
whom every ally and every opponent loved; the leader of horse who
was named with Ziethen and Seidlitz in all the cavalry barracks of
Europe; the idol of the people in days when the people seldom trou-
bled themselves to distinguish between one politician and another. But,
with all this, Granby behind the scenes was an erring, an over-bur-
dened, and at last a most unhappy man. He was a jovial companion
to high and humble; a profuse and often unwise benefactor; a soldier
of the camp in foreign lands, with little time and less inclination to

look closely into his private affairs at home; and, above all, an elderly
heir-apparent to an immense estate;— and it cannot be denied that he
had the faults of his qualities and of his position. Like some greater
men, and with more excuse, at fifty years of age he had a broken
constitution, and he was deep in debt. None the less, at the bidding
of duty, he resisted the entreaties of George the Third, who was sin-
cerely desirous not to lose him from the Ministry. Resigning his em-
ployments and emoluments, he retired into pecuniary embarrassment
unrelieved by occupation and uncheered by health. A year afterwards
he died at Scarborough, where he had gone in the hope of a cure, only
to find himself involved in the worry and tumult of a contested York-
shire election. "You are no stranger," a friend of the family writes, "to
the spirit of procrastination. The noblest mind that ever existed, the
amiable man whom we lament, was not free from it. I have lived to
see the first heir, of a subject, in the Kingdom, lead a miserable shift-
ing life, attended by a levee of duns, and at last die broken-hearted,—
for so he really was, — rather than say, 'I will arise and go to my father/
It is impossible to describe the distress of the whole country. Every
place you passed through in tears, and the Casde was the head-quarters
of misery and dejection. The Duke rose up to meet me with an appear-
ance of cheerfulness, but soon relapsed into a sullen melancholy, and
for three weeks he appeared to me petrified." x

The departure of Conway, Hawke, and Granby, three men of the
sword who feared nothing except an unrighteous quarrel, left the
honour of England in the keeping of the Bedfords. For them it must
be said that, when urging their views in council, they had all the ad-
vantage which proceeds from sincerity of conviction. Their ideas of
ministerial discretion permitted them, whether sober, drunk, or half-
seas over, to rail at the colonists as rebels and traitors before any com-
pany in London; and it may well be believed that they did not pick
their words within the walls of that chamber where they had a right

1 Historical Manuscripts Commission. Twelfth Report, Appendix, Part V. The letter is
in sad contrast with another in the same volume written nine years before to Granby,
then a recalcitrant invalid, by Lord Ligonier, — one of the few men who had a right to
criticise or to compliment him. "I am to thank you for the remedy you have discovered
for a fever. It has ever been unknown till your time; but now it is manifest that if a
man is ordered to his bed with this disorder, he has nothing more to do than to jump
•out of it, get upon his horse, and fight away. But however prevailing that remedy has
taeen on a late occasion, I do not recommend it for the future." Such a message from
such a soldier was a feather in the hat even of Granby, — if those who know his por-
traits can imagine him with any covering to his head. He had just come victorious out
of the last and fiercest of his German battles.

90

to speak their entire mind in as plain terms as their colleagues would
endure. What is known about the tractability of those colleagues is
among the miracles of history; though the full extent of it can only
be conjectured by a comparison of the partial revelations which have
seen the light of day. In 1779 Lord North confessed to the King that
for at least three years he had held in his heart the opinion that the
system which the Government had pursued would end in the ruin of
his Majesty and the country. Yet during three more years he continued
to pursue that system, and would never have desisted from it if Wash-
ington had not been too strong for him abroad, and Charles Fox and
his friends too many for him at home. Lord Gower, the President of
the Council, supported in public North's policy, although he loved it
no better than did North himself; but five years so spent were enough
for him, and at the end of that period he appeased his conscience by a
resignation which, for a member of that Ministry, may be called
prompt and even premature. Strangest of all was the letter in which
Lord Barrington, before ever a cannon had been fired or a sabre
stained, had laid down in black and white his inward judgment on
what had been the origin of the dispute, and on what should be the
conduct of the war. He argued that it was madness on the part of any
Ministry to impose a tax which no Ministry had the strength to levy;
that the attempt to fight the colonists on land could only result in
disaster and disgrace; that a judicious employment of our naval force
was the least unpromising method of combating the rebellion; and
that, so far from reinforcing the army in Massachusetts, the garrison
should at once be withdrawn from Boston, leaving that undutiful city
to its own devices. Those were his views, deliberately entertained and
never abandoned; and nevertheless as Secretary at War he despatched
to America every soldier who fought between the day of Bunker's
Hill and the day of Monmouth Court House.

The^theo^^£joaiai§Xerial responsibility which then prevailed in high
official circles was carefully laid down by Lord Barrington's brother,
the Bishop of Durham, in a passage of biography agreeably redolent of
fraternal pride. "In conjunction," the Bishop wrote, "with the other
members of Administration, Lord Barrington bore the censures which
were now very generally directed against the supporters of the Amer-
ican War: yet no person less deserved those censures. There is the
clearest and most decisive evidence that Lord Barrington disapproved
the adopted mode of coercion, and that he submitted, both to the
King and his Ministers, his sentiments on the subject in the most

91

unequivocal terms* His opinion was that, though it became his duty to
remonstrate with his colleagues in office, it was neither honourable
nor proper for him to appeal to the uninformed judgments of others,
and to play a game of popularity at the expense of the public/'

The colleague to whom Lord Harrington more particularly ad-
dressed his remonstrances was Lord Dartmouth, the Secretary of State
in charge of America. His selection for that post had been an act of
true wisdom. With an empire such as ours, a judicious ruler, who has
an appointment to make, takes due account of local tastes and prefer-
ences. He will flatter one colony by sending to it as governor a public
man who is supposed to have studied agriculture, and will please an-
other by appointing a nobleman who undoubtedly understands horses.
Bringing the same knowleagb-^mankind into higher regions, George
the Third and Lord North paid America- a marked and acceptable
compliment when they committed the care of her interests to the most
distinguished member of a school of thought and practice which was
already beginning to be called Evangelical.

The fame of Lord Dartmouth had been carried far and wide
throughout the English-speaking world by that association of brave
and sincere men who were in hard conflict with the vices of the age,
and in earnest protest against the lukewarmness of its religious faith.
He was a Churchman; and the claims of the Establishment were in
small favour with the colonists. But he belonged to that section of
Churchmen who looked outside, as well as within, their own borders
for allies to aid them in their lifelong warfare against ignorance and
indifference, misery, cruelty, and sin. Lord Halifax, accounted a rake
and spendthrift even by that lax generation, had gone as far as he
dared, and much farther than was safe, into a scheme for planting
bishops in America. But Dartmouth, the light of whose goodness
would have shone in the brightest days of Christianity, recognised only
one spiritual banner beneath which men should fight, and cared little
or nothing to what regiment belonged the arm that sustained it, if
only it was carried worthily. He had long ago applied himself to the
sage and praiseworthy task of turning to account the spirit of en-
thusiasm which had grown strong within the Church itself, under the
fostering care of Wesley and Whitefield. Those eminent men had been
encountered by a persecution, not discouraged by Church dignitaries,
and in the coarser and more cruel forms of which a beneficed clergy-
man was too often the ringleader. But by the year 1764 that persecution
had done its worst, and in vain. The heat of the day was already
92

borne, and the Methodists had obtained a standing so secure that their
self-respect allowed them to offer terms. Wesley addressed to fifty
ministers of the Establishment, who held the same essential doctrines
as himself, a singularly skilful and beautiful letter; and that appeal
for mutual good-will and united effort had, there is reason to believe,
been prepared years beforehand under the eye of Lord Dartmouth.
When the attempt at reconciliation failed, Wesley wrote to his noble
coadjutor in the style which he sometimes employed when he was not
pleased; but Dartmouth had no notion of throwing away such a friend-
ship on account of a few frank and rough words. "Have you a per-
son," asked Wesley, "in all England who speaks to your lordship so
plain and downright as I do; who considers not the peer, but the man;
who rarely commends, but often blames, and perhaps would do it
oftener if you desired it?" More than once, as will be seen in the
course of this narrative, Wesley made good his promise at a time when
honest advice was of priceless value.

Dartmouth assisted Lady Huntingdon with his means and influence,
and the still more needed contribution of his sound sense and knowl-
edge of the world, in her endeavours to provide English pulpits with
a supply of preachers who believed what they said, and were trained
in the art of saying it. He found a wiser and not less open-handed
auxiliary in John Thornton, the true founder of the Evangelicalism
which was prevalent and prominent in the Established Church during
the period when that Church took a forward part in courageous and
unpopular movements for the general benefit of mankind. The two
friends quietly and steadily applied themselves to mend the income
of poor livings held by good men, to purchase advowsons, and to con-
fer them upon clergymen who expounded the Gospel as they them-
selves had learned it. While pursuing this work they had the rare
privilege of establishing a permanent claim on the gratitude of very
many who have little sympathy with their specific creed. Lord Dart-
mouth made interest in high episcopal quarters to obtain the ordina-
tion of John Newton, who was too much in earnest about religion to
be readily entrusted with a commission to teach it, except as a matter
of favour to a great man. The statesman placed the divine in the
curacy of Olney; and Mr. Thornton added an allowance of two hun-
dred pounds a year. "Be hospitable," he wrote to Newton, "and keep
an open house for such as are worthy of entertainment. Help the poor
and needy." That roof soon sheltered a guest than whom few had been
worthier of entertainment since Abraham's tent was pitched on the

93 '

plains of Mamre, and none had been more in need of it since this
world began. For William Cowper spent the period of gloom and de-
pression which fell upon him in middle life under Newton's care, and
as a member of his family. It was at Dartmouth's cost that the house
had been fitted and furnished, and decorated in a manner to suit the
taste of the inmates.2 And to Dartmouth Newton made periodical
reports of his friend's condition in phraseology now long out of date,
but alive with sentiments of tenderness and delicacy which were to
the honour of him who wrote and him who read.

Dartmouth loved to hear from one or another of the two friends
how much they were enjoying the comforts which they owed him;
strolling in his woods, and mending their fare from his ponds, while
at Whitehall, sixty miles away, he himself was fishing in very troubled
waters. It was a relief to turn from the bullyings of the Bedfords, or
from poor Lord Harrington's plaintive confidences, and to refresh his
mind with the current news of a community which, quite apart from
the Unwins, must certainly have been the most innocent of villages.
"The simplicity and happy ignorance," Newton wrote, "of those who
live in a country place is a great advantage to a minister. A few
months ago I heard that some of them in their prayers at home had
been much engaged for the welfare of Mr. Wilkes. As the whole town
of Olney is remarkably loyal and peaceable with regard to the govern-
ment, I was rather surprised that gentleman should have partisans
amongst our serious people. Upon inquiry I found they had just heard
of his name and that he was in prison. Comparing the imperfect ac-
count they had of him with what they read in their Bibles, they took
it for granted that a person so treated must of necessity be a minister

2 "We have daily new reason to thank your Lordship for our dwelling. On looking
over the bills I observe that in some less essendai articles there might have been a spar-
ing. In the article of painting we pleased ourselves with mahogany doors, without being
in the least aware that colour was dearer than white or brown. There is one line per-
haps would surprise your Lordship, namely, for 160 letters in the study, 6s. 8J. This
being no great sum, and out of the common road, I did not intend should appear in
the bill. But perhaps you will allow me to explain it. If your Lordship had been at the
Plantations in or about the year 1746, and was now to come to Olney, you would be
sensible of an amazing difference between my situation there, and what it is here. I
therefore ordered the following texts to be painted over the fireplace; — •''Since thou
wast precious in my sight, thou has been honourable; but thou shalt remember that
thou wast a bondsman in the land of Egypt, and the Lord thy God redeemed thee.' "

This was the house in which Cowper resided during the height of his malady. Be-
fore and afterwards, the two families lived separately. The extracts from Newton's let-
ters are from the Fifteenth Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, Appendix,
Part I.

94

of the Gospel, and under that character they prayed earnestly that he
might be supported and enlarged. Mr. Cowper desires his respects. It
was agreed between us that whoever wrote first should let your Lord-
ship know that Mr. Cowper's servant can throw a casting net, that
we love fish at both houses, and that, relying on your Lordship's good-
ness, we have sometimes thought of employing the servant to catch us
some if he can."

In one of his first letters Newton expressed anxiety concerning the
lady who holds high place among the Sisters of Mercy of literature.
"My amiable guests are at present from home. Mr. Cowper has accom-
panied Mrs. Unwin this morning to St. Albans to consult Dr. Cotton.
Her frame is exceedingly delicate, and she has a variety of symptoms
which seem to threaten a consumption. The most alarming symptom
to me (if I may dare to call it so) is her eminence in the Christian life
and spirit. Her temper, her language, her very air, seem to indicate an
unusual meetness for glory." The danger of a calamity, which many
would still lament, passed away; and for Mrs. Unwin and her charge
there ensued some years of occasional happiness and only too constant
occupation. Sir Cowper, as he was styled by humbler neighbours who
had not studied the baronetage, but who knew a gentleman when they
saw him, was employed under Newton's direction on religious teach-
ing and visiting; — the very last work to which his attention should
have been directed. Cowper's health gave way; and about the time
that Dartmouth's American difficulties began in earnest he received
tidings which affected him even more than the Non-importation
Agreement, or the burning of the schooner Gaspee. "He is now sitting
by me, disconsolate. Lately he rejoiced in communion with God, and
lived upon the foretaste of eternal glory. I believe few people living
have given more unquestionable evidence of a heart truly devoted to
God than my friend, yet he is now upon the brink of despair, and our
most earnest endeavours to comfort him seem but to add to his dis-
tress. How often have I been ready to complain and say, 'Why does the
Lord deal so heavily with a favoured and faithful servant?' Mr. Cow-
per was (as I verily believe) the foremost of us all. His whole be-
haviour was not only unblamable but exemplary. Two circumstances
in his case, for which we cannot be sufficiently thankful, I must not
omit. The one is the great patience and mildness of spirit which the
Lord maintains in him; the other, that all his troubles and terrors are
restrained when he goes to bed, so that he generally sleeps eight hours
or more every night as undisturbed as a child." As soon as a favourable

95

change came, after many weary months, Dartmouth was the first to be
informed that the Lord was on his way to turn mourning into joy.
The patient awoke, to find his shelves bare of the books which, in his
time of poverty, he had been compelled to sell. Dartmouth's library
then supplied him with the volumes of travel over the study of which
his mind regained its strength, and acquired a cheerfulness that en-
dured long enough to depict itself for our delight in indelible colours
before it once again was finally clouded.

Cowper, and Newton, and Lady Huntingdon, and the Wesleys were
Church people, or tried stoutly to be accounted so. But Dartmouth's
breadth of charity and ardour of conviction were bounded by no
ecclesiastical barriers. In this respect he was in full sympathy with his
friend John Thornton, who to the end of his travelling days never
enjoyed an excursion to the mountains or the sea-coast unless he was
accompanied by some Nonconformist minister who wanted, but could
not afford, a holiday. Already, long before official position had made it
worth his while to court popularity in the colonies, the peer had taken
most effective interest in a school established on the New Hampshire
frontier for the conversion and civilisation of the Indians: a school
which, as time went on and his benefaction multiplied, received the
name of Dartmouth College. In 1771 he invited the co-operation of the
Bishop of London, and received a reply of a nature which goes further
to illustrate the inward causes of the American troubles than many
ponderous volumes of minutes and reports. The Bishop (so the answer
ran) had received no intimation that the head of the college was to
belong to the Church of England, or that the prayers to be used were
those of the Liturgy. The other members of the Board, his Lordship
further remarked, appeared to be Dissenters, and he therefore could
not see how a bishop could be of use among them, and accordingly
begged to decline the honour which the trustees had done him. Dart-
mouth—well aware that a religious undertaking in New England, if
Dissenters were kept in the background, could not be expected to over-
flow with vitality — continued President of the Board. John Thornton
acted as Treasurer: a function which, with his usual generosity, he
took care should never be a sinecure.

The colonists saw that Dartmouth understood their ways, and was
at one with them on matters which he regarded as infinitely higher
and more important than any political differences. Whether he was in
or out of office, — when he was advocating their cause, and when, in
obedience to worse and stronger men than himself, he was doing his

96

utmost to ruin it, — they persisted in looking on him as a friend at
heart, Virginia and New York addressed to him their felicitations on
the repeal of the Stamp Act, accompanied, among other less romantic
presents, by a young eaglet; at whose full-grown claws and beak, in
coming years, he must have looked with mingled feelings when he
paid a visit to his aviary. On the occasion of the Boston massacre of
March, 1770, the popular leaders transmitted to Dartmouth a full ac-
count of their proceedings, as to an honest man who would take care
that their statement of the case should be known at Court. When, in
August, 1772, he was appointed Secretary of the Colonies, the news
was hailed with satisfaction throughout America by people of all par-
ties, and indeed of every colour. The effusions of joy and expectation
which his advent to power excited began with a congratulatory ode
from a negress, the last couplet of which, for the sentiment if not for
the rhyme, might have passed muster in Cowper's "Table-talk/* 3 As
months rolled on, and the plot thickened, every post brought him
more valuable testimonies of affection and confidence in the shape
of letters of counsel from the most unlikely quarters. Good men, even
from among the ranks of those whom he never without a twinge
could call rebels, dared to write him their true thoughts, and cared to
do it. When he allowed himself to become the instrument of an hos-
tility which was foreign to his nature, and, it is to be feared, not
consonant with his opinions, they diminished something from their
respect, but he always retained their love. Two generations afterwards,
in the July of 1829, the citizens of New York asked leave to detain his
portrait, then on its way from England to the College which bore his
name. The request was granted; and they placed the picture in their
Hall of Justice, next those of Washington and Franklin, on the day
of the Celebration of Independence. If Dartmouth could have ruled
the colonies according to the dictates of his own judgment and his own
conscience, that Independence would have been postponed till he had
ceased to be Secretary of State; and, whenever it arrived, it would have
excited very different feelings and recollections from those with which
it was destined to be associated.

With all who were prudent in the Ministry cowed and silent, and
its reckless members dominant and noisy, the nation, at this supreme
moment, was likely to be ill piloted. Its best hope lay in those states-

3 Thou, like the Prophet, find the bright abode
Where dwells thy sire, the Everlasting God.

97

men out of office whose vocation was to restrain it from the mad
courses towards which its rulers were hurrying it. More often than ap-
pears on the face of history, a Cabinet has been saved from the full
consequences of its own policy by an opposition which did not shrink
from the labour and odium of preventing the men in power from
effecting all the mischief upon which their minds were set. But such
a task, the most invidious which can fall within the sphere of public
duty, requires something more for its successful performance than
patriotic impulses and good intentions. Unfortunately those honour-
able and seemly political commodities now constituted nearly the whole
stock in trade of the peers and county members who watched and
criticised the Government. As Ministers, eight years before, they had
done their duty faithfully and well during the brief period which
elapsed between the moment when the King had no choice but to
accept their services, and the mpjtnent when he first could find a pre-
text for dispensing with them. Burke's "Short Account of a Short
Administration" set forth, with the unadorned fidelity of an inventory,
the catalogue of performances which Lord Rockingham and his col-
leagues had packed into the compass of one year and twenty days. In
tastes, in character, and in worldly position these men were suited to
use power well, and to abandon it cheerfully as soon as they were un-
able any longer to employ it for the advantage of the country. But they
were not equally inclined to conduct, year in and year out, the thank-
less and hopeless battle against able and unscrupulous opponents who
were fighting like irritated bulldogs in defense of their salaries. For
true gentlemen, and such the Rockinghams were, the prospect before
them was not enticing. The best they could anticipate was to spend
years in being bantered by Rigby, and brow-beaten by Thurlow, and
denounced as traitors by Wedderburn for expressing in mild terms
their sympathy with a cause which in former days he had almost
contrived to bring into disrepute by the violence with which he had
advocated it. And at the end of those years they might, as the crown
of success, be able to force themselves into the counsels of a monarch
who hated them, and who treated 'them as none among them would
have treated the humblest of their dependents and retainers.

The Whig magnates, while they had little to gain from a political
career, had in their own opinion almost everything to lose. In that age
of enjoyment they had the best seats in the theatre of life; and their
notions of pleasure squared even less than those of most men with
the conditions under which hard public work is done. There were poli-

ticians for whom the sweetest hours of the twenty-four began when the
rattle of the coaches up St. James's Street told that the House of Com-
mons was no longer sitting, and ended when they were helped into
their beds by daylight;— in whose eyes Ranelagh surpassed all the
gardens of Chatsworth, and the trees in the Mall were more excellent
than the elms at Althorp or the oaks of Welbeck. But Rockingham
and his followers loved the country; and there were few amongst them
who did not possess plenty of it to love. Assembling for business in a
November fog, and wrangling on until a June sun shone reproach-
fully through the windows, seemed a doubtful form of happiness even
to Gibbon, whose conceptions of rustic solitude did not go beyond a
cottage at Hampton Court during the summer months. But to haunt
London when the thorns were red and white and the syringas fra-
grant, or when the hounds were running over the Yorkshire pastures
and the woodcocks were gathering in the Norfolk spinneys; to debate
amidst clamour, and vote in a lobby where there was hardly space to
stand, with the hope that at some unknown point in the future he
might draw salary for a few quarter days, — was not a career to the
mind of a great landowner who seldom got as much sport and fresh
air as he could wish, and who, since he had outgrown the temptations
of the card-table, had never known what it was to spend half his
income.

In the spring of 1774 the Opposition retained very little hold on
Parliament, and still less on the country. Their impotence was the con-
stant theme of every one who was their well-wisher, and who would
have been their supporter if "they had provide4 him with anything
to support. Their supine attitude was noticed with delight and ex-
ultation in the private letters of their adversaries, who were however
far too judicious to taunt them with it in public; and among them-
selves it formed an unfailing subject of mutual confession and ex-
postulation. For years together, both before and after the outbreak
of the American War, the comments of Londoners who kept their
friends at a distance informed of what was doing at Westminster are
all in the same strain. "I wish I could send you some news," wrote
Lord Townshend in 1772, "but all is dull and the town thin. The
Opposition, poor souls who can do no harm, (the Dukes of Richmond,
Devonshire, and Portland excepted,) seem to have left the nation
entirely to this wicked Ministry." "Lord North," said Sir George
Macartney in 1773, "has had a wonderful tide of success, and there
does not seem anything likely to interrupt it. Opposition is growing

99

ridiculous and contemptible, and 'tis now said that after this Session
Lord Rockingham will give it up."

The colonial difficulty, instead of bracing the sinews of the Opposi-
tion, only made them more conscious of their own helplessness. The
Duke of Richmond, who was the fighting man of the party in the
Lords, admitted in March, 1775, that he felt very languid about the
American business, that he saw no use in renewing efforts which in-
variably failed, and that in his view nothing would restore common
sense to the country except the dreadful consequences which must fol-
low from what he called the diabolical policy on which it was em-
barked. Samuel Curwen, a Tory exile who had fled across the Atlantic
Ocean in what may be described as the First Emigration, kept a close
watch on the proceedings at Westminster. He comforted the fellow-
loyalists, whom he had left behind him in the clutches of the Sons of
Liberty, with assurances that the Opposition in the British Parliament
was too inconsiderable in numbers, influence, and activity to hinder
the plans of the Administration for restoring order in New England.4
Horace Walpole, an honest and anxious patriot beneath all his fash-
ionable gossip and antiquarian frippery, thus wound up a long series
of passages reflecting on the degeneracy of the party which professed
to withstand the Court. "I would lay a wager that if a parcel of
schoolboys were to play at politicians, the children that should take
the part of the opposition would discover more spirit and sense. The
cruelest thing that has been said of the Americans by the Court is that
they were encouraged by the Opposition. You might as soon light a
fire with a wet dishclout." The complaint was uttered in October, 1777,
and it was the last of the number. In the November of the same year
Charles Fox openly, visibly, and definitively assumed the lead of the
Whigs in the House of Commons; and from that moment onwards,
whatever other charge might be brought against the Opposition, no
man ever spoke of their apathy again.

Epithet for epithet, the retrospective loyalty due from Liberals to a
former chief of their party would incline them to compare Lord Rock-
ingham to a nobler article of domestic use than that which suggested
itself to Horace Walpole; but a wet blanket he certainly must be
called. He was the most exalted instance in Parliamentary history of
the force of Burke's maxim that a habit of not speaking at all grows
upon men as fast as a habit of speaking ill, and is as great a misfor-
tune. To the end of his days, whenever Rockingham had mustered

4 Samuel Curwen to the Hon. William Browne of Boston. London, December 4,
1775.

100

courage to open his mouth in public, he was congratulated as if he had
been a young county member who had moved the Address, without
breaking down, on the first day of his first Parliament. "It gave me
great pleasure," wrote the Duke of Richmond in 1769, "to hear that
you had exerted yourself to speak in the House; and I am particularly
pleased that you returned to the charge on the second day, and re-
plied: for it gives me hopes that you will get rid of that ill-placed
timidity which has hitherto checked you. Be assured, you cannot speak
too often. Practice will make it easy to you." It was a curious way of
writing to a man who had already been Prime Minister.

If in the Lords the Opposition had a leader whose heart sank within
him whenever he gave the word of command, the Opposition in the
Commons had to do as they best could without any leader whatsoever.
They came to the House, as Burke ruefully expressed it, to dispute
among themselves, to divert the Ministry, and to divide eight and
twenty. There was indeed always Burke, who during a quarter of a
century adorned and illustrated the cause of freedom; and who, when
in his declining years he exerted his eloquence against the French
Revolution, led or rather drove the House of Commons and the Gov-
ernment, and the country too. But his merits and his failings alike
disqualified him to be the titular head of one of the great parties in
the fastidious and aristocratic parliaments of the eighteenth century.
He had some of the faults of his time, and some of the defects which
were then imputed to his place of birth. He wanted self-control in
debate, and he seldom observed a sense of proportion either in the
length of his speeches, or in the size and colour of his rhetorical fig-
ures. There are passages in Burke, rich to gaudiness and audacious
almost to crudity, which are equally astonishing when we reflect that
a human imagination was capable of producing them without pre-
vious study, and when we remember that they were spoken, in the
actual words which we now read, to a House of Commons waiting for
its dinner or (more inconceivable still) to a House of Commons that
had dined.5 He lived beyond his means, and was far too much in

6 In 1770, when arguing for an inquiry into the administration of the law of libel,
Burke thus expressed his want of confidence in the Judges: "The lightning has pierced
their sanctuary, and rent the veil of their temple from the top even to the bottom. Noth-
ing is whole, nothing is sound. The ten tables of the law are shattered and splintered.
The Ark of the Covenant is lost, and passed into the hands of the uncircumcised. Both
they and ye are become an abomination unto the Lord. In order to wash away your
sins, let Moses and the prophets ascend Mount Sinai, and bring us down the second
table of the law in thunders and lightnings; for in thunders and lightnings the consti-
tution was first, and must now, be established."

101

the company of relatives who were not particular as to the methods
by which they endeavoured to fill their empty purses. But that circum-
stance in itself was no bar to the favour of an Assembly where the
receipt for mending an impaired fortune was to sell votes for allot-
ments in government loans and for shares in government contracts.
The unpardonable sin of Edmund Burke was that he owed his position
in the political world to nothing except his industry and his genius.

He knew his place; and if he ever forgot it, there were those at hand
who made it a matter of conscience to deal with him faithfully. He
left among his papers a noble composition which, if it had been a fifth
of the length that it is, would have been as widely admired as Dr.
Johnson's reply to Lord Chesterfield. It was the draft answer to a letter
from Dr. Markham, the Bishop of Chester, and tutor to the Prince of
Wales. Markham was known during his life, and is still remembered,
for having almost contrived to make sycophancy one of the fine arts.
His reverence for those whom the poets of the eighteenth century
called "the Great" was in marked contrast to his treatment of one
who was great for all time. In 1764 Markham entreated the Duke of
Bedford to procure him "one of the inferior bishoprics." "Whatever
preferment," the Reverend Doctor wrote, "I may chance to rise to, I
shall not set a higher value on any of its emoluments than on the
ability it may possibly give me of being useful to some of your
Grace's frends." His style was very different when he saw occasion to
address Edmund Burke. Even at this distance of time it is impossible
to read without indignation the terms in which a pompous formalist,
who had begged and bargained himself into a great position, ventured
to upbraid an exalted thinker, who had missed wealth and prosperity,
for his presumption in expressing an opinion on matters which were
too high for him and on people of a station above his own. The
Churchman expressed surprise that the member of Parliament resented
the advice to bring down the aim of his ambition to a lower level, and
reminded him that arrogance in a man of his condition was intoler-
able. Burke's conduct was ridiculous folly, and his house a hole of
adders; and, being what he was, he had the insolence to ill-treat the
first men of the kingdom;— -those first men being Rigby and Lord
Barrington, whose names are now chiefly remembered because they
occasionally appear to disadvantage in a corner of one of his scathing
sentences. It was not a question, the Bishop said, of what pretensions
his correspondent might have, but of what claims the world would
choose to allow him.

102

"My Lord," was the reply, "I think very poorly of Ned Burke or
his pretensions; but, by the blessing of God, the just claims of active
members of Parliament shall never be lowered in the estimation of
mankind by my personal or official insignificance. The dignity of the
House shall not be sunk by my coming into it. At the same time, my
Lord, I shall keep free from presumption. If ever things should entitle
me to look for office, it is my friends who must discover the place I
hold in Parliament. I shall never explain it. I protest most solemnly
that, in my eye, thinking as I do of the intrinsic dignity of a member
of Parliament, I should look upon the highest office the subject could
aspire to as an object rather of humiliation than of pride. It would
very much arrange me in point of convenience. It would do nothing
for me in point of honour."

Burke needed no candid friend to bid him take a lower seat. The
iron had entered into his soul, never to leave it; and, far from aspiring
to the first place, he was well aware that he could not afford even to
be conspicuous. "I saw and spoke to several," he writes on one occa-
sion. "Possibly I might have done service to the cause, but I did none
to myself. This method of going hither and thither, and agitating
things personally, when it is not done in chief, lowers the estimation
of whoever is engaged in such transactions; especially as they judge in
the House of Commons that a man's intentions are pure in proportion
to his languor in endeavouring to carry them into execution."6 So
deeply impressed was he with the preponderating influence which
birth and rank then exercised in the transactions of politics that he
seriously thought of inviting Lord George Germaine to marshal and
command the party. At a very early moment however it became evi-
dent that, for people who wanted to be taken under fire, it was not
enough to get Lord George Germaine into the saddle. A division in
Parliament answers to a charge in the field, and Lord George had as
little eye or heart for the one as for the other. It soon got to Burke's
saying plainly and bluntly that, whether his Lordship concurred or
not, no human consideration would hinder himself, for one, from
dividing the House; and the paths of the two men thenceforward fi-
nally diverged. The nobleman took the road which led to place, and
salary, and a perceptible addition to the heavy account which already
stood against him in a ledger of Britain's glory. The commoner re-
turned to his continuous and at length victorious wrestle with corrup-

6 Burke to Rockingham, January 10, 1773.

103

tion in high places, and to his honourable and indispensable but ob-
scure labours behind the scenes of the senatorial theatre.

"Burke," said the Duke of Richmond, "you have more merit than
any man in keeping us together;" and none knew better than his
Grace how hard the task was. The exertions of the great orator were
by no means confined to the Chamber in which he himself sate. He
counted the peers as a part of the flock which he tended with so small
a prospective share in the profits, and so exclusive a monopoly of the
toil and the anxiety. He wrote their Protests; he drew their Resolu-
tions; he told them when they were to speak, and sketched, not always
in outline, what they were to say. From Rockingham downwards he
urged on them the duty of attendance at Westminster, putting aside
the plea of weak health with decorous but ambiguous incredulity. His
desk was full of pathetic epistles in which the fathers of the Whig
party, in both Houses, begged to be allowed a little longer holiday from
the public debates, and (what in that season of discouragement and
depression they liked even less) from the private consultations of the
party. "Indeed, Burke," wrote the Duke of Richmond from Good-
wood, "you are too unreasonable to desire me to be in town some
time before the meeting of Parliament. You see how very desperate I
think the game is. You know how little weight my opinion is of with
our friends in the lump; and to what purpose can I then meet them?
No; let me enjoy myself here till the meeting, and then at your desire I
will go to town and look about me for a few days." Even Savile
stopped at home, for reasons sufficiently elevated and disinterested to
have commended themselves to John Hampden, but which none the
less kept him out of the way when he was most wanted. Lord John
Cavendish, never good at excuses, was reduced to admit that he stayed
in the country to hunt; and Burke's sentiment with regard to him was
divided between respect for his frankness, and regret for the absence
of the keenest politician in a family group who required no watching
or stimulating when once he had collected them in London.

The state of things was described by Mason in a satire written just
before the change for the better came.

For, know, poor Opposition wants a head.
With hound and horn her truant schoolboys roam
And for a fox-chase quit Saint Stephen's dome,
Forgetful of their grandsire Nimrod's plan,
"A mighty hunter, but his prey was man."
104

Even in his rebukes Mason drew a distinction, creditable to the
Rockinghams, between their favourite pursuits and the recreations in
vogue among their political adversaries, who, according to the poet,

At crowded Almack's nighdy bet,

To stretch their own beyond the nation's debt.

A few months after the lines appeared the Opposition was no longer
headless. They had found a chief in Charles Fox, and Charles Fox
soon cured them of laziness. Already as much the heaviest of heavy
weights as Lord John Cavendish was light among the lightest, it was
from Almack's rather than from the hunting-field that the leader
came whose exhortations and example kept bench and lobby packed
with an animated, a devoted, and an ever-increasing throng of fol-
lowers throughout all the closing sessions of the great dispute.

The Whigs defended themselves to each other, and, when they
dared, tried to pacify their taskmaster by the allegation that public
action was useless in the House because public feeling was asleep in
the country. But this, as Burke did not hesitate to inform them, was
their own fault. They were selfishly indifferent about what he regarded
as a statesman's primary function, that of instructing the people to
discern and pursue their own highest interests. When it was a question
of preventing a rival family from securing the representation of the
shire in which he lived, any one of them was ready to spend his last
guinea; to mortgage his home-farm; to cut down his avenue; to rise
from a sick bed, (like poor Granby,) in order to vote, and canvass; and
dine in a stuffy tavern, at an unheard-of hour, in a company with
whom outside politics he had not a taste in common. And yet the
same man would take no trouble, and sacrifice none of his leisure,
in order to teach his countrymen what they ought to think about their
own grievances, and the dangers and duties of the nation. If the Oppo-
sition, so Burke told them, were to electioneer with the same want of
spirit as they displayed over the advocacy of those great principles
which were the end and object for which elections exist, there would
not be a Whig member left in Yorkshire or in Derbyshire. "The peo-
ple," he wrote, "are not answerable for their present supine acquies-
cence: indeed they are not. God and nature never made them to think
or act without guidance and direction."

But guidance was impossible when the guides themselves were un-
certain about the quarter towards which they should advance and, in
any case, were in no hurry to start. As far as the supply of public

105

questions was concerned, the party was living from hand to mouth,
and fared very sparingly. Wilkes, if it is not profane to say so, had
in his day been nothing short of a godsend; and, to do them justice,
the Whigs had made the most of him,7 But by this time the country
was tired of Wilkes, and Wilkes was still more heartily tired of him-
self as a public character and an idol for popular enthusiasm. One
fruitful lesson might have been drawn from the story of the Middlesex
election; and that it remained unlearned was in a large degree Burke's
own doing. The features of that scandalous and sordid struggle; —
the majority, docile themselves, and insolently intolerant of free speech
in others; the aspect of Lord Clive walking about with the consciences
of ten senators in his pocket, and of forty Scotch members voting like
one as the Court bade them; — turned the attention of a few thoughtful
politicians towards the remedy of Parliamentary Reform. Several
Whig statesmen had pet schemes of their own. But whenever they
showed any disposition to agree upon a plan, and to array themselves
in support of it, Burke threw himself across their path as an opponent;
and, like the conquering brigade at Albuera, his dreadful volleys swept
away the head of every formation. It was useless for Savile to recom-
mend the shortening of parliaments, or for Richmond to suggest the
extension of the franchise. As soon as their proposals had taken shape
and attracted notice, Burke appealed to all sober thinkers to say
whether England was not the happiest of communities in its exemption
from the horrible disorders of frequent elections; and whether it
would not be more in the spirit of our constitution, and more agreeable
to the pattern of our best laws, rather to lessen the number, and so
add to the weight and independency of our voters.

At last the Whigs were confronted by a question which aroused
them as their forefathers were stirred by the imposition of Ship-money.
It became known that the Irish Parliament meditated a bill laying a
tax of two shillings in the pound on the estates of absentee land-
owners; that the Irish Government, in sore straits for funds, would
assist the measure to become law; and that the English Government
was prepared to accept it if it was carried in Ireland. The rich Whig
proprietors were deeply moved; and on this occasion they showed
no want of vigour and alacrity. They addressed to the Prime Minister

7 "The people were very much and very generally touched with the question on
Middlesex. We never had, and we never shall have, a matter every way so well cal-
culated to engage them. The scantiness of the ground makes it the more necessary to
cultivate it with vigour and diligence, else the rule of exiguttm colito will neither be
good farming, nor good politics," — Burke to Lord Rockingham, September 8, 1770.

106

a memorial praying that the Privy Council would refuse to pass the
bill; and no abler and more artful state-paper had been signed by the
great names of the party since the invitation to William of Orange.
The letter to Lord North was even better worded than that historical
document of the past, for Burke drew it up; and it was not less sin-
cerely felt by those who set their hands to it. But all the considerations
put forth in condensed and formidable array by the most skilful of
Irish pens, employed on a strange office, will not avail against a couple
of sentences which described the attitude of the first among living
Englishmen. "I could not," said Chatham, "as a peer of England,
advise the King to reject a tax sent over here as the genuine desire of
the Commons of Ireland, acting in their proper and peculiar sphere,
and exercising their inherent exclusive right, by raising supplies in
the manner they judge best. This great principle of the constitution
is so fundamental and with me so sacred and indispensable, that it
outweighs all other considerations." In the end, the proposal was de-
feated in the Irish Parliament. The noblemen who had broad acres
in both countries commanded a greater influence in Dublin even than
that which they exercised at Westminster. The Irish Ministry, who
by this time had learned that the King, for once agreeing with the
Rockinghams, had condemned the tax as "very objectionable,"8
fought to lose, and with some difficulty got themselves beaten by a
narrow majority. But, narrow as it was, it saved the Whigs from the
calamity of a debate in the British Parliament; a prospect which Savile
contemplated with the repugnance of a sensible man who had no
fancy for losing his sleep in a cause so damaging to his party. Little
credit, he wrote to Rockingham, was to be obtained out of a question
in which it was notorious that they were all personally interested.
"Having a day of it, as the phrase is, will not get us much laurels. I
am sure having a night of it will be worse to me than a land-tax."

The exhibition to which Savile looked forward with just apprehen-
sion was happily averted; but none the less the Whigs were out of
touch with the country, out of heart with their parliamentary work,
and of small account among a class whose adhesion in sufficient num-
bers no party, which looks to office, can afford to lose. Pushing men,
whose prime object is to make their -way in life, whether they aspire
to be Lord Chancellors or tide-waiters, are apt to grow cool in their
loyalty, and (after a more or less decent interval) hot in their antago-
nism, to statesmen who cannot fight their own battles. Philip Francis

8 The King to Lord North, November 23, 1773.

107

was only one of thousands who, to employ his own words, had seen
plainly that "no solid advantage would come from connection with a
party which had almost all the wit, and popularity, and abilities in the
kingdom to support them, but never could carry a question in either
House of Parliament." England had seldom been in a worse case. The
tornado was approaching fast, and, according to Horace Walpole, her
public men were at their wit's end; which, he added, was no long
journey. There were some, he said, who still put their faith in Lord
Chatham's crutch, as a wand which might wave the darkness and the
demons away together; though his Lordship, in Walpole's opinion,
was better at raising a storm than at laying one. But it was natural
enough that men should turn in their despair to the imposing figure
of the old magician, who had made the name of their country supreme
abroad, and who had always stood for freedom and justice whenever
and wherever they were in peril. Chatham had broadened and en-
nobled the discussion of the Middlesex election. He had surveyed
the problem of the Absentee Tax from the point of view of a true
statesman. He had watched the growing greatness of the American
colonies with an affectionate pride which he of all men had a right
to feel. For years past he had been in favour of Parliamentary Reform.
"Allow a speculator in a great chair," he wrote in 1771, "to add that
a plan for more equal representation, by additional knights of the
shire, seems highly reasonable."

However much, in his habitual strain of stately humility, Chatham
might affect to disparage his own importance, he was far removed
from the modern notion of an arm-chair politician; for, when he felt
strongly, he was still ready to place himself where hard blows were
being taken and given. But years had begun to tell upon him, and
when the occasion came he was no longer certain of being equal to
his former self. Joseph Cradock, a man with means and connections,
and some tincture of letters, gives in his Memoirs an account of a
scene which indicates that Lord Chatham could not always at will
reach the level which had been without difficulty maintained by Wil-
liam Pitt. On a day when the King opened Parliament, while Wilkes
was in his zenith, a mob broke into the passage leading to the throne,
and there was crowding, and something like rioting, at the very door
of the House of Lords. "Lord Carlisle," said Cradock, "seeing my dis-
tress, most kindly recognised me, and made room for me between
himself and another nobleman. That nobleman got up to speak; and
then I perceived that it was the great Lord Chatham, whom I had
108

never seen but as Mr. Pitt. He spoke only for a short time, was con-
fused, and seemed greatly disconcerted; and then, suddenly turning to
me, asked whether I had ever heard him speak before. 'Not in this
House, my Lord,5 was my reply. In no House, Sir,' says he, *I hope,
have I ever so disgraced myself. I feel ill, and I have been alarmed
and annoyed this morning before I arrived. I scarce know what I have
been talking about.' " Later on in the debate a peer made an uncom-
plimentary reference to Chatham. "He suddenly arose, and poured
forth a torrent of eloquence that utterly astonished. The change was
inconceivable; the fire had been kindled, and we were all electrified
with his energy and excellence. At length he seemed quite exhausted,
and, as he sat down, with great frankness shook me by the hand, and
seemed personally to recollect me, and I then ventured to say, CI hope
your Lordship is satisfied.' 'Yes, Sir,' replied he, with a smile, 'I think
I have now redeemed my credit.' "

Lord Chatham's health was worse than fitful, and he sate in the
wrong House of Parliament for forming and leading a national party.
Nor must it be forgotten that the only existing nucleus for such a
party was the group which owned allegiance to Lord Rockingham;
and against Rockingham and his associates Chatham was bitterly
prejudiced. He taught himself to believe that his quarrel with them
was on account of their moderation: a fault which, if he had cared
to take them in the right way, he would have been the very man to
cure. But instead of trying to infuse into them the fire and resolution
which they lacked, his mind was bent on outbidding discrediting them.
"I am resolved," he said, "to be in earnest for the public, and shall
be a scare-crow of violence to the gentle warblers of the grove, the
moderate Whigs and temperate statesmen." That was not the tone
which Charles Fox, as fierce a fighter as Chatham himself had been
in his most strenuous days, adopted towards men whose abilities and
virtues he respected, and whose inertness and unconcern were soon
exchanged for very opposite qualities when once he had filled them
with his own spirit.

There was one man who possessed the talents, the turn of character,
the official position, and the intimate personal acquaintance both with
England and America which qualified him to be mediator between
the public opinion of the two countries; and he had all the will in
the world to perform the office. Out of the last seventeen years Frank-
lin had spent fourteen in London as agent for Pennsylvania; and of
late he had been agent for Georgia and Massachusetts as well. The

109

ambassadors accredited to St. James's from foreign Courts treated him
like an esteemed member of their own body. He was at home in the
best society in town and country, awing every company by his great
age and pleasing them by his immortal youth. The ministers of state
with whom he had business minded their behaviour in the presence
of one who had talked with Sir William Wyndham before they them-
selves had been born or thought of. Men of letters and men of science
could not have enough of the reminiscences of a veteran who fifty
years before had heard Mandeville discourse at his club, and had been
shown by Sir Hans Sloane over his collection of curiosities at a time
when the British Museum was yet in the future. People hardly re-
membered that he was a colonist, and were as proud of his European
reputation as if he had been the native of an English county and the
scholar of an English university. He returned the feeling. He loved
our country, and all parts of it. At Dublin he had been greeted with
the irresistible welcome which Irishmen bestow upon those to whom
they wish to do the honours of Ireland. He had spent in Scotland the
six happiest weeks of his life; and there, if circumstances had permit-
ted, he would gladly have passed the rest of it. And as for England,
— "Of all the enviable things," he said, "I envy it most its people. Why
should that pretty island, which is but like a stepping-stone in a brook,
scarce enough of it above water to keep one's shoes dry, enjoy in al-
most every neighbourhood more sensible, virtuous, and elegant minds
than we can collect in ranging a hundred leagues of our vast forests?" 9
He had long looked forward to the evening of life, the last hours of
which, in his cheerful view, were sure to be the most joyous; and he
had pleased himself with the anticipation of dying, as he had been

9 In our own time, as in Franklin's, Americans are apt to express their kindly senti-
ments towards England in diminutives, like a Russian who calls the Empress his Little
Mother.

"An islet is a world," she said,

"When glory with its dust has blended,
And Britain keeps her noble dead

Till earth and sea and skies are rended."

Nay, let our brothers of the West

Write smiling in their florid pages;
"One-half her soil has walked the rest

In poets, heroes, martyrs, sages."

The verses are by Wendell Holmes; and the idea, or something like it, has passed across
the fancy of many a one of his countrymen beneath the limes of Stratford-on-Avon
churchyard, or in the transepts of Westminster Abbey.

110

born and had always lived, in "the King's dominions." But now he
foresaw storms and troubles and, at near seventy years of age, he did
not expect to see the end of them; as the Ministers might read in a let-
ter which they had thought it worth their while to detain and violate.
That apprehension lent force and earnestness to the efforts which he
made in every quarter where his influence could penetrate. On the one
hand he adjured the New Englanders to reflect that, just as among
friends every affront was not worth a duel, so between the mother-
country and the colonies every mistake in government, and every en-
croachment on right, was not worth a rebellion. On the other hand
he took care that any British statesman to whose ears he could obtain
access should hear the words of reason and soberness; and the best of
them regarded him as a valuable coadjutor in preserving the peace of
the Empire. Chatham, in the House of Lords, openly said that if he
were first minister he should not scruple publicly to call to his assist-
ance a man whom all Europe held in high estimation for his knowl-
edge and wisdom, and did not hesitate to rank with Boyle and Newton
as an honour, not to the English nation only, but to human nature.

Most unfortunately, at this exact moment, Franklin became the
centre of one of those unhappy scandals which in a season of political
perturbation are certain to occur; and which are made the very most
of by able men who mean mischief, and by the multitude who do
not understand the deeper issues but can be voluble on a personal
question. There had reached his hands a mass of correspondence which
proved beyond any manner of doubt that Hutchinson and Oliver, the
Governor and Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts, had persistently
applied themselves to inflame the minds of the home authorities
against the colony, and had been profuse in the suggestion of schemes
framed with the object of destroying its liberties. The letters were
private; but Franklin, as agent for Massachusetts, thought it incumbent
upon him to send them to the Speaker of her Assembly; and he con-
tinued to think so until his life's end, though it was not a subject on
which he loved to talk. It is a sound rule that confidential correspond-
ence should, under no circumstances whatever, be used for the purpose
of damaging a political adversary. In our own day, private letters
attributed to a celebrated public man were printed in a great news-
paper; and the step was defended on the ground that the writer was a
public enemy, whose exposure was demanded by the interests of the
State. That argument must have presented itself in its utmost force to
the agent of a colony, when he lighted on the discovery that men-
Ill

born and reared within its confines, eating its bread and charged with
its welfare— had done their utmost to misrepresent its people, to de-
stroy its chartered rights, and to bring upon it the insult, the hardship,
and the fearful perils of a penal military occupation.

And, again, it must be remembered that the sanctity of the Post
Office was then a transparent fiction. No man's correspondence was
safe; and those who suffered the most were tempted, when the occa-
sion offered, to repay their persecutors in kind. The confidential clerks
of the Postmaster-General were sometimes engaged twelve hours on a
stretch in rifling private letters. The King, to judge by the endorsements
in his own hand, — which marked the hour and minute when he re-
ceived each packet of intercepted documents, and the hour and minute
when he returned it to the Office,— must have passed a great deal of
his time in reading them. A politician, when his turn came to be out
in the cold, recognised the liability to have his letters opened as one
of the incidents of opposition, and did not expect even the poor com-
pliment of having them reclosed with any decent appearance of con-
cealing the treatment to which they had been subjected. "To avoid the
impertinence of a Post Office," wrote Lord Charlemont to Edmund
Burke, "I take the opportunity of sending this by a private hand."
And Hans Stanley, a public servant of considerable note in his day,
complained to Mr. Grenville that all his correspondence, important
or trivial, "had been opened in a very awkward and bungling manner."

Bold men, with a secure social position and a touch of humour,
made use of the opportunity in order to give their opponents in the
Cabinet a piece of their mind under circumstances when it could not
be resented. A friend of George Selwyn regaled him with a personal
anecdote, rather abstruse in itself, and rendered hopelessly unintelligi-
ble by being couched in bad Latin. "I wrote this," he says, "to perplex
Lord Grantham, who may probably open the letter." "I don't know,"
Rigby told the Duke of Bedford, "who is to read this letter, whether
French ministers or English ministers; but I am not guarded in what
I write, as I choose the latter should know through every possible
channel the utter contempt I bear them." 10 But a system which was
no worse than a tiresome and offensive joke to men of the world,
who wore swords, and met the Postmaster-General on equal terms

10 The letter, good reading like everything of Rigby's, referred to the composition of
Rockingham's first Government. "Their Board of Trade," he wrote, "is not yet fixed,
except Lord Dartmouth for its head, who I don't hear has yet recommended Whitefield
for the bishopric of Quebec."

112

every other evening at White's or Almack's, had its real terrors for
humble people. A gentleman wrote from London to New York, with
nothing more treasonous to say than that he was concerned at the
alarming and critical situation. He expressed himself, however, as fear-
ing that his American letters, to judge by the red wax over a black
wafer, were opened in the Post Office; and he justly observed that
intercourse between friend and friend was rendered precarious by such
conduct on the part of the authorities. Franklin himself had the same
grievance against the British Government; and took it very coolly.
Many months before the war broke out he had occasion thus to warn
his sister in Boston: "I am apprehensive that the letters between us,
though very innocent ones, are intercepted. They might restore to me
yours at least, after reading them; especially as I never complain of
broken, patched-up seals." "I am told," he said on another occasion,
"that administration is possessed of most of my letters sent or received
on public affairs for some years past; copies of them having been ob-
tained from the files of the several Assemblies, or as they passed
through the Post Office. I do not condemn their ministerial industry,
or complain of it."

Whether Franklin was justified in his own sight by high consid-
erations of policy, or by the bad example of the British Post Office, his
conduct required no defence in the view of his employers beyond the
water. He had intended the letters to be seen by about as many pairs
of eyes as those which, in London official circles, had the privilege of
prying into his own correspondence; and his object was to enlighten
certain leading men of the colony, belonging to both parties, with
regard to the character of the Governor, and to put them on their
guard against his machinations. But such secrets are hard to keep
when men's minds are in a ferment, and when great events are in the
air. The Massachusetts Assembly insisted on having the letters. On
the second of June, 1773, the House, sitting within closed doors, heard
them read by Samuel Adams, and voted by a hundred and one to five
that their tendency and design was to subvert the constitution of the
Government, and to introduce arbitrary power into the Province. Be-
fore another month was out they had been discussed in all the farm-
houses, and denounced from almost all the pulpits. They came upon
the community as a revelation from the nether world, and everywhere
aroused unaffected astonishment and regret, which soon gave place to
resentment and alarm. "These men," (it was said with a unanimity
which the majority of twenty to one in the Assembly inadequately

represented,) "no strangers or foreigners, but bone of our bone, flesh
of our flesh, born and educated among us," have alienated from us
the affections of our sovereign, have destroyed the harmony and good-
will which existed between Great Britain and Massachusetts, and,
having already caused bloodshed in our streets, will, if unchecked,
plunge our country into all the horrors of civil war. The sentiments of
the colony were embodied by the Assembly in an address to the King,
stating the case against Hutchinson and Oliver in terms which cannot
be described as immoderate, and still less as disrespectful; and humbly
but most pointedly praying for their removal from office. Franklin
placed the petition in the hands of the Secretary of State, for presen-
tation to his Majesty at the first convenient opportunity; and Dart-
mouth, in return, expressed his pleasure that a sincere disposition pre-
vailed in the people of Massachusetts to be on good terms with the
mother-country, and his earnest hope that the time was at no great
distance when every ground of uneasiness would cease, and tranquil-
lity and happiness would be restored.

Dartmouth's intuitions, as usual, were good and wise. The oppor-
tunity had come for the mother-country to assume an attitude of true
superiority. An ancient and powerful State, in its dealings with de-
pendencies whose social system is still primitive, and whose public
men are as yet untrained, can afford to make allowance for faults
of taste, or even for breaches of official custom and propriety. But
dignified self-restraint was not then the order of the day in high
places. The complaint of Massachusetts against her Governors was re-
ferred to the Privy Council, and the Solicitor-General appeared on be-
half of Hutchinson and Oliver to oppose the prayer of the petition.
That Solicitor-General was Wedderburn, who before he joined the
Government had told them in debate that their policy would inevitably
ruin the country by the total loss of its American dominions; and that,
if for reasons which could not be made public such a policy must be
continued, Lord North would have to remain in office, as no man of
honour or respectability would undertake to do the duties of his
situation.

It was put about town that the famous advocate intended to handle
Dr. Franklin in a style which would be worth the hearing. Privy
Councillors attended in such numbers that they would almost have
made a quorum in the House of Commons. At the bar stood rows of
distinguished strangers, more worthy of the tide than those who are
ordinarily designated by it on such occasions, for Burke, and Priestley,
114

and Jeremy Bentham were among them. The ante-room and passages
were thronged with people who had to content themselves with learn-
ing, from the tones of his voice, that a great orator was speaking con-
temptuously of some one. For the Solicitor was as good as his word.
Leaving aside the merits of the question, he directed against Franklin
a personal attack which was a masterpiece of invective. The judges in
the case, encouraged by the undisguised delight of their Lord President,
rolled in their seats and roared with laughter. Lord North, alone
among the five and thirty, listened with gravity in his features and,
it may be believed, with something like death in his heart. Franklin, as
a friend who closely observed his bearing relates, "stood conspicuously
erect, without the smallest movement of any part of his body. The
muscles of his face had been previously composed, so as to afford a
tranquil expression of countenance, and he did not suffer the slightest
alteration of it to appear during the continuance of the speech." He
wore a full dress suit of spotted Manchester velvet, which that evening
retired into the recesses of his wardrobe. It reappeared on the sixth of
February, 1778, when he affixed his signature to that treaty with
France by which the United States took rank as an independent nation,
and obtained a powerful ally. So smart a coat attracted die notice of his
brother Commissioners, accustomed to see him in the staid and al-
most patriarchal costume which all Paris knew. They conjectured, and
rightly, that it was the first day since the scene at the Privy Council
Office on which he cared to be reminded of what had occurred there.
The immediate effect of Wedderburn's harangue, as an appeal to
men sitting in a judicial capacity, has in our country never been sur-
passed; and its ultimate consequences went far beyond the special
issue towards which it was directed. Twenty years afterwards, when
Franklin's pamphlet entitled "Rules for Reducing a great Empire to a
small one" was republished in London, the editor paid to Lord Lough-
borough a compliment which, as Alexander Wedderburn, he had justly
earned. "When I reflect," such were the words of the Dedication, "on
your Lordship's magnanimous conduct towards the author of the fol-
lowing Rules, there is a peculiar propriety in dedicating this new edi-
tion of them to a nobleman whose talents were so eminently useful
in procuring the emancipation of our American brethren."

CHAPTER IV

THE PENAL LAWS.
THEIR RECEPTION IN AMEBICA

IN such a temper, and with such an example to guide them, the
Houses of Parliament applied themselves to the question of the hour.
When Privy Councillors, duly appointed to try an issue, had laughed
the colonists out of court, it was not to be expected that the rank and
file of a political assembly would grant them a patient, or even so much
as a decent, hearing. England had open before her one policy which
was prudent, and another which at the worst was not ignoble. Clem-
ency and forbearance were her true wisdom; but, if she resolved to
punish, she should have done so in a manner worthy of a great na-
tion. The crime, since such it was adjudged to be, was common to the
four chief cities of America. Philadelphia had led the way in voting for
resistance. Charleston had followed suit; and it was not till weeks had
elapsed that Boston, on the same day as New York, adopted the Reso-
lutions which had been passed in Philadelphia. Those Resolutions had
been made good in action, by each of the places concerned, with just as
much or as little violence as under the circumstances of the special case
was needed in order to do the work thoroughly. The British Ministry
should have resorted to forgiveness and concession, or to a general
and impartial severity. But neither of those two courses pleased the
King and his advisers; and the opportunity was taken for exacting a
vindictive penalty from one small, exposed, and (as it was believed)
unwarlike and defenceless community.

Boston had done the same as the others, and had done it under the
provocation of having been dragooned, in time of universal peace,
for faults to which not one member of Parliament in ten could have
put a name, if he had set his mind to think them over. But, where
antipathy exists, men soon find reasons to justify it; and the drop-
scene of the impending American drama, as presented to British eyes,
116

was a picture of the New England character daubed in colours which
resembled the original as little as they matched each other. The
men of Massachusetts were sly and turbulent, puritans and scoundrels,
pugnacious ruffians and arrant cowards. That was the constant theme
of the newspapers, and the favourite topic with those officers of the
army of occupation whose letters had gone the round of clubs and
country houses. The archives of the Secretary of State were full of
trite calumnies and foolish prophecies. Bostonians, so Lord Dartmouth
was informed by an officious correspondent, were not only the worst
of subjects, but the most immoral of men. "If large and loud profes-
sions of the Gospel be an exact criterion of vital religion, they are the
best people on earth. But if meekness, gentleness, and patience con-
stitute any part, those qualities are not found there. If they could main-
tain a state of independence, they would soon be at war among them-
selves." 1 Such was the forecast with regard to a city whose inhabitants
were destined through a long future to enjoy in quite exceptional
measure the blessings of mutual esteem, and of the internal peace
which results from it. It was a specimen of the predictions which at
that moment obtained belief in Parliament and in the country.

The cue was given from above. On the seventh of March, 1774, Lord
North communicated to the House of Commons a royal message, re-
ferring to the unwarrantable practices concerted and carried on in
North America, and dwelling more particularly on the violent pro-
ceedings at the town and port of Boston in the province of Massa-
chusetts Bay. The fact was that George the Third had seen General
Gage, fresh from America; one of those mischievous public servants
who know a colony so much better than the colonists know it them-
selves. "His language," said the King, "was very consonant to his
character of an honest determined man. He says they will be lyons,
whilst we are lambs; but, if we take the resolute part, they will un-
doubtedly prove very weak." His Majesty therefore desired Lord North
not to repeat what he described as the fatal compliance of 1766, — that
repeal of the Stamp Act to which, in the royal view, all the difficulties
of the present situation were owing. The Minister was directed to send
for the General, and hear his ideas on the mode of compelling the
Bostonians to acquiesce submissively in whatever fate might be re-
served for them.

The world soon learned what was in store for the unhappy city.
On the fourteenth of March Lord North introduced a bill for closing

1 Dartmouth Manuscripts, vol. ii., Letter of February, 1774.

117

its harbour and transferring the business of the Custom-house to the
port of Salem. If the measure became law (so he foretold in the af-
fected lightness of his heart), the presence of four or five frigates in
Massachusetts Bay, without an additional regiment on Massachusetts
soil, would at once place the guilty municipality for purposes of for-
eign trade at a distance of seventeen miles from the sea. Parliament
might well be flattered by the assurance that, in the evenings of a
week, it could do for the detriment of Boston four times that which the
forces of nature had taken eighteen centuries to do for Ravenna The
Government majority was in a mood to believe anything. One of their
number, to whom the House listened while those who spoke on behalt
of the incriminated town were interrupted or silenced, declared that,
if every dwelling in it was knocked about the ears of its townsmen,
they would get no more than their deserts. He urged that that nest
of locusts should be extirpated, and enforced his appeal by the famous
sentence in which Cato adjured the Roman Senate to demohsh Carth-
age. A poor little Carthage where every child attended school, and no
man was a professional soldier; with its open streets, its unprotected
quays, and a powerful force of legionaries already quartered in its

citadel! ,

That was the first blow; and others fell in rapid succession. On the
twenty-eighth of March the Prime Minister explained the plan of a
measure by which he purposed to extinguish self-government in Mas-
sachusetts. The bill, stringent in the earlier draft, was altered for the
harsher and the worse before it was laid on the table. Lord George
Germaine, in whom, not so very long before, the Rockinghams had
been fond enough to discern their possible parliamentary leader, com-
mented upon the proposal of the Government as well meant, but far
too weak. He cordially approved the provisions by which a town
meeting might only be held under permission from the Governor.
Why, he asked, should men of a mercantile cast collect together, and
debate on political matters, when they ought to be minding their
private business? But the bill would only cover half the ground, and
the least important half, so long as the central Council of the Colony
was a tumultuous rabble, meddling with affairs of State which they
were unable to understand. That Council, in his opinion, should
be reconstructed on the model of the House of Peers. Lord North
thanked the orator, (and a real orator even his former friends admit-
ted that on this occasion he had proved himself to be,) for a suggestion
"worthy of his great mind." On the fifteenth of April the bill was
118

presented to the House with the addition of words enacting that the
Council, in whose selection the Assembly under the existing consti-
tution had a voice, should be nominated exclusively by the Crown.2

Governor Pownall, who had learned the institutions and geography
of Massachusetts by ruling it on the spot, reminded the House that
it was not a question of Boston only. If the measure was carried, local
business could not be transacted in the furthest corner of Maine, un-
less special leave to hold a town-meeting had been obtained from a
governor resident at the other end of three hundred miles of bad
roads and forest tracks. Burke, very ill heard by an assembly which
professed to regard a colonial Council as a riotous rabble, called in
vain for the exercise of care and deliberation. They were engaged, he
said, on nothing lighter than the proscription of a province: an under-
taking which, whether they desired it or not, would expand itself ere
long into the proscription of a nation. And Savile, begging that atten-
tion might be granted him during the length of a single sentence,
exclaimed that a charter, which conveyed a sacred right, should not be
broken without first hearing what might be put forward in defence of
it by those who lived beneath its safeguard. But such considerations
were not to the purpose of the audience. It was one of those moments
when the talk and tone of society have greater influence than the
arguments of debate; and a squire, who had recently been made a
baronet, gave the House a sample of what passed current in the lobby
as a valuable contribution towards the right understanding of the
American question. Levelling principles, this gentleman affirmed, pre-
vailed in New England, and he had the best of reasons for stating it.
He had an acquaintance who called at a merchant's house in Boston,
and asked the servant if his master was at home. "My master!" the
man replied. "I have no master but Jesus Christ."

The bill for annulling the charter was accompanied by another for
the Impartial Administration of Justice in Massachusetts Bay: which
was a fine name for a law empowering the Governor, if any magis-
trate, revenue officer, or military man was indicted for murder, to send
him to England for trial in the King's Bench. Barre and Conway
challenged Lord North to produce a single example of a government
servant who, having been charged with a capital offence, had suffered
from the injustice of an American tribunal. They recalled to the mem-

2 "It was a year,'* wrote Horace Walpole, "of fine harangues;" and he instanced es-
pecially Wedderburn against Franklin, Burke on the Tea-duty, and Lord George Ger-
maine on the government of Massachusetts. — Last Journals, April, 1774.

119

ory of Parliament, (so short if the good deeds of those whom it dis-
liked were in question,) how, at a time when public feeling in the
colony was at a height which in the future never could be over-passed,
Captain Prestion and his soldiers, after the fairest of fair trials, had
been acquitted by "an American jury, a New England jury, a Boston
jury." And now it was proposed to remove the cognisance of grave
political offences from a court without fear and without favour, to
one which was notoriously ready, — as Wilkes had experienced, — to
subserve the vengeance of Ministers, and which, if the occasion arose,
would be even more willing to make itself the instrument of their
misplaced lenity. The government supporters took no notice what-
soever of Captain Preston's acquittal, though it was a concrete in-
stance so recent and so much in point that it ought to have coloured
and permeated the entire discussion. After the usual fashion of a party
which has plenty of votes, and no case, they wandered far and wide
over the whole colonial controversy. The most admired speech was
that of young Lord Caermarthen, who denied the right of Americans
to complain that they were taxed without being represented, when such
places as Manchester — and, he might have added, Leeds and Sheffield
and Birmingham — had no members of their own in the British Par-
liament. It was indeed a magnificent anticipation of the calling in of
the New World to balance the inequalities of the old. The debate was
wound up by the gentleman who had compared Boston to Carthage.
Speaking this time in English, he recommended the Government, if
the people of Massachusetts did not take their chastisement kindly, to
burn their woods, and leave their country open to the operations of
the military. It was better, he said, that those regions should be ruined
by our own soldiers than wrested from us by our rebellious children.

The effect of Lord Caermarthen's allusion to unrepresented Man-
chester, as justifying the taxation of unrepresented America, was so
great that four days afterwards Burke thought it worthy of a refutation.
"So then," he said, "because some towns in England are not repre-
sented, America is to have no representative at all. They are our chil-
dren; but, when children ask for bread, we are not to give them a
stone. When this child of ours wishes to assimilate to its parent, and to
reflect with true filial resemblance the beauteous countenance of Brit-
ish liberty, are we to turn to them the shameful parts of our consti-
tution? Are we to give them our weakness for their strength, our
opprobrium for their glory?"

Even after the lapse of a century and a quarter these debates are not

120

pleasant reading for an Englishman. They went far to justify Turgot
in his wonder that a country, which had cultivated with so much
success all the branches of natural science, should remain so completely
below itself in the science the most interesting of all, that of public
happiness.3 The best which could be said for the policy adopted by
Parliament was that a great country should stand upon its rights
against everybody, and at all hazards. But kindred States, like the
members of a family, sometimes do well to refrain from insisting on
advantages which the law, if strictly read, allows them to take. "There
was a time," (wrote Philip Francis, putting into five lines the moral
of the whole story,) "when I could reason as logically and passionately
as anybody against the Americans; but, since I have been obliged
to study the book of wisdom, I have dismissed logic out of my library.
The fate of nations must not be tried by forms." Passion had more to
do than logic with the undertaking which occupied the two Houses
during the spring of 1774. If preambles spoke the truth, it should have
been stated broadly and plainly at the head of each of those fatal bills
that, whereas the inhabitants of the capital city of Massachusetts Bay
had incurred the displeasure of his Majesty and this present Parliament,
it was adjudged necessary and expedient to pay the colony out. That
was the object aimed at; and it was pursued with all the disregard of
appearances which had marked the proceedings of the same House
of Commons in its crusade against the electors of Middlesex, and with
still greater indifference to consequences. The members of the majority
forgot that in the long run it did not lie with them to decide that
Boston, and Boston alone, should have to answer for a course of con-
duct in which four colonies had taken part, and which commanded
the sympathy of all the others. They credited communities of their
own race and blood with the baseness of consenting to sit quiet while
one of their number was ruined for having done its share loyally, if
somewhat boisterously, in an enterprise to which all were pledged. In
the optimism of their resentment they ignored human nature, and put
out of their recollection the unanimity of America in her resistance to
the Stamp Act. And in their heat and haste they thrust out of sight the
dignity of debate, the rights of a parliamentary minority, and even a
show of fair play towards the people whose freedom and prosperity
they were intent on destroying.

The Americans who resided in London, or who found themselves
there in the course of travel, petitioned that one of their cities should

3 Letter from Turgot to Dr. Price, March 22, 1778.

121

not be visited with unexampled rigour before it was so much as ap-
prised that any accusation had been brought against it. Their prayer
was treated with silent contempt. But something more than silent con-
tempt was required to stifle the voice of the true friends of England and
of America within the walls of St. Stephen's. Insolence and intolerance
not often before ran so high, or were directed against statesmen of
such established character and standing. Barre had to sit down before
he had finished his say. Conway, for the crime of imploring the House,
in a very familiar Latin phrase, to hear the other side, was shouted
down by men who had listened to a fool when he treated them to the
quotation of "Delenda est Carthago." When General Burgoyne ex-
pressed a wish, (and he had better reason than he then knew for
wishing it,) to see America convinced by persuasion rather than the
sword, the sentiment raised as great a storm as if it had been a piece
of impudent disloyalty. Johnstone, a dashing sailor, who had been
governor of Florida, contrived to tell the House that the work on
which they were engaged would produce a confederacy of the colonies,
and would end in a general revolt; but the roisterers on the benches
opposite soon taught him that he had brought his knowledge of
America to the wrong market.

Such was the treatment of men each of whom had used a pistol
in battle, and was ready for one on very short notice in the ring
of Hyde Park; for Johnstone was a noted fire-eater, and Burgoyne,
though good-natured, never allowed a joke to go too far.4 It may well
be believed that things were still worse for civilians who had no better
title to a respectful hearing than an acquaintance with the subject
of debate, and a desire to place their views fairly and briefly before
their colleagues. The speeches of ex-governor Pownall, of Alderman
Sawbridge, and the other more persistent opponents of the ministerial
policy were seldom allowed to die a natural death. Burke himself,

4 During a contested election in Lancashire a party o£ Burgoyne's political opponents
met in a bar-room, and devised a scheme for what they described as "trotting the Gen-
eral." A certain James Elton pulled out a valuable watch, and handed it to Burgoyne's
servant, with the injunction that he should take it to his master, and request him to
say whether he could tell the time of day. Burgoyne placed the watch on a tray to-
gether with a pair of pistols, and desired his man to bring it after him to the inn where
the party was assembled. He went round the circle asking each of them whether he
was the owner of the watch. When no one claimed it, Burgoyne turned to his servant
and said, "Since the watch belongs to none of these gentlemen, you may take it and
fob it in remembrance of the Swan Inn at Bolton." As any one who knew old Lan-
cashire might readily believe, the real owner went by the name of Jemmy Trotter to his
dying hour.

122

though he held the House while addressing it on bye-issues, had to
contend against noise and ostentatious impertinence when he applied
himself to the main question of the Government legislation. High-
handed tactics are often at the time successful. The whole batch of
measures— including a bill for removing the legal difficulties which
hitherto had preserved the American householder from the infliction of
having soldiers quartered under his private roof— were placed on the
Statute-book without abridgment or essential alteration.

The third great blunder had now been committed; and, as in the
two former cases, the effect was soon visible in a shape very different
from what had been expected. The despatch of the troops led to the
Boston massacre; the imposition and retention of the Tea-duty pro-
duced the world-famed scene in Boston harbour; and the result of the
four penal Acts was to involve Great Britain in an unnecessary and
unprofitable war with exactly as many powerful nations. The main
responsibility rested with the Government and their followers; but the
Opposition were not free from blame. They allowed the Address in
reply to the royal message to pass unchallenged, and they let the Bos-
ton Port bill go through all its stages without calling for a division.
They voted against the two other principal bills on the third reading,
with about as much effect as if the governor of a fortress was to re-
serve the fire of his batteries until the enemy had carried their sap
beyond the counterscarp. Cowed by the aspect of the benches in front
of them, uncertain as to the feeling in the country, and afraid to put
it to the test by giving a vigorous lead to those wiser tendencies which
largely prevailed in the great commercial centers, they made a very poor
fight in the Commons.5 The House of Lords almost shone by com-
parison. Rockingham, who wanted self-confidence but not conviction,
put force enough upon himself to take a prominent part in the debate;
and in private he spared no remonstrances in order to keep in the path
of duty those among his friends who showed hesitation. Lord Chatham
was despondent, and most unhappy. "America," he wrote, "sits heavy
on my mind. India is a perpetual source of regrets. There, where I
have garnered up my heart, where our strength lay, and our happiest
resources presented themselves, it is all changed into danger, weak-
ness, distraction, and vulnerability." He was not well enough to take

5 The landed property, except some of the most sensible, are, as natural, for violent
measures. The interest of the commercial part is very decidedly on the other side, and
their passions are taking that turn." Shelburne wrote thus to Chatham as early as April
the Fourth, 1774.

123

a share in the earlier discussions; and his speech, when at length he
broke silence, was rather a funeral oration over the departed peace
and security of the Empire than a summons to political conflict.

But men do not look to the Upper House for the delay and mitiga-
tion of a coercion bill; and the Ministers won all along the line with
an ease which surprised themselves, and even their royal master, who
knew the probabilities of politics as well as any man alive. His jubi-
lation had no bounds. In four separate letters he could not find an
adjective short of "infinite" to express the measure of his satisfaction
over every fresh proof of the irresolution displayed by the Opposition.
But in his own view he owed them no thanks. Their feebleness and
futility, (such were the epithets which he applied to them,) were
an involuntary tribute to the irresistible excellence of the ministerial
legislation, and only procured them his disdain without detracting
anything from his displeasure. So far from being touched by their sub-
missive conduct, he was all the more indignant if ever they showed
a spark of spirit. When they spoke and voted in favour of receiving
a petition from an American gentleman in London, a former agent for
Massachusetts, who prayed that the fate of the colony might not be
finally decided until letters had travelled to and fro across the water,
the King pronounced that the Opposition had violated the laws of
decency, but that nothing better was to be expected from men who
were reduced to such low shifts. He had a right to enjoy his triumph.
By sheer strength of purpose he had imposed his favourite measures
on the Cabinet, and the Cabinet had carried them through Parliament
as smoothly as — before Fox's day and after it, though not during it-
bills for the restraint of the suppression of liberty so often passed.

Fox's day was not yet. Everybody was talking about him; and be-
hind his back little was said that was complimentary, and a great
deal that was abundantly silly. But some veterans of public life, who
remembered their own mistakes and excesses at an age more advanced
than his, regarded his future with hope, and his past with amused
indulgence. Chatham had his notice called to the tattle which repre-
sented the ex-Lord of the Treasury as a premature intriguer, encour-
aged in his mutiny by certain members of the Cabinet, who in their
turn had acted on a hint from the exalted quarter which was then
called the Closet. "The part of Mr. Fox," wrote the old statesman,
"must naturally beget speculations. It may however be all resolved,
without going deeper, into youth and warm blood." At this point in
his career, (said one who watched him narrowly and not unkindly,)
124

it was no longer a question of shining by speeches, for he could scarce
outdo what he had done already. The work which lay before him
was to retrieve his character by reforming it, to practise industry and
application, and to court instead of to defy mankind.6

If Fox was to be of use to his generation, his position in the House
of Commons had still to be made; and of that no one was more con-
scious than himself. Sorrow had caused him to think, and reflec-
tion had brought self-knowledge. He set no undue store on the gifts
which came to him by nature, and he was acutely aware of the de-
fects which were in full proportion to his extraordinary qualities.
Strong in the unwonted sensation of being on his guard and his good
behaviour, he at once adopted an independent but not a pretentious
attitude, and maintained it with diligence, forethought, moderation,
and even modesty. Leaving, as he safely could, the form of his speak-
ing to take care of itself, he devoted his exclusive attention to the
substance of it, and to the practical effect of the policy which he
recommended. He began by a protest against the determination of the
Speaker to exclude strangers from the gallery, so that a series of de-
bates, which were to fix the destinies of the English-speaking world,
might be conducted in secret conclave. He stoutly objected to the
clause which vested the responsibility of reopening Boston harbour,
whenever the time came for it, with the Crown instead of with Par-
liament. When, by way of answer, he was accused of desiring to rob
the King of his most valued prerogative, the opportunity of showing
mercy, he allowed the courtly argument to pass without satirical com-
ment. He contented himself with insisting that his motion to omit
that clause, together with another which was more questionable still,
should be put and negatived; in order that it might stand on record
in the journals how, amidst the general panic, at least one member of
Parliament had objected to something which the Government had
demanded.

Fox spoke briefly, but not infrequently, on the other bills relating
to America; more especially when their details were being arranged
in Committee. On the nineteenth of April the House of Commons
considered a motion to repeal the Tea-duty, which was brought for-
ward by a private member. Burke signalised the evening by a splendid
oration. Assisted by a comparison of the notes furtively taken by
various honourable gentlemen in the crown of their hats, he subse-

6 Chatham to Shelburne, March 6, 1774. Last Journals of Walpok, February, 1774.

125

quently wrote it out from memory, and saved it for a world which
must otherwise have been the poorer. The Government supporters
would have refused to listen to Cicero denouncing Antony, if the
performance had trenched upon the Government time; but, as it was
an off-night, they gave themselves up with a clear conscience for two
livelong hours to the enjoyment of the speech. Among other notable
passages it contained a biographical account of Charles Townshend as
copious as the discourse of an incoming French Academician over his
deceased predecessor. Even after such a feast of rhetoric they were
willing to hear Charles Fox, though they would hear no one else on
the same side. The latest words of reason which the House accepted
before it went to a division, (and both Barre and Burgoyne tried to
address it,) were those in which the young man defined the case in
language as plain as his exposition of it was accurate and adequate. A
tax, he said, could only be laid for three purposes: as a commercial
regulation, for the raising of revenue, or in order to assert a right. As
to the first two purposes, the Minister denied that he had them even
in mind; while the so-called right of taxation was asserted with the
intention of justifying an armed interference on the part of Great
Britain, with the inevitable consequence of irritating the American
colonies into open rebellion.

For the first time in his life Fox looked only to what was just and
prudent in speech and action; and he did not endeavour or expect to
attract a personal following. One sworn partisan he always was sure
of having. Poor Stephen's heart was in the right place in his great
body. He stood by his brother through the darkest hour of his for-
tunes, and attended him gallantly and jauntily in his wise endeavours,
as he had so often done in his hare-brained courses. In the House,
which was almost identical with the fashionable world, Stephen was
something of a favourite in spite of his faults, and even, it is to be
feared, on account of them. He took his share in the uphill conflict;
and on the second of May, when the Charter of Massachusetts was
under consideration, he delivered himself in phrases which were
worthy of his father's son in their manly common sense, and of his
son's father in their broad humanity. "I rise, sir," he said, "with an
utter detestation and abhorrence of the present measures. We are either
to treat the Americans as subjects or as rebels. If we treat them as
subjects, the bill goes too far; if as rebels, it does not go far enough.
We have refused to hear the parties in their defence, and we are go-
126

ing to destroy their charter without knowing the constitution of their
Government."

Those were the last sentences which Stephen Fox is known to
have uttered in public; for in two months he was a peer, and within
seven months he died. By that time Charles had made good his
ground in public estimation, and had secured a solid base of operations
from which he was soon to advance fast and far. Parliament was very
ready to forget and forgive in the case of a scion of an old and famous
parliamentary family. He had not tried to shine; he had placed to his
account no transcendent effort; and his colleagues liked him all the
better for his self-suppression, and admired him none the less. But,
whenever he addressed the House, he had proved himself its potential
master. Amidst a tempest of violence and prejudice he alone among the
opponents of the Government never condescended to begin with an
apology, and never sate down without having driven home all that
he wished to say. He had vindicated his right to argue a coercion bill
as he would have argued anything else, refusing to recognise the hack-
neyed plea of public safety as an excuse for hurry and slovenliness, and
sturdily declining to mend his pace under the pressure of public
anger. Having espoused the right cause, and fought for it like one
who was not ashamed of it, he brought an increased reputation and an
established authority out of as sorry a business as Parliament had ever
been engaged in. But he was powerless to amend the Government
measures. The whole of the baleful harvest was safely garnered; and
— amidst the Acts for paving and lighting streets, and for widening
and repairing county roads, with which the Statute-book of 1774, like
any other, is crowded — we still may read, in faded black and dingy
white, the dry and conventional text of those famous laws that in their
day set half the world on fire.

For the matter did not end when the bills had received the Royal
Assent. There was an opposition beyond the seas which was not kept
from speaking out by the fear of being called factious. The same ships
that took over copies of the Port Act, carried a parcel of Bibles and
prayer-books which Dartmouth entrusted for distribution to a clergy-
man of Philadelphia, who wrote to report the effect produced upon
public opinion by the two consignments. Personally the good man ex-
pressed nothing but gratitude towards his Lordship. The books had
been bestowed on those for whom they were intended, and there was
every sign that they would be blessed to the congregation. But con-
sternation prevailed in Boston on hearing that their harbour was to

127

be blocked up, and all the colonies seemed to be united in opposing
the authority of Parliament.7

The worthy divine was correct in his reading of the situation. But
though a Pennsylvanian, whose judgment was unclouded by the im-
minence of a terrible and incalculable danger, might already regard it
as certain that the whole of America would make common cause, the
future presented itself under a more dubious aspect to dwellers in the
threatened city. "We have not men fit for the times," said John Adams
in his private diary. "We are deficient in genius, in education, in
travel, in fortune, in everything. I feel unutterable anxiety. God grant
us wisdom and fortitude ! Should this country submit, what infamy
and ruin! Death, in any form, is less terrible." That was written for
his own eyes alone; but the hour was too grave, and the men and
the women around him too clear-sighted and resolute, for him to
mince the truth even when writing to others. He reminded James
Warren of Plymouth, who was as deep in the troubled waters as him-
self, of the ugly historical fact that people circumstanced like them had
seldom grown old, or died in their beds. And to his wife he wrote:
"We live, my dear soul, in an age of trial. What will be the conse-
quence I know not. The town of Boston, for aught I can see, must
suffer martyrdom. Our principal consolation is that it dies in a noble
cause." That was the spirit in which the cowards of Boston met the
announcement that they must bow their heads to the yoke, or fight
against such odds as the world had never seen. The last time that
Great Britain had exerted her full strength, she had beaten the French
by land on three continents; had established over France and Spain
together an immeasurable superiority at sea; and had secured for her-
self everything in both hemispheres which was best worth taking. Bos-
ton, on the other hand, contained five and thirty hundred able-bodied
citizens; and, in the view of her enemies, no population was ever
composed of worse men and poorer creatures. So George the Third,
his Ministers, and his army firmy believed; and they engaged in the
struggle armed with all the moral advantage which such a conviction
gives.

Before America could be loyal to the people of Boston, it had first to
be. shown whether the people of Boston were true to themselves. On
the tenth of May the intelligence arrived that the Assembly was hence-
forward to sit, and the business of administration to be carried on, in
the town of Salem; and that the Custom-house was to be removed to

7 The Revd. William Stringer to Lord Dartmouth, May 14, 1774.

128

Marblehead, the principal landing place in Salem harbour. Three days
afterwards General Gage arrived in Massachusetts Bay, with full pow-
ers as civil governor of the colony, and as Commander-in-Chief for
the whole continent. During those three days the Committees of Cor-
respondence which represented Boston and eight neighbouring vil-
lages had quietly, and rather sadly, taken up the glove which the
giant Empire had contemptuously flung to them. They had got ready
their appeal to all the Assemblies of the continent, inviting a universal
suspension of exports and imports; promising to suffer for America
with a becoming fortitude; confessing that singly they might find
their trial too severe; and entreating that they might not be left
to struggle alone, when the very existence of every colony, as a free
people, depended upon the event. Brave words they were, and the
inditing of them at such a moment was in itself a deed; but something
more than pen and ink was required to parry the blows which were
now showered upon the town, and upon the State of which it had al-
ready ceased to be the capital.

On the first of June the blockade of the harbour was proclaimed,
and the ruin and starvation of Boston at once began. The industry of a
place which lived by building, sailing, freighting, and unloading ships
was annihilated in a single moment. The population, which had fed
itself from the sea, would now have to subsist on the bounty of others,
conveyed across great distances by a hastily devised system of land-
carriage in a district where the means of locomotion were unequal to
such a burden. A city which conducted its internal communications by
boat almost as much as Venice, and quite as much as Stockholm, was
henceforward divided into as many isolated quarters as there were
suburbs with salt or brackish water lying between them. "The law,"
Mr. Bancroft writes in his History, "was executed with a rigour that
went beyond the intentions of its authors. Not a scow could be manned
by oars to bring an ox or a sheep or a bundle of hay from the islands.
All water carriage from pier to pier, though but of lumber or bricks
or kine, was forbidden. The boats that plied between Boston and
Charlestown could not ferry a parcel of goods across Charles River.
The fishermen of Marblehead, when they bestowed quintals of dried
fish on the poor of Boston, were obliged to transport their offerings in
waggons by a circuit of thirty miles." 8 Lord North, when he pledged
himself to place Boston at a distance of seventeen miles from the sea,
had been almost twice as good as his word.

8 Bancroft's History of the United States of America, Epoch Third, chapter iv.

129

In a fortnight's time, as soon as the pinch began to be felt, the
troops came back into the town, sore and surly, and a standing camp
for two battalions was established on Boston Common. Relief, or hope
of relief, there was none. Long before the summer was over the con-
stitution would be abolished; the old Councillors would be displaced
by Government nominees; and criminal and civil cases would be tried
by judges whose salaries the Crown paid, and by juries which the
Crown had packed. The right of petition remained; but it was worth
less than nothing. A respectful statement of abuses, and a humble
prayer for their redress, was regarded by the King and the Cabinet
as a form of treason all the more offensive because it could not be
punished by law. "When I see," said Franklin, "that complaints of
grievances are so odious to Government that even the mere pipe which
conveys them becomes obnoxious, I am at a loss to know how peace
and union are to be maintained or restored." A few weeks, or days,
remained in which the free voice of the country could still be heard;
and there were those who intended to take good care that its latest
accents should mean something. Early in June the Assembly met at
Salem. On the seventeenth of the month the House, behind locked
doors, and with an attendance larger by a score than any that had
yet been known, took into consideration the question of inviting the
thirteen colonies to a general Congress. The Governor's secretary, on
the wrong side of the keyhole, read a message proclaiming that the
Assembly was dissolved; but, when those who had entered the room
as senators filed out in their character of private citizens, the work
was past undoing. The place named for the Congress was Philadel-
phia; the date was to be the first of September; and the five delegates
for Massachusetts had all been duly elected, including the pair of
statesmen whom Massachusetts Tories, by way of depreciation, pleased
themselves by calling the brace of Adamses.9

The note had been sounded sharp and clear, and the response fol-
lowed like an echo. The first to rally were those who had the most
to gain by standing aloof. James the Second, in the matter of the
Declaration of Indulgence, had failed to discover a bribe which would
tempt the English Nonconformists to assist him in persecuting even
those who had persecuted them; and their descendants across the seas

9 The name was started by an old ex-governor in 1770, in a sentence which began
with the flavour of a Biblical reminiscence, but ran off into another strain. "Mr, Cushinji
I know, and Mr. Hancock I know; but where the devil this brace of Adamses came
from I know not."

130

had not degenerated. In Marblehead and Salem together there were
not found eighty individuals, all told, who cared to play the part of
wreckers in the disaster which had befallen the good ship Boston.
A much larger number of their fellow-townsmen, in an address to
General Gage, repudiated any intention of being seduced by the
prospect of their own advantage into complicity with a course of
action which, whether unjust or not from the point of view of the
Government, would on their own part be to the last degree ungracious
and unfriendly. "We must," they said, "be lost to all feelings of hu-
manity, could we indulge one thought to raise our fortunes on the
ruin of our suffering neighbours." To the Boston merchants they of-
fered the gratuitous use of their wharves and warehouses, and prom-
ised to lade and unlade Boston goods for nothing. And indeed they
very soon took the opportunity of the arrival from London of a bark
with chests of tea on board to treat the cargo in Boston fashion, and so
disqualify themselves for any further marks of Royal and Ministerial
favour.

Salem and Marblehead were forced by their circumstances to de-
clare themselves at once; and, as the provisions of the Act for regulat-
ing the government of Massachusetts were successively put in force,
the townships of the colony, one after another, eagerly followed suit.
The new councillors were appointed on the King's writ of mandamus,
and twenty-five among them accepted the office. It was the worst day's
work they had ever done for themselves; for their cause; and for the
peace, and in some unfortunate cases for the fair reputation, of the
neighbourhood in which they severally resided. For popular feeling
ran high and fierce; and their countrymen were determined that they
should not serve, to whatever lengths it might be necessary to go in
order to prevent them. Two thousand men marched in companies on
to the common at Worcester, escorting one of their townsmen whose
abilities and personal popularity had recommended him to the notice
of the Government, and formed a hollow square around him while,
with uncovered head, he read the resignation of his seat at the council
board. George Watson of Plymouth, who, in the stately language of
the day, "possessed almost every virtue that can adorn and dignify
the human character," made known his intention of assuming the
proffered dignity. On the next Sunday forenoon, when he took his
accustomed place in the meeting-house, his friends and familiar asso-
ciates put on their hats and walked out beneath the eyes of the con-
gregation. As they passed him he bent his head over the handle of

131

his cane; and, when the time arrived, he declined the oath of qualifica-
tion. More violent methods, which in certain cases did not stop short
of grotesque and even brutal horseplay, were employed against less
respected or more determined men. Of thirty-six who had received the
King's summons, the majority either refused obedience from the first,
or were persuaded or intimidated into withdrawing their consent to
join the Council. The rest took sanctuary with the garrison in Bos-
ton; and the tidings which came from their homes in the country
districts made it certain that they would do very well to stay there.

The immediate vicinity of the soldiers was a preventive against out-
rages of which the best of the patriots were heartily ashamed; but no
body of troops could be large enough, or near enough, to deter New
Englanders from acting as if they still possessed those municipal rights
of which they had been deprived without a hearing. General Gage
issued a proclamation warning all persons against attending town-
meetings; and town-meetings were held regularly, and were attended
by larger numbers than ever. The men of Salem, towards whom he
had special reasons for being unwilling to proceed to extremities,
walked into the Town-house under his eyes, and between footways
lined with his soldiers. Boston, whose character in official quarters had
long been gone, was obliged to be more cautious. When called to
account by the Governor, the Selectmen admitted that a meeting had
been held; but it was a meeting (so they argued) which had been
adjourned from a date anterior to the time when the Act came into
force. Gage, who saw that, if this theory was accepted, the same meet-
ing by means of repeated adjournments might be kept alive till the
end of the century, reported the matter to his Council. The new Coun-
cillors pronounced themselves unable to advise him on a point of
law, — that law which already had ceased to have force beyond the
reach of a British bayonet; — but they took occasion to lay before him
the disordered condition of the province, and the cruel plight to which
his policy had reduced themselves.

When the day came round for the Courts of Justice to sit in their
remodelled shape, the Judges were treated more tenderly as regarded
their persons than the mandamus councillors, but with quite as little
reverence for their office. They took their seats at Boston only to learn
that those citizens who had been returned as jurors one and all refused
the oath. A great multitude marched into Springfield, with drums and
trumpets, and hoisted a black flag over the Court-house, as a sign
o£ what any one might expect who entered it in an official capacity.

I32

At Worcester the members of the tribunal with all their staff walked
in procession, safe and sorry, through a quarter of a mile of street lined
on each side by people drawn up six deep. These militia-men (for
such they were) had their company officers to command them, and
wanted nothing to make them a military force except the fire-arms
which were standing ready at home, and which two out of every
three amongst them could handle more effectively than an aver-
age European soldier. Wherever the Judges went, if once they were
fairly inside a town, they were not allowed to leave it until they had
plighted their honour that they would depart without transacting any
legal business. After a succession of such experiences the Chief Justice
and his colleagues waited upon the Governor, and represented to him
that they must abandon the pretence of exercising their functions in a
Province where there were no jurymen to listen to their charges,
and where they could not even sit in court to do nothing unless the
approaches were guarded by the best part of a brigade of British
infantry.

The process of bringing Massachusetts into line with the Revolu-
tion was harsh, and sometimes ruthless. So far as any public opinion
opposed to their own was in question, the patriots went on the princi-
ple of making the Province a solitude, and calling it unanimity. The
earliest sufferers were Government servants. Clark Chandler, the Reg-
istrar of Probate at Worcester, had entered on the local records a
remonstrance against action taken by the more advanced politicians
among the citizens. He was called upon in open town-meeting to erase
the inscription from the books; and when he showed signs of reluc-
tance, his fingers were dipped in ink, and drawn to and fro across the
page. The chaise of Benjamin Hallo well, a Commissioner of Customs,
was pursued into Boston at a gallop by more than a hundred and fifty
mounted men. Jonathan Sewall is known in the school histories of
America as the recipient of a famous confidence. It was to him that
John Adams, after they had travelled together as far as the parting of
the ways, used those words of spirited tautology: "Swim or sink, live
or die, survive or perish with my country is my unalterable determina-
tion." Unfortunately for himself, Sewall was a law officer of the Crown
as well as a bosom friend of the Crown's adversary. His elegant house
in Cambridge was attacked by the mob. He was forced to retire to
Boston, and subsequently to Europe, where, after long struggles and
many sorrows, he died of a broken heart.

These were official people; but their fate was shared by private gen-

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tlemen whose sins against liberty did not go beyond some rather vio-
lent and foolish ebullitions of speech. This one had hoped that the
rebels would swing for it. That one had said that he should be glad
to see the blood streaming from the hearts of the popular leaders; and,
in a milder mood, had contented himself with wishing that they
might become turnspits in the kitchens of the English nobility. An-
other, while it was still a question whether Massachusetts should re-
sist or accept her punishment tractably, had a child baptized by the
name of "Submit." Angry and idle — for their life was now and hence-
forward one of enforced and unwelcome leisure — they talked reck-
lessly; though most of them would not of their own accord have hurt
a fly, let alone a fellow-citizen. They crowded the inns and boarding-
houses of Boston, and the spare chambers of their city friends; linger-
ing on the very edge of the ocean before they started on a much
longer flight, from which for most of them there was no returning.

Among those who had been expelled from their homes were some
of the richest landowners in the province, — men who would have
added respectability and distinction to any aristocracy in the world.
Colonel Saltonstall was a good soldier, a just magistrate, and a kind
neighbour; but the mob of his district would not allow him to stay,
and he went first to Boston, and then into exile. He refused to bear
arms for the Crown, against so many old friends who would gladly
have marched and fought under him if he had found it in his con-
science to take service with the Continental army. He felt to the full
such consolation as was afforded by the thought that he had done
nothing with which to reproach himself. "I have had more satisfaction,"
he wrote from England, "in a private life here than I should have
had in being next in command to General Washington." The Vassalls
were a family of worth and honour, one of whom was grandfather
of the Lady Holland who kept a salon and a dining-table for the
Whigs of the great Reform Bill. John Vassall of Cambridge had no
choice but to cross the seas with his kindred. His great property in
Massachusetts was ultimately confiscated, after having been subjected
to a course of systematised spoliation. His mansion-house at Cam-
bridge became the headquarters of the American army. The Com-
mittee of Safety published a succession of orders, carefully regulating
the distribution of the produce on his estate; and the Provincial Con-
gress solemnly voted half a pint of rum a day to the persons employed
on cutting his crops, and those of his fellow-refugees. Isaac Royall of
Medford, to whom hospitality was a passion, and the affection of all

around him, high and low, the prize which he coveted, did not es-
cape banishment and proscription. It was lightly but cruelly said by
his political opponents that to carry on his farms in his absence was
not an easy matter; "for the honest man's scythe refused to cut Tory
grass, and his oxen to turn a Tory furrow." During the dreary years
which lay before him, his cherished wish was to be buried in Massa-
chusetts; but that boon was denied him. He died in England, before
the war was over, bequeathing two thousand acres of his neglected soil
to endow a Chair in the famous university of his native province which
he himself was never permitted to revisit.

Women, whatever might be their opinions, were not uncivilly
treated. The habitual chivalry of Americans was extended to every
applicant for the benefit of it, even if she might not always have been
the most estimable of her sex. There was in Massachusetts a dame of
quality, who once had a face which contemporaries described as of
"matchless beauty," and a story very closely resembling that of the
notorious Lady Hamilton. She had been the companion of a wealthy
baronet, Collector of the customs for the Port of Boston. Those cus-
toms, with the license accorded to favoured place-holders before the
Revolution, he had contrived to collect while residing at his ease in the
South of Europe, He was frightened into marriage by the earthquake
of Lisbon; and after his death the widow returned to America, to her
late husband's country house, where he had maintained what, for the
New England of that day, was a grand and lavish establishment.
When the troubles grew serious she was alarmed by the attitude of
the rural population, and asked leave to retire to Boston. The Provincial
Congress furnished her with an escort, and passed a special Resolution
permitting her to take into the city her horses, carriages, live-stock,
trunks, bedding, and provisions. They detained nothing of hers except
arms and ammunition, for which the lady had little use, and the
patriots much. She got safe into Boston, and safe out of it to England,
where she closed her career as the wife of a county banker.

Amenities such as these were not for every day or every person.
There was one class of Government partisans which, in particular,
fared very badly. It was frequently the case that a clergyman, accus-
tomed to deal out instruction, held it incumbent upon him to inform
laymen about matters in which they did not desire his guidance. Old
Doctor Byles of Boston, though a stout loyalist, had the good sense
never to bring affairs of state inside the porch of his church. "In
the first place," he told his people, "I do not understand politics. In the

135

more than votes of sympathy. Patriotic circles were discoursing freely
about the excellence of the oratory in the Colonial Convention of
Virginia. Enthusiastic members of that Convention had assured John
Adams, (who was accustomed to hear the same about himself from his
own fellow-townsmen,) that Richard Henry Lee and Patrick Henry
would respectively bear comparison with Cicero and with Demos-
thenes. But a shrewd delegate from South Carolina, who on his
way to Congress had looked in at Williamsburg to see what they were
doing in the Old Dominion, gave it as his opinion that the most elo-
quent speech had been made by Colonel Washington. "I will raise,"
that officer had said, "one thousand men towards the relief of Boston,
and subsist them at my own expense." It was a sound Anglo-Saxon
version of the march of the Marseillais. If they knew how to die, he
would see that in the meanwhile they should know where they could
get something to eat.

But above all, and before all, the proposal of a Congress met with
eager acceptance on the part of twelve out of the thirteen colonies.
They took care to make convenient for themselves both the day and
the locality which Massachusetts had indicated. On the tenth of August
the delegates who had been chosen at Salem set forth on their journey
from Boston. The spaces which they had to traverse, and the welcome
which everywhere greeted them, brought home to their minds for the
first time a comfortable assurance that the task of subjugating such a
country, inhabited by such a people, would possibly require more
months and a great many more regiments than had been allotted to it
in the anticipations of the British War Office. Everywhere on their
passage bells were ringing, cannons firing, and men, women, and chil-
dren crowding "as if to a coronation." When John Adams was an old
gentleman, it took much to make him angry; but he never allowed
any doubt to be thrown, in his presence, on the enthusiasm which
attended himself and his colleagues during their progress to Philadel-
phia in the summer of 1774. The only time that his grandson ever
incurred the indignation of the ex-President "was by his expression of
surprise at the extent of those ceremonies, which he happened to find
set forth in high colours in an old newspaper. He was then a boy, and
knew no better. But he never forgot the reproof."

The material comforts which awaited the Bostonians in ever greater
profusion as they journeyed southwards were matter of constantly
renewed surprise and satisfaction, tempered by an inward sense of
stern superiority at the recollection of the plain but invigorating fare

138

which they had left behind them. New York, free-hearted as now,
would not let them go forward on their way until they had devoted
six evenings to rest and refreshment, and as many days to seeing the
sights;— the view from the steeple of the New Dutch church; St.
Paul's, with its piazza and pillars, which had cost eighteen thousand
pounds, in York money; and the statue of his Majesty on horseback in
the bowling green, of solid lead gilded with gold, which had still two
years to stand on the marble pedestal before it was pulled down to be
run into bullets. They rode on through New Jersey, which they thought
a paradise; as indeed it was, and as it remained until the Hessians
had been allowed their will on it. They halted for a Sunday at Prince-
ton College, where the scholars studied very hard, but sang very badly
in chapel, and where the inmates, from the president downwards, were
as high sons of liberty as any in America. They went on their course
from town to city, honouring toasts; hearing sermons; recording the
text from which the clergyman preached, and observing whether or
not he spoke from notes; admiring the public buildings, and carefully
writing down what they cost in currency of the colony. At the "pretty
village" of Trenton they were ferried over the Delaware, in the op-
posite direction from that in which it was to be crossed on the Decem-
ber night when the tide of war showed the first faint sign of turning.
On the nineteenth afternoon they entered Philadelphia, where they
were housed and feasted with a cordiality which in those early days
of the Revolution had the air of being universal, and with a luxury
which threw even the glories of New York into the shade. They had
known what it was to breakfast in a villa on Hudson's River with "a
very large silver coffee pot, a very large silver tea pot, napkins of the
finest materials, plates full of choice fruit, and toast and bread-and-
butter in great perfection." But in Philadelphia — whether it was at the
residence of a Roman Catholic gentleman, with ten thousand a year
in sterling money, "reputed the first fortune in America"; or the
Chief Justice of the Province; or a young Quaker lawyer and his pretty
wife — there was magnificence, and, above all, abundance under many
roofs. "A most sinful feast again," John Adams wrote. "Everything
which could delight the eye or allure the taste. Curds and creams,
jellies, sweetmeats of various sorts, twenty sorts of tarts, fools, trifles,
floating islands, and whipped sillabubs." These dainties were washed
down by floods of Madeira, more undeniable than the political princi-
ples of some among their hosts. For, as was proved just three years
later, when red-coats were seated round the same tables, Philadelphia

139

loved to place her best before her visitors, quite irrespective of whether
or not they were trusty patriots. But for the present the opinions of the
entertainers seemed as sound as their wine, and gushed as freely. At ele-
gant suppers, where the company drank sentiments till near midnight,
might be heard such unexceptionable aspirations as: "May Britain be
wise,' and America be free!" "May the fair dove of liberty, in this
deluge of despotism, find rest to the sole of her foot on the soil of
America!" "May the collision of British flint and American steel pro-
duce that spark of liberty which shall illuminate the latest posterity!"

Philadelphia was destined in the course of the war to play the im-
portant, if not very noble, part of serving as a Capua to the British
army; but the men of the first Congress were of a political fibre which
was proof against any enervating influences. They fell to work forth-
with, and their labours were continuous, severe, and admirably adapted
to the particularities of the situation. Possessed of no constitutional au-
thority to legislate or govern, they passed, after searching debate and
minute revision, Resolutions which had the moral force of laws and
the practical effect of administrative decrees. On the eighth of October
they put on record "that this Congress approve the opposition of the
Massachusetts Bay to the late Acts of Parliament; and if the same shall
be attempted to be carried into execution by force, all America ought
to support them in their opposition." They then proceeded to draw up
a Declaration of Rights, claiming for the American people in their pro-
vincial assemblies a free and exclusive power of legislation on all mat-
ters of taxation and internal policy, and calling for the repeal, in whole
or in part, of eleven Acts of Parliament by which that claim was
infringed. They unanimously agreed not to import any merchandise
from the mother-country; but, like wary men of business, they gave
themselves another twelve-month during which American goods might
be exported to Great Britain, if Great Britain chose to take them.

One class of imports was prohibited specifically, unconditionally,
and apart from all considerations of politics. "We will," so Congress
proclaimed, "neither import, nor purchase any slave imported, after
the first day of December next; after which time we will wholly
discontinue the slave trade." The pledge was binding upon all, but
it bore the special stamp of Virginia. The Assembly of that colony had
over and over again framed and carried, in condemnation of the slave
trade, laws which had over and over again been disallowed by the
royal veto, enforced on one occasion by a personal and emphatic ex-
pression of the royal anger. It is melancholy to reflect what the social
140

condition and the political history of Virginia might have been if the
home Government had allowed free play to the generous impulses
which actuated her public men before the Revolutionary war. They
liked to be told high and hard truths, and were prepared to act them
out in practice. "Every gentleman here is born a petty tyrant. Taught
to regard a part of our own species in the most abject and contemptible
degree below us, we lose that idea of the dignity of man which the
hand of Nature hath planted in us for great and useful purposes.
Habituated from our infancy to trample upon the rights of human na-
ture, every liberal sentiment is enfeebled in our minds; and in such an
infernal school are to be educated our future legislators and rulers."
That was how in 1773 a Virginian representative discoursed openly to
his fellows. No such speech could have been made with impunity in
the State Legislature during the generation which preceded the Seces-
sion of 1861.

And finally, knowing by repeated experience that for Americans to
petition Parliament was only to court their own humiliation, Congress
laid formality aside, and published a direct appeal to all true and
kindly Englishmen. The people of Great Britain, (so the document
ran,) had been led to greatness by the hand of liberty; and therefore
the people of America, in all confidence, invoked their sense of justice,
prayed for permission to share their freedom, and anxiously protested
against the calumny that the colonies were aiming at separation under
the pretence of asserting the right of self-government. Chatham, after
confiding to the House of Lords that his favourite study had been the
political literature of "the master-countries of the world," declared and
avowed that the resolutions and addresses put forth by the Congress
at Philadelphia, "for solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity, and wis-
dom of conclusion, under such a complication of difficult circum-
stances," were surpassed by no body of men, of any age and nation,
who had ever issued a state paper. A contemporary Scotch journalist
described these productions as written with so much spirit, sound
reason, and true knowledge of the constitution, that they had given
more uneasiness than all the other proceedings of the Congress.12

The rate of speed at which compositions of that excellence were
devised, drafted, criticised, amended, and sanctioned appears enviable
to the member of a modern representative assembly; but it fell short
of what satisfied men accustomed to the succinct methods of a New

12 The passage referred to in the text is quoted by Professor Tyler in chapter xv.
of his Literary History,

141

England town-meeting, and for whom Philadelphia was a place of
honourable but, as it seemed to them, almost interminable exile. As
early as the tenth of October John Adams wrote: "The deliberations of
the Congress are spun out to an immeasurable length. There is so
much wit, sense, learning, acuteness, subtlety, and eloquence among
fifty gentlemen, each of whom has been habituated to lead and guide
in his own Province, that an immensity of time is spent unnecessarily."
The end was not far off. On the twentieth of the month the Pennsyl-
vanian Assembly entertained Congress at a dinner in the City Tavern.
The whole table rose to the sentiment, "May the sword of the parent
never be stained with the blood of her children!" Even the Quakers
who were present drained their glasses on the ground that it was not a
toast, but a prayer; and a prayer which was much to their own liking.
Six days afterwards Congress dissolved itself. The tenth of May was
appointed for the meeting of its successor; and the Canadian colonies
and the Floridas were invited to send representatives. Two days more,
and the Massachusetts delegates mounted for their homeward journey.
"We took our departure," said Adams, "in a very great rain, from the
happy, the peaceful, the elegant, the hospitable and polite city of
Philadelphia. It is not very likely that I shall ever visit this part of
the world again, but I shall ever retain a most grateful sense of the
many civilities I have received in it, and shall think myself happy to
have an opportunity of returning them." Events were at hand of such
a nature that to set a limit to what was likely needed more than human
foresight. John Adams had not seen Philadelphia for the last time, by
many; and the return dinners with which he requited her hospitality
were given by him as President of seventeen States and six millions of
people.

Trevelyan now introduces the new Parliament brought to power in
the general election of 1774. ^s predecessor elected in the spring of
1768, "chosen amidst an orgy of corruption," claims title to remem-
brance by its long battle with the Middlesex electors and by its forfeit-
ing the loyalty of America. However, the unwept Parliament did
accomplish one constructive piece of business. It set up a quasi-judicial
process for determining election disputes. Although overt corruption
in the boroughs may have been restrained as a result of the new Corrupt
Practices Act, the House of Commons that was returned would be no
less compliant than the last.

142

CHAPTER V

THE KING AND LORD CHATHAM.

Fox COMES TO THE FRONT.

THE AMERICAN FISHERIES

JL HE King had long ago settled his policy. "I am clear," he an-
nounced to Lord North in the previous September, "that there must
always be one tax to keep up the right, and as such I approve of the Tea
Duty." To secure this object he was prepared to fight, and was in a
hurry to begin. Ten days before Parliament met, the first instalment
of the American news had already reached him. "I am not sorry," he
wrote, "that the line of conduct seems now chalked out, which the
enclosed despatches thoroughly justify. The New England Govern-
ments are in a state of rebellion. Blows must decide whether they are
to be subject to this country or in3ejpflSttdeht"." He made no attempt to
conceal his satisfaction when he learned that the quarrel could not be
patched up. Yet he did not, like Napoleon, love war for its own
sake; nor, like Louis the Fourteenth, was he unscrupulously eager to
make his country great and his own name great with it. Almost as
soon as he mounted the throne he had given a convincing proof of his
indifference to personal glory and national aggrandisement. At a time
of life when the desire of fame is a sign of virtue, or at worst a venial
fault, during the height of the most triumphant war in which Britain
has been engaged, he had thrust from power the ablest war-minister
whose deeds have been recorded in her history. He deserted the great-
est ally we ever possessed, at the exact moment of his greatest need.
To the end of his days Frederic of Prussia did not forget the pang of
that appalling and unexpected blow; and we were soon to learn that,
when he remembered an injury, he was not of a nature to forgive it.
The warlike promptings which actuated George the Third were
neither ambitious nor patriotic, but political. He looked on the Amer-
icans not as foreign enemies arrayed against England, but as English-

143

men who wanted more liberty than he thought was good for them;
and he sent his fleets and his armies against them just as he would
have ordered his Footguards to support the constables in clearing the
street of a mob of Wilkites.

One one point, and one point alone, the King was in agreement
with the great statesman out of whose control, as the first act of his
reign, he had taken the destinies of the country. Chatham, like George
the Third, regarded the colonists as compatriots. In his sight they
were Englishmen, who did not choose to be taxed without being repre-
sented; Whigs, who had not abandoned the principles of the Great
Revolution; fellow-citizens who could not be subjugated without pro-
spective, and even imminent, danger to the liberties of both our own
islands. For Ireland had as much at stake as Great Britain, and Irish-
men of all creeds and classes were alive and awake to the consequences
which would ensue at home if the cause of America was overborne and
ruined. In such a contest, (so Chatham insisted,) every man had a
right, or rather every man was under an obligation, to choose his side
in accordance with the political faith which was in him. This was not
a struggle against an external foe, but a dispute within our own family.
"I trust," he wrote on the Christmas eve of 1774, "that it will be found
impossible for freemen in England to wish to see three millions of
Englishmen slaves in America." A month afterwards he had read
the parliamentary papers, with the insight of one who had received
and answered a thousand despatches from the same regions. "What a
correspondence!" he exclaimed. "What a dialogue between Secretary
of State and General in such a crisis! Could these bundles reach the
shades below, the remarks of Ximenes and of Cortez upon them would
be amusing." He need not have brought Ximenes in. When Chatham
closed the volume, a yet stronger ruler, and one who knew even better
how to write to colonies and how to fight for them, had made himself
master of the miserable narrative.

Already, before he knew the particulars, the heart of Chatham was
too hot for silence. As the doom against America, (to use his own
phraseology,) might at any hour be pronounced from the Treasury
Bench, no time was to be lost in offering his poor thoughts to the
public, for preventing a civil war before it was inevitably fixed. On the
first day that the Lords met after Christmas he moved to address his
Majesty to withdraw the troops from Boston, in order to open the way
towards a happy settlement of the dangerous troubles in America, It
was not a tactical success. Chatham had told Rockingham beforehand
144

that he intended to pronounce himself against insisting on that the-
oretical right to tax America which Rockingham's own government
had asserted in the Declaratory Act of 1766. Some of the Whigs were
unwilling to throw over a Statute which in its day had formed part
of a great compromise. Others were prepared to consider the question
of repealing the Act, whenever that proper time arrived which in
politics is always so very long upon its journey. The more prudent of
them exerted themselves to suppress any public manifestation of the
annoyance which their party felt. "My Lord/' wrote the Duke of
Manchester to his leader, "you must pardon my freedom. In the pres-
ent situation of affairs nothing can be so advantageous to Administra-
tion, nothing so ruinous to opposition, nothing so fatal to American
liberty, as a break with Lord Chatham and his friends. I do not mean
to over-rate his abilities, or to despair of our cause, though he no
longer existed; but, while the man treads this earth, his name, his
successes, his eloquence, the cry of the many, must exalt him into a
consequence perhaps far above his station." But the resentment of the
Rockinghams was all the more bitter because they had to keep it
among themselves. In their communications with each other they
charged Chatham with the two unpardonable crimes of forcing their
hand, and taking the wind out of their sails; and in the House they
supported him reluctantly, and in small numbers.

But that was all of little moment compared with the fact that a
famous and faithful servant of England had made known to all and
sundry his view of the conduct which, at that complicated crisis, loyalty
to England demanded. William Pitt, then in his sixteenth year, had
helped his father to prepare for the debate; a process which, according
to the experience of others who enjoyed the same privilege, consisted
in hearing a grand speech delivered from an arm-chair, entirely differ-
ent in arrangement, in wording, and in everything except the doctrine
which it enforced, from the series of grand speeches which next day
were declaimed in public when the orator had his audience around
him. "The matter and manner," (so the lad wrote to his mother on
the morning after the discussion,) "were striking; far beyond what
I can express. It was everything that was superior; and, though it had
not the desired effect on an obdurate House of Lords, it must have
had an infinite effect without doors, the bar being crowded with
Americans. Lord Suffolk, I cannot say answered him, but spoke after
him. My father has slept well, but is lame in one ankle from standing
so long. No wonder he is lame. His first speech lasted over an hour,

145

and the second half an hour; surely the two finest speeches that ever
were made before, unless by himself." The most notable passage was
that in which Chatham declared that the cause of America was the
cause of all Irishmen, Catholic and Protestant alike, and of all true
Whigs in England; and in his mouth the name of Whig included
every man who was not a friend to arbitrary power. The colonists
were our countrymen and, if we persisted in treating them as aliens
and foes, the perils which awaited us were incalculable. Foreign war,
(so he told the House of Lords,) was at our door. France and Spain
were watching our conduct, and waiting for the maturity of our errors.
The argument was one not to be employed lightly; but if ever a states-
man was justified in referring to our neighbors across the British
Channel as our natural enemies it was at a period when we had been
at war with France for thirty years out of the last eighty-five, and
were still to be at war with her for twenty-five years out of the next
forty. And if ever there was a man who might, without a sense of
abasement, refer to danger from abroad as an additional reason for
dealing justly with our own people, it was the minister who had
fought France until he had landed her in such a plight that no one,
unless our government was imprudent to madness, could forsee the
the time when she would be in a position to fight us again.

Any one who objected to Chatham's attitude on the American ques-
tion was at liberty to term him a poor patriot and a bad citizen; and
whatever reproach attached itself to his fame must be shared by those
who thought with him. Charles Fox was not easily abashed, even
when he was in worse company than Chatham's; and at no time of his
life did he care what names he was called as long as the course of
action which earned them was such that he could defend in the face
of day. He did not shrink from defining, as explicitly and clearly as
he stated everything, the governing motive by which his conduct dur-
ing those trying years was determined. "I hope that it will be a point
of honour among us all to support the American pretensions in ad-
versity as much as we did in their prosperity, and that we shall never
desert those who have acted unsuccessfully from Whig principles,
while we continue to profess our admiration of those who succeeded
in the same principles in 1688." That was how he wrote to his familiars
in October, 1776, when the colonists were on the edge of destruction,
and when the liberties of England seemed worth but a very few years'
purchase in the view of some who were neither fools nor cowards.
Among them was Horace Walpole, who pronounced himself unable
146

to conceive how a friend of British freedom could view with equa-
nimity the subjection of America. He little thought, Walpole said,
that he should have lived to see any single Englishman exulting over
the defeat of our countrymen, when they were fighting for our liberty
as well as for their own. Lord Chatham was not such an Englishman,
nor Charles Fox either. They both of them looked upon the conflict
as a civil war, in which no man was justified in ranking himself
against those whom in his conscience he believed to be in the right.
But when France stepped in, and our country was in danger, Fox
took his place amongst the foremost, — nay, it may be said, as the
foremost, — of Britain's defenders; for no public man, out of office, has
ever before or since played so energetic and effective a part in the
management of a great war. "Attack France," he cried, "for she is your
object. The war against America is against your own countrymen; that
against France is against your inveterate enemy and rival." In a series
of speeches, replete with military instinct, he argued in favour of as-
suming the offensive against the fresh assailants who came crowding
in upon a nation which already had been fighting until it had grown
weary and disheartened. Aggressive action, (so he never ceased repeat-
ing,) was alike dictated by the necessities of the situation, and by the
character, the spirit, and the traditions of our people. He urged the
ministry, with marvellous force, knowledge, and pertinacity, to rescue
the navy from the decay into which they had allowed it to sink. When
the French and Spanish fleets rode the Channel, with a superiority in
ships of the line of two to one, his anxiety carried him and kept him
as close to the scene of action as the most enterprising of landsmen
could penetrate. He haunted the country houses and garrison towns of
the south-western coast, and lived much on shipboard, where, as any
one who knows sailors could well believe, he was a general favourite.
He shared the bitter mortification which his gallant friend the future
Lord St. Vincent felt when kept in harbour at such a moment; and he
went so far as to entertain a hope of finding himself, a cheery and
popular stowaway, in the thick of what promised to be the most
desperate battle which, on her own element, England would ever have
fought. He sympathised warmly with those of his comrades and
kinsmen who, having refused to serve against America, were rejoiced
at the prospect of active employment when France entered the field;
just as a royalist, who would have cut off his right hand rather than
fire a pistol for the Parliament at Dunbar or Worcester, might have
been proud to do his share among Cromwell's soldiers when they

147

were driving the Spanish pikemen across the sandhills at Dunkirk.
With a steady grasp, and unerring clearness of vision, Fox steered his
course through intricate and tempestuous waters; and succeeded in
reconciling, under difficulties as abstruse as ever beset a statesman, his
fidelity to a political creed with the duty which he owed to his country.

By this time many people were looking about to see where firmness
and vigour could be found; for the news from America had begun to
arouse the classes which worked the hardest, and paid the most, to
a perception of the dangers towards which the country was being
hurried. "The landed interest," so Camden told Chatham before the
middle of February, "is almost altogether anti-American, though the
common people hold the was in abhorrence, and the merchants and
tradesmen for obvious reasons are likewise against it." Burke com-
plained to Mr. Champion, the constituent whom he honoured with
his confidence, that if men with business interests had interfered de-
cisively when in the previous winter the American question became
acute, conciliatory measures would most certainly have been adopted.
Now, he said, they were beginning to stir because they began to feel.
It so happens that the exact date is known when the true state of
matters was first borne in upon the public mind. A letter from London
to a gentleman in New York, dated the sixth of December, 1774, runs
as follows: "This day there was a report current that the Congress of
the States of America had adjourned, having fixed on stopping all im-
ports into America from Great Britain the first of this month. From
curiosity I strolled upon 'Change, and for the first time saw concern
and deep distress in the face of every American merchant. This con-
vinced me of the truth of what I may have said before, that the mer-
chants will never stir till they feel; and everyone knows that the
manufacturers will never take the lead of the merchants." 1

The public despatches were alarming enough to those who reflected
that Governors and Lieutenant-Governors would naturally have put
the best face possible on a situation which they themselves had done

1The style of the letter to New York, with the curious similarity in certain ex-
pressions to those employed in the letter to Champion, renders it more than possible
that it was written by Burke, who three years before had been appointed agent to the
Assembly of New York with a salary of 5oo/. a year. It is true that he despatched a
long and very famous epistle from his home in Buckinghamshire on the fifth of Decem-
ber; but he was speaking in the House of Commons that evening, and again on the
sixth, and might well have gone on 'Change on the morning of the second day before
writing the letter to the gentleman in New York.

much to create. But those despatches did not tell the worst. Men could
still write freely to each other across the Atlantic; and the advices re-
ceived by city merchants and bankers were of a complexion to fill
everybody, except speculators for a fall, with a feeling nothing short of
blank dismay. No official papers from Maryland had been printed, and
it might have been supposed that no news was good news as far as
that colony was concerned; but before December ended it came to be
known that a principal seaport of Maryland had placed itself in line
with Boston. When the brig Peggy Stewart of London, having on
board two thousand pounds "of that detestable weed tea," arrived at
Annapolis, Messrs. William and Stewart, to whom the cargo was con-
signed, put their hands to a paper acknowledging that they had com-
mitted an act of most pernicious tendency to the liberties of America.
The same gentlemen then went on board the said vessel, with her sails
set and colours flying, and voluntarily set fire to the tea. In a few hours
the whole freight, and the ship with it, had been consumed by the
flames in the presence of a great multitude of spectators. When the let-
ter notifying this transaction to the London correspondents of the un-
fortunate firm was passing up and down Threadneedle Street, many a
warm city man must have felt a shiver go through him. In the same
month a Whig nobleman received an account of the warlike prep-
arations in America, written at Philadelphia by General Lee, whose
reputation in fashionable military circles lent weight to language
which, like himself, was less soldierly than soldatesque. "What devil of
a nonsense can instigate any man of General Gage's understanding to
concur in bringing about this delusion? I have lately, my Lord, run
through almost the whole colonies from the North to the South. I
should not be guilty of an exaggeration in asserting that there are
200,000 strong-bodied active yeomanry, ready to encounter all hazards.
They are not like the yeomanry of other countries, unarmed and
unused to arms. They want nothing but some arrangement, and this
they are now bent on establishing. Even this Quaker province is fol-
lowing the example. I was present at a review at Providence in Rhode
Island, and really never saw anything more perfect. Unless the banditti
at Westminster speedily undo everything they have done, their royal
paymaster will hear of reviews and manoeuvres not quite so enter-
taining as those he is presented with in Hyde Park and Wimbledon
Common."

The time was too surely approaching when communications ad-
dressed from America to gentlemen and noblemen in London would

149

never get further than the secret room in the Post Office; and colonists
who wished for peace hastened, while the avenues were open, to en-
lighten and admonish those English public men whom they could
hope to influence. At the end of 1774 a member of the British Parlia-
ment was informed in two letters from Pennsylvania that there were
gunsmiths enough in the Province to make one hundred thousand
stand of arms in one year, at twenty-eight shillings sterling apiece; that
the four New England colonies, together with Virginia and Maryland,
were completely armed and disciplined; and that nothing but a total
repeal of the Penal Acts could prevent a civil war in America. The
writer dealt as freely with large figures as General Lee; but he under-
stood his countrymen better in a case where the merits of that officer
were concerned. For the letters went on to explain that the colonies
were not so wrapped up in the General's military accomplishments as
to give him, when it came to choosing the Commander-in-Chief, a pref-
erence over Colonel Putnam and Colonel Washington, who had won
the trust and admiration of the continent by their talents and achieve-
ments. "There are several hundred thousand Americans who would
face any danger with these illustrious heroes to lead them. It is to no
purpose to attempt to destroy the opposition to the omnipotence of
Parliament by taking off our Hancocks, Adamses, and Dickinsons.
Ten thousand patriots of the same stamp stand ready to fill up their
places." Dickinson himself, writing not to England, but about Eng-
land, summed up the view of the best and wisest men on his side of the
controversy. "I cannot but pity," he said, "a brave and generous nation
thus plunged in misfortune by a few^.worthless persons. Everything
may be attributed to the misrepresentations and mistakes of Ministers,
and universal peace be established throughout the British world only
by the acknowledgment of the truth that half a dozen men are fools
or knaves. If their character for ability and integrity is to be maintained
by wrecking the whole empire, Monsieur Voltaire may write an addi-
tion to the chapter on the subject of 'Little things producing great
events.'"2

From this time forwards there was a growing disposition in the
House of Commons to take America seriously; and there was a man
in it determined never again to let the question sleep. On the second
of February, 1775, the Prime Minister moved an Address to the King,
praying his Majesty to adopt effectual measures for suppressing rebel-

2 The extracts given in this and the preceding paragraphs are all from the American
Archives.

150

lion in the colonies. Later in the evening a member rose who, in the
style of solemn circumlocution by which the chroniclers of proceedings
in Parliament appeared to think that they kept themselves right with
the law, was described as "a gentleman who had not long before sat
at the Treasury Board, from whence he had been removed for a spirit
not sufficiently submissive, and whose abilities were as unques-
tioned as the spirit for which he suffered." 3 Fox, (for Fox of course
it was), proposed an amendment deploring that the papers laid upon
the table had served only to convince the House that the measures taken
by his Majesty's servants tended rather to widen than to heal the un-
happy differences between Great Britain and America. That was the
turning point of his own career, and the starting point for others in a
hearty, fearless, and sustained opposition to the policy of the Govern-
ment. The effect of his oratory is established by various competent
authorities, from the official reporter who broke off to remark that Mr.
Charles Fox spoke better than usual,4 to Walpole, who records in his
journals that the young statesman entered into the whole history and
argument of the dispute with force and temper, and made the finest
figure he had done yet.

But the most lively and convincing testimony is found in a letter
written by a great man who on this occasion learned, finally and re-
signedly, how hard it is even to begin making a great speech. Gibbon
had been getting ready for the debate during the whole of the Christ-
mas holidays: studying the parliamentary papers as minutely as if they
had been the lost books of Dion Cassius; talking for four hours on end
with one of the agents from Massachusetts; and "sucking Governor
Hutchinson very dry," with as much probability of arriving at a just
conclusion as a Roman Senator who took his idea of the Sicilian char-
acter from a private conversation with Verres. But, when the hour came,
he felt that he himself was not the man for it. Throughout the Amend-
ment on the Address, and the report of the Address, he sate safe but
inglorious, listening to the thunder which rolled around him. The prin-
cipal antagonists on both days, he said, were Fox and Wedderburn; of
whom the elder displayed his usual talents, while the younger, em-
bracing the whole vast compass of the question before the House, dis-
covered powers for regular debate which neither his friends hoped, nor
his enemies dreaded. On the first day, when Fox discoursed for an
hour and twenty minutes, his contribution to the discussion is repre-

3 The Annual Register for 1775, chapter v.

4 The Parliamentary History of England, vol. xvii., p. 227.

sented in the Parliamentary History by an abstract of five lines, and on
the second day his name is not even mentioned; while Wilkes obtained
six columns, and Governor Johnston nine. It is evident, and indeed was
sometimes as good as confessed in a foot-note, that in those early and
artless days of reporting a speaker got back in print what he gave in
manuscript. Fox would as soon have thought of writing down what he
was going to say as of meeting a bill before it fell due; and the rapid
growth of his fame may be estimated by a comparison between the
reports of 1775 and those of 1779 and 1780. Before the Parliament was
dissolved, his more important speeches were reproduced without the
omission of a topic and, so far as the existing resources of stenography
admitted, without the abbreviation of a sentence.

Fox took the sense of the House on his Amendment, and had reason
to be satisfied with the result. He had been long enough a member of
Parliament to have learned that, in politics, all's well that ends pretty
well. The minority mustered over a hundred; a number exceeding by
forty the best division which, in the former Parliament, was obtained
against the worst of the American measures. It would have been reck-
oned a most weighty protest on any occasion when any House of Com-
mons has been invited to take steps which responsible Ministers affirm
to be necessary for vindicating the honour and securing the predomi-
nance of the country. But it was doubly significant in that age of
intimidation and bribery. All who voted on the one side were perfectly
well aware that in so doing they cut themselves off from the hope of
their sovereign's favour, or even of his forgiveness. And meanwhile a
full half of those who voted on the other side were drawing public
salary without rendering any public service except that of doing as they
were bid; or were fingering money which had passed into their pockets
from the Exchequer by methods that in our day would have been
ruinous both to him who received and him who bestowed. The King
pronounced the majority "very respectable," as to him, in both senses
of the word, it no doubt seemed. So pleased was he that he kindly con-
doled with his Minister on having been kept out of bed, (which in the
case of Lord North was a very different thing from being kept awake,)
till so late an hour as three o'clock in the morning.

That Minister, however, was less easily satisfied. He now knew him-
self to be face to face with a very different opposition from anything
which in the existing Parliament he had hitherto encountered. He
recognised the quarter from which vitality had been infused into the
counsels and procedures of his adversaries. Before a fortnight had
152

elapsed he came down to the House with a Resolution promising in
the name of the Commons that any American colony, in which the
Assembly consented to vote money for certain stated public purposes,
should be exempted from the liability to be taxed by the British Parlia-
ment. Every man, in that Parliament and outside it, saw that the plan
was specially and carefully framed to meet the argument on which, in
his recent speeches, Charles Fox had founded the case that he had so
brilliantly advocated. Governor Pownall, who immediately followed
North, stated in well-chosen words which no one ventured to contra-
dict that the Resolution was a peace offering to the young ex-minister.5
Such a recognition would have been a high compliment from any man
in office to any private member; but when paid by a First Lord of the
Treasury to a former subordinate, who had left his Board within the
twelvemonth, and had been attacking him ever since, it was a piece of
practical adulation which put to a searching and unexpected proof both
the strength of conviction and the presence of mind of him to whom
it was addressed.

On neither of the two points was Fox unequal to the test. While
Pownall was speaking he had time to decide on his line of action, the
importance of which he at once discerned. It was his first chance of
showing that he possessed the qualities of a true parliamentary leader,
who could make the most of a tactical situation without surrendering
in the smallest particular his loyalty to a great cause. He commenced
his remarks by congratulating the public on the change in the Prime
Minister's attitude. The noble Lord, who had been all for violence and
war, was treading back in his own footprints towards peace. Now was
seen the effect which a firm and spirited opposition never failed to
produce. The noble Lord had lent his ear to reason; and, if the minor-
ity in that House persevered in supporting the rights and liberties of
the colonies, the process of his conversion would go on apace. He had
spoken of the Americans with propriety and discrimination. He had
refused to allow that they were rebels; and even to Massachusetts he
would gladly open a door through which she might return to her

5 "An honourable gentleman, in a late debate, certainly was the first and the only
one to hit upon the real jet of the dispute between his country and America. He very
ably stated that the reason why the colonies objected to the levying taxes for the
purpose of a revenue in America was that such revenue took out of the hands of the
people that control which every Englishman thinks he ought to have over that govern-
ment to which his rights and interests are entrusted. The mode of appropriation spec-
ified in this resolution takes away the ground of that opposition." — The Parliamentary
History of England, Feb. 20, 1775.

153

allegiance. He had distinctly stated that Great Britain, dealing as one
nation according to diplomatic usage deals with another, had at the
outset demanded more than in the end she would insist on exacting;
and, once that principle admitted, the noble Lord would be as much
inclined on a future day to recede from what he proposed now, as now
he was ready to give up that which he had before so strenuously de-
fended. But for the present the noble Lord had not gone far enough.
He aimed at standing well with two sets of people whose views were
irreconcileable: — the colonists who were resolved, under no conditions,
to admit the right of Parliament to tax them; and the supporters of the
Government who were equally determined, in every contingency, to
assert that right and to exercise it. The noble Lord had wished to con-
tent both parties, and he had contented neither. On the countenances
of gentlemen opposite the orator, so far as he was able to read them,
could descry no symptoms of satisfaction; and the Americans, it was
only too certain, must and would reject the offer with disdain.

The speech was marked by the highest art, — that of saying precisely
what the speaker thought, in the plainest language, and without a
syllable over, A scene ensued when he resumed his place which was
long remembered within the House of Commons, and has occupied a
space in English and American histories out of all proportion to its
intrinsic consequence, except so far as it discredited the Prime Minister,
and established the position and authority of Fox. It was one of those
rare moments when a great party, in a tumult of indignant surprise,
shakes off the control of those to whom it is accustomed to look for
guidance; when the Ministers sit on thorns, or jump up, each in his
turn only to confound confusion, and attract on to his own head a
share of the impertinences with which the air is swarming; and when
an opposition feels itself repaid in the wild joy of a single hour for long
years of disappointment and abstinence. North, like much greater men
before and after him, experienced the inconvenience of having sprung
a policy on his followers and on not a few of his colleagues. The mutiny
began at headquarters. Welbore Ellis, a placeman who had already
turned his hundredth quarter-day, querulously announced that as a
man of honour he felt bound to oppose the Minister; and though North
could hardly be called a sick lion, the House hailed with glee an occur-
rence which bore a strong resemblance to a very familiar fable. Rigby
was seen taking notes, and could with difficulty be persuaded to put
them back into his pocket; but he did not fail to make his views known
to that part of the audience which was the least likely to be gratified by

them. An aside from him was more formidable than an oration from
Welbore Ellis; and every Right Honourable Gentleman within earshot
on the Treasury bench was obliged to hear how, in Rigby's opinion,
the proper persons to move and second Lord North's Resolution were
Mr. Otis and Mr. Hancock, of whom the one had been the ringleader
in the agitation against the Stamp Act, and the other had superintended
the destruction of the tea. The most violent in the fray was Captain
Acland, a cousin by marriage of Charles Fox. He was a young man of
fierce manners and dauntless courage, who now was always to the front
when sharp words were being exchanged; especially where there was
a prospect that on the next morning recourse would be had to yet more
pointed weapons. Acland assailed the Government in a style which
aroused the wonder even of Chatham; whose standard of the lengths
to which a young military man might go when denouncing his elders
in the House of Commons had, in the days when he himself was a
cornet of horse, been notoriously a generous one.6

The real danger to the Ministry lay in the sulkiness of the King's
Friends. These gentlemen, by an unaccountable blunder, had been left
without their orders. Having to decide for themselves as to what their
employer expected of them, they naturally enough concluded that, as
in the parallel case of Rockingham and the repeal of the Stamp Act,
their duty to the King required them to stab his Minister in the back.
North had been up five or six times, and matters were looking very
black for the Government, when, before it was too late, a deft and able
ally came to the rescue. Sir Gilbert Elliot was a politician of account in
his own generation, and had ere this been honoured by a message from
the King to the effect that he did not take so forward a part in the
House of Commons as his abilities warranted. But he needed no one
to tell him how to make the most of his remarkable qualities; and he
reserved himself for emergencies when a King's Friend who could
speak as well as vote was of more value than dozens or scores of silent
courtiers.

Gilbert Elliot's political fortunes had gained much, but his post-
humous celebrity has suffered not a little, from the unique distinction
of his family; for he was the midmost of five eminent men, with the
same Christian name and surname, who succeeded each other as father

6 "Lord North was, in the beginning of the day, like a man exploded, and the judg-
ment of the House, during about two hours, was that his Lordship was going to be
in a considerable minority; Mr. Ellis and others, young Acland in particular, haying
declared highly and roughly against his desertion of the cause of cruelty." — Chatham to
his wife, Feb. 21, 1775.

155

and son. The world, glad to have anything by which to identify him,
has remembered him as the writer of a pastoral song admired by Sir
Walter Scott. It began with the line, perhaps better known than the
rest of the poem,

My sheep I neglected, I broke my sheep-hook.

The author of the ditty now proved that he was skilled in the use of
that rustic implement. Elliot bluntly warned the official flock that it
was high time to leave off butting at each other, and scampering at
large over the country. He contrived to convey something into his man-
ner which suggested to the King's Friends that they were on the wrong
scent; as indeed was the case, since the whole business had been ar-
ranged beforehand between the Sovereign and the Minister. The storm
abated; and Fox, who saw that there had been sufficient of it for his
purposes, moved that the Chairman should leave the Chair. A division
took place, and there was some cross-voting; for on both sides there
were as usual certain of those ingenious senators who please themselves
with thinking that they indicate their opinion on the main issue by the
course they take on a technical point which is understood by no one
outside Parliament, and by fewer within it than is generally believed.
And so the business ended, with a twofold result. Fox, in his character
of a champion of liberty, had shown himself not less prompt a warrior,
and a much more judicious strategist, than in the days when he figured
as Lord of Misrule in all the sham tournaments of the House of Com-
mons. And North had been effectually frightened, for some long time
to come, out of any inclination to try his hand at the conciliation of
America.

The Prime Minister had no desire for a repetition of the lesson
which that twentieth of February had taught him. He saw very plainly
what his place would have been worth at noon on the twenty-first if the
King's Friends had been correct in thinking that they had the King
behind them. So long as North held his present employment there was
no demand for the services of his better self; and he returned once more
to plod the weary round of coercive legislation. The main occupation
of Parliament during that session was a bill for excluding the New Eng-
land colonies from the principal fishing grounds within their reach, and
notably from the banks of Newfoundland. It was from the cod fishery
that the prosperity of those colonies had originally sprung, and by the
same industry it was still largely maintained. A sea captain in the early

156

years of the seventeenth century calculated that the charge of equipping
a ship of a hundred tons, with eight boats of the sort now called dories
on board, was four hundred pounds. "Eight boats with 22 men in a
Summer doe usually kill 25,000 fish for every Boat. Sometimes they
have taken above 35,000 for a Boat, so that they load not onely their
owne Ship, but other spare ships which come thither onely to buy the
overplus." This captain went on to explain that the cargo, if taken in
the right season to the right market, (which was not "Touloune or
Merselus," but England,) would sell for 2,2507. "At New Plimoth, in
Aprill," the writer proceeded, "there is a fish much like a herring that
comes up into the small brookes to spawne. After those the Cod also
presseth in such plenty, even into the very harbours, that they have
caught some in their arms, and hooke them so fast that three men oft
loadeth a Boat of two tuns in two houres." 7

James the First had conferred upon the settlers in New England the
exclusive privilege of fishing in North American waters. That conces-
sion was justly resented by the English Parliament; but the colonists
forbore from enforcing their uttermost rights, and indeed had no occa-
sion for them. They lived and throve by fishing not because they were
monopolists, but because they were on the spot; because the best boat-
builders in the world, and very far from the worst ship-builders, had
their yards at Boston; and because above all they belonged to the right
race for the work. And now, when it was proposed for political objects
to drive them from the pursuit of their calling, the uneasiness which
had begun to pervade the commercial world deepened into consterna-
tion. It was vain for the Ministry to hold forth the bait of the spoils
of New England, and to evoke patriotic cupidity by the prospect of the
three hundred thousand pounds, or the five hundred thousand pounds,
which would be transferred yearly from the ship-owners of Salem and
Providence to the ship-owners of Poole and Dartmouth. The trained
leaders of commerce, who knew the open secrets of solid and profitable
business, did not look for information from hack-writers whose statis-
tics and arguments were dictated to them in Downing Street, The
whole life of every English merchant and banker, and of his father and
grandfather before him, had been one continuous course of instruction
in the present and progressing value of the trade with America. The
exports to Pennsylvania alone had increased fifty-fold in less than three-

7 The account may be found in "The Generall Historic of Virginia, New England,
and the Summer Isles f by Captaine John Smith, London, 1624*'; under the head of
"Master Dee, his opinion for the building of Ships."

157

quarters of a century. New England was a large and regular customer,
with an enormous current debt owing to British exporters and manu-
facturers. That custom would be a thing of the past, and those debts
could never be recovered, if with the loss of her fishing she lost the
means of providing herself with imported goods, and paying for those
which she had received already. Nor was it only a question of New
England. The colonies, one and all, were on honour to stand and fall
together; and, when the cruel and insulting measure now before Parlia-
ment was once in the Statute-book, all hope that Congress would drop
the non-importation agreement would have to be definitely abandoned.

This time there was little hesitation in the action of the mercantile
classes throughout the English-speaking world; and there could be no
mistake as to their views, which found a voice in petitions, in deputa-
tions, and in evidence proffered at the bar of the Lords. The planters
of the Sugar Islands resident in London entreated the House of Com-
mons to stay its hand. As time went on and the news of what was
purposed reached the tropics, the Assembly of Jamaica, in the hurry of
a well-grounded, panic, drew up and despatched a petition explaining
how in their case, with a vast slave population around and among them,
the very existence of society would be endangered by the cessation of
their traffic with the American colonies. The Society of Friends repre-
sented to Parliament the case of Nantucket, an island which lay off the
coast of Massachusetts. The population subsisted on the whale fishery,
and owned a fleet of one hundred and forty sail. The agricultural prod-
uce of Nantucket would hardly support twenty families; but the island
contained more than five thousand inhabitants. Nine out of ten among
them were Quakers, of whom none were disaffected politicians, and
all drank tea to a man. That was a sample of the extent to which the
bill would involve opponents, well-wishers, and neutrals in one com-
mon destruction. The sentiments of the higher commerce, in its central
haunt, found expression in an address laid by the Lord Mayor, the
Aldermen, and the Liverymen at the foot of the Throne. The occupant
of that august seat received their remonstrance in public with marked
coldness, and characterised it in private as a new dish of insolence from
the shop which had fabricated so many. It was a shop the proprietors
of which could not fairly be charged with interfering in matters outside
their own province; for the debts due from New England amounted
to eight hundred thousand pounds in the City of London alone.

The bill for restraining the trade and commerce of the New England
colonies afforded Parliament one more opening to arrange by policy
158

those difficulties which were rapidly tending towards a solution by the
arbitrament of war. That last opportunity was soon a lost one; but the
spokesmen o£ the minority comported themselves in a manner worthy
of the supreme occasion, and of the great assembly to which they be-
longed. It was a question precisely suited to the genius of Burke. The
final series of appeals in which he exhorted the House of Commons to
settle the American controversy by light and right, before it came to
a contest of might, showed more than his usual power of mastering the
details of trade and finance, and converting them into oratory for the
instruction of his audience, and into literature for the admiration of
posterity. As member for Bristol he was bound to do his utmost in the
interests of commerce; and his constituents, the best of whom were not
undeserving of such a representative, had supplied him with fresh
stores of facts and calculations in addition to those which he possessed
already. His speaking had never been more rich in the fruit, and more
sparing in the flowers; and he had his reward in the close and respect-
ful attention of hearers uneasily conscious that the fate of the empire
was slipping out of their grasp, and that an impulse had been given to
it which might carry it far in the wrong direction.

Burke's exertions were supported and supplemented by Fox with
an abundance, but no superfluity, of that straightforward and un-
laboured declamation which, from his earliest to his latest speech, al-
ways commanded the ear, and never offended the taste, of the House
of Commons. With headlong but sure-handed erjergy of delineation he
sketched out the broad lines of statesmanship, and filled them in with
the special circumstances of the situation. His warning against the folly
of presenting all Americans, whatever might be their political sym-
pathies, with the alternative of starvation or rebellion, impressed his
listeners by its force and directness, and received striking confirmation
at the critical moments of the war. On three several occasions the fate
of a campaign was largely influenced by those very fishermen who had
been driven wholesale from their employment into the ranks of Wash-
ington's army. The enthusiasm, the intrepidity, and the professional
skill of the mariners who served in the New England regiments en-
abled their general to deprive the British garrison of the supplies which
abounded on the islands in Boston harbour; to accomplish the retire-
ment from the lines of Brooklyn which averted what otherwise must
have been a crowning disaster; and to effect that crossing of the Del-
aware on a mid-winter midnight which secured for him the most sorely

159

wanted of all his successes. The loyalist poets amused themselves by
describing how

Priests, tailors, and cobblers fill with heroes the camp,
And sailors, like craw-fish, crawl out of each swamp.

But, as a matter of history, those sailors had walked ashore in a very
dangerous temper from the fishing vessels which, in consequence of
the action of Parliament, were lying useless alongside the quays of
every town and village on the seaboard of New England.8

Fox's argument, roughly and insufficiently reported, has not come
down to us in the shape for insertion in a handbook of oratorical ex-
tracts. But it has the stamp of a speech hot from the heart, spoken by
a man who thought only of convincing or confuting those who heard
him, without caring how his words would read on the next morning
or in another century. "You have now," said Fox, "completed the
system of your folly. You had some friends yet left in New England.
You yourselves made a parade of the number you had there. But you
have not treated them like friends. How must they feel, what must
they think, when the people against whom they have stood out in sup-
port of your measures say to them: 'You see now what friends in Eng-
land you have depended upon. They separated you from your real
friends, while they hoped to ruin us by it; but since they cannot destroy
us without mixing you in the common carnage, your merits to them
will not now save you. You are to be starved indiscriminately with us.
You are treated in common with us as rebels, whether you rebel or not.
Your loyalty has ruined you. Rebellion alone, if resistance is rebellion,
can save you from famine and ruin.' When these things are Said to
them, what can they answer?"

The opposite view to that held by Fox and Burke did not suffer for
want of being boldly stated. A recent addition to the notabilities of
Parliament had been made in the person of Henry Dundas, now Lord
Advocate for Scotland, who very soon gave indication of those qualities
which were to win for him his considerable future and his unenviable
fame. He entered on his career in the House of Commons with the
advantage of having early in life played leading parts on a narrower
stage. He had been Solicitor-General in the Court of Session of Edin-
burgh at four and twenty; and had learned to debate, if he had learned
nothing else there for his profit, in the General Assembly of the Church
of Scotland. Tall and manly,— with a marked national accent of which,

8 The verse is quoted in Tyler's Literary History.

160

unlike Wedderburn, he had the good sense not to be ashamed, — his
look and bearing betokened indefatigable powers and a dominant na-
ture. His face showed evident marks of his having been a hearty fellow,
for which a convivial generation liked him none the less; especially
when they came to find that his speeches had other things about them
which were broad besides their Scotch.9 Those who followed him closely
might hope to carry away what passed for a good story after dinner, in
circles which were not fastidious. Dundas now took upon himself to
defend the ministerial proposal against the strictures of Charles Fox.
The measure, he said, was not sanguinary; and as for the famine which
was so pathetically lamented, his only fear was that the Act would fail
to produce it. Though prevented from fishing in the sea, the New
Englanders had fish in their rivers; and though their country was not
fit to grow wheat, they had a grain of their own, their Indian corn, on
which they could subsist full as well as they deserved.

Such was the man who, when he was twenty years older, and neither
more nor less unfeeling, had at his absolute disposal the liberties of
Scotland, and the lives and fortunes of all who loved those liberties too
ardently for their own safety. On the present occasion Dundas had
gone further in his self-revelation than was pleasing to a House of
Commons not yet accustomed to him and his ways. Lord John Caven-
dish, speaking amidst general sympathy, gravely rebuked the Minister
who had uttered sentiments which would have been shocking even in
the mouth of a parliamentary buffoon; and Burke followed up the
attack in plain vernacular suited to the character of the offence which
he was chastising. Nothing, he said, could be more foolish, more cruel,
and more insulting than to hold out as a resource to the starving fisher-
men, ship-builders, and ship-carpenters who would be ruined by the Act
that, after the plenty of the Ocean, they might poke in the brooks and
rake in the puddles, and diet on what Englishmen considered as husks
and draff for hogs. The friends of the Government who had been too
apt, as Horace Walpole said, to treat the Americans in the spirit of a
mob ducking a pickpocket, were ashamed at seeing their own worst
features distorted in that brazen mirror. The Lord Advocate in vain
attempted to extenuate, to explain, and, if possible, to excuse his con-

9 Omond's Lord Advocates of Scotland, chapter xiv. Boswell, who had his personal
jealousies, and his own political ambitions outside the Scotch Bar, was greatly exercised
when Dundas began to play a part in London. He called the new Minister "a coarse
dog." The specimen of Dundas's humour referred to by Mr. Omond, and reported in
the 20th volume of the Parliamentary History, is not so much coarse as revolting.

161

duct. Even the majority had had enough of him; and the only accept-
able sentence of his second speech was that in which he announced
that he should bow to the disposition of the House, and say no more.
It was time that an example should be made. Sandwich and Rigby
were the two Ministers whose words went for most, because it was
notorious that they ruled the Government. As if by concert ^ between
themselves, they now adopted a tone of forced and studied insolence
with reference to the colonists. One would think, Rigby said in the
House of Commons, that the Americans were otters and ate nothing
but fish. As to the notion, of which so much had been heard, that they
might find courage in despair, it was an idea thrown out to frighten
women and children. They had not amongst them the military prowess
of a militia drummer. The Earl of Sandwich descanted on the ^ same
t'heme in the House of Lords. What did it signify, he asked, if the
colonies abounded in men, so long as they were raw, undisciplined, and
cowardly? For his own part he wished that they would put into the
field not forty thousand, but two hundred thousand, so-called soldiers;
as the greater their numbers, the easier would be the conquest. And
then he proceeded to tell the peers an anecdote which he professed to
have got from Sir Peter Warren. He related at considerable length, and
with infinite gusto, how at the siege of Louisburg in 1745 the Amer-
icans had been placed in the front of the army; how they had shown
much elation at the honour which had been conferred upon them,
though they boasted that it was no more than their due; how they all
ran away when the first shot was fired; how Sir Peter then posted them
in the rear, and told them that it was the custom of generals to preserve
their best troops to the last, especially among the ancient Romans, who
were the only nation that ever resembled the Americans in courage and
patriotism.

The story was a lie, on the face of it. No man with a grain of knowl-
edge about military affairs would have believed it for a moment; and
no man of honour would have repeated it without believing it, even
if he were not a responsible Minister addressing Parliament. By putting
it into the mouth of a British Admiral, Sandwhich insulted not only
the Americans, but the honest and generous service over which he un-
worthily presided. The speech was a poor compliment to the gratitude,
or else to the information, of the peers; for it was known and acknowl-
edged that the land force employed in those operations which resulted
in the first capture of Louisburg had been levied in New England, and
162

had behaved to admiration.10 The Lords resented the language which
Sandwich had addressed to them. The Earl of Suffolk, Secretary of
State though he was, took his colleague of the Admiralty roundly to
task; and sixteen peers, in the Protest which they entered on the Jour-
nals, recorded their opinion that the topic so much insisted upon by a
lord high in office, namely, the cowardice of his Majesty's American
subjects, had no weight in itself as an argument for the bill, and was
not at all agreeable to the dignity of sentiment which ought to char-
acterise their House.

These taunts, directed against a people as high-mettled as our own,
and more acutely alive to what was said and thought about them, exer-
cised on the martial spirit of the colonists the same effect as Wedder-
burn's speech before the Privy Council had produced on their political
sensibilities. The records of America during the next two years indi-
cate on every page how many recruits of the choicest sort were impelled
into her armies by the determination that such a reproach should not
be justified. Her national literature throughout the next generation
proves that the memory rankled long after the veterans who survived
the war had gone back to the stack-yard and the counting-house. Un-
fortunately no one intervened in the debates who, with the authority
of personal experience, could testify to the real value of the colonial
militiamen. Those great soldiers who had served with them in the field
were in retirement or in the grave. Chatham, who owed them so large
a debt, was prevented by ill health from coming down to the House
of Lords in order to abash their detractors. From his sick-chamber he
wistfully and critically watched all that was passing, and he was not
left without his consolations. The Marquis of Granby, before he came
of age, had been returned as member for the University of Cambridge
for the sake of the hero whose noble portrait, as he stands by his

10 Parkman says in the first chapter of his Uontcalm and Wolfe: "New England had
borne the heaviest brunt of the preceding wars. Having no trained officers, and no
disciplined soldiers, and being too poor to maintain either, she borrowed her warriors
from the workshop and the plough, and officered them with lawyers, merchants, me-
chanics, and farmers. To compare them with good regular troops would be folly; but
they did, on the whole, better than could have been expected, and in the last war
achieved the brilliant success of the capture of Louisburg." The exploit, Parkman goes
on to say, was owing partly' to good luck, and partly to native hardihood.

Captain Mahan writes: "The most solid success, the capture of Cape Breton Island
in 1745, was achieved by the colonial forces of New England, to which indeed the royal
navy lent valuable aid, for to troops so situated the fleet is the one line of communica-
tion." Lord Stanhope, in his History, attributes the taking of Louisburg to the people
of New England. "For their commander they chose Mr. Pepperel, a private gentleman,
in whom courage and sagacity supplied the place of military skill.'*

163

charger, lights up the Great Combination Room of Trinity College
with life and colour. The son was resolved that, as far as he could
speak for his dead father, something should be heard even at second
hand from one who had learned to be a judge of courage amid scenes
very different from those with which the Bedfords were familiar. Break-
ing silence for the first time, he followed Rigby with a fine vindication
of the colonists, and a happily expressed tribute to the Minister who
had made use of their valour for the protection and enlargement of the
Empire. His reward was a letter dictated by Chatham, exquisite in
feeling, and containing words of praise which, coming from such a
quarter, would do more than volumes of good advice to turn a young
man into the right path.11

It may be observed with satisfaction that the chorus of calumny was
swelled by no one with soldierly antecedents, or with the making of a
soldier in him. Captain Acland, who was much too ready to inform
Parliament that he cordially disliked the people of Massachusetts, al-
ways spoke of their military qualities with decency and even with
respect. The time was not far distant when he learned the whole truth
about the fighting value of New Englanders. After the last of a succes-
sion of hot engagements, in all of which he had shown daring and skill,
he was picked up desperately wounded, well within the American lines.
And, while he was still a prisoner, his services to his country were cut
short in a duel with a brother officer who had sneered in his presence
at the military character of those colonists whom, brave as he was,
Acland knew to be no less brave than himself.

11 Chatham to Granby, April 7, 1775; from a draft in Lady Chatham's handwriting.

164

CHAPTER VI

HOSTILITIES BECOME IMMINENT.
LEXINGTON

jKjGBY had told the House of Commons that, if the Acts against
which Congress protested were repealed, the seat of the Empire would
henceforward be at Philadelphia; and he recommended gentlemen
ambitious of a career to transfer themselves to that capital, and enjoy
the honour of consorting with Dr. Franklin. For the great American
had now started on his way back across the ocean; though it was no
fault of Rigby that he was not still in London, and in very uncom-
fortable quarters. If by the publication of Hutchinson's letters Franklin
contributed to embroil the relations between England and the colonies,
he had abundantly expiated his own error, and had done his best to
redeem the errors of others. His existence during the last fourteen
months had been one long penance, which he endured manfully and
patiently because he was conscious that he, and he alone, possessed in
combination the knowledge, position, character, and capacity indis-
pensable to any one who aspired to bring the last faint chance of peace
to a successful issue. On the day after the scene in the Privy Council
Office he had been dismissed from his Postmastership; and of his own
accord he dispensed himself from all diplomatic ceremonies, keeping
aloof from levees, and abstaining from direct and ostensible intercourse
with Cabinet Ministers the most powerful among whom made no secret
of their opinion that the proper residence for him was the inside of
Newgate. Meanwhile his wife, to whom he had been happily married
forty-four years, and from whom he had been parted for ten, was dying
at home in Pennsylvania; and he never saw her again. But at no time
in his life was his society so eagerly courted by such eminent men, for
the promotion of such momentous objects. Chatham, (whom Franklin
had once found unapproachable, but who, as is the case with strong
and haughty but generous natures, had grown mild and mellow with

165

years,) secured him as a guest in Kent, called on him at his lodgings
in a street off the Strand, and took care to be seen paying him marked
attention in public. In the House of Lords the old statesman, with
characteristic ignorance of the non-essential, took Franklin to the space
before the throne, which is reserved for Privy Councillors and the eldest
sons of peers. On learning his mistake he limped back to the outer Bar,
and commended his friend to the care of the door-keepers in accents
which all might hear.

Lord Howe, now a Rear Admiral, who if hostilities broke out was
sure of an important command, honoured himself by an endeavour to
avert a war which could not fail to bring him wealth, however small
might be the opportunity for acquiring glory. He commissioned his
sister to challenge Franklin to a trial of skill at chess, and contrived to
be within call on an evening when the invitation had been accepted.1
Lord Howe, in the phrase of the day, opened himself freely to his new
acquaintance on the alarming situation of affairs, and put him into
communication with Lord Hyde, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lan-
caster; and Lord Hyde, as was well understood all round, meant Lord
Dartmouth. The Secretary for the Colonies would have given his salary,
many times told, to prevent bloodshed; though in the last resort he
could not induce himself to thwart, or even to contradict, a master to-
wards whom he entertained a true attachment, and who esteemed him
as he deserved. For George the Third was at his very best when ex-
changing ideas with Dartmouth for any other purpose than that of
harrying him into harrying the Americans. "If the first of duties," (so
the monarch wrote to the Minister in July, 1773,) "that to God, is not
known, I fear no other can be expected; and as to the fashionable word
'honour,1 that will never alone guide a man farther than to preserve
appearance. I will not add more; for I know I am writing to a true
believer; one who shows by his actions that he is not governed by the
greatest of tyrants, Fashion." Not long afterwards his Majesty asked
Dr. Beattie what he thought of Lord Dartmouth, and the author of the
Essay on Truth responded with effusion which bordered on the ful-
some. The King, who spoke and wrote a style greatly preferable to
that of some among his subjects who had most pleased the literary
taste of the hour, smiled and said: "Doctor Beattie, you are perfectly
right. I think precisely the same of him myself. He is certainly a most
excellent man."

1 Franklin's Account of Negotiations in London for effecting a Reconciliation between
Great Britain and the American Colonies.

166

An unofficial negotiation for settling the difficulties between Great
Britain and the colonies was set on foot forthwith. The details were
conducted by Franklin in concert with two of those Englishmen of the
middle class who, if a chance was given them, were able and willing
to employ upon the business of the nation the same diligence and
sagacity with which they had long managed their own. Mr. Barclay
was a well-known member of the Society of Friends, as likewise was
his colleague, Dr. Fothergill; a physician with a great London practice,
and a Natural Historian of remarkable distinction. Their deliberations
took shape in a document called by the modest name of a 'Taper of
Hints for Conversation." In truth it was the draft of a treaty which,
if it had been approved, signed, and ratified, would have had a merit
rare among the celebrated instruments in history; — that of terminating
a sharp and extended controversy rationally, equitably, permanently,
and without derogation to the self-esteem of either of the contracting
parties. A copy of the proposed Articles had been in Dartmouth's hands,
and he expressed himself about them hopefully and favourably in
private. On the first of February, 1775, Chatham presented to Parlia-
ment a bill for settling the troubles in America, and the Secretary for
the Colonies begged their Lordships not to kill the measure by an
immediate vote, but to let it lie on the table until it had received their
careful and respectful consideration. In his sincere desire to do his duty
according to the light of his own understanding, Dartmouth had for
a moment forgotten the terrors of the Bedfords. Sandwich, who sus-
pected that peace was in the crucible, knew only too well that prema-
ture publicity may be as discomforting to those who are planning good
as to those who are plotting evil. He chose his moment with a sinister
address worthy of the orator who turned the debate in the Second Book
of "Paradise Lost." Looking full and hard at Franklin, who was lean-
ing over the Bar, Sandwich exclaimed that he had in his eye the person
who drew up the proposals which were under discussion, — one of the
bitterest and most mischievous enemies whom England had ever
known. Chatham hastened to interpose the shield of his eloquence for
the protection of one who might not speak for himself within those
walls; but Franklin was not the quarry at whom Sandwich aimed.
The shaft had gone home to the breast towards which it was really
levelled. Dartmouth rose once more, and said that he could not press
a course which evidently was unacceptable to their Lordships, and that
he himself would give his voice for rejecting the bill forthwith.
The scheme of reconciliation, which promised so fairly, had received

167

its death-blow. Franklin, who was determined to leave no device un-
tried, offered to pay the East India Company for their tea on the secu-
rity of his private fortune, and (he might have added) at the risk of
his popularity among his own countrymen. Mr. Barclay on the other
hand, in his honest eagerness to save the irretrievable, hinted that, if
the representative of America would show himself sufficiently easy to
deal with, he might expect not only to be reinstated in the Postmaster-
ship which he had lost, but to get any place under Government that
he cared to ask for. Franklin, more offended than he chose to show,
replied that the only place the Ministry would willingly give him was
a place in a cart to Tyburn, but that he would do his utmost without
any other inducement than the wish to be serviceable. The proceedings
of the conference trickled on for a few weeks, and then ended in a
marsh; as must always be the case where the agents on either of the
two sides are not their own masters, but have those behind them^ who
intend the negotiations to fail* By the middle of March Dr. Fothergill
sadly admitted that the pretence of an accommodation was specious,
but altogether hollow; and that the great folks whom he was in the
habit of attending as patients had all along regarded the colonies as
nothing better than "a larger field on which to fatten a herd of worth-
less parasites." Some days afterwards Franklin sailed for Philadelphia,
and beguiled a protracted voyage by drawing up an account of the
doleful transactions on which he had been recently engaged, and by
the more profitable and congenial occupation of testing with his ther-
mometer the breadth and the direction of the Gulf Stream.

After a short interval he was followed across the Atlantic by emis-
saries the colour of whose coats showed that the day of grace was past.
The affairs of America were in a tangle which the King and his Min-
isters had neither the will nor the wit to unravel. The knot was now
for the sword to cut, and they looked around them for a man who had
the skill of his weapon* Clive, and his old chief Lawrence, had died
within the last few months. Granby had fought in the best British
fashion at the head of a British contingent as large as a formidable
army; and Wolfe had done miracles with smaller numbers. But they
both had gone, leaving nothing except their example. Albemarle too
was dead, who as general of the land forces in the West Indies had
shared with the navy in the undoubted honour and the vast profit
which accrued from the conquest of Havana. As an officer who had
been tried in a supreme command there remained Sir Jeffrey Amherst.
He had won his laurels in America, where he had gained the character
168

of a cautious and sound strategist. His name stood high among the colo-
nists, who had formed half of the very considerable body of troops
which he was careful to gather around him before he opened a cam-
paign; whom he had treated handsomely; and to whose co-operation
he gratefully attributed an ample portion of the credit of his victory.

The judgment of New Englanders on their rulers, when newspapers
were few and cautious, was to be found in their sermons, which never
flattered those whom the preacher and his hearers did not love. When
Montreal fell in the autumn of 1760, the pulpits rang with the praises
of "the intrepid, the serene, the successful Amherst." The pastor of
Brookfield, who had been a chaplain in a Massachusetts regiment, (and
American military chaplains generally contrived to smell whatever
powder was being burned,) after hailing the downfall of the Canadian
Babylon, broke out into praises of Amherst the renowned general,
worthy of that most honourable of all tides, the Christian hero; who
loved his enemies, and while he subdued them, made them happy.
Amherst had indeed endeavoured to infuse some chivalry and human-
ity into the rude and often horrible warfare of the backwoods; and
his severities, sharp enough on occasion, were necessitated by the hide-
ous cruelties which the Indian allies of France inflicted upon the farm-
ing population of the English border.

Amherst had proved himself a stout warrior elsewhere than in the
field. In the year 1768 he had been in collison with the King over a
matter about which neither was in the right; and the General had
come off with flying colours and abundance of spoil. A Court favourite
had been nominated to a post which Amherst held, but the work of
which he did not do. In his wrath he threw up all his functions and
appointments, and aroused such a commotion in the political and mili-
tary world that he had to be coaxed back at any sacrifice. He returned
to the official ranks stronger, and better endowed with public money,
than ever; and neither minister nor monarch ventured to disturb him
again. By January 1775 George the Third had reconsidered the favour-
able opinion which he had formed of General Gage, and now declared
him wanting in activity and decision. He proposed to confer upon
Amherst the command of the troops in America, together with a com-
mission to use his well-known influence and popularity among the
colonists for the purpose of inducing them to make their peace before
recourse was had to arms. Gage meanwhile, by an arrangement in
which the tax-payer was the last person thought of, was to continue
Governor of Massachusetts, and to draw his pay as Commander-in-

169 ,

Chief. George the Third undertook in person the task of appealing to
Amherst's loyalty, which he endeavoured further to stimulate by the
offer of a peerage. In the disagreeable and disastrous war which was
now at hand, tides were of use rather for the purpose of tempting men
into active service, than of rewarding them when they returned from
it. The veteran stated very plainly that he could not bring himself to
serve against the Americans, "to whom he had been so much obliged."
The King, with sincere regret, informed Dartmouth that Amherst
could not be persuaded. It only remained, he said, to do the next best;
to leave the command with Gage, and send to his assistance the ablest
generals that could be thought of.

The choice of those generals was not an act of favouritism. George
the Third, as long as he continued to transact public business, looked
closely into all high military appointments which involved grave mili-
tary responsibilities. His judgment was excellent save when as in the
case of the Duke of York it was misled by considerations of family
interest and of strong affection. Determined to have his armies well
commanded, he set aside his personal inclinations and overcame his
political prejudices. In time of peace and war alike, even when he was
told that the salvation of the country depended on it, no importunity
from a Cabinet which required strengthening could prevail on him to
employ a statesman whom he regarded as an opponent. And between
one war and another he was far from overlooking political considera-
tions in his treatment of the army and the navy. Whenever a veteran,
scarred with wounds and honoured throughout the whole service, ven-
tured to give a vote displeasing to the King, he was harshly received
at Court and ruthlessly deprived of the rewards which his valour had
earned. But when hostilities broke out, if a famous soldier or sailor
who had been wronged and slighted had any fight left in him, George
the Third did not fail to display what moralists class as the rarest form
of magnanimity, — that of overlooking the injuries which he himself
had inflicted.

Ingratitude during peace, alternating with a tardy recognition of
merit under the pressure of war, up to the very last marked George
the Third's dealings with great soldiers whose politics displeased him.
Sir John Moore complained that he was treated as a "bad subject" by
the King, for whom he had been wounded five times, and the disci-
pline and efficiency of whose army he had done more than any living
man to restore. At length, when he was wanted for the chief command
in Spain, George the Third "very graciously," and it must be owned
170

very frankly, said that a stop must be put to persecution, and that Sir
John Moore "must not be plagued any more." Lord Lynedoch had been
nothing but a Whig country gentleman till he was five and forty; and
a Whig country gentleman he remained until he died at ninety-five
with a military reputation second only to that o£ Wellington. He was
even worse used than his friend and patron Sir John Moore; for the
King angrily refused to give him army-rank. His Majesty quarrelled
even with Lord Melville when that statesman protested against the
treatment to which so distinguished an officer was exposed, and was
quite prepared to quarrel over the same matter with Pitt. After Cor-
unna, when such a sword as Graham's could not be suffered to remain
idle, he at length received his due, and was sent as Wellington's right-
hand man to the Peninsula, where he won Barossa and helped to win
Vittoria.2

Chief among the three Major-Generals selected to serve in America
in the spring of 1775 was William Howe, brother of the Admiral and
of the Lord Howe who fell at Ticonderoga in the year 1758. That
nobleman, who was an Irish viscount, had been member for Notting-
ham. When the news of his death reached England, his mother in
pathetic terms urged the people of the city which her son had repre-
sented to replace him by his younger brother, who himself was then
at the front with his regiment. So William Howe was nominated and
chosen, and had sat for Nottingham ever since. At the general election
of 1774 he told his constituents that the whole British army together
would not be numerous enough to conquer America, and assured them
that, if he were offered a command against the colonists, he would not
scruple to refuse it. The King, who knew him as a splendid officer, the
discipline of whose battalion had been a model, and whose gallantry
was a proverb, was himself courageous enough to take the risk of a
rebuff. When invited to sail for America, Howe inquired whether he
was to consider the message as a request or an order; and on being
informed that it was an order he obeyed it. He came back before the
end of the Parliament, with a reputation for every military quality,
except that of coolness under fire, sadly impaired, — to find at the next
election that the freemen of Nottingham had good memories, and a
different view of his personal obligations from that which he himself
had held.

The next of the three was John Burgoyne. He had gone through the
usual experiences of a distinguished military man who was likewise a

2 Delavoye's Life of Lord Lynedoch, pp, 249, 250, 262, 269.

171

politician. He had been thanked in his seat in Parliament; he had
received the governorship of a fortress in marked and special recogni-
tion of his brilliant valour; and he had been the subject of a letter in
which the King told the Prime Minister that, if Colonel Burgoyne had
not been prudent enough to vote for the Royal Marriage Bill, his
Majesty would certainly have taken that governorship away. Burgoyne's
sentiments towards the colonists were friendly, but his view of the legal
and constitutional aspect of the controversy was not favourable to their
claims. He agreed to serve against them without compunction, though
he missed that sense of exhilaration which he had hitherto felt when-
ever he had gone to meet the enemy. He confessed his lack of enthu-
siasm to his Sovereign in a letter not unbecoming a soldier, but too
long and too laboured, like all which Burgoyne ever wrote even under
circumstances calculated to prune and chasten the most copious and
flowery style.

The third Major-General was Henry Clinton, who had learned his
trade under Prince Ferdinand during the Seven Years' War, and who
now was member for Newark and a supporter of the Ministry. The
dash and dexterity with which these officers, one and all, had seized
their opportunities, in America, in Portugal, or in Germany, fully jus-
tified the King :n his hope that they would be equal to larger enter-
prises; and the public opinion of the army confirmed his choice. The
connection between war and politics, in the aristocratic England of
four generations ago, was not less close than in the great days of an-
cient Rome. Then the scion of a consular family courted the suffrages
of the people in order that he might go forth to command their le-
gions, and returned to the senate from Spain, or Gaul, or Pontus, to be
congratulated if he had triumphed, or to defend himself in case things
had gone badly with him in the field. The three Major-Generals were
all members of Parliament, and all remained members while year
after year they were campaigning and administrating thousands of
miles away from Westminster. After the frightful miscarriages which
befell them personally, or which had taken place under their auspices,
they all resumed their seats on their accustomed bench in the House
of Commons as naturally and quietly as if they had come back from
a week of partridge shooting.

The expedient adopted was singularly unfortunate. If any one of

the three had been invested with the command in chief, he would for

the sake of his own reputation have applied to the War Office for as

many regiments as could be spared from home duties; and, being on

172

the spot, he would have made his representations felt. But no Ministry
will press upon an absent general larger means and appliances than
those which he insists on having. Gage was the author of the pleasant
theory that the military side of the difficulty would prove to be a very
small matter. He now had begun to be alarmed, and wrote in vague
terms about the necessity of being provided with "a very respectable
force." But during his recent visit to England, speaking as a soldier
who knew the colonies and who was responsible for keeping them,
he had set going a notion that the Americans were unwarlike as a
community, and pusillanimous as individuals. That agreeable and
convenient idea had been eagerly caught up by the noisiest members of
the Government, and had been employed by them in public as an
argument against those who condemned their policy as hazardous.
They had assured Parliament that a course of coercion would be ef-
fective, safe, and the very reverse of costly; and this they had done on
Gage's authority. He had named a limited number of additional bat-
talions as the outside which he would require in order to complete the
business; and those battalions he should have, and not, a musket more.
The reinforcements which accompanied Howe and Burgoyne across
the sea brought up the garrison at Boston to ten thousand men. It was
an army powerful enough to inspire all the colonies with alarm for
their independence, and so burdensome as to irritate Massachusetts be-
yond endurance. But it was utterly inadequate to the task of holding
down New England, and ludicrously insufficient for the enterprise of
conquering, and afterwards controlling, America. When the war had
endured a twelvemonth David Hume, — who had lived through a very
great period of our history, and had written almost all the rest of it,
—pronounced that the show of statesmen in power, and generals and
admirals in command, had up to that point been the poorest ever
known in the annals of the country. Of those generals Gage was the
first, and perhaps the worst; and in his combined quality of civil ad-
ministrator, military leader, and above all of adviser to the Govern-
ment in London, he played, for a very small man, a material and
prominent part in the preparation of an immense catastrophe.

A Governor who was bound by statute to destroy the liberties of his
province, and ruin the prosperity of its capital, had a very narrow mar-
gin within which he could display himself as a beneficent ruler. But
there were two ways of discharging even such a commission. Obliged
to punish, Gage should have avoided the appearance of enjoying the
work on which he was employed unless he was prepared to abandon

173

the hope of ultimately playing the peacemaker; and that function was
one among the many which he was called upon to fulfil. He had been
confidentially instructed by the King to "insinuate to New York and
such other colonies as were not guided by the madness of the times,"
proposals which might entice them back to due obedience, without
putting "the dagger to their throats." 3 The General had already tried
his hand at pacification. In October 1774 he wrote to the President of
the Congress at Philadelphia congratulating him on his endeavours
after a cordial reconciliation with the mother-country, and promising
his own services as a mediator.4 He might have spared his fine phrases;
for he was the last man whose arbitration or intervention would have
been accepted by any New Englander endowed with a grain of local
patriotism. By making public reference to a hackneyed and offensive
taunt he had done that which private persons seldom forgive, and
communities never. To be called a saint by the unsaint-like is a form
of canonisation which nowhere is held to be a compliment; and just
now there was something too much of it in Boston. "The inhabitants
of this colony," wrote an officer, "with the most austere show of devo-
tion are void of every principle of religion or common honesty, and
reckoned the most arrant cheats and hypocrites in America." That
was the creed of the barracks; and Gage paid it the homage of a joke
such as a parcel of subalterns might have concocted after mess, and
been ashamed of long before the eldest of them had got his company.
When Massachusetts, threatened in her liberties and her commerce,
bowed her head, (though not in fear,) and set aside a day for prayer
and fasting, he inflicted a deliberate and official insult on the people
whom he governed by issuing a proclamation against Hypocrisy. Hav-
ing thus paralysed for ever and a day his power of acting as an in-
tercessor between the Crown and the colony, he informed the Cabinet
that, public feeling in America being what it was, the penal Acts
could not be enforced, and had much better be suspended.

Such a recommendation from the very man whose sanguine as-
surances had decoyed the Government into what he himself now con-
fessed to be a Slough of Despond, was described by the King with
pardonable impatience as "the most absurd course that could possibly
be suggested." But whatever might be the quarter whence it emanated,
the advice came on the top of tidings which foretokened that a river
of blood would be set flowing unless it was acted upon without delay.

3 George the Third to Dartmouth: Jan. 31, 1775.

4 Historical Manuscripts Commission. Fourteenth Report, Appendix, Part X.

174

The cannon and stores of the Massachusetts Militia were kept at and
near Cambridge. Gage now learned the ominous circumstance that the
several townships of the province had begun quietly to withdraw their
share of the ammunition. On the first of September 1774 before sun-
rise, he despatched an expedition from Boston, by road and river,
which took possession of a couple of field pieces and two hundred and
fifty kegs of powder, and lodged them securely behind the ramparts of
the Castle, The performance was smart, and the most was made of
it, not so much by the vanity of the author as by the apprehensions
of those against whom it had been projected. The truth was spread all
over Middlesex county in a few hours. It ran through the New Eng-
land colonies with the speed and the growing dimensions of a rumour;
and, by the time it got to New York and Philadelphia, good patriots
professed to know for certain that a British man-of-war had fired on
the people and had killed six of them at the first shot. In some such
shape the news reached London; and all the friends and all the foes
of America believed that Gage had made good his boasts and his
promises, and that the colonists, at the first glint of a bayonet, had
indeed proved themselves such as Rigby and Sandwich had represented
them,

Charles Fox expressed his thoughts to Edmund Burke in a letter
which has been quoted ere now in condemnation of them both, but
which proves nothing worse than that the patriotism of the two states-
men embraced their fellow-countrymen on both sides of the Atlantic.
"Though your opinions," Fox wrote, "have turned out to be but too
true, I am sure you will be far enough from triumphing in your fore-
sight. What a melancholy consideration for all thinking men that no
people, animated by what principle soever, can make a successful re-
sistance to military discipline! I do not know that I was ever so
affected with any public event, either in history or life. The introduc-
tion of great standing armies into Europe has then made all mankind
irrevocably slaves!" The consideration which most depressed him was
"the sad figure which men made against soldiers" Fox's remarks, how-
ever, were based on a curious and total misapprehension of the facts.
As fast as the report of the seizure of the powder travelled up and
down the coast and among the inland villages, the neighbours flocked
to each centre of resort, and remained together throughout the night.
Next morning many thousand people converged on Cambridge. They
arrived with sticks and without fire-arms; as citizens, and not as mili-
tia; under the command of a Selectman of their township or a member

175

of their Committee of Correspondence. The General had taken a step
implying war; and they, as civilians, had come for the grave purpose
of doing that which meant revolution. Oliver, the Lieutenant-Governor
of the province, who resided at Cambridge, had gone into Boston for
the purpose of entreating Gage to keep his troops within their bar-
racks. The distance to and fro between the two towns was only what
a sophomore of Harvard College .would cover for his daily exercise
between lecture and chapel. But Oliver who knew his countrymen
as one who feared them, and Joseph Warren as one who loved and led
them, were agreed in their opinion that, if a detachment marched, it
would never find its way back to Boston.

It was Oliver whom the people sought, and they waited with full
knowledge of the purpose for which they wanted him. They kept their
hand in during his absence by taking pledges of renunciation of office
from a High Sheriff, and two Mandamus Councillors. When the Lieu-
tenant-Governor came back with what he intended to be the welcome
announcement that no armed force was on the road from Boston, they
requested him formally to resign his post; and after some gasconading
on his part, which they endured very stolidly, he acceded to their
desire. Then, standing closely packed beneath the rays of the hottest
sun which had shone during that summer, they began like true Amer-
icans to pass Resolutions; acknowledging that Gage, when he removed
the powder, had not violated the constitution; and voting unanimously
their abhorrence of mobs and riots, and of the destruction of private
property. The British General in anxious self-defence wrote to the
Ministry at home that they were no town rabble, but the freeholders
and farmers of the county. Guided by their own good sense, and by
the advisers on whom they had been accustomed to rely in the ordinary
transaction of civil business, they exhibited a firmness combined with
moderation which reassured those who, with Charles Fox, expected
little from the behaviour of men when placed in opposition to soldiers.
Soldiers, however, within a few days, and not many hours, they might
have had in abundance; for the contingents from the more distant
regions, where the alarm was greater and the exasperation not less,
came armed and in martial array. Israel Putnam, his deeper feelings
touched to the quick by the loss of the material for so many good
cartridges, took upon himself to call out the militia of Connecticut,
and sent the fiery cross far and wide over the continent. Twenty thou-
sand musketeers were already on foot, with their faces towards the
mouth of the Charles River, when they were turned back by expresses
I76

from Boston bearing the intelligence that for the present everything
was well over. Putnam, proud of the result, if only half pleased at the
ease with which it had been attained, replied by an assurance that, but
for the counter orders, double the force would have been on the move
in another twenty-four hours. And he took the opportunity of giving
the people of Massachusetts an admonition, (the more mundane part
of which he evidently thought that they needed,) to put their trust in
God and mind to keep their powder safe.5

The Boston patriots were never again caught napping; and they
very soon commenced a system of reprisals, or rather of depredations
on their own property, which kept both the garrison and the squadron
awake. One night, within hearing of the nearest man-of-war, if only
the officer of the watch had known what they were about, they with-
drew the cannon from a battery at Charlestown, which commanded the
entrance of the inner harbour. Another night they removed four pieces
which were stored in the neighbourhood of the Common. Their au-
dacity and ubiquity were so bewildering that Admiral Graves, who
now was conducting the blockade, could think of no better expedient
than that of spiking the guns which, from the North point of the city,
bore upon the roadstead where his ships were lying. At other seaports,
to which the royal navy was only an occasional visitor, the inhabitants
were still more free to act; and in laying hands on what belonged to
their colony they felt that they had on their side the moral law, or at
any rate as much of it as sufficed for their simple needs. At Portsmouth
in New Hampshire the Sons of Liberty entered the fort in broad day-
light, to the sound of music. Disregarding the remonstrances of half
a dozen invalids who were quartered in the precincts, they carried off
sixteen cannon and a hundred barrels of powder with which to load
them.

Outside the glacis of the earthworks which General Gage in hot
haste was now constructing across Boston Neck, British rule was
dead. The condition of New England then, and throughout the winter,
has no parallel in history. Elsewhere provinces and nations, while in
open and declared revolt against their former rulers, have -been under
the control of an organised and established government of their own.
But by the end of the year 1774, throughout the northern colonies, the
old machinery of administration had ceased to work, and it had not

5 "We much desire you to keep a strict guard over the remainder of your powder;
for that must be the great means, under God, of the salvation of our country."

177

been replaced by new. Elsewhere, as in provincial France after the
fall of the Bastille, and in rural Ireland more than once in the course
of more than one century, the written law lost its terrors and was not
obeyed;, But in New England, though the tribunals were void and
sllent/crime was repressed and private rights were secure, because the
people were a law to themselves. It was as if in a quiet English county
there were no assizes, no quarter and petty sessions, and no official
personage above the rank of a parish overseer. The Selectmen of the
townships were the most exalted functionaries who continued to per-
form their dudes. Power rested in each locality with the Committees of
Correspondence; and the central authority was the revolutionary con-
vention, or (as it called itself) the Congress, of the colony.

In Massachusetts that Congress had even less than a legal title; tot
it sate, deliberated, and even existed in defiance of the constitution.
Gage had appointed the Assembly to meet at Salem at the commence-
ment of October; but before that date arrived he thought better of it,
and issued a proclamation declining to be present as Governor, and dis-
charging the elected representatives from the obligation of attendance.
The document was unusual in form, but perfectly clear in meaning. If
the members of the Assembly took the course enjoined upon them, all
hope of continuing the struggle was over, and they would have noth-
ing to do except to sit by their firesides with hands folded till their fate
overtook them. True indeed it was that the Congress of all the prov-
inces was still in session at the capital of Pennsylvania; but the popular
leaders of Massachusetts would look in vain to that quarter for pro-
tection. It was a far cry to Philadelphia, and the danger was knocking
at their own door. The Continental Congress was nothing more than
an aggregation of delegates, provided only with general instructions,
of varying fulness and tenor, from the colonies by which they were
severally commissioned. Those delegates in their corporate capacity
were not inclined to usurp executive functions; and they did not as
yet think fit to go beyond the stage of presenting to the world, in a
precise and forcible shape, the case against the British Government.
To make good that case by arms,— and to arms it was plain that the
decision must speedily come,— it was essential that there should be an
authority furnished with powers which, whether constitutional or not,
were recognised and respected by the people in whose name they
were exercised; an authority planted on the scene of action, and in-
spired by that sort of unanimity and energy which actuates men who
know that, if they do not pursue their forward march together and

178

to the end, they have already gone much too far for their personal
safety.

The Massachusetts Assembly met. After waiting two days for the
Governor who never came, the members constituted themselves into a
Congress and adjourned from Salem to the more remote and inac-
cessible retreat of Concord. Hebrew or English, the names of the two
places had little in common with the mood in which these men set
forth upon their up-country journey.6 True to their national origin,
they took some pains to define their constitutional position, and to de-
fend it by adducing precedents and quoting charters. But they had
attention to spare for more pressing business. They commenced by
ordering "that all the matters that come before the Congress be kept
secret, and be not disclosed to any but the members thereof until fur-
ther order of this body." Then, on the twenty-fourth of October, they
appointed a Committee to consider the proper time for laying in war-
like stores; and on the same day the Committee reported that the
proper time was now. And therefore without delay they voted the
purchase of twenty field pieces and four mortars; twenty tons of grape
and round-shot; five thousand muskets and bayonets, and seventy-five
thousand flints. They made an agreement to pay no more taxes into
the royal Treasury. They arranged a system of assessment for the pur-
poses of provincial defence, and made a first appropriation of ninety
thousand dollars. They then proceeded to elect by ballot three gen-
erals. They appointed a Committee of Public Safety, of which John
Hancock was the most notable and Joseph Warren the most active
member. They invested that Committee with authority to call out the
militia, every fourth man of whom was expected to hold himself ready
to march at a minute's notice;— a condition of service that suggested
the name of Minute-men by which the earlier soldiers of the Revolu-
tion were called. And, having done the best they knew, they adjourned
until the fourth Wednesday in November; by which time the Commit-
tee of Public Safety, disbursing their funds thriftily, had bought, in
addition to the prescribed amount of ordnance, three hundred and
fifty spades and pickaxes, a thousand wooden mess-bowls, and some
pease and flour. That was their stock of material wherewith to fight
the empire which recently, with hardly any sense of distress, had
maintained a long war against France and Spain, and had left them
humbled and half ruined at the end of it.

Whether on a large or small scale, the irrevocable step was taken.

6 "Being King of Salem, which is, King of Peace." — Hebrews vii. 2.

179

The Massachusetts congressmen were fully aware that, with the first
dollar which passed into the coffers of their own Receiver-General,
the game of armed resistance had begun, and nothing remained ex-
cept to play it out. Men in power had called them rebels rudely and
prematurely; and rebels they now were in fierce earnest. In a series
of Resolutions every one of which the most indulgent Attorney-Gen-
eral, without thinking twice about it, would pronounce to be flat trea-
son, they gave consistence and direction to the seething excitement of
the province. They recommended to the inhabitants of the several
towns and districts that any person who supplied intrenching tools,
boards for gun platforms, or draught oxen and horses, to the troops
in Boston, ought to be deemed an inveterate enemy to America and
held in the highest detestation. The methods of expressing that de-
testation they left, as they safely might, to local effort and initiative;
for ten years of almost unintermittent agitation had perfected New
Englanders in the science of making themselves unpleasant to those
whom they regarded as bad friends of the cause. They most solemnly
exhorted "the Militia in general, as well as the detached part of it
in Minute-men, in obedience to the great law of self-preservation," to
spare neither trouble nor expense over the task of perfecting themselves
in their exercises. And in April 1775, taking more upon them as time
went on and perils thickened, they framed and issued a paper of Rules
and Regulations for the Massachusetts army. They were not afraid to
notify that whatever officer or soldier shamefully abandoned a post
committed to his charge, or induced others to do the like when under
fire, should suffer death immediately. Nor were they ashamed to lay
down what, according to the tradition of their colony, was the right
preparation for that frame of mind in which homely and half-trained
men may best meet the stress of danger. All officers and soldiers who,
not having just impediment, failed diligently to frequent divine service
and to behave decently and reverently when present at it, were to be
fined for the benefit of sick poor comrades. The same penalty was im-
posed upon any who were guilty of profane cursing and swearing.

Their statement of the circumstances on which they grounded the
necessity for tightening the bonds of military discipline differed widely
from the preamble of the Mutiny Act which annually was placed on
the Statute-book at Westminster. That statement consisted in an out-
spoken vindication ,of religious and political convictions, ennobled
and elevated by the pride of ancestry. "Whereas the lust of power,"
such was the wording of the recital, "which of old persecuted and
180

exiled our pious and virtuous ancestors from their fair possessions in
Britain, now pursues with tenfold severity their guiltless children; and
being deeply impressed with a sense of the almost incredible fatigues
and hardships our venerable progenitors encountered, who fled from
oppression for the sake of civil and religious liberty for themselves and
their offspring; and having seriously considered the duty we owe to
God, to the memory of such invincible worthies, to the King, to Great
Britain, our country, ourselves, and our posterity, we do think it our
indispensable duty to recover, maintain, defend, and preserve the free
exercise of all those rights and liberties for which many of our fore-
fathers bled and died. And whereas we are frequently told by the tools
of the Administration that Great Britain will not relax in her measures
until we acknowledge her right of making laws binding upon us in all
cases whatever, and that if we persist in our denial of her claim the
dispute must be decided by arms, in which it is said we shall have no
chance, being undisciplined, cowards, disobedient, impatient of con-
trol;"—and so the passage continued to run in phrases clearly showing
that its authors had got hold of some sentences which EngKsh minis-
ters had recently spoken in Parliament, and were putting their dis-
covery to a telling but most justifiable use.

Having invested themselves with the responsibility of dictating the
policy of the colony, and the equipping it for self-defence, the repre-
sentatives of Massachusetts remained together either at Cambridge or
at Concord, (as the chance of interruption by the armed hand of
authority was less or more present to their minds,) through the rigours
of a New England winter. In consideration of the coldness of the
season, and that the Congress met in a room without a fire, it was
resolved that the members who inclined thereto might keep on their
hats. Resembling in that respect, but in few others, the British House
of Commons, they sate almost continuously; although they adjourned
for some days in order to observe a Thanksgiving appointed in
acknowledgment of the special protection which Heaven had extended
to the colony of Massachusetts. Determined to be thankful, they de-
tected a mark of Divine favour in the unanimity with which their
province had faced the crisis. By their fervent recognition of a blessing
that, after all, was mainly due to themselves, they gave Providence,
on the eve of a doubtful war, a significant indication of the gratitude
which they were prepared to feel for such greater mercies as it might
have in store for them,

181

These proceedings, whatever figure they might eventually make in
history, were not of a nature to be contemplated with equanimity by
the British garrison. Our troops had hitherto behaved on the whole
quite as well as could be expected from men who were planted down
in such a place for such a purpose. But, by the time the winter was
over, their patience had reached its limit. In the first week of March
the townspeople assembled to hear the annual address in celebration
of the event which was popularly known as the Boston Massacre. The
scene had been described by an eye-witness, whose point of view is
not disguised by his narrative. "In the pulpit were Warren, the orator
of the day, Hancock, Adams,7 Church, and others. Some of the gen-
tlemen of the army had placed themselves on the top of the pulpit
stairs. Officers frequently interrupted Warren by laughing loudly at the
most ludicrous parts, and coughing and hemming at the most sedi-
tious, to the great discontent of the devoted citizens. The oration how-
ever was finished, and it was moved by Adams that an orator should
be named for the ensuing fifth of March, to commemorate the bloody
and horrid massacre perpetrated by a party of soldiers under the com-
mand of Captain Preston. At this the officers could no longer contain
themselves, but called Tie! Shame!' and Tie! Shame!' was echoed by
all the Navy and Military in the place. This caused a violent confusion,
and in an instant the windows were thrown open and the affrighted
Yankees jumped out by fifties."

The ludicrous parts of Warren's speech were, it may be presumed,
his references to the Bible; and the promise (which he kept) to give
his life in case his life was wanted. And, as a matter of fact, they
were women who escaped by the windows.8 In the spring of 1775 it
took something more than a loud noise to make New England men
leave a spot where their duty called on them to stay. The commotion
grew from bad to worse until an officer, "dressed in gold lace regi-
mentals, with blue lapels," thought fit to put a gross affront upon the

7 This was Samuel Adams. John Adams in a former year declined to take the principal
part in the ceremony, on the ground that he had acted as Captain Preston's advocate.
"Though the subject of the Oration," he said, "was compatible with the verdict of the
Jury, and indeed even with the absolute innocence of the soldiers, yet I found the
world in general were not capable or not willing to make the distinction; and therefore
I should only expose myself to the lash of ignorant and malicious tongues on both
sides of the question." In 1774 he attended the meeting, and heard with admiration
John Hancock, who might be trusted not to fall below the topmost altitude of the
occasion; and he would most certainly have agreed with every syllable which in 1775
came from the lips of Warren.

8 American Archives: March 8, 1775.

182

Chairman o£ the meeting. In the course of the next fortnight the army
broke loose from restraint, or rather from self-restraint; for those who
ought to have kept others in order were the prime actors in every suc-
cessive manifestation of partisanship. The day of prayer and fasting or-
dained by Congress for the whole colony was observed with marked
solemnity in the churches of Boston. On that day the members of a
corps, which was bent on deserving its tide of The King's Own,
pitched two "marquee tents" within ten yards of the chapel at the
West End of the city, and played their drums and fifes as long as the
service lasted, while their Colonel looked approvingly on. Real or
reputed patriots of all grades in society became the objects of insult
and, where a plausible excuse could be found, of personal violence. A
party of officers broke Hancock's windows, and hacked the railing in
front of it with their swords. A country fellow who had been tempted
(or, as his friends asserted, entrapped) into buying a gun from a sol-
dier, was tarred and feathered in the guardhouse of the regiment and
paraded about the streets on a truck, escorted by a crowd of all ranks
from the commanding officer downwards, and preceded by a band
playing "Yankee Doodle."

Those strains were not agreeable hearing for the crowd before whose
pinched and anxious faces the procession passed. In and about the
town there was plenty of employment to be had which would have
kept Boston children plump, and Boston cottages warm and garnished.
But for six months past all the mechanics had struck work on the
Barracks, and the roughest labourer refused to turn a sod at the fortifi-
cations. They hung outside the shops where bricklayers and carpenters,
fetched from Nova Scotia, or (a reflection more bitter still) even from
New York, were freely spending the excellent wages which in such a
strait the Government was only too glad to pay. They stood in line at
the doors of the Donation Committee, waiting for their allowance of
meal, and rice, and salt fish, the further supply of which was at that
very moment in the act of being cut off by the legislation of the Brit-
ish Parliament. They took their turn of labour on municipal industries
extemporised under the superintendence of the Selectmen, and paid
for out of the savings of that middle-class which, as the artisans had
the good sense to foresee and the neighbourly feeling to regret, would
soon be as poor as themselves.

It was a cheerless season; but for those who looked in the right
quarter there still were smiling visages to be seen. "My spirits were
very good," a lady said, "until one Saturday riding into town I found

183

the Neck beset with soldiers; the cannon hoisted; and many Tories on
the Neck, and many more going up to see the encampment with the
greatest pleasure in their countenances, which gave a damp that I had
not before felt." The inner thoughts of these people may be read in a
letter from Dr. Samuel Peters, of Hebron in Connecticut. That divine
had taken sanctuary in Boston after having been rabbled at home by
fellow-townsmen whom he had sorely provoked, if any provocation
could excuse outrage. "I am in high spirits," he wrote. "Six regiments
are now coming from England, and sundry men-of-war. So soon as they
come, hanging work will go on, and destruction will first attend the
seaport towns. The lintel sprinkled on the side-posts will preserve the
faithful." Years afterwards, when Peters had long been resident in
England, his old parishioners learned with interest that the style of
preaching which had given displeasure at Hebron was too strong
meat even for a congregation of Londoners. A brother exile, who
heard Peters deliver a sermon in an English metropolitan pulpit, said
that "it was hard to conceive how he got there." 9

On week-days, when the Episcopal churches were closed, the Bos-
ton Tories could draw comfort from the periodical effusions of a vigor-
ous writer, the style of whose prophecies and invectives proved that
neither side in the great American controversy had a monopoly of
grandiloquence. According to "Massachusettensis," the Boston Com-
mittee of Correspondence was the foulest, subtlest, and most venomous
thing that had ever issued from the eggs of the serpent of sedition;—
a knot of demagogues, who did for their dupes no more solid service
than that of inducing them to swallow a chimera for breakfast. The
point of the observation was all the sharper at a time when the families
of citizens who followed Hancock and Warren were in a fair way to
have very little indeed that was more substantial for breakfast, dinner,
or supper either. Such was the condition of mutual charity and good-
will to which George the Third had reduced the inhabitants of a colony
into whose local elections, at a date as recent as ten years before, the
element of political partisanship had not even entered. 1766 was the
first year in which die Selectmen of even so considerable a place as
Braintree were chosen for their politics. The waters of strife had then
been first stirred by a violent Tory sermon. On the next Sunday a
Whig clergyman replied by preaching from the text, "Render unto
Caesar the things that are Caesar's"; from which things he specially
excepted the price of stamps bearing Caesar's head.

9 Sabine*s Loyalists, vol. ii.

184

The royalists in Boston, as they watched the reviews on the Com-
mon, and listened to the professional opinions which were freely de-
livered around them, never doubted of a rapid and triumphant issue.
Reinforcements continued to arrive from England, and a large body
of marines was landed from the squadron. By the end of die year
there were eleven battalions in garrison; weak, for the most part, in
numbers; but well-housed, splendidly equipped, and brimming over
with confidence. The British offcers set a high value on the fighting
quality of their own men, which indeed it was not easy to over-rate.
But the estimation in which they held the colonists was not creditable
to their habits of observation or to their knowledge of military history,
and said very little indeed for the worth of oral military tradition. "As
to what you hear of their taking arms, it is mere bullying, and will go
no further than words. Whenever it comes to blows, he that can run
fastest will think himself best off. Any two regiments here ought to be
decimated if they did not beat in the field the whole force of the
Massachusetts province; for though they are numerous, they are but a
mere mob without order or discipline, and very awkward in handling
their arms."

That was the view of the regimental officers, who were unaware of
the fact that colonists, so far from being awkward with their weapons,
were as a rule marksmen before they became soldiers. The familiar
conversation of the staff, which ought to have been better informed,
was in the same strain. The Quartermaster-General wrote home that
Congress had appointed three scoundrels to command the militia. It
was the very reverse of the real case. The first commanders of the
American forces had indeed, as always happens at the commencement
of a civil war, the defects of leaders chosen on account of exploits per-
formed many years before; but they were of blameless and even rigid
character. In the days of their early renown, they had gone forth
against the power of France in the stern conviction that they them-
selves were the champions of Protestantism. Seth Pomeroy, a good
man, but no better than his colleagues, had seen the hardest service of
the three. In September 1755 he was colonel of a Massachusetts regi-
ment at the action of Lake George, fought by a colonial officer at the
head of sixteen or seventeen hundred rustics, very few of whom had
been under fire before, against an army largely composed of regulars.
The general of the French, in the lightness of his heart, encouraged
his soldiers with the assurance that American Militiamen were the
worst troops on the face of the earth. After the battle, a prisoner with

three bullets in him, he pronounced that in the morning the New
Englanders had fought like good boys, at noon like men, and in the
afternoon like devils; and at all times of the day their aim was such
that their adversaries "dropped like pigeons." Pomeroy, who was em-
ployed to bury the slain, took measures to preserve the French dead
from the indignities of the Indian scalping-knife. He had lost a brother
in the battle. "Dear Sister/' he wrote, "this brings heavy tidings: but
let not your heart sink at the news, though it be your loss of a dear
husband. Monday was a memorable day; and truly you may say, had
not the Lord been on our side, we must all have been swallowed up/'
It was not the letter of a scoundrel.10 But the deeds of the colonists in
former battles, though well remembered in Paris, were forgotten at
British mess-tables. In all ranks of our army there unhappily prevailed
that contempt of the enemy before the event which is the only bad
omen in war; — quite another sentiment from the invaluable conscious-
ness of superiority arising from the experience of victory.

The latest comers had some excuse for their ignorance of the coun-
try; for between them and the outer world an impenetrable veil was
spread. Inside Boston there was little to be learned. Whenever a scarlet
coat was in the company, Whigs kept their own counsel; and Tories
spoke only pleasant things which, human nature being what it was,
they had honestly taught themselves to believe. Beyond the fortifica-
tons, over a breadth of many score of miles, lay a zone of peril and
mystery. Officers could not venture to leave the precincts of the gar-
rison unless they were accompanied by a strong force in military array;
and in the case even of such a force its reception depended upon the
character of its errand. When the General was contented to march his
people out in order to march them back again, — without attempting to
impound military stores or arrest political leaders, — the expedition en-
countered nothing more formidable than black looks and closed shut-
ters. In January 1775 a party of infantry proceeded to Marshfield, with
the object of protecting the formation of a Loyal Militia, and took them
fire-arms in greater numbers than there were loyalists in the neigh-
bourhood to carry them. The troops preserved exact discipline. They
molested no one, and no one molested them. As long as they stayed
in the town, (so a Government newspaper in New York boasted,)
every faithful subject there residing dared freely to utter his thoughts
and drink his tea. But when they left Marshfield, and returned to Bos-
ton, the Loyal Militia disappeared from history, and General Gage

10Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe, vol. i.} chapter 9.

186

would have felt more easy if he had been certain that their muskets had
disappeared with them.

A month afterwards Colonel Leslie sailed to Marblehead, for the
purpose of seizing some artillery which the provincials had deposited
at Salem as a place of comparative security. He landed his detachment
successfully on a Sunday morning; but, when the alarm reached the
nearest meeting-house, the congregation turned out and took up a posi-
tion upon some water which barred his route. They refused to lower
the draw-bridge, on the plea that there was no public right of way
across it; and, when Leslie attempted to lay hands on a couple of
barges, the owners proceeded to scuttle them. The soldiers drew their
bayonets, and inflicted some wounds not so wide as the church-door
from which the patriots had issued, and only just deep enough to allow
Salem to claim the honour of the first drops of blood which were shed
in the Revolution. A loyalist clergyman intervened. The people agreed
to lower the bridge, and Leslie pledged his honour not to advance
thirty rods beyond it. Brave to imprudence when duty as well as
danger lay clear before him, he was not prepared, without specific
orders from a high quarter, to light the match which would set the
thirteen colonies in a blaze. He recalled his men, and re-embarked
them empty-handed just as the company of minute-men from the next
township, with plenty more of their like to follow, came marching in
to the help of Salem.

A countryside, in this state of effervescence, presented few attrac-
tions even to the most adventurous officers of the garrison; whether
they were sportsmen, or students of manners, or explorers of the pic-
turesque. But nevertheless one of their number has left a narrative
which affords a glimpse of New England in the February of 1775.
Gage despatched a captain and an ensign through the counties of
Suffolk and Worcester, with a commission to sketch the roads, to ob-
serve and report upon the defiles, and to obtain information about
forage and provisions. They dressed themselves as countrymen, in
"brown clothes, and reddish handkerchiefs." Their disguise was so far
artistic that, on their return, the General and his staff mistook them for
what they pretended to be; though during their expedition no one,
either friend or foe, looked at them twice without detecting what they
were. They stopped at a tavern for their dinner, which was brought
them by a black woman. "At first she was very civil, but afterwards
began to eye us very attentively. We observed to her that it was a very
fine country, upon which she answered, 'So it is, and we have got

187

brave fellows to defend it.'" Downstairs she told the soldier-servant,
who looked still less of a ploughman than his masters, that, if his
party went any higher up, they would meet with very bad usage.
Towards the close of the day they came to a village where they had a
more hearty, but a not less alarming, welcome. "We stopped at the sign
of the Golden Ball, with the intention to take a drink, and so proceed.
But the landlord pleased us so much, as he was not inquisitive, that
we resolved to lie there that night; so we ordered some fire to be made,
and to get us some coffee. He told us we might have what we pleased,
either Tea or Coffee." Their relief on hearing the Shibboleth of loyalty
was more than balanced by the reflection that this landlord was not
inquisitive only because he had seen all he wanted without needing
to ask a single question.

Another stage of their journey brought them to Worcester. "The
next day being Sunday we could not think of travelling, as it was
not the custom of the country. Nor dare we stir out until the evening,
because nobody is allowed to walk the street during divine service
without being taken up and examined: so that we thought it prudent
to stay at home, where we wrote and corrected our sketches. On our
asking what the landlord could give us for breakfast, he told us Tea
or anything else we chose. That was an open confession what he was:
but for fear he might be imprudent, we did not tell him who we were,
though we were certain he knew it. At Shrewsbury we were over-
taken by a horseman who examined us very attentively, and especially
me, whom he looked at from head to foot as if he wanted to know me
again, and then rode off pretty hard." They got their meal at an inn,
and had an opportunity of watching from the window a company
of militia at drill. "The commander made a very eloquent speech,
recommending patience, coolness, and bravery, (which indeed they
much wanted;) quoted Caesar, Pompey, and Brigadiers Putnam and
Ward; recommended them to wait for the English fire, and told them
they would always conquer if they did not break; put them in mind
of Cape Breton, and observed that the Regulars in the last war must
have been ruined but for them. After a learned and spirited harangue
he dismissed the parade, and the whole company drank until nine
o'clock, and then returned to their homes full of pot-valour." The allu-
sion to Cape Breton showed that the rank and file of the colonial
militia were familiar with the true history of that first siege of Louis-
burg which Sandwich had so woefully garbled for the amusement of
the Peers.
188

On their way to Marlborough the two officers were accosted by
riders, who asked them point-blank whether they were in the army,
and then passed on towards the town. They arrived after nightfall, in
what now would be called a blizzard; but the street was alive and
buzzing. They were waylaid and interrogated by a baker who, as they
afterwards learned, had a deserter from their own regiment harboured
on his premises. They had hardly entered the dwelling of Mr. Barnes,
a well-to-do loyalist, when the town-doctor, who had not been inside
their host's door for two years past, invited himself to supper and fell
to cross-examining the children about their father's guests. They were
sent off again into the darkness at once,- and not a minute too soon;
for immediately after their departure the Committee of Correspond-
ence invaded the house, searched it from garret to cellar, and told the
owner that, if they had caught his visitors under his roof, they would
have pulled it down about his ears.11 It was not until the travellers had
completed a march of two and thirty miles through wind and snow
that they reached a friendly refuge, and were comforted with a bottle
of mulled Madeira, and a bed where they could rest in safety. Next
morning they walked back to Boston, having enjoyed the rare priv-
ilege of being in contact with an Anglo-Saxon population as highly
charged with electricity as any among the Latin races at the most
exciting junctures of their history.

At last the thunder-cloud broke, and flash after flash lit up the gloom
which overhung the land. Gage, rather because he was expected to
take some forward step, than because he saw clearly where to go, con-
ceived the idea of destroying the stores which had been collected at
Concord. The force told off for this service, according to a faulty prac-
tice of those times, consisted of detachments from many regiments; and
the officer in charge of the whole was incompetent. The troops started
before midnight. At four in the morning, just as an April day was
breaking, they reached the village of Lexington, and found sixty or
seventy of the local militia waiting for them on the common. Firing
ensued, and the Americans were dispersed, leaving seven of their num-
ber dead or dying. It was a chilly and a depressing prologue to a
mighty drama. The British advanced to Concord, where they spoiled

11 American Archives: Feb 22, 1775. The entertainer of these officers paid dearly for
his opinions. An important Whig, whose goods were within the British lines at Boston,
was allowed by way of compensation to use the furniture of the Marlborough loyalist
for his own so long as the siege lasted. Mr. Barnes was subsequently proscribed and
banished. He died in London.

some flour, knocked the trunnions off three iron guns, burned a heap
of wooden spoons and trenchers, and cut down a Liberty pole. In order
to cover these trumpery operations a party of a hundred infantry had
been stationed at a bridge over the neighbouring river, and towards
ten o'clock they were attacked by about thrice as many provincials, who
came resolutely on. After two or three had fallen on either side, the
regulars gave way and retreated in confusion upon their main body
in the centre of the town.

Pages and pages have been written about the history of each ten
minutes in that day, and the name of every colonist who played a part
is a household word in America. The main outlines of the affair are be-
yond dispute. When Colonel Smith discovered that there was nothing
for him to do at Concord, and made up his mind to return to Bos-
ton, he should have returned forthwith. As it was, he delayed till
noon; and those two hours were his ruin. The provincials who had
been engaged at the bridge did not push their advantage. They hesi-
tated to act as if war had been openly declared against England;
and they were not in a vindictive frame of mind, as they had heard
nothing beyond a vague report of the affair at Lexington. But by
the time the British commander had completed his arrangements for
withdrawing from his position the whole country was up, in front,
around, and behind him. Those who came from the direction of the
sea knew what had taken place that day at early dawn; and, where
they had got the story wrong, it was in a shape which made them
only the more angry. From every quarter of the compass over thirty
miles square the Ezras, and Abners, and Silases were trooping in. The
rural township of Woburn "turned out extraordinary," and marched
into action a hundred and eighty strong. The minute-men of Dedham,
encouraged by the presence of a company of veterans who had fought
in the French wars, spent, but did not waste, the time that was re-
quired to hear a prayer from their clergyman as they stood on the
green in front of the church steps. Then they started on their way,
"leaving the town almost literally without a male inhabitant before
the age of seventy, and above that of sixteen." Carrying guns which
had been used in old Indian battles, and headed by drums which had
beat at Louisburg, they covered the hillsides and swarmed among the
enclosures and the coppices in such numbers that it seemed to their
adversaries "as if men had dropped from the clouds." It was a calamity
for the British that the first encounter of the war took place under
circumstances which made their success a military impossibility. When
190

a force, no larger than the rear-guard of an army, is obliged to retreat
and to continue retreating, the extent of the disaster is only a question
of the amount of ground that has to be traversed, and of the activity
and audacity which the enemy display. The colonists knew the dis-
tance at which their fire was effective, and were determined, at any
personal risk, to get and to remain within that range. The English
regimental officers, whenever one of them could collect a few privates
of his own corps, made a good fight during the earlier stage of the
retreat. But, before they emerged from the woods which lined most of
the six miles between Concord and Lexington, ammunition began to
fail; the steadier men were largely employed in helping the wounded
along; many of the soldiers rather ran than marched in order; and the
column passed through Lexington a beaten and, unless speedy help
should come, a doomed force.

They had still before them twice as much road as they had travelled
already. But the very worst was over; because a few furlongs beyond
the town they were met by the reserves from Boston. The supporting
body was better composed than their own, for it was made up of
whole regiments; and it was much better commanded. Lord Percy,
owing to stupid blunders which were no fault of his, should have been
at Concord by eleven in the morning instead of being near Lexington
at two in the afternoon; but, now that he was on the ground, he
proved that he knew his business. He disposed the field pieces which
he had brought with him in such a manner as to check the provincials
and give a welcome respite to Colonel Smith's exhausted soldiers.
When the homeward march recommenced, he fought strongly and
skilfully from point to point. The hottest work of the whole day was
as far along the line of retreat as West Cambridge. It was there that
an example was made of some minute-men who had covered sixteen
miles in four hours in order to occupy a post of vantage, and who
were too busy towards their front to notice that there was danger be-
hind them in the shape of a British flanking party. But the Americans
were in great heart, and they were briskly and gallantly led. The senior
officer present was General Heath, a brave and honest man, who had
learned war from books, but who did well enough on a day when
the most essential quality in a commander was indifference to bullets.
And Warren had hurried up from Boston, eager to show that his
oration of the month before was not a string of empty words. "They
have begun it," he said, as he was waiting to cross the Ferry. "That
either party could do. And we will end it. That only one can do."

191

From the moment that he came under fire at Lexington he was as
conspicuous on the one side as Lord Percy on the other; and there was
not much to choose between the narrowness of their escapes, for the
New Englander had the hair-pin shot out of a curl, and the Northum-
brian had a button shot off his waistcoat.

No courage or generalship on the part of the British commander
could turn a rearward march into a winning battle. As the afternoon
wore on, his men had expended nearly all their cartridges; and they
had nothing to eat, for the waggons containing their supplies had been
captured by the exertions of a parish minister. "I never broke my fast,"
so a soldier related, "for forty-eight hours, for we carried no provisions.
I had my hat shot off my head three times. Two balls went through
my coat, and carried away my bayonet from my side." 12 The provin-
cials had surmounted their respect for the cannon, and kept at closer
quarters than ever. As the tumult rolled eastwards into the thickly in-
habited districts near the coast, the militia came up in more numerous
and stronger companies, fresh and with full pouches. When the sun
was setting the retiring troops, half starved and almost mad with thirst,
came to a halt on the English side of the causeway over which the
Cambridge highway entered the peninsula of Charlestown. They were
only just in time. "From the best accounts I have been able to collect,"
Washington wrote six weeks later on, "I believe the fact, stripped of all
colouring, to be plainly this: that if the retreat had not been as precipi-
tate as it was, (and God knows it could not well have been more so,)
the ministerial troops must have surrendered, or been totally cut off.
For they had not arrived in Charlestown, under cover of their ships,
half an hour before a powerful body of men from Marblehead and
Salem was at their heels, and must, if they had happened to be up one
hour sooner, inevitably have intercepted their retreat to Charlestown."
That was the conclusion at which Washington arrived; and his view,
then or since, has never been disputed.13

The Americans lost from ninety to a hundred men, of whom more
than half were killed outright; and the British about three times as
many. The strategic results of the affair were out of all proportion to
the numbers engaged in it; for it settled the character and direction of
the first campaign in the Revolutionary war. For fifteen months to
come the British army did not again take the open field. Bunker's Hill

12 American Archives: Letter of April 28, 1775.

13 Washington from Philadelphia to George William Fairfax in England; May 31,
1775-

192

was but a sortie on a large scale, and ranks only as a terrible and
glorious episode in the operations of a siege which, by the time the
battle was fought, had already lasted for the space of eight weeks. For
when Lord Percy crossed Charlestown Neck, and General Heath
halted on Charlestown Common, the invasion of Massachusetts by the
English was over, and the blockade of Boston by the Americans had
begun. In the previous December the Secretary at War had confided
his anticipations to the Secretary for the Colonies. "I doubt," so his
letter ran, "whether all the troops in North America, though probably
enow for a pitched battle with the strength of the Province, are enow
to subdue it: being of great extent, and full of men accustomed to
fire-arms. It is true they have not been thought brave, but enthusiasm
gives vigour of mind and body unknown before." 14 As Lord Barring-
ton had turned his attention to the subject of courage, it was a pity
that he could not find enough of it to tell his views to the King and
the Bedfords, instead of writing them to Dartmouth, who knew them
already. But at sundown on the nineteenth of April the event had
spoken; and it mattered little now what the English Ministers said,
or left unsaid, among themselves.

After Lexington, Trevelyan ta\es us to Bunker Hill — heroics for
which praise is generously bestowed on defenders and attackers alike.
Then he describes how Washington organized a rabble in arms and
laid siege to Boston. The scene of the British embarkation "resembled
the emigration of a nation rather than the breaking up of a garrison"
The campaign of Boston was at an end. "England had never reaped
so little glory or advantage from so great an expenditure of money,
and after so much preliminary swagger on the part, not of the people
who were to pay or the soldiers who were to fight, but of the statesmen
who had already begun to blunder"

Political Life of Viscount Barrington; Section viii.

193

CHAPTER VII

WASHINGTON

The Battle for New Yor%, the retreat across the Jerseys, Trenton
and Princeton reveal that the second campaign of the British to sub-
due the rebellious colonies is little more successful than the first. Out
of it emerged a military commander whose reputation would soon be
worldwide.

SlR WILLIAM HOWE, for the time being, had lost his hold on
the mainland of America; and his second campaign, like his first, had
gone to water. The most important results, however, of Trenton and
Princeton were not of a local or a temporary character. The permanent
and paramount consequence of those masterly operations was the es-
tablishment of Washington's military reputation, and the increased
weight of his political and administrative authority throughout every
State of the Confederacy, and up to the very latest hour of the war. A
commander, patient and intrepid in adversity, and silent under cal-
umny,— who never attempts to gloss over his reverses, or to explain
away his mistakes, — reaps the reward of his honesty and self-control
tenfold, and a hundredfold, when, out of a cloud of gloom and peril,
success at length comes. No one then questions the truth as he tells it
in his despatches; men are inclined to over-rate, rather than to de-
preciate and to decry, the advantages he has gained; and few grudge
the full credit of victory to a general who has always accepted the entire
responsibility for failure. The withdrawal of Sir William Howe from
his advanced positions in New Jersey proved to be, in the case of
Washington, what the retreat of Massena from before the lines of
Torres Vedras was in relation to the personal fortunes, and the public
usefulness, of Wellington. Any more exact parallel in the story of two
exalted careers it would be difficult to name. From Trenton onwards,
Washington was recognised as a far-sighted and skilful general all
Europe over, — by the great military nobles in the Empress Catherine's
court, by French Marshals and Ministers, in the King's cabinet at
194

Potsdam, at Madrid, at Vienna, and in London. He had shown him-
self, (said Horace Walpole,) both a Fabius and a Camillus; and his
march through the British lines was allowed to be a prodigy of leader-
ship.1 That was the talk in England; and the Englishman who, of all
others, most warmly appreciated Washington's strategy in New Jer-
sey during that fortnight of midwinter was one who had had the very
best opportunity for judging of it. After the capitulation at Yorktown,
in October 1781, a dinner was given at the American head-quarters to
the principal officers in the British, the French, and the Continental
armies. Cornwallis, — exaggerating to himself, it may be, the obligations
of old-fashioned courtesy and chivalry, — took his seat at the board,
and responded thus to a toast which Washington had proposed. "When
the illustrious part that your Excellency has borne in this long and
arduous contest becomes matter of history, fame will gather your
brightest laurels rather from the banks of the Delaware than from
those of the Chesapeake." At that moment, and before that audience,
Washington's generalship in the Chesapeake campaign must have
represented an exceptionally high standard of comparison.

In such estimation was Washington held by foreigners, whether they
were declared enemies, or benevolent neutrals, or potential and prob-
able allies; and he thenceforward had all his own countrymen for ad-
mirers, except those very few who did not as yet altogether renounce
the ambition of being popularly regarded as his rivals. The enhanced
influence which he derived from prosperity came at the precise con-
juncture when that influence could be utilised with the greatest pos-
sible effect. On the twentieth of December .he had addressed to the
President of Congress a long and earnest exposition of the evils arising
from the plan of short enlistments in the Continental armies; from a
low average of professional capacity in the commissioned ranks; from
the weakness of the artillery, and the entire absence of cavalry and of
scientific officers. Congress, in reply, invested him with "full, ample,
and complete powers" to raise sixteen additional battalions of infantry,
three thousand light-horse, three regiments of artillery, and a corps
of engineers; to call upon any of the States for such aid of the militia
as he should deem necessary; to displace and appoint all officers be-
neath the rank of Brigadier; to take, at a fair price, all supplies of
provisions, or articles of equipment, which he might require for the
use of the army; and to arrest, confine, and send for trial in the Civil
Courts, any persons whatsoever who were disaffected to the American
cause. This dictatorship, — for it was nothing less, — was extended over

1 Walpole to Mann; Strawberry Hill, April 3,' 1777.

195

the old Roman period of six months; and Congress specifically an-
nounced that the step was taken in perfect reliance on the wisdom,
the vigour, and the uprightness of General Washington. It was hand-
somely worded; but the force of the compliment lay not so much in
the phrasing, as in the timing, of the Resolution. Although a final de-
cision was not taken until the day after Trenton, Washington's letter
had been read and considered, and a committee had been appointed
to prepare an answer, before the issue of that battle was known in
Baltimore. Such an expression of confidence, unstintedly and unani-
mously accorded during the closing hours of the very darkest season
in American history, will remain on record through all ages as a
tribute to the man, and not to his fortune.

That fortune had now turned. After a year and a half's intense and
continual study of Sir William Howe, Washington had read his char-
acter, and understood his ways. Divining with certainty that the Brit-
ish general would leave him in peace during the rest of the winter
and well forward into the spring, he set himself calmly to the task
of reinforcing and remaking the Continental army. Congress, acting
on his advice, had sanctioned the enlistment of soldiers for a term of
three years, or for the duration of the war; and the sixteen new bat-
talions were to be formed of men taken indiscriminately from all or
any of the States. The last provision was much to the mind of Wash-
ington, who, (to use his own language,) had laboured to discourage all
kinds of local attachments and distinctions throughout the army, "de-
nominating the whole by the greater name of American." 2 That sen-
timent, in the early days of the Revolution, was not congenial to the
national tastes and temperament. In the view of a New Englander, or
a Pennsylvanian, the ideal regiment was a provincial corps where he
was at home among friends and neighbours; where discipline was
loose, and furloughs might be had for the asking, or even for the tak-
ing; and where the period of service was terminable within the twelve-
month. Previously to Trenton it would have been impossible to exact
the strict conditions indispensable for the solidity of a regular army;
but the name of Washington was now endowed with a power to in-
spire and attract his younger fellow-countrymen; and he succeeded in
engaging a considerable supply, although not a sufficiency, of recruits
who bound themselves to see the war through. If they came in slowly,
they came steadily; and those who presented themselves were for the
most part well worth retaining.

2 Washington to the President of Congress; Camp above Trenton Falls, December 20,
1776.

196

Washington still had plenty o£ room in his ranks for privates; but
the case was otherwise with regard to his officers. The muster-rolls
showed a superfluity of captains and lieutenants, and a veritable glut
of colonels. There were good and bad among them; but their indi-
vidual worth had been severely and decisively tested on Long Island
and at White Plains, in the Jersey retreat, and amid the hardships of
the Canadian expedition.3 Washington had an intimate personal ac-
quaintance with those brigades which he had led in battle; he knew
for himself whether an officer sought, or shunned, work and danger;
and he spared no pains to ascertain the merits and defects of those
who had served in distant parts of the Continent under other generals.
Absolute trust was reposed in his justice and impartiality; his authority
no one ventured to dispute; and there seldom, or never, has been a
fairer opportunity for the exercise of that unflinching and enlightened
selection which is the keystone of warlike efficiency. The labour of
reorganisation was carried forward under dire pressure; but it was not
scamped or hurried. Before the end of the ensuing summer a very
censorious critic was at his post of observation when the American
Commander-in-Chief marched down the main street of Philadelphia
at the head of nine or ten thousand of his troops. Though indifferently
dressed, (so this witness remarked,) they held well-burnished arms, and
carried them like soldiers; and they looked as if they might have faced
an equal number of their redoubtable adversaries with a reasonable
prospect of success.4 That opinion was justified, in the five years which
were to come, by a long series of battles honourably lost, or arduously
won. The military force which Washington brought into shape at
Morristown, — waxing or waning in numbers, but constantly improving
in quality, — followed him obediently, resolutely, and devotedly as long
as their country had occasion for a general and an army.

3 The American Archives contain a curious report to the New York Convention, made
at the close of 1776 by a committee appointed for the purpose of revising the list of
officers in the State Contingent. The work was done conscientiously and rigidly; and
some of the entries are in remarkably plain and unvarnished English. "Not so careful
and attentive as could be wished." "A sober officer, but rather too old." 'Too heavy and
inactive for an officer." "Too heavy and illiterate for an officer." "Of too rough a make
for an officer; better qualified for the Navy than the Army." "A very low-lived fellow."
"A good officer, but of a sickly constitution, and had better quit the service." "Wanting
in authority to make a good officer. He has deceived the Convention by enlisting the
men for six and nine months, instead of during the war." "These three lieutenants wish
to decline the service. They will be no loss to it." Many of the names are noted as
excellent, creditable, and promising; but it is evident that there had been little time to
pick and choose among the candidates for commissions during the stress and hurry
which accompanied the outbreak of hostilities.

4 Pennsylv anian Memoirs; chapter xii.

197

CHAPTER VIII

FEARS FOR ENGLISH LIBERTY.

THE NEWSPAPERS.
* NORTH AND SOUTH BRITAIN

i. HE events, which took place during those stirring months in the
regions watered by the Delaware and Hudson rivers, form a plain and
straightforward narrative; but the story of what was passing in Eng-
land is more complicated, and far more difficult to tell. For that was
no affair of marches and counter-marches, of skirmishes, and panics,
and surprise. The conflict there was in the senate, the market-place,
and the newspaper; in the interior of every household, and within the
breast of every thinking citizen. Before the year 1777 was six weeks old
it became plain that the hour had arrived when it was incumbent upon
all men to form an opinion of their own, to profess it frankly, and to
abide by it courageously. Up to this time many had concerned them-
selves but little with the rights and wrongs of the quarrel, or with the
expediency of an appeal to arms. The Government, which was sup-
posed to know, had proclaimed that the colonists were contemptible
as antagonists, that the war would be short and cheap, and that the
cost of it would very soon be covered, several times over, by the pro-
duce of taxes which Americans would never again refuse to pay when
once they had been well beaten; and quiet people, who liked being
governed, had believed the Government. Some, indeed, among the
Peers and members of Parliament who supported the Cabinet had long
ago admitted to each other, in whispers and sealed letters, that they
had begun to be desperately uneasy. "Administration," (wrote Lord
Carlisle to George Selwyn as early as the winter of 1775,) "is in a great
scrape. Their measures never can succeed. We, who have voted for
them, have a right to complain; for they have deceived us, and, I
suppose, themselves."1 The same disheartening conviction was now

1 George Selwyn and his Contemporaries; Vol. III., page 114, o£ the Edition of 1844.

108

brought home to every private individual who could spare five minutes
a day to the consideration of public affairs. After eight years of military
occupation, and twenty-one months of very hard fighting, America was
far from being conquered, and farther yet from being convinced that
her interest lay in submission to the demands of the British Parliament.
The situation was clearly understood, and temperately but unan-
swerably exposed, by discerning onlookers in either country. An Amer-
ican Whig, at the very moment when the prospects of his own cause
were darkest, made a cool and careful estimate of the English chances.
"Their whole hope of success," he said, "depends upon frequent and
decisive victories, gained before our army is disciplined. The expense
of feeding and paying great fleets and armies, at such a distance, is
too enormous for any nation on earth to bear for a great while. It is
said that ninety thousand tons of shipping are employed in their
service constantly, at thirteen shillings and four pence a ton per month.
When our soldiers are enlisted for the war, discipline must daily in-
crease. Our army can be recruited after a defeat, while our enemies
must cross the Atlantic to repair a misfortune. Have we felt a tenth
part of the hardships the States of Holland suffered at the hands of
Spain; or does our case look half so difficult? States are not conquered
by victories. After a succession of splendid victories obtained over
France by the Duke of Marlborough, in each of which more men were
slain than in the whole of this war, still that kingdom made a formida-
ble resistance, and obtained an honourable peace." 2

That was written in December 1776, when all the victories which
hitherto marked the campaign had been scored by the British. After
Trenton and Princeton were fought, and Howe had retired from the
Jerseys, the same views were yet more powerfully enforced by a Lon-
doner. "The small scale of our maps deceived us.; and, as the word
'America' takes up no more room than the word 'Yorkshire,' we seem
to think the territories they represent are much of the same bigness;
though Charleston is as far from Boston as London from Venice.
Braddock might tell the difficulties of this loose, rugged country, were
he living. Amherst might still do it. Yet these officers found a willing
people to help them, and General Howe finds nothing willing. We
have undertaken a war against farmers and farmhouses, scattered
through a wild waste of continent, and shall soon hear of. our General
being obliged to garrison woods, to scale mountains, to wait for boats
and pontoons at rivers, and to have his convoys and escorts as large

2 American newspaper article of December 24, 1776; signed "Perseverance."

199

as armies. These, and a thousand such difficulties, will rise on us at the
next stage of the war. I say the next stage, because we have hitherto
spent one campaign, and some millions, in losing one landing-place
at Boston; and, at the charge o£ seven millions and a second campaign,
we have replaced it with two other landing-places at Rhode Island
and New York. I am entirely o£ opinion with Voltaire that every
great conquerer must be a great politician. Something more is required,
than the mere mechanical business of fighting, in composing revolts
and bringing back things to their former order." 3

The keenest eye in Europe already foresaw the inevitable issue.
Frederic of Prussia had won and lost many battles, and had learned
not to over-rate the importance of any single defeat or victory. He had
followed Washington, through the vicissitudes of the protracted strug-
gle, with the insight and sympathy of one who himself had striven
against fearful odds; who had committed grievous mistakes, and had
profited by his lesson; and who had at length emerged, secure and
successful, from a flood of war in which both friends and enemies, for
years together, felt assured that nothing could save him from being
overwhelmed. With such an experience he did not need to wait for
Saratoga and Yorktown in order to be convinced that Great Britain
had involved herself in a hopeless task. All the information which he
had received, (so he wrote in the first half of March 1777,) went to
show that the colonies would attain, and keep, their independence.4
That was how the future was regarded by the greatest warrior of the
age; and the facts of the case, as he knew them, were the property of
all the world. Civilians, who had never seen a cannon fired, but who
could use their common sense, had plenty of material on which to
build an estimate of the military probabilities. Abundant and most
discouraging intelligence appeared in private letters from officers in
America, which were freely published in the English journals; and
even those who took in the "London Gazette," and no other news-
paper, might find very serious matter for reflection as they read be-
tween the lines of Sir William Howe's despatches.

There was, however, an aspect of the question which occupied and
concerned our ancestors far more deeply than any purely military con-
siderations. It must never be forgotten than many Englishmen from
the first, — and in the end a decided, and indeed a very large, ma-
jority among them,— regarded the contest which was being fought out

3 Letter from London of February 1777.

4Le Roi Fr£d&ic au Comte de Maltzan; Potsdam, 13 mars, 1777.

200

in America not as a foreign war, but as a civil war in which English
liberty was the stake. They held that a policy had been deliberately
initiated, and during half a generation had been resolutely pursued,
of which the avowed object was to make the Royal power dominant
in the State; and the historians in highest repute, who since have
treated of those times, unreservedly maintain the same view. That
policy had now prevailed; and Personal Government, from a mis-
chievous theory, had grown into a portentous reality. The victory of
the Crown had been preceded by an epoch of continuous and bitter
strife, every stage in which was marked by deplorable incidents. The
publication through the press of opinions obnoxious to the Court had
been punished with unsparing severity. The right of constituents to
elect a person of their choice had been denied in words, and repeatedly
violated in practice. The benches of the Lords and the Commons
swarmed with an ever increasing band of placemen and pensioners
subsidised by the King; and these gentlemen well knew the work
which their paymaster expected of them. Their vocation was to harass
any minister who conceived that he owed a duty to the people as well
as to the Sovereign; and to betray and ruin him if he proved incor-
rigible in his notions of patriotism. The most famous English states-
men,— all, it is not too much to say, who are now remembered with
pride by Englishmen of every party, — were shut out from the oppor-
tunity, and even from the hope, of office; and our national qualities of
manliness and independence had come to be a standing disqualification
for employment in the nation's service. At last the Cabinet had picked
a quarrel with the colonies over the very same question which con-
vulsed England in the days of Strafford and the ship-money. In order
to vindicate the doctrine that taxation might be imposed without repre-
sentation, the servants of the Crown, or rather its bondsmen, (for the
Prime Minister, and the most respectable of his colleagues, were in this
matter acting under compulsion, and against their consciences,) had
undertaken to coerce the communities in America with fire and sword,
and to visit individuals with the extreme penalties of rebellion. It fol-
lowed, as a natural and certain consequence, that the party, which
resented the encroachments of the Crown at home, sincerely and uni-
versally entertained a belief which influenced their whole view of the
colonial controversy. That belief had been placed on record, in quiet
but expressive language, by a nobleman who, in his honoured age,
lived among us as the last of the old Whigs. Lord Albemarle distinctly
states that in 1774, and for some years afterwards, the Opposition were

201

possessed by "a deep and well-grounded conviction that, if despotism
were once established in America, arbitrary government would at least
be attempted in the mother-country," 5

Those apprehensions were shared by men whose judgment cannot
lightly be set aside, and the strength of whose patriotism was many
degrees above proof. Chatham, when he spoke in public, dwelt mainly
upon the rights of the colonists, the duty of England, and the appalling
military dangers which would result to the Empire if those rights were
invaded and that duty ignored. With the instinct of a great orator,
he did not willingly introduce fresh debateable matter into a con-
troversy where he had so many sufficient and self-evident arguments
ready to his hand; but his private correspondence clearly indicates that
the keenness of his emotion, and the warmth of his advocacy, were
closely connected with a profound belief that, if America were sub-
jugated, Britain would not long be free. Would to Heaven, (he wrote,)
that England was not doomed to bind round her own hands, and
wear patiently, the chains which she was forging for her colonies! And
then he quoted, with telling effect, the passage in which Juvenal de-
scribed how the spread of servility among the Roman people, and the
corruption of their public spirit, avenged the wrongs of the subject
world upon the conquerors themselves.6

The fears which Chatham acknowledged were confessed likewise
by the only man, then alive, whose authority stands on a level with
his own. In the early spring of 1777 Burke affirmed that the American
war had done more in a very few years, than all other causes could
have done in a century, to prepare the minds of the English people
for the introduction of arbitrary government. The successive steps of
the process, by which that result was being brought about, are set forth
in the last five paragraphs of the Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol with
the fullness and exactness of a political philosopher, and the incisive
vigour of a practical statesman. Those paragraphs, indeed, are too
long to quote; and it would be a literary crime to abridge or to para-
phrase them; but the conclusions at which Burke had arrived are
more briefly and roughly stated in a couple of sentences wherein he
thus commented on the American rebellion. "We cannot," he wrote,
"amidst the excesses and abuses which have happened, help respecting

5 Those words are found in the tenth chapter of the second volume o£ Lord Rocking-
ham's Memoirs. Lord Albemarle, who had played trap-ball with Charles Fox, lived to
hold an extemporised levee of London society on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the
day when he carried the colours on to the field of Waterloo.

6 The Eari of Chatham to Mr. Sheriff Sayre; Hayes, August 28, 1774.

202

the spirit and principles operating in these commotions. Those princi-
ples bear so close a resemblance to those which support the most
valuable part of our constitution, that we cannot think of extirpating
them in any part of His Majesty's dominions without admitting con-
sequences, and establishing precedents, the most dangerous to the liber-
ties of this kingdom." 7

Horace Walpole, with whom the chief men of both parties freely
conversed, had no doubt whither the road led which the stronger,
and the worse, members of the Cabinet joyfully followed; and down
which the less perverse, and the more timid, were irresistibly driven.
He never was easy about the political future of his country, until
North's Government fell, and the danger disappeared. During the
winter when Howe and Washington were contending the Jerseys,
Walpole complained that his life at present consisted in being wished
joy over the defeat and slaughter of fellow-countrymen, who were
fighting for his liberty as well as for their own. Thirty months after-
wards he spoke still more gloomily. It was bad enough, (he said,) to
be at war with France and Spain because we would not be content
to let America send us half the wealth of the world in her own way,
instead of in the way that pleased George Grenville and Charles
Townshend. But the subversion of a happy Constitution, by the hands
of domestic enemies, was a worse fate than any which we could suffer
from the foreigner; and that fate, unless the nation recovered its senses,
only too surely awaited us. Walpole emphatically declared that the
freedom of England had become endangered, and her glory began to
decline, from the moment that she "ran wild after a phantasm of ab-
solute power" over colonies whose liberty was the source of her own
greatness.8

It was an ominous circumstance that the Jacobites and the Non-
jurors were open-mouthed against America, and, one and all, were
ardent supporters of the war. The members of that party, which pro-
fessed the doctrine of passive obedience, had transferred their allegiance
to George the Third, honestly and undisguisedly, from the moment
that he made manifest his intention to select his own ministers and
govern for himself. They stood by the Court, (as readers of Junius

7 The manuscript, which is in Mr. Burke's handwriting, is thus docketed by the
fourth Earl Fitzwilliam: "Probably this was intended as an amendment to the Address
to be moved after the campaign of 1776.*' In that case, the paper must have been
drafted at the precise point of time which this narrative has now reached.

8 Walpole to the Countess of Ossory, Jan. 26, 1777. Walpole to Sir Horace Mann,
June 1 6, 1779; and to the Countess of Ossory, June 22, 1779.

2O3

are aware,) throughout every turn of the conflict which raged around
the Middlesex Election. They were frequently taunted, in very good
prose and extremely poor verse, with having deserted the shrine of
their ancient loyalty; but the course of action which they adopted was
to the credit of their common-sense and their consistency. The Jaco-
bites of 1775 were not dreamers, nor dilettantes. Only half a life-time
before that date they had been formidable enough to shake the State to
the very foundation; and, now that they had suited themselves to their
altered circumstances, they were a redoubtable party again. Men who
had been Jacobites in their youth, and who were the friends of arbi-
trary government still, constituted a strong minority in the Corpora-
tions of some towns, and a majority among the Justices of the Peace
on not a few Petty Sessional benches in the northern counties. They
did not amuse themselves with a ritual of wreaths and rosettes, or
trouble themselves about the Christian name of the monarch whose
health they drank. Their creed was a serious and genuine devotion
to the principles in accord with which they thought that the coun-
try ought to be administered. If they could not have a Stuart, they
were willing to accept a Hanoverian who pursued the Stuart policy;
and they were quite ready to put their money on the White Horse,
so long as he galloped in what they conceived to be the right direction.
When once the American war broke out, it became evident to them
that there were no lengths to which the King was not prepared to go:
and there were most certainly none to which they themselves would
not eagerly follow.9 Testimony to that effect was given by a witness
who knew, as well as anybody, what the Jacobites were thinking. In
one of the last letters which he wrote, David Hume, with the solemnity
of a dying man, prophesied that, if the Court carried the day in
America, the English Constitution would infallibly perish.10

Historians, who understand their business, when seeking to ascer-
tain the trend of national opinion at any crisis in our history, have

9 "The Scots address and fight now with as much zeal in the cause of the House of
Brunswick as they did, during the last reigns, in that of the House of Stuart. This proves
that it is not the name, but the cause, for which they fight. The Scots are in hopes that
extinguishing the very name of English liberty in America will secure the destruction of
the constitution in old England. In the present auspicious reign they think themselves
nearer the completion of their wishes, and are therefore more insolent, and more ardent,
in the pursuit." Extract from the Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser of 1776.

10 Histoire de I' Action Commune de la France et de I'Amerique pour I'lndepandence
des ttats-Unis, par George Bancroft: Tome III., page 200. The Paris version of this work
is described as "Traduit et annote par le Comte Adolphe de Circourt; accompagnc de
Documents Ine*dits."

204

always laid stress upon the confidential reports of foreign emissaries
accredited to St. James's, and on the conclusions which were borne
in upon the mind of the Ruler to whom those reports were addressed.
Our knowledge of English feeling, during the years that preceded our
own Great Revolution, is largely derived from the secret correspond-
ence of the French Ambassador at the Court of James the Second;
and, in like manner, the correspondence of the Prussian Minister in
London, at the time of the Declaration of Independence, throws an
important light upon British politics. Indeed, of the two diplomatists,
Frederic the Great's envoy is the safer guide. The Count de Maltzan
was better qualified to distinguish between material facts, and party
gossip, than de Barillon, who habitually dabbled in political intrigues
at Westminster; and Frederic, in a very different degree from Louis
the Fourteenth, was an employer to whom it was much less safe to
tell a doctored and flattering tale than a disagreeable truth.

Frederic had observed every turn of the constitutional struggle in
England as closely as he watched the variation in numbers of the
Austrian or Russian armies, and with as good cause; and he now was
firmly persuaded that the fears of Burke and Chatham with regard to
the precarious condition of our public liberty were not exaggerated. It
might have been supposed that the prospect would have left him in-
different; for assuredly he had no desire to set up a Parliamentary
opposition at Berlin, or convert his own Kingdom into a limited
monarchy. But he was in the habit of looking to results; and, in his
eyes, the suitable form of government for any country was that, and
only that, which produced strong and capable administration. The
England, which Frederic the Great desired to see, was an England
taking a continuous and intelligent interest in Continental movements;
commanding the esteem and confidence of her neighbours; and able,
with all her enormous resources well in hand, to make her influence
decisively felt. But, under her then rulers, our country was a cipher
in Europe; distracted by internal dissension, and spending in a foolish
quarrel with her own colonies the strength which had so recently made
her the arbitress of the world, and which,— at the rate that she was
lavishing men, money, and reputation,— might soon be hardly suffi-
cient for the protection of her own coasts and arsenals.

Frederic, moreover, had a special grudge of his own against the sys-
tem of government which had of late been inaugurated in England.
That nation, under the inspiration of Lord Chatham,— the statesman
who now was the prime assertor of its imperilled liberties,— had

205

fought the earlier campaigns of the Seven Years' War side by side
with Prussia, and had helped her, in her dire extremity, with a supply
of British gold which was only less welcome than the assistance of the
British sword. But when George the Third ascended the throne, and
as soon as he could get a minister to his mind, he tore up that glorious
treaty of alliance; stopped the payment of a subsidy which to the Eng-
lish Treasury was a pittance, but which seemed a mountain of wealth
to the thrifty Prussian War Office; and, in the hottest moment of the
chase, threw Frederic over to the wolves. Those wolves, in the end,
found him a tough morsel; but he never even pretended to forget
.that the first overt act of Personal Government in England had been
to play him a trick which came very near to be his ruin. Detestation of
Lord Bute, and of Lord Bute's Royal patron, and a very genuine love
and admiration for Chatham, rendered the Prussian King an earnest
and far-seeing friend of British constitutional freedom. If the nation,
(such was the tenor of his predictions,) allowed the Sovereign to act
according to his good pleasure, and abandoned the colonies to the lot
which he destined for them, that lot would sooner or later be shared
by England; for the policy of George the Third was the same every-
where, and he was pursuing despotic courses in all portions of his
dominions, "It appears," Frederic wrote, "from all I hear, that the
ancient British spirit has almost entirely eclipsed itself, and that every-
thing tends to a change in the form of government, so that the old
constitution will exist only in the surface, and the nation in effect will
be nearer slavery than in any preceding reign-" n

Those were strong words from a ruler who was an autocrat, and
who fully purposed to remain one; but the danger which threatened
English liberty aroused uneasiness in a still more singular quarter than
the Royal cabinet at Potsdam. Frederic, after all, was at peace with our
country, although it did not break his heart to find her in a scrape;
whereas France was an active, and erelong an open, enemy. The
French Government, sore from recent losses and humiliations, greeted
with delight the rebellion of our colonists; supplied them almost from
the first with money and military stores; seized the opportunity of our
difficulty to declare hostilities, which were prosecuted with what, for
the French, was unwonted, and even unexampled, energy; and la-
boured to unite Europe in a coalition against the British Empire. And
yet there were Frenchmen, and many Frenchmen, who never ceased

11 Lc Roi Frederic au Comte de Maltzan, 14 aoftt, 1775, (en chiffres;) 18 decembre,
1775; 26 juin, 1777.

206

to reverence England as a country which held up to the contemplation
of mankind an example of the material and moral advantages arising
from stable and rational self-government; and which, for more than
two centuries, had been a champion of liberty outside her own bor-
ders. Their prayer, or, (more strictly speaking,) their hope and as-
piration,— for advanced thinkers in France were not much given to
praying, — was that England might cease to be forgetful of her high
mission, and might bethink herself, before it grew too late, that in
destroying the freedom of others she was striking at her own.

These ideas are reflected in letters addressed to Lord Shelburne by
the Abbe Morellet when war between France and England was already
imminent; and a later part of the same correspondence proves that,
after four years of fierce and dubious fighting, solicitude for the
honour of our country had not been extinguished in the hearts of some
generous enemies. The fall of Lord North in 1782 was hailed by en-
lightened Parisians with a satisfaction inspired by the most laudable
motives. They felt joy and relief because there would be an end of
bloodshed; because the highest civilisation, of which France and Eng-
land were the chief repositories, would no longer be divided against
itself; but above and beyond all, because liberty would henceforward
be secure in the one great country of Europe which was constitution-
ally governed. "Yes, my Lord," cried Morellet, "in spite of the war that
divides us, I am glad to see your country better administered. I re-
joice, in my quality of citizen of the world, that a great people should
resume their true place; should regain a clear view of their real inter-
ests; and should employ their resources, not in the pursuit of an end
which cannot be attained, but for the conservation of that wealth and
influence which are naturally their due, and which, for the sake of the
world at large, it is all-important that they should continue to possess.
If the independence of America had perished, your constitution
would have been overthrown, and your freedom lost."15

Among foreigners who vexed themselves about the perils which
overhung the British Constitution the Whigs in America could no

12 Lettres dc VAbU Morellet, de I' Academic Vrangaise, a Lord Shelburne, depuis Mar-
quis de Lansdawne, 1772-1803, avcc Introduction et Notes par Lord Edmond Fitz-
maurice: Paris, 1898; pages no, 189, 191. The passage in the text reproduces the sub-
stance of Morellet's letter of April 1782, and some of the words; for the words are many.
Morellet was a decorative artist of a high order; an adept in dressing up the stern dis-
coveries of British political economists in a shape to suit the French taste. When, as in the
case before us, he lighted upon a subject which admitted of sentiment and emotion, he
was not sparing of his ornament.

207

longer be reckoned. As the war went forward, and their sacrifices and
sufferings increased, the colonists, (and none could fairly blame them,)
took less and less count of the distinction between the two political
parties at Westminster. They regarded Britain as one integral and
formidable whole; and the character in which she presented herself at
their doors was not such as to command their sympathy. Charles Fox,
and his eloquent and statesmanlike speeches, were a long way off;
while General Burgoyne, with his Brunswickers and his Red Indians,
was very near indeed. People who were occupied in striving to re-
pel British armies, and in rebuilding towns which British fleets had
burned, were left with very little leisure to interest themselves about
the preservation of British liberties. But their descendants, who had
plenty of time to think the matter over,— and who, indeed, in the
department of history, for many years to come thought of very little
else, — have gradually arrived at the conclusion that, if the resistance
of the colonies had been overpowered, British and Transatlantic free-
dom would have perished together. That conclusion is, now and again,
set forth by living American writers in a tone of just pride, and in
language worthy of the theme. Whatever, (we are told,) may be the
spirit of the people of the United States to-day, in the eighteenth
century the people of the colonies were English to the heart's core. Ever
since the new reign began, they had noticed, with growing anxiety, the
determination of George the Third to undermine and overthrow the
old English structure of genuine national self-government, and real
ministerial responsibility. The Englishmen in America rebelled the
first, because they were the first to feel the full force of the assault upon
liberty. Their Revolution was not an uprising against England, or the
. English people, or the English Constitution. It was a defensive move-
ment, undertaken in behalf of essential English institutions, against the
purpose and effort of a monarch to defeat the political progress of
the race, and to turn back the hands of time so that they might mark
again the dreary hour before Parliament had delivered us from the
Stuarts.13

Such, in the deliberate judgement of a succeeding generation, was
the aspect of the situation in England during the earlier years of the
American war; and such it then seemed to Frenchmen who watched
our politics from the safe side of the Channel. It was an aspect neces-
sarily most alarming to contemporary Englishmen who foresaw that

13 Article by Henry Loomis Nelson, in the New York Journal Literature of March 31,
1899.

208

the free institutions of their own country might erelong be exposed
to a final and successful assault; and who were conscious of being too
high-spirited and stout-hearted to shrink, when the day of trial came,
from doing their utmost in defence of freedom, however ruinous might
be the penalty to themselves and their families. Those anticipations
saddened their lives, inspired their public action, and coloured their
written and spoken confidences. The Duke of Richmond was a senator
of long experience, a man of the world, and a great peer with an
enormous stake in the country; his private letters are serious docu-
ments of grave authority; and those letters supply posterity with a
sample of what was thought and feared by many thousands of hum-
bler, but not less honest and patriotic, people.

In August 1776, — on the day, as it happened, that Howe began to
move against the American lines in Long Island, — Richmond wrote to
Edmund Burke at great length from Paris. The Duke had repaired
to France, for the purpose of looking after his hereditary estate in that
country, and of making good his claim to the Dukedom of Aubigny.
That proved a burdensome undertaking; for the grant of a peerage,
in order to be valid, required to be registered by the Parliament of
Paris; and, in the Parliament of Paris, nothing was to be had for noth-
ing. Richmond complained that, "besides the real business itself, the
visits, formalities, solicitations, dinners, suppers," and all the rest of the
machinery for bringing influence to bear upon every individual con-
cerned, were infinitely wearisome and costly. And yet all the expense
of time, trouble, and money was in his estimation, very well laid out;
because, although things were ill managed in France, circumstances
might arise when it would be impossible for him to reside at his Eng-
lish home. "Who knows," wrote Richmond, "that a time may not
come when a retreat to this country may not be a happy thing to have?
We now hold our liberties merely by the magnanimity of the best of
kings, who will not make use of the opportunity he has to seize them;
for he has it in his power, with the greatest ease and quiet, to imitate
the King of Sweden.14 I have not the least doubt but that his faithful
peers and commons would by degrees,— or at once if he liked it better,
—vote him complete despotism. I fear I see the time approaching when
the English, after having been guilty of every kind of meanness and
corruption, will at last own themselves, like the Swedes, unworthy to

14Gustavus the Third had recently subverted the Constitution in Sweden; not with-
out excuses which were altogether wanting to George the Third when he devised his
scheme of Personal Government.

209

be free. When that day comes, our situation will be worse than France.
Young despotism, like a boy broke loose from school, will indulge
itself in every excess. Besides, if there is a contest, though it be a feeble
one, I, or mine, may be among the proscribed. If such an event should
happen, and America not be open to receive us, France is some retreat,
and a peerage here is something." 15

British opinion was never unanimous at any stage of the American
war; but in what proportion that opinion was divided it is impossible
to determine at the distance of a hundred and thirty years. Men of
practical experience in politics turn sceptical when told very positively
what "the country" thinks with regard to a question even of their own
day, and are inclined to ask their informant how large a part of the
country has taken him into its confidence. Historians, who have tried
to gauge the feeling of our ancestors during the struggle with Amer-
ica, have often paid far too much respect to the hasty generalisations of
sanguine, or despondent, partisans. All those who sturdily push their
way through the thickets of that ancient controversy find such fruit
growing in profusion on every bush. A Whig in Devonshire wrote
out to Philadelphia that the whole nation was mad, and that he could
scarcely meet one man in twenty who did not wish to see Great Brit-
ain, and himself, bankrupt rather than not bring the colonies to the
feet of Lord George Germaine. John Wesley, on the other hand, while
heartily agreeing that the nation was mad, gave as a proof of it that
a great majority of Englishmen, Irishmen, and Scotchmen were ex-
asperated almost to insanity against the King and the King's policy.
Anything may be proved on either side by a judicous selection of in-
dividual utterances that were made in all good faith, but too f requendy
from very imperfect knowledge. More profitable results are to be ob-
tained by minute observation of certain facts and circumstances which
are beyond dispute; and the significance of which can be tested by
those who, whenever the England of their own lifetime has passed
through a period of warlike excitement, have kept their eyes open to
what went on around them. Twice in the memory of men over sixty
years of age, and once at least in the experience of everyone who reads
these volumes, Britain has been engaged in a war on which the interest
of the nation was eagerly concentrated. All who have noted the fea-
tures and incidents of the Crimean war, and the Transvaal war, — and
who have studied the parallel features and incidents of the years which

15 The Duke of Richmond to Edmund Burke, Esq.; Paris, August 26, 1776.
210

elapsed between 1774 and 1782,— may estimate for themselves whether
the American war, as wars go, was popular or not.

Before commencing that inquiry, there is one preliminary remark
which, on the face of the matter, it is permissible to make. The House
of Commons, at the last, with the warm and very general approbation
of the country, put a stop to hostilities, and recognised the independ-
ence of America. The British nation had been tried in the fire before
then, and has been tried since; and it has never been the national cus-
tom to back out of a just quarrel for no other reason than because
Britain, at a given moment, was getting the worst of it. In 1782 our
people solemnly and deliberately abandoned the attempt to reconquer
America on the ground that it was both wrong and foolish; and that
fact, to the mind of everyone who holds the British character in es*
teem, affords an irresistible proof that a very large section of the people
must all along have been fully persuaded that the coercion of our
colonists by arms was neither wise nor righteous.

The surest criterion of the popularity attaching to a warlike policy
is afforded by the prevailing tone and tendency of the public journals.
So long as a people have their hearts in a contest, newspapers which
oppose the war are few, and for the most part, timid; while the news-
papers which support the war are numerous and thriving, and very
seldom err by an excess of tolerance when dealing either with critics
at home, or with adversaries abroad. Books or pamphlets, however
large their number, do not supply an equally important test of national
opinions. On the one hand, it is notorious that Ministers of State in the
eighteenth century were in the habit of paying an author to defend
them and their proceedings; and, on the other hand, a man who, from
public spirit or private spite, is opposed to a Government, thinks little
of spending ten or twenty pounds in order that his fellow-citizens
should be able to peruse his views in print, however few among them
may care to avail themselves of the opportunity. But a newspaper lives
by being read; and, in the great majority of cases, none read it, and
still fewer buy it, unless they agree with its opinions. The first quarter
of a century in George the Third's reign was to a marked degree an
age of newspapers. Whatever good or evil the King might have done,
he had lent, most unintentionally, an extraordinary impulse to the ac-
tivity and influence of public journalism. During the long constitu-
tional agitation, of which the Middlesex Election was the outward and
visible symptom, newspapers had played a commanding part. They
had multiplied in number; they had grown in size; they had perfected

211

themselves in the art of producing matter acceptable to their readers;
and they had greatly increased their circulation. Between 1760 and 1775
the stamps issued by the Treasury had risen, from less than nine and a
half, to considerably over twelve and a half, millions a year. In 1776,
— after some experience of a war conducted beneath the eyes of a vigi-
lant press,— the Cabinet, needing money much and loving newspapers
but little, raised the stamp duty to the amount of three halfpence on
every half sheet. Still the sale went upwards; and it was not until
Lord North retired from office, and the long argument between the
Crown and the people was thereby concluded, that the growing de-
mand for newspaper stamps began to flag, and at length actually fell.

Among London newspapers the largest, the most attractive, and
quite incomparably the most in request, were opposed to the American
policy of the Cabinet. The "North Briton," indeed, was no longer in
existence. Number Forty-five, the dearest scrap of printed matter on
record, — for it cost the Government, soon or late, a hundred thousand
pounds to suppress it, — had been burned by the common hangman
amid public excitement so vehement that the hangman himself was
with difficulty saved from being burned as well. But a whole covey of
Phcenixes rose from its ashes, eager to avenge their defunct predecessor
with beak and talon. The London "Evening Post," the "Public Ad-
vertiser," the "Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser," and the
"Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser," gave the Court and the Bed-
fords superabundant cause to regret that they had not left Wilkes and
his newspaper alone.

Most of the leading journals, mindful of their origin, were careful to
insert the time-honoured name of "Advertiser" in some corner of their
title. They had commenced existence as advertising sheets, containing
little news and less politics.16 But it was far otherwise with the im-
posing pages which, on every other morning during every week that
the American war lasted, came rustling forth from the London presses.
They did not altogether disdain to inform the world where purchasers
might hear of desirable house-property, and seasoned hunters, and
drafts of fox-hound puppies, and pectoral lozenges for defluxions, and
Analeptic Pills for gout, and Catholic Pills for everything; but they
devoted very much the larger part of their ample space to more flam-
ing and fascinating topics. Their varied columns teemed with news
which could not be found in the "London Gazette," and which the
Ministry had frequently the strongest personal reasons for concealing.

16 Chapter vii. of English Newspapers, by H. R. Fox-Bourne; London, 1897.
212

In communicated articles; in spicy paragraphs; in epistles of inordinate
length, signed by old Roman names of the Republican era, — they flag-
ellated the Prime Minister and every one of his colleagues, and de-
nounced him for having begun an unjust war which he was totally
incompetent to conduct.

The "Morning Post and Daily Advertiser" had been converted into
a ministerial paper by Henry Bate, the editor. Bate was a clergyman
by profession, and was reasonably enough viewed in Whig circles as
one who did not rise to the obligations of his sacred calling; for very
eminent Tories, in his own day and afterwards, have admitted that at
this period of his career he was nothing better than a bully and a
ruffian. Dr. Johnson, who fought for his Sovereign's policy strenuously,
and even fiercely, but who always fought fair, spoke of Bate with
scathing reprobation; and Mr. Croker, who had no Whig prejudices,
has written an account of the young man's performances which con-
firms Johnson's strictures upon his character.17 If we except the damag-
ing advocacy of the "Morning Post," and the official sterility of the
"London Gazette," Ministers had not much for which to thank the
newspapers. The little "London Chronicle," a square foot in size,
treated them with a friendliness tempered by its abhorrence of Lord
Bute and the Scotch, whom, (like English mankind in general,) it per-
sisted in regarding as the secret inspirers of George the Third and his
Cabinet. The "Public Ledger" announced itself as a political commer-
cial paper, open to all parties and influenced by none; and it bestowed
on Lord North an occasional word of praise, accompanied by much
good advice which he seldom heeded. And yet even the "Ledger" ex-
cused the American invasion of Canada as a step to which the colo-
nists had been driven in self-defence. There were journals which,
while they disapproved the war, still continued to speak well of the

17 "Sir," said Johnson, "I will not allow this man to have merit. No, Sir; what he
has is rather the contrary. I will, indeed, allow him courage; and on this account we
so far give him credit. We have more respect for a man who robs boldly on the high-
way than for a fellow who jumps out of a ditch, and knocks you down behind your
back. Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue that it is always respected,
even when it is associated with vice."

This left-handed compliment, — the best that was to be said for Bate, — is to be found
in the seventy-ninth chapter of Boswell's Life of Johnson, as edited by the Right Hon-
ourable John Wilson Croker. Croker gives a short narrative of Bate's proceedings in a
note subjoined to the passage. To the end of his days, which were many, "Parson Bate"
was a famous patron of the prize-ring; and his prowess had been tested in many chance
encounters. His admirers assure us that the professionals were much relieved by his
refusal to step inside the ropes. Late in life he was made a Baronet. To such base
use did that ancient, but unfortunate, order come at last.

213

Government; but in the whole circuit of the London Press no news-
paper could be found which adopted the line of being in opposition to
the Government, but in favour of the war,

In estimating the balance of British opinion during the American
Revolution great importance must be attached to the views expressed
by the newspapers; but not less significant was the impunity with
which those views were given to the world. It has happened more
than once that an Administration, already on the decline, has become
powerful and popular when a war broke out, and has retained its
advantage so long as that war endured; and, under the Georges, an
accession of strength, and of public favour, meant a great deal more
to a Government than it means now. A war ministry then, which had
the country with it, was terribly formidable to political opponents at
home. It might have seemed likely that, after the colonists had re-
course to arms, journalists and pamphleteers who went counter to the
royal policy would soon have a very bad time in England; but exactly
the opposite result ensued. During the first fourteen years of George
the Third, the ministerial censorship of the Press had been continuous,
inquisitorial, and harsh almost to barbarity. The most exalted magis-
trates had placed themselves at the service of the executive with culpa-
ble facility; not for the first time in our history. Roger North, in his
picturesque and instructive family biographies, reports how, through-
out the civil dissensions of the seventeenth century, the time of the
King's Bench was taken up with factious contentions; and he speaks
of that Court as a place where more news than law was stirring. The
law, as there laid down by Lord Mansfield in 1763, was fraught with
grave consequences to all men who gained their livelihood by writing
copy, or by setting up type. Informations began to rain like hail upon
authors, editors, publishers, and printers. Crushing fines, protracted
terms of imprisonment, and the open shame of the pillory, were, for
several years to come, the portion of those who criticised the Cabinet
in earnest. Their plight would have been hopeless if they had not
sometimes found a refuge in the Common Pleas, where the president
of the tribunal was Lord Chief Justice Pratt; who subsequently in the
House of Peers, as Lord Camden, ably supported Lord Chatham's
endeavours to reconcile Great Britain and America. Pratt, acting in
the true spirit of the law wherever liberty was at hazard, and auda-
ciously advancing the limits of his own jurisdiction when he otherwise
could not rescue a victim, nobly vindicated the ancient reputation of his
214

Court.18 As time went on, the ministerial majority in the House of
Commons joined in the hunt; and Parliamentary Privilege, which
had been devised for the protection of freedom, was perverted, amid
scenes of scandalous uproar and irregularity, into an engine of tyr-
anny.19

Ministers who had pursued such courses in a time of peace, — when
they could not excuse their arbitrary measures by the plea of national
danger, or the necessity for preserving an appearance of national una-
nimity,— might have been expected, when a war was raging, to have
strained and over-ridden legality more unscrupulously than ever for
the purpose of paying out old scores, and repressing fresh ebullitions
of hostile criticism. But, though the clamour against the King and his
ministers waxed ever more shrill and more pertinacious, the censor-
ship seemed to have lost its nerve, and the Opposition press went for-
ward on its boisterous way unmenaced and almost unmolested. Politi-
cal trials became infrequent, and, after a while, ceased.20 The voice
of the Attorney-General calling for vengeance, — now upon grave con-
stitutional essayists, or vehement champions of freedom; now upon
some miserable bookseller's hack, and the compositors who had de-
ciphered and printed his lucubrations, — was hushed and silent. Men
wrote what they thought and felt, in such terms as their indignation
prompted and their taste permitted. However crude and violent might
be the language in which the newspapers couched their invectives, the
legal advisers of the Government, when it came to a question of prose-
cution, were awed and scared by the consciousness that there existed
immense multitudes of people for whom diatribes against the Court

18 "The parties aggrieved," (so Lord Campbell writes,) "avoided the Court of King's
Bench, and sought redress in the Court of Common Pleas from the Lord Chief Justice
Pratt. He liberated Wilkes from the Tower on the ground of parliamentary privilege;
and, declaring general warrants to be illegal, he obtained from juries very heavy dam-
ages for those who had been arrested, and whose papers had been seized, on the sus-
picion that they were concerned in printing, and publishing, the number of the "North
Briton which had been singled out for prosecution." Life of Lord Mansfield, chapter
xxxvi.

Roger North's discriminating praise of the Common Pleas under the Stuart dynasty
is sanctioned by what was then the highest known authority. "As the Lord Nottingham
in one of his speeches expressed!, The law is there at home.'*

19 The excesses into which Parliament was betrayed during those evil years, and
the zest with which Fox led the riot within its walls, at an age when he ought to have
been taking his degree at Oxford, may be seen in the fifth, sixth, and ninth chapters ef
the Early History of Charles James Fox.

20 John Home Tooke's trial, on a charge of seditious libel connected with the Amer-
ican controversy, took place as early as the second year of the war. His conviction in-
jured the Ministry much more than it alarmed the Press.

215

and the Cabinet could not be too highly flavoured. Absolute liberty of
discussion thenceforward prevailed; but, to the honour of English
fairness, there was no immunity for gross slander. In the case of a false
and foul charge, brought against a public man of either party, our
tribunals showed themselves ready, according to the racy old judicial
phrase, to lay a lying knave by the heels. The "Morning Post," in 1780,
accused the Duke of Richmond of treasonable communication with
the French Government. But that statesman's display of kindliness to-
wards British colonists, who would still have been the Duke's fellow-
subjects but for an insane policy which he himself had consistently
opposed, was no proof of guilty sympathy with a foreign enemy in the
view of British jurymen. Nor were they disposed to overlook a flagrant
insult offered to one of the real heroes of Minden, in order to gratify
politicians who were not ashamed of sitting in the same Cabinet with
Lord George Sackville. Bate was found guilty, and was incarcerated
for a twelvemonth.

The exemption from maltreatment which Opposition publicists en-
joyed was certainly not purchased by their own moderation or discre-
tion. They wrote in a strain, sometimes of jovial impudence; some-
times of powerfully reasoned, and withering, animadversion; and their
swoop was never so direct and savage as when they flew at the highest
game. In the "North Briton" of the twenty-third of April 1763, Wilkes
had commented on a King's Speech in terms very uncomplimentary
to the Cabinet, but, wherever the King was mentioned, in decent and
measured phrases. While the Speech was pronounced to be the most
abandoned instance of official effrontery ever attempted to be imposed
on mankind, it was expressly declared to be the production of unprin-
cipled Ministers, which in a weak moment had been adopted as his
own by a gracious King. At a later time in the annals of journalism,
an amiable votary of literature, — whose virtues and weaknesses had
rendered him harmless to everybody except himself, — applied to the
Prince Regent a jeering epithet which any man of common sense, and
the throne or near it, would have read with a contemptuous smile, and
dismissed from his memory. And yet Leigh Hunt was heavily fined,
and imprisoned for twenty-four months; and George the Third, dur-
ing ten consecutive years, tried so hard to ruin Wilkes that, in the
course of his operations, he came unpleasantly near to upsetting his
own throne. The promptness and rigour with which attacks upon
royalty were punished both before and since, — as compared to the
boundless license which was permitted at that epoch when the sov-
216

ereign stood before the nation as a prime instigator, and a resolute
supporter, of the American war, — may be taken as a measure of the
distaste which that war then inspired in a very great number of
Englishmen.

From 1775 onward the newspapers went straight for the King. The
Empire, (they declared,) was under the direction of a bigoted and
vindictive prince, whose administration was odious and corrupt in
every part: so that the struggles of a handful of his subjects, made
-furious by oppression, had proclaimed the weakness of that Empire to
die world. Those precise words were printed at the beginning of 1776;
and towards the end of the year a Christian Soldier addressed George
the Third in a sermon of a couple of columns, headed by the first
seven verses of the Sixth Chapter in the Wisdom of Solomon. The
denunciation against wicked rulers, which those verses contain, was a
sufficient sermon in itself; but the preacher did not shrink from the
duty of pressing his text home. "Have you not," he asked the King,
"called your own pretensions the necessity of the State? Have you
chosen for your Ministers and Counsellors men of the greatest piety,
courage, and understanding? Have you not dreaded to have such
around you, because they would not flatter you, and would oppose
your unjust passions and your misbecoming designs?" And so the
argument continued through a score of interrogatives, any one of
which, five years before, or ten years before, would have sent the
author, and his printer, and the printer's devils as well, to think out
the answer to that string of irreverent queries in the solitude of
Newgate.

Whenever the Ministry was mentioned in connection with the King,
it was not for the purpose of shielding him from responsibility, but in
order to upbraid him for having entrusted the government of the
country to such a pack of reprobates. There could not, according to
one journalist, be anything more unfortunate for a nation than for
its Prince not to have one honest man about him. "Americans," wrote
another, "are totally indifferent about every change of Ministers which
may happen in the Court system. They care not who comes in. They
know that a change of men implies nothing more than knaves suc-
ceeding to that power which former knaves were fools enough to
abuse." The reason why England had come to be ruled by fools and
knaves was illustrated by an historical anecdote duly pointed with
italics. "Mr. Waller, the celebrated poet, being in the Closet with
James the Second one day, the King asked him how he liked a picture

2I7

of the Princess of Orange. 1 think,' says Waller, 'she is very like the
greatest woman in the world.' 'Whom do you call so?' said the King.
'Queen Elizabeth,' replied the other. 'I wonder, Mr. Waller,' said the
King, 'you should think so, as Queen Elizabeth owed all her greatness
to the wisdom of her Council.' 'And pray, sir,' says Waller, 'did you
ever tyow a fool chuse a wise one?' " 21

These passages are a small nosegay of specimens culled from a vast,
and not always fragrant, garden. Caradoc, and Britannicus, and Pub-
lius, and Ximenes, and Eumenes, and A True Whig, and A Friend
to Liberty, were often drearily long-winded, and sometimes uncon-
scionably violent; and yet many thousands of our forefathers read their
effusions with solemn satisfaction, and never wished them shorter by
a sentence, or less strong by a single superlative. Even where an as-
sailant of the King had the grace to veil his attack beneath a guise of
irony, he always took good care to make his meaning obvious. Before
the winter Session of 1776, a contributor to a newspaper, signing him-
self "Arams," was at the pains to compose an imaginary Speech
from the throne. "My Lords and Gentlemen," (so George the Third
was represented as saying,) "since the whole world knows how I have
been deceived, I have chosen in this public manner to declare that I
am now sensible of the errors into which I have been led by evil
counsellors. I glory in avowing the disposition of my heart; and, con-
vinced of the generosity and magnanimity of my people, I know they
will approve my candour. I have no doubt that they will soon reduce
France and Spain to peace, if they should dare to draw the sword
against me. An English monarch must always be triumphant when he
reigns in the heart of his people."

Odes, as Pindaric as a poet of the antechamber could make them,
had long been considered by the French and English Courts to be the
appropriate form in which literary incense should be burned before
Kings. But George the Third very early learned, — what Louis the
Great, to the grievous hurt of his dignity, had been taught by no less
skilful a master than Matthew Prior,22 — that poetry, and official poetry
above any, presents a temptation which an idle and malicious humorist

21 The London Evening Post of Saturday, September 27, to Tuesday, September 30,
1777-

22 "Prior burlesqued, with admirable spirit and pleasantry, the bombastic verses in
which Boileau had celebrated the first taking of Namur. The two odes, printed side by
side, were read with delight in London; and the critics at Will's pronounced that, in
wit as in arms, England had been victorious." Macaulay's History of England; chap-
ter xxi.

218

finds it impossible to withstand. Regularly as Whitehead's New Year
ode, and Birthday ode, were laid on the bookseller's counter, the whole
tribe of scribblers betook themselves with never-failing relish to the
work of parody. Opposition newspapers, all through the months of
January and June, regaled their subscribers with interminable files of
halting stanzas. In case the Laureate died, there was only too evidently
a large supply of bards who, if they consented to change their political
opinions, had every intellectual qualification for succeeding him.
Everything which could be said for or against the King, and the King's
Friends, and the King's Ministers, found its way into the strophes and
antistrophes with which the town was deluged; and in that Arncebean
contest it is hard to pronounce whether panegyrists, or detractors, of
Royalty were the sorriest rhymers.23 The Court ode, a sickly and un-
natural species of composition from the very first,— whether original,
or under the handling of a satirical imitator, — became positively nau-
seous from endless reiteration.

Incidents not unfrequently occurred which inspired more slashing
writers with verses less unreadable, but often grossly and extravagantly
unfair. The King was said to have been in the Royal box at the theatre
when the report of a sanguinary battle reached London.

"At the play when the news of the slaughter arrived!
What! Pray is the ghost of old Nero revived?
A Caesar to grin at a Foote or Macheath,
While perhaps his own armies are bleeding to death!

An empire disjoined and a continent lost!
The zeal of her children converted to hate,

23 " So firm withal, he's fixed as Fate.
When once resolved, at any rate

He'll stick to his opinions;
And, nobly scorning to be crossed,
Has most magnanimously lost

Three parts of his dominions.

How blest the men he condescends
To honour with the name of Friends!

Where steadier could he choose him?
For, from my conscience I believe,
'Tis not in nature to conceive

The service they'll refuse him."

These are the most presentable lines which can be discovered among the parodies ca
the Birthday Ode of 1776.

219

And the death of the parent involved in its fate;
Her treasures exhausted, her consequence broke,
Her credit a jest, and her terrors a joke!"

Those were the circumstances, (so Englishmen were bidden to ob-
serve,) under which poor George the Third, the most laborious and
self-denying of public servants, had ventured forth for a much needed
evening out. Such a theory of what propriety demanded constituted
a very extensive interference with the King's recreations; for the time
was at hand when never a day elapsed that some one, in some quarter
of the globe, was not being killed in a war which, after the winter of
1777, the monarch kept afoot by his own personal influence against
the very general wish of his people, and the judgement of all prudent
members of his Cabinet.

In spite of some excesses, absurdities, and affectations, the best news-
papers did much to maintain at a high level the character of the British
Press. The conduct of the war by both belligerents was narrowly
watched, and was criticised from week to week in outspoken prose not
open to the charge of being either trivial or calumnious. There were
grave and excellent writers who constituted themselves the guardians
of their countrymen's honour, on whichever side of the quarrel those
countrymen fought. They censured the arming of savages by the Brit-
ish War Office, and the burning of defenceless towns by British frigates;
but they protested, with as warm disapproval, when the printing estab-
lishment of James Rivington, the New York Loyalist, was sacked by a
mob of Whig raiders from Connecticut, and when insults were offered
at Philadelphia to Quakers whose scruples would not allow them to
take service against the Crown. Newspapers never shrank from ex-
pressing an opinion beforehand about strategical operations of the Gov-
ernment; and few were the instances where Lord George Germaine
ultimately proved to be in the right, and the newspapers in the wrong.
That most illogical test of patriotism which has been insisted upon by
unwise rulers, and their flatterers, from the days of Ahab and Micaiah
the son of Imlah downwards,24 had no terrors for Englishmen of a
vigorous and valiant generation; and very small attention was paid to
ministerial partisans who brought charges of disloyalty against a
military critic because he would not prophesy pleasant things.

24 First Kings, chapter xxii., verses i to 38. "And the messenger, that was gone to
call Micaiah spake unto him, saying, Behold now, the words of the prophets declare
good unto the king with one mouth: let thy word, I pray thee, be like the word of
one of them, and speak that which is good."

220

The Opposition newswriters, when the event showed their anticipa-
tions of failure to have been accurate, were bold to point the moral.
"Who were they who brought His Majesty's army into a place from
which it was a triumph to escape? If Boston was not a spot worth
defending for its own sake, why did the troops continue there for near
two years? Why were they reinforced until they amounted to near
twelve thousand men? Why were four generals sent to command
them? Why was the Ordnance Office emptied to defend Boston? Why
was the Sinking Fund swallowed up? Why were sixty thousand tons
of transports employed in that service? Why was the nation almost
starved to feed that town? Why was so much brave blood shed at
Bunker's Hill?"25 These are questions which have never yet received
an answer.

When, in January 1777, Howe was forced to abandon the Jerseys,
and confine himself to the neighbourhood of New York City, those
journalists who had been all along opposed. to the expedition were
exceedingly frank in their comments. They condemned the General
for his faulty tactics; and still less did they spare the Minister. In mak-
ing out their case against Lord North they appealed to that sound,
and not ignoble, principle which had inspired the foreign policy of
Burleigh and of Chatham, and had produced the victories won by
Drake, and Clive, and Wolfe, and Amherst. On that principle the
greatness of Britain was founded; for it consisted in the recognition of
some reasonable proportion between the risks and the expense of hos-
tilities, on the one hand, and the importance of the object for the
sake of which those hostilities were commenced, on the other. Was
Long Island, (the Opposition publicists inquired,) worth one fortieth
part of what it had taken to recover it? If England was to reoccupy
the whole of the American coast, at the rate it had cost to regain Long
Island, would the entire landed estate of the kingdom, if sold to the
best bidder, raise enough to pay for that ill-omened conquest?

A certain sense of comradeship between the two great branches of
our people, which the war had not extinguished, was manifested in the
feelings entertained by many Englishmen in England towards the Rev-
olutionary leaders who had displayed energy and courage, and par-
ticularly towards such as had fallen in battle. After the repulse of the
Americans before Quebec, Montgomery's body, by General Carleton's
order, was borne into the town with every mark of reverence and
regret, and buried with military honours. When the tidings of his

25 Letter of Valens; July n, 1776.

221

death reached the House of Commons, the most powerful orators, not
on one side only, praised his virtues, and lamented his fate. Burke
spoke of him with admiration. Lord North acknowledged that he
was brave, able, and humane, and deplored that those generous epithets
must be applied to one who had been a rebel; to which Charles Fox
retorted that Montgomery was a rebel only in the same sense as were
the old Parliament men of a hundred years ago, to whom those he
saw around him owed it that they had a House of Commons in which
to sit. Some ministerial supporters, — making the usual contribution
to debate of senators who are eager to express their view, but afraid
to take the floor,-— greeted the remark with sarcastic laughter; and that
laughter brought up Colonel Barre. He had been with Montgomery
where French bullets were flying, and still had one of them embedded
in his face; and, (on that occasion, as on others,) when Barre took
upon himself to rebuke an impertinence, it was not apt to be repeated.
A leading journal published its report of the evening's proceeding in
a paragraph edged with deep black; and, to judge by the general tone
of the press, the same would have been done by other newspapers if
the idea had occurred to other editors. Close parallels were drawn, in
divers odes and sonnets, between the characters of John Hampden
and of Richard Montgomery, and between the causes in defence ut
which they received their death-wounds. There appeared about this
time a political pamphlet, thinly disguised as a Dialogue of the Dead;—
a species of composition which had been consummately executed by
Lucian sixteen centuries ago, and more or less vapidly ever since; until,
for the comfort of humanity, in our own generation it has at length
ceased to be written at all. The author of this production, who evi-
dently was a staunch partisan of the colonists, professed to relate the
first interview between Montgomery, and his former chief, General
Wolfe, when they renewed their friendship in the Elysian Fields.26
Nor were American sympathies confined to those who wrote what
was intended to be perused in the safe seclusion of the study. A play,
dating from the last French war, and containing a graceful and pa-

26 "It is a happy chance for me, brave Wolfe," (so Montgomery began,) "to find
you alone in this solitary walk; since I may, without being interrupted, expatiate with
you on the unjust contempt you have shown me from the day of my arrival in this
delightful place." That is very well, but not exactly in the style of Lucian. The char-
acters in the discussion, besides the two principals, were George Grenville and Charles
Townshend^ as well as David Hume, who strolled out of a shady valley to join in the
talk, and eventually succeeded in reconciling the whole party. Hume had died in
August 1776, just in time to take a share in the conversation.

222

thetic allusion to the hero who died before Quebec, was just then being
given in London. The passage had been written for Wolfe; but the
theatre applied it to Montgomery, "and fairly rocked with applause."

Washington, from the earliest hour, was handled by the London
newspapers, and in the talk of London society, after a fashion which
could hardly have been more respectful if his great destinies had al-
ready been accomplished. Indeed, his treatment by English writers
and speakers during the war with England is in strong contrast to the
rough usage which, towards the close of his career and in the heats of
the French Revolution, he frequently experienced from that section of
his own countrymen who were opposed to his foreign policy. "General
Washington," wrote a London journalist in January 1776, "has so much
martial dignity in his deportment that you would distinguish him to
be a General and a Soldier among ten thousand people. There is not
a king in Europe but would look like a valet-de-chambre by his side."
A still more solid compliment was paid to him by Lord Chatham,
who knew well how to address a practical-minded Parliament which
commences business every day by petitioning that its monarch may be
permitted in health and wealth long to live. "Mr. Washington," said
Chatham in the House of Lords, "who now commands what is called
this night the rebel force, is worth five thousand pounds a year." 27

The American officer who, at this period of the struggle, had espe-
cially caught the fancy of Englishmen, was Benedict Arnold. His dash
and fire, his hairbreadth escapes, the stories which were afloat about
his rollicking and masterful demeanour, his cheerfulness in defeat, —
and, above all, (for so Englishmen are made,) his hard-won successes,
—commended him to a people which, next to a trusty servant, loves a
gallant enemy. His picture was in shop-windows, and on the walls of
many private rooms. Since it was pretty clear that the wound which
would keep him quiet was not known to surgery, men prayed that
he might be captured and brought a prisoner to England; but they
would have been sincerely sorry if he had been carried off by death.
Among the most severe, and, (if such a supremacy were possible,)
quite the worst-rhymed, . of all the contemporary pasquinades was
addressed to "the partial paragraphist of the Gazette who, after being
obliged to recount Colonel Arnold's rapid march, and his bravery and
conduct, thought fit to obscure his merit by calling him 'one Arnold.' "
Resentment against the carping and jealous attitude of his own Gov-
ernment,—which rankled in Arnold's heart, and at last impelled him

27 Debate on the Address in the House of Lords; Thursday, Nov. 20, 1777.

223

to his undoing, — was pointed and intensified by a knowledge that his
martial qualities were cordially appreciated by that British adversary
who had so thoroughly tested them in the field.

However large might be the number of our countrymen who could
not bring themselves to hate Americans, there was one nation, closer
at hand, which the great mass of Englishmen made no pretence what-
ever of loving. The permanent, no less than the ephemeral, literature
produced during the first twenty-five years of George the Third's reign
was pervaded, to an extent unpleasant and even scandalous, by the
animosity with which his subjects south of Tweed regarded his sub-
jects who had been born, but were not content to live, north of that
river. Englishmen had some excuse for their prejudice against Scotch-
men, i£ only they had indulged it in moderation. Twice in human
memory our borders had been penetrated, and our capital threatened,
by a host of armed mountaineers; and those warriors, whatever ro-
mantic attributes they may possess in the imagination of posterity,
most certainly did not impress their contemporaries as the sort of peo-
ple by whom a highly civilised society would willingly be conquered
and overrun. In 1715 a handful of Highlanders, with some North-
umberland fox-hunters for cavalry, had advanced half-way through
Lancashire before they were surrounded and destroyed; and, thirty
years later, several thousand clansmen had marched to Derby, and had
given the Londoners a fright from which not a few worthy citizens
never entirely recovered.

But the Englishmen of 1776 had no need to sharpen their hatred of
the Scotch by repeating to each other old stories which they had heard
from their fathers and grandfathers. They themselves had experienced
the calamities and humiliations of a third invasion; and this time the
army of occupation had arrived to stay. As soon as Lord Bute was
Prime Minister, he summoned southward, (beginning, but by no
means ending, with his own kinsmen and retainers,) a multitude of
compatriots to partake of his good fortune. An assaulting force, which
is active and enterprising, is always estimated above its real numerical
strength by the party of defence. Pensions, and patent places, and Court
offices with quaint tides and easy salaries,— -in the view of that Eng-
lish governing class whose perquisite they hitherto had been,— seemed
fast becoming the monopoly of North British peers and North British
members of Parliament. The sight was all the more vexatious because
a Scotchman of family found means to save money, and to buy land,
224

from the proceeds of an office with the aid of which an English noble-
man thought himself fortunate if he could keep the bailiffs out of his
town-house, without even contemplating the possibility of paying off a
farthing of the mortgages on his country estate. Untitled Scotchmen,
meanwhile, abounded in the army, in the navy, in the Government de-
partments, and in India and the colonies. Wherever they might be
stationed, they did their work admirably, and, (instead of paying a
deputy,) made a point of doing it themselves. Idle Englishmen of
fashion saw with dismay that sinecures, the reversion of which they
held or hoped for, in the hands of Scotch occupants were sinecures no
longer; but, in despite of their industry and public spirit, their shrewd-
ness and frugality, — and even, it is to be feared, all the more on ac-
count of those qualities, — the fellow-countrymen of Lord Bute met
with the very reverse of gratitude from the nation which they served.28
Although thirteen long and eventful years had elapsed since Bute
vacated office in 1763, he was still the fertile theme of gossip and sus-
picion. He had, indeed, been far from a popular minister when he
stood openly at the sovereign's elbow as chief adviser and prime fa-
vourite; but he was not less detested, and much more feared, now that
he was supposed, most erroneously and absurdly, to be manipulating
the wires from behind the curtains of the throne. It may be doubted
whether public opinion has ever been more profoundly affected by a
more general and persistent illusion than in the case of the belief that
Lord Bute was a motive power of George the Third's policy all the
while that the American troubles were brewing, and as long as the war
lasted. The Princess Dowager had died several years before a shot was
fired; and the last remains of her old friend's political influence had
died with her. 2d And yet the legend of an Interior Cabinet at Bucking-
ham House, where Bute had the first and the last word in every con-

28 The prevalence of these unamiable sentiments is amusingly illustrated by a con-
versation, the printed report of which remains to all time the very model of artistic
treatment When Johnson and Wilkes, approaching each other from the Antipodes of
political opinion, met first at Mr. Dilly's table, a topic had to be found about which
they were both agreed, and on which they both were known to talk their very best.
By common consent, and with all the greater zest because it was a Scotchman who had
brought them together, they at once fell to work against the Scotch.

29 In July 1778 George the Third wrote to Lord North about the rumour of a
political negotiation between the Earl of Chatham and the Earl of Bute. *1 have read
the narrative," (His Majesty said,) "of what passed between Sir James Wright and Dr.
Addington, and am fully convinced of what I suspected before, that the two old Earls,
like old coachmen, still loved the smack of the whip." Those were the terms in which
the King referred to Lord Bute at a time when, according to Whig newspapers, that
nobleman was omnipotent in the secret counsels of the State.

225

sultation, and where discussions were conducted in a jargon unintelligi-
ble to Southron Privy Councillors, was an established article of faith
with the majority of patriotic Englishmen. Every odious measure, and
every unexpected and exorbitant demand on the Exchequer, was habit-
ually attributed to the machinations of a phantom conclave which
passed by the name, sometimes of the Junta, and more often of the
Thane's Cabinet. London was reminded several times a week, with a
free use of capital letters, that the ruinous and unnaturally wicked con-
flict in consequence of which English families were mourning the loss
of Husbands, Sons, and Brothers was a SCOTCH WAR; engineered by
the relentless Bute, and the bloodthirsty Mansfield. If once peace were
restored, that crafty and cruel Caledonian Judge would no longer be
able to harangue the House of Peers about the duty of killing men,
and would be reduced, like Domitian, to kill flies.30 Despatches from
Scotch colonial governors had kindled the war; Scotch counsellors had
promoted it; Scotch violence had conducted it; and pamphlets from the
pens of Scotch gazetteers,— whose necessities had taught them to write,
though they could not talk, so as to be understood by Englishmen,—
had deluded simple people into believing that the unconditional sub-
mission of America was necessary for the honour and safety of Great
Britain. Those were the doctrines preached three times a week by
Anti-Sejanus, and Historicus, and Politicus, and a whole tribe of able
and uncompromising exponents, whose credit with the public steadily
grew as hostilities went forward, and the cloud of misfortunes thick-
ened. When Burgoyne had been captured, and when half Europe was
on the eve of joining in an attack upon England, the newspapers au-
thoritatively announced, in paragraphs marked by a semi-official turn
of phrase, that the private Cabinet, of which the Earl of Bute was
President, had met at an Honourable Lady's house, and had finally re-
solved to prosecute the war rather than part with their employments.
Burke, in a sentence which has been quoted in famous debate,31 laid

30 Ever since Lord Mansfield uttered his unfortunate sentence about killing Americans,
he passed in newspapers by a name the use of which is the most cruel insult that can
be offered to a British Judge. In January 1776 it was reported that the distress inside
Boston exceeded the possibility of description, and that our troops were eating horse-
flesh, and burning the pews for fuel. "But the goes to the play, and laughs as usual;

Jemmy Twitcher sings catches with his mistresses at Huntingdon; and sly old Jeffreys
drops hints for shedding more blood."

31 That was the quotation with which Mr. Gladstone began his reply to a chivalrous
and heart-felt speech, by Mr. Gathorne Hardy, just before the division on the Second
Reading of the Irish Church Bill. Mr. Hardy had made two yet finer orations hi the
course of the two preceding years; but those, who then heard Mr. Gladstone, find it
difficult to believe that he ever had more profoundly and pleasurably stirred his audience
than on that early morning in March 1869.

226

it down that an indictment cannot be brought against a nation. Nor,
on the other hand, can a nation commence an action for libel; or
else Scotland, in any year between the Second and Twenty-second of
George the Third, might have secured exemplary damages from her
traducers. The ball of vituperation, set rolling by Churchill and Wilkes,
was kept in motion by less skilful, but far more unfair and ill-natured,
players, long after Wilkes had grown lazy and indifferent, and when
death had silenced Churchill. Scotland, and all that appertained to her,
was the stock subject for the gall of the lampooner and the acid of
the caricaturist; until the most omnivorous collector of eighteenth-
century broadsheets and woodcuts turns aside in disgust when he
espies the syllable "Mac" in a political ballad, or the flutter of a kilt in
the corner of a coarse engraving. The storm of obloquy rose perceptibly
higher when the American war began, and waxed more fierce as it
proceeded. Sometimes a crafty adversary, — meeting Scotchmen with
their own weapons, and affecting the character of a political economist
whose feelings had been wounded by ministerial extravagance, — put
forth a mass of exaggerated statistics clustered round a particle of fact.
One day it was affirmed that the Scotch did not pay a fiftieth propor-
tion with the English towards the Revenue, while, upon the most
moderate computation, they enjoyed above half the emoluments of
Government. On another morning the newspapers published a return
of Scotchmen in receipt of public money, accompanied by an apology
to the effect that the catalogue was unavoidably incomplete. But, even
so, the placemen and pensioners whose names appeared on the list,
were represented as drawing incomes from the Treasury to the tune
of one hundred thousand a year more than the annual receipt of land-
tax from the whole of Scotland.

Anti-ministerial writers vehemently contended that the continuance
of the war, which was ruining the larger nation, brought nothing
except gain to the smaller; and almost daily proofs were adduced in
support of that assertion.32 The Prohibitory Act, forbidding importa-
tion from America, had advanced the price of tobacco seventy per cent.
Glasgow merchants, (it was alleged,) to whom the Chancellor of the
Exchequer had dropped a hint, had laid in great quantities of that
commodity, and were selling at their own prices; since the Junta

32 "A miserable remnant of English nobility, with a few unprincipled commoners, are
cunningly employed to bear the odium of the business; while embassies, governments,
contracts, regiments, and all the profitable jobs and employments created by the calami-
ties of the war, are without exception reserved for Murrays, Mackenzies, Stuarts, and
Frazers; — Scotchmen who have been marked as enemies to liberty, and the vile instru-
ments of two late horrid rebellions." Letter from an Essex Farmer; July 21, 1776.

227

would not let slip such a favourable opportunity of enabling Scotch
middlemen to fatten on the plunder of English consumers. Govern-
ment inspectors were said to have passed without examination all the
stores provided by Scotch contractors, who accordingly supplied the
army with food too bad to be eaten by any except Scotch soldiers, who
fed worse at home.33 It was a standing rule, (so the story ran,) both at
the War Office and the Admiralty, that, when things went wrong, it
was never the fault of a Scotchman. The Greyhound frigate, a vessel
of a class that in the last war used to capture privateers with thirty-six
guns, had been beaten off by an American ship carrying only twenty-
six cannon; but the captain was a Scotchman, "and the Ministry would
sooner, once in a while, confess Americans to be brave than admit
their favourite Scots to lack courage."

South-countrymen, who wished to live out of the taxes, could not
be expected to welcome the incursion of a fresh and hungry herd into
the very pick of the Treasury pastures. But even those quiet and
unaspiring Englishmen, who were honourably contented to carry their
labour into the open market, sincerely believed that the bread was
taken out of their mouths by Scotch competition; and, if they failed
to perceive the injury which was inflicted upon them, it was not for
want of telling. A man of spirit, (so they were informed,) would en-
deavour to explore new lands until times grew better, and would
cross the seas on a butcher's tray, if he could not afford a Thames
wherry, rather than starve at home under a reign when none except
Scotchmen might thrive in England. A correspondent, signing himself
Hortulanus, related a sorrowful tale which was calculated to inspire
uneasiness in a very large and estimable body of work-people. He de-
scribed himself as having been dismissed, with seven English gardeners
who had worked under him, by a country gentleman, a kind and good
master, who had been perverted by the example of a great person
in the neighbourhood. This unpatriotic nobleman, a member of Lord
North's Administration, was extremely fond of Scotch architects, Scotch
politicians, and Scotch butlers and footmen; and he employed no
fewer than fourteen of the ten thousand Scotch gardeners who had
ousted Englishmen from all the most expensively equipped establish-

33 "A correspondent asks whether General Howe has any horses to draw his artillery
and waggons, without which he will never get to Philadelphia. The horses sent by
Mr. Fordyce are all dead. This is a pretty job; but Mr. Fordyce is a Scotchman, and
intends to be member for Colchester. He has canvassed the toone, and prepared aw things
in readiness. Contracts are fine things! How many millions o£ English money will the
Scotch profit by in this war?" London Newspaper of October the nth, 1776.

228

ments in the south of the island. Why, (the indignant writer asked,)
should men born in a cold region, where neither plants, fruits, nor
flowers, could flourish, — where the sun could not ripen a grape, and
where half-starved spiders fed upon half-starved flies, — be preferred to
the inhabitants of a country for which nature was more generous, and
the sun more warm and prolific? "Old as I am and encumbered by a
family, I offered to work under these Caledonian favourites; but my
oflfer was not accepted. The Steward, who pitied my case, told me I
should lead a wretched life with the Scots, who would consider me,
and treat me, as a foreigner; for it was their usual custom, on getting
into a family, to introduce their own countrymen, and turn out all the
old servants." 34

Hortulanus, in all probability, never cultivated anything except the
flower-pots outside an attic window in Soho; but he, and plenty like
him, had mastered the easy trick of handling those topics of interna-
tional prejudice, and trade jealousy, which go straight home to the
apprehensions of common men. The majority of readers, alarmed and
sore, accepted in good faith these provocative statements, which were
often deliberately invented, or dishonesdy over-coloured. They relished
their newspaper all the more when it contained an appeal to trie
memory of a prince who, alive or dead, was incomparably the most
popular member of the reigning family throughout the country, and
especially in the capital. It has been wittily said that, from the time
Lord Bute took office, many Englishmen, and most Londoners, re-
fused to admit any blemish on the fame of the victor of Culloden, and
found no fault with his Royal Highness except that he had left too
many Camerons and Macphersons to be made gaugers and custom-
house officers. Scotchmen, (wrote a vigorous controversialist,) seemed
to vie with each other in the business of fettering our fellow-subjects
in America, and of subjugating a brave, a loyal, and a free people to
absolute slavery and bondage; but their cunning and persistent efforts
were really levelled not so much against the liberties of the colonists as
against the liberties of Englishmen. "But, alas, since the demise of the
Saviour of England, the late worthy Duke of Cumberland,— Wully
the Butcher, as the Scotch call him, — an Englishman dare scarce look

34 The letter is in the London Evening Post of September n, 1777. Macaulay, among
his collection of newspapers relating to the American war, had acquired all the volumes
of the London Evening Post on which he could lay his hands. That was part of the
preparations made for continuing his History of England down to a time which was
within the memory of men still living, and for relating "how imprudence and obstinacy
broke the ties which bound the North American colonists to the parent state.**

229

a Scotchman in the face." 35 Such was the overcharged invective which
habitually disfigured the public journals. Our progenitors, it must be
admitted, occasionally came rather oddly by opinions which they held
very stubbornly; and a vast number of Englishmen were confirmed
and rooted in their friendship towards America because with some
cause, but out of all measure, they envied and disliked the Scotch.

35 Letter by Toby Trim; January 29, 1777.

230

CHAPTER IX

THE CITY OF LONDON.

NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE.

THE NATION AND THE WAR

the beginning of that century which now was far gone, the
City of London, in time of war, had always been a centre of warlike
feeling. In 1701 it eagerly rallied to William the Third whom it did
not greatly love, when he proudly and indignantly accepted the chal-
lenge of the French King. In 1711 the butchery of Malplaquet had
sickened the nation; and the national conscience was revolted by the
wanton prolongation of the horrors of a war, the objects of which
might long ago have been secured by a prudent and disinterested
Cabinet. The new Tory Ministry, which had displaced Godolphin,
was actually negotiating with France; and yet the City of London
made preparations for greeting Marlborough, as leader of the war-
party, with a popular demonstration so aggressive and significant that
it was very properly suppressed by the Government in the name of
peace and order. During the Seven Years' War the Corporation sup-
ported Chatham with enthusiasm and devotion. After he fell from
power, and was succeeded by ministers who thought that there had
been enough fighting, he was honoured, — on his way to the Guildhall,
and inside its walls, — with a reception such as no subject has ever ex-
perienced in English history. But in 1775 the hostilities in Massachu-
setts found City opinion sullen and recalcitrant; and that state of mind
rapidly developed into angry and determined opposition.

All the four members for London voted steadily against the war from
first to last. The Corporation carried Humble Remonstrances to the
foot of the Throne with so much persistency that George the Third
would almost as willingly have seen at St. James's the blue and yellow
uniforms of Washington's army as the red gowns, and furred caps, and

231

heavy gold chains of the City officers.1 Every successive appearance of
that all too familiar group at the door of his Presence Chamber indi-
cated that he would once more have to listen, with some show of
civility, to a long screed of manly common sense which he strongly
suspected Mr. Alderman Wilkes of having drafted. The Recorder of
London wore mourning in public "for the brothers whom he had lost
at Lexington;" and his conduct so far met the view of those who had
elected him that, when he died no long time after, the Court of Alder-
men appointed a successor who notoriously held the same opinions.
Through these trying months John Sawbridge was Chief Magistrate
of the City, as well as one of its parliamentary representatives. He
was a person of social consequence; a country gentleman, a Colonel
of Militia in his county, and a high authority in the clubs of St. James's
Street, where he was accounted the best whist player in town. Wealthy,
proud, and honest, he was beholden to no minister, and afraid of no
one. He had stood up in face of the Government majority at West-
minster, in its most insolent moods, as often and as sturdily as did
Barre, and Savile, and Dowdeswell; and only less frequently than Ed-
mund Burke and Charles Fox. The courage and vigour with which,
at the Mansion House and in the Commons, Sawbridge thwarted and
rebuked the operations of the Cabinet, secured him enormous popu-
larity as Lord Mayor, and a safe seat for life as a member for the City.
Sawbridge strengthened his influence among Liverymen by the
somewhat unscrupulous audacity with which he asserted the privileges
and immunities of the City in a matter about which almost all citizens
were of one mind. At the outbreak of hostilities the Board of Ad-
miralty was even more behindhand in its preparations than the War
Office, and with less excuse. Lord Barrington, the Secretary at War,
had always cherished a hope that the dispute would be settled by
negotiation, and had done what he dared, (which was not much,) to
bring that result about; whereas Sandwich, the First Lord of the
Admiralty, — who was in the inner counsels of the Government, and
the spokesman for his colleagues in the House of Peers,— had con-
sistently laboured, both in Parliament and behind the scenes, to em-
broil the relations between England and her colonies. He, at all events,
was bound to provide that, so far as his own Department was con-

i'The day before the sheriffs went to know when the King would receive the
Address, he said to a young man who was hunting with him; 'I must go to town
to-morrow to receive those fellows in furs. They will not be very glad to see me, nor I
them.' " Last Journals; Dec. 1781.

232

cerned, the country should be in a position promptly, and strongly, to
enforce by arms a policy for the adoption of which he himself was so
largely responsible. And yet, as late as December 1774, he had de-
liberately reduced the Navy by four thousand men, on a total strength
of twenty thousand, of whom a full quarter were Royal Marines.
Eleven months afterwards he called on Parliament to vote an addi-
tion of twelve thousand men. The number of seamen was doubled
in a single evening; and the process of violently and suddenly with-
drawing so vast a multitude from their homes, their habits, and their
avocations, paralysed commerce, and caused wide-reaching and un-
necessary suffering to individuals.

The newspapers made known the story with a copious employment
of those nautical terms which were familiar to a sea-going nation.
Thirty sail of ships, (it was reported,) were "tumbling in Yarmouth
Roads at single anchor/* without anyone on board any of them except
the master, and a few little cabin-boys. As many more lay in Harwich
harbour, losing their voyage at a time when there was a great demand
for their cargoes in the London markets. A captain, who owned his
vessel, and whose sailors had been taken out of her by the press-gang
in an Essex haven, paid fifty-six guineas for a crew to work her round
to London; whereas, with his own people to help him, it would have
been done for as many shillings. The mariners of the Northern coun-
ties, formidable in a strike or a Revenue-riot, were not submissive un-
der this more serious invasion of their liberty. Hundreds of prime sea-
men left their families penniless in the ports of Durham and Northum-
berland, and ran off, with the project of remaining away until the heat
of the Press was abated. But that time was long in arriving; for the
maritime conscription grew more active and stringent as the necessities
of the country deepened, and her enemies multiplied. Discontent after
a while led to open violence. The impressed men, on board a tender
in the river between North and South Shields, rose upon the crew,
took possession of the ship, and carried her to sea under cannon-fire
from her consorts, and from a fort which protected the entrance of
the channel. A week or two afterwards a Lieutenant of the Royal
Navy organised a raid upon the Colliers which lay in the estuary.
A great number of sailors came to the help of the vessel which he first
attacked, and mustered on the forecastle to repel boarders. The fight
commenced with lumps of coal and billets of wood on the part of the
defenders, answered on the other side by a blunderbuss, which first
missed fire, and then killed a man at whom it had not been aimed.

233

Newcastle citizens, who had learned by repeated experience the temper
and quality of a Quayside mob, felt greatly relieved when they ascer-
tained that Lieutenant Oakes and his party had escaped with their
lives.2

In and below London the misery was intense; and the resistance of
the sufferers, though less determined, entailed a longer list of fatal
accidents. Upwards of a thousand seamen were captured in the Thames
alone. Towards the end of October 1776, twenty armed boats came up
river from Deptford and Woolwich, and took every man, except the
master and mate, from every ship that they found in the stream. A
Royal officer was shot with a pistol as he went up the side of a vessel;
and eight merchant-sailors endeavoured to escape by swimming, and
were drowned in the attempt. The West Indian captains, especially,
were in pitiable case. They had everything ready for weighing anchor.
Their holds were full; they had paid their crews for the time spent in
the river, and for a month of the voyage in advance; and now every
man who slept before the mast was carried off with his money in his
pocket. The needs of the Royal Navy had to be met with a hurry
which did not admit of careful selection, or of a decent regard for in-
dividual claims to indulgence and consideration. The hatches of the
tenders were battened down upon a mixed crowd of fisher-folk and
merchant-sailors, with sore hearts and undressed wounds; of townsmen
who had never been on board a ship before; and of old broken mar-
iners who had gone to sea so often, and for so long, that they had
earned a right to spend the rest of their days where, and how, they
chose. One press-gang had to answer in the law-courts for having laid
hands on a veteran whose skull had been fractured in the last French
war. Another swept off a group of people from a lottery office, while
they were engaged on insuring the numbers which they had drawn.
"Come, my lads," said the lieutenant, "I will insure you for good
berths on board a ship of war." A knot of labouring men, who had
been buying their family dinners, were assailed on their way home-
wards, and showed fight to some purpose. One sailor was knocked
down with a leg of mutton, and another with a bundle of turnips;
and, before their party could make good their retreat, the whole of
them had been ducked by the crowd. That was a touch of pantomime,
in the midst of many silent and obscure domestic tragedies. An adver-
tisement appeared to the effect that the bodies of five impressed men,
suffocated in the hold of the Hunter tender, had been brought on

2 Local Records of Northumberland and "Durham] by John Sykes, Newcastle, 1832.

234

shore to be owned. It was uncongenial work for bluff, hearty, tars who
were told off for that odious duty. The crime, (so a spirited journalist
reminded his readers,) rested not on the sailor's bludgeon, nor on the
lieutenant's cutlass, but on the unthinking head o£ a minister who,
through many years of peace, forgot the future probability o£ a war,
and left every precaution alone until it was too late to act without
violating humanity.

Enthusiasm for the naval service there was none. The war was bar-
ren of prize money; no glory was to be obtained out of a campaign
against privateers commanded by Yankee skippers who knew very
well when to attack, and when and whither to run; and, moreover,
many a poor fellow, who in days gone by had helped to beat the
French and Spaniards, was in his rude way a patriot. Mariners, who
had served the guns under Hawke and Saunders, had no mind for
exchanging shot and blows with men who fought their ship in Eng-
lish fashion, and who, when the battle had gone against them, begged
for quarter with an English tongue. The irritation caused by the harsh
and precipitate action of the Admiralty was general throughout Lon-
don, and nowhere so acute as within the City bounds. It was a short
journey to Cornhill from Rotherhithe and Greenwich, opposite the
river front of which the Jamaica fleet lay, and seemed likely to lie
until the timbers rotted; and West Indian captains, and their employ-
ers, might be seen whispering together with long faces under the
colonnades of the Royal Exchange, and across the tables of the neigh-
bouring coffee-houses. The dignity of the Corporation was offended by
the invasion of the press-gangs; and the City fathers had been touched
in a tender point, for the supply of fish was scanty and irregular. Essex
boatmen had transferred themselves and their nets to Holland; and a
naval officer, of more than common hardihood, braving a storm of
malediction from the conception of which the imagination shrinks,
laid forcible hands on a number of seamen in the very heart of Bil-
lingsgate market.

That district lay within the Lord Mayor's jurisdiction; and the sit-
uation was still further strained by the impressment of Mr. John
Tubbs, a Waterman of the Lord Mayor's Barge.3 The outraged Magis-

3 Rex versus Tubbs became a leading case in the King*s Bench, where Lord Mansfield
took occasion to deliver himself in favour of the legality of pressing for the Royal Navy.
"A pressed sailor," he pronounced, "is not a slave. No compulsion can be put upon him
except to serve his country; and, while doing so, he is entitled to claim all the rights of
an Englishman." The readers of Smollett, and even of Captain Marryat, may be permit-

235

trate issued an order for the apprehension of all naval officers who
carried on their operations inside the limits of the City. Three lieu-
tenants and a mate, belonging to a ship of the line, were arrested, and
brought before the Guild-hall Bench, A very eminent Judge attended
the examination in order to support the accused officers with his coun-
tenance and advice. His Lordship was stiffly rebuked by the sitting
Aldermen, who told him that they themselves would never venture to
intrude their presence upon him in his own Court on such an errand.
The defendants refused to find bail, and were duly committed to the
Poultry Counter, where they remained in durance until the Attorney
and Solicitor General gave it as their opinion that bail had better be
procured. At one moment it seemed as if the forcible enlistment of
seamen within the City would be impracticable. The Lord Mayor de-
clined to back the press-warrants; and his example was afterwards fol-
lowed by Sir Thomas Halifax, his successor in the Chair. But that diffi-
culty was surmounted by the warrants being taken for signature to
Alderman Harley, as stout a Tory as ever Sawbridge was a Whig.
Harley, who was grand-nephew of the celebrated Earl of Oxford, had
a good hereditary tide to show for his political opinions; and, as a
firm supporter of Lord North, he had opportunities placed at his dis-
posal which enabled him to make a mountain of money by the war.4
There had been a war anterior to 1776, and there have been wars
since, when the youth of the City, — abandoning the employments by

ted to question what those rights were worth to a landsman with a broken head, im-
prisoned many feet below the water-line in the hold o£ a frigate which had put to sea
for a three years' cruise in distant waters.

4 The impunity with which press-gangs acted, and the terror that they inspired among
humble civilians, are amusingly illustrated by a story from the unpublished Memoirs of
Archbishop Markham. Some years after the American war a party of Westminster boys
dressed themselves up as men-of-warsmen; — which was not difficult in days when an
officer kept watch on board ship in any costume which he found most comfortable. They
stationed themselves at the corner of Abingdon Street, and were headed by a stout lad
in a pea-jacket and hairy cap, "who had acquired the art of making a cat-call by
whistling through his fingers," and who personated the lieutenant. They promptly
pounced on the first passer-by; examined him; pronounced him a fit person to serve his
Majesty; and then dexterously loosed their hold, and allowed him to run. While they
were occupied over their fifth victim, an under-master came by, and the sport ended.
Dr. Vincent thought the affair so serious that he called in the Archbishop, who in his
day had been a Head-master of Westminster with whom no scholar ever trifled. "That,"
said the old man of the world, "was a very smart piece of fun. Now do show me
the hairy capl" and the boys got off with a hundred lines of Virgil apiece.

It was said that gold-laced hats were worn by people who could ill afford them,
because they had a military look, and were therefore a protection against the attentions
of the press-gang.

which they lived, and giving up, in some cases, assured and attractive
prospects of commercial advancement, — took arms for the prosecution
of a quarrel which they regarded as their country's cause. But the dis-
pute with America excited no enthusiasm in the mercantile commu-
nity. Whatever martial ambition might exist among respectable civil-
ians was deadened and discouraged by the humiliating possibilities
which awaited every volunteer who donned the scarlet coat. It was al-
most universally believed in military circles that flogging was a valu-
able preservative of discipline at home, and quite indispensable on
active service. That last named article of belief has died hard, and it
survived the longest in official quarters. It was the task of inde-
pendent members of Parliament, some of whom are not yet old men,
to break it down by argument; and practical experience, on a scale
and of a nature which enforces conviction, has now finally settled
the controversy. Within the last four years, in South Africa, order and
obedience have been effectively maintained, without recourse to corpo-
ral punishment, in by far the largest and the most variously constituted
force that Great Britain ever put into the field, and kept there over a
very long space of time under circumstances exceptionally trying to the
spirits and temper of an army. Some of our most distinguished officers,
for more than a century past, felt sufficient faith in their countrymen
to anticipate a happy result which now is matter of history;5 but,
during the war of the American Revolution, such wise and far-seeing
prophets were few. On an April day of 1777 the whole neighbourhood
of Whitehall was disturbed by the most dreadful shrieks, proceeding
from the Parade-ground behind the Horse-guards and the Treasury.
A soldier was receiving the first instalment of a thousand lashes; and a
hundred were afterwards inflicted upon a drummer whose heart had

5 "At the same time that the British soldiers were maintaining with such devoted
fortitude the glory of England, their camps daily presented the most disgusting and
painful scenes. The halberts were regularly erected along the lines every morning, and
the shrieks of the sufferers made a pandemonium, from which the foreigner fled with
terror and astonishment at the severity of our military code. Drunkenness was the vice
of the officers and men; but the men paid the penalty; and the officers who sate in judge-
ment in the morning were too often scarcely sober from the last night's debauch. It will
be a consummation of my most anxious wishes, grounded upon my memory of these
early scenes of abuse of power, when the system of punishment, such as I have de-
scribed it, shall be referred to only as a traditional exaggeration.1* So wrote General
Sir Robert Wilson with reference to the campaign in Flanders of the year 1794. That
was the end of what had been worst. The standard of personal behaviour among offi-
cers in Wellington's Peninsular army was high; and punishments, though still very
severe, became less frequent when the soldiers could look to their superiors for a worthy
example, and for watchful and kindly guidance.

237

failed him during the operation. When such things were done in St.
James's Park, a stockbroker or a clerk, of reputable character and good
position, would unavoidably reflect as to what might be his fate when
he was on detached service in the backwoods of America, at the mercy
of an unfriendly and tyrannical sergeant who possessed the confidence
of the regimental officers.

The American war brought into the City a tribe of interlopers
whose presence there was viewed with moral repugnance by the
worthiest portion of the community, and who inflicted very serious
damage upon the material interests of established traders and finan-
ciers. Sometimes it was a man of rank and pleasure, and sometimes an
impudent and voluble upstart of doubtful antecedents, who came east-
ward through Temple Bar armed with a contract for rum, or beef, or
army-cloth, which replaced to him, many times over, the three or four
thousand pounds that he had sunk in the purchase of his seat for a
Cornish borough. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer had recourse
to one of his frequent borrowings, he passed over the hereditary bank-
ers whom investors trusted, and who would have been satisfied with a
fair and reasonable commission for their risk and trouble. The money
was largely raised through the agency of a great number of members
of Parliament,— who, for the most part, had never lent anything before
in their lives, but had borrowed much, — on terms of scandalous laxity
which had been arranged for the express purpose of rewarding them
for their votes. Lord North himself admitted that, on a single loan of
twelve millions, upwards of a million had gone in clear profit among
the individuals to whom it had been allotted; and half of them were
politicans who sate behind him in the House of Commons. "I agree
with you," (Lord Abingdon wrote to Lord Rockingham,) "in think-
ing the loan to be a very abominable transaction.'* That was how
clean-handed senators viewed the disgraceful proceedings; but harder
things still were said in bank-parlours. The spectacle of fine gentle-
men, and of some gentlemen who were anything but fine, masquerad-
ing about Threadneedle Street and Birchin Lane with the air of part-
ners in Glyn's or Child's, and talking a financial jargon which they
supposed to resemble the conversation of the capitalists whose gains
they intercepted, inspired in genuine City men a disgust which, (since
they were neither more nor less than human,) pointed and sharpened
their disapprobation of the Government policy in America.

That disapprobation was grounded upon large knowledge and long
observation. The City had been firmly persuaded that the knot of

238

colonial discontent could n<ver be cut by the sword. The Funds al-
ways fell after British defeats, and never very visibly recovered them-
selves in consequence of a British victory. In August 1774, before the
. Revolution began, the Three per Cent. Consols stood at 89. A month
before the news of Long Island arrived in London they were at 84; a
fortnight after that news they were at 82; and that was all the effect
produced by a complete rout of the Americans, which was hailed by
courtiers at home, and English diplomatists abroad, as a most reassur-
ing, and almost a conclusive, success. By October 1777 Consols had
fallen to 78. The tidings of the capture of Burgoyne brought them
down to 70. They fell, and fell, until the capitulation of Lord Corn-
wallis reduced them to 54; and they could hardly have gone lower if
they were to retain any value at all. Then Lord North made way for
a Ministry pledged to recognise the independence of America, and to
abandon the right of taxing her wealth and controlling her commerce;
a right which Lord Nortli and his adherents had always insisted to be
absolutely essential for maintaining the prosperity of British trade and
British manufactures. And ^et Consols, when the situation came to be
understood, rose six points on the mere prospect of a peaceful settle-
ment with our former colonies; although England was still at war, all
the world over, with France, Spain, and Holland. The silent testimony
of the Stocks, those authentic witnesses who never boast and never
flatter, unanswerably proves that the City of London at no period
shared with the Court and the Cabinet in the delusion that the col-
onies could be subdued by arms.

The state of opinion in London was evident on the surface; but it is
more difficult to collect indications of the feeling which prevailed else-
where. The sentiments, however, which were current in one famous
region of industry and enterprise have been recorded by a witness
whose evidence on this point is above suspicion. Samuel Curwen, a
prominent Massachusetts Loyalist,— who had been a high official in
his native province, and who now was an exile in England,— made a
tour in the Midland counties, and spent a week at Birmingham.
Walking there on the Lidi£eld road, Curwen was invited indoors by
a Quaker, and found him "a warm American, as most of the middle
classes are through the Kingdom." He passed an agreeable day with
a merchant, who had been in America, and who was "her steady and
ardent advocate." He stepped into the shop of a gunmaker. The Brit-
ish Ministry,— -with foresight which, for the War Office, might almost
be called inspiration, — had given the man an order to construct six

239

hundred rifles for the use of General Howe's army: and yet, (said
Curwen,) "he is an antiministerialist, as is the whole town." 6 If such
was the case in a district where Government orders for military sup-
plies had been freely placed, it may well be believed that political dis-
content and disgust were not less acute in those commercial centres
which greatly suffered, and in no way profited, by the existence of
hostilities. Yorkshire manufacturers, especially, had no part in the war
except to pay increased taxes; to borrow from their banker on terms,
that every month grew worse, money that every month they needed
more; and to see their warehouses glutted with goods which they were
forbidden to sell to those New Englanders, and Pennsylvanians, who
had formerly been their very best customers. "In the West Riding,"
wrote John Wesley, "a tenant of Lord Dartmouth was telling me, 'Sir,
our tradesmen are breaking all round me, so that I know not what
the end will be.' Even in Leeds I had appointed to dine at a mer-
chant's; but, before I came, the bailiffs were in possession of the house.

Upon my saying, *I thought Mr. had been in good circumstances,'

I was answered, 'He was so, but the American war has ruined him.' " 7

One considerable provincial town had an opportunity of showing, at
a critical conjuncture, that within the circuit of its walls there ex-
isted no very general predilection for Lord North's American policy.
The opponents of a war are never so weak and helpless for the pur-
poses of an election as at a time when, towards the commencement of
hostilities, the country has met with a military reverse. While the
resources of the people are still abundant, and their eagerness unim-
paired, they hotly resent the circumstance of having been foiled by
an enemy, and especially by an enemy whom their rulers have en-
couraged them to despise; and any candidate who advocates concession
and conciliation is almost sure to receive a disagreeable lesson at the
polls. That was precisely the military situation in the second month
of 1777, when the news of Trenton, of Princeton, and of Howe's re-
tirement to New York, were published in the English Journals. It was
a moment when, (if only the country had been in favour of the
war,) no advocate of peace would have ventured to face a parliamen-
tary contest unless he could afford to lose at least thirty per cent, of
the votes which in quieter times would have been cast for his party.

In that very month died Sir Walter Blackett of Northumberland,

6 Samuel Curwen's Journal for August 1776.

7 John Wesley to Lord Dartmouth: Historical Manuscripts Commission; Fifteenth Re-
port, Appendix, Part I.

240

who, like many other faithful supporters of the Ministry, had begun
public life as a mild Jacobite. His friends claimed that he was the
father of the House of Commons. He had sate forty-three years for
Newcastle-on-Tyne; and his family had represented that city, with
hardly any break, for over a century. Whoever held the Corporation
was supposed to hold the seat in Parliament; and never was so wealthy
and powerful a municipality so loyally devoted to one man as the
Corporation of Newcastle to Sir Walter Blackett. He derived an
enormous income from lead-mines and coal-mines, lands and shipping;
and he always spent every farthing of it before the year was out. In-
exhaustibly charitable; affable and accessible to all; a lavish patron of
the church, and a splendid benefactor to the town,—he had most of
the virtues that cause a man to be beloved, and a large assortment of
frailties which, in those far from Puritanical days, told rather for than
against his personal popularity. His hospitality was once a proverb in
the North of England, and is still a tradition. The town residence
of the Blacketts had formerly lodged Charles the First during the
eight months which that monarch spent at Newcastle in custody of the
Scotch army. It was described by local historians and antiquaries as a
princely house, surrounded by spacious pleasure-grounds, "very stately
and magnificent; supposed to be most so of any house in the whole
kingdom within a walled town;" 8 and Newcastle still preserved the
gates and towers which in 1745 had baffled the Highlanders. That
mansion was the scene of frequent and profuse feasting; and, when
Sir Walter was at his country home, any Aldermen or Common
Councillors, who cared to ride twenty miles on a summer morning
over the northern moors and pastures, might have their fill of venison
from the deer-park which their host kept up for the sake of his politi-
cal influence, and of the famous Tokay which was consigned to him
direct from Hungary. There were few fellow-townsmen of Sir Walter
Blackett who took exception to the inscription on an engraving from
one among those pictures of him by Sir Joshua Reynolds which adorn
the public buildings of Newcastle. "All our whole city," (so the quo-
tation ran,) "is much bound to him."

The guardians of that city evinced their gratitude by a watchful
care of his political interests. Every elector in the constituency, with
the exception of half a dozen unattached burgesses, was a member of
one among the two-and-thirty guilds; and the officers of the Corpora-

8 Brand's History and Antiquities of the Town, and County of the Town, of New-
castle upon Tyne; London, 1789: note to page 341 o£ Vol. I.

241

tion were very particular in seeing that any adherent of the Blacketts
should be enrolled as a freeman without being put to unnecessary ex-
pense or trouble. On Sir Walter's death it was taken for granted that
his nephew, Sir John Trevelyan, who held his uncle's opinions, and
who had succeeded to his landed estate, would occupy his seat in
Parliament as a matter of course; but the electoral independence of
Newcastle found an unexpected and a curious champion. Andrew
Robinson Stoney was a bankrupt Irish lieutenant in a marching regi-
ment, who had already wedded and buried a Tyneside heiress, after
wasting her substance and breaking her heart. In January 1777,— by
means of a plot to which he contrived to give the appearance of a
sordid romance, — he succeeded in marrying the widow of Lord Strath-
more; who, as Miss Bowes, had inherited a very large fortune, and a
country house some little way from Newcasde, on the Durham bank
of the river. Mr. Stoney took his wife's family name, and, indeed,
everything else of hers on which he could lay his hand by law, or
force, or fraud. Thackeray, in depicting Barry Lyndon, drew from
Stoney Bowes, and flattered him; but Lady Lyndon, (and a wonder-
ful portrait it is,) was the Countess of Strathmore all over.

The fight was keen, the canvass importunate, and the coercion un-
merciful. Very much was talked and printed, on the one side, concern-
ing the debt which Newcasde owed to the Blacketts; and, on the
other, about the disgrace of converting a great city into a family
borough. Sir John was abused as an anti-Wilkite, a Ministerial satellite,
and a heavy-headed Somersetshire foxhunter; nor had the Tories any
difficulty in getting something to say against Stoney Bowes, than
whom a more consummate villain never went through this world un-
horsewhipped, and left it unhung.9 So far, however, as can be gath-
ered from the literature of the election, (and a great mass of it has
been preserved,) no allusions were made to the American controversy
by partisans of the Government, and not very many by its adversaries;
but those few were strong and uncompromising. Lord North's candi-
date kept all mention of the war studiously in the background. When
asked about his views and principles, he would reply that he was a
plain country-gentleman who proposed to reside much in Northum-
berland if the electors of Newcasde returned him to Parliament. No
single circumstance was of more profit to Mr. Stoney Bowes than an
attempt which had been recently made to represent Newcasde as an

*Thc Lives of Andrew Robinson Bowes and the Countess of Strathmore, by Jesse
Foot, Surgeon; London, 1810; passim.

242

anti-American community. The proclamation of hostilities, in the pre-
ceding September, had been heard by the populace of that city amid
dead silence; and there soon followed an open meeting of free bur-
gesses, twelve hundred of whom signed a petition against the war,
and entrusted it for presentation to no less eminent a Whig than Sir
George Savile. Thereupon Sir Walter Blackett and Sir Matthew White
Ridley, the sitting members, had procured an Address to the King,
urging the subjugation of the colonies. The document was backed by
fewer than two hundred names; — and not many of those signatures,
(so the opponents of the Government averred,) would have com-
manded the confidence of a prudent bill-broker if affixed to mercantile
paper.10

Each party polled alternately in tallies of twelve, day by day, and
week after week; during all which time the entire staff of the Corpora-
tion, high and low, were busy in securing votes for the Government
interest. Quiet people complained that Mace-bearers, Marshals, Ser-
geants, Gaolers, and even Recorders, attacked them in the streets, and
blockaded them in their houses, more like debtors and felons than
Englishmen and freemen. Some of the Guilds swarmed with paupers;
and every pauper voted for Sir John Trevelyan. As ministerial candi-
date, he was supported by all the sixty-five Custom-house officers. No
seafaring man, under the rank of mate, dared present himself at the
polling-booth unless he had obtained, from the naval officer of the
port, a guarantee that he should not be impressed while the election
lasted. The Admiralty was then governed by a First Lord who treated
our Naval Service as if it were an organisation designed, and main-
tained, for the discomfiture of his own political opponents; and a
mariner, who had kept himself hitherto out of the clutches of the
press-gang, would think twice before he marched into the jaws of the
trap by applying to one of Lord Sandwich's underlings for a protec-
tion which would enable him to give a vote against the Government.11

All the advantages possessed by Lord North's candidate only gave
point to the discovery that Lord North's Ministry had lost ground

10 John Sykes's Local Records; Vol. I., pages 303, 304. Several Whig electioneering
broadsides, relating to "The Newcastle smuggled Address, with the names of the gen-
tlemen who signed it," are among the Blackett papers at Wallington.

11 The certificate recorded the applicant's age, height, complexion, and dress; and
then it went on to state that he had leave to attend the Election at Newcastle, (o£ which
town he was a Freeman,) from the twenty-third of February 1777 to the third of
March following; during which period he was not "to be molested or impressed." He
did not need to be officially informed that his week on shore would be a time well
worth living, and would cost him nothing.

243

since the war broke out. In October 1774 Sir Walter Blackett and Sir
Matthew White Ridley, — though opposed by two local gentlemen of
rank, birth, and reputation, — had been returned by a majority of two
to one. In March 1777 Sir John Trevelyan just managed to defeat the
least respectable individual who, (as far as any authoritative record
goes,) ever aspired to sit in Parliament, by less than a hundred votes
on a poll of considerably more than two thousand.12 The independent
electors of Newcastle-on-Tyne, (so a London newspaper triumphantly
argued,) wounded in their conscience by the events which were pass-
ing in America, had very nearly snatched a miraculous victory, "in
despite of the massy weight of a Corporation enjoying a revenue of
sixteen thousand pounds a year, together with the interests of every
peer, and every opulent landholder, in the neighbourhood." The new
member,— who had plenty of good sense, though he was no great
speaker, — tacitly formed his own opinion about the chances of a second
appeal to the constituency which he had so narrowly won. When the
next general election came, Sir John stood, and was chosen, for Somer-
setshire.13 Stoney Bowes became member for Newcastle; and, — at such
times as he happened to be more afraid of meeting his Northern,
than his Southern, creditors,— he went up to London, and voted
against the war..
That war was marked by a feature unique in English history. Not

12 The 1774 poll, as given in the Blackett MSS., stood thus:

Sir Walter Blackett, Bart., 1432

Sir Matthew White Ridley, Bart., 1411

The Hon. C. T. Phipps, 795

Mr. William Delaval, 677

In 1777 Sir John Trevelyan got 1163 votes, to 1068 which were polled for Mr.
Stoney Bowes.

13 Stoney Bowes made an ingenious use, during the contest, of his opponent's con-
nection with the South of England. "We hear that, in case of Sir John Trevelyan's suc-
cess in the present election, he has prepared cards of invitation to ail free burgesses in
his interest, to partake of an entertainment at his seat in Somersetshire, when the days
are long, and the roads fit for travelling; and that Mr. Bowes has ordered 10 oxen, 30
sheep, and OCEANS of Newcastle Ale to be ready at his seat at Gibside, immediately after
the election, where open house will be kept for some time on account of his late
happy nuptials."

Three thousand five hundred copies of that handbill were printed and distributed; for
the Newcastle election was conducted by both parties with small regard to the Grenville
ACL That celebrated law, as is the tendency with all ordinances against bribery, was al-
ready administered in a less Draconic spirit than at first. It came out on petition that
any elector, who so chose, was hired as a messenger for Sir John Trevelyan. The wit-
nesses, however, deposed that the payment which they received had no effect upon their
action at the polls, "for their votes and interests had always been with that family;" and
the Committee accepted the explanation as satisfactory.

244

a few officers of every grade, who were for the most part distinguished
by valour and ability, flatly refused to serve against the colonists; and
their scruples were respected by their countrymen in general, and by
the King and his ministers as well. An example was set in the highest
quarters. The sailor and the soldier who stood first in the public es-
teem were Augustus Keppel, Vice Admiral of the White, and Lieu-
tenant General Sir Jeffrey Amherst. Keppel made it known that he
was ready as ever to serve against a European enemy, but that, al-
though professional employment was the dearest object of his life, he
would not accept it "in the line of America." After that announcement
was made, and to some degree on account of it, he enjoyed a great,
and indeed an extravagant, popularity among all ranks of the Navy;
and, when a European war broke out, he was promoted, and placed in
command of the Channel Fleet. Amherst had absolutely declined to
sail for New England in order to lead troops in the field. He withstood
the expostulations and entreaties of his Sovereign, who in a personal
interview, (as Dr. Johnson truly testified,14) was as fine a gentleman as
the world could see; and who never was more persuasive and im-
pressive than when condescending to request one of his subjects to
undertake a public duty as a private favour to himself. The circum-
stance was not remembered to Amherst's disadvantage. He was re-
tained as Commander-in-Chief of the forces; within the ensuing five
years he became a peer, the Colonel of a regiment of Household Cav-
alry, and a full General in the army; and he died a Field-Marshal.

Amherst, although determined not to fight against the colonists, who
had fought so well under him, was a political friend of the existing
Administration; and, in the main, a supporter of their colonial policy.
His course of action naturally enough commended itself to military
men who were opposed to the Government, and who believed that the
American question had been grievously mismanaged. Their views ob-
tained expression in a statement made by a brother-soldier, whom of
all others they would have chosen for their spokesman. Conway, like
Amherst, terminated his career a Field-Marshal; but his most glorious
and joyous years were those which he passed as aide-de-camp to the
Duke of Cumberland in Flanders. The immediate vicinity of that in-
trepid prince, during a battle, was quite hot enough for most people,
but not for Harry Conway. At Fontenoy the young fellow contrived,
on his own account, to get hand to hand with two French grenadiers;
and at Lauffeld he was within a finger's breadth of being killed in a

14 Johnson's account of his conversation with George the Third in February 1767.

245

desperate scuffle with some French hussars. His courage, however, had
seldom been so severely tested as when, in November 1775, he addressed
the House of Commons on the limits of military obedience. That sub-
ject, (he said,) having been started in Parliament, it might look like
an unworthy shrinking from the question if he did not say a few words
to it. No struggle in die mind of a military man could be so dreadful
as any doubt of this kind. There was a great difference between a for-
eign war, where the whole community was involved, and a domestic
war on points of civil contention, where the community was divided.
In the first case no officer ought to call in question the justice of his
country; but, in the latter, a military man, before he drew his sword
against his fellow-subjects, ought to ask himself whether the cause
were just or no. Unless his mind was satisfied on that point, all emolu-
ments,— nay, the sacrifice of what people in his situation held dearest,
their honour,— would be nothing in the scale with his conscience. He,
for his part, never could draw his sword in that cause.15

Those words were frank and weighty; but for the purposes of his-
tory the manner in which they were taken is far more important and
significant than the words themselves. The influence of Conway upon
politics rose steadily in the course of the coming years, throughout
which his view of a soldier's obligations never wavered, and never was
concealed. The candour and fairness of his character, (we are told,)
drew much respect to him from all thinking and honest men.16 In
February 1782, during his country's dark hour, Conway recommended
Parliament to terminate the contest with America,— a course which he
had always thought to be the duty of England, and which many, who
had long been deaf to duty, were beginning to contemplate as neces-
sary to her interests. His proposition was rejected by a single vote on
a division in which nearly four hundred members took part; and a
few nights afterwards he induced a larger and a wiser House to con-
demn any further prosecution of the war by a majority of nineteen.
Such a Resolution on such a subject,— carried against all the efforts
and influence of a powerful Court, and of a Cabinet which to external
appearance was unanimous, — is unprecedented in the annals of our
Parliament, and perhaps in those of any national assembly. No more
sincere and striking proof could possibly be given of the estimation in
which Conway was held by his fellow-senators. They admired him

15 Debate in the Commons on bringing in the American Prohibitory Bill. Parliamen-
tary History of England; Vol. XVIII., page 998.
16Walpole's Last Journals; February 22, 1782.

246

none the less, and trusted him all the more, because, at the outbreak
of the war, he had not shrunk from declaring himself on as abstruse
a point of conduct as a soldier and a patriot was ever called upon to
determine.

The same respectful and considerate treatment was very generally
extended to other military and naval men whose personal action was
governed by the same motives. Some left the service outright, and
re-entered private life, with no diminution to such popularity, or social
predominance, as they had hitherto enjoyed.17 Some remained on half-
pay until Great Britain was attacked by European enemies, when they
promptly and joyfully placed their swords once more at the disposal
of the Government. Others, again, accepted a commission in the mili-
tia; a post of unusual danger and importance at a moment when
England, stripped bare of regular troops, had temporarily lost com-
mand of the sea in consequence of the scandalous improvidence of
the Board at the head of which Lord Sandwich sate. Whatever course
they adopted, their fidelity to principle appeared reasonable, and even
laudable, to their countrymen of the middle and lower classes; and
in their intercourse with equals they brought down upon themselves
and their families no penalties whatsoever. The American war, from
the outset to the finish, was an open question in English society. A
general or colonel, who had refused to take a command against the
colonists, lived comfortably and pleasantly with his country neigh-
bours. The strong Tory politicians among them might grumble against
him as fanciful or factious; but much harder things would have been
said about him if he had shot foxes, or given a piece of ground for
the site of a Nonconformist chapel.

17 Such an one was Mr. Bosville of Thorpe Hall. That gentleman, after serving a
campaign with Howe, had quitted the army because he would not act any longer against
American Independence. Season after season he kept open house in town for Fox, and
Grey, and Erskine, and Sheridan; nor for them only; for one of his constant guests
was Lord Rawdon, than whom the Americans had no more stern and dreaded ad-
versary in arms all the while that the war had lasted. Until he grew old, in order to
avoid the daily trouble of entertaining at home, Bosville's board was spread at the Piazza
Coffeehouse; where, when five o'clock came, two dozen frequently sate down to dine,
and to dine well, even though only half a dozen had been expected. Whether the com-
pany was small or large, the host was king of it, or rather despot; and a despot of the
kind which London needed then, and needs still. For dinner was served when the hour
struck; and any one who came late knew that the only thing left for him was to go
away, and dine elsewhere. The custom of proposing toasts and sentiments after the cloth
was drawn, — destructive to conversation, and most depressing to the convivial hap-
piness of the shy and the inarticulate, — was abolished at Bosville's table. See the Life of
General Sir Robert Wilson; Volume I., chapter ii.

247

To the general public of our own day, — as indeed had always been
the case with every well-read Englishman,— the name of Lord Chat-
ham stands for patriotism. For he raised England, in a very few years,
from distress and discredit to a brilliant and unquestioned pre-emi-
nence; he made our Empire; and he expressed the national sentiment,
which was ever present with him, in unusually apt and glowing
language. Chatham gave his sons to his country. Great as were the
pains which he bestowed upon the training of the second brother as an
orator and a ruler, it was with equal ardour that he incited and en-
couraged the military studies of his eldest boy. Lord Pitt was sent
into the army at fiteen. The father, who never was entirely happy
unless he had all his family about him, felt the separation keenly;18
and he was actuated by a sole view to the young man's usefulness in
that profession which he regarded as not less honourable, and hardly
less important, than the calling of a statesman. "My son's ambition,"
(so Lord Chatham informed the Governor of Canada in his stately
manner,) "is to become a real officer; and I trust he already affixes to
the appellation all the ideas that go to constitute a true tide to the
name." General Carleton learned with infinite satisfaction that the
ex-minister, — who possessed so extensive and accurate a knowledge of
the higher ranks on the British army-list, — wished his son to serve an
apprenticeship on Carleton's staff, and had purchased him a pair of
colours in the regiment of which Carleton was the Colonel.

The letter from which that extract is taken was dated in October
1773. In February 1776 Lady Chatham wrote to thank the Governor
warmly, in her husband's name, for the favour and attention which
Lord Pitt had received from his chief, in garrison and in the field.
"Feeling all this, Sir," (so she proceeded,) "as Lord Chatham does,
you will tell yourself with what concern he communicates to you a
step that, from his fixed opinion with regard to the continuance of
the unhappy war with our fellow-subjects of America, he has found
it necessary to take. It is that of withdrawing his son from such a
service." Two years afterwards, when the French war broke out, the
family, (and who could blame them?) discovered a bright side to that
great public calamity in the reflection that a son and brother could
now return to the profession of arms with an easy conscience.19 Lord

18 *The time draws nigh for our dear Pitt joining his regiment at Quebec. What pain
to part with him I And what satisfaction to see him go in so manly a manner, just in the
age of pleasures!" Lord Chatham to Lady Stanhope; March 23, 1774.

w Letter from the younger William Pitt to the Countess of Chatham; March 19, 1778.

248

Pitt went back to the Service, and was appointed aide-de-camp to the
Lieutenant-Governor of Gibraltar. He had not yet left England when
Lord Chatham was struck down by death; but he sailed before the
funeral, and handed over the post of chief mourner to his brother
William. The House of Commons heard, with deep emotion, the noble
words in which the dying man was said to have bidden his son honour
a father's memory by responding on the instant to his country's call.20
Lord Pitt was rewarded for his filial behaviour by the privilege of tak-
ing his share in that immortal defence of our Mediterranean citadel
which did so much to restore the imperilled supremacy, and to salve
the wounded pride, of England.

The Earl of Effingham was a regimental officer, in the spring of life,21
and passionately attached to his vocation. At a moment when there
was no fighting to be witnessed west of the Carpathians, he had joined
the Russian army as a volunteer, and had gone through a campaign
against the Turks with a name for conspicuous enterprise and valour.22
He did not belong to the class of people who are prone to self-question-
ing, and inclined to crotchets of fanaticisms. A plain, rather rough,
country squire, he lived according to the less ideal habits of his period
and his order.23 And yet when his regiment was told off for America,
he threw up his commission, and, though far from a rich man, re-
nounced the prospect of sure and quick advancement. In May 1775
he made his explanation in Parliament. His highest ambition, (so he
told the House of Lords,) ever since he had any ambition at all, was
to serve his country in a military capacity. If there was on earth an
event which he dreaded, it was to see that country so situated as to
make his profession incompatible with his obligations as a citizen;
and such an event had now arrived. "When the duties," he said, "of a
soldier and a citizen become inconsistent, I shall always think myself
obliged to sink the character of the soldier in that of the citizen, till

20 Speech of Lord Nugent; May 13, 1778. Parliamentary History; Vol. XIX., page
1217.

21 In the Correspondence of the Marquis of Cornwallis, chapter L, Effingham is styled
a Lieutenant General; but, according to Collins's Peerage, he was not thirty years old in
1775. A note to the Parliamentary History describes him as a captain; and that state-
ment is borne out by the regimental lists preserved in the War Office. It was his father,
the second Earl, who was a Lieutenant General.

22 Lord Effingham's behaviour was specially marked in 1770, when almost the whole
of the Turkish fleet was burned in a bay on the coast of Anatolia. It was the Sinope
of that war.

28 His lady hunted, and rode over five-barred gates. He himself liked his wine; and
a summer-house on the estate had been christened Boston Casde, — not as a tribute to
the American cause, but because no tea was ever drunk there.

249

such time as those duties shall again, by the malice of our real enemies,
become united." Effingham sate down as soon as he had made this
remarkable confession; but none of his brother peers, who were pres-
ent, took exception to his speech; nor was he ever subsequently taunted
with it in debate, although he was a frequent, a fiery, and a most
provocative assailant of the Government. Outside Parliament, not in
any way by his own seeking, he at once became celebrated, and vastly
popular. Mason, the poet, inquired if ever there was anything, ancient
or modern, either in sentiment or language, better than Lord Effing-
ham's speech.24 Public thanks were voted to him by the Corporations
of London and Dublin. The Free Citizens of the Irish metropolis,
many of them gentlemen of wealth and standing, and Protestants all,
dined together and drank toasts to the Glorious and Immortal memory
of the great King William; to Lord Chatham; to the brave General
Carleton, the Man of too much Humanity for the purpose of a Cruel
and Cowardly Minister; and to the Earl of EfHngham, who did not
forget the Citizen in the Soldier.

Lord Frederic Cavendish, (a name which is the synonym of loyalty,)
had been a soldier from his youth onwards. At the outbreak of the
Seven Years' War he had made a compact with three other promising
officers,— Wolfe, Monckton, and Keppel,— -not to marry until France
was defeated, and finally brought to terms.25 He was an aide-de-camp
to the Duke of Cumberland in Germany, and during several cam-
paigns he rode at the head of a brigade of infantry in the army of
Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick. Already a Lieutenant General of
repute when the American disturbances broke out, he still, at the age
of five-and-forty, had the best of his career before him; but he al-
lowed it to be known that he would not apply for a command against
the colonists. Lord Frederic, however, continued in his profession; and
in subsequent years he was made a full General by the Whigs, and a
Field-Marshal by the Tories. Before it was ascertained that he declined
to take part in the war, something disagreeable was written about
him by a Mr. Falconer of Chester, who cannot be ranked as a very
noteworthy critic. "The times assist the Americans. They are united
by our divisions. Lord Frederic Cavendish is going to this service.

24 Mason to Walpole; June 17, 1775.

25 This account of Lord Frederic Cavendish is largely taken from the Dictionary of
National Biography. The article allotted to Lord Frederic in that work recounts an
anecdote about him and the Due d'Aiguillon, which very pleasandy recalls the chivalrous
relations existing, in time of war, between the nobles and gentlemen of France and of
England.

250

If he acts consistently, he should turn to their side; for that family
has been the best friends to Faction of every kind, and the most
furious enemies to civil order." 2a Burke, on the other hand, described
the Cavendishes as men who were among the ornaments of die country
in peace, and to whom the King owed some of the greatest glories of
his own, and his predecessor's reign, "in all the various services of the
late French war." Great integrity; great tenderness and sensibility of
heart, with friendships few but unalterable; perfect disinterestedness;
the ancient English reserve and simplicity of manner, — those, accord-
ing to Edmund Burke, were the marks of a true Cavendish.27 Such
was the opinion held about the Devonshire family by one who as-
suredly knew them more intimately than ever did Mr. Falconer; and
the one judgement may be weighed against the other.

Public attention had recently been strongly and favourably drawn
to a man who was the forerunner of a class which, from that time
to ours, has played an unostentatious and unrecompensed, but a most
commanding, part in the history of moral and social progress. Effing-
ham and Chatham, Conway and Cavendish, were peers and members
of Parliament; but Granville Sharp, though not himself a senator, had
the originality, the native strength, and the indefatigable enthusiasm
of one whose behests, in the long run, senators are irresistibly com-
pelled to obey. He had recently been invited to enter Holy Orders
with the promise of a valuable living; but he put aside the offer on
the ground that he could not satisfy himself concerning his qualifica-
tions for the function of a spiritual teacher.28 Granville Sharp was one
of the founders of the Bible Society; he learned Hebrew in hopes of
converting a Jew, and Greek in order to refute a Socinian; and his
criticisms upon the sacred texts were recommended to the attention
of theological students by a Bishop. If he was not fit to be a clergyman,
it is hard to see how the Church of England could have been manned.
Nevertheless when Granville Sharp advanced, as an additional reason
for declining to take orders, his belief that he could serve the cause
of religion more effectually as a layman, there was much good sense
in his decision. He was already deeply committed to a laborious, a
rude, and a hazardous undertaking which, though it was inspired by

26 Letter by Mr. Thomas Falconer, among the family papers of James Round, Esq.,
MJP.: Historical Manuscripts Commission, Fourteenth Report; Appendix, Part IX.

27 Letter drafted by Burke in 1771. Burke's Character of Lord John Cavendish,

28 Letter to the Rev. Granville Wheler, Esq.: Memoirs of Granville Sharp, Esq., by
Prince Hoarc; Part L, chapter i. The singular address which the envelope bore is ex-
plained in a note at the bottom of the page.

251

Christianity, could only be forced to a successful conclusion by a free
use of carnal weapons. Between 1765 and 1772 he carried on a seven
years' war of his own for the establishment and vindication of the doc-
trine that a slave is liberated by the act of setting his foot upon Eng-
lish ground. He had Lord Mansfield against him; until, by his un-
daunted pertinacity, he brought to his own opinion jury after jury,
and at length the Bench itself. London then, and especially the lower
districts on the Thames river, can hardly be said, in the modern sense
of the word, to have been policed at all; and Granville Sharp stood in
constant peril from the ruffians who were employed to re-capture
runaways, or to kidnap negroes and negresses at the instigation of
people who had not a tide of claim to the ownership of their victims.
His small patrimony was soon eaten up by law-costs, and by the
expense of harbouring, clothing, and feeding the poor wretches whom
he endeavoured to protect; but he contrived to support existence on
his salary as a clerk in the Ordnance Department.

That slender resource failed him of a sudden. On the twenty-eighth
of July, 1775, there occurs the following clumsily worded, though not
ungrammatical, entry in Granville Sharp's diary: "Board at Westmin-
ster. Account in Gazette of the Battle at Charlestown, near Boston,
and letters with large demands for ordnance stores, being received,
which were ordered to be got with all expedition. I thought it right to
declare my objections to the being any way concerned in that un-
natural business." The chiefs of the department, both military and
civil, behaved in a manner that did them honour; and their treatment
of him, (as his biographer remarks,) was a specimen of the respectful
kindness which the probity of Mr. Sharp's character attracted even
from those who differed from him in opinion.29 That difference was
not very deeply marked in the case of the most conspicuous among
Mr. Sharp's official superiors. Sir Jeffrey Amherst, who was at the head
of the Ordnance, must have felt it a doubtful point whether he him-
self was justified in shipping gunpowder to America, when he could
not find it with his conscience to go thither for the purpose of firing
it off against the colonists. The Commissioners of Ordnance declined
to accept Mr. Sharp's resignation. They gave him continuous leave of
absence for nearly two years, by instalments of two months, and three
months, and six months, at a time; and they would not accede to his
urgent request that his salary should meanwhile be apportioned to the
payment of the substitutes who did his work, so that the office might

29 Prince Hoare's Memoirs of Granville Sharp; Part I., chapter vi.
252

incur no additional expense upon his account. But in the end he had
his own way; as sooner or later he always had his way about every-
thing. In 1777 his place was declared vacant; and at an age well past
forty he was thrown penniless on a world where people, even less un-
worldly than Granville Sharp, find it difficult to make an income by
new and untried methods after once they have turned the corner of
life.

By the year 1775 something had been heard of a man who, in the
course of a very long and honoured career, did as much in defence
of our political freedom as Granville Sharp accomplished for the cause
of humanity. John Cartwright, the younger son of a Nottinghamshire
squire, entered the Royal Navy in 1758 at a late age for a midshipman.
He soon made up for lost time, and attracted such notice by activity
and intelligence, joined to a singularly amiable and chivalrous charac-
ter, that Lord Howe took him on to his ship, the Magnanime, which
then was reputed the best school for a rising officer. Cartwright be-
came a prime favourite with his captain, — if such a word can fairly be
applied in the case of a chief the degree of whose favour was invari-
ably determined by merit. Howe, who knew every man in his crew
and every corner of his vessel, contrived special arrangements to en-
sure that the young fellow should live with congenial comrades, and
that he should enjoy all possible facilities, which the space and the
routine of a man-of-war would permit, for learning the theory of his
profession.30 Cartwright, (as was likely to happen with Pitt for war
minister, and Anson for First Lord of the Admiralty,) soon had a
trial of that profession in its most practical and exciting shape. At the
battle in Quiberon Bay he had the care of four guns on the lower
deck; and, out of his twenty-six men, thirteen were swept down by
one discharge. Lord Howe had the adversary's flag-ship, and two of
her consorts, upon him at one and the same moment; and John Cart-
wright informed his friends at home that, more than once in the
course of the engagement, he expected little less than to be diving for
French cockles. When Howe was selected by Hawke to lead an attack

30 Until the rules of spotless cleanliness and careful stowage, which were initiated
by Lord St. Vincent and perfected by Lord Nelson, had been established throughout
the British navy, a seventy-four gun ship, with her six hundred men between decks,
was neither an abode of comfort, nor the place for quiet and uninterrupted studies.
Dr. Johnson, whose standard of tidiness was not exacting, often quoted his stay on
board a ship of war in Plymouth Sound as an experience which reconciled him to any,
and all, the drawbacks incidental to life on shore. "When you look down," he said,
"from the quarter-deck to the space below, you see the utmost extremity of human
misery; such crowding, such filth, such stench."

253

on those ships of the enemy which had run for safety into the Vilaine
river, Cartwright was one of the three officers who accompanied his
Lordship in the boats. The Magnanime was kept at sea for the best
part of two busy years, until the crew had to be at the pumps during
the whole of every watch. At length Howe surrendered the command,
and was succeeded by a very different kind of officer;31 and the single
thought of the young lieutenant was henceforward to attain such a
proficiency in seamanship as would render him worthy of his luck
if ever the day came for him to sail with Howe once more.32

That day arrived at last; and a sad day it was for John Cartwright.
In February 1776 Lord Howe was appointed to the American station;
and he forthwith invited Cartwright to call at his house in Grafton
Street, and earnestly pressed him to embark on board the flag-ship.33
Cartwright, too deeply moved to argue with a patron whom he almost
worshipped, intimated that he was unable to accept the offer, and
placed in the Admiral's hands a letter which explained the reason of
his decision; and Lord Howe in reply acknowledged, mournfully
enough, that opinions in politics, on points of such national moment
as the differences subsisting between England and America, should be
treated like opinions in religion, wherein everyone was at liberty to
regulate his conduct by those ideas which he had adopted upon due
reflection and enquiry.34 Cartwright continued to reside in his native
county, respected and loved by young and old. He was known in the
hunting-field for a fine horseman, who rode with the courage of a
sailor; and he passed in the Militia for a most just and kind, but a very
strict, officer, who made his battalion, which had been much neglected,
into an example for discipline and organisation. His value was recog-
nised, and his friendship sought, by the General in command of the
district,— the Lord Percy who helped to win the day at Fort Washing-
ton, and who saved as much of it as could be saved at Lexington.

31 It would be more profitable, (so Cartwright declared,) to be taken prisoner for a
few months, and to have the advantage of learning to fence and t-alfc French, than to
serve under a captain who lingered about wherever he could get fresh meat and sylla-
bubs, and who missed opportunities for a fight "the loss of which would make a
parson swear."

82L*> and Correspondence of Major Carttvright: London, 1826; Vol. I., pages 8
to 29.

33 Cartwright was well aware of the chance which he was losing. Lord Howe, (so
he told his friends,) now commanded more ships than had ever fallen to the lot of
one man since the defeat of the Spanish Armada, so that it would be "the fairest field
for rapid promotion that could possibly be imagined."

3*Ufe and Correspondence of Major Cartwright: Vol. L, pages 72 to 81.

254

About a twelvemonth after he had refused to serve against the colo-
nists, Major Cartwright received the freedom of the town of Notting-
ham; a significant indication of the views prevailing in a community
which had the Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Army in America
for a parliamentary representative.85

It has happened again and again that, when a nation is engaged in
serious hostilities, the partisans of peace have been exposed to humiliat-
ing, and sometimes very unmerciful, treatment from outbreaks of
popular violence. But opponents of the American war had in this
respect very little to complain about, if we may judge by the noise
made over some very mild instances of persecution which were loudly
advertised, and vociferously rebuked, by the chorus of Whig journal-
ists. After the battle of Long Island, (so their story went,) preparations
had been made to illuminate Manchester whenever the tidings arrived
that New York was taken. One of the citizens put out a notice that he,
for his part, had no intention of joining in the demonstration; and that,
if his windows were broken, informations would be lodged against the
offenders. Thereupon a certain Reverend Doctor was said to have
transmitted a copy of the notice to one of the Secretaries of State, with
the expectation that "the writer would be immured in Newgate, and
that he himself would be complimented with the first vacant Bishop-
ric;" neither of which consequences, so far as history records, came to
pass. Again, it was alleged by the Opposition newspapers that the
Jacobites in the town of Derby, who toasted the Stuarts kneeling, had
celebrated the successes of the Royal Army in America with a banquet
where they drank confusion to the Whig corporation; and the minis-
terialists of Taunton were accused of having taken a liberty with the
Parish Church by ringing the bells hi honour of Howe's victory on the
Brandywine. When such trumpery occurrences were minutely nar-
rated, and solemnly adduced against the Tories as proofs of insolence
and outrage, their political adversaries must have been very hard put
to it in order to find a real grievance; and it must have been seldom
indeed that any friend of America, in any city of England, was harshly

35 Among the officers who objected to serve in America some, as may well be con-
ceived, failed to express their disinclination in terms which satisfied the taste of a
military superior. "For the safety of the Service I must recommend that Major Norris,
of the 27th Regiment, may have leave to sell. He came to me, and found fault with this
most just and necessary war his Majesty is obliged to make against his rebellious sub-
jects. When I would have interrupted him, he thundered out a hundred Greek lines
from Homer. He then talked to me out of Plutarch's Lives. In brief, my Lord, he con-
vinced me that he will be better out of the King's service than in it." General Irwin to
Earl Harcourt, September i, 1775.

255

or disrespectfully used by those among his neighbours who belonged
to the war party.

The story o£ a disturbance, which took place on the reception of the
news of Lexington, rather tends to suggest that the idler and less
responsible section of our population was in sympathy with the col-
onists. On an evening in August 1775, a party of scapegraces smashed
the lamps at Vauxhall; pulled the door of the Rotunda off its hinges;
stormed the Throne of Orpheus, and ejected the musicians who occu-
pied it; and chased out of the gardens the whole staff of the establish-
ment, together with all the constables, calling out that they themselves
were the Provincials beating the Regulars. That, for some years to
come, was the only riot in which civilians were concerned. On other
occasions the most effective violators of public order appear to have
been subalterns in the army. At Lincoln Lieutenant Macintosh, of the
Sixty-ninth Regiment, entered a printshop, took from the window a
picture of General Putnam, tore it in pieces, and then paid for it across
the counter* Soon afterwards Macintosh came back again, destroyed
another picture without giving compensation, and swore that next
time he would run his sword through the panes of the shopfront. On
the Monday following some other officers, (mistaking for an enemy
one who, in effect, if not in intention, was among England's most
serviceable allies,) cut the head out of an engraving of General Charles
Lee, and threatened that, if the tradesman did not mend his ways, the
soldiers should be ordered to pull down his house.

The proceeding was a boyish ebullition of military loyalty, pardon-
able in the eyes of any fair man who himself had worn a uniform
when he was one-and-twenty; but Whig scribes, who saw deep into
every milestone on the road from Edinburgh to London, cited it as a
proof that a Scotchman might insult English citizens with impunity.
If officers, (it was said,) had behaved with such turbulence and want
of breeding in the good old King's reign, they would have been
broke, or, at the least, would have received a public reprimand at the
head of the regiment; but now, with Lord Bute behind the Throne,
no colonel in the army would dare to censure a lieutenant whose name
showed that he came from Inverness. These enormities, (as the Opposi-
tion journalist styled them,) afforded so many additional indications
that the "only path to preferment was by trampling upon law, and
turning into ridicule the rights: and privileges of the people." It un-
doubtedly was the right and privilege of a shopkeeper to exhibit the
portraits of American generals as popular heroes; but it was a right

256

which he would have been very cautious indeed of exercising if any
large proportion of his neighbours had been ardent supporters of the
war. That such, however, was the case either in the town of Lincoln,
or generally throughout England, is disproved by certain consider-
ations the significance of which it is not easy to deny.

In time of war a political agitation, — especially one that is aimed
against institutions and abuses on the continuance of which the su-
premacy of the party in power depends, — is almost certainly doomed
to languish and to fail; and that such an agitation should be too
insignificant for serious notice may well be the best thing which could
happen for its promoters. During the great war with France, towards
the close of the eighteenth century, the bolder advocates of parliamen-
tary reform were sometimes rabbled by mobs, and sometimes punished
in the law-courts with exemplary severity; whereas twenty years previ-
ously, all the while that our armies were fighting Washington in
America, the art of Constitutional agitation at home was brought to a
perfection, and pursued with an amount of success, surpassing any-
thing which had ever been known before. A combined movement, —
directed towards the improvement of our electoral system, and the
extinction of those manifold facilities for corruption by which the
Court kept in awe the Cabinet, and the Cabinet controlled the Parlia-
ment,— ran its course with growing velocity; and neither the Govern-
ment at Whitehall, nor its adherents throughout the country, en-
deavoured to repress that movement either by penal legislation or by
lawless violence. There were open meetings of Freeholders in the
shires, and of Freemen in the cities; County Associations for the re-
dress of grievances; Committees of Correspondence which maintained
uniform and concerted action among reformers all through the king-
dom; and public dinners with toasts so bravely worded as to ring like
the challenge of a trumpet, and so numerous, when drunk in bumpers,
as effectually to drown every vestige of caution and timidity. That such
methods, without entailing any disagreeable consequences on those
who employed them, should have been put in practice against a Min-
istry which was engaged in the conduct of an important war, is an
indirect, but a most material, proof that the war itself was disliked by
the nation.

The direct evidence is stronger yet; for at many County meetings
there was a Resolution, at most banquets a whole string of flowery
Sentiments, and prominent in every Petition and Address an emphatic
paragraph, all of which denoted friendliness towards America, and

257

exhaled hearty aspirations for an immediate Peace. At length, in De-
cember 1781, the Liverymen of London, in public assembly duly con-
voked, took action which has been so forcibly narrated by a con-
temporary historian that it is well to reproduce his description, italics
and all. "They besought the King to remove both his public and pri-
vate counsellors, and used these stunning and memorable words : 'Your
armies are captured; the wonted superiority of your navies is an-
nihilated; your dominions are lost! " These words, (so the writer pro-
ceeded,) could have been used to no other king: "for no king had lost
so much, without losing all. If James the Second lost his crown, yet
the Crown lost no dominions." 36 The Address from the Livery was
never presented; but the last had not yet been heard of it; for a week
afterwards, in Westminster Hall, a similar petition was proposed by
Charles Fox, and adopted by a vast concourse of Westminster electors.
The Footguards were held in readiness for the protection of Downing
Street against a possible incursion of the Opposition mob, and not at
all from an apprehension lest the war-party should invade the Hall,
and attempt to break the heads of the peace-party. Experience had
often shown that there was no ground for anticipating any such con-
tingency. Anti-war meetings always passed off quietly between 1776
and 1782; although there is no reason to suppose that our ancestors
were more tolerant, or better-mannered, than their descendants. The
Wilkes riots, and the Keppel riots, conclusively demonstrated what
Londoners of the period were capable of doing for the promotion of
disorder whenever they had a mind that way. There exists one tenable
theory, and one only, to account for the tranquillity and security amid
which those, who opposed the Government on the question of Amer-
ica, were able to carry forward their political operations. The rational
explanation is that the disfavour beneath which, from other causes,
the Ministry had long and deservedly laboured, instead of being dimin-
ished, was confirmed and aggravated by the war.

36 Last Journals; December 4, 1781.

258

CHAPTER X

THE TALK OF MEN.

CONTEMPORARY HISTORIANS.

THE PAMPHLETEERS.

THE "CALM ADDRESS"

Englishman who approved the war was quite willing that Eng-
lishmen who disliked it should be at full liberty to express their opin-
ions; but he had no inclination whatever to conceal his own. The
printed memoirs of the period are sprinkled thickly with scraps of
many conversations; and brief selections from the familiar utterances
of famous men have been deliberately reported for the amusement and
enlightenment of future ages. From these sources it is possible to catch
at least an echo of the bluff jolly talk which flowed round the tables of
country houses, while the Gainsboroughs and Romneys, with their
colours still fresh, looked down upon the company from the panelling
of the walls. The disputants on either side met in a fair field and on
equal terms, and handled the fiery topics of the war as unreservedly
as their grandsons in the days of Peel argued about the Corn Laws. A
gentleman in the Western Counties complained that the Dissenters,
who in that part of the world were "as thick as mushrooms," not con-
tented with the unmolested enjoyment of their own mode of worship,
mixed themselves up with State affairs, and presumed to sit in judge-
ment on the American policy of the Government; but, in spite of his
disgust, could not escape from hearing all that the Dissenters had to
say.1 A Loyalist refugee from New England who, for want of some-
thing better to occupy him, spent much of his time in public places,
described to a friend at Boston the sort of talk which went on around
him in London. "America," he wrote, "furnishes matter for dispute in
coffee-houses; sometimes warm, but without abuse or ill-nature; and
there it ends. It is unfashionable, and even disreputable, to look askew
on one another for difference of opinion in political matters. The doc-

1 Letter from a Gentleman in Somersetshire to a Friend in London; October 6, 1776.

259

trine of toleration, if not better understood, is, thank God, better prac-
tised here than in America." 2

During the earlier years of the American conflict people wrangled
about colonial politics for the pleasure of unburdening their own souls,
and of hearing vigorous epithets, and well-worn taunts, sounded forth
by their own voices; for they had little expectation of converting an
adversary. Starting from directly opposite premises, they entered the
lists armed respectively with an entirely different equipment of facts.
Each man retailed what he found in his favourite newspaper; and the
newspaper which was Gospel for the one seemed a magazine of men-
dacity to the other. Whigs proclaimed their distrust of every statement
in the "London Gazette," and their belief in many items of intelligence
which they could not find in its pages. Tories as roundly asserted that
Congress had bought the entire Opposition press through the agency
of Arthur Lee; — a Virginian, (so they described him,) who had been
bred a physician, but had turned lawyer, and now was finishing as a
rebel.3 Horace Walpole, with the impartiality of one who accepted
nothing for truth but what he read in a private letter, said that it was
incredible how both sides lied about the war.4 The distance from the
scene of action, and the uncertainty of communication by sailing ves-
ses, gave unbounded scope to the audacity of any London penman who
seasoned, and served up, contemporary military history in a form to
suit his reader's palate. And so it came to pass that, when they were
debating the events of the current campaign, men of contrary parties
were seldom agreed as to the direction in which things were moving;
although everybody admitted that they moved very slowly.5 Our an-
cestors were vehement in assertion, and not over choice in repartee;
but there was a point in most controversies when discord and con-
tradiction ceased, and an appeal was made to the ordeal of the wager.
Fifty guineas even, that the war would terminate before Christmas
1779 without America being independent of the Crown of Great
Britain; thirty guineas to ten that Sir William Howe was not in pos-

2 Journal and Letters of the late Samuel Curwen, Edited by George Atkinson Ward;
New York, 1845.

3 Letter of 9th August, 1775; Round MSS.

4 Walpole to Sir Horace Mann; August n, 1776.

5 'Don't you begin to think, Madam, that it is pleasanter to read history than to
live it? Battles are fought, and towns taken, in every page; but a campaign takes six
or seven months to hear, and achieves no great matter at last. I dare to say Alexander
seemed to the coffee-houses of Pella a monstrous while about conquering the world. As
to this American war, I am persuaded it will last till the end of the century." Walpole
to the Countess of Ossory; Strawberry Hill, October 8, 1777.

260

session of Philadelphia by June 1777; twenty-five guineas for every
three months that France remained at peace with England from the
first of March 1779 onwards; and a bet of fifty guineas, to run for
three years, that Lord North died by the hand of justice before Mr.
Hancock, the President of the Continental Congress;— those are a few
authentic specimens of a characteristic national practice, the resort to
which, at the critical moment in a dispute, restored the harmony of
many a social evening, and averted the necessity of a hostile meeting
at some dismally early hour on the morning of the morrow.

Many wars have ere this been waged, not by England only, in pur-
suit of inadequate and illusory ends, and have been carried on long
after the course of events had made it manifest that those ends were
impossible of attainment. Wars of that class are the despair of his-
torians belonging to the school which would fain account for every
great national undertaking by a theory that the people,— instinctively,
even if ignorantly and unconsciously, — are impelled by an unerring
sense of the national interests. Such wars are commenced in anger,
and afterwards continued from obstinacy, or, it may be, from the neces-
sities of self-preservation; and the actual explosion generally follows
close upon some striking and theatrical occurrence which evokes an
eruption of moral indignation and international repugnance. In 1793
the execution of Louis the Sixteenth was a signal for the clash of arms;
and the spilling of the tea in Boston Harbour had, not less certainly,
been the exciting cause of that protracted struggle which finally re-
sulted in the independence of America. It will always be remembered
to the credit of Pitt and Grenville that, under the shock of the French
Revolution, they laboured gallantly, honestly, and perseveringly to
maintain peace between France and England. All the while that Burke
was preaching a crusade against the wicked Republic with a fury of
rhetoric which took the conscience of our country by storm, the Prime
Minister, and the Foreign Minister, insisted that the counsels of mod-
eration should be heard, and kept their followers in hand as long as it
was possible to hold them.6 But, throughout our American troubles,

6 "No hour of Pitt's life," (wrote Mr. Green in his History of the English People,)
"is so great as the hour when he stood, lonely and passionless, before the growth of
national passion, and refused to bow to the gathering cry for war."

"I bless God that we had the wit to keep ourselves out of the glorious enterprise
of the combined armies, and that we were not tempted by the hope of sharing the spoils
in the division of France, nor by the prospect of crushing all democratical principles
all over the world at one blow." That was said by Lord Grcnville as late as November
1792; two full years after Burke had thrilled England by his celebrated appeal to Chiv-
alry on behalf of Queen Marie Antoinette.

261

the rulers of the British Empire exerted upon public opinion an ex-
asperating, and not a restraining, influence. Even in the business letters
which he addressed to Lord North the King could never write about
New Englanders with patience. Lord Dartmouth, indeed, treated the
colonists with sympathy, and evinced a desire to ascertain and under-
stand their own view of their own case; but in that regard he was
almost alone in the Cabinet. After the quarrel had become envenomed,
few members of the Government, whose words counted for anything,
spoke of Americans in Parliament with respect, or even with common
propriety.

The cue was given, and the fashion set, to all partisans of the Court
and the Ministry, Their talk, (so much as has reached us,) ran in a
channel of considerable violence, but of little depth. How far recon-
ciliation was practicable; by what steps, and through the employment
of what agents and intermediaries, it might be achieved; what was the
judgement of contemporary Europe; what were the schemes and in-
clinations of foreign governments, and what would be their action if
the war was indefinitely prolonged; how that war affected the pros-
perity of our own West Indian islands; whether America could be
subdued by force; how long, if reconquered, she could be kept in
subjection, and at what cost; — those were speculations altogether too
abstract and unpractical to engage the attention of Lord North's sup-
porters. The staple of their conversation, even in the case of men who
posed as authorities on the colonial question, consisted in wholesale
and vehement abuse of the disaffected colonists. James Boswell, though
a sound Tory, entertained scruples about the right of Parliament to
tax America. Like a good disciple he begged, and again begged, Doc-
tor Johnson to clear up his misgivings; but on each occasion he was
handled in such a fashion as to regret, (which was most unusual with
him,) that he had not been discreet enough to leave burning topics
alone. Once, however, he enjoyed the opportunity of listening to the
famous teacher at a moment when his mind had been attuned to
milder and holier thoughts. Johnson was maintaining, in opposition to
a handsome and eloquent Quakeress, that friendship could not strictly
be called a Christian virtue. He urged that, whereas the ancient philos-
ophers dwelt only on the beauty of private friendship, Christianity
recommended universal benevolence, and enjoined us to consider all
men as our brothers. "Surely, Madam," he said, "your sect must ap-
prove of this; for you call all men friends!' But that weather was too
calm to last. "From this pleasing subject," wrote Boswell, "he made a
262

sudden transition. *I am willing,' he cried, 'to love all mankind except
an American;' and his inflammable corruption bursting into horrid
fire, he breathed out threatenings and slaughter, calling them rascals,
robbers, pirates, and exclaiming that he would burn and destroy
them."7

Considering that he was a professed master in the science of ethics,
Dr. Johnson's estimate of the American character was not very judicial
or discriminating; and still less could it be expected that people, who
had never claimed to be philosophers, should mince their words when
they were engaged in denouncing the iniquities of the colonists. That
mattered little in a discussion with English Whigs, who gave as good
as they got, and who were much more concerned to speak their mind
against the Cabinet than to defend the Americans. But there was a class
of men whose feelings were cruelly wounded by the tone of conversa-
tion which largely prevailed in London society; men whom it is im-
possible to name without a tribute of respectful compassion. The town
was full of refugees from every colony hi America, who had sacrificed
all that they possessed to their love for Britain, and their veneration
for Britain's King. Their condition, sad in itself, was melancholy in-
deed by contrast to that which they had known at home. Some of them
had been proprietors of vast districts, with powers and prerogatives far
exceeding those of an English landowner. Others had held office as
Lieutenant-Governors of Provinces, Judges, Councillors, and Commis-
sioners of Revenue. Others, again, had been Presidents of Colleges, or
clergymen in charge of rich, and once admiring and affectionate, con-
gregations. Among the five occupants of the Bench in the superior
Court of Massachusetts all save one were Loyalists; and three of them
were driven into banishment. The political faith for which these gen-
tlemen suffered is finely summarised in the epitaph on Chief Justice
Oliver, the president of their tribunal, which may be seen in St.
Philip's, Birmingham; — a church standing in the very centre of the
city, with an ample space about it, and its doors hospitably open to the
passing stranger.8 One of Oliver's colleagues died in Nova Scotia, and
another in England; and at least five members of his family, who were

7 The Life of Samuel Johnson, Sept. 23, 1777; April 15, and 18, 1778.

8 The monument is erected to the Honourable Peter Oliver, formerly His Majesty's
Chief Justice of the Province of Massachusetts Bay in New England; and the inscription
runs: "In the year 1776, on a Dissolution of Government, He left his Native Country;
but in all the consequent calamities his Magnanimity remained unshaken, and, (though
the source of his misfortunes,) nothing could dissolve his Attachment to the British
Government, nor lessen his love and loyalty to his Sovereign.**

263

living in Massachusetts as grown men before the Revolution broke
out, are buried in different corners of our island. When General De
Lancey of New York was laid in his grave a fellow-refugee said, truly
enough, that there would be scarcely a village in England without
some American dust in it by the time they were all at rest. And not
in England only; for, in the course of our wars against the French
Republic and the French Empire, many American Loyalists, both of
the first and second generation, breathed their last on the field of
honour in one or another of our country's battles.9

When Governor Hutchinson of Massachusetts was superseded in
June 1774, many leading merchants, and most of the officials, united
to present him with an Address approving his political conduct, and
wishing him a prosperous future. Among the names attached to the
paper was that of Samuel Curwen of Salem, Judge of the Admiralty
for the province. Popular pressure was brought upon the subscribers
for the purpose of inducing them to withdraw their signatures, and to
insert in the newspapers an apology for the action which they had
taken- Many yielded; but Curwen thought it best to go elsewhere
in search of that security, and those personal rights, which, (to use his
own words,) by the laws of God he ought to have enjoyed undis-
turbed in his native town. His wife, not a little to his surprise, disliked
a sea voyage more than she feared the Sons of Liberty; and, in his
sixtieth year, he sailed alone for England. He solaced his leisure in that
country by the composition of a journal which presents, in subdued
but distinct colours, a very cheerless picture of the exile's existence.

The misery of such an existence has been sung and spoken in many
languages, by famous people of many nations; but it has never been
more irksome than to men of our own busy and energetic race. Among
those men, the New England refugees belonged precisely to the class
upon whom the trials and discomforts of banishment pressed the heav-
iest. In America they had been important personages, successful al-

9 "Mr. Flucker died suddenly in his bed yesterday morning, and it is the forty-fifth
of the refugees from Massachusetts, within my knowledge, that have died in England.
He was Secretary of State for Massachusetts." Curwen's diary; Feb. 17, 1783.

Wellington's Quartermaster General, who was killed at Waterloo, was a De Lancey
of New York. Colonel James De Peyster, of the same province, had, as a youth, dis-
tinguished himself on the British side during the war of the American Revolution. In
1793 ke led an assault on an almost impregnable French position at Lincelles in West
Flanders, and was shot dead in the moment of victory. Those were two out of many;
for Loyalists of the upper class were a fighting race throughout all the colonies. Tory
fanners and shopkeepers, and Tory mechanics, in the Northern and Central provinces,
showed much less inclination to take up arms for their opinions.

264

ready, or on a sure and easy road to success; wealthy according to the
standard o£ the community in which they resided; and with every day
of their life filled and dignified by serious occupations. But in England
they were nobodies, with nothing in the world to do. It is true that
the sights of London were there to be admired, if only they had the
heart to relish them. They attended as spectators at numerous proces-
sions characteristic of the period and the country. They saw their Maj-
esties returning from a Drawing-room in sedan-chairs; the King in
very light cloth, with silver buttons, and the Queen in lemon-coloured
flowered silk on cream-coloured ground. They saw the milkmaids and
chimney-sweeps keep May-day in all its ancient splendour, with many
hundred pounds' worth of silver plate disposed amid an enormous
pyramid of foliage and garlands. They watched five couple of young
persons chained together, walking under the care of tip-staves to Bride-
well. They visited the British Museum, and examined the Alexandrine
Manuscript. Readers of Shakespeare, like all of their countrymen who
read anything, they made an expedition to the Boar's Head tavern in
the City for the sake of Falstaff, and in Hertfordshire in order to
inspect the great Bed of Ware.10 They heard blind Sir John Fielding
administer justice at Bow Street. They were present when the Rever-
end Doctor Dodd, at the Magdalen Hospital, delivered a discourse
which set the whole chapel crying, not much more than a twelve-
month before he preached his own Condemned Sermon in Newgate
gaol. They saw Garrick in tragedy; and were crushed, and buffeted,
and almost stifled, for the space of two hours at the Pit door of
Drury Lane theatre in a vain attempt to see him in comedy. They
dined with the ex-Governor of Massachusetts, and met each other; and
with the ex-Attorney General, and met each other again. They sought
distraction in the provinces, and made a round of manufacturing
towns, and cathedrals, and feudal castles, and romantic prospects. They
explored Blenheim, and Old Sarum, and Stonehenge, and the inn at
Upton where Tom Jones found Sophia Western's muff with the little
paper pinned to it. But all was to no purpose. After eighteen months
spent in surveying the wonders and beauties of the mother country
with sad and weary eyes, Judge Curwen pronounced, as the conclusion
of the whole matter, that his flight to England had been a dreadful
and irreparable mistake. The tyranny of an unruly rabble, when en-
dured beneath a man's own roof, with a plentiful purse and all his

*<> Twelfth Night; Act IV., Scene 2.

265

friends around him, was, (he confessed,) an enviable fate compared
to liberty under the mildest government on earth, when accompanied
by poverty, with its horrid train of evils.11

The American exiles, with very few exceptions, were bitterly poor.12
Curwen found London "a sad lickpenny," where the vital air could
not be breathed unless at great expense. Everything was ruinously
dear, — the lodging; the food; the wine, without the production of
which no business could be transacted, and no visitor honoured; and,
above all, the fuel. In January 1776 there came a cold Sunday, when
the Thames bore, and the mercury stood at eight degrees below zero.
"The fires here," Curwen wrote, "are not to be compared to our large
American ones of oak and walnut. Would that I was away!" Numer-
ous applications to the Treasury by Loyalists, who had stronger claims
than his, excluded him from the most distant hope of relief. To beg
from chance acquaintance was humiliating, "and to starve was stupid;"
and so, — with a mild stroke of sarcasm against Seneca and the long list
of moralists, heathen and Christian, who wrote most edifying treatises
on the duty of contentment and resignation, but had never known
what it was to want a meal,— he went into a cheap and dull retirement
at Exeter, where he kept body and soul together on something less
than half a guinea a week.13 John Wentworth, who had been formerly
Governor of New Hampshire, resided in Europe all through the
Revolution. He was received with exceptional favour by the Ministry
and by the King; and yet he esteemed the lot of an exile, at the very
best, to be all but intolerable. When the war was over, he thought
himself bound to give the benefit of his experience to those unhappy
Loyalists who still lingered on their native soil, stripped of all their
property, and exposed to the insults of triumphant and unforgiving
adversaries. However distressing might be their plight, he earnestly
recommended no one to seek a refuge in England who could get clams
and potatoes in America. "My destination," he added, "is quite un-
certain. Like an old flapped hat, thrown off the top of a house, I am

J* Samuel Curwen to the Hon. Judge Sewall; Exeter, Jan. 19, 1777.

12 One of these exceptions was Charles Steuart, a rich tobacco-merchant of Norfolk
in Virginia. Steuart, contrary to all intention of his own, did a memorable service to
liberty; for he brought with him from America the negro Somerset, whose name will
always recall Lord Mansfield's declaration of the principle that our free soil makes
a free man.

13 Letters to the Rev* Isaac Smith, June 6, 1776; to Dr. Charles Russell of Antigua,
June 10, 1776; and to the Hon. Judge Sewall, Dec. 31, 1776.

266

tumbling over and over in the air, and God only knows where I shall
finally alight and settle." 14

The affection of the Massachusetts Loyalists for the chief town of
their province grew with absence, and only ceased at death. A dis-
tinguished Nova Scotia statesman, the son of a refugee, has given a
pleasant and spirited account of his father's unalterable attachment to
the city of his birth, which had cast him out. In 1775 John Howe,
who then was just of age, had served his apprenticeship as a printer,
and, like a true young American, was already engaged to be married;
and yet "he left all his household goods and gods behind him, carry-
ing away nothing but his principles, and his pretty girl." 15 He settled
at Halifax and prospered. Though a true Briton, he made no shame of
loving Boston with a filial regard. While the conflict between Eng-
land and the revolted colonies was still at its height, John Howe did
every kindness in his power to American prisoners of war, if only
they were Boston men; and, far into the nineteenth century, whenever
he was in poor health, his family, as an infallible remedy, shipped the
old fellow off southwards to get a walk on Boston Common. Wher-
ever a banished New Englander wandered, and whatever he saw, his
model of excellence, and his standard for comparison, was always the
capital of Massachusetts. At Exeter, according to Judge Curwen's cal-
culation, the inhabitants were seven-eighths as numerous as at Boston;
but the city was not so elegantly built, and stood on much less ground.
Birmingham, in its general appearance, looked more like Boston, to
his eyes, than any other place in England. There was something very
pathetic in the feeling with which the exiles regarded the home where
they never again might dwell. Awake, or in dreams, their thoughts
were for ever recurring to old Boston days; they tried to believe that a
more or less distant future would bring those good times back for
themselves and their families; and they industriously collected every

14Sabine's Loyalists; Vol. L, page 322, and Vol. II., page 10. In the American Ar-
chives there is a letter addressed by Thomas Oliver to a friend who had escaped from
Boston to Nova Scotia. "Happy am I," (Oliver wrote from London,) "that you did not
leave Halifax to encounter the expenses of this extravagant place. Every article of ex-
pense is increased fourfold since you knew it. What the poor people will do, who have
steered their course this way, I cannot tell. I found Mrs. Oliver well, and settled in a
snug little house at Brompton, in the neighbourhood of London; but I shall continue
here no longer than I am able to find an economical retreat. I have no time to look
about me as yet. Some cheaper part of England must be the object of my enquiry."

15 The words are quoted from a speech delivered by the Honourable Joseph Howe
in Faneuil Hall, Boston, on the Fourth of July, 1858. Joseph Howe was Secretary of
the Province, and leader of the Liberal party, in Nova Scotia.

267

scrap of news which came by letter from a town where their places
had already been filled by others, and their names were by-words.
Assailed by the fierce and implacable hostility of their own fellow-
citizens, and treated too often with contemptuous indifference in Eng-
land, they tasted the force of that verse in the Book of Proverbs which
says: "The brethren of the poor do hate him. How much more do his
friends go far from him! He pursueth them with words, but they are
wanting unto him."

For, in one important particular, a painful disillusion awaited the
exiles at their arrival on our shores. They had anticipated the enjoy-
ment of much rational and sympathetic intercourse with the most
select and the best of company. In their own country,— since the trou-
bles began, and the Stamp Act, and afterwards the Tea-duty, had been
to the fore in every conversation, — they had been alarmed by the
spread of Republicanism, and infinitely disgusted by the manners of
some who promulgated that novel and hated creed. The father of
Mrs. Grant of Laggan, for instance, had acquired a large property in
Vermont, which he called by the name of Clarendon, and liked to
describe as a Baronial estate. But social tendencies in New England,
(if ever they had taken that direction,) now altogether ceased to point
towards the formation of an aristocracy. "My father," wrote Mrs.
Grant, "grew fonder than ever of fishing and shooting, because birds
and fish did not talk of tyranny and taxes. Sometimes we were re-
freshed by the visit of friends who spoke respectfully of our dear King
and dearer country; but they were soon succeeded by some Obadiah,
or Zephaniah, from Hampshire or Connecticut, who came in without
knocking, sate down without invitation, lighted his pipe without cere-
mony, and began a discourse on politics that would have done honour
to Praise God Barebones." 16 In contrast to all that seemed vulgar and
offensive to them in America, the emigrants had beguiled themselves
with an ideal picture of the welcome which they would receive from
the refined society of England. A writer unequalled in his acquaint-
ance with the surface aspects of the Revolution, and not less observant
of the inward causes which then governed the ebb and flow of political
opinion, has remarked that a prodigious obstacle to the Whig cause
in the colonies was the worldly prestige, "the purple dignity, the aris-

ieln order to escape this infliction, the Lord of the Manor of Clarendon retreated to
his native Scotland in the summer o£ 1770; and, before very long, every acre that he
left behind him in America had been confiscated.

268

tocratic flavour," of the Tory side of the question.17 To live familiarly
amid such associations, to be at home in such circles, to be recognised
as the martyrs of loyalty within the very precincts of the shrine where
the object of their worship dwelt, — such privileges would go far to
compensate the expatriated Loyalists for all that they had endured and
sacrificed.

Their disappointment was in proportion to their expectations. They
found the upper class of Great Britain absorbed in its own affairs, and
intent upon pleasures most uncongenial to a plain and frugal American
on account of the money they cost, the amount of time they con-
sumed, and the scandal which not unfrequently attended them. In
1790 the French emigrants, who sought sanctuary across the British
Channel, experienced much comfort and advantage from the fraternity
which had long existed between the nobility of France and of Eng-
land; but in 1775 the knowledge that a stranger came from Boston, —
whether of his own accord, or because he could not help it,— was a
poor introduction to the good graces of Almack's, of Newmarket, and
of Ranelagh. The Bostonian habit of mind, according to the language
then in vogue, was marked by "the low cunning of a petty commercial
people;" and the mere circumstance that a citizen of the obnoxious
town was a Tory, instead of a Whig, did not exempt him from the so-
cial consequences of that sweeping criticism. A ghost at a banquet was
hardly more out of place than a sober and melancholy New Eng-
lander in a St. James's Street Club. George Selwyn, and his like, had
little use for a companion who, when people of fashion were men-
tioned, did not know to what county they belonged, or with what
families they were connected; who had never in his life amused him-
self on a Sunday, and not much on any day of the week; who was
easily shocked, and whose purse was slender. The hand of charity,
(Judge Curwen said,) was very cold; and the barriers which fenced
in the intimacy of the tided and the powerful were all but impenetra-
ble. More than twelve months after he first landed at Dover, the diarist
noted, as a very uncommon event, that he had a free conversation

17 These are the epithets used by Professor Tyler, in the 30th chapter o£ his Literary
History. He there quotes an account by Francis Hopkinson, the Whig humourist, of a
lady who did not possess one political principle, nor had any precise idea of the real
cause of the contest between Great Britain and America; and who yet was a professed
and confirmed Tory, merely from the fascination of sounds. The Imperial Crown, the
Royal Robes, the High Court of Parliament, the Lord Chancellor of England, were
names of irresistible influence; while captains and colonels who were tailors and tavern-
keepers, and even the respectable personality of General Washington the Virginian
farmer, provoked her unqualified disdain.

269

with a couple of very affable gentlemen; "the better sort of gentry be-
ing too proud or reserved to mix with those whom they did not know,
or to indulge in a promiscuous chat." 1S

Loyalist emigrants, who desired to talk American politics with Eng-
lishmen from the English point of view, were thrown back upon the
casual acquaintances of the coffee-house, the stage-coach, and the inn
parlour. Recruiting-officers, commercial travellers, tradesmen on a sub-
urban jaunt, and gentlemen of the turf on the road to a race-meeting,
were among those with whom they frequently were reduced to con-
sort. The allusions to their own country, by which on such occasions
they were regaled, though not discourteously meant, 19 affected them
with more pain than pleasure; for they consisted mainly in sweeping
denunciations of vengeance against the New England people, and
blatant depreciation of the New England character. More than once
an exile confessed that he felt nowhere so much at ease as in the com-
pany of quiet middle-class citizens of Birmingham or Bristol who were
opponents of the war; for there, at all events, whatever difference of
opinion might exist between the guest and his hosts, he was sure of
hearing nothing said which grated on his feelings. Over and over
again, in public vehicles and in places of general resort, the refugees
would gladly have taken their share in a reasonable talk about the
equity of demanding that the colonies should contribute towards the
expenses of our Empire, and the importance to America of retaining
her connection with Great Britain; but the dialogue almost always took
such a turn that, before half a dozen seatences had been spoken, they
were forced by their self-respect as Americans to assume the cudgels
against detainers of their nation. Judge Curwen, while journeying from
the West by way of Tewkesbury, met an officer who allowed himself
great liberties respecting America. "I took the freedom of giving him
several severe checks; and my companion spared not till he was thor-
oughly silenced and humbled. He said many ungenerous, foolish, and
false things, and I did not forbear telling him so." In December 1776
a Mr. Lloyd of the Twentieth Regiment, who had just arrived from
Canada, treated the New England Loyalists to a discourse which he
no doubt sincerely intended as a compliment to themselves, and a
tribute to their political views. "He speaks," said Curwen, "of the

18 June 10, and July 13, 1776.

19 Curwen was only once subjected to direct and intentional impertinence. "In our
way through Long Row we were attacked by the virulent tongue of a vixen, who saluted
us by the name of 'damned American rebels.*" — Curwen' s Journal; Bristol, June 17,
1777-

270

Yankees, (as he is pleased to call them,) as cowards, poltroons, cruel,
and possessing every bad quality the depraved heart can be cursed
with. It is my earnest wish the despised Americans may convince
these conceited islanders, by some knock-down irrefragable argument,
that, without regular standing armies, our continent can furnish brave
soldiers and expert commanders; for then, and not till then, may we
expect generous or fair treatment. It piques my pride, I confess, to
hear us called 'our Colonies, our Plantations/ with such airs as if our
property and persons were absolutely theirs, like the villains in the old
feudal system."20

Those were strange sayings in the mouth of a man who had broken
up his life, and wrecked his happiness, because he would not side with
the colonists in the attitude which they had adopted towards the
mother-country. The most distressing element in the lot of the emi-
grants was that they had always been animated, and now were tor-
tured, by a double patriotism; for they were condemned to stand by,
idle and powerless, while the two nations, which they equally loved,
were tearing at each other's vitals. Symptoms of the conflict between
loyalty to Britain, and affection for America, are visible on every page
of Judge Curwen's Journal, and in every paragraph of his correspond-
ence. He rejoiced at having justice done to his countrymen by an
English officer of character in Sir Guy Carleton's army, who testified
that Arnold and the Provincials had displayed great bravery in the
battle on Lake Champlain, but had been out-matched by superior
weight of metal. He expressed himself as not a little mortified when,
standing on a height which overlooked Plymouth Harbour, he saw
a captured American privateer brought round from Dartmouth; nor
were his ears a little wounded when they were condemned to hear
another such prize sold at open auction. He noted with despair the
determination of the King and his advisers to overwhelm and ruin the
rebellious colonies. "Would to God," he cried, "that moderate and
just views of the real interests of both countries might possess the
minds of those who direct the public measures here, and there! The
language of the Court, (the papers say,) is, as it ever has been,
Delenda est Carthago. If this be not slander, woe betide my poor coun-
try."21 At last, when Lord North and his colleagues began to reap

20 Curwen's Journal; Sept. n, and Dec. 18, 1776.

21 Journal of Dec. 21, 1776, and Feb. 28, 1777. Letter to the Reverend Isaac Smith,
Jan. 17, 1778.

271

the fruits of their senseless policy in a harvest of national perils,
Curwen's fears for America, though none the less gloomy, became
overshadowed by his anxiety about the future of England. In March
1778 he heard "the dreaded sound, War declared against France."
Some few days before, he had written to a Birmingham friend that,
when he contemplated the decline and fall of great and powerful
states, — and the causes of that decline which, in the history of the
world, were uniformly the same, — he could not recall to his mind the
commanding and secure position of Great Britain four years since,
as compared with the present alarming crisis, without horror and
trembling. "May my apprehensions," he said, "exist only in imagina-
tion! I had rather be a mistaken man than a true prophet."22

Those apprehensions about the stability of the British power, which
racked the imagination of the banished American, were always present
to the minds of Englishmen who had watched many wars, who knew
the continent of Europe, who cared for their country, and who under-
stood that country's interests. Horace Walpole, in more than one manly
and thoughtful passage, reviewed the long correspondence with his old
friend at Florence which had begun when his own father was still
Prime Minister; had continued while England was "down at Derby,
and up at Minden;" and was still in progress now that she had dashed
herself, (so he sorrowfully declared,) below the point to which no
natural law of gravitation could have thrown her in the course of a
century.23 The middle portion, said Walpole, of that correspondence
had been the most agreeable. Its earlier part was the journal of a civil
war, when an army of Scottish rebels penetrated almost unopposed
into the very centre of the island. Fifteen years afterwards,— when our
generals marched, and our fleets sailed, under Chatham's auspices,— it
was his proud and pleasant task to recount victory upon victory, and
conquest upon conquest; but for the last five years his letters had been
the records of a mouldering kingdom. The ministers, indeed, encour-
aged their countrymen by recalling how England had more than once
maintained herself successfully against both France and Spain; but,
(said Walpole,) we on former occasions had America as a weight in
our scale of the balance, whereas now it was in theirs; and moreover
we then possessed a Lord Chatham, who did not seem to have been
replaced. "As I have no great faith," he subsequently wrote, "in virtue

22 Journal of March 20; and letter of March 16, 1778.
^Horace Walpole to Sir Horace Mann; Sept. 5, 1779.

272

tempted by power, I expect that the American leaders will not easily
part with dictatorships and consulships to retire to their private
ploughs. Oh, madness to have squandered away such an empire!"24

Predictions of that sort were no new things; and people endeavoured
to relieve their uneasiness by reminding each other how there never
had been a time of serious public danger when somebody did not sin-
cerely believe that the country was on the verge of destruction. Sir
John Sinclair, — the prince of busybodies, — brought Adam Smith the
news of Saratoga, and added, on his own account, that the nation was
now ruined. "There is a great deal of ruin in a nation," was the
philosopher's quiet reply; 25 and yet Sir John Sinclair might well have
proved to be in the right, if George the Third had pursued his course
to the end, unchecked. The prophets of evil, for once in a way, were
the wise men; and their predictions would undoubtedly have been ful-
filled to the letter, had it not been for a contingency which the most
sanguine patriots did not venture confidently to anticipate. How long
the end would have been in coming no man fortunately now can tell;
but, in the long run, the policy of the Court must have been fatal to
the country unless Parliament had taken the matter into its own hands,
and insisted on composing the quarrel with America. Parliament,
however, during many sessions seemed to have been effectually bribed
into acquiescence; and the means at the disposal of the Treasury for
gratifying the cupidity of venal politicians grew in proportion to the
growing expenditure on military and naval operations. Every new
expedition to the Carolinas or the West India seas, and every fresh
enemy who came against us in Europe, increased the mass of profits
from loans, and lotteries, and contracts which was available for being
divided among supporters of the Government. The war fed corruption,
and corruption kept on foot the war; but there was something in the
English nature whereon George the Third and the Bedfords had not
counted; and two successive Parliaments, which had both begun very
badly, shook themselves free from the trammels of self-interest and
servility, defied their taskmasters, and saved their country.

The scholarship at our universities in the earlier days of George
the Third was less severely accurate than it became during the first
fifty years of the succeeding century; but many English gentlemen,
not only at college, but in after life, read Latin as they read French;

24Walpole to Mann, May 27, 1776; June 16, 1779.
of Adam Smith, by John Rae; chapter xxii.

273

and every one who pretended to literature had a fair knowledge of
ancient history, and a clear conception with regard to the personal
identity, and the relative authority and merit, of the most famous
Greek authors. It was well understood that the narratives of Xenophon
and Polybius, of Sallust and Suetonius, owed much of their peculiar
excellence to the fact that those writers had been alive during at least
some part of the periods which they treated; and had been acquainted
with not a few of the warriors and rulers whose actions they im-
mortalised, or whose mistakes and crimes they condemned. Despairing
English patriots, who correcdy predicted a succession of disasters, but
who did not foresee that the public ruin would ultimately be averted
by a resurrection of national common-sense, looked around them for
an historian who might undertake the melancholy task of chronicling
the misfortunes of England. They sought a Tacitus; and they thought
to have discovered one, ready to their hand, in Doctor William Robert-
son, whose "History of Scotland" had founded his position as an au-
thor, and whose "History of Charles the Fifth" had won him a
European name. Robertson had for some years been occupied with the
earlier annals of America, and was steadily approaching the point
where he would come into contact with the great political question of
the hour; for the first instalment of his work, which appeared in 1777,
brought him much more than half-way between Christopher Colum-
bus and Charles Townshend. The hopes excited in the reading world
are indicated by Edmund Burke, in language on a higher level than
is often reached by a letter of thanks for a presentation copy. "There
remains before you a great field. I am heartily sorry we are now sup-
plying you with that kind of dignity and concern which is purchased
to history at the expense of mankind. I had rather, by far, that Doctor
Robertson's pen were employed only in delineating the humble scenes
of political economy, and not the great events of a civil war. How-
ever, if our statesmen had read the book of human nature instead of
the Journals of the House of Commons, and history instead of Acts of
Parliament, we should not by the latter have furnished out so ample
a page in the former. ... Adieu, Sir! Continue to instruct the world,
and,— whilst we carry on a poor unequal conflict with the passions
and prejudices of our day, perhaps with no better weapons than
other passions and prejudices of our own, — convey wisdom to future
generations."26

26 Edmund Burke, Esq., to Doctor Robertson; June 10, 1777.
274

Robertson's "America" was ransacked greedily by people who hoped
to discover in its pages satirical references to current events, and arch
strokes against the politicians of their own time. But the admirable his-
torians whom that generation produced, both in Edinburgh and in
London, habitually refrained from those contemporary allusions which
a French writer has stigmatised as the sidelong leers of history, in
contradistinction to her straightforward and honest glances into the facts
of the past. In his account of the settlement of the Western Continent,
Doctor Robertson had much to say about the projects of Las Casas,
and much about James the First and Sir Walter Raleigh; but there
was not a phrase which could be twisted into a covert expression of
his views on the Declaratory Act or the Boston Port Bill. Sedate and
sagacious Scotch divine that he was, he had no intention whatever of
diving into a perilous controversy which he was not enough of a
partisan even to enjoy. Although he considered the Americans prema-
ture in asserting their independence, he none the less was of opinion
that the whole matter had been sadly mismanaged by the Cabinet.27
It must not be forgotten that Doctor Robertson was the Bang's His-
toriographer for Scotland. The emolument, indeed, was of no object
to him in comparison with the profits of literature; for his "Charles
the Fifth" alone had produced a sum of money which amounted to
twice the capital value of his official salary. Nor, as he on more than
one occasion gave honourable proof, was he afraid of speaking his
mind when he conceived reticence to be unworthy of his station and
his character. But the post of Historiographer had been revived, with
the King's consent and at the King's cost, as a particular compliment
to Robertson himself; and he was not disposed to requite his Majesty's
favour by recording, for the information of all time, the improvidence
and incapacity of his Majesty's ministers.

Robertson had a stronger reason yet for circumspection and caution
in his reluctance to begin telling a story whose catastrophe was still
hidden in the unknown future. His professional pride as an historian
forbade him to put forward theories, and deliver judgements, which
the issue might show to be erroneous, and even ridiculous. In what-
ever manner, (so he wrote in the preface to the first volume of his His-
tory,) the unhappy contest might terminate, a new order of things
must arise in North American, and American affairs would assume

27 Letter from Doctor Robertson of October 6, 1775, as printed in Section HI. of his
Life by Dugald Stewart.

275

quite another aspect. He would therefore "wait, with the solitude of a
good citizen, until the ferment subsided, and regular government was
again established." When those days arrived Robertson must expect to
be over sixty; and an extensive history, commenced at that time of life,
is too often not so much a tribute to Clio as an excuse to Charon. The
Latin saying, which warns the artist that life is brief, came forcibly
home to one who had so continuously and conscientiously practised
the very longest among all the arts.

Robertson apart, of the triumvirate of noted British historians Gib-
bon and David Hume remained; but Hume did not remain long. He
died on the twenty-fifth of August, 1776, and met his fate with a cheer-
ful serenity which deeply scandalised some excellent persons who had
pleased themselves by conceiving a very different picture of the scep-
tic's death-bed.28 But, though without any uneasiness as to what might
befall himself, he passed away in the conviction that immense dangers
overhung the country. A stronger Tory than George the Third, Hume
had not allowed his views and prejudices concerning home politics to
blind his insight into colonial questions. The most caustic remarks
about the folly of alienating the Americans, and the impossibility of
subduing them, came from the pen, not of any Whig or Wilkite, but
of David Hume; and Hume was a Jacobite who would have been
heartily pleased if the King had hanged Wilkes, had shot down the
Liverymen and their apprentices by hundreds, and then, after making
a terrible example of London, had announced his intention of reigning
ever afterwards in Stuart fashion.29 The autumn before his death
Hume was requested to draw up an Address to the Crown from the
county of Renfrew; but he declined, on the ground that he was an
American in principle, and wished that the colonists should be let
alone to govern, or misgovern, themselves as they thought proper. If,
(such was the form that his suggestion took,) the inhabitants of the
county felt it indispensably necessary to interpose in public affairs,

28 Any mention of the calmness and equanimity with which Hume departed this
Kfe never foiled to arouse in Doctor Johnson very opposite emotions. Adam Smith had
borne testimony to the tranquillity of his friend's closing hours; and Johnson could
not forgive him. Sir Walter Scott's account of the interview at Glasgow between the
two philosophers, in spite of the serious nature of the topic, is a gem of comedy. Note
to Croker's edition of Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides, under the date of the 2gth Oc-
tober, 1773.

2* Hume prayed that he might see the scoundrelly mob vanquished, and a third of
London in ruins, "I think," he wrote, "I am not too old to despair of being witness
to all these blessings.** Hume to Sir Gilbert Elliot; 22nd June, 1768.

276

they should advise the King to punish those insolent rascals in London
and Middlesex who had set at nought his authority, and should duti-
fully inform him that Lord North, though an estimable gentleman,
had no head for great military operations. "These," (he said,) "are
objects worthy of the respectable county of Renfrew; not mauling the
poor unfortunate Americans in the other hemisphere."30

Gibbon, indeed, was still in his prime; but he did not even con-
template the notion of exchanging the colossal literary undertaking,
to which he looked for the establishment of his fame and the improve-
ment of his modest fortune, for such a hypothetical theme as the de-
cline and fall of England. He had no inclination to leave untold the
defeat of Attila at Chalons, and the siege of Constantinople by Maho-
met the Second, in order to expend his gorgeous rhetoric over the bat-
tle at Monmouth Court House, or the investment and evacuation of
Boston. His political opponents, who likewise were his constant and
familiar associates, professed to discover a less respectable motive for
his unwillingness to transfer his historical researches into another
field.

"King George, in a fright
Lest Gibbon should write

The story of England's disgrace,
Thought no way so sure
His pen to secure

As to give the historian a place."

The little poem, whereof that is the first stanza, is attributed to
Charles Fox, and most certainly it emanated from Brooks's Club; an
institution which contained a group of witty and scholarly men of the
world who,— as the graceful, flowing verse of the Rolliad very soon
made manifest, — literally thought in rhyme. Brooks's had an exceed-
ingly strong case against Gibbon. In the first stages of the American
Revolution he was a staunch, though a silent, adherent of the Ministry;

30 Letter to Baron Mure; Oct. 27, 1775. Hume was closely connected with John
Crawford, the friend of Charles Fox and the Member for Renfrewshire. It was Craw-
ford who induced young Lord Tavistock to read Hume's History, which the Duke of
Bedford, a careful Whig parent, had forbidden his son and heir to open.

A very few months before his death Hume confided to his most intimate friend
his belief that England was on the verge of decline, and pronounced himself unable to
give any reason for the complete absence of administrative genius, civil and military,
which marked the period. John Home's Diary of his Journey to London in company with
David Hume; April 30, 1776.

277

but he consorted mainly with the Opposition, among whom he found
that which, to his excellent taste, was the best company in London.31 He
belonged to the club as of right; for, great man of letters though Gib-
bon was, he never ceased to be a recognised personage in the world of
fashion. He wrote his letters at Brooks's; he supped there, or at Al-
mack's, after the House of Commons was up for the night; and he
freely accepted the condition on which alone it was possible to enjoy
good Whig society, inasmuch as he listened tolerantly, — and, (as time
progressed,) even complacently, — to orthodox Whig views. "Charles
Fox," he wrote, "is now at my elbow, declaiming on the impossibility
of keeping America, since a victorious army has been unable to main-
tain any extent of posts in the single province of Jersey." 32

Gibbon, — to whom usually, at this period of their acquaintance, Fox
was "Charles," and nothing more distant or ceremonious, — loved the
young statesman, and never tired of hearing him discourse. The his-
torian, however, did not need any one to teach him the deductions
which his own bright and powerful intellect drew from a contempla-
tion of the political facts. Gibbon's familiar epistles already frankly indi-
cated that he had begun to pass through the mental process which,
sooner or later, was traversed by almost every sensible man in the coun-
try whose perceptions were not distorted by the promptings of self-
interest. Even before Saratoga he had serious qualms. In August 1777
he spoke of himself as having found it much easier to defend the
justice, than the policy, of the ministerial measures; and, — in a phrase
worthy to stand among the weightiest that he ever printed, — he admit-
ted that there were certain cases where whatever was repugnant to
sound policy ceased to be just. In the following December, Gibbon had
got to the point of saying that, however the Government might re-
solve, he could scarcely give his consent to exhaust still further the
finest country in the world by the prosecution of a war whence no
reasonable man entertained any hope of success; in February 1778 he
stated it as his opinion that Lord North did not deserve pardon for the
past, applause for the present, nor confidence for the future; and on
one critical occasion he passed from word to action, and voted with

31 'This moment Beauclerk, Lord Ossory, Sheridan, Garrick, Burke, Charles Fox,
and Lord Camden, (no bad set, you will perhaps say,) have left me.'* Gibbon to J. B.
Holroyd, Esq.; Saturday night, 14th March, 1778. "I have been hard at work since
dinner," (he wrote elsewhere,) "and am just setting out for Lady Payne's Assembly;
after which I will perhaps sup with Charles, etcetera, at AlmackV

32Almack's; Wednesday evening, March 5, 1777.

278

Fox in a division bearing on the conduct of the war.33 None the less, in
the summer of the next year, he became a Lord Commissioner of
Trade and Plantations. He joined a Board where, according to Ed-
mund Burke, eight members of Parliament received salaries of a
thousand pounds a year apiece for doing nothing except mischief, and
not very much even of that;34 and thenceforward, as by contract
bound, he acted with the ministers. His story curiously illustrated the
artificial and mechanical character of the support which enabled the
Court to prolong the American war in opposition to the genuine wish
of the people. Eleven days before accepting office, Gibbon, in Brooks's
Club, had informed as many of the members as stood within hearing
that there could be no salvation for the country until the heads of six
of the principal persons in the Administration were laid upon the table.
That truculent sentence was carefully entered by Charles Fox in his
copy of the "Decline and Fall," with the addition of some biting
comments. Two years afterwards an execution took place at Fox's
house, and all the volumes in his library were sold by auction;— whether
he had acquired them on credit at a shop, or, (which was the case
here,) as a present from the author. Poor Charles's autograph en-
hanced the value of the History. "Such," wrote Walpole, "was the
avidity of bidders for the smallest production of so wonderful a genius
that, by the addition of this little record, the book sold for three
guineas." 35

In default of these great authors whose names are still known, and
whose works are still read, expectation was for a while concentrated
upon a writer who then lived in a halo of celebrity which is now dim
almost to extinction. Mrs. Catherine Macaulay, the sister of Lord

33 On February the 2nd, 1778, Gibbon was in a minority of 165 to 259 en Fox's
motion, "That no more of the Old Corps be sent out of the Kingdom."

34Burke's Speech on presenting to the House of Commons a Plan for the better
Security of the Independence of Parliament, and the Economical Reformation of the
Civil and other Establishments. The passage relating to the Board o£ Trade and Plan-
tations,— in itself a treasury of wit and wisdom, — covered a twelfth part of that vast
oration, and must have taken twenty minutes to deliver. "I can never forget the delight
with which that diffusive and ingenious orator was heard by all sides of the House,
and even by those whose existence he proscribed. The Lords of Trade blushed at their
own insignificance." That good-humoured confession is from a note in the most com-
prehensive of Gibbon's numerous Autobiographies.

35 iflff journals; June 20, 1781. Anthony Storer, writing to Lord Carlisle, gave a
somewhat different account of the matter. "Charles's books, which were seized, were
sold this week. Gibbon's book, which contained the manuscript note by Charles, was
smuggled from the sale; for, though Charles wished to have sold it, yet it never was
put up. He bought in most of his books for almost nothing."

279

Mayor Sawbridge, had for many years past been giving to the press
a History of England from the Accession of the Stuart Family. Each
successive volume was hailed by able, learned, and even cynical, men,
(if only they were Whigs,) with admiration and delight quite incom-
prehensible to modern students. Mason pronounced Mrs. Macaulay's
book the one history of England which he had thought it worth his
while to purchase, and confessed his national pride to be gratified when
he learned that, although her husband's name was Scotch, she herself
had been born of English parents. Gray ranked her above every pre-
vious author who had attempted the same subject, and thereby gave
her the preference over Clarendon, Hume, and Burnet; 36 and Horace
Walpole endorsed Gray's estimate in the most unqualified language.
George, Lord Lyttelton, the historian of Henry the Second, said that
she was a prodigy,— solemnly and sincerely, as he said everything,—
and exhorted mankind to erect statues in her honour. Portraits of
Mrs. Macaulay, in fancy characters, and by engravers of note, were on
every print-seller's counter; and an artist came over from America ex-
pressly in order to model her and Lord Chatham in wax. She was one
of the sights which foreigners were carried to see in London; and she
met with flattering attentions in Paris, where England was so much
in fashion that current English reputations were taken unreservedly,
and sometimes even rapturously, on trust. Among the more audacious
thinkers in the society of the French capital enthusiasm was ecstatic
with regard to a lady who was a republican by conviction, and the
severity of whose strictures upon a State clergy were not prompted
by the narrowness or fanaticism of a religious sectary.37

Overrated by some clever judges, and adulated by many foolish
people in exceedingly foolish ways, Catherine Macaulay was at the
height of her repute when the American controversy was developed
into a war. In one month of 1776 three set panegyrics on her talents
and deserts appeared in the columns of a single London newspaper.38

36 So did not Lord Macaulay. An industrious, but not very discerning, critic had re-
marked that Bishop Burnet's History of His Own Times was of a class with the works
o£ Oldmixon, Kennett, and Macaulay. That lady's distinguished namesake wrote thus
on the margin of the passage: **Nonsense! Who reads Oldmixon now? Who reads
Kennett? Who reads Kate Macaulay? Who does not read Burnet?"

37 "What could persuade the writer that Mrs. Macaulay was a Dissenter? I believe
her blood was not polluted with the smallest taint of that kind." Extract from a letter,
as given in Nichols's Literary Anecdotes; Vol. IX., page 689.

88 The opening of a Birthday Address, (by a poet who was not afraid of repeating
an adjective which pleased his fancy,) exemplifies the taste of the age, and the high-
flown language which it was customary to use when complimenting Mrs. Macaulay. She

280

Readers were keenly excited by her promise of a "History of England
from the Revolution to the Present Time, in a series of Letters to the
Reverend Doctor Wilson, the Rector of St. Stephen's, Walbrook;"
for Mrs, Macaulay had not emancipated herself from the delusion that
sprightliness could be infused into a dull book by arranging its con-
tents in the form of epistolary correspondence. "Sir Robert Walpole,
my friend, was well acquainted with the blindness of the nation to
every circumstance which regarded their true interest." That is a speci-
men sentence from Mrs. Macaulay; and it is difficult to imagine how
such a style of composition could be tolerated by Horace Walpole,
whose own youthful narrative of the scenes in Parliament, which led
up to his father's fall, palpitates with life as do the political letters of
Cicero.

The literary form, into which Mrs. Macaulay had thrown her His-
tory, proved in the sequel fatal to her reputation as an author. The
Doctor Wilson, for whose edification the book professed to be writ-
ten, was no ordinary, or parsimonious, admirer. He had made over to
Mrs. Macaulay his house at Bath, with the furniture and library; he
placed her statue, adorned with the attributes of the Muse of History,
inside the altar-rails of his church; and he built a vault where her re-
mains should rest when her spirit had joined the immortals.39 The first
volume of the Continuation of her History was published in 1778. Be-
fore that year ended Mrs. Macaulay took to herself a second husband,
who was very much less than half her own age, and who was not
Doctor Wilson. The statue was at once removed, the house reclaimed,

was born in April; and she then resided at Alfred House, — a name that suggested the
motive of the poem.

"Just patriot King! Sage founder of our laws,
Whose life was spent in virtue's glorious cause:
If aught on earth, blest saint, be worth thy care,
Oh! deign this day's solemnity to share,
(Sacred to friendship and to festive mirth,)
The day that gave the fair Macaulay birth;
Whose learned page, impartial, dares explain
Each vice, or virtue, of each different reign,
Which tends to violate thy sacred plan,
Or perfect what thy sacred laws began.

Blest month! Tho' sacred to the Cyprian Dame
This day, at least, let sage Minerva claim,
(Sacred to friendship and to social mirth,)
The day which gave her loved Macaulay birth!
39 Nichols's Literary Anecdotes] Vol. VIII., page 458.

28l

and the vault sold. The clergyman and the lady paraded their mutual
grievances before a disenchanted world; and that world, as its custom
is, revenged its own infatuation upon the idol whom it had unduly
worshipped. The complimentary odes, in which her praises had once
been sung, gave place to satirical parodies reflecting on a Certain
Female Patriot; the new book was recognised to be detestably bad;
and it was the last of the series. A sense of humour could not be
counted among Mrs. Macaulay's gifts; but she perceived the absurdity
of continuing, through a long succession of volumes, to pour forth ex-
haustive disquisitions on the Stamp Act, and minute examinations of
the New England Charters, interspersed with affectionate epithets
addressed to an elderly gentleman between whom and herself there
notoriously existed an irreconcileable quarrel.

No worthy record of that eventful time can be found in any con-
temporary book which was deliberately compiled as a history; but
the age nevertheless gave birth to a vast mass of political literature,
written for the purpose of the moment, some portion of which will
never be allowed to die. There is a stirring and decisive chapter in the
story of ancient Greece which a good scholar makes shift to pick out,
and piece together, for himself from the orations of Jischines and
Demosthenes; and so,— between the day that George the Third insti-
tuted the system of Personal Government, down to the day when the
American war, (the chief, and almost the solitary, fruit and product of
that system,) ended in public disaster and national repentance, — the
most brilliant and authentic account of the period may be drawn from
Edmund Burke's published speeches and controversial treatises. Apart
from, and above, their unique literary merit, those performances are
notable as showing how the gravity of a statesman, and the sense of
responsibility which marks a genuine patriot, can co-exist with an
unflinching courage in the choice and the handling of topics. That
courage, in the case of Burke, was exercised with impunity through-
out the most perilous of times. Multitudinous and formidable were the
assailants whose attacks, from the in-coming of Lord Bute to the out-
going of the Duke of Grafton, were directed against the King, and
those King's Friends who made office a purgatory for every King's
Minister whom the King did not love; but all their effusions together
were less damaging in their effect on the minds of impartial men than
the "Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents," the last ten
pages of the "Observations on a late State of the Nation." and one
282

very brief paragraph of courtly and almost reverential irony in that
marvel of point and compression which is entitled a "Short Account of
a Short Administration."40

Other, and less redoubtable, critics of the Government,— as well as
the very craftsmen who printed, and the tradesmen who sold, their
writings,— were punished with the utmost rigour of the law, and har-
assed by the arbitrary vindictiveness of Parliament; but neither the
Attorney-General, nor the Sergeant-at-Arms, ever meddled with Burke
or his publishers. It was the strongest possible testimonial, on the part
of his adversaries, to his character and his standing in the country.
The agents of the Government would no more have ventured to
prosecute Edmund Burke for libel than they would have dared to ar-
rest Lord Chatham on a charge of treason as he passed out of the
House of Lords after delivering one of his diatribes against the influ-
ence of the Crown. Burke enjoyed immunity himself, and extended
the shield of his protection over his humbler associates in the business
of giving his opinions to the reading world, during the miserable
years when the persecution of the Press was at its height. All the more,
after the American difficulty had become serious, — when the power of
the Executive was on the decline, and the Censorship had lost its ter-
rors,— the great Whig publicist, if his taste and self-respect had permit-
ted, might safely have pursued the Court and the Cabinet with an
unbounded licence of invective. But he wisely preferred to set forth his
opinions with the same measured and dignified force of argument and
illustration as he had displayed when the Middlesex Election was the
question of the day. He could not, indeed, write better than he had
written already; but close reasoning, supported by a solid array of facts
and figures, has nowhere been presented in a shape more attractive and
persuasive than in Burke's "Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol," and in the
authorised report of his "Speech on moving the Resolutions for Con-
ciliation with America."

A literary work of rare merit seldom stands alone, and in most
cases proceeds from the pen of one who does best what many around
him are attempting to do well. Burke's masterpieces were produced at

*°"In the prosecution of their measures they were traversed by an Opposition of a
new and singular character; an Opposition of placemen and pensioners. They were sup-
ported by the confidence of the nation; and, having held their offices under many diffi-
culties and discouragements, they left them at the express command, as they had ac-
cepted them at the earnest request, of their Royal Master." So mildly did Burke refer
to the usage which Lord Rockingham and his colleagues encountered from the monarch
whom they so faithfully served.

283

a time when the political essay was widely practised, and held in great
account. The historian, who is destined to relate the events of our own
generation, will be under an obligation to read leading articles by the
furlong and the mile; for, during the past half-century, the leading
article has frequently dictated the action of the State, has inspired or
terrorised its rulers, and has kept them up to the mark, or below it,
until their allotted task has, for good or evil, been accomplished. But
between 1774 and 1783 the leading article, strictly so called, was yet in
the future. The news in newspapers, already ample in quantity, year
by year improved in accuracy; but the editorial comments on public
affairs were confined to paragraphs of five or six, to a dozen, lines,
allusive rather than explanatory in their character, and for the most
part of a humorous and satirical tendency. Serious instruction and ex-
hortation were conveyed to the world in the pamphlets of well-known
men who acknowledged their authorship; and (within the columns of
daily and weeky journals,) by means of long, elaborate, and often ex-
tremely able letters, signed by some adopted name, for the periodical
reappearance of which a large circle of readers eagerly looked. Charles
Fox, who was conversant with every legitimate method of influencing
opinion, has clearly drawn the distinction between the signed letter
and the newspaper paragraph. Grave problems in foreign and domestic
politics must, (he said,) first be treated in some earnest and plain way,
and must be much explained to the public before any paragraphs
alluding to them could be understood by one in a thousand.41 These
responsible, or semiresponsible, personal manifestoes, (for a writer
who styled himself Atticus or Publicola was expected to be rational
in his arguments, and constitutional in his views, almost as much as
one who called himself by his Christian name, and his surname, in
full,) had never been so numerous, or attained so high an average level
of excellence, as during the American war. Junius, indeed, whoever
Junius was, had not published a single sentence of print since Philip
Francis sailed for India. A conspicuous niche was vacant, which no
single successor or imitator had been reckoned worthy to fill; but the
lists of controversy were thronged by a perfect phalanx of well-in-

41 "I cannot think as you do of the insignificancy of newspapers, though I think that
others overrate their importance. I am clear, too, that paragraphs alone will not do.
Subjects of importance should be first gravely treated in letters or pamphlets or, (best
of all perhaps,) in a series of letters; and afterwards the paragraphs do very well as an
accompaniment. It is not till a subject has been so much discussed as to become thread-
bare that paragraphs, which consist principally in allusions, can be generally understood."
Fox to Fitzpatrick; St. Ann's Hill; Sunday, November, (or December,) 1785.

284

formed and fervid partisans, who, under a variety of Greek and Roman
pseudonyms, insisted on the madness of the policy which Parliament
had adopted, and held up to reprobation the ministerial and military
blunders which prevented that policy from being crowned with even
a transitory success.

As opposed to all this spontaneous ardour, and unfettered intellectual
activity, there was very little independent talent on the side of the
ministers. It was their own fault. In Parliament, and in literature, they
had bought up everything that was for sale; and they found themselves
in the position of a general when he has overpaid his mercenaries, and
cannot get volunteers who are disposed to fight for him, and willing to
subject themselves to the necessary discipline. Doctor Tucker, the Dean
of Gloucester, was a declared adversary of the Rockingham party. His
pamphlets had a large circulation; but he took a line of his own which
sorely embarrassed the Government. A distinterested man, he pos-
sessed a cultured and original mind, with a singularly accurate percep-
tion of the direction in which the world was moving. When his gaze
swept a sufficiently wide horizon, he gave proofs of a foresight which
is the wonder of those who have learned by frequent disappointments
what their own political prophecies are usually worth.42 He was, how-
ever, woefully deficient in tact; and his ignorance of the motives which
guided the action of contemporary public men, and parliamentary
parties, was hopeless and complete. He appears sincerely to have be-
lieved that the opponents of the Court, whom he called the Modern
Republicans, were in point of fact Jacobites who admired Doctor Price
as their predecessors in the reign of Queen Anne had admired Doctor
Sacheverell. Doctor Price wrote much and well in favour of recon-
ciliation with America; and Dean Tucker was never so happy as when
belabouring him and Edmund Burke on account of their partiality for
the New England colonists, whom the Dean himself cordially abomi-
nated. But his blows seldom got home upon either of his antagonists;
and the cudgel with which he laid about him dealt back-strokes that
hit a ministerial, and occasionally even a Royal, head.

Here, (argued the Doctor,) is a discontented and riotous population,
three thousand miles away across the ocean, who do not like us, and
do not want us. We may flatter them, and cajole them, and try to

42 "I have observed," (Dean Tucker wrote,) "that measures evidently right will pre-
vail at last. Therefore I make not the least Doubt that a Separation from the Northern
Colonies, — and also another right measure, viz., a complete Union and Incorporation
with Ireland, — (however unpopular either of them will now appear,) will both take
place within half a century."

285

appease them by making one concession and surrender after another;
and then, when we have eaten a mountain of humble-pie compounded
for us by the philosophers and orators of the Opposition, the Americans
will perhaps graciously consent to pretend that they will abide a
while longer in their allegiance to the British Crown. But, as they in-
crease in strength and numbers, an army of fifty thousand, and before
long a hundred thousand, English-born soldiers, (and none others can
be trusted,) will scarcely be sufficient to keep their turbulent spirits
in awe, and prevent them from breaking forth into insurrection at
every favourable opportunity. And how could such an insurrection be
quelled? What British officer, civil or military, would be so foolhardy
as to order the troops to fire on a New England mob, with the assured
prospect that, if any of the bullets carried straight, he would be tried
for his life on a charge of murder before a New England jury?43 Mr.
Burke, (said Tucker,) would deserve much better of his country if,—
in place of giving the colonists fair words in print, and speaking
respectfully and affectionately about them when he was addressing the
House of Commons,— he would bid them cut themselves loose from
Great Britain, and thenceforward go their own ways, to their inevitable
loss and ruin. That was Dean Tucker's logical position; and that was
his advice in the year 1774. He undoubtedly made Burke very angry;
but Lord North and the King would sometimes have been quite as
thankful if their reverend ally had only been pleased to leave the
Cabinet undefended.

The destitution to which ministers were reduced for want of ad-
vocates obliged them to accept assistance from a very questionable
quarter. John Shebbeare had now during nearly two generations been
a scandal to letters. His coarseness and effrontery in the give and take
of private society have been faithfully portrayed by Fanny Burney, a
judge of manners as indulgent and as uncensorious as was compatible
with native refinement and feminine delicacy.44 Shebbeare made his
livelihood by defamation and scurrility. His first literary effort was a
lampoon on the surgeon from whom he had received a medical educa-
tion; and his last was entitled "The Polecat Detected;" which was a

43 Dean Tucker's Fourth Tract; 1775.

44 On the 2oth February, 1774, Miss Burney and some of her friends, one of whom
was a very young girl, were unfortunate enough to find themselves guests in the same
drawing-room as Shebbeare. "He absolutely ruined our evening; for he is the most
morose, rude, gross, and ill-mannered man I ever was in company with." Much of his
conversation, as reported by Miss Burney with her transparent fidelity, was incredibly
brutal; and still worse passages were crossed out in the manuscript.

286

libel, and not, (as might have been supposed,) an autobiography. Dur-
ing the reign of George the Second, Shebbeare had been severely, —
and, indeed, arbitrarily and most improperly, — punished for a fierce
attack upon the House of Hanover. He now enjoyed a pension of
two hundred pounds a year; and he was aware of the conditions
on which, for such as he, the payment of his quarter's stipend de-
pended. Throughout the American war he vilified the group of great
statesmen, whom George the Third persisted in regarding as adversar-
ies, with the same ill-bred vehemence which he had formerly directed
against that line of kings who were the rivals and supplanters of the
Stuarts. Shebbeare was the man whose name Thomas Townshend, in
the House of Commons, had coupled with that of Samuel Johnson,
on the ground that they both had once been Jacobites, and both now
were pensioners; and Townshend's ill-natured remark had called forth
from Charles Fox an eloquent and indignant protest which, to his
dying day, Johnson gratefully recollected.

There were members of the Government who had long been anxious
to enlist Doctor Johnson's literary skill, and personal authority, on be-
half of the Government measures. In this case there was no compul-
sion. The King entertained a true regard for his eminent subject, and
felt a lively satisfaction at the thought that his own generosity had en-
abled a great author, — who had long known want, and sorrow, and the
slavery of set tasks and uncongenial labours, — to spend the rest of his
days in conversation, and travel, and the desultory and fragmentary
reading which he so dearly loved. It was Johnson himself who con-
ceived that his duty towards his Royal Master required him to do a
good turn for those ministers who possessed the Royal favour; and he
intimated his willingness to assist the Cabinet with his pen. The sub-
ject of each successive pamphlet was suggested to him by great men
in office; but the opinions which he enunciated were unmistakably
his own. Indeed, Johnson was so strong a partisan that the censors of
Downing Street interfered with him only to tone down his declarations
of policy, and to blunt the edge of his satire. One cutting and con-
temptuous epigram in his "Thoughts on the late Transactions Respect-
ing the Falkland Islands" so scared Lord North that the sale of the
first edition was stopped after only a few copies had got abroad.45 In

45 The words which did not please Lord North related to George Grenville, and
originally stood thus: "Let him not, however, be depreciated in his grave. He had pow-
ers not universally possessed. Could he have enforced payment of the Manilla ransom,
he could have counted it" In the second edition the sentence ran: "He had powers

287

the spring of 1775 Johnson brought out his "Taxation no Tyranny,"
which, as the tide implied, went down to the root of the quarrel be-
tween Great Britain and America. It was revised and curtailed by the
ministerial critics, who struck out of the text one passage as unneces-
sarily insulting and alarming to the colonists.46 Johnson's sturdy good-
humour was proof against a trial which would have touched the vanity
of a more susceptible author. If, (he said,) an architect had planned a
building of five stories, and the man who employed him ordered him
to build only three, it was the employer, and not the architect, who
must decide.

The utmost severity of expurgation would have failed to convert
"Taxation no Tyranny" into a felicitous performance. Admirable, and
thrice admirable, disquisitions on State affairs have been published by
famous literary men who descended for a while into the arena of
political controversy. Such were Swift's "Examiners;" and Addison's
"Freeholders;" and, (better still, and nearer to our own times,) Syd-
ney Smith's "Plymley Letters" on the Catholic Claims. Nor was any
more ably composed, and entirely readable, State paper ever issued
than that Memoir, in the French language, in which Gibbon, at the
request of ministers, towards the commencement of 1778 submitted
the case of England, as against France, to the judgement of Europe. But
Johnson was not even potentially a statesman. He had never thought
deeply, or wisely, on politics; and his everyday conversation abun-
dantly proved him to be peculiarly ill adapted for arriving at a just
conclusion upon the American question. He was incapable of main-
taining a rational and considerate attitude towards any great body of
men with whose opinions he disagreed. His vociferous declamations
against the Americans were annoying and oppressive to the compan-
ions with whom he lived. He might be heard, (they complained,)
across the Atlantic. The study which he bestowed upon the commer-
cial interests, which so profoundly affected the relations between the
mother-country and her colonies, had been very superficial. He once
comforted a friend, who was anxious about the effect of the war upon
trade, by assuring him that, if we had no commerce at all, we could

not universally possessed; and, if he sometimes erred, he was likewise sometimes in the
right;'* which is true of every public man that ever lived, and does not require a Samuel
Johnson to say it.

46 "He told me," wrote Boswell, "that they had struck out one passage which was
to the effect: That the colonists could with no solidity argue, from their not having
been taxed while in their infancy, that they should not now be taxed. We do not put a
calf into the plough. We wait till he is an ox.' "

288

live very well upon the produce o£ our own island. On the connection
between taxation and parliamentary representation, which his treatise
was ostensibly written to discuss, he argued like a man who had not
the most elementary conception of, or sympathy with, the principle of
self-government. He was fond of saying that a gentleman of landed
property did well to evict all his tenants who would not vote for the
candidate whom he supported. If he himself, (so the great moralist
once put it,) were a man of great estate, he would drive every rascal,
whom he did not like, out of the country, as soon as ever an election
came.

When "Taxation no Tyranny" appeared in print, most of Johnson's
admirers perused the piece with regret, and with something of appre-
hension. They began to fear that, as a writer, he had seen his best
days; and they never recovered their confidence in his powers until,
some years later on, his "Lives of the Poets" were given to a charmed
and astonished world. There he was on his own ground. There he
revelled in the consciousness of supreme capability. He cast aside, at
that late moment, the elaborate and florid diction of his early and
middle period. During the half of every day, and of every night, since
the well-directed bounty of the State had made him his own master,
he had been discoursing on every conceivable subject to all who were
privileged to listen; and he had insensibly acquired the habit of writing
as he talked. He now had an ideal subject for a biographer endowed
with his vigorous common-sense, his vast and insatiable interest in the
common things of life, and his acute perception of the rules which
ought to govern conduct. We may well doubt whether so delightful
and instructive a book as Johnson's "Poets," on a large scale and of
serious purpose, was ever commenced and finished in the two years
that precede, and the two that follow, the age of seventy,47

Johnson's pamphlet, by indirect means, obtained a startling notoriety.
His bolts fell innocuous; but his thunder awoke an echo which was
heard far and wide. Of all people then living, — of all, perhaps, who
ever lived, — no one had so profound an acquaintance with the state
of opinion at home, and in America, as John Wesley. He knew Scot-
land well, and England as a man must know it who preached eight
hundred sermons annually, in all corners of the island; who, fine or
rain, travelled his twelve-score miles a week on horseback, or in public

*7 Carlyle completed his Frederic the Great when close on seventy; but he had been
working at it fourteen years.

289

vehicles, which for him was a more perilous mode o£ conveyance;48
and who lodged, — an easily contented, an affable, and a communica-
tive guest,— with the farmer, the tradesman, and the cottager. Soon
and late, he more than fifty times crossed the Irish Channel. He had
passed nearly two years in America; and he had learned by personal
experience how long it took to get there; a fact ill understood by those
ministers who had misgoverned our remote colonies in peace, and who
now were attempting to reconquer them by war. Wesley relates, in
the first pages of his incomparable "Journal," how he and his com-
rades took ship at Gravesend on the fourteenth of October, 1735; and
how, on the following fifth of February, God brought them all safe
into the Savannah river. The voyage was long enough for him to learn
German, and increase threefold the number of communicants who at-
tended his ministrations on board. Ever since that time he had been
kept minutely informed of what was passing in America by disciples
for whom it was a privilege to correspond with him, and a sacred
duty to write him the truth.

As recently as the year 1770, — when New England was already in a
state of dangerous effervescence, and the military occupation of Bos-
ton had actually commenced, — John Wesley stated in print that he
did not defend the measures which had been taken with regard to
America; and that he doubted whether any man could defend them
either on the foot of law, equity, or prudence.49 So he openly told the
world; and in secret he dealt very faithfully indeed with the advisers
of the Crown. He addressed to them a series of most impressive letters,
in which the exalted diction of an old Scriptural prophet added force
and dignity to the solid arguments of a sagacious and patriotic Eng-
lishman. He warned them plainly that the Americans were an op-
pressed people, asking for nothing more than their legal rights; who
were not frightened, and would not be easily conquered. As fighting
men, (he said in so many words,) they were enthusiasts of liberty,
contending for hearth and altar, wife and children, against an army
of paid soldiers "none of whom cared a straw for the cause wherein

48 Wesley had turned seventy when the American war began; and thenceforward he
more frequently rode in a post-chaise, or a mail-coach. It is worth a reader's while to
count the number of his carriage accidents, if only as an occasion for going through the
last volume of the Journal once again. Sometimes he made a safe journey, as from
Coventry in July 1779- "I took coach for London. I was nobly attended. Behind the
coach were ten convicted felons, loudly blaspheming, and ratding their chains. By my
side sat a man with a loaded blunderbuss, and another upon the coach."

40 Wesley's Free Thoughts on the Present State of Public Affairs.

290

they were engaged, and most of whom strongly disapproved of it."
And he had gone so far as to implore the Prime Minister, for God's
sake and for the King's sake, not to permit his sovereign to walk in
the ways of Rehoboam, of Philip the Second of Spain, and of Charles
the First of England.

That was John Wesley's view, as conveyed to Lord North on the
fifteenth of June, 1775. Before the summer was over there appeared a
quarto sheet of four pages, professing itself to be "A Calm Address to
our American Colonies by the Reverend John Wesley, M.A." It was
sold for a penny, and was bought by forty thousand purchasers, who
were amazed at finding it nothing more nor less than an abbreviated
version of "Taxation no Tyranny," published without any reference to
the original whence it was derived. The little piece was redolent of
Johnson's prejudices, and so full of violent and random assertions that
no room was left for those temperate expostulations which the title
promised. Wesley assured the colonists, — and it must have been news
to Samuel Adams and to John Dickinson, — that the discontent in
America was not of native origin. It had been produced, (he declared,)
by the books and pamphlets of wicked and artful writers resident in
England, whose object was to overset the British Constitution; and,
considering that the chief among those writers was Edmund Burke,
to whom every tittle of the British Constitution was as the Law to a
Pharisee or the Koran to a good Mahommedan, there was something
exquisitely ludicrous in such a statement. The nearest approach to an
argument in Wesley's tract was an appeal to the people of New Eng-
land, whom, with less than his customary shrewdness, he appears to
have esteemed a very simple-minded folk. "You say that you inherit
all the rights which your ancestors had of enjoying all the privileges
of Englishmen. You are the descendants of men who either had no
votes, or resigned them by emigration. You have therefore exactly
what your ancestors left you; not a vote in making laws nor in choos-
ing legislators, but the happiness of being protected by laws, and the
duty of obeying them." It would be difficult to compress into so few
words any theory of citizenship less satisfying to the political aspi-
rations of Americans, either past or present.

Wesley's change of attitude bordered on the grotesque, and to some
of his followers was perfectly bewildering. At the general election of
the previous year he had advised Bristol Methodists to vote for the
candidates who were in favour of conciliation with America; and he
had urged his friends to procure and study a pamphlet called "An

291

Argument in Defence of the Exclusive Right claimed by the Colonies
to tax themselves." That circumstance Wesley had forgotten; as a man
of his years, and his enormous and multifarious occupations, might
be excused forgetting anything. Rudely accused of insincerity, he ex-
amined his memory, and admitted that he had read the pamphlet in
question, and had agreed with its conclusion. In answer to the charge
that he had recommended it to the attention of others, he quietly re-
plied: "I believe I did: but I am now of another mind." Wesley's
candour failed to disarm his opponents. The "Calm Address" aroused
a tempest of controversy; and during several publishing seasons the
great preacher was exposed to hailstorms of wild calumny, and un-
savoury abuse. He was furiously denounced as a wolf in sheep's cloth-
ing; a Jesuit and a Jacobite unmasked; 50 a chaplain in ordinary to the
Furies; and a Minister Extraordinary to Bellona, the Goddess of War.

It was Trevelyan' s contention that "dislike and dread of episcopacy
intensified American opposition to the fiscal policy of Parliament"
and recent scholarship would tend to support him. The collective ac-
tion of the American clergy was a mighty force in politics, and as
Trevelyan depicts it, it was to be employed to bolster the Patriot cause
and to ma\e doubly sure that no bishop was sent to America. Con-
trariwise, where, as in the Southern plantations, the Church of Eng-
land had been the dominant faith, that establishment soon became
a persecuted body and "went down beneath the first gust of the
tornado"

The account that Trevelyan gives us of the crucial Battle of Saratoga
is along traditional lines, with the onus for the failure of the three-
pronged campaign placed more squarely upon Lord George Germain
than the Colonial Secretary perhaps deserves. Trevelyan criticizes Ger-
main for entrusting the Northern command to Burgoyne instead of
having it executed by Sir Guy Carleton and for having violated the
basic principles of military strategy when "he made over to the Amer-
icans the immense advantage of operating an interior line of country."
Then come the familiar story of Howe's advance on Philadelphia, the
inevitable withdrawal by Howe's successor, Sir Henry Clinton, when

50 It was not the first time that Wesley had been called a Jesuit. He once was preach-
ing at Dublin to a large assemblage. "One of them, after listening some time, cried out,
shaking his head: 'Ay: he is a Jesuit; that's plain.' To which a Popish Priest, who happened
to be near, replied aloud: 'No; he is not. I would to God he was!1 ** Journal for May 15,
1748.

292

the military situation deteriorated and France's entry into the war
rendered Philadelphia untenable. Until the end of hostilities, Clinton
was to be left in command of the royal forces in America, hampered
by Germain's "foolish and contradictory orders'" and unable to count
upon the assistance of a navy "mismanaged and misdirected by the
Earl of Sandwich!' While in his own lifetime Clinton was accounted
the most notorious of those

"Generals who will not conquer when they may,
Firm friends to peace, to pleasure, and good pay"

Trevelyan feels that, all things considered, Clinton was "an unusually
capable officer," a judgment that most military historians of the present
day will not share. Nonetheless, Clinton's withdrawal across the Jer-
seys and his encounter with the Patriots at Monmouth Court House
were "tough and ungrateful" tas\s that severely tested his qualifica-
tions as a military leader.

293

CHAPTER XI

EUROPEAN PXJBUC OPINION.
CHOISEUL.

VERGENNES*

TUBGOT

vJTRAVER news had seldom crossed the Atlantic; although the latest
occurrences in America were not closely studied in London, and their
full import was understood only by the wise. Hopes had been excited
by Burgoyne's first successes, by Howe's victory on the Brandywine,
and by the capture of Philadelphia. The catastrophe at Saratoga had
been received with disappointment, and with something very nearly
approaching to dismay. But Sir Henry Clinton's retirement on New
York, which was the most significant event in the whole war, attracted
little attention in English society, and scanty comment in the press.

Week after week, and month after month, during the late spring
and early summer of 1778, our newspapers gave very meagre informa-
tion about the British army on the Delaware; for the mind of Britain
was already distracted by problems demanding more instant attention,
and by dangers much nearer to her own shores. The Morning Chron-
icle, and the Evening Post, related the battle of Monmouth Court
House at less length than they bestowed upon a sham-fight at the
great militia camp which had been formed on Cox Heath, in Kent,
to provide against the imminent contingency of a French invasion.
Towards the end of July, an anxious public were informed that very
heavy firing had been heard off the Lizard. "Yesterday," (so the para-
graph ran,) "a report confidently prevailed, which God forbid that a
tithe should be true, that Admiral Keppel had been beat in a general
engagement." * The rumour of a battle was premature; and, when it
did take place, it was claimed as an English victory, though among
the very poorest in our naval annals; but we may well believe that,

l-The London Daily Advertiser; July 24, 1778.

294

during a week when home-news of this description floated in the air,
men were not inclined to devote much attention, or regret, to the
evacuation of Philadelphia.

For two centuries back, on many critical occasions, England's for-
eign and warlike policy had presented a very noble record. Queen
Elizabeth assisted the United Provinces of Holland, in their utmost
need, against the bigotry and cruelty of Spain. Oliver Cromwell inter-
fered in Continental matters, with decisive effect, in the interests of
justice, humanity, and religious freedom. The war which William the
Third fought out to the end, and the subsequent war which he com-
menced, and which Marlborough prosecuted, were both of them set
going with the express object of protecting weak European com-
munities from the unscrupulous and insatiable ambition of Louis the
Fourteenth. It was true, indeed, that George the Second's two great
wars had been undertaken by the British Cabinet from mixed motives,
amongst which national self-interest certainly found a place; but in both
cases an honourable, a generous, and a disinterested idea possessed and
actuated the great mass of Englishmen. Such an idea unquestionably
inspired the exertions and sacrifices made by our forefathers in 1742,
and during the five years that followed; — the vast subsidies transmitted
to Vienna from the British Treasury; the glorious victory of Dettingen;
the still more glorious reverse of Fontenoy; and the visit of Com-
modore Martin's squadron to the Bay of Naples, which was an ex-
ploit conceived, and conducted to a bloodless but triumphant issue, in
the very spirit and style of the Great Protector. The main thought and
intention of our people in that arduous struggle was a determination
to save the young Empress Queen from insult and spoliation, and to
prevent the balance of power from being irremediably overset by the
ruin and dissolution of Austria. And Chatham's war, which in America
and the East secured enormous acquisitions of territory for his country,
presented on the Continent of Europe, (and not unjustly,) the ap-
pearance of a public-spirited, and even a chivalrous, enterprise. English
troops fought loyally and most successfully, and English guineas were
not stinted, in order to strengthen the hands of Prussia against the
most powerful combination of military States that ever, for so many
years together, applied themselves in concert to the business of an-
nihilating a puny neighbour.2

2 Hard words have often been applied to the doctrine of the Balance of Power; but,
during the century which followed the Revolution of 1688, that doctrine excited almost
as much enthusiasm as was evoked, in the nineteenth century, by the principle of

295

These striking events, and this all but continuous course of mag-
nanimous policy, had landed England in a position more desirable
than has ever been enjoyed by any nation in modern times; and for
which a parallel can only be found in the fame and popularity of
Athens after she had repelled the Persian invasion, and before she had
begun to tyrannise over her Greek allies. When the Seven Years' War
came to a termination, the influence of England throughout the Con-
tinent of Europe was immense; her power on the high seas was un-
disputed; and, together with these advantages, she had contrived to
retain a large measure of the general good-will. She had drawn the
sword so often, and wielded it so efficaciously, on behalf of others,
that the governments, which she had protected and rescued on the
European mainland, seldom grudged her those provinces and colonies
which she had founded, or appropriated, in distant quarters of the
globe.

"I shall do well!

The people love me, and the sea is mine;

My powers are crescent; and my auguring hope

Says it will come to the full."3

England, after the Peace of Paris in 1763, might very fairly have
applied to herself these verses of her own greatest poet. Feared and
hated by some nations, esteemed and even beloved by others, she was
everywhere respected, admired, and imitated. Nowhere was she so
obsequiously watched and followed as in the capital city of her ancient,
and her most formidable, foe. "What Cromwell wished," (thus Gibbon
wrote in March 1763,) "is now literally the case. The name of English-
man inspires as great an idea at Paris as that of Roman could at
Carthage after the defeat of Hannibal." The more frivolous of the

Nationality. The efforts to preserve Europe from the acquisitiveness of France or Austria
inspired Englishmen, in the days of Marlborough and Chatham, with the same kind of
sympathy as their descendants felt for the Independence of Greece, and the Unity of
Italy. Robertson published his Charles the Fifth in 1769; and his Introductory Essay on
the Progress of Society in "Europe, which filled the first volume, contains many allusions
to the theory of the Balance of Power. The historian apparendy regarded that theory as
among the most beneficent discoveries of a civilised era. "That salutary system," (thus
he described it,) "which teaches modern politicians to take the alarm at the prospect of
distant dangers, which prompts them to check the first encroachments of any formidable
power, and which renders each state the guardian, in some degree, of the rights and in-
dependence of all its neighbours/'

3 Anthony and Cleopatra; Act IL, Scene I.

296

French nobility copied and borrowed our simple dress, our less gaudy
and far swifter carriages, our games at cards, the implements of our
national sports, and the jargon of our race-course, — so far as they could
frame their lips to pronounce it. Those among them who were of more
exalted nature, and tougher fibre, envied the individual liberty and
responsible self-government which prevailed in England, and the op-
portunities there afforded for a strenuous and worthy public career.
The pride of young French gentlemen, (wrote the scion of a great
family in Perigord,) was piqued by the contrast between their own
situation, and that of men of their age and class beyond the Channel.
"Our minds dwelt upon the dignity, the independence, the useful and
important existence of an English peer, or of a Member of the House
of Commons, and upon the proud and tranquil freedom which ap-
pertained to every citizen of Great Britain." 4

Such was the towering eminence which Britain proudly occupied;
and it is an inevitable condition of national greatness that conspicuous
States, on which the attention of mankind is concentrated, have to
mind their ways at home, as well as abroad. Small or effete countries
may be well or ill governed, their ministers and even their monarchs
may come and go, and their constitutions may be reformed or overset,
without attracting any considerable amount of observation outside their
own confines; but the politics of a people who lead the world are re-
garded, all the world over, as matter of universal interest and concern.
The top-heavy edifice of personal government, — which George the
Third, through the instrumentality of Bute, and Grafton, and North,
had built up from the foundation, — was a familiar, and not a lovely,
phenomenon to educated men in every capital of Europe. All true
friends, and some high-minded enemies, of England deplored that
the energies of our rulers should be devoted to unworthy, and worse
than unprofitable, objects, and witnessed with sincere regret the long
roll of sordid and demoralising incidents which marked the trail of
the Middlesex Election. It was a sorry spectacle to see the Government

par M. Le Comte de Segur, de V Academic Franfaise, Pair de France:
Deuxieme Edition, page 140.

A young Englishman o£ good family, writing in the year 1774, described how he left
London, where his father never got back from Parliament till long after midnight, and
spent his whole morning correcting his speech for the newspapers; and how in Paris
he found men of the highest birth leading a life of unbroken leisure, — calling occasion-
ally on the King's Ministers, to exchange a few compliments, but otherwise knowing as
little about the public affairs of France as of Japan.

297

of a people which had humbled France and Spain, had defended Ger-
many, and had conquered Canada and Bengal, wasting its efficiency
and its credit, twelvemonth after twelvemonth, over a miserable
squabble with the voters of one very ill-used English county. England,
before this, had had her faults and her misfortunes; but since the
Revolution of 1688, alone among the principal nations of the world,
she had been ruled by strong men who forced their way to the front
by prowess in debate, by valuable public services, and by the favourable
estimate which their fellow-countrymen formed of their wisdom and
capacity. That, however, was the case no longer. Second-rate, and
third-rate, place-holders now trifled with the welfare and honour of
the country; while their betters were inexorably excluded from office
because they were unacceptable to the King. Patriots and statesmen
like Edmund Burke, Lord Camden, and Sir George Savile, were left
unemployed; and England was governed by such sinister or paltry
figures as Sandwich and Rigby, Lord Weymouth and Lord George
Germaine.

This disastrous condition of things was vividly brought home to the
perception of Europe by the notoriety of Lord Chatham's disfavour
at Court. The ex-minister, whose commanding genius had laid France
at the feet of England, was incomparably the most highly regarded of
English citizens, all the Continent over; and nowhere was that senti-
ment so pronounced as in France itself. French people of fashion were
for ever pestering British tourists for an authentic anecdote about Pitt,
or for a few specimen sentences from his latest oration; and the presence
during a single evening of one among his kinsmen, or even his parlia-
mentary supporters, was of itself sufficient to make the fortune of any
drawing-room in Paris. Lord Chatham's reputation as a public speaker
was never so widely diffused as during the later stages of the Wilkes
controversy, and the opening scenes of the American Revolution. Mag-
nificent fragments of his rhetoric, dating from that period, are not
even yet submerged in the sea of oblivion which, mercifully for human
endurance, in most cases drowns the oratory of the past; and samples
of his eloquence, while it still was fresh, were freely quoted, and en-
thusiastically admired, by foreigners who had learned to read our
language. And now, at the summit of his fame,— in the prime, as
Berlin and Paris believed, of his intellect and his vigour,— he was denied
the opportunity of governing his native island, and saving from dis-
memberment that Colonial empire which he had enlarged and strength-
298

ened for no other public reason than because he stood, squarely and
manfully, for the independence of the British Parliament.5

For some years before the American Revolution broke out, the
influence of England abroad had been sapped and weakened by the
growing deterioration of her internal politics. And now, after a decade
marked by maladministration and popular discontent at home, the
new methods of government had produced their appropriate fruit in
the alienation of our colonies. On that question one and the same
view was held by every rational foreigner, and was pointedly expressed
by those French writers who then were the recognised interpreters of
European thought. "Your ministers," wrote the Abbe Morellet to Lord
Shelburne, "have not perceived that, by enslaving and ruining America,
they are drying up an abundant source of wealth and prosperity, of
which England would always have secured the largest share; for such
would have been the happy consequence of natural and unforced re-
lations between a mother-country, and a colony inhabited by a people
sprung from her race, and speaking her tongue. Those ministers re-
semble a territorial landlord who, in order to maintain certain honorary
rights which bring him in little or no cash, should make war on his
own tenants, impounding their teams and setting fire to their barns,
with the result that his farmers would thenceforward be unable to till
their fields, and pay their rent." It is true that, in our own day, an
author may occasionally be found, in one country or another, who
defends the policy of Lord North's cabinet as having been laudable
and judicious. But, while the affair was actually in progress, all the
civilised world outside our own island held that policy to be wrong
and foolish : and it is the opinion of contemporaries, and not of poster-
ity, which has an influence on the issue of the event.

Then came the Declaration of Independence. There exists among
mankind an innate disposition to believe that people know their own
business best, and a readiness to accept the description which they
give of themselves in preference to any which is given of them by others.

5 While Horace Walpole was at Paris, in the autumn of 1765, his correspondence
is full of casual, and occasionally very humorous, allusions to the awe with which
William Pitt was regarded in that city. "The night before last," (Walpole wrote to
Pitt's sister,) "I went to the Luxembourg; and, if I had conquered America in Germany,
I could not have been received with more attention." Walpole gave an unlucky Scotch
baronet a very bad half -hour by assuring a party of eager, and curious, fine ladies, most
untruthfully, that the poor gendeman was an excellent mimic, and could reproduce
Pitt's speaking better than any man alive. When the terrible wolf of the Gevaudan was
brought dead to Paris, the animal lay in state in the Queen's antechamber, and "was ex-
hibited to us with as much parade as if it was Mr. Pitt."

299

When America, speaking with an exuberant emphasis which had no
example in the State-papers of the Old World, asserted for herself a
separate and distinct place among the family of nations, there was a
general inclination, all Europe over, to take her at her word, and
acknowledge her right to be the arbitress of her own destiny, and the
mistress of her own future. The claim which she embodied in her
famous manifesto was soon made good by arms. Thrice had Great
Britain put forth her full strength against the colonists, and three
campaigns had been fiercely contested. In the first campaign King
George lost Boston; the second had ended with the defeat of his
German auxiliaries at Trenton; and the third had resulted in one
of his armies being captured, while the other was driven back into the
City of New York. What had hitherto been the suppression of a rebel-
ion now became, in the eyes of foreign critics, the invasion of a country.
The conflict was regarded no longer as a civil war, but as a war of con-
quest: and conquest is never popular except among the conquerors.6
The English had hitherto been regarded by other nations as the most
sagacious people of modern times. A century and a half of bold and
judicious colonisation, and three quarters of a century made notable
by a series of amazingly prosperous wars, had secured for them nearly
all the outlying districts of the globe that were then worth having.
Their proceedings had been characterised by instinctive common-
sense, and by obedience to the laws of a broadly considered and sound
economy. All those immense enterprises, which they had undertaken
and carried through, were well within their compass, and amply re-
paid them for their ungrudging expenditure of that public money
which, at the decisive hour, they never spared. But now, in profound
peace, at the height of unparalleled prosperity, they had committed
themselves to an internal war against a part of their own empire, — a
war marked by all the folly of a Crusade, without the piety, — of which
the end must be distant, and the event, whatever shape it might ul-
timately assume, could not fail to be calamitous to Great Britain. The
national reputation for prudence and shrewdness was grievously im-
paired in the eyes of Europe; and our countrymen had thrown away

* Albert Sorel, in his account of the repulse of Brunswick's invasion, makes an
interesting allusion to the respect felt in Europe for the young American Republic, after
it had successfully endured the baptism of fire:

*'Les Francais ont supporte Tepreuve decisive, celle qui a fait la mine des Polonais, et la
puissance des Americains. Cette nation a vu les etrangers sur son temtoire, et elle est
rcstee unie, in&ranlable dans scs idees. II faut renoncer au fol cspoir d'enchaincr une
nation entiere."

300

a yet more valuable advantage than that of ranking as the cleverest race
in history. The Declaration o£ Independence had aroused an unusual
emotion in the mind o£ Europe. Jefferson's lofty and glowing phrases
resounded through France and Germany in accents strange and novel,
but singularly, and even mysteriously, alluring to the ear. The de-
pressed and unprivileged classes in a feudal society, which abeady had
arrived within fialf a generation of the uprising and overturn of 1789,
hailed with delight from across the ocean that audacious proclamation
of their own silent hopes and lurking sympathies. In previous wars
England had figured as a champion of the weak, and a fearless assertor
of the common liberties against the misuse of power by any State, or
conspiracy of States; but now, to the sorrow of her admirers, she was
committed to the task of crushing the political life out of a group of
Republics which, in the view of Europe, had as much right to free
and uncontrolled self-government as the cantons of Switzerland. She
had forfeited the general respect and esteem which formerly was her
portion; and she was to learn erelong that, at a grave conjuncture, re-
spect and esteem are among the most valuable military assets upon
which a nation can reckon.

Certain incidents of the American war,— which were forced upon
the attention of the European populations, and in some respects very
seriously affected their comfort, their security, and their commercial
interests, — aggravated that disapproval of King George's policy which
they so early, and so generally, felt. The more powerful and self-
respecting governments blamed and despised those petty princes who
had sold their troops for service against our revolted colonists; while
all civilians, and almost all true soldiers, were profoundly shocked by
the cruelty and injustice inseparable from the traffic. "The Anspach
and Bayreuth regiments were put on board boats at Ochsenfurt; but
so closely packed that many of the men had to stand up all night. We
sang hymns, and had prayers. The next day, many of the men threat-
ening to refuse, the non-commissioned officers were ordered to use
heavy whips to enforce obedience, and later to fire on the malcontents,
so that some thirty were wounded." That is the account given by no
political agitator, but by a musketeer who served King George bravely,
and not at all reluctantly, throughout the later years of the American
war.7 It was little wonder if such scenes as these, — occurring along the

7 Stephen Popp's Journal, 1777-1783; published by Joseph G. Rosengarten, After re-
lating the mournful and clamorous partings between tie young villagers, and the par-
ents from whom they were torn, the writer goes on to say: "Some of the soldiers were
glad, and I was of their number, for I had long wanted to see something of the world."

301

main roads of Europe, and on the banks of her navigable rivers, at a
time when there was peace within her own borders,— filled quiet,
kindly citizens with pity and disgust. The Margrave of Anspach, who
had been called in to quell the mutiny, escorted his troops to the seaport
where they were embarked for New York; and it is on record that he
was hooted by mobs, and pelted with reproachful epithets, in the streets
of every Dutch town which he traversed on his homeward journey.

So it was on land; and, in the department of maritime affairs, the
American war speedily kindled burning questions which flared up
into something not far short of a universal conflagration. The sudden
and complete extinction of the great, the increasing, and the excep-
tionally profitable trade between England and her colonies opened out
an enticing prospect to the cupidity of foreign manufacturers and
foreign ship-owners. Warlike stores rose at once to famine prices
in America; and, if the rebellious colonies had not the hard dollars
wherewith to pay those prices, at any rate there was plenty of Virginian
tobacco which might be exported as a substitute for gold and silver.
The multitude of New England sailors, who in former wars had
helped to man British fleets, now shipped themselves on board the
privateers which preyed upon British commerce. Privateering on a
large scale, and in distant waters, is impracticable unless captains of
predatory vessels can find a port in which they are allowed to sell
their prizes; and such ports, situated in the European territories, or
the colonial dependences, of France, and Spain, and Holland, were
soon placed at the disposal of the American corsairs with the con-
nivance of the local authorities. Under these circumstances the British
Government had recourse to their own interpretation of the code
which regulated the power of naval search, and the enforcement of
naval blockades. They insisted upon a large, and in some cases a
very disputable, extension of the Est of articles included in the cate-
gory of Warlike Stores; and their narrow and rigid definition of the
immunities to be enjoyed by neutral vessels was much more agreeable
to the captains of their own frigates than to Dutch, or Danish, or
Scandinavian, or Russian ship-owners and ship-masters. Britain, in all
particulars, revived and put in practice the extreme theory of her mari-
time rights; and such was the nature of the world-wide contest in which
she was engaged that it was difficult for her, if not impossible, to allow
those rights to sleep.

Every week that sped, — and, as the war progressed, almost every day,
—brought the news of some high-handed act on the one side, and some
302

flagrant breach of the impartiality due from non-combatants on the
other. On the deep seas, at the mouth of a Baltic estuary, or off the bar
of a West Indian harbour, transactions were passing which continually
added fuel to the flame of international resentment. The British peo-
ple, sometimes with more anger than uneasiness, saw one European
neighbour after another converted into an overt enemy, or, at best,
into a malevolent and bitterly prejudiced umpire. Before the close of
1780 she was at war with three of the naval Powers; and the others
had drawn themselves together into a league which called itself The
Armed Neutrality, but which had very little that was neutral about it
outside the title. Portugal alone retained, — and, (grateful little nation
that she was,) for a long time ventured to manifest, — her ancient predi-
lection for our country; but the pressure at length became too strong for
her fidelity, and Portugal threw in her lot with the rest. Benjamin
Franklin could truthfully write from Paris that England had no friends
on that side of the Straits of Dover, and that no nation wished her
success, but rather desired to see her effectually humbled. Nor was
disapprobation of Lord North's action in America confined to Con-
tinental, or to foreign, lands; for that sentiment had long been dominant
in Ireland. The Catholics indeed, so far as in their sad and depressed
condition they had any politics at all, were mostly for King George as
against the Whig opposition and the Philadelphia Congress. But,
throughout all the four Irish provinces, the coercion of New England
was intensely distasteful to the public opinion of the governing classes;
and in that century, and that country, Protestant and Landlord opinion
alone counted. "I heard t'other day," said Horace Walpole, "from
very good authority that all Ireland was 'America mad.' That was the
expression. It was answered: 'So is all the Continent/ Is it not odd
that this island should, for the first time since it was five years old,
be the only country in Europe in its senses?" 8

By the time that our American rebellion had lasted a twelvemonth,
Great Britain could not count upon any friend, or any possible ally,
among the leading European nations; while the most powerful of them
all was her busy and irreconcilable enemy. France, for a long while
back, had been in that mood which renders a proud and gallant people
the most dangerous of neighbours to a victorious rival. Chatham, and
his English, had wrenched away her colonies, had expelled her from
North America, and had ousted her from any prospect of influence or

8 Walpole to the Countess of Ossory; Strawberry Hill, June 25, 1776.

303

empire in the peninsula of Hindostan. Her troops had been often and
disgracefully beaten, her squadrons driven off the ocean, her com-
merce annihilated, and her finances ruined. Her consciousness of in-
feriority was kept alive by the humiliations to which she was subjected
in her intercourse with other Powers. She was still obliged in one of
her own home ports, to endure the presence and the supervision of a
British Commissioner, whose duty it was to assure himself that no
fortifications were erected on the front which faced the sea.9 So weak
that she could not insist upon her right to take a hand in the game of
European diplomacy, she was forced to overlook and condone the
lucrative iniquities which, in the black and shameful year of 1772,
Russia, Austria, and Prussia combined to perpetrate at the expense of
a feeble and unhappy nation. It was impossible, (said Lafayette,) for
Frenchmen of a later generation even to conceive the political and
military nullity to which their country had been reduced by the Seven
Years' War, and by her enforced acquiescence in the partition of Poland.
France had suffered terribly, and had been stripped bare; but she
had learned self-knowledge in the school of misfortune, and was
quietly and resolutely intent upon recovering the self-respect which
she had lost. The more thoughtful and capable among her statesmen,
her sailors, and her soldiers were assiduously engaged in amending
the discipline, and increasing the fighting strength, of her fleets and
armies. The master-workman in the task of national recuperation and
reconstruction was the Due de Choiseul. A politician, who aspires to
be a ruler, must travel towards his goal by the avenues which are in
customary use in his own country, and among his own contemporaries;
and Choiseul had risen to the summit of affairs, — as openly and avow-
edly as an English nobleman would set himself to gain place and power
by making speeches in Parliament, — through the good graces of a
Royal mistress. He was a prime favourite, and a most serviceable
partisan, of Madame de Pompadour; but none the less was he a
genuine patriot. He had his full share in the onerous responsibility of
starting the Seven Years' War, and he did not greatly shine in the
conduct of it; but he had taken to heart the stern lessons which that
war had taught. In 1761,— the mid period of the struggle, when the
naval power of France had already been destroyed,— Choiseul, with
rare foresight and fixity of purpose, commenced the building of war-

9 A stipulation to this effect with regard to the port of Dunkirk, dating from the
Peace of Utrecht, was revived and reestablished in the year 1763 by a special article in
the Treaty of Paris.

304

vessels on an extensive scale, and continued to build with redoubled
vigour after hostilities terminated. By the year 1770 sixty-four French
sail of the line, and fifty frigates were actually afloat.10 When once
the ships were provided, there was no lack of men. Colbert had long
ago devised, and Choiseul had now perfected, an accurate register
of the entire sea-going population; and a rigorous, but equitable, con-
scription obviated the necessity of the press-gang, and supplied the
war-fleet with the very pick and flower of French sailors. A matter
of hardly less importance, when dealing with an element where, after
seamanship has done its very utmost, cannon must decide the day, was
the organisation of a marine artillery; and the French Admiralty in
1767 enlisted a body of ten thousand naval gunners, "systematically
drilled once a week during the ten years still to intervene before the
next war with England." n

Choiseul's ships were built to encounter the battle and the storm,
and they were handled by officers who understood and loved their
calling. Unwarmed by the beams of Court favour, and patient and
loyal under the vexation of cruelly slow promotion, they were as blunt
and rough, as brave and manly, and as whole-hearted in their devo-
tion to duty, as the heroes of Tobias Smollett's naval stories. True
sea-dogs, or rather sea-wolves, (for so their countrymen preferred to
call them,)12 they knocked about the Gulf of Lyons and the Bay of
Biscay in all weathers, and on every sort of errand. According to their
notion it was better for King Louis that he should lose a few spars
and top-sails, or even an occasional ship's company of sailors, than
that his frigates should lie safe and idle in harbour with inexperienced
captains, and crews who were no better than landsmen. And so it
came about that the French marine was never so efficient, before or
since, as at the commencement of the war which arose out of the
American Revolution; while the sea power of Great Britain had been
brought down to a very low point by the incompetence and heedless-
ness of the British Cabinet. Lord North and Lord Sandwich starved
the dockyards, and reduced the seamen, at a time when they were
pursuing a Colonial policy which plunged their country into a des-
perate contest with all the other great navies of the world. Howe and

10Hw/o/r<? dc La Marine Fran$aise, par E. Chevalier; Livre L, Chapitre 2.

11 Mahan's Influence of Sea Power upon History; Chapter 9. Chevalier; Preface, Livre L

12 The Memoirs of the Due des Cars give a most interesting picture of his valiant
brother, who was "un vrai loup de mer, et d'une nature extrSmement sec,"

305

Rodney, by consummate strategy and splendid victories, at length re-
stored the maritime supremacy of England; but, during the space of
four years, the French fleets and squadrons, commanded by zealous
and enterprising Admirals,— and in the case of the Bailli de Suffren,
by a naval leader of very high quality, — held their own, and some-
thing more than their own, in the Mediterranean Sea, and on the
Atlantic and Indian oceans.

A scantier measure of success attended ChoiseuPs efforts to regenerate
the army, which had become a veritable hot-bed of privilege, of indo-
lence, and of almost unfathomable incapacity. There was a sharp and
striking contrast between the conditions under which Frenchmen
served their King on land and on water. The Chevalier des Cars,
who afterwards became the Duke, began his career in life as a naval
officer; and, as has happened to others, he made all the better soldier
for it afterwards. While he was still a sailor, the young fellow injured
his health during two hard winters at sea in the narrow quarters, and
the ineffable discomfort, of an eighteenth century cruiser. Then he
obtained a commission in the Cavalry; and, after a short apprentice-
ship with his regiment, he repaired to Paris, where he led an agreeable
existence amidst a round of theatres and supper-parties, varied by
excursions to Versailles with the object of taking part in the royal stag-
hunts, and dancing attendance on the Comte d'Artois. The Chevalier
was nominated a Colonel of Dragoons within a year and a half of the
time when he first joined the army; and, on the evening of the same
day, he had the enviable honour of being selected from a crowd of
courtiers to hold the candle while the King was undressing. In the
meanwhile his elder brother, the Baron des Cars, who had served with
credit at sea through the whole of the English war, and had more than
once commanded a frigate, still ranked as a plain lieutenant. If the
Baron had been a musketeer, or a Gendarme, of the Royal Household
he might have been a Major General at five and twenty. All the
coveted prizes of a military career were for men, and sometimes even
for children, of quality.13 The upper grades in a French regiment were
occupied by Viscounts and Marquises; while the hard work was done
by veterans of low degree, and often of great though ill-rewarded merit,
who were distinguished from their high-born comrades by the some-

13 The Comte de Segur's father commanded a regiment when only nineteen years o£
age. A son of the Marechal de Richelieu was made a colonel at seven; and his Major
was a boy of twelve.

306

what ironical appellation of "officers of fortune." 14 It must be admitted
that troops so commanded were queer allies for the sturdy and un-
compromising Republicans of Connecticut and Massachusetts.

The French army, with all its faults, contained plenty of valour and
chivalry; and Choiseul exerted himself to introduce into it any reforms
and improvements which were compatible with the aristocratic char-
acter of the military hierarchy. Close attention was thenceforward be-
stowed upon the recruiting, the re-mounts, the drill, the manoeuvres,
the clothing, and the weapons. Regiments of the line, one and all, were
dressed in the same uniform; and in 1777 the infantry were supplied
with a type of musket so excellent that, after some alterations in the
mechanism, it held its ground through the Napoleonic wars, and up
to the middle of the nineteenth century. The new firelock weighed
only eleven pounds, which in those days was a miracle of lightness;
and when, (as was ordinarily the case in batde,) a soldier dispensed
with the ceremony of taking aim, he could discharge five shots a
minute.15 The officers were encouraged to instruct themselves in the
tenets of the Potsdam school, which was then supposed to be in pos-
session of all attainable human knowledge relating to the science of
war. The great master of that school, however, took very good care
that only a few exoteric fragments of his doctrine should be imparted
to his foreign disciples. French colonels and generals were at full liberty
to borrow the Prussian methods of manipulating troops on parade;
but they were allowed to learn from Frederic the Great "nothing
except his most elementary and least essential lessons."16 A French
Minister of War, in the enthusiasm of imitation, empowered regi-
mental officers to adopt the German custom of chastising privates with
the flat of the sabre; as if that peculiar institution had been the secret
of victory at Zorndorf and at Rossbach. Two subalterns of high birth
and great promise, who afterwards were admirable soldiers, went so
far as to shut themselves up in their lodgings, and belabour each other,
turn and turn about, until they had ascertained "the impression made
by blows from the flat of the sword upon a strong, brave, and healthy

14 This invidious system was resuscitated in the French army after the Restoration.
Paul Louis Courier, in the year 1820, represents himself as comforting an old Sergeant
Major, who had fought under Napoleon, by reminding him that he might some day be
an officer. "An officer of fortune!'* was the reply. **You little know what that means! I
had rather drive a plough than become a lieutenant in my own regiment in order to be
bullied by the nobles.**

15 Bonaparte en Italic: Felix Bouvier; Chapitre i, Section 2.
lQMemoires par M. Le Comte de Segur; Paris, 1825; Tome I., Page 128.

307

man." The discussion of military problems became the fashion of the
day, even beyond exclusively military circles; and a dispute which
raged over the question of the attack in column, and the attack in
line, aroused almost as keen partisanship in Paris as the musical con-
troversy between the faction of Gluck, and the faction of Piccinni.

Choiseul, with the vigilance of a practised diplomatist, had long
watched for an opportunity of bringing about a collision with England.
During the later months of 1770 a difficulty arose, in reference to the
Falkland Islands, between the British and the Spanish governments;
and the Bourbon of Spain was prepared to assert his claim by arms, if
the Bourbon of France would back him in the quarrel. Choiseul used
every endeavour to prevent an amicable settlement, and to create a
war; but his day of Court favour, and backstairs influence, was past
and gone. The bright, particular star which was then dominant,— the
cynosure by which every wary French statesman was careful to steer
his course, — shone with a pacific, and not with a red and angry, lustre.
Madame de Pompadour, in days gone by, had consented to plunge
France into war if only the Empress of Austria would call her cousin.
But Madame du Barry, unlike her more ambitious predecessor, was
frankly and contentedly disrespectable. Unable to induce as many as
six French ladies of rank to visit her, she entertained no hope whatever
of being admitted into the family of European sovereigns.17 She de-
tested Choiseul as a serious man, and a masterful minister; as a kill-joy
in the class of society which frequented her apartments; and as an ad-
vocate of large armaments, and of an open breach with England.
Madame du Barry had learned just enough of politics to be aware
that a war would cost a great deal of money, and would render it less
easy for her to lay her hands on the millions of crowns which were
indispensable to her jovial, and prodigal, existence. She made up her
mind that Choiseul should go; and a change of government was ef-
fected by that process which France, in the reign of Louis the Fifteenth,
regarded as the strict constitutional method. The King's mistress
said a word to an Abbe who had access to the royal ear; the Abbe
suggested a course of action to the King; and the King summoned
the minister into his presence, and demanded an account of the inter-
national situation. When Choiseul had expounded his policy, his sov-
ereign's face "became livid, and he cried out in a fury, 'Monsieur, I
have told you that I would not have a war.' " Choiseul was dismissed

17 Walpole's Memoirs of the Reign oj George the Third; Volume IV., Chapter 8.
308

from office; the disagreement about the Falkland Islands was patched
up; and a belief that peace was secured, until the throne of France
had another occupant, universally prevailed in Paris, and in London
likewise. At Brooks's club, in May 1774, Mr. Edward Foley betted
Mr. Charles Fox fifty guineas that England would be at war with
France "before this day two years, supposing Louis the Fifteenth
dead." Almost in the same month, the same view was expressed by
a much greater man. "I little thought," (so Lord Chatham wrote from
his Somersetshire home,) "that I should form daily wishes for the
health and life of His Most Christian Majesty. I believe now that no
French subject of the masculine gender prays so devoutly for the preser-
vation of his days as I do, in my humble village. I consider the peace
as hanging on this single life, and that life not worth two years'
purchase."

If wars of retaliation can be staved off during a sufficient period of
time, the most passionate aspirations for reprisal and revenge may
die away, and be succeeded by friendlier sentiments. That, within
our own experience, has been the case with the French Republic and
the German Empire; and the same circumstances might have pro-
duced the same happy effect on the relations between France and
England in the generation which followed the conclusion of the
Peace of Paris. Frenchmen, smarting under recent defeat, cherished
the notion of a fresh appeal to the ordeal of battle; but prudence kept
them quiet. The warlike power of Great Britain was enormous; and
the British colonies in America, growing rapidly in wealth and popu-
lation, were more than ever capable of contributing, in the day of
need, a most formidable addition to the naval and military strength
of the mother-country. If only the concert between the whole English-
speaking race, on both sides of the Atlantic, remained unbroken,
France might in the end have accepted the accomplished fact, and
diverted her energies from the preparations of war to the pursuits of
peace. But the statesmanship of George the Third's ministers proved
unequal to the task of keeping the national inheritance bound together
in voluntary and indissoluble union; and the revolt of our colonies
afforded an irresistible temptation to the martial ardour, and the pa-
triotic resentment, of the French army and the French people.

When the Americans flew to arms in the early months of 1775,
there was already a new reign in France; and there was a new France

309

also. Nothing so instantaneous, nothing so exceptional and peculiar
in its character, as the intellectual Renaissance which immediately fol-
lowed upon the death of Louis the Fifteenth has occurred in any age
or country. The influence of the movement was most visible in the priv-
ileged class; but that class was a nation in itself, for it included a
hundred and forty thousand men and women, belonging to at least
five and twenty thousand noble families.18 Never, (wrote a most able
historian,) did a generation attain its majority with an equipment of
ideas and impressions more utterly opposed to those of their parents
than the sons of the French nobility during the opening years of Louis
the Sixteenth's reign.19 It was a generation which had read, or at all
events had bought, the Encyclopaedia; which derived its views on public
right and public policy from Montesquieu, its emotions and aspirations
from Rousseau, and its theology from the Philosophical Dictionary of
Voltaire. Frenchmen of good family, who survived the great Revolu-
tion, looked regretfully and wistfully back to the artificial, irresponsible,
and the intensely enjoyable lives which they led towards the beginning
of the fourth quarter of the eighteenth century. Unobservant of the
ominous fact that doctrines, with which they amused themselves as a
pastime, had permeated those vast masses of their less fortunate de-
pendents and inferiors to whom Freedom, and Equality, and Justice
were terms fraught with very serious meaning indeed, the younger
nobles, fearless about the future, extracted the quintessence of all that
was delightful from every phase and aspect of the present. On their
country estates, among their peasants, and land-stewards, and game-
keepers, they still retained a substantial remnant of feudal power. At
Versailles they basked in the sunshine of the Court, and secured their
share of places, and pensions, and promotions. When they repaired to
the camp, the mere possession of a great name placed them in the
highest ranks of the military service. And meanwhile they held them-
selves free to mingle, at Parisian supper-tables, with all that was bril-
liant in untitled circles on terms of a pleasant imitation of plebeian
equality. That is the picture drawn long afterwards by one of their
own number. "We passed," (so the Comte de Segur wrote,) "the
short years of our spring-time in a round of illusions. Liberty, royalty,
aristocracy, democracy, ancient prejudices, bold and unfettered thought,
novelty and privilege, luxury and philosophy,— everything conspired

18 L'Ancien Regime, par H. Taine, de 1* Academic Fran^aise; Chapitrc II., Section I.
M Doniol's History; Volume I., Page 635.

310

to render our days happy; and never was a more terrible awakening pre-
ceded by sweeter sleep, and by more seductive dreams." 20

The solitary grievance of these young patricians was that they were
excluded from the government of the State; for it was an established
tradition in the French Court that age and wisdom went together.
Youth pushed its way everywhere outside the royal Council-Chamber,
which was closed against all except elderly Ministers. But the members
of the rising generation had, in truth, little reason to complain. They
were not fully cognisant of their own power. As individuals they
were, indeed, kept outside the administration; but their influence as
a class, for good or evil, was nothing short of omnipotent. The active
force in French politics which alone mattered, and before which, in
the last resort, the monarch and his advisers were compelled to bow,
was the public opinion of the fashionable world; and, in June and
July 1775, the current of that opinion ran with a vehemence and una-
nimity which carried all before it. Events were taking place at Boston
and Philadelphia which usurped the attention, and touched the imag-
ination, of everyone who had a thought to spare from his own selfish
pleasures. The older men, whose animosity towards England had
been embittered by two desperate wars, and by the sacrifices and ig-
nominies of a dishonourable peace, caught eagerly at so unique a
chance of inflicting a deadly wound on the pride and strength of the
hereditary enemy. The younger men were all on fire to go crusading
to America. Dependent on their parents for a fixed allowance, which
seldom left them with cash in pocket, they contrasted their own posi-
tion with the good fortune of Lafayette, who had come into his
property early, and who was able to charter his own ship, and select
his own companions in arms. They envied even such unlucky heroes
as Pulaski and Kosciusko, who, after the ruin of their national cause
at home, had shaken the dust of Poland from their feet, and gone across
the western ocean to fight for the liberty of others. The tidings of
Lexington reached the Baths of Spa at the precise period of midsummer
when the great world had assembled to take the waters. That town
was then "the coffee-house of Europe," to which French ladies and
gentlemen resorted on a pretext of health, but in reality for the purpose
of maintaining relations with those important people of other coun-

20 Memoires par M. Le Comic de Segur; Tome I., Page 27. Such, in its essence, was
the life o£ the great English Whigs during the first half of the nineteenth century.
**What enviable men you are!" said a French politician to the owners of Bowood and
Castle Howard. "You dwell in palaces, and you lead the people."

311

tries who, in the eighteenth century, combined to form one immense
aristocracy of birth and fashion. When the fighting began at Boston
it was a strange and novel spectacle to see "the representatives of every
European kingdom united by a lively and friendly interest in subjects
who had risen in revolt against a King."

Almost everyone, who was somebody, in Paris or at Versailles, had
American sympathies; and nobody was at pains to conceal them. The
new reign had relaxed the springs of despotic authority, had unpeopled
the Bastille, and had set all tongues free to criticise and argue. The
courtiers were not afraid of the King; and other members of the royal
family were afraid of the courtiers, who seldom failed to impose their
own view of politics upon those above them. The Comte d'Artois had
been powerfully affected by the craze which was known as Anglo-
mania. He is said to have evinced his respect and esteem for our na-
tion by refusing to make bets with any except Englishmen; and that
was no barren or valueless compliment, for he had sometimes lost
as much as six thousand Louis d'or at a single race-meeting.21 And
yet, as soon as the frequenters of the QEil de Boeuf began to take sides,
—or, more properly speaking, to take one side,— in the American
controversy, the Comte d'Artois, Prince of the Blood though he was,
had no choice but to sink his English proclivities, and declare himself
a "Bostonian" with the rest. The young Queen had not been educated
as a patroness of rebels. She was brought up by a mother who, of all
sovereigns that ever lived, was perhaps the most indefatigable and con-
scientious assertor of the doctrine that people should stay quietly
where their rulers had placed them. Marie Antoinette's favourite
brother, and the only person on earth of her own generation by whom
she would submit to be lectured, was the Emperor Joseph the Second;
and Joseph regarded a monarch who encouraged disaffection in the
British colonies as a traitor to his own caste. When an attempt was made
to enlist his good-will on behalf of the American insurgents, he coldly
replied that his vocation in life was to be an aristocrat. But the influ-
ence of her Austrian family over the Queen's mind was not strong
enough to preserve her from the contagion of the new ideas. Her
most intimate associates had always been women; and the warmest ad-
vocates of American liberty were to be found among a sex which never
is half-hearted in partisanship. "Woman,'* (wrote a French historian
under the Second Empire,) "in our sad day the prime agent of reaction,
then showed herself young and ardent, and out-stripped the men in

21 London Evening Post of February 1777.

312

zeal for freedom." 22 Marie Antoinette obeyed the impulse which per-
vaded the society around her, and threw herself into the movement
with frank and vivid enthusiasm. Long afterwards, when the poor
lady had fallen upon very evil days, one of her determined political
antagonists expressed himself as bound by justice and gratitude to
acknowledge that "it was the Queen of France who gave the cause
of America a fashion at the French Court." 23

The warlike emotions which agitated the public mind exhaled them-
selves, as such emotions always do, in angry and contemptuous re-
flections on the apathy and timidity of the government. The French
Ministers, however, were prepared to extract the utmost advantage
from a situation which they understood very much better than any
of the fine ladies and gentlemen who were inveighing against their
excess of caution and their culpable indifference to the honour of
the country. The responsible rulers of France had taken their measures
silently, vigorously, adroitly, and most unscrupulously; and they had
no objection whatever to being accused of backwardness, and even
of pusillanimity, by foolish and noisy people outside the Cabinet.
The war of aggression against England, which they had in contempla-
tion, was so flagrantly unjustifiable, and so entirely unprovoked, that
they were willing to present the appearance of having been driven into
violent courses by an outburst of popular clamour and passion. The
philosophical circles of Paris might be in a whirl of cosmopolitan
excitement about the emancipation of a people from its tyrants, and
the universal brotherhood of the human race; but the official advisers of
Louis the Sixteenth descried in the American rebellion nothing except
an opportunity for promoting the national interests of France, and
for maiming and enfeebling the British Empire. That had been the
central object of French statesmanship for three generations back; and
the Prime Minister, the Comte de Maurepas, who had already passed
his seventy-third birthday, was of an age which inclined him to pursue
a continuous foreign policy. The old courtier saunters across the early
pages of Carlyle's French Revolution under the guise of a frivolous
votary of wit and pleasure; "his cloak well adjusted to the wind, if so
be he may please all persons." That is the conventional portrait of
Maurepas which posterity has accepted, in his own country and in ours.
Nevertheless there was a more serious side to his character. Through
the whole of a long life he never trimmed or trifled over any question

3*3

de France par J. Michelet; Tome XIX., Chapitre 14.
^Paine's Rights of Man.

connected with the efficiency of the French fleet and army; and he had
been an early, and a persistent, naval reformer under rebuffs and dis-
couragements which would have daunted an insincere or a timid man.
In 1776 the edge of his patriotism remained as keen as ever; but his
power of work was impaired, and his bodily force abated. The burden
of the crisis rested on the very capable shoulders of a younger col-
league.24

The Comte de Vergennes had been French Ambassador at Con-
stantinople when the Peace of Paris was signed. He felt the defeat of
his country as men feel a grave personal misfortune. But his patriotic
concern and mortification did not sink to the level of despair; for
already, with rare sagacity, he detected a possible rift in the imposing
fabric of the British Empire. He foresaw and foretold, from the very
first moment, the consequences which would infallibly result from
the cession of Canada. So long as the English colonists had France for
their neighbour, — harassing them with raids, inciting the Indians to
ravage their villages, and building forts and blockhouses up to the
very edge of their frontier, and sometimes even within it, — they could
not afford to dispense with the aid and protection of the mother-
country. But the French power had been up-rooted from America.
England, by her own act, had destroyed the only check which kept
her Transatlantic subjects in awe; and if ever, from that time forward,
she ill-treated or offended them, they would reply by throwing off
their dependence. So Vergennes had specifically prophesied; and, at
the very moment when his prescience was justified by the event, he
found himself Foreign Minister of France, with the secret strings of
diplomacy in his grasp; enjoying the unlimited confidence of his aged
chief; and controlled by no one except a youthful king who was too
obtuse to detect all that his Ministers were engaged in doing, and far
too shy to rebuke them roundly for anything rash or unprincipled
which they had actually done. Carlyle describes Vergennes as sitting

24 "Malgre son Sge," (so Doniol says of Maurepas,) "il restait I'homme par qui avait
etc operee autrefois la reconstitution de la Marine en vue de tenir tete a la Grande
Brctagne, et de faire reprendre, un jour ou 1'autre, a France sa part de I'empire des
mers." The passage which follows this sentence contains a most interesting comparison
between the actual, and the legendary, Maurepas.

"The ablest man I knew," wrote Horace Walpole, "was the old Comte de Maurepas.
. . . Madame de Pompadour diverted a large sum that Maurepas had destined to re-
establish their Marine. Knowing his enmity to this country, I told him, (and the com-
pliment was true,) that it was fortunate for England that he had been so long divested
of power." Walpole's Memoirs of the Reign of George the Third; Volume IL, Chapter 2.

314

at his desk "in dull matter of fact, like a dull punctual clerk;" but it is
well for the tranquillity of Europe that such clerks do not often find
their way to the top of the French Foreign Office. He was, in truth, a
statesman with will and energy, who was always possessed by two
absorbing ideas, the concurrent force of which impelled him towards
his goal through a wilderness of obstacles, and over a mountain of
almost superhuman labour. He could not feel at peace with himself
until his country had recovered her rank among the nations of the
world; and his policy was habitually inspired by intense and implac-
able hostility to England.

Then French Ministers were strongly disposed to assist and protect
the American insurgents; but they had a mortal terror of the British
navy. They could not forget their experience of 1755, when they were
taught, with no desire for a repetition of the lesson, that the mistress
of the seas had a rough, and an over-prompt, way of dealing with an
intruder on her own element. In the summer of that year, before ever
war had been declared between the two nations, Boscawen attacked and
scattered a French squadron of battle-ships, and Hawke brought into
British ports three hundred French trading vessels, and lodged six
thousand French sailors in British prisons.25 And now, in the spring of
1776, the advisers of Louis the Sixteenth were haunted by an appre-
hension that, if France showed her hand prematurely, England, and
the English colonies, would hasten to make up their family quarrel,
and would celebrate their reconciliation by joining together in an
attack upon the French possessions in the West Indies. King Louis
was solemnly and repeatedly warned by his diplomatic agents in
London that Lord Chatham, the idol of his compatriots on both sides
of the Atlantic, would mediate between the Crown and Crongress, and
would be recalled to power as Prime Minister. He would have at his
disposal,— equipped for a campaign, inured to battle, and assembled
at a convenient spot for embarkation,— the Boston garrison of ten
thousand British regulars, and a host of New England minute-men and
Virginian sharp-shooters; while sixty vessels of the Royal Navy, and
a swarm of colonial privateers, were afloat on American waters, ready
and eager to bombard French ports, and to make prizes of French
merchantmen. Long before any reinforcements could arrive from
Brest or Rochefort, the famous English war minister would sweep the
French from Saint Domingo, and Martinique, and Guadeloupe, and

25 Mahan's Influence of Sea Power; Chapter 8.

315

all the rest of the Greater and Lesser Antilles, just as, half a generation
previously, he had swept them out of Canada.26

That prospect, formidable as it looked, did not deter Vergennes from
the purpose upon which his mind was set; but he thought it prudent,
for the time being, to mask his operations by an artful system of under-
hand manoeuvres. Disguising a flagrant breach of international good
faith under the specious name of patriotic caution, he drew up a
paper of Considerations on the Policy which should be pursued by
the Governments of France and Spain; and, on the twelfth of March
1776, he communicated the document to King Louis, and to his own
four principal colleagues in the Cabinet. It was essential, (he wrote,)
to persuade George the Third that the intentions of the two Bourbon
Powers towards England were not only pacific, but positively friendly,
in order that the English ministry might be emboldened to entangle
themselves, too deep for retreat, in a fierce, a dubious, and a most
exhausting war against their own colonists. The courage of those
colonists, on the other hand, would have to be "sustained by secret
favours" from France. They should be supplied furtively, but gen-
erously, with arms and money, and informed that, while it was below
the dignity of the French King to treat openly with insurgents, His
Majesty was disposed to recognise them as allies if they ventured upon
the decisive step of renouncing their allegiance to the English Crown,
and declaring themselves an independent nation.27

The Chief of the Cabinet, the Minister of War, and the Minister of
the Marine warmly approved the objects that Vergennes had in
view, and expressed no repugnance to the means by which he purposed
to attain them. But every paragraph in the Foreign Secretary's mem-
orandum was intensely distasteful to the King. Louis the Sixteenth had
little inclination to pose as the tutelary genius of a rebellion. "His in-
tuitions, dim as they were," forewarned him that revolutionary prin-
ciples were among the most portable of all foreign products, and that
no ocean was broad enough to preserve European monarchies from
being infected by the contagion of American republicanism.28 Nor
could he fail to remember how, a very short while back, and by his own
express command, the Comte de Vergennes had emphatically re-
assured Viscount Stormont, the English Ambassador in France, as to

26Doniol; Volume I., Page 69, and elsewhere.

27Ooniol; Volume I., Pages 272-286.

28 Bancroft's History oj the United States of America; Epoch Fourth, Chapter 2.

316

the intentions and the sympathies of the French Court.29 The Prime
Minister himself, at a subsequent interview with Lord Stormont, spoke
still more unequivocally to the same effect. "I and my colleagues," said
Maurepas, "are not the men to take advantage of a neighbour's diffi-
culties, and to fish in troubled waters. You may accept it for certain
that we are not giving, and will never give, any single article of warlike
stores for the use of the rebel army." 30 Louis the Sixteenth, who was
acquainted with all that had passed between his own confidential serv-
ants and King George's diplomatic representative, recoiled, like a true
gentleman,, from the notion of striking a foul blow against a brother
monarch with whom he professed to be on terms of cordial amity. He
was governed, moreover, by a conviction of duty, as well as by a sense
of honour. Although of languid will, and inert habits, he none the less
was instinctively public-spirited; and by the sincerity of his religious
belief, and the rectitude of his personal conduct, he merited his conven-
tional appellation of The Most Christian King. Conscience forbade
him to enter upon a course of treachery which could not fail to in-
volve his country in a hazardous and protracted war. Actuated by an
unfeigned solicitude for the people committed to his charge, he shrank
from wantonly inaugurating, after an interval of only twelve years,
another devil's carnival of bloodshed and rapine, of national peril, and
of private bereavement, impoverishment, and ruin.

Louis the Sixteenth had good reason to trust his unfavourable judg-
ment of the proposals submitted to him by Vergennes; for his own
scruples were shared by as wise and virtuous a minister as ever took
part in the councils of any State, whether kingdom or republic, in the
modern or the ancient world, Michelet, — the most audacious of his-
torians, who has handled only too freely topics which he would have
done much better to leave alone, — relates how, in the darkness of the
night, an inner voice addressed to him the warning words: "What man
of this generation is worthy to speak of Turgot?" 31 Every author, and
not Michelet only, may well feel that it is superfluous, and almost im-

29 Lord Stormont to Lord Rochford; Fontainebleau, October 31, 1775. Vergennes,
"spontaneously, and with the air and manner of a man who utters his honest opinion,"
informed Lord Stormont that the American rebellion was regarded at Versailles as a
calamity; and that, far from desiring to increase the embarrassments of the British
Government, the King of France and his Ministers contemplated those embarrassments
with extreme regret.

30Doniol; Volume I., Pages 198-202.

31Hw*o*V<r dc Trance; Volume XIX., Chapter 13.

317

pertinent, to praise a statesman the bare mention of whose name is in
itself a sufficient panegyric. By March 1776, Turgot had for nineteen
months been Comptroller of Finances, and, (in far other than the offi-
cial sense of the term), a keeper of the King's conscience. He had still
five years of life before him; and within that time, working at the rate
at which he hitherto had worked, he might have brought to completion
the vast, but practicable, scheme of public economy, extinction of
privilege, unfettered commerce, local self-government, and national ed-
ucation by which he confidently hoped to re-organise the body politic,
and to renovate society. If Turgot had not been robbed of his royal
master's confidence by the intrigues of those courtiers and nobles whom
he was endeavouring to save in spite of themselves, his country would
have been guided along quieter paths, an much happier destinies than
those which awaited her under Robespierre, and Barras, and Napoleon
Bonaparte. France might have escaped untold horrors; and Europe
might have been spared an almost interminable series of useless and
devastating wars.

Turgot had been a warm, and a very early, friend to the independence
of America; which he welcomed in the interests of mankind, and not
least for the sake of England.32 But his first duty was to his own coun-
try; and he combated the proposal of a warlike policy with an earnest-
ness inspired by his profound conviction that the whole future of
France was involved in the decision which her rulers were now called
upon to take. His reply to Vergennes cost him some weeks of thought
and labour. It was a masterly production; a voluminous treatise, three
quarters of a century in advance of his age, on the philosophy of colo-
nial administration, and at the same time a powerful and persuasive
official minute upon the question of the hour. England, (so the argu-
ment ran,) would in all likelihood lose her colonies; or, if she suc-
ceeded in reconquering them, she would be condemned thenceforward
to hold them in subjection at an expense of money, and military re-
sources, which would bind her over, under the most stringent penalties,
to keep the peace with her European neighbours and rivals, and more
especially with France.33 Whatever result might ensue, France would be
the gainer; and to choose such a moment for a wanton and gratuitous
attack upon England was an immeasurable folly, and a signal crime.

32 Turgot to Doctor Josiah Tucker, the Dean of Gloucester; Paris, September 12, 1770.

33 "Que nous faisait, des lors, que 1'Angleterre soumit ou non ses colonies insurgentes?
Soumises, dies 1'occuperaient assez par leur desir de devenir libres, pour que nous n'ayons
plus a craindre. AflFrancnies, tout le systeme commercial se trouvait change.'*

318

The English ministry had done nothing whatever to invite or pro-
voke a war; and every plan of aggression on the part of France was
forbidden by moral reasons, and by considerations of national self-
interest more imperious still. The King, (said the Comptroller-General,)
was acquainted with the condition of his finances, and knew, better
than anyone, what sacrifices and efforts were required to stave off bank-
ruptcy even in time of peace. The first cannon-shot fired against a for-
eign enemy would scatter to the winds all His Majesty's gracious de-
signs for the better government of France, and for the amelioration
in the hard lot of her unhappy peasantry. "An English war," (such was
Turgot's conclusion,) "should be shunned as the greatest of all misfor-
tunes; since it would render impossible, perhaps for ever, a reform
absolutely necessary to the prosperity of the State and the solace of the
people."34

Turgot did well to spare no pains over the composition of this his-
torical document, for it was the last important State-paper which he
wrote from his official chair. He had made a host of enemies by his bold
and uncompromising action in almost every department of public af-
fairs; and yet he was feared and hated, less for what he had done al-
ready, than for what he might do next. It was bad enough that the tiller
of the soil should be released from the obligation of maintaining roads
and highways by his unpaid labour; that the town artisan, emancipated
from the shackles of trade monopoly, should be at liberty to carry his
skill and industry into the open market; that corn grown in one prov-
ince should be sold, and exported, with the effect of lowering the price
of bread in another; and that tribute should no longer be exacted from
government contractors, and Farmers General, by great people about
the Court. All this was bad enough, but there was worse behind; for
it was a matter of notoriety that "le sieur Turgot," with the innate
vulgarity of his birth and breeding, was not alive to the merits of a
fiscal system under which the poor and the industrious were bled to
the quick, while the rich and the idle "contributed a mere fraction of
their substance to the revenue of the State, and then divided among
themselves the larger part of its expenditure." Unless a change came
over the spirit of the Treasury, the tax-gatherer would soon be knock-
ing, with equal hand, at the castle and the cottage; and salaries and
pensions would have to be earned by hard dull work in the service of

34Doniol; Volume L, Pages 280-283. The Life and Writings of Turgot, edited by
Walter Stephens; pages 295-296, and 321-324.

319

the nation, instead of being distributed among the sons and daughters
o£ leisure, as the reward of sycophancy and importunity.

The case was urgent; and the manipulators of politics had recourse
to the machinery by which Ministerial rearrangements had been ef-
fected during the late reign, with one very important modification.
Female influence was again called into play; but it was the influence
of the wife, and not of the mistress. There was an outburst of sinister
activity in the closely-banded circle of high-born men and women
by whom Marie Antoinette was encompassed, and plundered, and
prompted. Turgot was not blind to the perils of his situation. When
he first went to the Treasury he had addressed his royal master in plain
and honest words. "I shall have," he said, "to struggle even against the
goodness and generosity of Your Majesty, and of the persons who are
most dear to you." He kept his promise; and the Queen, before very
long, became his personal adversary. Her only idea with regard to pub-
lic money was to get as much as possible of it to spend. However often
her lap was filled with gold, and her toilet-case with jewels, she still
had unpaid bills which she dared not show to her husband because she
knew that her husband dared not show them to his Comptroller Gen-
eral.35 There was one grudge rankling in her memory which surpassed
all others. In an evil hour for herself, and for the object of her mis-
placed bounty, she had done her utmost, without success, to procure
the enormous salary of fifty thousand crowns a year for her favourite,
the Princesse de Lamballe; the same ill-fated lady who, in September
1792, heard economic reformers, of a very much fiercer type than Tur-
got, thundering at the door of her prison. The Austrian ambassador at
Versailles, the Comte de Mercy, had been entrusted with the duty of
keeping his Empress punctually and faithfully informed as to her
daughter's conduct; and the young Queen was exhorted, both by her
mother and brother, to abstain from interference in French politics.
But her monitors were far away, and her tempters near at hand. Sel-
dom indeed, in all the history of the past, was greater mischief wrought
by woman than when Marie Antoinette placed herself at the service
of that base and selfish conspiracy for the murder of a noble career,
and the destruction of a nation's hopes.36

The threatened minister became conscious that the ground was un-

35 Monsieur de Mercy to the Empress of Austria; July 19, 1776.

36 Marie Antoinette confessed to her mother that she was not ill pleased by the
changes in the ministry, although she herself had not meddled in the matter. De Mercy
told Maria Theresa a very different story. It was, (he wrote,) the Queen's full intention
to have the Comptroller General turned out from office, and sent straight to the Bastille.

320

dermined beneath his feet. He stood deserted and alone in the face of
danger. Even President Malesherbes, the only colleague with whom he
was on terms of sympathy and confidence, resigned office unexpectedly,
and, (as regards Turgot,) somewhat shabbily and disloyally. Sixteen
years afterwards Malesherbes, with a prospect of the guillotine as his
advocate's fee, valiantly defended his fallen sovereign at the bar of the
Convention; a conspicuous example that there have been those who
find it less terrible to confront death than to defy social unpopularity.
Malesherbes retired on the twelfth of May 1776; and, on the same eve-
ning, Turgot received a message to the purport that he was no longer
Comptroller General. There was joy in the corridors of Versailles; and
dowagers, who thought that they wrote like Madame de Sevigne, filled
their letters with epigrams upon the fallen minister. But the millions,
who toiled and suffered, knew that they had lost their best friend, and
their only protector; and all sincere well-wishers to France were over-
whelmed by grief, consternation, and a sentiment akin to despair. Con-
dorcet sent Voltaire a melancholy and touching letter, ending with the
words: "Adieu! We have had a beautiful dream." "Ever since Turgot
is out of place," (Voltaire himself wrote,) "I see only death before me.
I cannot conceive how he could be dismissed. A thunderbolt has fallen
on my head and on my heart." The announcement of the great Min-
ister's removal from power was everywhere recognized as the death-
knell of European peace. "Such men as Turgot," (said Horace Wai-
pole,) "who are the friends of human kind, could not think of war,
however fair the opportunity we offered to them. Poor France and
poor England!" After the deed was done, King Louis was overcome
with shame, and very sad and anxious. "Except myself and Turgot,"
(so he had been used to say,) "there is no one who really loves the
people." Sensible of his own weakness, he foresaw that he would soon
be coerced into undoing all the good work which he and his departed
servant had accomplished together. And, now that he stood alone
against the opinion of his united Cabinet, he felt himself powerless to
avert the projected war with England which shocked his conscience,
and which in its consequences proved fatal to his reign.

321

CHAPTER XII

BEAUMARCHAIS.

FREDERIC OF PRUSSIA.

FRANKLIN IN PARIS.

THE FRENCH TREATIES

Vv HEN Turgot fell from power, Vergennes became undisputed
master of the international situation; and he had at his disposal, for
carrying out his purposes, an instrument as sharp as ever political crafts-
man handled. He was in intimate and secrcet relations with a man who
may fairly be described as having led the typical French career of the
eighteenth century. Pierre Augustin Caron, born in the Rue Saint-
Denis at Paris in the year 1732, was the son of an ex-Calvinist watch-
maker who enjoyed the patronage of the Court at Versailles. The
younger Caron might often be seen at the Palace on his father's errands.
He was greatly noticed for his handsome face and manly bearing, his
assured air and dominant manners, and the instinctive impression
which he produced on all who met him that, against whatever diffi-
culties and by whatever methods, he intended to carry the world before
him. His merits were not lost on the great ladies of the Court; but he
had the good sense to try his wings in a low flight, and, by the age of
three-and-twenty, he was on the best of terms with the wife of one of
the sixteen Clerks of Office of the King's Household, who, as a matter
of fact, and in plain words, were the waiters at the royal dinner-table.
The husband, already advanced in years, made over his employment
to his young friend, and died a few months afterwards. Caron had
now a salary of two thousand francs, and enjoyed the privilege of wear-
ing a sword when he brought in the dishes. He married the widow;
and from that time forward he signed himself Caron de Beaumarchais,
after a small feudal estate which was said to be in the possession of his
wife's family. The exact locality of that estate has never been ascer-
tained; but the name was soon famous throughout Europe.
322

Beaumarchais climbed fast when once his foot was on the ladder. He
had the inestimable gift of persuading others to serve him without re-
quiring in return anything except his gratitude. His first wife died
within the year, and in due time he married another rich and hand-
some widow. He had not attained the social rank which qualified for
admission among the friends, and personal clients, of Madame de Pom-
padour; but he contrived to make acquaintance with the gentleman
who had been her husband, and he struck up a very close alliance with
her confidential man of business. This was Monsieur Du Verney, the
eminent capitalist who put Voltaire in the way of obtaining that army-
contract which made him the Croesus of literature, and who was an
equally generous patron to Beaumarchais. Du Verney endowed the
young fellow with a large sum of money; he indoctrinated him in the
secrets of Court finance; and he provided him with funds whenever a
lucrative office was for sale which was beyond the compass of his pri-
vate resources. Beaumarchais was thus enabled to become Secretary to
the King, Lieutenant-General of the Parks and Chases, and Captain
of the Warren of the Louvre. He laid down half a million francs, at a
single payment, in order to buy a place among the Grand Masters of
the Lakes and Forests; but on this occasion he had aimed too high,
and the other members of the Board refused to be associated with the
son of a watchmaker. Beaumarchais declined to intrude where he was
not welcome, and avenged himself on his fastidious opponents by a
delicious specimen of his sarcastic humour.1 He was an admirable
writer. His prose was always clear and pointed, sometimes remarkably
forcible, and often exquisitely graceful; and his verse, which flowed
profusely, satisfied the taste of the day. His celebrity owes a very large
debt to the genius of others; for his name has been perpetuated by
Rossini and Mozart in the two most popular operas, of their own class,

1 Beaumarchais, the most perfect of sons and brothers, never wrote better than when
he was rebuking those who jeered at his family, or attacked his private life. "I own,"
he said on one occasion, "that nothing can wash away the reproach of having been the
son of a watchmaker. I can only reply that I never saw the man with whom I would
exchange fathers; and I know too well the value of that time which, in the exercise of
our trade, he taught me to measure, to waste any of it in taking notice of such despic-
able trivialities,"

An adversary of Beaumarchais endeavoured to sap his credit with the Comte de
Vergennes by accusing him of "keeping girls." Beaumarchais favoured his calumniator
with a letter, of which he sent a copy to the Foreign Secretary. "Monsieur," (he wrote,)
"the girls whom I have kept for the last twenty years are five in number; my four sis-
ters and my niece. Two of them, to my great sorrow, have lately died; but I likewise
support that unhappy father who is unfortunate enough to have given to the world so
shameless a libertine as myself.*'

323

that ever were exhibited on the stage. Beaumarchais himself was no
mean musician. He sang with taste; and played to perfection on the
flute, and on the harp, which then was a novelty in Paris. He was a
principal performer in the weekly concert given at Versailles in the
apartment of those four daughters of Louis the Fifteenth who bore
the august title of Mesdames de France.

Beaumarchais breathed freely and easily in the corrupt element by
which he was surrounded; but he had in him the making of a greater
man if he had lived in greater times. He was something very different
from a supple courtier. The Dauphin, who was an abler prince than
his unfortunate son, and far more virtuous than his father, said that
Beaumarchais was the only person, in and about Versailles, from whom
he could learn the truth; and the two famous comedies, the Barber of
Seville and the Marriage of Figaro, which were produced at a time
when their author was still laboriously mounting the path of advance-
ment, abounded in sharp strokes against the follies of those great folks
who had the power to make, or unmake, his fortunes. Beaumarchais,
the most brilliant of upstarts, never ceased to be a mark for envy, and
for what would willingly have been contempt; but no one then lived
with whom it was less safe to trifle. The wounds inflicted by his pen
took long to heal; and he possessed the courage of the swordsman as
well as of the satirist. He had killed his man in a terrible duel; and,
while his reply to an insolent letter was invariably couched in phrases
of subtle and refined wit that set all the world laughing, he was pretty
sure to conclude with a very significant hint that he was ready to make
good his words by push of steel. He was admired and dreaded as the
most dexterous and persistent of intellectual gladiators. Never was there
such an example made of any offender as Beaumarchais made of Mon-
sieur Goezman, the Judge who gave a decision unfavourable to his
claims, after the Judge's wife had accepted from him a purse of gold.
The guilty pair were ruined; and the disappointed suitor emerged from
his single-handed conflict against the paramount, and unscrupulously
exerted, authority of the Parliament of Paris with the reputation of
having approved himself the most irrepressible controversialist in
France*2

Beaumarchais was now regarded in the highest quarters as too clever

2 Everything known about Beaumarchais has been told, and well told, in the ad-
mirable work entitled Beaumarchais ', et Son Temps, par Louis de Lomenie, de I' Aca-
demic Fraitfaise: Paris, 1855. De Lomenie ends his last volume with a very just, and
interesting, disquisition on the political eminence, which Beaumarchais might have
reached if he had been born in the days of free and constitutional government.

324

to be wasted, and much too formidable to be left unemployed. Shortly
before the death of Louis the Fifteenth he was sent to England, under
a feigned name, as a private agent of the French Cabinet. Information
had arrived from London that, somewhere in the very lowest and
dingiest regions of literature, preparations were on foot for issuing a
book which purported to be the secret memoirs of Madame du Barry.
Beaumarchais settled the business at a cost in money which greatly ex-
ceeded the value of that lady's reputation. He secured and destroyed
the manuscript; and three thousand copies of the work were burned in
a lime-kiln under his personal supervision. He next bought up, for a
still larger price, a mischievous libel upon Marie Antoinette; and his
successful conduct of these two negotiations led to his being entrusted
with a still more singular commission. He was directed to seek out the
Chevalier d'Eon, who then resided in England, and order him in the
name of King Louis to dress himself in petticoats, and make a public
declaration that he was a woman, which he most certainly was not. The
work in which Beaumarchais was engaged during his visit to our
island cannnot be described as dignified or important; but he found
time to spare for matters more worthy of his attention, and not less
suited to his very peculiar abilities. He had a lively interest in British
politics, which at that time were almost exclusively concerned with the
question of America. He rubbed shoulders with men of all parties, and
he heard both sides. Lord Rochford, the most approachable among
Secretaries of State, made him the companion of his all too numerous
lighter hours; and he was sworn brother to John Wilkes, who resem-
bled Beaumarchais as nearly as an Englishman can resemble a French-
man, in the defects and qualities of his character, and not less in the
most remarkable circumstance of his past career. There was not much
to choose, whether for praise or blame, between the champion of the
Goezman law-suit, and the hero of the Middlesex election. As soon as
the rebellion broke out, Beaumarchais foresaw that the colonists would
win; and he entertained a deep and passionate belief that, if France
helped them in their hour of need, she would obtain her share in the
advantages of their victory. He threw himself into the movement with
an energy so masterful that he imposed his views upon the leading
members of a Cabinet, which he served in a humble, and even an
ignominious, capacity. There is no more instructive instance of the stu-
pendous results which may be accomplished by native force of will, and
acute perception of the right moment for vigorous action, than the story
of the adventurer who, with no recognised official position, and three

325

aliases to his name, never hesitated or rested until he had set France
and England by the ears.

The potent influence exercised by Beaumarchais over the decisions of
the French Government is a strange pheomenon, but not altogether
inexplicable to those who have been behind the scenes in politics. A
private individual, with a message of his own to deliver, finds it very
difficult to get a hearing in official quarters. But, if once he has been
accepted as an adviser, he has every chance of making his opinion felt;
for he speaks with a freedom of conviction, and novelty of phrase,
refreshing to overworked statesmen depressed and dulled by the sense
of responsibility, who are tired of discussing an affair of State among
themselves, and who know each other's arguments by heart. Beaumar-
chais twice addressed the Royal Council at Versailles in a strain of
fiery and picturesque eloquence which no Cabinet Minister, that ever
lived, would venture to inflict upon his own colleagues. His line of
reasoning was artfully adapted to the pacific temperament of Louis the
Sixteenth, and to his unambitious aspirations for the welfare and tran-
quillity of his people. The American rebellion, (so Beaumarchais
wrote,) must terminate, if left to itself, in a complete victory for Eng-
land, or for the revolted colonies; and in either of those contingencies
France would inevitably, and almost immediately, find herself plunged
into a sanguinary, and frightfully expensive, war. The only possible
means of averting such a catastrophe was to maintain an equilibrium
between the two contending parties by surreptitiously helping the in-
surgents, during the first stage of the conflict, with arms and ammuni-
tion. That transaction should be so conducted as not to compromise
the French Government; and, if His Majesty required the services of
a devoted agent, Beaumarchais himself was prepared to accept the
office, and to compensate for lack of ability by zeal, fidelity, and dis-
cretion. "Believe me, Sire," (he said,) "when I assure you that the mere
preparations for a first campaign would be more onerous to your Treas-
ury than the whole amount of those modest succours for which Con-
gress now petitions; and that the paltry and melancholy saving of a
couple of million francs at the present moment will cost you three hun-
dred millions before two years are over." s In his private correspond-
ence with the ministers, Beaumarchais was much less respectful to his
Sovereign; and he did not scruple to say plainly that, in small things
and in great, Louis the Sixteenth never had, and never would have, a

3 Memoirs remls au Roi cachctS, par Af. de Sortines le 21 Septembre, 1775. Mcmoire
remis a M. le Comic de Vergennes, cachet volant, le 29 Fevrier, 1776.

326

mind of his own. He recalled to Maurepas how that amiable and docile
Prince had sworn that he would not allow himself to be inoculated;
and how, a week after the oath was taken, he had the germ of the
small-pox in his arm. "Everyone," said Beaumarchais, "knows how
the case stands between the King and yourself; and no one will ex-
cuse you, if you cannot persuade His Majesty to adopt those high
designs on which your own soul is intent." 4

Such letters, in any previous reign, might have lodged the writer in
the Bastille, and consigned the minister to disgrace and exile; but
Maurepas and Vergennes stood in no awe whatever of Louis the Six-
teenth, and they were impressed and fascinated by Beaumarchais. He
had proposed himself as an intermediary between Philadelphia and
Versailles; and he was promptly taken at his word. In June 1776 the
Foreign Secretary handed him an order on the French Treasury for a
million francs; and, two months afterwards, another million was trans-
mitted to him by the Court of Madrid. From Spain he also borrowed a
title for the fictitious house of business under cover of which he traded;
and purchases were made, and ships chartered, on behalf, not of Caron
de Beaumarchais, but of Roderigo Hortalez and Company. It was a
favoured firm, whose buyers found means to procure surplus military
stores in great quantity, and excellent condition, from the public arsen-
als of France; together with a large number of cannons and mortars
cast in the royal gun-factories, on which, by a convenient oversight, the
authorities had omitted to stamp the royal arms.5 The custom-house
people, and the officers of the port, at Havre and Nantes had at first
been troublesome and inquisitive; but in January 1777, after the arrival
of a government courier from Paris, they stopped asking questions
about any vessels, bound for an unknown destination, which had been
taking suspicious cargoes on board. Half a score of merchantmen, os-
tensibly belonging to Hortalez and Company, were presently on their
way to America; and, in the course of the next few weeks, three ship-
loads of muskets and gunpowder, together with clothing and footgear
for five-and-twenty thousand soldiers, were landed at Portsmouth in
New Hampshire "amidst acclamations, and clapping of hands, from an
immense multitude of spectators." Only a very short time had elapsed
since the Comte de Vergennes, in the name of his monarch, had con-

*Memoire de Eeaumarchau, re-mis au Comte de Maurepas le 30 Mars, 1777.

5 This circumstance is stated in a conversation between the Duke of Grafton and Lord
Weymouth, reported in the ninth chapter of the Autobiography and Political Corre-
spondence of the Du& of Grafton, Edited by Sir William Anson.

327

gratulated the English ambassador on the capture o£ Rhode Island by
the English navy; and the Foreign Secretary had thought fit to add,
on his own account, that he had heard the good news with an emo-
tion of "true sensibility." 6 They little knew our country who imagined
that she could be tricked and flouted with impunity. It was a matter
o£ absolute certainty that now, as at other periods of her history, she
would encounter secret treachery by open resort to arms. That million
of francs, by the judicious and timely disbursement of which the French
Ministry had hoped to inflict a mortal injury on the British power with
small cost and danger to themselves, had grown, before the affair was
finally settled, into a war expenditure of something very near a mil-
liard and a quarter; and the royal government of France, which had
stooped to such unroyal practices, was submerged in an ocean of bank-
ruptcy where it was destined miserably to perish. That was what came
of an attempt to fight England on the cheap.7

The ablest monarch on the Continent of Europe was an unsparing
critic of the British policy, and a personal enemy of the British sover-
eign; but he was wise enough, and old enough, to regulate his animos-
ity by a prudent and rather selfish caution. Frederic of Prussia had
already reached his grand climacteric. He was prematurely aged in
looks and in health; a broken man, if the body could have subdued
the soul. But there was tempered steel within that frayed and battered
sheath; and his spirit was unquenched, his will firm, and his wit keen
and biting. In October 1775 he had been prostrated by the most severe
illness from which he ever rose alive. The British ambassador at Berlin
reported him to his Court as dying; and the French accounts exagger-
ated his physical weakness, (to use Frederic's own martial metaphor,)
as much as they always were accustomed to exaggerate the English
losses in a pitched battle. He was very ill; but he never wasted an
opportunity; and, during the hours when the doctors would not allow
him to work, he lay quiet, and thought the American question out.8
The illustrious invalid, on his sick-bed, understood George the Third's
affairs much better than they were understood by George the Third
himself when in full possession of his health; and some of the reflec-
tions which presented themselves to Frederic's mind were eminently

6Doniol; Tome II., Chapitre 6.

7 It was calculated that, between the years 1778 and 1783, the war with England cost
tie French Treasury forty-eight million pounds sterling. It was the main cause of those
financial difficulties which led immediately up to the Revolution of 1789.

8 Le roi Frederic au Comte de Maltzan, Octobre 1775.

328

just, and far from ill-natured or ignoble. He had known and admired
England at a period when she was true to her better self, and while
she still obeyed the guidance of her best man. She had been the only
ally who, in the old hero's immense and varied experience, had ever
given him more help than trouble; and Lord Chatham was the one
human being on earth whom, in his heart, he acknowledged as his
peer. Frederic would gladly have seen our nation intelligently and
strongly governed; taking an active part in European politics; and re-
maining faithful, at home and abroad, to those principles of liberty
which, (however little he might desire to see them introduced into his
own kingdom,) he regarded as the main source of England's strength,
and as the common heritage of her sons in every quarter of the globe.
He thought it "very hard," (such were his exact words,) that Parlia-
ment should have proclaimed the colonists as rebels for defending their
privileges against the encroachments of the central government. "Every
Englishman," he said, "who is a friend to his own country, must de-
plore the turn that affairs are taking, and the odious perspective of
discord and calamity which has opened in the history of his race."

That sentiment was finely expressed, and honourable to Frederic's
head and heart; but his hostility to the Court of St. James's was in-
flamed by prejudices and resentments less worthy of so great a rulen
In his personal dislikes he was only too little of a hypocrite; and his
opinion of contemporary monarchs, and their favourites of both sexes,
had always been the one and only State secret which he was incapable
of keeping unrevealed. Everything in Prussia was strictly governed
except his own tongue and pen; and he would have avoided many
serious difficulties if to the military genius of a Gustavus Adolphus, and
the administrative faculty of a Peter the Great, he had added the char-
acteristic attribute of William the Silent. There were two men, and
one woman, by whom Frederic esteemed himself to have been deeply
injured, and whom he never even pretended to forgive. The woman,
who was Madame de Pompadour, had by this time died; but the other
objects of his wrath were still within the reach of his ill offices, and
the range of his satire. It had been a bad moment for the King of
Prussia when, at the crisis of the Seven Years' War, the military and
financial assistance extended to him by George the Second, and Wil-
liam Pitt, was unexpectedly withdrawn by George the Second's suc-
cessor, and his new Scotch Prime Minister. Half a generation had
elapsed since that distressing event occurred; but Frederic even yet
could never mention George the Third and Lord Bute with patience,

329

and very seldom with decency. A scalded cat, (he would say,) dreaded
even the cold water; and he, for his part, was incapable of being friends
with a prince who had treated him with such signal duplicity. On one
occasion, indeed, he went so far as to tell his ambassador in London
that he would as soon be an ally of King George as a good Christian
would be on terms with the Devil; and he was fond of declaring that
Lord Bute would certainly be hanged for throwing away the Ameri-
can colonies, and that he himself would be only too delighted to pro-
vide the rope.9

Although Frederic the Great seldom denied himself the indulgence
of giving free play to his malicious humour, he had not become the
most famous, and the most successful, of European potentates by basing
his foreign policy on his private antipathies and predilections. He hated
King George, and he despised King George's ministers; but, during
every successive phase of the American dispute, his course was exclu-
sively determined by the conception which he had formed of Prussian
interests, and by no other consideration of any sort or kind whatso-
ever. He had long ago been satiated with campaigns and battles. In
his ambitious youth, before he had been a twelvemonth on the throne,
he had cut out for himself a task which lasted him his life-time; and
now, at the age of sixty-three, he had no mind to re-commence his
Herculean toils, and expose his people, whom he sincerely loved, to
the sacrifices of war and the miseries of invasion. But for some while
past he had foreseen, with stern reluctance, the approach of a political
contingency which would force him once again to draw the sword.
The Elector of Bavaria, who was in precarious health, might die at
any moment, leaving behind him no issue, and a disputed succession.
His Duchy was claimed by the Emperor of Germany, on the most
flimsy and antiquated of pretexts; and Joseph the Second made no
secret of his intention to march across the Inn river, and take forcible
possession of Munich, and the adjacent district, as soon as the breath
was out of the Elector's body. So great an increase of territory would
render the House of Austria nothing less than despotic within the
boundaries of the Empire; and Frederic was firmly resolved to stand
forward in the character of the champion of German independence.

As Generalissimo of the levies of the Confederacy, with his own
splendid army to set them an example of valour and discipline, the
King of Prussia was a match for any force which Austria herself could
place in the field; but it would be a far more serious business if the

^Le roi Frederic au Comte de Maltzan, 3 Janvier 1774; g Janvier 1775; 10 Octobre
1776; 7 Avril 1777.

33°

Emperor Joseph could persuade Marie Antoinette to cajole her hus-
band into embarking upon an offensive, and defensive, alliance with
the Court of Vienna. The young Queen of France was deeply attached
to her brother, and followed his advice on all points where she recog-
nised his tide to interfere with her opinions and her conduct. If it was
a question of enriching a favourite, or of spending too much money
on her milliner and her landscape-gardener, she was in the habit of
treating his admonitions with silent neglect; but she obeyed him loy-
ally and eagerly with regard to any matter that excited the ambition,
and promoted the aggrandisement, of the family from which she
sprang. The instinct of the Parisians had already condemned her, not
unjustly, as a good Austrian and a very indifferent Frenchwoman; and
the knowledge that she was devoted to the interests of his own life-
long adversary gave deep concern, and unsleeping anxiety, to the ruler
of Prussia. That doughty soldier was nervously alive to the danger of
female influence in high places. When Turgot fell, and when the au-
thority of the first administrator of his generation withered before the
breath of a woman's displeasure, Frederic expressed his dread lest
France should thenceforward "pass under a Government of the dis-
taff;" 10 and the veteran warrior had cruel reason to regard the distaff
as the most formidable of weapons. What with two empresses, and a
King's mistress, — three women, (so he used to say,) hanging at his
throat for seven years together,— he had come so near to being throttled
that he had no inclination to repeat the horrible experience. He held it
as a matter of life and death that, for several years to come, the atten-
tion of France should be diverted from Prussia, and that her energies
and resources should be consumed in another, and a distant, quarter. If
the Cabinets of Versailles and London could be embroiled over the
question of America, Louis the Sixteenth would have no men or money
to spare; and Joseph the Second would be reduced to fight single-handed
in the German war which now was imminent. The King of France
might be the most uxorious of husbands; but no sane or rational French
statesmen would aspire to have Frederic the Great for an enemy on
land at a time when they were contending at sea against the power of
England.

The King of Prussia, who was no vulgar soldier, knew that a long
period of stable peace was a prime necessity for France, exhausted, as
she was, by a series of calamitous wars; and he had sincerely applauded
Turgot as a wise and merciful man, who made it his object to re-
lieve a wretched peasantry from the fiscal burdens under which they

10 Le roi Frederic & M. de Goltz; Potsdam, 25 Avril 1776.

33*

groaned.11 But Frederic was not in a position to afford himself the
luxury of yielding to an impulse of philanthropy. During five-and-
thirty years of peril and difficulty he had lived in single-minded obedi-
ence to the law of self-preservation; and, when he arrived at the con-
clusion that a quarrel between France and England would conduce
to the security of his own kingdom, he put aside all thoughts of com-
passion for the French tax-payer. From the beginning of 1778 onwards
he employed his immense cleverness, and his unequalled authority, to
impress upon Louis the Sixteenth's ministers a conviction that the
revolt of the American colonies was an opportunity for reducing the
power of Great Britain which had never occurred before, and could
not be expected to present itself again in the course of three genera-
tions.12 That was the text upon which his ambassador at Versailles
was ceaselessly exhorted to ring the changes. The poor man could never
preach often enough, or loud enough, to satisfy his exacting master.
Every week, — and, as the plot thickened, every third day, — brought
from Potsdam a hotly worded reminder that King Louis, and his ad-
visers, were letting the favourable moment slip. The pusillanimity of
the Cabinet at Versailles, (so Frederic declared,) would be an eternal
monument of weakness and indecision, and would prove that French
public men lacked either the nerve, or the ambition, to revive the com-
manding part which their Court had formerly played on the theatre of
Europe. When the unhappy Prussian envoy sought to excuse himself
from acting as the mouthpiece for a diplomatic message couched in
such very unflattering terms, he was told that his explanation was a
parcel of verbiage, not worth the travelling expenses of a courier. In-
stead of pestering his Sovereign with page after page of diffuse and
senseless rubbish,— the sort of stuff that a parrot might write if it could
use a pen,— let him go straight off to the Comte de Vergennes, and say
that the King of Prussia, after reading the last news from America,
was willing to stake his military reputation on a prediction that, unless
France speedily interfered, the colonists would be beaten; and that
England, as soon as the rebellion was crushed, without troubling her-
self to issue a formal declaration of war, would descend in overpower-
ing force upon the French garrisons in the West Indies.13
Frederic's neighbourly interest in their national affairs was accepted

11 Le roi Frederic a M. de Goltz, i Juillet 1776; a Monsieur d'Alembert, Octobre 1774,

12 These words arc taken from a letter written by Frederic in September 1777.

13 Le roi Frederic a M. de Goltz, Berlin, 31 Decembre 1776; Potsdam, 16 Octobre, 30
Octobre, 13 Novembrc, 17 Novembre, 27 Novembre 1777. Doniol; Tome I., Annexes du
Chapitre 17.

332

by the French as a compliment. They set a high value on the advice
voluntarily and gratuitously offered them by so consummate a master
of war and foreign policy; although they could not but perceive that
he consistently abstained from enforcing his precepts by the smallest
particle of practice. An old German Baron in Philadelphia had been
accustomed to amuse his young Whig friends by assuring them, in
quaint English, that the King of Prussia was "a great man for Lib-
erty;"14 but never was sentiment more strictly platonic than Fred-
eric's affection for the cause of American freedom. He maintained a
passive attitude throughout the war; he civilly, but very plainly, for-
bade Congress to use his port of Emden as a base for their naval op-
erations; and it was not until the rebellion had finally triumphed, and
the world was once more at peace, that he followed the lead of Great
Britain herself, and, long after the twelfth hour had struck, recognised
the United States as an independent nation.15 Frederic overflowed with
excellent reasons for remaining neutral. He was aways ready to explain,
with ostentatious humility, how he was so poor, and so much of a
landsman, as to be of no account whatever in a maritime war. Eng-
land, (he said,) could raise the thirty-six million crowns, which each
campaign cost her, more easily than he himself could borrow a florin.
When a French philosopher inquired what part His Majesty would
take in the approaching struggle on behalf of humanity, Frederic re-
plied that, so far as he could discern the intentions of Mars and
Bellona, the combatants would expend their mutual fury at sea; and
that his own fleet unfortunately laboured under the disadvantage of
containing neither ships, pilots, admirals, nor sailors. He was frequently
urged to sanction a traffic, which could not fail to be lucrative, be-
tween the Prussian ports and the sea-board of the revolted colonies;
but he answered, like a sound man of business, that the British Admir-
alty had eighty cruisers afloat, and that the capture of a single one of
his own blockade-runners would sweep away the profits of the entire
venture.16

Frederic the Great eluded the advances of the American Congress
with the skill and astuteness of an old campaigner. During the year
immediately succeeding the Declaration of Independence, the new Re-
public across the ocean was a terror and a bugbear in every Chancel-

14 Graydon's Memoirs.

15Wharton's Diplomatic Correspondence; Volume L, Introduction, Chapter 6.
18 Le roi Frederic Comte de Maltzan, 13 Octobre 1777; a M. d'Alembcrt, 26 Octobre
1777; au Comte de Maltzan, 3 Juin 1776; a M. de Schulcnburg, 16 Mai 1777.

333

lery on the Continent of Europe. All the multitudinous blunders in
administration and in war, which were made by that audacious and
energetic population of Anglo-Saxon colonists, thrown unexpectedly
on their own resources, were as nothing in comparison to the crude and
haphazard quality of their early attempts at diplomacy. Congress,
jealous of the individual, declined to nominate a responsible Minister
for Foreign Affairs; and the external relations of the United States
were entrusted to a committee fluctuating in numbers and composi-
tion, with no permanent Chairman or Secretary, and no authority to
initiate a policy of its own. Important matters were openly debated,
and decided by vote of the whole House, after the most confidential
despatches from Madrid or Versailles had been read aloud at the table;
and, when Congress was not in session, the decision had to wait. The
statesmen at Philadelphia conducted their diplomatic proceedings with
no lack of spirit and vigour, and with a superabundance of startling
originality. They began by procuring a copy of Vattel, "which was
continually in the hands of members;" and, if the book taught them
nothing else, they might learn from its pages that every proposal, great
or small, which they pressed on the attention of foreign Courts, was
in flat and flagrant contradiction to the Law of Nations. They ap-
pointed a perfect swarm of envoys and agents, and invested them with
extensive powers. They fixed the salaries of their ambassadors, and left
them to be paid by the novel expedient of borrowing money from the
Courts to which they were accredited. They arranged a separate cipher
with each of their emissaries; they instructed him in the mysteries
of invisible ink; and they carefully specified the weight of shot which
would be required to sink his bag o£ papers if ever, in the course of a
voyage, the ship in which he travelled was in danger of being over-
hauled by a British frigate. And, above all, they laid down principles,
and invented methods, which in process of time would have revo-
lutionised the whole system of diplomacy, if they had been recom-
mended for general imitation by success, instead of being discredited
by notorious; failure.17

Among the authoritative canons of diplomacy are the three setded
rules that an envoy should not be pressed upon a foreign Court which
is unwilling to receive one; that, when proposals of an exceptional and
momentous character are submitted to a foreign government, the case

17Wharton*s Introduction, Chapters i and 9. Franklin to Dumas; Philadelphia, De-
cember 19, 1775. Arthur Lee to the Committee of Secret Correspondence; June 3, 1776.
Committee of Secret Correspondence to Captain Hammond; Baltimore, Jan. 2, 1777.

334

should be put forward with circumspection, and the ground carefully
prepared beforehand; and that, where a nation is unable to command
the services of professional diplomatists, its ambassadors should be men
who have the given proof of ability and discretion in other, and kin-
dred, departments of State business. Benjamin Franklin, the only
American who had had experience in dealing with European Cabinets,
urged these considerations upon his brother-members; but the Lees
and the Adamses, and those with whom they habitually acted, were
enamored of a theory which not even Franklin could induce them to
abandon. The same political party within the walls of Congress, which
believed in amateur generals, and advocated a headlong strategy in
war, pinned its faith on amateur ambassadors, and maintained that all
negotiations with external governments should be conducted in a blunt
and unceremonious style. "Militia diplomatists,'* (said John Adams,)
"sometimes gain victories over regular troops, even by departing from
the rules.'118 That was the doctrine of the hour; and the politicians
who then guided the counsel of America acted up to it without qualifi-
cation, and without reserve. They extemporised a diplomatic service
by the easy process of nominating any American Whig who happened
to be in Europe when the Revolution broke out, and who had a mind
for public employment. None of these ready-made ambassadors pos-
sessed any aptitude for their new vocation; their antecedents had often
been dubious; and their subsequent history, in some cases, was nothing
better than deplorable. Always without invitation, and for the most
part in the teeth of strenuous remonstrances, they were despatched to
the capital of every leading European country, or at all events as far
across the frontier as they were allowed to penetrate. The acceptability
of the individual envoy has always been accounted a prime factor in
the success of his mission; but anything less resembling a persona grata
cannot be pictured than an ex-barrister or commission agent, — with
the gift of die tongue, but not of tongues,— forcing his way into a royal
antechamber as the representative of a Republic which had never been
officially recognised; begging in voluble and idiomatic English for a
large loan of public money; and exhorting the Ministers of the Court,

18 John Adams to Robert R. Livingston; Feb. 21, 1782. Adams said, in the same
letter, that a man might be unacceptable at the Court to which he was sent, and yet
successfully accomplish the object o£ his mission. That would be true o£ those who, like
Adams himself, and the younger Laurens, brought to the unaccustomed work of di-
plomacy an exalted character, and a strong intellect; but the typical American emissary,
in the earlier period of the Revolution, was endowed with neither the one nor the
other.

335

within whose precincts he had trespassed, to embark upon a course of
treacherous hostility against a powerful monarch with whom they were
living on terms of apparent amity.

Spain, of all the great European powers, required the most cautious
and delicate handling. Her wars with England had left her embittered
and vindictive, perilously weak and terribly poor. The British garrison
at Gibraltar was a thorn in her side which she would risk a very seri-
ous operation to extract; but she discriminated between the various
expedients that presented themselves for retaliating upon her ancient
enemy. She was prepared to encourage disaffection, and to subsidise re-
bellion, among the Catholics of Ireland; 19 but she watched the revolt
of the British colonies in America with small sympathy, and grave
uneasiness on her own account. The population of the Spanish depend-
encies on the further side of the Atlantic far exceeded that of the
mother-country. They were bound to Spain by no sentiment of patri-
otism, no affection for the reigning family, and no community of
political rights and privileges. The union between the component parts
of the empire depended exclusively on material force; and the material
force of the Spanish Government had been reduced very low indeed.20
Louis the Sixteenth's ministers were insistent in their proposal that
both branches of the House of Bourbon should join in the crusade
against England. But Charles the Third, and his able and honest Chief
of the Cabinet, the Count Florida Blanca, listened to the suggestion
with distrust and misgiving; and when, after long hesitation, and many
qualms of conscience, they at length yielded to French importunity,
they never ceased to suspect, in their inmost hearts, that their alliance
with the American republic was a suicidal policy. Spanish Legitimists
of pure blood believe, to this very hour, that all the subsequent mis-
fortunes of their cause, and country, are due to the madness of the old
Spanish Court in assisting the rebels of New England and Virginia
against their lawful Sovereign.21

19 Letter of the Marquis de Grimaldi from Madrid to the Spanish Ambassador at
Paris; 26 February 1777. Doniol; Tome I., Page 335.

20 Bancroft's History of the common action of France and America in the War of
Independence; Chapter I.

21 "The disregard of the Legitimist principle by France and Spain, between 1776 and
1782, led to the French Revolution, the invasion of Spain by the French, and to revo-
lutions in all the Spanish possessions on the American Continent. The rebellions in Cuba,
and the Philippines, are the last direct consequences of the help which Charles the Third
gave the Americans in their War of Independence." These sentences are taken from an
Address, presented to Don Carlos by some of his leading adherents during the recent
conflict between the United States and Spain.

336

The Lees of Westmoreland County in Virginia, when the Revolu-
tion began, might plausibly be described by their admirers as the gov-
erning family of America.22 Two of them were Signers; and one,
the celebrated Richard Henry Lee, was an orator of great influence,
and remarkable charm. Another pair of the brethren sought their for-
tune in England, — William as a merchant, and Arthur at the Bar. They
plunged deep into the municipal politics of London, at a time when
the London Corporation was a living and powerful force in the politics
of the empire. William Lee, in 1775, was elected an alderman on the
Wilkes ticket, after a heated contest in which his brother Arthur aston-
ished the Liverymen by a display of that eloquence which was native
in his family. Arthur Lee had considerable talent; and he might have
played a fine part in the American Revolution if his self-esteem had
not been in vast excess of his public spirit. His constitutional inability
to see anything in his colleagues and comrades except their least pleas-
ing and admirable qualities, and his readiness to imagine evil in them
where none existed, marred his own usefulness as a servant of the
people, and led him, in more than one instance, to inflict cruel and
irreparable injury upon others. Such was the man who, in the spring
of 1777, set off on the road to Madrid as the show ambassador of the
United States. He heralded his approach by a memorial to the Court
of Spain describing the American Republic as an infant Hercules who
had strangled serpents in the cradle; and declaring, (with a change of
metaphor inside the space of three sentences,) that the hour had come
to clip the wings of Britain, and pinion her for ever. The Spanish
ministers replied, quietly and curtly, that Lee, in his eagerness to serve
his own country, had not considered the difficulties and obligations of
those whom he was addressing. His progress southward was stopped
short at Burgos by order of the Court; and, like other people who
have not been wanted in Spain, he was gradually compelled to retreat
beyond the Ebro to Vittoria, and thence expelled in rout and con-
fusion back across the Pyrenees.

Arthur Lee did not stand alone in the frustration of his hopes, and
the collapse of his enterprise. His brother William, who had been

22 "That band of brothers, intrepid and unchangeable, who, like the Greeks at
Thermopylae, stood in the gap, in defence of their country, from the first glimmering
of the Revolution in the horizon, through all its rising light, to the perfect day." This
picture of the Lee family was drawn by John Adams, at the age of eighty-three. He put
no shade into his group of portraits, although there was enough, and to spare, of it in
one of the sitters. But it would be unjust to deny that all the Lees were sincere partisans
of the Revolution.

337

appointed by Congress to be their national representatve in Austria,
was duly admonished that his presence would be unacceptable to the
Emperor Joseph; and he was careful not to show himself within a
hundred leagues of Vienna. Ralph Izard of South Carolina had for
some years resided in Europe as "a gentleman of fortune." He was
named American Minister at Florence; but he never passed the Alps;
for the Grand Duke of Tuscany let him know by post that his creden-
tials would not be recognised. The most disagreeably situated among
all the batch of envoys was Francis Dana of Massachusetts, who had
been told off to Russia, and who walked fearlessly into the she-bear's
den, Catherine had no use for him. As a politic Sovereign she shrank
from giving unnecessary offence to England; and a demure Bostonian
was not the sort of foreign visitor whom, as a woman, she cared to
have about her. Her ministers informed Dana that he must not so
much as petition to be received at Court. He lived in mortifying iso-
lation. Official society closed its doors against him; and his existence
was studiously ignored by the English, who were the only people in
St. Petersburg with whom he could exchange an intelligible sentence.23
Rebuffed in every quarter of Europe, like so many commercial travel-
lers forbidden to display their wares, the baffled diplomatists fell back
upon Paris, where they led an aimless and restless existence; — inter-
fering in the negotiations conducted by the American Legation at the
Court of France; squabbling over their share in the fund available for
the payment of their salaries; and sending monthly reports to Congress
which, as often as not, failed to arrive at their destination. For the risks
o£ communication by sea were so great that American state secrets
were no secrets for the English Cabinet. The Republic had as many
as twelve paid agents on the Continent of Europe, all of whom wrote
home on every opportunity; and yet there was once a period of eleven
months during which not a single line from any one of them reached
Philadelphia.24 It was calculated that more than half the letters writ-
ten by, and to, the American envoys in Europe were captured on deep
water by British cruisers; and King George's servants in Downing

^Wharton's Introduction; Chapter 14. Dana used to write in English to Verac, the
French Ambassador at St. Petersburg; and Verac got his letters translated, and then
answered in French. c*It is very doubtful, Sir," (so Verac warned Dana on one occasion,)
"whether the Cabinet of Her Imperial Majesty will consent to recognise the Minister of
a Power which has not as yet, in their eyes, a political existence, and expose them-
selves to the complaints which the Court of London will not fail to make 1 ought

to inform you that the Count Panim, and the Count d'Ostermann, do not understand
English. This will render your communication with the ministers difficult."

24 Wharton's Introduction; Pages 461-466.

338

Street were kept informed o£ the plans and intentions of Congress as
promptly, as regularly, and as circumstantially as the Ministers of Con-
gress abroad.

Arthur Lee, very soon after his return from Spain, started from Paris
with the intention of presenting himself to Frederic the Great in the
capacity of Minister for the United States at the Prussian Court. He
was accompanied by a Secretary of Legation in the person of Stephen
Sayre, an American born, who had been a Sheriff of London, and who
had dipped deep in the politics of that city, where he more than once
was in hot, and rather dirty, water. Lee, on his arrival at Berlin, was
met by an official notification which, as far as he could puzzle out
the language employed to convey it, indicated to him that his visit
was an unexpected and unappreciated honour, but that he might re-
main in the city as a private individual, without assuming a diplomatic
character.25 He employed himself in drawing up a memorial which
contained a a great deal of advice about Frederic's own business, en-
forced in a style curiously unsuited to that monarch's literary taste.26
Lee, in what the King must have regarded as a tone of grandiose im-
pertinence, lectured his Majesty on the advantages which he would
reap by allowing American privateers to sell their prizes in Prussian
harbours, and by supplying the American troops with arms and am-
munition. Attacking his hero on what was supposed to be his weak
side, Lee suggested to the Prussian ministers that, for every musket
which their royal master exported to New England at a cost to him-
self of less than five dollars, he might carry back as much Virginian
tobacco as would sell for forty dollars in Europe.27 Frederic was deaf
to these blandishments; and the American strangers, for want of more
profitable occupation, passed much of their time in watching the sol-
diers of the most famous army in Europe go through their exercise.
The letter, in which Arthur Lee communicated to General Washing-
ton his observations on the Potsdam discipline, suggests a suspicion

25 Baron de Schulenburg to Arthur Lee; Berlin, May 20, and June 9, 1777. "I have
received," (the Baron wrote,) "the letter which you did me the honour of writing to
me yesterday; and I imagine, from its conclusion, that, on account of the difference o£
language, you did not, perhaps, take in the true sense some of the expressions which I
used in our conversation."

26 Lee confidently assured Frederic that he need not be afraid of England. **You have,*'
he wrote, "no vessels of war to cause your flag to be respected. But, Sire, you have the
best regiments in the world; and Great Britain, destitute as she is of wise counsels, is
not so foolish as to incur the risk of compelling your Majesty to join your valuable
forces to those of her rival."

27 A. Lee to Schulenburg; June 7, 1777.

339

that some Prussian subaltern, with a turn for mystification, must have
attended him as his military cicerone. He reported that King Frederic's
infantry, instead of taking aim, were taught to slant the barrel down-
wards so that the bullet would strike the ground ten yards in front
of them. "This depression," wrote Lee, "is found necessary to counter-
act the elevation which the act of firing gives to the musket." 28 That
was a lesson in practical marksmanship which the American Com-
mander-in-Chief was at liberty to impart, for all that it was worth, to
Colonel Morgan and his Virginian riflemen.

The King of Prussia, at that moment, would willingly have dis-
pensed with the presence at Berlin of any diplomatic representative of
the English-speaking race. There had been times when the ambassa-
dor of Great Britain stood high in the favour of Frederic the Great.
Sir Andrew Mitchell was his comrade of the camp, and the partner
of his interior counsels, throughout the worst hardships and anxieties
of the Seven Years' War; and he had been on excellent terms with
Mitchell's successor, — that same James Harris who afterwards made
a considerable figure as the first Earl of Malmesbury. Harris had very
recently been promoted to St. Petersburg, and had been followed at
Berlin by Hugh Elliot, a cadet of the house of Minto. Elliot possessed
much of the family cleverness, and already was versed in the lighter
aspects of several European Courts. He had served with spirit against
the Turks, as a volunteer in the Russian army; but as yet he was only
five-and-twenty, and no wiser than people of the same age who are
not ambassadors. Frederic viewed the appointment as a personal slight
upon himself, and told the Comte de Maltzan, his diplomatic repre-
sentative in London, that he had half a mind to recall him, and re-
place him at the Court of St. James's by a captain of infantry. That was
the way, (he said,) to repay the English government with like for
like.29

While the king was in this humour he was informed that the serv-
ants of the British Embassy had broken into Arthur Lee's lodging, and
purloined his box of secret papers, the contents of which had been
copied out by a large staff of writers, and despatched to England.
Frederic, who had been through graver troubles, did not lose his self-
possession over an incident which had a redeeming feature in the eyes

28 A. Lee to Washington; Berlin, June 15, 1777.

29 Le roi Frederic au Comtc de Maltzan, Potsdam, 10 Octobre 1776; 27 Janvier, 24
Fcvrier, 1779.

34°

o£ the old cynic, inasmuch as it provided him with a fertile, and con-
genial, theme for banter and irony. "Oh, the worthy disciple," (he
cried,) "of Lord Bute! What an incomparable personage is your God-
dam Elliot.30 The English ought to blush for sending such ministers
abroad." He vented his wrath, during the course of the next fortnight,
in phrases of droll vehemence; but he was not disposed to bear hard
upon a young man of promise who attempted no defence, and who
appealed in becoming terms to the royal clemency. Elliot accepted the
whole responsibility; declared, — truly or diplomatically, as the case
might be, — that the British government had no share in a transaction
which he acknowledged to be unjustifiable; and submitted himself
humbly to the judgment of the King of Prussia. Regret was duly ex-
pressed by George the Third's Cabinet; and the Secretary of State
rebuked Mr. Elliot for the impropriety of his conduct, and warned him
that nothing except the generous behaviour of His Prussian Majesty
had on this occasion prevented the necessity of removing him from
his post.31 Frederic's anger and annoyance, in point of fact, were di-
rected rather against the victim, than the contriver, of the outrage. The
King was only too well aware that the notice, which he had been
obliged to take, of an international scandal arising within the circuit
of his own capital, would be construed by the world at large as an
indirect recognition of the American Republic. His hand had been
forced, — a sensation which a strong man never relishes; and the effects
of his disgust and resentment were soon apparent. Arthur Lee's mis-
sion came to an abrupt termination. His papers had been abstracted on
the twenty-fifth of June; and before the last day of July he was back
again in Paris. Four months afterward he intimated to the Prussian
government that his brother William was appointed to succeed him at

30 Le roi Frederic au Comte de Maltzan; Potsdam, 30 Juin 1777. Frederic did not
easily tire of an old, or even a very old, jest; and, now that our countrymen had lost
his good graces, he often applied to them that nickname by which, three centuries and
a half before, they were known on the continent of Europe among people who did not
love them. "If," said Joan of Arc, "there were a hundred thousand more Goddams in
France than there are to-day, they should not have this kingdom."

31 The tone of this communication from the English Foreign Office, and the substance
of that which followed, indicate that Lord Suffolk had known a great deal more about
the seizure of Lee's papers than he now chose to admit. "A little later, another despatch
informs Mr. Elliot that the King of England had entirely overlooked the exceptional
circumstances of the business, in consideration of the loyal zeal which occasioned them;
and the despatch closes by the announcement that the expenses, incurred by Mr. Elliot,
would be indemnified by the Crown." Memoir of the Right Honourable Hugh Elliot, by
the Countess of Minto; Chapter 3.

341

Berlin; but Frederic had had enough of the Lees, and replied by
a brief and peremptory refusal.82 No sane man, in the face of such a
prohibition, would venture to thrust himself into the territory of a
monarch who had spent the seven best years of his life in proving that
he could make himself supremely unpleasant to an invader.

The early relations between the United States of America, and the
monarchies of Europe, may be studied with advantage by those writers
who attach little or no importance to the personal factor in history.
The prospects of the young Republic were seriously, and to all appear-
ance irretrievably, damnified by the mismanagement of Congress; but
the position was saved by the ability, the discretion, and the force of
character of one single man. Benjamin Franklin was now past seventy.
He had begun to earn his bread as a child of ten; he commenced as
an author at sixteen; and he had ever since been working with his
hands, and taxing his brain, uninterrnittently, and to the top of his
power. Such exertions were not maintained with impunity. He kept
his strength of will unimpaired, his mind clear and lively, and his
temper equable, by a life Jong habit of rigid abstemiousness; but he
already felt the approach of painful diseases that tortured him cruelly
before the immense undertaking, which still lay before him, had
been half accomplished. In September 1776 he was elected Commis-
sioner to France, by a unanimous Resolution of Congress, Franklin,
in the highest sense of the term, was a professional diplomatist; for
he had passed sixteen years in England as Agent for his colony; and
his individual qualities had gained for him a political influence, and a
social standing, out of all proportion to the comparatively humble in-
terests which he represented at the British Court. The ambassadors of
the Great Powers, who were resident in London, treated him as one
of themselves. He was old enough to be the father of most among
them, and wise enough to be the adviser of all; and, towards the end
of his time, they united in regarding him as in some sort of the doyen
of their body. Franklin's knowledge of European statesmen, and cour-
tiers, taught him to anticipate nothing but failure and humiliation from
the diplomatic methods which Congress favoured; and he had no con-
fidence whatever in the emissaries whom it thought fit to employ. The
acceptance of the laborious and perilous mission, to which he was now
invited, presented itself to his mind in the light of an absolute duty.

32 Baron de Schulenburg to A. Lee; Berlin, November 28, 1777.

His feelings remain on record in a letter which he subsequently ad-
dressed to a friend who urged him, in those "tempestuous times," to
take some care of himself, and of his own safety. "I thank you," he
wrote, "for your kind caution; but, having nearly finished a long life,
I set but little value on what remains of it. Like a draper, when one
chaffers with him for a remnant, I am ready to say: 'As it is only the
fag end, I will not differ with you about it. Take it for what you
please.'"33

We are told that "before Franklin left for France he placed in the
hands of Congress, then in dire necessity for want of money, all his
available funds, knowing that, if the cause failed, his loan failed with
it."34 It was a paltry sum according to American standards of to-day;
for the capital accumulated by the most famous inventor, and the most
indefatigable municipal administrator, of his generation, amounted to
just three thousand pounds: and, when the country grew poorer still,
and it became doubtful whether Franklin would ever again see the
colour of his money, he acquiesced in his probable loss with the resig-
nation of a disinterested patriot.35 He, and two of his grandsons, em-
barked in a sloop o£ war of sixteen guns, carrying a consignment of
indigo which was to be sold in France for the purpose of defraying the
initial expenses of the American Legation. The captain was charged
by the Committee of Marine to make the Doctor's voyage pleasant, and
to take his orders about speaking to any vessel which might be encoun-
tered on the way.36 The weather was rough, and Franklin suffered
much from an old man's ailment, aggravated by the tossing of the
waves; but he never was fretful, and never at a loss for occupation and
diversion. He confirmed, or corrected, his former observations on the
temperature of the Gulf-stream; he experienced the emotion of being
chased by a British war-ship; and, after a swift run of thirty days, he
sailed into Quiberon Bay, accompanied, to the wonder and amusement
of Europe, by two prizes laden with a large and varied assortment
of goods, the value of which he doubtless could calculate more accu-

33 Franklin to David Hartley; April, 1778.

34 Wharton's Introduction; Chapter 10.

35 Twelve years afterwards Franklin took stock of his investment. "I have received,"
he wrote, "no interest for several years; and, if I were now to sell the principal, I
should not get more than a sixth part. You must not ascribe this to want of honesty
in our government, but to want of ability; the war having exhausted all the faculties
of the country."

36 American Archives for October 1776.

343

rately and quickly than any other man on board.37 When he had recov-
ered sufficient health he travelled to Paris, where he was awaited by
Silas Deane and Arthur Lee, whom Congress had associated with him
on the Commission. Before the end of the year the three Americans
had an interview with the Comte de Vergennes, and placed in his
hands a very brief and closely argued letter, which bore in every sen-
tence the marks of condensation and excision by Franklin's pen. The
Commissioners offered France and Spain the friendship and alliance
of the United States; they made a promise, (which, as the event showed,
was not theirs to give,) that a vigorously conducted war would expel
the British from their settlements in the West Indies; they asked for
thirty thousand firelocks and bayonets; and they proposed to hire from
King Louis eight ships of the line, grounding their request on the
analogy of the battalions which the Duke of Brunswick, and the Land^
grave of Hesse, had placed at the disposal of England.38 The French
government returned a very civil, but guarded, answer; by word of
mouth, and not on paper, in order that the envoys of Congress might
have no compromising document to exhibit, or to mislay and lose. But
the mere circumstance that proposals so audacious and unusual had not
been summarily rejected by a Cabinet of responsible French ministers
was a point gained for America, and a long step by France on the
downward road which led straight to an English war.

The Marquis de Noailles, who then was French Minister at the Court
of St. James's, had been instructed to assure the English Cabinet that
Franklin's presence in Europe was a matter of no political significance
whatsoever. Acting upon the maxim that a man is best able to deceive
others when he is deceived himself, King Louis's Foreign Secretary
was at the pains to compose an artful, and most insincere, despatch
with the express intention of hoodwinking and misleading King Louis's
ambassador. Vergennes informed Noailles that Doctor Franklin con-
ducted himself modestly in Parisian society, where he had renewed
acquaintance with some old friends, and was surrounded by a host
of the curious. His conversation, which betokened the man of talent
and intelligence, was in a quiet and subdued tone; and his whole course

37 Walpole to the Countess of Ossory; Dec. 17, 1776. Beaumarchais to Vergennes; 16
December, 1776. "The noise," wrote Beaumarchais, "made by the arrival of Franklin is
inconceivable. This brave old man allowed his vessel to make two prizes on the way,
in spite of the personal risk he thereby incurred. And we French permit ourselves to
be afraid I"

38 Doniol; Tome I., Chapitre 8.

344

of life was transparently candid and guileless.39 There was something
exquisitely absurd in this fancy portrait of Benjamin Franklin as a
philosopher travelling in search of scientific facts, and actuated by a
mild and amiable interest in the manners and customs of the foreign
country where he chanced to find himself. Lord Stormont, the Eng-
lish ambassador in France, took occasion to warn the French govern-
ment that the Doctor, simple as he seemed, had got the better of three
successive English Foreign Ministers; and that he never was so for-
midable, and never so little to be trusted, as when he appeared to have
no room in his mind for affairs of State.

Lord Stormont was right. Franklin had come to Europe for the sole
purpose of engaging in a stern and single-handed conflict with the
difficulties and problems of a supreme crisis; and the old man's tale
of work during the next eight years was a record which has seldom
been beaten. Europe, (it has been truly said,) was henceforward the
centre of action, where the funds for carrying on the Rebellion were
raised, and the supplies required by the American armies were mainly
purchased. In Europe, moreover, as a consequence of the impossibility
of prompt and regular communication across the seas with Congress,
the diplomacy of the Republic was necessarily moulded. American
privateers were fitted out, their crews enlisted, and their prizes sold,
in European ports; and all controverted questions about the legal valid-
ity of their captures were examined and decided in Europe, and not
in America. "It was by Franklin alone that these various functions were
exercised. It was on Franklin alone that fell the enormous labour of
keeping the accounts connected with these various departments." 40 He
had no staff of clerks at his command, and no deft and devoted sub-
ordinates to collect information, to sift correspondence, to prepare
despatches for signature, and to save their over-burdened chief from
the infliction of a personal interview with all the idlers, and jobbers,
and soldiers of fortune, and real or sham men of science, who daily
thronged his door. His only assistant was his elder grandson, — a worthy
youth who could write from dictation, and copy a letter in good round
hand; but who did not possess, and never acquired, the art of drafting
an important paper.

39 Le Comte de Vergennes au Marquis de Noailles; 10 Janvier, 1777.

40Wharton, in the tenth chapter of his Introduction, gives an exhaustive account of
Franklin's work in France. His functions, (Wharton writes,) "were of the same general
character as those which in England are exercised by the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, the Admiralty Board, the War Secretaries, and the
Courts of Admiralty."

345

From other Americans then resident in Paris Franklin received little
help, and a great deal of most unnecessary hindrance. Silas Deane, who
had business knowledge and business aptitudes, was of service in arrang-
ing contracts, and inspecting warlike stores; and Deane, after Franklin's
arrival in Europe, had the good sense to confine himself strictly within
his own province. But Arthur Lee was an uneasy, and a most danger-
ous, yoke-fellow. Lee was a sinister personage in the drama of the
American Revolution; — the assassin of other men's reputations and
careers, and the suicide of his own. He now was bent on defaming
and destroying Silas Deane, whom he fiercely hated, and on persuading
the government at home to transfer Franklin to Vienna, so that he
•himself might remain behind in France as the single representative of
America at the Court of Versailles. The group of politicians in Phila-
delphia, who were caballing against George Washington, maintained
confidential, and not every creditable, relations with Arthur Lee at
Paris. His eloquent brother was his mouthpiece in Congress; and he
plied Samuel Adams with a series of venomous libels upon Franklin,
which were preserved unrebuked, and too evidently had been read with
pleasure. The best that can be said for Arthur Lee is that, in his per-
sonal dealings with the colleagues whom he was seeking to ruin, he
made no pretence of a friendship which he did not feel; and his atti-
tude towards his brother envoys was, to the last degree, hostile and
insulting. He found an ally in Ralph Izard, who lived at Paris, an am-
bassador in partibus, two hundred leagues away from the capital to
which he was accredited; drawing the same salary as Franklin; de-
nouncing him in open letters addressed to the President of Congress;
and insisting, with querulous impertinence, on his right to participate
in all the secret counsels of the French Court. Franklin for some months
maintained an unruffled composure. He had never been quick to mark
offences; and he now had reached that happy period of life when
a man values the good-will of his juniors, but troubles himself very
little about their disapproval. He ignored the provocation given by his
pair of enemies, and extended to them a hospitality which they, on
their part, did not refrain from accepting, although his food and wine
might well have choked them.41 But the moment came when his own
self-respect, and a due consideration for the public interest, forbade
Franklin any longer to pass over their conduct in silence; and he spoke
out in a style which astonished both of them at the time, and has grati-
fied the American reader ever since. He castigated Arthur Lee in as
plain and vigorous English as ever was set down on paper, and in-

41 Wharton's Introduction; Chapter 12,

346

formed Ralph Izard, calmly but very explicitly, that he would do well
to mind his own business.42

Franklin, as long as he was on European soil, had no need to stand
upon ceremony when dealing with a refractory fellow-countryman;
for he was in great authority on that side of the Atlantic Ocean. Europe
had welcomed and accepted him, not as a mere spokesman and agent
of the government at Philadelphia, but as the living and breathing
embodiment of the American Republic. No statesman would do busi-
ness with anybody but Franklin. No financier would negotiate a loan
except with him, or pay over money into other hands but his. "It was
to Franklin that both the French and English ministries turned, as if
he were not only the sole representative of the United States in Europe,
but as if he were endowed with plenipotentiary power." 43 Nine-tenths
of the public letters addressed to the American Commissioners were
brought to his house; "and," (so his colleagues admitted,) "they would
ever be carried wherever Doctor Franklin is."44 He transacted his
affairs with Louis the Sixteenth's ministers on a footing of equality,
and, (as time went on,) of unostentatious but unquestionable superior-
ity. Thomas Jefferson, an impartial and most competent observer, had
on one occasion been contending that American diplomatists were al-
ways spoiled for use after they had been kept seven years abroad. But
this, (said Jefferson,) did not apply to Franklin, "who was America
itself when in France, not subjecting himself to French influence," but
imposing American influence upon France, and upon the whole course
and conduct of her national policy.

The fact was that the French ministry, in its relations to Franklin,
had to reckon with a political phenomenon of exceptional nature, and
portentous significance. The royal authority in France was uncontrolled
by any effective, and continuously operating, machinery of national
self-government; but that very circumstance lent force and weight to
public opinion, at those rare conjunctures when public opinion had been
strongly moved. If ever the privileged, the moneyed, and the intellec-

42 "It is true that I have omitted answering some of your letters, particularly your
angry ones, in which you, with very magisterial airs, schooled and documented as if I
had been one of your domestics. I saw, in the strongest light, the importance of our
living in decent civility towards each other, while our great affairs were depending
here. I saw your jealous, suspicious, malignant, and quarrelsome temper, which was
daily manifesting itself against Mr. Deane, and almost every other person you had any
concern with. I therefore passed your affronts in silence; did not answer, but burnt,
your angry letters; and received you, when I next saw you, with the same civility as if
you had never wrote them.** Franklin to Arthur Lee; Passy, 4 April, 1778.

43Wharton's Introduction; Chapter n.

44 John Adams to Jonathan Jackson; Paris, 17 November, 1782.

347

tual classes united in one way of thinking, their influence was all the
more irresistible because it was not defined, and limited, by the provi-
sions of a written constitution. The rest of the nation, below those
classes, was a powerless and voiceless proletariat; while above them
there was nothing except a handful of Viscounts and Marquises, the
Royal ministers of the hour, who were drawn from their ranks, and
lived in their society, and who were mortally afraid of their disappro-
bation, and still more of their ridicule. France, in the last lesort, was
ruled by fashion; and Franklin had become the idol of fashion like
no foreigner, and perhaps no Frenchman, either before or since.

His immense and, (as he himself was the foremost to acknowledge,)
his extravagant popularity was founded on a solid basis of admira-
tion and esteem. The origin of his fame dated from a time which
seemed fabulously distant to the existing generation. His qualities and
accomplishments were genuine and unpretentious; and his services to
the world were appreciated by high and low, rich and poor, in every
country where men learned from books, or profited by the discoveries
of science. His Poor Richard, — which expounded and elucidated a code
of rules for the everyday conduct of life with sagacity that never failed,
and wit that very seldom missed the mark, — had been thrice translated
into French, had gone through many editions, and had been recom-
mended by priests and bishops for common use in their parishes and
dioceses. As an investigator, and an experimentalist, he was more widely
known even than as an author; for he had always aimed at making
natural philosophy the hand maid of material progress. Those homely
and practical inventions, by which he had done so much to promote
the comfort and convenience of the average citizen, had caused him
to be regarded as a public benefactor in every civilised community
throughout the world.45 His reputation, (so John Adams wrote,) was

45 The Franklin stoves were much used in Paris. One of the French ministers was
asked whether he had as yet put them into his reception-rooms. "No," (he replied;)
"for the English ambassador would not then consent to warm himself at my fire."

There was talk, among men of science, about George the Third having ordered the
disuse at Kew Palace of lightning-conductors on the Franklin pattern; but the Doctor
himself refused to be drawn into the controversy. "Disputes," he wrote, "are apt to sour
one's temper and disturb one's quiet. I have no private interest in the reception of my
inventions by the world, having never made, nor proposed to make, the least profit by
any of them. The King's changing his pointed conductors for blunt ones is, therefore, a
matter of small importance to me. If I had a wish about it, it would be that he rejected
them altogether as ineffectual; for it is only since he thought himself, and his family,
safe from the thunder of Heaven that he dared to use his own thunder in destroying his
innocent subjects."

348

more universal than that o£ Leibnitz or Newton. "His name was famil-
iar to government and people, to foreign countries, — to nobility, clergy,
and philosophers, as well as to plebeians,— to such a degree that there
was scarcely a peasant or a citizen, a valet, coachman, or footman, a
lady's chambermaid, or scullion in the kitchen, who did not consider
him a friend to humankind." If Franklin, at seventy years of age, had
visited France as a private tourist, his progress through her cities would
have been one long ovation; and her enthusiasm transcended all bounds
when, coming as an ambassador from a new world beyond the seas,
he appealed to French chivalry on behalf of a young nation struggling
for freedom. "His mission," (said a French writer who was no blind
partisan of Franklin,) "flattered all the bright and generous ideas which
animated France. He caressed our happiest hopes, our most gilded
chimaeras. He came across the ocean to win liberty for his own coun-
try; and he brought liberty to us. He was the representative of a peo-
ple still primitive and unsophisticated, — or who appeared so in our eyes.
He professed no religious creed except tolerance, and kindliness of heart.
France, moved by a thousand passions and a thousand caprices, pros-
trated herself at the feet of a man who had no caprices and no pas-
sions. She made him the symbol and object of her adoration; and
Franklin took rank above Voltaire and Rousseau, by the side of Soc-

rates."46

One such account must serve for all. It would be tedious, and super-
fluous, to multiply quotations from contemporary authors who have
recorded that passionate devotion, and, (what in parallel cases has been
a rare feature,) the invincible constancy and fidelity with which French
society abandoned itself to the worship of Franklin. The wise old
American was keenly alive to the excess, and the occasional absurdity,
of the adulation by which he was encompassed. He had measured, more
accurately than any man then living, the true and exact worth of Ben-
jamin Franklin; and he did nothing whatever to encourage the exag-
gerated estimate of that personage which most Frenchmen, and all
French women, persisted in cherishing. He lived his own life, and
talked his own talk, and allowed the imaginative and emotional Pari-
sians to make what they chose both of the one and the other. The
French Government, anxious to keep their distinguished guest as far
as possible removed from hostile supervision and impertinent curiosity,
placed at his disposal a house and garden at Passy, which now is well

46L<r Dix-huiticmc Siede en Anglcterre par M. Philarete Chasles, Profcsscur au Col-
lege de France; Paris, 1846.

349

within the circuit of the fortifications, but then was still "a neat village,
on high ground, half a mile from the city." 47 Here Franklin dwelt,
as pleasantly lodged as in an elm-shaded suburb of his own Philadel-
phia; superintending the education of his smaller grandson, who was
a child of seven; entertaining Americans, young and old, at a quiet
dinner on the Sunday afternoon; working, during odd hours, in the
Royal Laboratory, which stood close at hand; and making a show of
drinking the Passy waters. He was seldom seen on foot in the streets
of the capital; and he took his exercise, with conscientious regularity,
in his garden when the sun shone, and within doors during the months
of winter. "I walk," (so he told John Adams in November 1782,) "every
day in my chamber. I walk quick, and for an hour, so that I go a
league. I make a point of religion of it." When he appeared in public
he was dressed in good broadcloth of a sober tint; conspicuous with
his long straight hair, whitened by age, and not by art; and wearing
a pair of spectacles, to remedy an old man's dimness of vision, and a
cap of fine marten's fur, because he had an old man's susceptibility to
cold.

Franklin's costume had not been designed with any idea of pleasing
the Parisians; but it obtained an extraordinary success, and has left a
mark on history. Fine gentlemen, with their heads full of the new
philosophy, regarded his unembroidered coat, and unpowdered locks,
as a tacit, but visible, protest against those luxuries and artificialities
which they all condemned, but had not the smallest intention of them-
selves renouncing. He reminded them of everything and everybody
that Jean Jacques Rousseau had taught them to admire. The Comte de
Segur declared that "Franklin's antique and patriarchal aspect seemed
to transport into the midst of an enervated, and servile, civilisation a
Republican of Rome of the time of Cato and Fabius, or a sage who
had consorted with Plato." Some compared him to Diogenes, and some
to Phocion, — about whom they can have known very little; for, if
Phocion had been a Pennsylvanian of Anno Domini 1776, he would,
beyond all question, have been a strenuous and uncompromising sup-
porter of the British connection. Readers of Emile, who then comprised
three-fourths of the fashionable world, delighted to recognise in the

47 Franklin to Mrs. Margaret Stevenson; Passy, 25 January, 1779. John Adams, on
his arrival in France, was greatly exercised at finding his brother Commissioner so de-
sirably lodged, — "at what rent," (he said,) "I never could discover; but, from the mag-
nificence of the place, it was universally suspected to be enormously high." It is now
well ascertained that Monsieur Ray de Chaumont, under whom Franklin sat rent-free,
was acting on behalf of the Government.

35°

American stranger an express and living image of the Savoyard Vicar;
and it was believed, with some reason, that his views on religion nearly
corresponded to those of Rousseau's famous ecclesiastic, although Frank-
lin would most certainly have compressed his Profession of Faith into
much shorter compass.48 The great French ladies were attracted and
fascinated by his quiet self-possession, his benign courtesy, and his play-
ful, yet always rational, conversation. The ardour of Franklin's votaries
sometimes manifested itself with an exuberance which made it difficult
for him to keep his countenance. When he paid a visit to Madame
d'Houdetot at her country residence in the Valley of Montmorency,
his hostess, — attended by the solemn and inperturbable Marquis who
then was her lover, as he was the lover in turn of the most celebrated
blue-stockings of that generation, — came forth to meet him, as if he
were a royal personage, before he entered the avenue. She greeted him
with an address in verse; at dinner he was regaled by a rhymed compli-
ment, from some Count or Viscount, between every course, and after
the coffee; Monsieur d'Houdetot himself, "rising to the sublime of
absurdity in his quality of husband," instituted an elaborate parallel be-
tween Franklin and William Tell, to the disadvantage of the Swiss
patriot; and the departing guest was ultimately pursued to his coach-
door by a shower of laudatory couplets. To exhibit himself as the
central figure in such scenes was not the least among the sacrifices
which Franklin made upon the altar of his country.

Franklin dined abroad on every weekday;49 not because people
thought it their duty to invite him, but because they never could have
too much of his company. John Adams, before he himself spoke French
at all, gave a disparaging account of Franklin's grammar and accent;
but Frenchmen praised the ease and skill with which he employed their
language; and that is the one point on which no true Parisian will
ever condescend to flatter. The banquets which he attended did not

48 "Ambassadors," (so a French diplomatist informed John Adams,) "have in all
Courts a right to a chapel of their own way; but Mr. Franklin never had any. . » . Mr.
Franklin adores only great Nature, which interested many people of both sexes in him."
European society entertained exceedingly vague ideas with regard to Franklin's religious
creed. Some Parisians were deeply impressed by his "Quaker humility," and Horace
Walpole spoke of him as a Presbyterian. Philarete Chasles came nearer the mark, and
pronounced him a Deist of the school of Locke. But Franklin was no man's disciple,
and his opinions and beliefs were the home-growth of his own mind. He had been
converted to Deism, at the age of twenty-one, by a sermon preached against the Deists,
"whose arguments," he said, "which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much
stronger than the refutations."

49 Franklin to Mrs. Margaret Stevenson; Passy, 25 January, 1779.

351

afford him unmixed enjoyment; for he was almost sure of meeting
some officer who wanted to become a Major General in the American
army, or some chemist with an invention for blowing up the English
fleet, and who only waited to begin their attack upon him until he
had been "put in good humour by a glass or two of champaigne." The
world then dined at two in the afternoon; the party broke up as soon
as the dinner had been eaten; and Franklin's evenings were very gen-
erally spent at the house of his neighbour, Madame Helvetius, who
lived beyond him at Auteuil, in the direction o£ the Bois de Boulogne.
In this lady's salon he consorted with the most prominent of his brother
Academicians; for he had long ere this been elected a member of their
august body. Diderot and Morellet, Lavoisier, d'Alembert, Condorcet,
and Turgot were his habitual associates, and his attached friends. In
Paris and at Auteuil alike, during the give and take of the best con-
versation which the Continent of Europe then had to show, Franklin
never missed an opportunity of interesting his companions in the cause
of America, and re-assuring them about her future. An undaunted and
persuasive optimist, speaking with the authority of one who was no
mere amateur in war, he imparted to all around him his own loyal
confidence in Washington's strategy; and, at the lowest moment of his
country's fortunes, he boldly and cheerfully proclaimed his settled con-
viction that it was not the British who had taken Philadelphia, but
Philadelphia which had taken the British.50 No less a writer than the
Marquis de Condorcet has borne witness to the tact and ability, and
the all but universal acceptance, with which Franklin handled the
topic of America. "It was an honour," said Condorcet, "to have seen
him. People repeated in all societies what they had heard him say.
Every entertainment which he accepted, every house where he con-
sented to go, gained him new admirers who became so many partisans
of the American Revolution."

He was a great ambassador, of a type which the world had never
seen before, and will never see again until it contains another Benja-
min Franklin. Tried by the searching test of practical performance, he
takes high rank among the diplomatists of history. His claims to that

50 Six weeks after Franklin's arrival in Paris, the Prussian envoy in France sent the
following account of him to King Frederic. "Le Docteur Franklin n'est pas le medecin
Tant-Pis. Toutes les fois qu'on lui annonce que les Americans ont ete battus, il dit: 'Tant
mieux. Les Anglais seront bien attrapeV" When people talked to him despondently
about the prospects of American Independence, Franklin would reply: "Qa ira, Qa ira;"
and it is said that he thus brought into fashion a phrase destined to be the watchword
of the French Revolution.

352

position have been vindicated, in a manner worthy of the subject, by
an eminent American publicist o£ our own generation. There were
conspicuous statesmen, (writes Doctor Wharton,) at the Congress of
Vienna; but the imposing fabric constructed by Metternich, and Nes-
selrode, and Talleyrand, with such lofty disregard for national liberties
and popular rights, has long ago perished, while Franklin's work en-
dures to this hour. It was Franklin who introduced America, on a
footing of equality, into the councils of Europe, and who, in a truer
sense than Canning, called the New World into existence to redress
the balance of the Old. And the crown and coping-stone of his pro-
tracted labours was that final treaty of peace between Great Britain
and the United States, which of all international settlements is "the
one that has produced the greatest blessings to both the contracting
parties, has been of the greatest benefit to civilisation as a whole, and
has been the least affected by the flow of time.51

The Treaty of 1782, and the recognition by England of American
Independence, were still in the distant future; but, during the early
weeks of Franklin's domestication in the neighbourhood of Paris, it
became evident to all concerned that the affairs of the new Republic
were in firm and capable hands. Originality, unalloyed by any tinc-
ture of eccentricity, marked every private letter, and public memoran-
dum, which issued from the library at Passy. Franklin's breadth and
accuracy of knowledge, the force and acuteness of his reasoning, and
the "masculine simplicity" of his style, impressed veteran French min-
isters with a sensation which was most unusual in their experience
of official business. The relations between America, and all European
countries except France, had been gravely compromised fay the prema-
ture and ill-considered action of Congress; and, for some while to
come, Franklin was occupied, not so much in engineering diplomatic
successes, as in effacing disagreeable impressions. He began very quietly
to court the favour, and invite the confidence, of all the foreign am-
bassadors then resident in Paris. The representatives, (we are told,)
of those Sovereigns, who had not recognized the Government of the
United States, were unable to extend any official civilities to the Com-
missioners of the Republic; but in private they sought the acquaintance
of Franklin, and among them were some of his most esteemed and
intimate friends.52 He soon was on excellent terms with the Spanish

61 Wharton's Digest of International Law, as quoted in the tenth Chapter of his
Introduction.
52 Life of Doctor Franklin, by Jared Sparks; Chapter 10.

353

Minister, the Comte d'Aranda; and he established a claim on the grati-
tude of Prince Bariatinski, the Russian ambassador, who was helped
out of a very formidable scrape by the famous American's native good
sense and inexhaustible good-nature. Franklin's personal popularity,
during the later period of the war, was of invaluable service to his
political efficiency; and the rapid growth of anti-English sentiment, all
the Continent over, was due almost as much to his personal influence
as to the recklessness and maladroitness of Lord North's Cabinet. The
time came when Lord Shelburne told the House of Peers, with a near
approach to the truth, that George the Third had but two enemies
upon earth; — one, the whole world, and the other, his own Ministry.

When Franklin landed in France, Beaumarchais expressed a friendly
uneasiness lest the old man, left to his own guidance "in that cursed
country of meddling and gossip," should fall into bad hands, and com-
mit some fatal blunder or indiscretion. It was sympathy wasted. The
Pennsylvanian veteran had the craft of age without its feebleness; and,
during the next six or seven years, the statesmen of France, and Spain,
and Holland were destined to learn by unpleasant experience that,
whoever was left in the lurch, it would not be Benjamin Franklin.
From the very first moment of his arrival in Paris he set himself delib-
erately, and most artfully, at work to tempt Louis the Sixteenth's Cabi-
net deeper and deeper into a policy which was the salvation of America,
but which in the end brought utter ruin upon the French Monarchy.

When the American Revolution broke out, and for some while after-
wards, the French Government pursued a line of conduct in accord
with the true interests of their own country, and consistent with the
letter, if not with the spirit, of their obligations towards the Govern-
ment of England. The Comte de Vergennes pronounced Lord North's
attempt to subjugate the colonies by arms as "an undertaking against
Nature;" injurious, in any event, to Great Britain, and replete with
profit to France, if only France would remain quiet, and allow the
civil war to run its course beyond the Atlantic. There was nothing,
(Vergennes wrote,) which need afflict the Court of Versailles in the
spectacle of England tearing herself to pieces with her own hands. It
soon became evident that a golden and unexpected opportunity had
arisen for the development of French commerce. Great Britain's export-
trade to America had been killed outright; and her mercantile inter-
course with the rest of the world was sorely hampered by the activity
and audacity of the American privateers. Arthur Lee told the Com-
354

mittee of Foreign Affairs at Philadelphia how the Abbe Raynal, who
had just returned from London, informed him that nothing disgusted
the English so much as seeing their ports crowded by French ships,
which were engaged in carrying on the commerce of England with
other nations. "Their merchants," said Lee, "are obliged to have re-
course to this expedient to screen their merchandise. They have been
driven to this necessity by the number and success of your cruisers in
and about the Channel." 53 The aspect of foreign-built vessels, taking
in cargoes of home-made goods alongside the wharves of the Thames,
the Mersey, and the Bristol Avon, was gall and wormwood to British
ship-owners; but the British ministry favoured the continuance, and
connived at the irregularities, of the traffic, because the employment of
neutral merchantmen was essential for the dispersion abroad of those
manufactures on which the prosperity of the kingdom already mainly
depended.34

If France had been content to maintain a pacific attitude throughout
the whole period of the American troubles, she would have been re-
warded by an immense accession of wealth, and a secure and exalted
position among the nations of the world. Those advantages, moreover,
would have accrued to her automatically and inevitably, without risk
or exertion on her own part, and, (which was a more important con-
sideration still,) with no sacrifice of her public honour. But the in-
trigues of Beaumarchais had already committed Louis the Sixteenth
and his ministers to a perilous, and worse than questionable, series of
transactions; and, from this time forward, the energy and pertinacity
of Franklin allowed them no rest, until they had sinned against their
international duty too heinously to be forgiven by the people and the
parliament of England. The influence of the great American Commis-
sioner was apparent in every department of French administration.
King Louis was timid and conscientious, and had for his Finance
Minister a cautious and frugal Swiss banker; but certain members of
the Cabinet, who counted for a great deal more than either His Majesty
or Monsieur Necker, were always as eager to give as Franklin was

53 Arthur Lee from Paris; September 9, 1777. "It is plain," wrote Washington, "that
France is playing a politic game; enjoying all the advantages of our commerce without
the expense of war.'*

5* "From this invasion of the American trade by foreigners one advantage is derived,
if not to the commerce and navigation, yet to the manufactures of England; for these
foreign nations, not having yet got into the way of providing a proper assortment of
goods for the American market, resort hither for supply. This is felt in all the manufac-
turing towns; and the Ministry owe much of their quiet, during the present contention,
to that source." History of Europe in the Annual Register for 1776; Chapter 9.

355

bold to ask. The American Commissioners were soon accommodated
with a loan of two million francs, bearing no interest, and to be re-
paid only "when the United States were settled in peace and prosperity."
Another million came from the Farmers General, in exchange for a
permission to purchase twenty thousand hogsheads of tobacco, at local
prices, from the warehouses of Maryland and Virginia. Four millions,
ten millions, and six millions were afterwards forthcoming in three
successive years; and the total money obtained from France, at the
solicitation of Franklin, amounted at last to six and twenty million
francs. These great sums were thriftily, and very knowingly, expended
on the purchase of military stores for Washington's armies, and on the
equipment of American cruisers which preyed upon British commerce
in European waters.55

Not a few of those cruisers were American only in name. When the
sloop of war which conveyed Franklin across the ocean had deposited
him at his destination, she ranged the Channel in company with two
consorts, the Lexington and the Dolphin, the latter of which was armed
with French cannon, and manned exclusively by French sailors. Within
a few weeks the three ships made fifteen prizes; and their list of
captures reached an enormous figure before any of them met their fate.
When the Lexington was at last taken, her log-book, and the letters
and papers found on board of her, proved that she had burned, sunk,
and destroyed fifty-two British merchantmen.56 The American captains
found, in the harbours of Normandy and Brittany, a sure refuge from
danger, a ready market for their prize-goods, and all indispensable
facilities for repairing, re-fitting, and re-arming their vessels. They
sailed in and out of Havre, and Lorient, and Nantes, taking in fifty
barrels of gunpowder at one place, and filling up their crews with
prime French sailors at another, as coolly and freely as if France were
already at war with England. When the English ambassador remon-
strated, the Versailles Cabinet gave him fair words, and ostentatiously
prohibited any future breach of neutrality in sham orders which, after
a brief show of obedience, were openly and systematically disregarded
by the port authorities. If such things were done on the very coast of
France, within forty leagues of her capital, it may well be believed that
violence, and illegality, ran riot in distant quarters of the globe which
lay outside the range of diplomatic surveillance and protest. The British

55 Franklin, Dcanc, and Lee to the Committee of Secret Correspondence; Paris, Jan-
uary 17, 1777. Wharton's Introduction; Chapters 4 and 10.

56 Journal of Samuel Curwen; October 4, 1777.

356

trade with the West Indies was devastated by ten or a dozen large
corsairs, which hailed from Martinique and Guadeloupe; and which,
though they displayed the Stars and Stripes, and carried letters of
marque from Congress, were to all intents and purposes not Ameri-
can privateers, but French pirates. Out of a hundred and twenty-five
fighting men, on board one of these formidable vessels, only two were
citizens of the United States.57

Meanwhile the Ministers of King Louis, with less and less effort at
concealment, hurried forward their military and naval preparations
for a war which they had long foreseen, and which they now began
to anticipate with lively satisfaction. A very strong squadron was as-
sembled at Toulon, and an exceedingly powerful fleet at Brest. Accord-
ing to the advices which reached London, twenty-five frigates lay
equipped for active service in Brest Harbour, as well as no fewer than
thirty sail of the line, of which ten had been finished off within the
last eighteen months. "These ships," (so the reporter stated,) "are sup-
posed, by many judicious people in marine architecture, to be the finest
moulded, and best built and completed, in the whole French navy,
and perhaps in Europe. Upwards of ten thousand shipwrights, carpen-
ters, caulkers, riggers, blockmakers, sailmakers, and ropemakers are
collected at Brest. Every sailor has been ordered thither, from Dunkirk
to Bayonne; and the Guinea, the Newfoundland, and the West Indian
ships dare not put to sea till this fleet is manned and victualled."58
It was a still more ominous circumstance that a great number of regi-

57 Me 'moire Justificatif pour servir de Reponse a I'Expose des Motifs de la Condttite
du Roi de France relativement a I'Angleterrc; Londres, 1779. This masterpiece by Ed-
ward Gibbon, written in the French language with an Englishman's accuracy of state-
ment, and concentration of purpose, was a special favourite with Lord Macaulay. In his
copy of Gibbon's Miscellaneous Wor%s he drew, with his pencil, a line of approbation
down the entire margin of all its thirty-four pages. That was a compliment which, in
the case of similar productions, he reserved for one or two of Swift's Examiners, and for
three or four of Paul Louis Courier's inimitable pieces.

The Evening Post of May 31, 1777, gives a list of French privateers in the West
Indies, with their gun-power, and the strength of their complements. They mosdy car-
ried above a hundred men, and from fourteen to eighteen cannon. A gentleman in the
island of Grenada wrote to a friend in Liverpool that it was not the Americans, but
the French from Martinique and St. Lucie, who were buccaneering in those seas. **It
is now," he said, "become customary, as soon as a man hears that his vessel is taken,
to go directly to Martinique, and buy as much as he can of his own property in again,
as things are sold pretty cheap for cash. They are very expeditious with their sales; for
they neither wait for condemnation, nor any other form."

58 It then was a common practice, when war appeared imminent, to detain mer-
chant vessels in harbour, so as to prevent a competition for the services of seamen be-
tween the State, and the private employer.

357

ments had been drawn down to the coast, and embodied in what was
only too evidently intended for an army of invasion. Everything was
ready. Biscuit for two months had been baked. Provisions were very
cheap, and all the magazines full. The rank and file were punctually
paid, and well clothed and disciplined. The old and the weak had been
carefully weeded out from every battalion; and twenty-five thousand
troops, the most effective in France, stood prepared for embarkation
at a day's notice. The French naval officers were full 'of fight and their
tongues were loud and unbridled. They looked to a war with Eng-
land for the acceleration of their wretchedly slow promotion, and
for the sadly needed rehabilitation of their professional repute. A young
nobleman, — who, gallant and ambitious as he was, thought the war
a crime, — has related how, from admiral to midshipman, they all re-
joiced at the prospect of avenging those humiliating defeats which,
half a generation before, had been inflicted on the French navy by
Hawke and Boscawen.59

The strain was too severe to last. In the first week of December,
1777, tidings of Burgoyne's surrender arrived in Europe. On the way
back from Passy, whither he had hurried to congratulate Franklin,
Beaumarchais was thrown out of his carriage, and narrowly escaped
a fatal accident. As soon as the surgeon allowed him ink and paper,
he addressed the Comte de Vergennes in a vein of not very decorous
exultation. "This propitious event," he wrote, "is balm to my wounds.
Some god has whispered in my ear that King Louis will not disap-
point the hopes of the faithful friends whom America has acquired for
herself in France. It is my voice which calls out on their behalf from
beneath iny blankets; 'Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, Oh
Lord! Lord, hear my prayer!'" Beaumarchais, as at this period of his
life was generally the case, spoke the mind of Paris. When the news
of Saratoga spread abroad in the city, the partisans of England dis-
appeared from view; the theatres resounded with marital demonstra-
tions; and the buzz of drawing-rooms and coffee-houses swelled into
a unanimous cry for war. The demand in France for vigorous and
immediate action was re-inforced by a potent auxiliary from beyond
her own borders. When the New Year opened, the Elector of Bavaria
died; the Emperor of Germany moved his troops across the Bavarian
frontier; and Frederic the Great perceived that for himself, and for
Prussia, the fateful hour had come. Resolved, so far as in him lay, that
the French armies should be employed elsewhere than in Germany,

5fi MSmoires du Due dcs Cars; Tome L, Chapitre 5.

358

he redoubled his efforts to tempt, and drive, Louis the Sixteenth into
open hostilities against the British Crown. In a series of jumbled meta-
phors, which he would never have ventured to use when writing to
Voltaire, he commanded his envoy in Paris to be all eyes and ears, to
sift the matter to the bottom, and to shake every sail loose. "This,"
wrote the King, "is the moment for exerting yourself to the summit
of your strength. You must force the deaf to hear, and the blind to
see; and be sure that you wake up the lethargic to some purpose."60

The French Government did not need pressing. A hint was con-
veyed to Doctor Franklin, and his colleagues, that it would be agree-
able to His Majesty if they renewed the offer which they had made
him a twelvemonth back; and they acted on the intimation given. Some
time was consumed in arranging the preliminaries; it was necessary
that Spain should be consulted, or at all events kept informed, at each
successive stage of the negotiation; but on the sixth of February 1778
the signatures were affixed to a Treaty of Commerce, and a Treaty
of Amity and Alliance, between France and the United States. The
French Government, paying a tribute by anticipation to the principle
of the Monroe Doctrine, solemnly disclaimed all intention to re-conquer
Canada. No condition whatever was exacted from America, except a
promise that she would never purchase peace with Great Britain by
consenting to resume her subjection to the British Crown. The ancient
monarchy had dealt very handsomely with the young Republic; and
the Prime Minister of Spain, who did his best to delay the business,
and who disliked it all the more because he feared that his own Court
would be compelled before long to follow suit, pronounced the con-
duct of the Versailles Cabinet a glaring instance of Quixotism. He com-
pared the American Commissioners to those Roman Consuls whom the
kings of Pontus and Cappadocia approached, in the attitude of sup-
pliants, with a humble petition for their aid and support in war.61

On the twentieth March those Commissioners were granted the
honour of a public reception at the Court of France. An immense
throng assembled to watch Franklin pass. His bust and portrait had
been multiplied by tens of thousands all the kingdom over; his minia-
ture was carried in the lids of snuff-boxes, in watch-cases, and in the
setting of rings; and the Gazettes of Europe, (said one who grudged

60 Le Roi Frederic a M. de Goltz, Berlin, 12 Janvier; Potsdam, n Fevrier, 1778.
These exhortations are written by the king's own hand, as a postscript to the official
despatches.

61 Doniol; Tome II., Chapitres 10, n; Tome in., Chapitre i.

359

him his celebrity,) contained a greater number of panegyrics on Frank-
lin than on any other individual who had been born since Gazettes
were printed. And now the whole tribe of his admirers, high and
humble, had an opportunity of seeing the man himself, at the culminat-
ing hour of his prolonged and notable career. He was greeted by ac-
clamations, and clapping of hands, in the streets of the town, in the
quadrangles of the Palace, and even in the corridors which he tra-
versed on his way to the Present Chamber. The first meeting between
the King of France, and the delegates of the American Commonwealth,
was a memorable and suggestive, but almost a silent, interview. On
such occasions Louis the Sixteenth seldom found much to say, and
never said the right thing; and the obligation to speak a sentence or
two of spirited and sympathetic welcome, in the name of France, would
have disconcerted even a cleverer, and a less honest, monarch. For at
the bottom of his heart the King had not yet learned to love rebels;
and he agreed with his more sober-minded subjects in regarding the
contemplated assault upon England as "the most indecent of all
wars." 62 Franklin has left no account of the ceremony; but it is on
record that Versailles struck him as exceedingly dirty, and he doubt-
less would have liked well to give it the thorough scouring which,
under his supervision, had so often been bestowed on the public build-
ings of Philadelphia. Meanwhile the signature of the treaties was no
longer a state secret. The Marquis de Noailles had already placed the
British Court in possession of the facts, with a display of frankness
which came very near to impudence. King Louis, (so the communica-
tion ran,) was determined to cultivate the good intelligence notori-
ously subsisting between France and Great Britain, and had accord-
ingly commissioned his ambassador to inform King George of a trans-
action so interesting to both countries. That was not the kind of honey
to make such a dose palatable in England.63

Each of the two contracting parties was solemnly and specifically
bound by the Treaty of Paris "to give no succour or protection, directly
or indirectly," to the enemies and assailants of the other; and this was
the manner in which the French observed their side of the engagement.
They had caught England at a frightful disadvantage. She had not an
ally in the world. The conflict with American rebellion had been a
heavy drain upon her pecuniary resources, and had gravely impaired
her credit. The price of her Consols had already fallen twenty points.

62 Memoires de Due des Cars; Tome L, Chapitre 5.

63 Doniol; Tome IL, Chapitre 12.

360

Her field-army, and all the foreign auxiliaries whom she had been able
to muster, were three thousand miles away across the ocean; and the
British Islands were left very slenderly garrisoned at a moment when
the naval strength of Britain had been allowed to drop far below the
standard of safety. That was the pass to which our country had been
reduced by the ineptitude and improvidence of her rulers. The appar-
ent weakness, and the undoubted isolation, of England had tempted,
and excited, the unprincipled ambition of the French Ministers; but,
as has happened so often before and since, they had omitted to reckon
with the haughty patriotism, the stern and dogged temper, and the
indomitable pertinacity of the English people.

Lord North's colonial policy, from the first to last, was condemned
and opposed by perhaps the largest, and certainly the best and wisest,
section of the British community; but all men, of both parties, were
of one and the same mind with reference to the French quarrel. They
entertained no illusion about the difficulties and perils of the situation.
They knew that, for many months to come, the war would be a strug-
gle for the defence of hearth and home; but they were firmly resolved,
before the account was closed, to make the French repent their cupid-
ity, their insolence, and their treachery. The public indignation blazed
up fierce and high. The more turbulent members of a nation which
had been so often, and so egregiously, befooled by French ambassadors,
paid very little regard to the sanctity of the diplomatic person; and
the Marquis de Noailles, who left London at daybreak in order to
avoid insult, was pelted as he passed through the streets of Canterbury
on his road to Dover. Lord Stormont was at once recalled from Paris.
The British Inspector of Fortifications at Dunkirk was forced to pack
up his trunks, and leave the country; and this time he did not go back
when the war was over. His presence on French soil constituted the
one, and only, genuine grievance which France could allege against the
British Government; and that grievance might easily have been reme-
died, with mutual consent, by a bloodless and amicable negotiation
between the Foreign Offices of London and Versailles. It was a sorry
spectacle, and a sad example, when the two leading nations of Europe
were plunged headlong into an unnecessary, and objectless, war; from
which, after a world-wide crash of arms, and a prodigal outpouring
of treasure, they emerged at the end of five years with less than no
gain, and very little glory.

361

CHAPTER XIII

THE KING'S POLICY,
PERSONAL GOVERNMENT.

LORD CHATHAM.
THE SEVENTH OF APRIL

JL HE capture of Burgoyne, the evacuation of Philadelphia by the Brit-
ish army, and the outburst of war between France and England in the
spring of 1778, were decisive events in the history of the American
Revolution. For ten years past the resources of the mother-country had
been applied, lavishly and continuously, to the object of preventing, and,
(when prevention failed,) of crushing the rebellion in her Western
colonies. The King and his Ministers had devoted themselves with
single-minded energy to the work of coercion and re-conquest, and
Parliament had refused them none of the means which, in their judg-
ment, the prosecution of that work demanded. Strongly worded
Addresses of sympathy with the Ministerial policy; penal laws of novel
character and terrible severity; armies larger than ever yet had been
transported across any ocean; multitudes of foreign mercenaries; pow-
erful fleets; ordnance and commissariat stores in unexampled profusion;
— whatever the responsible government demanded, or even suggested,
had been at once forthcoming. The forces of the rebellion had been
pitted against the forces of the Crown during four hot and fierce cam-
paigns, in which Great Britain, undistracted by European enemies,
exerted much of her naval, and almost all her military strength against
the power of the Revolution. And now, in July 1778, as the result of
these sustained and strenuous endeavours, there was not a single prov-
ince, or even a single township, where the civil administration was in
Loyalist hands; and, outside the fortifications which protected the
city of New York, the British army held not one square mile of soil
on the mainland of the Northern and Central colonies.
Historians have in many cases overlooked, or undervalued, the dom-

362

inant circumstance which governed the military situation during all
the closing years of the War of Independence. Ever since that week in
March 1776 when General Howe abandoned the city of Boston to
Washington's besieging army, and took himself and his forces away
by sea to Halifax, New England was never again assailed by a deter-
mined and formidable invader. That vast tract of country, as large as
Scotland and Ireland together, contained a population of men ardent
for the Revolution, who had established a very effective political una-
nimity by the expulsion of all such as disagreed with them in political
opinion. Farmers and sailors for the most part, — hardy, shrewd, and
frugal, and as brave as need be on those occasions when there was
nothing for it but to fight,— they yielded implicit and intelligent obedi-
ence to rulers chosen by themselves from among tried and respected
members of their own community; and they always were ready to
rally in force to the rescue whenever, and wherever, the Republic was
in perilous straits. Connecticut, and Massachusetts, and New Hamp-
shire formed a spacious, a plentifully stored, a powerfully garrisoned,
and an altogether impregnable citadel of rebellion. It was the story
over again of the Associated Eastern Counties of England during our
Seventeenth Century struggle between the Parliament and the Crown.
Once and only once, the safety of the old Puritan provinces was seri-
ously menaced throughout the seven years which followed the evacu-
ation of Boston. When Burgoyne, with his column of British and
German infantry, and his horde of Indian warriors, came trailing down
towards Albany in close proximity to the frontier of New England, thir-
teen thousand New England yeomen marched, at their own charges,
to repel the aggressor; and, if the career of the English general had
not been stopped short at Saratoga, he would have had twice that num-
ber upon him in front, flank, and rear, before ever he had penetrated
into the heart of Massachusetts.

So it had long been with New England; and now the same immu-
nity from hostile invasion had been secured for the rich and populous
Central provinces as a consequence of the protracted campaign which
began at Brandywine, and terminated at Monmouth Court-house. A
large, an admirably appointed, and a valiant British army, conveyed
and assisted by a noble fleet, had gone south from New York City in
the July of 1777; had done its duty in conspicuous fashion; and twelve
months afterwards had returned, not indeed defeated, but foiled, dis-
appointed, and with very small expectation of ever repeating an ex-
periment from which no military man, who understood the business

363

of his profession, anticipated even the possibility of success. Two great
battles had been fought and won, and the capital city of the Revolution
had been triumphantly entered by the royal troops; but, as the final
result of the whole matter, the disputed territory was left, then and
thereafter, in possession of the Revolutionary government. That gov-
ernment was destined to have its own troubles and difficulties as long
as the war lasted; but they were troubles and difficulties of a nature
to which the most firmly settled and long established monarchies have
always been liable during a period of national emergency. There were
wrangles and intrigues in Congress, just as there was quarrelling be-
tween Whigs and Tories at Westminster. There were outbreaks of
turbulence in Washington's army, just as there was a mutiny at the
Nore at a time when England was engaged, heart and soul, in her
death struggle with the French Republic, The American Treasury
flooded the country with issues of worthless paper, just as Frederic
the Great had debased the silver coinage of Prussia in the agony of the
Seven Years' War. But those are internal maladies of which a nation
does not die; and the United States were now, to all intents and pur-
poses, a self-contained and independent nation. The concluding phase
of the great conflict was no longer a mere colonial rebellion, but an
international war between Great Britain and America, in which the
Americans were assisted by France, Spain, and Holland, and by the
unconcealed and very efficacious sympathy of almost every other Euro-
pean power. The British Cabinet indeed, at a large expense of money,
but with an utterly inadequate force of troops, made some ill-combined
attempts to detach Virginia and the Carolinas from the Republican
cause; but the British generals had as little intention of marching into
New England, or of besieging Albany and Philadelphia, as George
Washington had of invading Cheshire or Lancashire, The case was
truly put by Nathaniel Greene in his own quiet manner. "We," (he
wrote,) "cannot conquer the British at once; but they cannot conquer
us at all. The limits of the British government in America are their
out-sentinels.** And, in the month of August 1778, those out-sentinels
had been withdrawn from almost every post which they had hitherto
occupied on the American continent.

The King himself had renounced all hope of subduing America by
campaigns and battles, "It was a joke," (such was his own expression,)
"to think of keeping Pennsylvania,"1 and it was far beyond a joke
even to contemplate the forcible recovery of New England; but his

1 George the Third to Lord North; March isth, 1778.

364

determination never to acknowledge the independence of the Amer-
icans, and to punish their contumacy by the indefinite prolongation o£ a
war which promised to be eternal, was as fixed and resolute as ever.
His intention henceforward was to retain his garrisons at New York
and on Rhode Island, in Canada, and in Florida; to withdraw all the
rest of his troops from America; and to employ them in attacking the
French and Spanish possessions in the West Indies. Meanwhile aggres-
sive hostilities against the Americans would be confined to the destruc-
tion of their coasting-trade, and the bombardment of their commercial
ports; to sacking and burning their villages within a day's march of
the sea-coast, and turning loose the Indians, from time to time, upon
the more exposed and defenceless of the settlements which lay along
their Western border. These operations, according to the royal view,
would inspire courage in the partisans of the Crown throughout every
colony; would promote faction in Congress; and would keep the rebels
harassed, anxious, and poor, until the day when, by a natural and in-
evitable process, discontent and disappointment were converted into
penitence and remorse. That was an infallible, and for the English
taxpayer a very cheap method, which sooner or later would bring the
Revolutionary diplomatists to their knees, and, (to use the King's own
words,) "would make them come into what Great Britain might de-
cently consent to." 2

Such was the plan of action, and inaction, which George the Third
had thought out for himself, and which, in a long succession of let-
ters, he lovingly and minutely expounded to his Prime Minister. It was
a foolish, and a most cruel policy;— cruel to the Loyalists who, after
having been invited and induced to declare themselves for the Crown,
were abandoned, unprotected by the presence of a British army, to the
vengeance of their political opponents; cruel by the infliction of use-
less and objectless suffering, for an indefinite period of time, upon the
civil population of the United States; and cruel, above all, to the people
of Great Britain. The hour had come when our country, already weary
of war, was to fight for her life against a combination of new and old
European enemies who aimed at nothing short of her utter ruin, and
her permanent humiliation. She would have to face the crisis alone,
and shorn of no small portion of that native strength on which she
had formerly been accustomed to rely. The military resources of Amer-
ica, from which Lord Chatham extracted such memorable advantage
in the glorious past, were now employed not for, but against, the

2 George the Third to Lord North; Jan. I3th, 1778.

365

mother-country. The people of Massachusetts who, when Chatham
asked them for money, had taxed themselves to the amount of two
pounds in every three of their year's income for the defence of the
British empire, now spent their substance in keeping the flame of revo-
lution ablaze in less wealthy States of the American Union. The suc-
cessors of those provincial militiamen, who had marched in their thou-
sands under Wolfe and Amherst, were now embattled beneath the Stars
and Stripes in the ranks of the Continental army. The successors of
those New England mariners, who had been proud to serve in the
fleets of Hawke and Boscawen, were now scattered, on board of their
innumerable cruisers, over the wide and narrow seas of both hemi-
spheres, making prey on British commerce. Of all the infatuated ideas
that have crossed the brain of a ruler none was ever more illusory than
this notion that the Americans would sit with folded hands, and
sheathed weapons, while England and France fought their quarrel
out. The Revolution had bred and trained a multitude of restless and
repressible warriors both on land and sea. Paul Jones, Anthony Wayne,
and Harry Lee, and Morgan's sharpshooters, and Marion's fiery gue-
rillas, were not the men to desert the war-path because King George
had ordained that active hostilities between England and America
should slacken, and cease, up to the precise moment when he himself
found it convenient to begin again. Unless he could bring himself to
make peace with the United States the King was in the plight of a
hunter who had hold of a wolf, or rather a grizzly bear, by the ears
at a time when the most formidable wild beasts of the forest came
ravening upon him.

The prospect was alarming to all far-sighted men; and the future,
when it began to unfold itself, did not belie their most gloomy antici-
pations. As those black years rolled on, the dangers which beset our
country were continually on the increase, and her hope of deliverance
lessened. A conviction gradually crept over the public mind that Eng-
land could never emerge, safe and erect, from the conflict with her
European foes unless she consented to treat with Congress upon terms
which Congress would accept. That view of the only possible solu-
tion became evident at last to the great majority of Englishmen, but
not to the King. He, for his part, refused to make an acknowledgment
which was the condemnation of his own colonial policy, and his own
favourite system of parliamentary management. He had brought upon
himself, and on his subjects, calamities and distress almost as bad as
the plagues of Egypt; but his heart was hardened against America,
366

and he would not let her people go. He was unable to give any tenable
reason for his persistence; he persuaded no man's judgment; and the
time eventually arrived when he looked around him in vain for any
sincere and disinterested adherent to his policy. That policy was clam-
orously defended by bribed senators, and pensioned courtiers, and
the whole swarm of army-jobbers, and loanmongers, and fraudulent
contractors who

"leach-like to their fainting country cling
Till they drop blind in blood."

It was supported in the Cabinet mainly by the Bedfords,— • a knot of
reckless statesmen, overloaded with debt, and intent only on keeping
the Government in place for another, and yet another, quarter-day.
The Prime Minister, and his more respectable colleagues, conscience-
stricken and miserable, begged piteously to be allowed to resign their
offices and permit the nation to be saved by less discredited and more
independent men than themselves; but they served an inexorable
master, who combated their prayers and expostulations sometimes with
angry reproaches, and sometimes with earnest and pathetic appeals
to their personal affection for himself. King George has met his deserts
from the hands of posterity. Mr. Lecky, writing with unwonted pas-
sion, has pronounced that his course of action, during the later part
of the American War, was "as criminal as any of the acts which led
Charles the First to the scaffold." More than one famous writer has
exerted all the powers of his pen in drawing a parallel between George
the Third and George Washington, to the immense disadvantage of
the English monarch; but it is unfair to try an hereditary ruler by the
standard which is applied to men who have risen, by pre-eminent
merit, from a private station to the height of power. Kings should be
compared with kings; and, if that course is adopted, it is impossible
to doubt that the American difficulty would have been more prudently
and rationally handled, from first to last, if the throne of Britain had
been occupied, not by George the Third, but by a monarch endowed
with the solid judgment, the calm temper, and the watchful and en-
lightened public spirit of his grandfather, or his great-grandson.

A most striking contrast between the position of England in 1763
and in 1777, and between the methods of government pursued re-
spectively by George the Second and by his successor, was drawn by
a pamphleteer of an ability unusual even in days when the ablest men

367

devoted their best thought and labour to the political pamphlet. Burke
himself has not left behind him a more searching analysis, or a more
unanswerable condemnation, of George the Third's favourite System
of Personal Government, than this anonymous author. "So material
a change/* (he wrote,) "as a little space of time, yet short of a quarter
of a century, hath wrought in our empire, cannot be ascribed to acci-
dent. Probably the history of mankind, and of human society, doth not
furnish such another. Let us pause for a moment, and look up to that
pinnacle of national glory from which we have fallen. Compared with
this power, — the extent to which it might have been pushed, the ad-
vantages which might have been derived from it, — everything that
hath gone before it is trifling and insignificant. I speak with the pride,
the partiality, the enthusiasm of an Englishman. Alas! How are all
our well-founded expectations destroyed! Where are we now to seek
our glorious dependencies ? ... The reign of George the Second af-
forded the ministers of his successors a large body of experience which
a real statesman would have been fortunate in the possession of. The
maxims pursued in that reign were wise, not because they were to
be accounted for upon this or that theory, but because their conse-
quences were salutary. Strange as it will tell to posterity, this body of
experience was not sapped by degrees, but at once, totally, and in all
its parts, overthrown by those who were called to the Administration
after his present Majesty's accession. As if the public happiness were
a subject of envy to the courtiers, that happiness was to be reversed.
Men, who have never given a proof of capacity, were placed in the
front offices; and the doctrine of the Court was that the King's choice
was not to be questioned, and that the Royal favour was to stand in
the place of all qualifications for public employment." 3

That was most indubitably the doctrine of the Court; and for eight-
een years, with one brief interval, George the Third's ministers had
been men of his own choice, and to his own mind. The nation, by the
end of that time, was satiated with experience as to the true worth,
in peace or in war, of a Government selected by such a process. The
internal administration of the Earl of Bute, the Duke of Grafton,
and Lord North had been marked by abuses which loom very large
in our political history, and in our national literature. Their repeated
assaults on the freedom of the Press, and the freedom of Election,
kept Parliament in a chronic state of factious and barren agitation,

3 Address to the public by an Unconnected Whig; 1777. From the collection of
pamphlets at the Athenaeum Club.

368

and plunged the City of London into a fever of excitement varied by
not unfrequent ebullitions of popular fury. Great, indeed, were the
issues involved in those long and angry controversies; and yet, how-
ever flagrant were the scandals of our domestic history, the world was
only half acquainted with the personal character, and the qualifications
for exalted office, of King George's favourite statesmen, until, in a
disastrous hour of the British empire, they began to exhibit their im-
providence and incapacity to a far larger circle of spectators, and on a
more conspicuous stage.

Unwarned by the recent lesson of the Stamp Act, which had been
written in such glaring characters across so many pages of our story,
these fatal rulers insisted on making a grave and far-reaching innova-
tion in the fiscal arrangements of America without the smallest particle
of consideration for American opinion; and then, having irritated all
the thirteen colonies, and driven Massachusetts to disaffection and
despair, they entered upon a headlong course of vindictive repression.
Parliament which, under their leadership, could seldom or never find
time for the long arrears of useful legislation so urgently needed by
the people of Great Britain, was called upon to pass a whole series
of Coercion Acts devised against the people of America. The military
occupation of their townships; the ruin of their cities; the annihila-
tion of their commerce; the extinction of their chartered rights, — those
were some of the spells by which these clumsy magicians undertook
to exorcise that spirit of rebellion which they themselves had raised.
But it is a work of superfluity, at this distance of time, to pile up an
indictment against men who already stood self-condemned before the
tribunal of their own contemporaries. In February 1778 Lord North
informed a dumb-foundered* and almost incredulous, House of Com-
mons that his Cabinet had resolved to abandon the Tea Duty; to
renounce the power of taxing America without her own consent; to
repeal the Boston Port Act, the Massachusetts Government Act, and
the Act for Restraining the Trade and Commerce of the New England
Colonies; and to surrender every claim and demand, whether trivial
or essential, for the sake of enforcing which England had fought a
dozen battles, had spent seventy million pounds, and was now em-
barked upon what threatened to be the most perilous European war in
which she had ever yet been implicated.

The men whom the King delighted to honour had blundered
egregiously as Home Ministers and as Colonial Ministers; and by this
time they had given a more than sufficient sample of their value as

369

War Ministers. During the opening years of the American rebellion
our soldiers never came short of their duty, and our regimental officers
performed their part to admiration. It could not indeed be denied that
British generals in the field had not always made the most of their
opportunities; but the prime cause of their failure, — as every com-
petent critic, from Frederic the Great downwards, perceived then, and
as every student of our military history recognizes now,— had been
the senseless scheme of strategy which was dictated to them from
Downing Street. It was the unhappy fate of Great Britain to enter
upon an internecine war with France, and in all probability with half
Europe, under the guidance of statesmen who had wasted four cam-
paigns over an unsuccessful attempt to put down an insurrection in
our own colonies. All opponents of the ministers, and many more of
their supporters than chose to admit it, contemplated the future with
distrust and dismay; and their worst fears were justified by the event.
After four more years of squandered resources, and mismanaged hos-
tilities, and baffled diplomatic efforts, Lord North and his partners
had been judged and condemned by every Englishman who was not
paid to praise them. What their best friends thought about them in
the spring of 1782 was bluntly expressed by the most staunch of Tories.
"Such a bundle of imbecility," (said Doctor Samuel Johnson,) "never
disgraced a country. If they sent a messenger into the City to take up
a printer, the messenger was taken up instead of the printer, and com-
mitted by the sitting Alderman. If they sent one army to the relief
of another, the first army was defeated and taken before the second
arrived. I will not say that what they did was always wrong; but it
was always done at a wrong time." It was idle to hope that England
would ever be extricated by such feeble and awkward hands from the
net of danger in which she was so deeply entangled. No more urgent
and vital question has ever been submitted to Parliament than the
expulsion from power of those deplorable ministers, and the abolition
of that system of Court favouritism which had planted and rooted
them in office. And so it came about that, during the later period of
the American War, the Senate was even more important than the
camp; and the centre of interest was transferred from the banks of the
Delaware and the Hudson rivers to the polling-booths of Great Britain,
and the floor of the House of Commons.

Amidst the turmoil of these anxious and troubled years Lord Chat-
ham presented as noble, and in some respects as pathetic, a figure as
370

any which stands in the gallery of history. Whether or not he was the
greatest of Englishmen, he had, beyond all question whatever, done
the greatest work for England; and he lived to see the best part of
that work undone by the hands of others. Goethe has complained,
somewhat sadly, that, if a man accomplishes something for the sake
of the world, the world will take good care that he shall never do it
a second service; and there is no more striking exemplification of
Goethe's remark than the story of Lord Chatham and the British
empire. When Chatham, after his long and mysterious illness, once
more appeared in public he had regained something of his ancient
vigour, and all his unequalled judgment of State affairs on a large
and comprehensive scale. But those rare powers of insight and pre-
vision did not make for his happiness; for he returned to find the
goodly fabric of political liberty and national pre-eminence, which his
own hands had raised, sapped to the foundation by the perversity of
his successors. The great ex-minister knew America with a knowledge
founded on long experience, and intense interest and affection; he could
read the motives and ambitions of foreign Courts as in an open book;
he was minutely acquainted with the naval and military resources of
Great Britain, as compared with those of her European ill-wishers and
rivals; and he discerned, at a very early moment, the inevitable issue
of Lord North's colonial policy. Before ever the Boston Port Bill had
left the House of Commons Chatham foresaw and foretold the long
series of calamities which was sure to follow. "A fatal desire," he wrote,
"to take advantage of this guilty tumult of the Bostonians, in order
to crush the spirit of liberty among the Americans in general, has taken
possession of the heart of the Government. If that mad and cruel meas-
ure should be pushed, one need not be a prophet to say that England
has seen her best days." 4

During several generations after Chatham's death his legitimate fame
suffered, in no small degree, from the undiscriminating admiration and
gratitude of his fellow-countrymen. Some of his most characteristic
attributes were lost and forgotten in the popular tradition of the over-
powering orator who conquered France by animating our nation at
home, and our soldiers and sailors abroad, with his own patriotic au-
dacity and self-devotion. But his contemporaries knew him likewise as
a painstaking and all but omniscient administrator, for whom no pre-
cautions were too humble, and no particulars too dull; as a master of
strategy, and a consummate judge of military merit in the generals and

* The Earl of Chatham to the Earl of Shelburne; Burton Pynsent, March 20, 1774.

371

admirals who fought our country's battles on land and sea. The dili-
gence of recent historians has disclosed to us the full secret of those
methods by which Chatham repaired defeat and organised victory. His
power of speech, it is true, was among the wonders of the world; and
it was the gift of nature. Members of his family, before and after him,
had at their command an inexhaustible store of passionate and pictur-
esque language which some of them applied to trivial and unworthy
uses; and his second son inherited the Pitt eloquence, perfected to the
very highest standard of culture and precision.5 The spontaneous rush
of Chatham's rhetoric, apart from the mastery which it gave him over
the emotions of his audience, was of practical advantage to the quality
of his statesmanship; for he was spared all the preliminary trouble of
picking words, and framing sentences, and could devote his whole
attention to dealing with events and realities. When he had resolved
upon the substance of his policy, the explanation and the defence of
it might safely be left to the unstudied inspiration of the moment.
"Bitter satire," (wrote Horace Walpole,) "was Pitt's forte. When he
attempted ridicule, which was very seldom, he succeeded happily. But
where he chiefly shone was in exposing his own conduct;" and his con-
duct during the Seven Years' War, was of a nature to bear the closest
and most searching exposition. Walpole, a loyal son, was fond of con-
trasting Chatham's oratory with his own father's shrewd and homely
mode of addressing the House of Commons, and he was always fair
to both his heroes. Sir Robert's strength, (wrote Horace,) was "under-
standing his own country"; and his foible may be said to have been
inattention to other countries, which made it impossible that he should
thoroughly, and for all purposes, understand his own. But Chatham
understood every Government in Europe, every Native State on the

5 Chatham's grandfather, the Governor of Madras, (as Lord Rosebery's readers know,)
was a man of exceptionally masterful and emotional nature, whose correspondence was
conducted on a high level of emphasis and passion. His denunciations of all who ven-
tured to criticise his very high-handed methods of Indian administration, or to question
the genuineness of his Pitt diamond, display a wealth of invective which leaves no
doubt of the source from which the Great Commoner derived his eloquence. The family
characteristics were not less deeply marked in a succeeding generation. The biographer
of Lady Hester Stanhope, Chatham's granddaughter, was lost in perpetual admiration
of her forcible and impetuous volubility. "She was,*' we are told, "unceasingly employed
in laying bare the weakness of our common nature," or, hi plainer language, in harangu-
ing about the shortcomings of other people* On that topic she could hold an audience,
or more usually a single auditor, for many hours at a time. The performance was, be-
yond all doubt, an extraordinary exhibition of rhetorical powers; and the voice was
the voke of Chatham. "Good God!" said her uncle, the Prime Minister: "If I were
to shut my eyes I should think it was my father."

372

sea-board of Hindostan, and every British and foreign colony in the
Western Hemisphere. One of his contemporaries, who was a well-
known and much respected man of business, pronounced that, "while
Lord Chatham's abilities were transcendent, his knowledge was almost
boundless:" 6— his knowledge, that is to say, of what was worth know-
ing, for his want of acquaintance with unimportant things was a stand-
ing marvel to that large portion of London society which concerned
itself about little else.

The world-wide magnitude of Chatham's successful operations is
unparalleled in modern history. Napoleon's comprehensive glance
swept as wide an horizon of land and sea, and his armies were vastly
greater than those that contended in the Seven Years' War; but Napo-
leon's schemes ended in a huge ruin, while the English minister made
his country the queen of nations. The elder Pitt's arrangements for a
campaign in Germany, or an expedition across the ocean, remain on
record as a model which only too few of his successors have been at
the pains to imitate. He ascertained beforehand the force required for
each successive undertaking; and he provided that force, and some-
thing over. He selected his commanders with care, and trusted them
absolutely, — depicting to them, in broad but intelligible outlines, the
nature of their allotted task; leaving them a generous latitude; and
perplexing them with no contradictory or ambiguous suggestions.7 But
he never spared ink and paper when dealing with a point of practical
detail. His letters on business were no formal departmental despatches,
drawn up by subordinates, with the great man's signature scrawled
at the foot of a half-read document. He took infinite personal trouble
to secure that the naval and military authorities should be aware of
each other's needs, and should play into each other's hands. On the
eve of the final struggle with the French in Canada his admiral on the
American station was duly informed that the Government at home
had taken up twenty thousand tons of transport, with six months' food
for all on board, and equipped in every respect for the reception of ten
thousand troops on the scale of a toa and a half per man. On the same

6 Letter of January 1770 from Thomas Bentley, the partner of Josiah Wedgwood.

7 "I am to signify to you the King's pleasure that you do attempt, with the utmost
vigor, the reduction of Canada. At the same time His Majesty, placing great confidence
in your Judgment and Capacity, is pleased to leave entirely to your discretion by what
Avenues you will penetrate into the same; and whether you shall judge it most ex-
pedient to operate in one Body, or by detaching, in the Manner you mention, a Corps
to the right, and another to the left." Mr. Secretary Pitt to General Amherst; Whitehall,
March 10, 1759.

373

day General Amherst was told how many of the ten thousand men,
and the six thousand field-tents, were consigned to him for the further-
ance of his own objects, and how many had been shipped direct to
General Wolfe at Louisburg; and Mr. Secretary Pitt,— a very different
war-minister from the nobleman who devised the campaign of Sara-
toga,—did not forget to supply General Amherst with a copy of the
Secret Instructions which had been sent to General Wolfe. Special
attention, according to the medical lights of the day, was bestowed on
the physical comfort and welfare of the troops; although it was clearly
laid down that, in the last resort, no subsidiary considerations should
be allowed to interfere with the exigencies and opportunities of active
warfare. Brigadier General Wolfe having represented that it would be
of the greatest utility to the health of the army to have a quantity of
molasses to make spruce beer as a preservative from scurvy, measures
had been adopted for enabling the privates to purchase that liquor at
a halfpenny a quart. "But it is the King's express pleasure," wrote
Pitt, "that you do not, on account of the Molasses above-mentioned,
delay for one moment the Embarkation and Sailing of the Troops."

The elder Pitt, as became a great Englishman, was a maritime strate-
gist of the highest order. His instructions to Admiral Boscawen,
preparatory to the siege of Louisburg, have been justly admired as ?
shining example in their own class. Pitt there laid down the doctrine
that a naval administrator,— with the view of securing the passage
across the sea of his own reinforcements, and intercepting the rein-
forcements of the enemy,— should concentrate his ships of war in over-
powering force at the point of departure and the point of arrival, and
allow his transports to find a way for themselves over the compara-
tively secure expanse of the mid-ocean.8 If Lord North's Board of
Admiralty, in the autumn of 1781, had acted in accordance with that
sound principle of warfare, the irreparable disaster of Yorktown would
in all likelihood have been averted. Pitt knew geography to some pur-
pose. He had the strength, the destination, and the probable latitude
and longitude, of every French and English squadron on the high seas
always present to his mind. When planning a naval campaign he never
forgot, (so he himself tells us,) that the progress of a fleet is regulated
"by the pace of the lag-ship"; and he took care to find out how slowly,
or how quickly, that lag-ship sailed. The minute events of war were
his delight and recreation, as his generals in the front were well aware.
Lord Amherst's journal-letters,— obviously concealing nothing, obvi-
8 Julian Stafford Corbett's England in the Seven Years' War; volume I, chapter 13-
374

ously exaggerating nothing, and narrating a string of homely and petty
occurrences, lighted up from time to time by the announcement of
splendid successes,— kept the Secretary of State loyally and frankly in-
formed of all that happened while the British army was hewing its
path towards Canada through the primeval forest. In fewer sentences,
(for Wolfe and Boscawen had just then less time to write,) Mr. Pitt
was told how matters had gone at Louisburg; — how the surf ran so
high that it seemed almost impossible to land even if the French ar-
tillery had not been firing across it; how many boats were swamped,
and how many dashed to pieces by the cannon-balls; how long it took
to drive the enemy from the beach, leaving behind them "thirty-five
guns, great and small"; and how it rained so hard all through the siege
that no British soldier had a dry thread upon him until the place sur-
rendered with twenty-four companies of marines, and four battalions
of white-coated infantry. The pride and satisfaction of an officer, se-
lected to carry home the tidings of victory, were enhanced by the pros-
pect of being cross-examined by Mr. Pitt with the well-informed and
sympathetic curiosity which is the most valued compliment that a
civilian can pay to a soldier. "I send Major Barre with this," (so Am-
herst wrote after the capture of Montreal,) "that you may receive all
the intelligence of the apparent state of everything in this country."
When the Major appeared in Downing Street, with a French bullet
in his face which he carried to his grave, the fine qualities displayed
by him during his interviews with the Minister laid the foundation
of a warm personal and political friendship between Pitt and Barre;
and that friendship, in after years, was nobly and generously recog-
nised by Pitt's son.

Pitt's lofty and sterling nature was conspicuously visible in his rela-
titons with the colonial authorities of America, and, through them,
with the American people. In a contest for British honour and British
interests which was waged on many shores, and on every sea, it was
no small advantage that a statesman, who for the time being was su-
preme ruler of the empire, should treat men of British descent, all the
world over, as self-respecting and self-governing citizens. When he had
a point of importance to carry, he began his despatch by setting forth,
in one or two of his rolling sentences, the reasons why he called upon
the American colonists for exertions and sacrifices; and he scrupu-
lously and exactly defined the nature, and the limit, of the demands
which he made upon their patriotism. His Majestv, (so the letter would
commence, for in his public communications he aKvays spoke of George

375

the King rather than of William Pitt the Minister,) not doubting that
all his faithful and brave subjects would continue most cheerfully to
co-operate with, and second to the utmost, the large expense and ex-
traordinary succours supplied by the mother-country for their preser-
vation and future security by completing the reduction of all Canada,
urged them to raise a stated number of regiments proportioned to the
resources of every province. "The King," (Pitt went on to say,) "is
pleased to furnish die Men, so raised as above, with Arms, Ammuni-
tion, and Tents, as well as to order provisions in the same manner as
is done to the rest of the King's Forces. The whole that His Majesty
expects and requires from the several Provinces is the Levying, Cloth-
ing, and Pay of the Men."9 That was how Pitt's requisitions were
worded; and they met with prompt and eager obedience. Massachu-
setts,— so close-fisted against any attempt to take her money without
asking her own consent, — gave Pitt a hundred and forty thousand
pounds in twenty months, and loaded herself with debt when the yield
from current taxation shewed symptoms of dwindling. The less popu-
lous and wealthy colonies strained their credit, and ransacked their
villages for recruits, at the call of a leader who accompanied his appeals
for assistance with explanations which they believed, and exhortations
which fired their public spirit. The Governor of South Carolina, writ-
ing in the name of his province, expressed an earnest hope that, under
the blessing of Almighty God, the next campaign would expel the
French from the Continent of America; that the inhabitants of that
Continent would for the future be safe from an insatiable and cruel
hereditary enemy; and that Mr. Secretary Pitt himself might live to
enjoy the effects of the vigorous measures which he had so wisely pro-
moted. Under that glorious administration every member of our race,
in whatever corner of the universe he had been born, deemed it, like
William Cowper,

& Mr. Secretary Pitt to the Governors of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut,
Rhode Island, New York, and New Jersey; Whitehall, January 7th 1760.

This circular is quoted from The Correspondence of William Pitt, when Secretary^ of
State, with Colonial Governors, and Military and Naval Commissioners in America;
edited by Gertrude Selwyn Kimball. It is a work to be studied along with Mr. Corbett's
England in the Seven Years' War. In the year that these excellent books were published
there appeared an English translation of Albert von Ruville's William Pitt, Earl of
Chatham; but, — whatever valuable qualities this writer's work may possess,— his an-
alysis of Chatham's character, and his theory with regard to Chatham's motives, may
be laid aside in amazed silence.

376

"praise enough

To fill the ambition of a private man
That Chatham's language was his mother tongue,
And Wolfe's great name compatriot with his own." 10

Those were the arts by which Chatham secured for England the
affection of her colonists, and those were the methods by which he
brought her enemies to rout and ruin. But power and responsibility
had been transferred to other hands than his; and the statesman, who
had extended and consolidated our empire, was thenceforward a sad
and anxious, though not a silent, spectator of a policy which had
brought about his disruption, and which threatened to result in its
downfall. He had combated at each successive stage, with weighty argu-
ments and glowing words, the action of the King's government in
relation to America. That action produced the consequences which
from the first he had predicted. America renounced her allegiance to
the British Crown; and it was too late for even Chatham's oratory to
undo the mischief. He did not, however, deem himself absolved from
the duty of counselling Parliament; and, when the occasion presented
itself, he gave utterance to warnings and prophecies every one of which
was scouted by men in office, and every one of which was fulfilled by
the event. He had told the Ministers, at a very early moment, that it
was idle to dream of reducing the whole of British America to obedi-
ence with three or four slender brigades of infantry. In the late war,
(so he reminded them,) the expulsion of the French from a compara-
tively small part of that region had required the exertions, "during five
full years, of forty thousand men, under the command of one of the
ablest generals in Europe, Sir Jeflfery Amherst." His advice was ne-
glected. Only ten thousand troops were sent; and, so far from over-
running the thirteen colonies, they were not enough to defend even
the single town of Boston, where they would have been captured to
a man if they had not been withdrawn by sea.

France was Chatham's ancient adversary, whose projects he divined
as a swordsman divines, and anticipates, the intention of his opponent
to plant a thrust. In January 1775 the Ministers, with a light heart, and
no eye for future European complications, exhorted the House of Lords
to approve by an overwhelming majority the forcible subjugation of
the revolted colonies. Chatham reminded his brother Peers that Amer-
ica did not stand alone in the world of nations. "France," he said, "has

10 The Tas%; ii, 235.

377

her full attention upon you. War is at your door; and carrying the
question here by your votes tonight will not save your country from
the extremity of peril." And now in December 1777, a few days after
the reception of the news from Saratoga, the Cabinet thought it well
to adjourn Parliament over the space of six entire weeks, as if it were
a matter of paramount importance that the Peers and Commoners
should not miss their Christmas hunting. Lord North, in the Lower
House, had encountered the objections which were offered to the pro-
posal by an easy and offhand assurance that France and Spain had no
mind to molest us, and that, in any case, England was prepared at all
points to meet either of them, or both of them together. Such was not
the view of Lord Chatham. "At so tremendous a season," he said, "it
does not become your Lordships, the great hereditary council of the
nation, to retire to your country-seats in quest of joy and merriment,
while the real state of public affairs calls for the fullest exertions of
your wisdom. It is your duty, my Lords, to advise your sovereign, to
be the protectors of your country, to be conscious of your own weight
and your own authority." Lord Chatham wished to keep Parliament
sitting, not for the purpose of making fine speeches, but in order to
lose no opportunity of enforcing practical suggestions of immense im-
portance, and bringing to the public knowledge significant and mo-
mentous facts. He was almost the first, and quite the most earnest,
to recommend an immediate embodiment of the Militia. Using the
modesty of true greatness, as if he had been rather the witness, than
the author, of those judicious measures which in former days had
saved and aggrandised England,— he told his audience how, during
the late war> he had enjoyed the satisfaction of visiting no less than
three extensive and admirably situated camps, swarming with a well-
trained and well-armed Militia. "I remember," he said, "when appear-
ances were not nearly so melancholy and alarming as at present, that
there were more troops in Kent alone, for the defence of that county,
than there are now in the whole island.*'

Chatham's speeches made all the deeper impression upon the coun-
try at large because, for the most part, they remained without an
answer in the assembly to which they were addressed. We are told
that "it became fashionable, if not a rule of conduct, with the Court
Lords" to treat his censures and proposals with an affected indifference,
and to talk contemptuously about his waning powers.11 But that sort
of conversation was reserved for the dinner-table and the supper-

11 History of Europe in the Annual Register of 1778; chapter 3.

378

table; and the Treasury Bench in the House of Peers, when Chatham
was concerned, seemed seldom or never in a fighting mood. Lord
Sandwich and Lord Weymouth, on whom the main burden of the
debate lay, were voluble enough when there was a meek or discredited
opponent in face of them; but they both had the strongest personal
reasons for not venturing to engage at close quarters with an antago-
nist, himself of unimpeachable character, who wielded with such ter-
rible effectiveness the lash of moral reprobation. The Ministry, unable
to refute so powerful an adversary in open debate, endeavoured to dis-
parage his authority by the agency of mercenary pens. In pamphlets
written by State pensioners, and in newspaper paragraphs paid for out
of the Secret Service money, Lord Chatham's past history was held
up to reproach, and his good fame bespattered by calumnies. Those were
not, and never had been, Chatham's own weapons. "Mr. Pitt," (it has
been said,) "to his immortal honour, employed no writer to justify his
administration. He nobly declared in the House of Commons that he
wished for no approbation of his measures but that which was con-
stitutional. The moment those who were the best judges of his conduct
disapproved it, he would withdraw into retirement."12 As a senator
he always answered argument with argument; and as a war-minister,
(so Horace Walpole finely said,) he replied to abuse by victories.

Lord North's government reverted to Sir Robert Walpole's practice
of subsidising the press, and carried it to a height which it had never
attained before. It was matter of common knowledge that many thou-
sand pounds of public money were distributed annually among people
who, in the language of the Opposition, were "a set of dishonest
scribes"; but, whatever epithets these gentry may have deserved, they
had the merit of keeping faith with their employers whenever they
were told off to attack the Earl of Chatham. "The Duke of Newcastle,"
according to the Morning Post, "used to say that Mr. Pitt's talents
would not have got him forty pounds a year in any country but this.
His lips dropped venom. When he had obtained enormous legacies,
pensions, and sinecures, the mask fell off. His treachery to the cause
of the people still loads his memory with curses." Lord Chatham had
insisted, with extraordinary force, upon the distinction which should
be drawn between German rulers who hired out soldiers to put down
the rebellion in America, and German rulers who, in the Seven Years'
War, had sent their troops to serve with British allies, and in British
pay, for the purpose of repelling a French invader from the soil of

12 London Evening Post; Saturday August 7, to Tuesday August 10, 1779.

379

the German Fatherland. The ministerial journalists professed them-
selves unable to see any difference between the two cases. "That vain
old dotard with the short memory," (such was the description of Chat-
ham given by one of the ablest among them,) "seems to have forgot
the meaning and use of auxiliary troops. I am astonished that this
new-made Lord should, in the House of Peers, take the liberty to
abuse his betters, the German Princes, who are much older gentlemen
than himself, with all the blackguardism of modern patriotism, when
so many Noblemen sit there who can claim their pedigrees from a
descent of above a hundred years. If this goes on much longer he, and
his gang, shall hear some private anecdotes not very pleasing to
them." 1S To us it seems strange that an Englishman should ever have
lived who thought a Landgrave of Hesse, and a Margrave of Anspach,
the betters of Chatham.

The stream of Treasury gold which poured through the subter-
ranean chanels of literature was wasted money for any effect which it
produced upon the serious judgment of the country. The times were
such that Englishmen did not care to take their politics from Grub
Street. When the tidings from Saratoga were followed closely by an
announcement that France and America had joined hands,— when a
conviction flashed upon the public mind that we had no army at home,
and only an outward show of a war-fleet in the channel; — the world,
as if by a single and simultaneous impulse, bethought itself of the
statesman who, just twenty years back, had rescued England from al-
most as poor a plight, and within the space of thirty months had
mounted her on a pinnacle of triumph. The hour had come round
once again, and the man was still there. Everyone who had anything
to lose, everyone who cared for the interests and honour of the nation,
joined in a cry for the return to office of the Earl of Chatham. The
journalists in Government pay began to change their note. One news-
paper, which had repeatedly assured its readers that, if ministers had
taken Lord Chatham's advice, they would have rendered themselves
the laughing-stock of Europe, suddenly inquired why the great Earl,
whose health was now completely re-established, held aloof from at-
tendance in Parliament. It was no answer, (said another Tory jour-
nalist,) to repeat that Lord Chatham was past his prime. Mr. Pitt had
always been thought older than he really was, "for the same reason
that the same error prevailed with regard to the celebrated Voltaire,"
because he came into public life earlier than most of his contempo-

13 Letter from Vindex in the Morning Post; Dec. n, 1777.

380

raries, and was already a distinguished ornament of the House of
Commons at the age of six-and-twenty. It soon became evident that
those gentlemen were writing under orders. Lord Barrington, who then
was still Secretary at War, took upon himself to inform the King that
a general dismay existed in all ranks and all conditions, arising from
an opinion that the Government was unequal to the crisis; — an opin-
ion, (he confessed,) so universal that it prevailed among those who
were dependent on, and attached to, the ministers, and even among
those ministers themselves. "Lord North," (in the works of Mr. Lecky),
"implored the King to accept his resignation, and to send for Lord
Chatham. Bute, the old Tory favourite, breaking his long silence, spoke
of Chatham as indispensable. Lord Mansfield, the bitterest and ablest
rival of Chatham, said with tears in his eyes that, unless the King sent
for Chatham, the ship would go down." u

Men of all parties, save and except the Bedfords, were united in call-
ing for Lord Chatham. But the King's repugnance was inexorable.
In these days we are told that History has no right to concern itself
with Ethics. Whether such be the case or not, a prudent historian will
gladly leave to the moralist the unpleasant task of explaining the mo-
tives of George the Third's hatred for a statesman who had made him
the greatest monarch in the world; who was old enough to be his
father; and whose reverence for the kingly office, and the kingly per-
son, was blamed as excessive even by indulgent critics. The royal vo-
cabulary, often bald and barren, teemed with depreciatory epithets
whenever the subject under discussion was the greatest of living Eng-
lishmen. Lord Chatham's political conduct was so abandoned, — it was
:so absurd to expect from him gratitude, "when the whole tenour of
Hs life had shown him incapable of that honourable sentiment," —
that he, and his family, must hope for no mark of favour from the
•Crown "until death, or decrepitude, had put an end to him as the
trumpet of sedition." 15 That was the strain in which King George had
habitually written about the Earl of Chatham; and, when the leading
men in politics, with Lord North at their head, urged him to accept
the object of his dislike as Prime Minister, his anger was hot and his
resolution stubborn. He acceded to the pretence of a negotiation; but
the conditions which he exacted were such as to render an agreement

14 History of England in the Eighteenth Century, chapter 14.

15 George the Third to Lord North; Kew, August 9, 1775.

381

impossible; 16 and, lest there should be any mistake about the royal
intentions, Lord North was informed specifically that, if Lord Chat-
ham should ask for an interview with the King before giving his
final reply, the King would certainly refuse to see him. No one could
expect, — no one, then or now, could wish, — that Chatham should have
stooped to accept such an offer. The attempt at an arrangement fell
through, to the undisguised relief and satisfaction of the monarch; while
Lord North sadly and reluctandy abandoned the hope of transferring
his responsibilities to the group of statesmen for whom his Sovereign
could find no more respectful appellation than "Lord Chatham and
his crew."

George the Third might safely have dispensed with that ungracious
outburst of self-revelation. The famous statesman, whom he misunder-
stood and misprized, had no desire whatever to impose his services
upon an unwilling master. Ambition was extinct in Chatham's breast;
and, though patriotism sat enthroned there as supreme as ever, he felt
that he was no longer able to fulfil the expectations of his countrymen.
His health was shattered beyond repair; and his strength would not
support the ceaseless vigilance, and relentless labour, which devolve
upon a Minister who is directing, instead of leaving to the hazard of
fortune, the operations of a great war. An ever-present sense of fatigue,
both of mind and body, warned him that the day was already spent,
and the night very close at hand. It was a calm and mellow sunset.
Nowhere might be found a more united family or a more peaceful
home. Lady Chatham, a true helpmate in joy or sorrow, was one with
her husband in affection, in opinion, and in her views of duty. They
had around them their three sons, whom they were launching into
life, which in the case of Chatham meant that he was giving them to

16 The King laid down the limits of concession, for Lord North's guidance, in a
sentence of which the grammar was confused, but the meaning plain, and the spirit
imperious and inexorable. "If," he said, "Lord Chatham agrees to support your Adminis-
tration, or, (if you like the expression better,) the fundamentals of the present Ad-
ministration, and Lord North at the head of the Treasury, Lords Suffolk, Gower, and
Weymouth in great offices of their own inclination, Lord Sandwich in the Admiralty,
Thurloe Chancellor, and Wedderburne a Chief Justice, I will not object to see that
great man when Lord Shelburne and Dunning, with Barre, are placed already in offices:
but I solemnly declare nothing shall bring me to treat personally with Lord Chatham."
King George the Third to Lord North: Queen's House, March i6th, 1778. 28 minutes
past 8 a.m.

In the course of this letter the King speaks of his unwillingness to accept the services
of "that perfidious man"; and Lord Russell, in his memorials of Fox, quotes the ex-
pression as meaning Chatham. Macaulay notes in the margin of the book: **No. Lord
Shelburne certainly.'*

382

his country. The eldest son, as soon as the French war became immi-
nent, had returned to the military profession; and he now was on the
eve of sailing to join the garrison at Gibraltar, which henceforward
was the scene of danger. The third son, a lad of great promise, and
amiable disposition,— "the young tar," said Chatham, "who may, by
the favour of heaven, live to do some good," — had just passed as lieu-
tenant, and was looking forward to his first independent command.17
The second son, William, marked out by nature for a great career, was
waiting for one-and-twenty, and meanwhile served his political appren-
ticeship as the confidential assistant, and inseparable companion, of
his father. "My dear Secretary," the old man called him:— and he
added, with a humorous side-glance at the King and his Secretaries
of State, "I wish Somebody had as good and as honest an one." The
new year of 1778 found Chatham fairly well, and exempt from pain
and discomfort. "Perhaps," (so he told his physician,) "I may last as
long as Great Britain." Early in February he had an attack of gout
which aroused hope, rather than apprehension, in those of his friends
and well-wishers who, according to the accepted theory of their gen-
eration, regarded that disease as a remedy. Lord Granby wrote in much
the same language as his brave father might have addressed to Mr.
Secretary Pitt many years before. "I hope," said the young Peer, "that
your Lordship's gout continues favourable, and will be productive of
such a stock of health as may enable your Lordship to save us from
the cloud of misfortune which impends over our heads." But Chatham
did not mistake his own symptoms and sensations, and was aware that
the end could not be far distant.

Lord Chatham, while the nation clamoured to be governed by him,
stood almost isolated in his attitude towards the question of the mo-
ment. He made no secret of the policy which he would adopt if he
was raised to power. He would cease to contend in arms with the
American rebellion. He would withdraw every British and German
soldier; abrogate every obnoxious statute; renounce every disputed
claim; and trust, for the future reunion of the colonies with the mother-
country, to the healing influence of time and the bonds of a common
race and a common religion. In the debate on the Address of Novem-
ber 1777 he had given the House of Lords his opinion about the con-

17 James Charles Pitt served on the West India station under Rodney, who appointed
him to the Hornet sloop, where he died of fever at the age of twenty. When Lord
Chatham sank down unconscious in the House of Lords it was observed by the report-
ers that the youth, though apparently not more than seventeen or eighteen years old,
displayed a sailor's handiness and presence of mind "in assisting his venerable father."

383

flict with America. "In a just and necessary war," he then said, "to
maintain the rights and honour of my country, I would strip the shirt
off my back to support it. But in such a war as this, unjust in its prin-
ciple, impracticable in its means, and ruinous in its consequences, I
would not contribute a single effort, or a single shilling." On that
point he agreed with Lord Rockingham and the Duke of Richmond
in the Peers, and with Sir George Savile and General Conway in the
Commons; but they, one and all, recognised, — as a stern fact, and an
established certainty, — that the war with America would never cease
until the Independence of America was acknowledged by the govern-
ment of Great Britain. In such an acknowledgment Lord Chatham
refused to concur. He could not bring himself to speak the irrevocable
word which would divide the English people. His position was criti-
cised by Horace Walpole with shrewd and unsparing logic. "He would
recall the troops," (said Walpole,) "and deny the Independence of the
Americans. He is right to recall an army that cannot conquer; but a
country that will not be conquered, and that cannot be, is in an odd
sort of state of dependence." 18 It was an inconsistency very natural,
and very noble, in an old statesman who was dealing with colonies
which he had saved by his genius, where he was still passionately
beloved, and where, (as he beautifully expressed it,) his heart was
garnered.

On the seventh of April, 1778, the American question was brought
forward in the House of Peers by the Duke of Richmond. Chatham in-
sisted on being present at the debate, and, when the Duke ceased
speaking, he rose from his seat amidst the anxious sympathy of an
awe-stricken assembly. "His Lordship," so the report runs, "began by
lamenting that his bodily infirmities had so long, and especially at so
important a crisis, prevented his attendance on the duties of Parliament.
He declared that he had made an effort, almost beyond the powers of
his constitution, to come down to the House on this day, (perhaps the
last time he should ever be able to enter its walls,) to express the in-
dignation he felt at an idea, which he understood was gone forth, of
yielding up the sovereignty of America." But to narrate once more the
story of what then occurred would be like telling over again how Nel-
son was struck down on the quarter-deck of the Victory. Lord Chat-
ham was carried, from the scene of the catastrophe, by easy stages to
his home in Kent. There he lay, between life and death, with all his
family about him, except the eldest son, whom he affectionately, but

18 Walpole to the Countess of Ossory; Dec. 5, 1777.

384

firmly, dismissed from attendance at the bedside to his post of duty on
the battlements of Gibraltar.19 On the eleventh of May Chatham
breathed his last. He was saved, by the good fortune of a timely death,
from the distress of seeing a war with France conducted in accordance
with the methods of Lord George Germaine and the Earl of Sand-
wich. Nor is he to be compassionated because he was forbidden by
fate to embark on the hopeless task of resuscitating the loyalty of Amer-
ica towards the British Crown. "Heaven, (it has been truly, and not
unfeelingly, said,) "spared him the anxiety of the attempt, and, we
believe, the mortification of a failure." 20

Edmund Burke, in the finest passage of an admirable speech, had
reckoned the name of Chatham as among the solid and valuable pos-
sessions of the nation. "A great and celebrated name," (so he called
it,) which had kept the name of England respected in every other coun-
try of the globe.21 The citizens of London, in Common Council as-
sembled, expressed an earnest desire that their favourite statesman
should be buried "in their Cathedral Church of St. Paul." Rigby trans-
lated the known sentiments of the King into his own rude and bluster-
ing language, and scoffed at the idea of bestowing a compliment upon
the Aldermen of London, whom he vehemently attacked for their de-
generated respectability, and their detestable politics. The King himself
told his Lord Chamberlain that they might do what they pleased with
the corpse, but that he would not let his Guards march in procession
into the City, Whatever may have been the motives of the refusal, the
decision itself cannot be regretted. The Commons voted Lord Chatham
a public funeral, and a monument in Westminster Abbey which, in
conception and execution, proved worthy of the man whom it com-
memorated; 22 and ample, though not excessive, provision was made

19 A full year elapsed before the new Peer made a hurried visit to England. "The
young Earl of Chatham took the oaths and his seat in Parliament on Thursday last. His
Lordship was dressed in his regimentals, which were scarlet turned up with green, and
he presented a very elegant, manly, and graceful figure. He is as tall as his late
father, has the appearance of much mildness in his countenance, and is said to be a
most examplary young gentleman in his morals and general character." London Evening
Post of Thursday July 17, to Saturday July 19, 1779.

20 The Quarterly Review of June 1840. The article was from the pen of Mr. Croker.

21 Mr. Burke's speech on American Taxation of April 19, 1774.

22 A Whig member, who wished to gratify the City, complained that the proposed
statue in the Abbey "would be too near the ceiling'*; a feature which is the most strik-
ing and characteristic merit of the whole design. The tombs of Chatham and of his
august coaeval Lord Mansfield, — noble monuments, and nobly placed, — go far to re-
deem the North Transept of the Abbey from presenting the appearance of a statuary's
shop.

385

for the bereaved family. Lord North's personal behaviour, throughout
the proceedings, was marked by delicacy, and by genuine good feeling;
and the House of Commons honoured itself by the tribute of respect
and gratitude which it paid to one who in earlier days had been its
own greatest glory.

It was otherwise in the House of Lords. A whole string of insignifi-
cant peers, among whom not the least insignificant was Lord Chan-
cellor Bathurst, delivered themselves as if they were so many members
of a third-rate debating club assembled to discuss a motion condemn-
ing the political conduct of the late Earl of Chatham. They inveighed
against him as an arbitrary ruler; as a spendthrift of the public re-
sources; as a plausible and misleading orator; and as a war-minister
who owed his reputation to better men then himself. One speaker
after another, with suspicious unanimity, reminded their audience that
our successes in the Seven Years' War were due, not to Mr. Secretary
Pitt, but to Lord Hawke and Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick; and
Parliament, (they added,) had not thought fit to treat those distin-
guished warriors with the liberality which it was now invited to exer-
cise towards the Pitt family. Lord Camden replied, on behalf of his
old friend and chief, with intense, but studiously guarded, indignation.
He acknowledged that the professional qualifications of Lord Hawke,
and of Prince Ferdinand, were beyond question; but the one, (he main-
tained,) was Lord Chatham's admiral, and the other, his general; "and
so far from their individual merits lessening those of the deceased Earl,
or diminishing the value of his services, they went directly to enhance
both." Lord Chatham was warmly defended by several other Whig
noblemen; but the honours of the day rested with a member of His
Majesty's Government; for Lord Lyttleton, who with all his faults was
a gentleman, argued forcibly and eloquently on the same lines as Lord
Camden. There had been many commanders, (he said,) who in past
days had led our soldiers and sailors to triumph on land and sea; but
England, in the course of her history, had never seen the like of Chat-
ham. At a dark hour in her fortunes he had thrust his way to the front
by the mere force of his abilities. He had silenced faction; had restored
energy to the administration; and had reduced those national enemies,
who at the outbreak of hostilities were assured of success, "to sue with
the most abject and mortifying humility for peace." As was most ap-
propriate when dealing with a question involving the expenditure of
public money, he gave examples of Chatham's disinterestedness, and
of his high-souled scorn for what then were the customary perquisites
386

of office.23 Lyttleton's fervour thrilled the assembly, and persuaded
most of the ministerialists who had not already committed themselves
in debate. After he had resumed his seat cavil was hushed; and the
financial proposals, which had been sent up from the Lower House,
were carried by a large majority. The Lord Chancellor, and the Arch-
bishop of York, whose own services to the world were remunerated by
colossal incomes, put on record a Protest against "an unwarrantable
lavishing away of public money during an expensive war." But only
two other peers could be induced to sign the document.

The funeral took place on the ninth of June. The great officers of
the Court were absent from the ceremony; and Cabinet Ministers re-
mained at home, as if, (said Horace Walpole,) their modesty shrank
from a comparison with Lord Chatham, Gibbon, as a supporter of the
Ministry, was anything but pleased with his leaders. "The Govern-
ment," he wrote, "ingeniously contrived to secure the double odium
of suffering the thing to be done, and of doing it with an ill grace."
Before ever the grave in the Abbey was closed, the work of detraction
and calumny recommenced. Thurlow, who succeeded Bathurst as Lord
Chancellor within a week of the funeral, had set the tone in Govern-
ment circles by a sarcasm which was exceptionally brutal, even for
him; and aspirants to official preferment launched their gibes against
Lord Chatham in epistles written to be shown in high, and in the
highest, quarters.24 The hirelings of the newspaper press continued, all
summer through, to slander and ridicule the dead statesman with a
pertinacity which, even at this distance of time, provokes contemptu-
ous disgust. Their efforts to belittle him went for less than nothing.
Four years back Edmund Burke had analysed the elements of that
atmosphere of national respect and regard by which Lord Chatham
was surrounded, — "his venerable age, his merited rank, his superior

23 "The noble Earl,*' said Lyttelton, "had gone through offices, which generally
seemed to enrich his predecessors, without deriving a shilling of advantage from his
situation. When he was Paymaster General, a subsidy to the King of Sardinia passed
through his hands. The usual perquisite amounted to more than twenty thousand
pounds. The noble Earl declined to touch it, and the whole sum was found in the
bank years afterwards. It was then offered to the Earl of Chatham as his right. He
refused it; and the money was applied to the public service."

24 Some curious letters in this class have been preserved in the collection of Steevens's
Facsimiles at the British Museum. Sir Beaumont Hotham, for example, wrote thus to
the Right Honourable William Eden. "The 'Chathamania' is very strong upon us. What
a wonderful people we are! If Lord Chatham had happened to have lived till Parliament
had risen, in all probability this wonderful furor would have subsided long before it
met again; and in that case his family would have remained in the same condition as
other families descended from expensive and thoughtless ancestors,"

387

eloquence, his splendid qualities, the vast space which he filled in the
eye of mankind; and, more than all the rest, his fall from power,
which, like death, canonises and sanctifies a great character." And now
death itself had come; and the feeling of England about Lord Chat-
ham, from that moment onwards, was a sentiment altogether above
and outside party. The strength of that feeling was curiously tested
when, after no long interval of time, young William Pitt stepped over
the threshold of manhood into the confidence and affection of his
fellow-countrymen as naturally and easily as an heir-at-law succeeds
to the estate of his predecessor in title. That was the noblest inheritance
which ever descended to son from father.

CHAPTER XIV

FOX AND THE FRENCH WAR.

THE HABITS OF SOCIETY.
PERSONAL POPULARITY OF Fox

\^ HATHAM had passed away, old and very weary; and the times, as
he himself confessed, required the services of younger men. His life's
work had been ruined by a monarch and a minister who belonged to
a later generation than his own; and the deadly peril, which the policy
of George the Third and Lord North had brought upon the nation,
could only be averted by a political leader in the vigour of life, who
possessed the spirit and enterprise of his years. When the news of
Saratoga arrived in London, Charles Fox was still but eight-and-
twenty. He had begun early. At fourteen he attended the theatre,
dressed and powdered in the latest French style. He soon fell roman-
tically in love with the reigning toast of the day; and his sweet and
pretty aunt, Lady Sarah Lennox, could discern nothing but what was
graceful and becoming in the manifestation of his boyish passion.1 At
sixteen his good sayings, — and very good they were, — were duly re-
ported to George Selwyn, even when they were uttered at Selwyn's
own expense; and men of fashion were already glad to win his money,
and to take his advice about the cut and colour of their finery, and
about the matching of their horses at Newmarket. By the age of five-
and-twenty he had despoiled himself of a younger son's landed estate,
and a magnificent fortune in money; and he still was a jovial, an ill-
ordered, and a very far from irreproachable member of society. But
his mind was tending towards nobler interests; and the time gradu-

1 "Charles is in town, and violently in love with the Duchess of Hamilton. Think of
his riding out to see her! You know how he hates it. He is all humbleness and respect,
and never leaves her. He is now quite manly, and is very much liked in the world.
He is a sweet boy, and I hope will continue as he is." Letter of Dec. 16, 1764, in the
Correspondence of Lady Sarah Lennox.

389

ally approached when, in his own peculiar way, he became a reformed
character. He ceased to gamble. He lived contented within his slender
means. His home-life with the woman whom he loved,— both before
and after he married her,— was admired by his uncensorious contem-
poraries as a model of domestic affection, and mutual sympathy in the
insatiable enjoyment of good literature and quiet rural pleasures. Noth-
ing at last remained of the old Charles Fox except the frankness and
friendliness, the inexhaustible good-nature, the indescribable charm of
manner, and the utter absence of self-importance and self-consciousness,
which combined to make him, at every period of his existence, the best
fellow in the world.

It is worth while to place side by side, but not in contrast, three sepa-
rate accounts of Charles Fox at three different and distant epochs of
his life. "I have passed," (so George Selwyn wrote in 1774,) "two eve-
nings with him at Almack's; and never was anybody so agreeable, and
the more so from his having no pretensions to it." Many years later,
when he was near forty, he paid a visit to Gibbon in his pleasant her-
mitage at Lausanne; and the historian, — who had conversed with most
English, and not a few European, celebrities, and who knew all that
could be told in books about the best and greatest men of many ages
and countries,— declared that no human being was ever more perfectly
exempt than Mr. Fox from the taint of malevolence, vanity, and false-
hood. Such, in his early youth, and in middle life, Charles Fox showed
himself to his elders and his political opponents. How, after the lapse
of twenty more years, he was beloved by the younger members of his
own family circle, is recorded in Lord Holland's narrative of the great
statesman's last illness. "On my approaching my uncle's bedside,"
(Lord Holland writes,) "he said, with a melancholy smile which I can
never forget: 'So you would not leave me, young one, to go to Paris,
but liked staying with me better!'" The hour had arrived when on
his own account Fox was not unwilling to have done with life; but he
could not speak without deep emotion of his wife, or of the public
causes which he had nearest at heart. "Do not think me selfish, young
one," he said. "The Slave Trade and Peace are such glorious things.
I cannot give them up even to you." His last intelligible sentence was,
"I die happy." In that placid mood, which was so habitual to him, he
left a world the pleasures of which he had keenly relished, and where
he had endured, good-humouredly and gallantly, very much more than
his fair share of abuse and injustice, of disappointed hopes and baffled
labour.
390

By the time that the American War had run half its course the par-
liamentary position of Charles Fox was unique in the history of na-
tional assemblies. The Lower House was an aristocratic body, includ-
ing almost every commoner who was prominent in fashionable society,
and pervaded by a spirit of easy and unceremonious equality. Fox was
familiarly known to all his brother-members, and quite as much at
home among them as a clever and popular undergraduate among the
students of a great Oxford or Cambridge College. The politicians at
Westminster had always heard a great deal about him while he was
still at Eton, and had met him in London and at Ascot far more fre-
quently than his schoolmasters ought to have permitted. He was elected
for Midhurst at the age of nineteen; he was on his legs before many
months had passed; and, when once he knew the sound of his own
voice in Parliament, he seldom or never was a silent member for
four-and-twenty consecutive hours. In the course of two sessions, ac-
cording to his own story, he spoke every day but one, and was sorry
he had not spoken on that day likewise; and, strange to say, the rest
of the House was sorry also. The extraordinary effect which, from the
very first, was produced by his masterful rhetoric, is established by the
unanimous testimony of impartial, and even hostile, witnesses; but it
must be taken on trust, for it is impossible to define, and difficult even
to conjecture, the nature of the spell which the wayward and audacious
young patrician cast upon his audience. His politics, anti-democratic
to excess, were for some years the politics of a boy, and not the best or
wisest of boys; but the greatest orators of a great generation envied the
skill and force with which he expounded and defended the perverse
and absurd opinions which it pleased him to adopt. His speeches were
admired by his adversaries of the Opposition more than they were
liked by the Government which he supported. The Cabinet was deeply
committed to a warfare against the liberty of the Press, and the rights
of the Middlesex electors; and Charles Fox was perpetually exhorting
Ministers to intensify the rigour of their harsh and unconstitutional
policy. However far and fast Lord North and his colleagues travelled
along the path of repression, they could not save themselves from being
upbraided as lukewarm guardians of authority and order by the young
Draco who sat behind them, and sometimes amongst them. Always an
object of terror to the leaders of his own party, Charles Fox was never
so formidable to them as during those intermittent periods when he
condescended to adorn the Treasury Bench as a subordinate member
of the Ministry.

391

The change came, just in time for his own reputation, and for his
usefulness as a servant of the public. In the spring of 1774 Charles Fox
broke, finally and irreconcilably, with Lord North's government; and,
(what was more to the purpose,) he broke with his old self likewise.
The deaths of both his parents, and of his elder brother, within the
space of half a year, — together with the knowledge of that distress
which his unspeakable folly, and unbridled extravagance, had brought
upon those whom he loved, — set him thinking soberly and remember-
ing sadly, and produced in him a penitence which was sincere and
lasting. He was governed from within by more honourable impulses
than had actuated him in the past; and the political associates with
whom he now consorted were men whose advice and example he could
safely follow. Edmund Burke, and Sir George Savile, were very differ-
ent mentors from the Right Honourable Richard Rigby, and the Earl
of Sandwich. In another respect, moreover, Charles Fox enjoyed a rare
advantage, which, (as it is not uncharitable to believe,) was due to
his good luck rather than to his foresight and discretion. In his salad
days, when he was green in judgment, he had never uttered a word
about America, — good, bad, or indifferent, — which remained on rec-
ord. And therefore when Lord North, throwing open the casket of
Pandora, invited Parliament to wreck the prosperity of Boston and
extinguish the freedom of Massachusetts, Fox, to the astonishment and
amusement of the House of Commons, presented himself in the very
unusual attitude of a cold and cautious neutrality. "Without heat," (so
Walpole tells us,) "he felt himself at liberty to take what part he should
please," The world was not long left in suspense as to what that part
would be. During the remainder of the session, the last session of a
bad Parliament, Charles Fox was an unflinching opponent of those
penal laws which provoked the armed resistance of New England. He
spoke seldom,— for him,— but always with effect; he was fertile in em-
barrassing objections, and in practical amendments which the Govern-
ment had no choice but to accept; and, above all, he established his
claim to be heard amidst the noisiest tumult of an excited house, and
at the closing hour of a prolonged discussion. There was that about
him which repelled insult. It frequently happened, while those fate-
laden measures were being rushed through Parliament, that the pro-
tests of Conway and Barre, and even of Burke himself, were inter-
rupted by jeers and drowned in clamour. But, when Fox rose to his
feet, he never failed to command universal and willing attention by
his impressive vehemence, his persuasive logic, and his unerring tact.
392

Nor would he consent to resume his seat until the whole row of Min-
isters had listened to every syllable o£ that impassioned rush of closely-
reasoned sentences in which he conveyed his disapproval of their policy.
The new parliament met in November 1774; and within three years
from that date Charles Fox, — with no suspicion of intrigue, or even
of conscious intention, on his own part, and without jealousy on the
part of others, — had advanced naturally, and by gradual stages, into
the undisputed leadership of the Opposition in the Commons. He spoke
on every important occasion with increased acceptance, and immense
authority. His prophecies had all come true, and the Ministers them-
selves could not conceal their regret that his warnings had been allowed
to pass unheeded. He had reached the summit of his intellectual and
physical powers. Henry Grattan, drawing on his long experience of
the Irish and English parliaments, pronounced that Fox, during the
American War, was the best speaker whom he had ever heard. His
method in controversy, then and afterwards, was singularly chival-
rous and straight-forward. "He never," said a careful observer, "mis-
represented what his opponent had said, or attacked his accidental
oversights, but fairly met and routed him where he thought himself
strongest.2 He wasted no time in preliminary skirmishes, but flung
himself upon the key of his adversary's position, pouring in his argu-
ments as a fighting general hurries up his successive waves of rein-
forcements in the crisis of a battle. Intent on convincing, he reiterated
the substance of his case in fresh forms, and with new illustrations,
until the stupidest of his hearers had caught his full meaning; while
the cleverest, and the most fastidious, never complained that Charles
Fox spoke too long, or repeated himself too often. Always the pre-
eminent debater, at this period of his career he was a superb orator.
Joseph Galloway, the Pennsylvanian loyalist, who was a frequent at-
tendant in the House of Commons, observed him with the eyes of a
bitter and implacable enemy. The person of Fox, (according to Gallo-
way,) was short and squalid; his appearance was mean and disagree-
able; his voice inharmonious, and his countenance strongly Judaic. And
yet, when it came to the speech itself, this jaundiced critic was all
praise and admiration. "Fox is not supposed," (so Galloway continued,)
"to possess a great fund of information; but his mind supplies the
deficiency from its own inexhaustible treasure. His delivery is rapid
in proportion to the quickness of his conception. The torrent of argu-
ment comes rolling from him with irresistible force* He does not leave

2 The Character of Charles Fox, by William Godwin.

393

his hearers to follow. He drives them before him. The strongest sense
is not proof against his power. He sways the whole assembly; and
every man communicates the shock to his neighbour." 3
^ Eloquence, if it is to rule the world, must be inspired by strength
of conviction, and by continuity of purpose, Charles Fox converted to
his own way of thinking two successive parliaments, and extricated
his country from the whirlpool of danger in which it was engulfed,
not only because he could make wonderful speeches, but because he
had a policy, while his opponents had none. The Ministers of the
Crown had well-nigh exhausted the national resources in a contest with
our own colonies, for the pursuit of ends every one of which, after four
years of civil war, they had publicly renounced and abandoned as im-
possible of attainment. That was the case as concerned the past. A more
serious crisis had now arisen; and statesmen in office, to whom the
country had a right to look for guidance, stood once again at the parting
of the ways, on a lower and more precipitous stage of the descent along
the road to ruin. A French war, for which France had long been
silently preparing, was already on foot; and a Spanish war was surely
coming. There was hardly a government in Europe which did not
wish us ill, and intend, if the opportunity offered itself, to do us a
mischief. Our Treasury had run dry; the best of our battle-ships, and
almost all our regiments, were on the other side of the Atlantic; and
America was still uncpnquered. It was a moment, above all others,
when it behoved the rulers of England to look facts honestly in the
face. But Lord North and his colleagues, instead of applying themselves
with vigilance and resolution to the altered circumstances of their task,
went on trifling and dawdling, as they had trifled and dawdled in the
past;— irritating America by threats and taunts; cajoling Parliament;
manipulating die Press; and attempting to conceal from public knowl-
edge the solitude of their barrack-yards, and the nakedness of their
arsenals. Their management of the war was in flat contradiction to the
dictates of good sense and sound strategy. They had reduced our Home-
fleet to such miserable proportions that, in the summer of 1779, a com-
bined French and Spanish armada paraded unopposed in and about
the British Channel for fifteen livelong weeks. They angered the Baltic
powers, and the Mediterranean powers by their arbitrary and high-
handed treatment of neutral shipping, during a war in which they
themselves failed to provide their own national commerce with that

3 Considerations on the American Enquiry of the year 1779, by Joseph Galloway, the
Speaker of the House of Assembly of Pennsylvania.

394

reasonable amount of protection which British merchants had a right
to expect from a British Admiralty. At a time when every available
soldier was required for the defence of Kent and Sussex, and for service
in the East and West Indies, they kept one army idle, or worse than
idle, within and around the City of New York, and consumed another
army in the series of desultory marches, and bloody engagements,
which led up to the catastrophe of Yorktown. They did not even
themselves believe in the ultimate success of their own hand-to-mouth
policy, and the efficacy of their own half-measures. The Prime Min-
ister, when he spoke the truth in private, confessed that the prolonga-
tion of hostilities in America was morally unjustifiable, and foolish
to the verge of madness. But, in the words of a precise historian, "his
loyalty and personal attachment to the King were stronger than his
patriotism. He was cut to the heart by the distress of his sovereign, and
he was too good-natured to arrest the war." 4

Charles Fox was quite as good-natured as Lord North; but that
was not the shape which his good-nature took. He did not, in Novem-
ber 1778, conceive it expedient to recognise, openly and immediately,
the independence of the United States. His present idea, (so he told
Richard Fitzpatrick,) was in favour of withdrawing the whole Royal
army from America, abstaining from all aggressive operations against
the revolted colonies, and going straight at the throat of France, and
of Spain also, if Spain thought fit to thrust herself into the dispute.
"Whatever," (he said,) "may be the conditions of alliance between the
United States and France, I cannot help thinking that the States will
act very lukewarmly against England when they find themselves wholly
uninterested in the war, and engaged merely by a point of honour."
His industry and his ability were thenceforward directed to a triple
purpose. He laboured strenuously to deter the Ministry from wasting
the resources of England on ill-advised and fruitless efforts for the
subjugation of America; he urged them, by every means in their power,
to hurry forward the equipment of our fleets and armies; and he did
all that could be done by a private member of Parliament to see that
the forces of the Kingdom were employed, with unflagging vigour, and
at the right points, against the rapidly increasing multitude of our
European foes. His comprehensive glance embraced the entire military
and political situation; and he had a marvellous faculty for presenting
that situation to the minds of others. In his more important speeches
he reviewed the American question, and the French question, at great

4 Mr. Lecky's History of England in the Eighteenth Century; chapter 14.

395

length, and in all their bearings. Singular as it may appear to men
who know the distaste for being lectured which is a permanent char-
acteristic of the House of Commons, those speeches were as attentively
heard, and as rapturously applauded, as any orations that have ever
been delivered at Westminster. A sense of personal responsibility for
the adequate defence of the country was now the governing motive
which urged Charles Fox to activity; and his efforts were not confined
within the walls of Parliament. He was often at the militia-camps, an
intelligent and deeply interested spectator of the manoeuvres; and he
passed weeks at Portsmouth and at Plymouth, watching the progress
of the work in the fittting-basins and the building-yards, and living on
ship-board with the admirals and captains, among whom he had some
intimate friends, and many acquaintances emulous for the privilege
and pleasure of his company. He did very much to further the national
preparations for giving the French a warm reception on land and sea;
and he threw into the business more heart and spirit than all the
Cabinet Ministers together. Never, since the days of Demosthenes and
his Olynthiac and Philippic orations, did any public speaker, not en-
dued with the power and authority of office, exert so commanding an
influence over die conduct of a war,

Charles Fox, like other great men who are the natural product of
their age, was provided with a theatre expressly suited to the display
of his gifts, and the exercise of his capacities. The long period of years
during which Pitt, and Murray, and Henry Fox contended for suprem-
acy in Parliament had fixed the standard of debate, and had created
a distaste for any speaking that was not unstudied, forcible, perspicu-
ous, and always to the point. Set orations, (said Horace Walpole,)
ceased to be in vogue, "which added to the reputation of those great
masters." Similes, quotations, and metaphors had fallen into disrepute;
allusions to ancient Rome, and ancient Athens, were less liked than
formerly; and the style which, by the end of George the Second's
reign, had become the fashion, was "plain, manly, and argumenta-
tive," and based upon a thorough knowledge of essential facts,5 It was
a fashion which suited Englishmen, who nowhere seemed so com-
pletely English as within the walls of their own representative assem-
bly. The aspect of our parliamentary proceedings was surprising to
a foreigner. A travelling German clergyman has recorded his impres-
sions of the House of Commons, in the days of Fox and North, with

*Uemoires of George the Second, by Horace Walpole. The spelling of the tide is
Walpole's own.

396

the convincing fidelity of a witness who finds the reality of a famous
scene something very different from what he has pictured to himself
beforehand. The interior of the building, (this gentleman said,) was
mean-looking, and reminded him of nothing so much as of the choir
of a Lutheran church in Prussia. The members kept on their hats, and
wore greatcoats, and even boots and spurs. There was no end to their
going in and out, pausing in front of the Speaker, and making him
a bow like boys who ask their master's permission to leave the school-
room. "Those who speak," (he continued,) "deliver themselves with
but little gravity. If a member rises who is a bad speaker, or if what
he says is deemed not sufficiently interesting, so much noise is made,
and such bursts of laughter are raised, that he can scarcely distinguish
his own words. On the contrary, when one, who speaks well and to the
purpose, rises, the most perfect silence reigns; and his friends and ad-
mirers, one after another, make their approbation known by calling
out 'Hear him!'5'6

An authentic description of the inside of the House of Commons,
during the height of the American War, may be read in the speech
of a Somersetshire member. He was known from others of his family
as Mr. Temple Luttrell; for in those upper-class parliaments a round
half-dozen of Luttrells sat for one or another West Country village;
and, between them all, they had something under four hundred con-
stituents. Highway Bills, and Enclosure Bills, (according to Mr. Temple
LuttrelTs account,) generally consumed the time until four o'clock of
the afternoon; and the number of members present when public busi-
ness commenced seldom, or never, amounted to three hundred. On
a very great night, if a Congratulatory Address to the Crown, or an
augmentation to the Civil List Revenue, was under discussion, — a hun-
dred more would drop in before the division; "and indeed," (said
Mr. Luttrell,) "some scores of the majority members thought it suf-
ficient if they repaired from their outposts towards the close of the
debate, and made a forced march to the standard of the Minister. Hence
it was that, when the Ayes and Noes were finally cast up at eight or
nine at night, there was a respectable attendance of near four-fifths
of the whole body." 7 As soon as the question was put from the Chair
the door was instantly and inexorably shut, and the vote taken. The

6 Travels, chiefly on foot, through several parts of England in 1782, by Charles P.
Moritz. Translated from the German by a Lady.

7 Debate on Mr. Temple Luttrell' & Motion for the admission of Strangers into the
Gallery of the House; April 30, 1777.

397

three minutes' grace for the benefit of truants and laggards had not
then been conceded; and everyone, who desired to place his opinion
on record, was obliged to be actually within the walls of the Chamber at
the precise moment when the debate ceased. While a division was in
prospect every bench was uncomfortably crowded with sitters; and a
dense mass of members stood below the bar, and behind the Speaker's
Chair, packed like Wilkites in front of the Middlesex hustings. The
latecomers were full of wine; and those who had remained on duty
through the dinner-hour were impatient for their suppers. It was a
terrible audience for an ambitious orator who had not accurately judged
his own value; and any gentleman of slow invention and short mem-
ory, who rose with a paper of notes in his hand, might count upon
being shouted down into his seat before he had come to the end of his
first sentence. But even then the House could enjoy a true debate,
where argument answered argument, and trenchant hits were capped
by telling repartees; especially when Charles Fox wound up the evening
with a flood of common-sense, red hot, and fresh from the furnace,
which sent his followers forth into the lobby boiling with excitement,
and carrying with them not a few of their Parliamentary colleagues
upon whose votes the Government whips had hopefully counted.8

The influence of Charles Fox inside Parliament owed much to his
extreme popularity in that limited and well-defined circle of fashion-
able society which was almost identical with the sphere of politics. His
kingdom was of this world; and a jolly, easy-mannered, world it was.

8 Mr. Speaker Brand used to maintab that the institution of the three minutes* law
before divisions, between the first and second bells, had worked a greater change in the
style of House of Commons speaking than any other circumstance whatsoever. Up to
that moment, when a matter had been enough discussed, the debate was summarily
stopped by the throng of members who were waiting for the question to be put; and a
debate it was, and not a succession of speeches, some of which are meant to waste time,
while others savour of the study.

The author, during thirty years of Parliament, listened to many fine orations; but
there is only one scene which stands out in his memory as a sample of what an en-
counter between Fox, and Burke, and Wedderburn very probably may have been during
the heats of the Middlesex Election. That was the tornado of passion which swept the
House of Commons on the seventh of May 1868, when, in consequence of an unex-
pected incident at a time of intense political excitement, Mr. Bright, Mr. Gladstone,
and Mr. Disraeli met in sudden and furious combat. Mr. Disraeli, in particular, spoke
as perhaps he had never spoken before, and as most certainly he never spoke after-
wards,— with no sparkling epigrams, or fanciful turns, or picked phrases; but with
unwonted emphasis and abundance of natural gesture, and amazing vehemence of emo-
tion. The whole affair was over in forty minutes; but it left an indelible impression
upon all who witnessed it.

398

The rural life of the governing class was on a generous scale. Landed
proprietors, relatively to the rest of the community, were far richer than
at present; and Whig statesmen were not the least affluent among them.
We are told that the list of peers who, in the winter of 1778, protested
against the prolongation of the American War, was "one of the most
respectable that had appeared for some years; as, independent of their
great characters in private and public life, there were ten of them whose
fortunes made up above two hundred thousand pounds a year." 9 They
lived on their paternal estates in homes which they took infinite trouble
to enlarge and beautify. All through the middle of the eighteenth cen-
tury companies of Italian workmen travelled from one end of England
to the other, decorating the ceilings and cornices of the great country-
houses with those plaster-mouldings which, in the history of domestic
ornament, bridge the interval between the work of Grinling Gibbons
and the work of the brothers Adam.- But the taste for artistic im-
provement displayed itself most conspicuously in what was around,
and not within, the mansion. The strength and prevalence of that
taste may be measured by the celebrity of Lancelot Brown, who raised
himself from very small beginnings to be the monarch, or rather the
despot, of landscape gardening. It was he who, with a very questionable
claim upon the gratitude of posterity, extirpated those antique and
formal pleasure-grounds which Pope had satirised in his lines on
Timon's villa; and it was he who surrounded the most famous country-
houses in England with immense masses of forest-trees, with deer-
parks and cattle-parks brought within sight of the windows, and with
artificial lakes thrown in wherever, in his judgment, nature would
have done well to place a sheet of water. His services were so much in
request that he refused to exert his talents upon any landed estate of
which, (to use his favourite catchword, the origin of his nickname,)
he did not recognise "the capabilities"; and he had very decided views
of his own upon politics. He disapproved of Lord North's American
policy; he regarded the Earl of Chatham as the first of living states-
men; and, if Lancelot Brown's employers thought otherwise, they were
careful, in his presence, to keep their opinion to themselves. "This,"
(so he wrote from Burleigh House,) "is a great place, where I have
had twenty-five years' pleasure in restoring the monument of a great
minister of a great queen. I wish we had looked at the history of her

9 Morning Post of December 1778.

399

time before we had begun so unfortunate and disgraceful a war as
we have been engaged in." 10

Our rural magnates of the eighteenth century made their homes
splendid, not as show-places for the admiration of the general public,
but for their own personal enjoyment, and the gratification of their
intimate friends and social equals. To all who came within that fa-
voured class their hospitality knew no limit in profusion or duration.
The select few had the run of all the country-seats which were best
worth visiting; they arrived on the day that suited their own con-
venience; and they stayed as long as they were amused, or until a
touch of gout took them. There exists a specimen letter from the Earl
of March to George Selwyn, written, on the last day of the year, from
a house the name of which is not given. "I have fixed," he said, "no
time for my return. I want to make a visit to the Duke of Grafton, but
I like everything here so much that I have no inclination to leave the
place. There is an excellent library, a good parson, the best English and
French cookery you ever tasted, strong coffee, and half-crown whist.
The more I see of the mistress of the house, the more I like her; and
our landlord improves on acquaintance. We are now all going to the
ice, which is quite like a fair. There is a tent, with strong beer and
cold meat, where Lady Spencer, and our other ladies, go an airing.
Lord Villiers left us this morning." That was the sort of company
which men like Lord March came all the way from St. James's Street
to consort with; but they looked with infinite disdain upon "the country
squires, (God help them!) with their triple-banded and triple-buckled
hats; and the clod-pated yeoman's son in his Sunday clothes, his drab
coat, and red waistcoat, tight leather breeches, and light worsted stock-
ings,— calling for porter in preference to ale, because it has the air of
a London blade; and depriving of all grace a well-fancied oath from
the mint of the metropolis by his vile provincial pronunciation." 11
The fine ladies, and their admirers, who posted across half England

10 Harcourt Papers for the year 1778. "Capability" Brown, when requested by George
the Third to introduce some alterations into the French gardens at Hampton Court,
"declined the hopeless task out of respect for himself and his profession." But he per-
formed wonders at Kew; and Londoners owe to him that Rhododendron Walk which is
perhaps the most attractive of all their possessions. The servant made use of his op-
portunities to speak a word in season to the master, and plainly told His Majesty that
he listened too readily to the Earl of Chatham's enemies. No man, (he said,) was a more
loyal subject than his Lordship, or loved England better; and the King, in reply, paid
Lord Chatham's patriotism the somewhat stingy compliment of acknowledging that he
had too much good sense to wish harm to his country.

11 The Reverend Doctor Warner to George Selwyn.

400

to spend the inside of a month at Euston or Chatsworth, came to meet
each other, and not to meet the local gentle-folk. Those who have
studied the comedies of Goldsmith and Foote, and the novels of
Fanny Burney, do not need to be told how people inside the fashion
then regarded people outside of it, and with what careless insolence they
permitted their sentiments to colour their behaviour. There were occa-
sions, however, even in the most stately and well-kept mansions, when
a fastidious London guest came in for more of rustic company, and
rustic politics, than at all pleased him. Once in the month, — or even
once a week, when an election was pending, — a wealthy nobleman
would keep open house for neighbours of every rank and every calling;
because in that generation a vote was a vote, and a peer with twenty
thousand acres would have fallen many points in his self-esteem if a
couple of politicians of the opposite interest to his own had been re-
turned for the county in which he resided. 12

The best of the great English land-owners were neither triflers nor
dandies. Aristocrats of the right sort, they were fiery, if not very labori-
ous, politicians; well-read gentlemen, for the most part; and sportsmen
every inch of them. Those of them who lived within a day's journey
from London made a point of entertaining a houseful of political allies
and adherents from the first day, to the last, of that parliamentary
recess which then covered the whole of January. An honest fox-hunter,
who had come all the way from Devonshire or Yorkshire to vote
sturdily against Lord North throughout the November session, was
amply repaid for his trouble by an invitation to pass the Christmas
holidays at Goodwood, accompanied by an assurance that room might
be found in the stables for his horses. The Duke of Richmond treated
his guests with the heartiness of a soldier, and the courtesy of a perfect
host; but he yielded no man precedence in the hunting field, — at all
events when Lord John Cavendish was not there to outride him.
There were other famous houses where the gamekeeper was a more
important personage than the huntsman. Shooting was still a science,
which demanded thorough acquaintance with the habits of wild
animals, sympathetic knowledge of dogs, and minute familiarity with
the features of a countryside. A lord of the manor, were he Earl or
Marquis, had to rise early in order to intercept the pheasants on their
feeding-grounds before they betook themselves to cover; unless he was

^ "The house," wrote one of Seiwyn's correspondents from beneath Lord Coventry's
roof, "is full of tobacco; the yard is full of tenants; and the peer, with an important
face, is telling us how much he pays to the Land-tax."

401

prepared to spend the rest of the day among the brambles and the un-
derwood, with a brace or two of well-broke spaniels hunting close
around him.13 The practice of lazy and wholesale massacre was still
in the far future; and it would have been well worth a man's while
to hear the language in which Coke of Norfolk would have replied if
he had been invited to take part in killing three or four hundred hand-
reared ducks and drakes on a single morning. When that typical
patrician, after serving fifty-five years in the House of Commons, at
last condescended to become the Earl of Leicester, he still went out
with his gun on every week-day during the season. At the age of
seventy-eight, in the year of the great Reform Bill, he killed twenty-
four head of game in twenty-five shots; and that amount of firing was
reckoned sufficient for his day's amusement by a nobleman who ranked
among the finest sportsmen in the country.14

These wealthy and high-born Englishmen had been subjected to
a system of instruction not ill adapted to prepare them for a public
career. A classical education, whatever may be said against it in theory,
is a discipline by which very great men have been successfully trained
for the conduct of great affairs. There have been eminent statesmen
who brought nothing to their life's work except an intense and glowing
mind, a clear insight into the circumstances of the contemporary
world amidst which they moved, and a passionate admiration for the
masterpieces of ancient literature. That, and little else, constituted the
intellectual outfit of Lord Chatham, and of his famous son, when they
first entered upon the scene of their labours. A youth of promise, with
a turn for elocution, learned from old Greek and Roman examples
how to express his ideas in an elevated, a lucid, and a manly style;
and he might learn from the same source more important lessons
still. Lord Camden, (as his biographer remarks,) owed an inestimable
debt to Eton. Not only was his taste refined by the equisite, if not very
profound, scholarship which was a special feature of the place, "but
from his Livy, and from a stealthy perusal of Claudian, he imbibed

13 The passage on pheasant-shooting in Colonel Hawker's Instructions to Young
Sportsmen shows that the conditions o£ the sport did not alter during the next half-
century; for Colonel Hawker had been wounded at Talavera long before he wrote his
admirable and authoritative book.

14 Ten years later on, the Earl of Leicester was too old to range the stubbles, and his
sons maintained the credit of the establishment "At Holkham," (so Lord Melbourne
told Queen Victoria,) "they shoot from morning to night; and, if you do not shoot,
you are like a fish upon dry land." Lord Melbourne was then not long past sixty; but
the heroic age of the great Whig sportsmen was already on the wane.

402

that abhorrence of arbitrary power which animated him through life." 15
It was the same at Harrow, under the influence of Samuel Parr, the
most efficient, and, (it must be admitted,) the most pompous and self-
opinionated of all assistant-masters. One of his pupils, himself a man
of some distinction, relates how the eloquent tutor inculcated and en-
forced "the love of freedom, and the hatred of tyranny, which breathed
in the orators, poets, and historians of Greece and Rome."16 The
lively young Whigs, who swarmed on that classic hill, had soon an
opportunity of testifying their attachment to those generous doctrines
in a practical form. The Head-master died; and the Governing body
chose his successor from Eton. Parr, who applied for the post, was
passed over, — according to his own account, because he had voted for
Wilkes at Brentford; — and the Harrow boys, among whom both Parr
and Wilkes were favourites, manifested their indignation by mobbing
the Governors, and wrecking the carriage which had brought them
down from London. Parr resigned his mastership, and set up a rival
educational establishment in the neighbouring village of Stanmore. He
attracted away with him from Harrow a large number of his former
pupils, who are described, in stately diction, as "the flower of the school
in the zenith of its glory."

There were few men of rank and opulence who did not entertain, —
or, at the very least, affect, — a keen interest in the literature and art
of their own generation. They were intelligent critics, and munificent
patrons after a fashion which encouraged merit, without breeding
servility. They kept their book-shelves, all our island over, as well
supplied as their cellars and their ice-houses; and they never hesitated
about paying down their two guineas, or three guineas, for a bulky
quarto fresh from the printing-presses of Millar, or Strahan, or Dodsley.
They freely purchased the Fermier General editions of the French
classics; and those Italian engravers who dedicated their ponderous
and superb volumes, in terms of fulsome panegyric, to Roman Princes
and Cardinals, found their most numerous, and certainly their most
solvent, customers among British Peers and squires.17 For a student,

15 Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors; chapter 142.

16 Memoirs of Thomas Maurice, the Oriental scholar and historian.

17 In 1764 Robert Adam, the King's architect, brought out his great book on Diocle-
tian's palace at Spalatro in Dalmatia. The London subscription-list, for six hundred
copies of that costly work, included almost every territorial potentate, and every man
in a public position whose name is now remembered. Lord Shelburne applied for five
sets; Sir Thomas Robinson, the ex-Secretary of State, for six; and Lord Bute, — a Scotch-
man opening his purse-strings to a brother Scotchman, — for no less than ten. The whole

403

whose estimate of beauty and charm in books is not regulated by the
conventional values of the auction-room, there is no inheritance more
desirable than a library collected by ancestors who read and travelled
during the middle portion of the eighteenth century. The culture that
permeated society was faithfully reflected in its conversation, which
was brilliant perhaps as never before or since, and singularly exempt
both from pedantry and triviality. Gibbon, writing at ten o'clock on
a Saturday night, relates how he had just seen off from his door Burke,
Garrick, Sheridan, Charles Fox, Lord Camden, Lord Ossory, and
Topham Beauclerk. That was a London supper-party of the year 1778.
Beauclerk, of all who sat round the table, was in his own days the least
known to fame; and yet Beauclerk left behind him a library of thirty
thousand volumes, and possessed talents which Doctor Johnson con-
fessed himself disposed to envy.

Our progenitors lacked the mechanical appliances, and many of
the imported luxuries, which are now regarded as indispensable; but
what they had was good, and they never pretended to be above en-
joying it. Their habits were different from ours, and very different from
those which prevailed among people of their own class on the Con-
tinent of Europe. A French gentleman—who, after spending six weeks
in our island, without understanding our language, published an ex-
haustive work on our character and manners,— regarded Londoners
as the most incomprehensible ascetics. Till late in the day, (he said,)
they took nothing but tea, and two or three slices of bread and butter,
so thin as to do honour to the dexterity of the person who cut them.
Such was the mode of life in an English household a hundred and
forty years ago, and it continued to be the same in mercantile and
professional families throughout the first quarter of the nineteenth
century. Breakfast was of the lightest; and those who required luncheon
were mostly content with bread and butter again. A certain country-
house in the East of England still sends out to the shooting-field the
historical noon-tide meal of bread and cheese, and a bag of onions,
which satisfied the vigorous appetites of Coke of Norfolk, and Charles
James Fox. But the period of abstinence ended when the day's work
finished; and it finished early. There were hearty dinners at four
o'clock in the country, and pleasant dinners lasting from five till

continent of Europe together took six-and-twenty copies. When, a few years later,
Volpato gave to the world his reproductions of Raphael's Arabesques in the Loggia of
the Vatican in a magnificent tome forty-two inches high, most of the copies, before
very long, had made their way from Rome into British country-houses.

404

eight in town, with a good supper to follow. Elderly people, in the
year 1778, — as had been the case in almost every successive generation
since the Norman conquest, — grumbled about the growing lateness
of the dinner-hour. Horace Walpole complained bitterly that his after-
noon callers would not go home to dress for the evening until four
o'clock had struck; and, when he was in a particularly bad humour
over the American policy of the Government, he asserted dolefully
that the glory of Britain had departed, that everything in public and
private life was altered for the worse, and that he could not even get
his dinner before nearly six at night.18

The culinary art, as then practised in England, owed little to exotic
teaching and example. Here and there might be found a nobleman
who paid his French chef a salary of ninety guineas a year; but the
made-dishes of native origin were very few in number; and, in this
country of ancient and continuous tradition, it is still possible to ascer-
tain how detestably they must have tasted.1^ The merit of a London
or provincial dinner depended not so much upon the cunning of the
cook as upon the intrinsic excellence of the viands; and there is little
doubt that the immense and undisputed reputation of turtle and veni-
son has been handed down from the days when epicures looked to
substance rather than to style. Our ancestors had plenty of turbot and
john-dories, when they lived near the coast, and, (if they chose to
break the law,) they could buy game anywhere; but they counted
among their luxuries some articles of food which are very seldom
placed on a modern table.20 George Selwyn's favourite parson, when
located many miles away from Billingsgate market, was contented

18 Gibbon to Holroyd; March 5, 1777. Walpole to Mann; Arlington Street, December
1 8, 1778; and February 6, 1777.

According to Bishop Watson of Llandaff the dinner-time at Cambridge was three
o'clock. When the bishop was a Trinity sizar in 1754 every college dined at twelve,
and he never grew reconciled to the change of hour.

19 In cookery-books of that date the usual side-dishes are collared eels and mutton-
pies, repeated twice, — or, at a great banquet, even four times, — at opposite angles of
the same table. Collared eels may still be eaten at Sunday breakfasts in Trinity College,
Cambridge; and mutton-pies, made after the receipt of 1764, were, within the author's
memory,, served as an entree at Johnson's Club on an evening when a new member was
initiated. Two of them would have made a dinner even for Doctor Johnson himself.

20 One of Edmund Burke's visitors wrote down the bill of fare on a day when
there was a houseful at Beaconsfield.

"First Course: a boiled turkey, roast beef, soup, calves-head, cow-heel.
Second Course: Woodcock, Hare, tarts, asparagus."

It could be wished that a guest at the Tusculan villa had left as precise an account
of the dinner which Marcus Tullius Cicero gave his friends in the country.

405

with perch "plain boiled, or in a water-zoochey," and a fine jack
with a pudding inside of it. Another of Selwyn's correspondents an-
nounced the return to town of a gentleman who had repaired from
St. James's Street to the purer air of Brighthelmstone in quest of an
appetite. "Fanshawe," he wrote, "set out this morning. He will arrive in
London the very quintessence of wheat-ears; for he has eat nothing
else for this week past, and it is feared that he has destroyed the
species," Pike, and perch, and wheat-ears would now be archaic items
on a bill of fare; but there is still a cheerful ring about the form of
words which in the eighteenth century was proverbial of intimate
rural hospitality, when one old friend invited another to come down
to his manor-house or rectory to help him "eat a trout." Whether the
food was good, or less good, the board was crowned with the very best
of liquor. The young and the imprudent drank Burgundy, while more
cautious diners were at great pains to procure the choicest vintages
from Bordeaux. People who were at a distance from their wine-mer-
chant would trust no one short of George Selwyn, if they had a claim
upon his good offices. "Get me the best Chambertin you can," wrote
the Earl of March; "and you may give any price for it." And Mr.
Anthony Storer, — a not less important, and far more respectable, mem-
ber of fashionable society than Lord March,— told Selwyn that, as
long as he could pay his way, he would have his Vin de Grave, such
as Madame de Sevigne used to drink, although it cost him four shil-
lings a bottle.

That was the social atmosphere in which Charles Fox moved, with
an energy of motion that kept everything alive around him. He car-
ried to excess all the tastes which were in vogue among his contempo-
raries, and he had mastered all the attainments and accomplishments
upon which they prided themselves. Fox was a scholar in that sense of
the word which gives scholarship its true value. His Eton composi-
tions, in Latin verse and prose, were something better than an in-
genius, but lifeless, mosaic of antique phrases. Slight, graceful, and
spontaneous, — and of an amatory cast whenever the subject admitted
of it,— they might have been written in the days of Augustus by a
young Roman of quality, who had spent his time over Propertius and
Tibullus when he ought to have been reading his Stoic philosophers.
As the years went on, Fox became more and more imbued with a
passion for the classics, not of Greece and Rome only. No famous
Englishman ever lived who had a more ardent and disinterested love
406

of books. Fox acquired some command over every language which
then could boast a literature. Spanish he knew well, and Portuguese
imperfectly. He read Italian as easily as French; and he could talk
French, and write it, as rapidly and as intelligibly, although not so
elegantly, as English. At a later period of his life the poetry and his-
tory of the past occupied and absorbed his mind almost to the extinction
of personal ambition; and, even during the bustle of the American
controversy, he contrived to get through an enormous amount of read-
ing in that bed which he sought unwilling towards daybreak, and left
with all but insuperable reluctance at two in the afternoon. He already
had a good selection of books, of which some were scarce and valuable;
and George Selwyn wondered why "he did not keep them at Brooks's,
where they would have been unmolested." But such a precaution was
altogether foreign to the nature of Charles Fox. He had gone security
for one of those friends who had often gone security for him; and the
contents of his house were seized in execution by a creditor. The re-
moval of his goods was the sight of the day in St. James's Street;
and their sale was an event of the London season. General amuse-
ment was excited by the shabby condition of his furniture; and the
pages of his books were examined with curiosity for the sake of the
notes which were pencilled on the margin. Such, (said Horace Wai-
pole,) was the avidity of the world "for the smallest production of
so wonderful a genius." Charles Fox came off on this occasion better
than he merited. Half Brooks's was there to watch over his interests;
and the Earl of March, (who otherwise in all probability would have
been worse employed,) spent the whole of the day in the auction-
room buying in the best of the books with the object of restoring them
to their owner. Fox meanwhile, by a strange whim of fortune, for
the first time in his life had a continuous run of luck at cards, and
kept the money. He re-furnished his house within a fortnight; and,
to the unutterable surprise of all who knew him, he had it cleaned
and painted. He relieved the anxiety of Lord Carlisle by paying off
the obligations which that devoted friend had incurred on his behalf;
and he could thenceforward annotate his favourite volumes in full
confidence that they never again would come to the hammer.

Charles Fox paid a heavy penalty for his early greatness. He is
habitually cited as the instance of a statesman who was a confirmed
gamester; and yet he ceased to be a gamester at an age when very few
indeed, besides himself, have taken rank as statesmen. While still a
stripling he was diced and wagered,— and, as his elders believed, was

407

glaringly and transparently cheated,— out of an immense fortune. For
some years afterwards he continued to play high; but in the spring
o£ 1782, at the period of life when an aspiring member of Parliament
begins to hope for an appointment as a Junior Lord of the Treasury,
Fox became the leading Minister of the Crown in power and influ-
ence, although not in tide. Thenceforward he gambled less and less
frequendy, until, after no very long while, he dropped the practice
altogether. Prudence and self-respect made him mend his ways; and
he had counter-attractions, congenial to his better nature, which grad-
ually inspired him with a distaste for the most sordid and irrational of
all pastimes. The drawing-room at White's or Almack's, after the
hazard-table had been lighted up, was no paradise for men of sense
and intellect. "Alas! alas!" said Lord Carlisle. "We do nothing but
drink gin-negus, and two or three other febrifuges, all the time.
And, then, looking at the candle for nine hours together is so good
for the eyes!" Fox no longer cared to fritter away his evenings on such
dreary and debasing pursuits when Dante and Boccaccio were awaiting
him at home, or when Johnson and Burke were talking across the
empty chair reserved for him at the dinner-table of the Literary Club.
His familiar associates, moreover, were great peers and commoners
who had long ago grown ashamed of trying to win money, which
they did not want, from people less wealthy than themselves. Rich-
mond, and Savile, and Buckingham played whist for small sums of
silver, when they played at all; and Coke of Norfolk had sworn off
from gambling before he came to full manhood, and kept his oath
ever afterwards. Other converts, who had weaker wills than Thomas
Coke, fortified their good intentions by a device singularly charac-
teristic of the world in which they lived. When a member of Brooks's
judged that the time had come for him to set up as a serious-minded
politician, he not unfrequently called in the aid of a bet to assist him in
keeping his virtuous resolutions. "Lord Northington," (so it stands
recorded,) "has given Lord George Cavendish ten guineas, to receive
twelve hundred if Lord George Cavendish loses on one night one
thousand guineas, from Dinner to Dinner, at Hazard before the tenth
of May next.21

21 George Selwyn was under a running engagement to pay Lord Carlisle twenty
guineas, for every ten guineas, above fifty, which he himself lost, on any one day, at
any game of chance. The forfeits were all to go for the benefit of the litde Howards.
"I reserved fifty," said Selwyn, "for an unexpected necessity of playing, in the country
or elsewhere, with women;" for the ladies were too often insistent gamblers, inexorable
creditors, and evasive losers. This peculiar form of moral insurance was applied to other

Fox took part in all bodily exercises, which then were popular, with
an enthusiasm very flattering to those who made proficiency in such
exercises the principal study of their lives. He played well at cricket,
and very well at tennis; and he was devoted to the gun, although
he possessed no manor of his own to sport over. His share of the pa-
ternal acres had long ere this gone the same road as all else which he
inherited.22 But the owners of shooting were always ready to place it
at the disposal of Fox. When inclination prompted, and the weather
served, he did not wait to be invited; and, asked or unasked, he was
welcomed everywhere. How he got about the country, with so notori-
ously deficient a store of ready money, was a source of wonder to
George Selwyn, who was forever minding the business of other people,
and more especially the business of Charles Fox. But Fox had a way
with innkeepers, as with all his fellow-creatures, and he never failed
to command post-horses from the commencement, to the close, of the
shooting season. He travelled into Derbyshire, to kill grouse at Chats-
worth,— a brace or two in the day, where they are now killed by
scores,— and where he carefully recorded the exact weight of the
finest bird which his bag contained. He made rapid excursions from
London into one or another of the home-counties whenever a hard
frost gave hope of woodcock; and he spent his Septembers among
the partridges in Norfolk, which,— in the days of Walpoles, and
Townshends, and Cokes, and Keppels,— was more thickly studded
with Whig houses than any other district in England. Fox shot better
as he grew older and cooler; but, before he had turned five-and-thirty,
he was often too excited to do himself justice when game was afoot.
He took an unselfish pride in the marvellous performances of his
brother-sportsman, Thomas Coke; and Coke repaid him by the trouble
that he expended in providing horses sufficiently powerful to carry his
illustrious friend about the country. Fox had overcome his boyish
dislike of the saddle; although riding was to him almost as great an
exertion as walking, or even running, to a man of ordinary bulk. He
might be seen on the course at Newmarket, waiting opposite the spot
where his jockey had been ordered to make the final effort; and from

temptations than those of the gaming-board. One man of high position received five
guineas from a friend, in return for a promise to pay a thousand if ever he went to
a certain house, in a certain street, known to both parties.

22 On an occasion when Charles Fox encountered in debate his fiery young kinsman
from Somersetshire a nobleman, who knew them both, observed that it was a drawn
battle between Acland and Lackland.

409

that point onward he galloped in with the horses, "whipping, spurring,
and blowing, as if he would have infused his whole soul into his
favourite racer." He worked at the abstruse problems of weights, and
distances, and public running, and private trials, as hard as he worked
at everything except the conscious preparation of his speeches; and he
was very generally regarded as the most expert and trustworthy handi-
capper in the South of the island. Fox enjoyed existence thoroughly;
and he was willing that all other people should enjoy it likewise,
according to their opportunities, and their own notions of what con-
stituted pleasure. He refused to discountenance bull-baiting. The out-
cry against the inhumanity of the common people was, (he said,)
unjust, as long as their betters fished and hunted; and he was "de-
cidedly in favour of boxing." In the course of his life he must have
seen more than enough of it as he looked down upon the crowd from
the Westminister hustings.23

When Fox was in London he established his headquarters at
Brooks's, which was within a few doors of his house. There he was

23 The Fox papers include several confidential letters on racing topics. The following
document is a workmanlike production; and, (so far as a non-racing man can judge,)
it contains nothing incompatible with the spirit of a genuine sportsman. It is docketed
as of the year 1779, Fox very seldom dated his earlier letters to Fitzpatrick, and gen-
erally omitted to append his signature.

"Newmarket, Wednesday night.
"Dear Dick,

The horses came in in the following order. The race was on the Flat.

stone Ib.

Rosemary 8 — 2

Diadem 8 — 2

Rodney 8 — 12

Trotter 7 — 2

Fumus (?) 8 — 2

It was a very near race among the four first; and your horse was beat a great way, and
very easily. I am rather inclined to think the race a very true one; and, if it is, your
horse must be what I always believed him, — a very bad one. If you should happen to
meet the Duke of Queensberry in a matching humour, and you should find him willing
to run Drowsy against Rosemary, provided it is not less than a mile, I think you cannot
make a bad match; though, if it could be across the Flat, I should like it better. I do
not think there is much chance of making a match; but, if you can, pray do. Diadem
and Rosemary are both disengaged the latter end of the First Meeting; and, as to Rod-
ney, I know he is afraid of him.

Yours affly.

Both Rodney and Trotter seemed to run faster than the mare, though she won at
last. Foley thinks Trotter as likely a horse to match to advantage as either of the others.
You must set him down in your mind to be a stone worse than Rosemary for a mile,
and 1 8 Ibs. worse across the Flat."

410

much more comfortable than under his own roof; and there he was
in the bosom of his family. For the club was his castle, garrisoned by
a staunch body-guard of friends, in the midst of whom he was safe
from duns, and bores, and Ministerial supporters, — except those of
them who, like Gibbon and George Selwyn, were so fond of his com-
pany that they could tolerate, without a protest, the unreserved out-
pouring of his political opinions. No party test as yet barred the portals
of Brooks 's against a professed Tory; but admission to the club was
guarded by a rigorous standard of social exclusiveness; and it so hap-
pened that those candidates, who were most acceptable for social rea-
sons, very generally belonged to the Opposition. The mark of a fashion-
able Whig, (in the words of Horace Walpole,) was to live at Brooks's,
"where politics were sown, and in the House of Commons, where
the crop came up;" and at Brooks's Fox might usually be found, —
when he was not at St. Stephen's, or between the blankets,— marching
to and fro, like other famous talkers in the flower of their youth, and
expounding to a sympathetic audience his estimate of Lord North
and Lord George Germaine, and his anticipations about the next
stand-and-fall division in the House of Commons. The club owns
an admirable water-colour by Rowlandson, showing the great draw-
ing-room, adorned by a ceiling and chimney-piece in the Adams
style, with pairs of veterans intent on their games of ecarte in each
corner, and the vast circular table surrounded by a multitude of players,
with a tank full of gold in the centre. In the foreground of the pic-
ture Charles Fox, — two or three years older, and somewhat fatter, and
even less aesthetically dressed, than during the American War, — is
holding forth to the unconcealed delight of his hearers.

The drawing-room is still the same as ever; and the round table
remains, innocent of dice and cards. The club-house has been doubled
in area, and brought up to a modern level of sanitation; but those
who remember the Brooks's of five-and-forty years ago can form for
themselves a very lifelike notion of the eighteenth century. Solid and
unpretentious luxury, of an antique type, ruled within its walls. A
dinner, the absolute perfection of English cookery, was served by a
numerous band of attendants, respectful and confidential after the
manner of the good old school, in that full evening costume, with
knee-breeches and black silk stockings, which is now worn only in
kings' palaces. There was no recourse to scientific methods of illumina-
tion, but each little table was lighted with two portly wax candles.
Before the disruption of the party in the summer of 1886 there were

411

nights when a member, who came up from the House of Commons
or the House o£ Lords, bringing the latest news with him, might see
none but friends, or intimate acquaintances, around him. The talk
went across the room, from table to table, as freely as in the days of
Fox; and the place was full of his associations. Three or four times
every year a party of sound politicians, a club within a club, honour-
ing him in a fashion which would have met his hearty approbation,
dined together very sumptuously, and drank "The memory of Mr.
Fox, in solemn silence." It was currently, but perhaps not very au-
thoritatively, believed in Brooks's that the annual subscription had
been increased from ten to eleven guineas in order to pay off some of
his debts; and any proposal to build bath-rooms and dressing-rooms
died away in presence of the tacit, but instinctive, sentiment that
those facilities for washing which had satisfied the unexacting require-
ments of Mr. Fox were good enough for the best of his successors.

Frederic the Great once expressed his surprise when he was in-
formed by a tourist, who was on a visit to Potsdam, that Englishmen
might sit in Parliament at one-and-twenty. The King remarked that
Peers and Commoners in Great Britain evidently acquired the tal-
ent for legislation much sooner than a Patrician of ancient Rome, who
might not enter the Senate before forty;24 and, no doubt, if these
young gentlemen had been his own subjects, he would have sent them
to employments which, in his view, were much better suited to their
years. The House of Commons in the eighteenth century swarmed
with eldest sons; with cousins and nephews of great noblemen who
were patrons of family boroughs; and with wealthy squires, who
scorned a peerage, but made it a point of honour to stand for their
own county at the first general election after they came of age. Charles
Fox, at nine-and-twenty, was already a Parliamentarian of ten years*
service; and he exercised unbounded authority over the gilded youth
who supplied so large a contingent to the ranks of the Opposition.
His immediate contemporaries had always believed in his future at
a time when the rest of the world, with much excuse, thought him a
trifler and a ne'er-do-well. As early as 1774 George Selwyn complained
that there were people at Almack's who cherished a fanatical belief
in the necessity of Charles Fox being the first man in the country,
both for his own sake, and for the well-being of the nation. And now,
in 1778* if F°x was not the first man in England, at all events there

24 The age at which a Roman citizen could enter the Senate was more probably about
thirty. But King Frederic was sadly to seek in his knowledge of the classics.

412

was no one, from King George downwards, who did not either fear
him, or follow him.

The host of young Whig members at last found a leader, and,
(which they had not counted upon,) a drillmaster. They had enjoyed
easy times in the past. Rockingham, and Savile, and Lord John Caven-
dish, excellent and immaculate as they were, loved their own leisure
too well to feel themselves justified in reproving the laziness of others;
and Edmund Burke who, with solitary and undaunted perseverance,
had spared no exertions to indoctrinate the Whig party with a sense of
their public obligations, had little influence on the daily conduct of
his younger parliamentary colleagues. He was above them, but not of
them. They looked upon him as a superior kind of schoolmaster,
whose notions of duty were too severe, and whose lectures were a
great deal too long; and they kept out of his way as sedulously and
respectfully as, not many years before, they had kept out of the way
of their Eton tutor. But there was no escaping the eye of Charles Fox.
The most ubiquitous of mortals, he was with them in their goings
out and comings in, — in the card-room of the club, in the gun-room
of the country-house, at Ranelagh and Vauxhall, at Epsom, at Ascot,
at Newmarket, and even so far north as Doncaster. He talked politics
as irrepressibly, as persuasively, and in as curious and inappropriate
places, as Socrates talked ethics. His comments on the Cabinet Min-
isters were infinitely diverting, his forecast of the course of State af-
fairs was cheeerful and sanguine, and he was always ready to back his
prophecies by a wager. But, despite his joviality, and his sympathy
with every form of human enjoyment, he had within him the es-
sential qualities of a disciplinarian. His adherents and supporters might
amuse themselves wherever they pleased between-whiles, as long as
they answered his call whenever the summons to action came; and
they, on their part, yielded him the implicit and unquestioning obedi-
ence which youth pays to youth, in a case where a right to command
has been recognised and conceded. He could not be eluded, or hood-
winked; for he had been one of themselves. He was acquainted with
all their haunts and hiding-places; he fathomed the hollo wness of their
excuses when a critical division was impending; and he let them
know his mind, in language which went home to theirs, if on any
such occasion he missed their faces in the Lobby. His familiar cor-
respondence,—and the familiarity of Charles Fox embraced a wide
circle of people, — was largely made up of rebukes to the delinquent,
and reminders to the forgetful A fair example may be found in a.

413

letter written during the closing months of the American controversy.
"I never/' (so Fox told a friend in February, 1782,) "was more sorry
to hear you were out of town. Monday is likely to be of as much conse-
quence, towards deciding the fate of these people, as any day this
year. If you can possibly come, pray do; for it is really childish, when
attendance is of such real importance, to give it up for mere idleness."
Charles Fox might admonish others with a clear conscience because
he himself took public life very seriously. He had been educated in
the tenets of a loose and vicious creed, the creed of old Holland House,
by a father who was at once the most fascinating and corrupting of
preceptors. But his superb mental constitution at length threw off that
deadly poison; and he thought out for himself a just, a lofty, and,
(for his generation,) a most original conception of the statesman's
duty. Fox was drenched with calumny when alive; and it has been
the fashion ever since, among writers of a certain school, to ignore
the priceless services which he rendered to liberty and humanity, and
to judge him solely by their own interpretation of his attitude with
regard to the foreign policy of Great Britain. But his detractors, then
or now, have never been able to call in question his highest tide to
honour. No man has denied, and no man ever can deny, that, during
all the best years of his life, Charles Fox sacrificed opportunities of
power and advancement, emoluments which he sorely needed, and
popularity which he keenly relished, for the sake of causes and prin-
ciples incomparably dearer to him than his own interest and advan-
tage.

The change in his moral nature was silent and unostentatious; but,
by the year 1778, some acute and friendly observers began to be aware
what sort of man he had now become. Burgoyne's disaster, and the
certainty of a breach with France, spread a panic through official circles.
Lord North used the utmost diligence to attract to himself political
support from outside his Government; and he was prepared to bid
very high indeed for a young man who was already the favourite of
the House of Commons. "Charles," (so George Selwyn was informed,)
"eats, and drinks, and, though he never loses sight of the Treasury,
confesses it is rather a distant prospect at present. A great part of the
Opposition have had offers of coming in, but not on terms that they
like; and I do think it does Charles great credit that, under all his
distresses, 'he never thinks. of .accepting a place on terms that are in
the least degree disreputable. I assure you, upon my honour, that he
has had very flattering offers made him more than once of late, and
414

he has never for a moment hesitated about rejecting them."25 Fox
explained the motives which guided him at this conjuncture in a
letter to Captain Richard Fitzpatrick, who then was serving with
the British army in Philadelphia; and his explanation is deserving of
all credence, because those two young men had always been in the
habit of writing to each other the plain unvarnished truth, even
when that truth did not look well on paper. Fox now told Fitzpatrick
that, according to general expectation, the Ministry would be driven
to resign, but that he himself was firmly persuaded to the contrary.
"People flatter me," (so he proceeded, with much underscoring of
his manuscript,) "that I continue to gain, rather than lose, my credit
as an orator; and I am so convinced that this is all that I shall ever
gain, (unless I become the meanest of men,) that I never thinly of
any other object of ambition. Great situation I never can acquire,—
nor, if acquired, keep, — without making sacrifices that I will never
makf" 26 Those were the convictions which inspired alike his House
of Commons speaking, and his private talk; and not a few members
of Parliament, who had hitherto regarded politics as a trade or a
pastime, were brought to a consciousness of their public responsi-
bilities by the force of his exhortations, and the influence of his ex-
ample.

Fox was popular with women, and stood high in the good graces
of the best among them for reasons very honourable to himself, and
to his admirers. He was no lady-killer, and only too little of a fop.
The young Oxonian of nineteen, who had made himself talked about
by travelling post from Paris to Lyons in order to select patterns for
his fancy waistcoats, had already sobered down into the most plainly
and carelessly dressed man, of his own age and eminence, in London.
He was not in, but above, the fashion; and the world,— overstocked,
as it always has been, with dandies and coxcombs,— liked Charles Fox
all the better for his inattention to outward appearance. He possessed,
in a remarkable degree, the rarest of social gifts, the power of being
himself in every company. Familiar, kindly, and expansive with high
and low,— with the brilliant and the dull, the virtuous and the faulty,
alike,— he united all suffrages; and his most loyal well-wishers were
certain great ladies who had been satiated with flattery, and who knew
no pleasure like that of being treated as intellectual equals, and trusty
comrades, by one whose esteem and confidence were so well worth

25 James Hare to George Selwyn; June 1778.

26 Fox to Fitzpatrick; February 1778.

415

having. They were no fair-weather friends. In the very darkest period
of his fortunes,— when English politics were dominated by an over-
whelming reaction against the ideas of progress and the national tra-
ditions of liberty, — whoever else deserted Fox, those brave women re-
mained loyal to him, and to the principles which he had taught
them. It was then that the Duchess of Devonshire expressed herself
with a noble frankness to no less formidable a correspondent than
Philip Francis, who had referred to the regard felt by the Duchess for
Charles Fox in some sentences which, if style is any guide, most as-
suredly came from the pen of Junius. "The generous passions," (so he
told her,) "are always eloquent, especially on a favourite subject. You
love him with all his faults, because they are his. I wish I was one of
them. I should keep good company, and share in your regard." Her
reply ran as follows. "As I am very sure you do not think that I, as
a woman, ever was, could be, or am, in love with Charles Fox, you
will allow that in fervour, enthusiasm, and devotion I am a good
friend — Would I were a man to unite my talents, my hopes, my
fortune, with Charles's; to make common cause, and fall or rule with
him!" That tribute to an unbroken intimacy of very long duration
was paid in the year 1798, when the writer thought fit to call herself
an old woman; but in the autumn and winter of 1777 the Duchess of
Devonshire, and the Countess of Ossory, and Mrs. Crewe of Crewe
Hall were all young together, and all sincerely attached to Fox. It
was an example which others of their sex found it easy and agree-
able to follow; for women could not meet Charles Fox without liking
him. They became his sworn partisans. They canvassed for him at
elections. They smuggled themselves under the gallery of the House
of Commons on an afternoon when he was expected to speak his best.
They studied political questions, although some of them had to begin
with the rudiments;27 and they took care that their husbands and
brothers, if they called themselves Whigs, should give orthodox Whig
votes. Throughout the whole of the struggle which convulsed Parlia-
ment, and London society, during the coming fifty months it was
no slight benefit to Charles Fox that he had the women on his side.

There follows a savage indictment of the administration of the navy
under the profligate Earl of Sandwich, of its inept showing in home

27 "Lady Melbourne," said Horace Walpole, "was standing before the fire, and ad-
justing her feathers. Says she: 'Lordl They say the Stocks will blow up. That will be
very comical.' "

416

waters, and of its humiliating conduct during the attempted invasion of
England in the summer of 1779 that followed upon Spain's entry into
the war in alliance with France. That England, so utterly unprepared
for invasion, should have managed to stand off her ancient enemies
was due jar more to faulty cooperation between the allied fleets, Chan-
nel storms, and a smallpox epidemic that ravaged the French ships,
rather than to any heroic deeds of Sir Charles Hardy, whose com-
mand of the Channel Fleet on this occasion will always be a subject
of controversy.

417

CHAPTER XV

BURKE AND THE INDIANS.

THE POWER OF THE CROWN.

BURKE AND BRISTOL

JL HROUGHOUT the years which elapsed between 1775 and 1782 war
raged all the world over, and military reputations were made, and un-
made, with startling rapidity. And yet, as far as England was con-
cerned, the most distinguished names which have come down to us
from that stirring time are those of civilians, and not of soldiers; for,
in the full sense of the phrase, the toga was then more powerful than
the sword. In the course of our long parliamentary history the two
great parties in the House of Commons have not unfrequently been
led by rival statesmen each of whom was an orator of the first order;
but, except during the period which coincided with the American
Revolution, such a pair of champions as Burke and Fox have seldom
indeed fought side by side in the same ranks. They were closely, and,
(as it then seemed,) indissolubly united by devotion to a common
cause, and by mutual confidence and affection. Fox, devoid of self-
conceit, and incapable of envy, regarded Burke with

"That instant reverence,
Dearer to true young hearts than their own praise;"

and the older man took unceasing delight in the company of the
younger, and submitted himself willingly and unreservedly to the
spell of the extraordinary charm which he, like everybody else, found
it impossible to define and analyse.

Very early in the time when they began to work in concert Burke
paid Fox the unusual tribute of accepting him as the exponent of his
own views on more than one occasion;1 and the influence of the two

1 After the discussion on the Address in November 1776 Burke wrote to his friend
Champion to explain his own silence. "I never," (he said,) "knew Charles Fox better,

418

allies on the proceedings in Parliament was all the more effective be-
cause the one was the precise complement of the other. "You always,"
said Wordsworth, "went from Fox with your feelings excited, and
from Burke with your mind filled." 2 So full and cultured a mind as
Burke's, — so vivid an imagination, and so intense and catholic an
interest in all human affairs, past and present, — have never been placed
at the service of the state by any one except by Cicero. A famous
author, in the most heartfelt, and therefore perhaps the most beau-
tiful, passage which he ever wrote, regrets that Cicero and Burke ex-
pended in political controversy the time, health, and thought which
they might have more profitably bestowed upon literature.3 But man-
kind must take thankfully whatever the like of Burke and Cicero
chose to give them; and it may reasonably be contended that both of
them found the material, which was best suited to their genius, in the
senate rather than in the library. Unless Cicero had drunk deep of the
ambitions, the passions, — and, in his case, the sorrows and terrors, — of
Roman public life, the Letters to Atticus would not have been among
the most thrilling and pathetic of extant compositions; and, if Edmund
Burke had stood aside from Parliament, he might have done wonders
in history and philosophy, but he could have created nothing of higher
value than the Speech on Conciliation with America, or the Thoughts
on the Cause of the Present Discontents. It is not for politicians to
question the choice of a career made by the two men who, beyond all
others, have adorned and embellished the vocation of politics.

At this period of his life Burke had a sound instinct for the selec-
tion of topics which called into exercise the entire force of his marvel-
lous capacity. He had no time to lose, for he was close upon fifty; a
circumstance which went for a great deal in a generation when four
men, — the Duke of Grafton, the Marquis of Rockingham, Lord North,
and the younger Pitt,— became Prime Ministers at an average age of
eight-and-twenty. The question of the relations between Great Britain
and her American colonies had thrown all other questions into the
back-ground; and it was a problem by which Burke, with his vast
knowledge and his all-embracing sympathy, was sure to be attracted,

or indeed any one, on any occasion. His speech, was a noble performance 1 did not

speak, though up twice. I was not so much hindered by my cold, which was then but
slight I waited for the Crown lawyers, expecting some of them would follow Charles
Fox; but none spoke, and the debate could not He better than he left it.'*

% Hay don's Autobiography; May 23, 1815.

3Macaulay to Ellis; Calcutta, December 30, 1835.

419

and which he was pre-eminently competent to handle. That disastrous
controversy would never have reached an acute stage if King George's
Cabinet had acted in obedience to those great principles of exalted
common sense which were the main articles of Burke's creed. He had
been constantly repeating, in a form of words which all readers could
understand, and with a force and pregnancy on which no writer who
ever lived could improve, that the temper of the people whom he
governs should be the first study of a statesman, and that magnanimity
in politics is the truest wisdom. Parliament, (so he freely admitted,)
had a constitutional right to tax America; but it was a right which,
in the condition of feeling that prevailed beyond the Atlantic, no
British Minister in his senses would dream of exerting. "Whether,"
he said, "all this can be reconciled in legal speculation is a matter
of no consequence. It is reconciled in policy; and politics ought to be
adjusted, not to human reasonings, but to human nature, of which
the reason is but a part, and by no means the greatest part."4 That
was the view which Burke earnestly impressed upon the leaders of his
own party, who had hitherto been slow to recognise the full gravity
of the American crisis. He rebuked their indolence with a respectful
and affectionate eloquence unsurpassed in the literature of politics; 5
and before very long, by his precepts and his example, he succeeded in
inspiring them with all his own courage, and much of his own zeal.
They joined in his emphatic protest against those penal laws which,
after a trial of four calamitous years, were condemned and aban-
doned by the very Minister who had placed them on the Statute Book.
They argued against the passing madness of the hour, and they were
stigmatised by their detractors as unpatriotic and un-English;— that
taunt which is, of all others, the most suicidal to the true interests of
England. For a high-minded people, such as ours, will not consent to
learn their national duty from the criticisms of foreigners; and there-
fore, if it be un-English for Englishmen to speak their minds, the
country will never hear the truth at all.

When war had broken out between Great Britain and her colonies,
and when France and Spain had thrown themselves into the quarrel,
Burke directed his attention to those elements of the situation which
lay in his habitual line of thought, and with regard to which his advice
was especially valuable. He left it for Charles Fox to animadvert upon

4 Observations on a Late Publication, entitled, "The Present State of the Nation," 1769.

5 The finest of these memorable compositions was addressed to the Duke of Richmond
on the seventeenth of November, 1772.

420

the strategical operations in America, and to expose the inadequacy of
the military and naval preparations which had been made for the de-
fence of our island; and he confined himself, as his own particular
province, to what may fairly be described as the moral aspects of the
war. From the summer of 1778 onwards the ministers of George the
Third finally and deliberately abandoned their attempt to re-conquer
the Northern and Central States of the Union; but they continued to
keep the dispute alive by a series of petty and inconclusive acts of
hostility directed against the civil population, rather than against the
armed forces, of the enemy. It was a species of warfare which served
no purpose except to irritate the Americans, and dispose them to
persevere in a course of active retaliation at a time when, in their utter
weariness, they would otherwise have been inclined to rest quiet, and
allow France, Spain, and England to fight until one or other of them
was beaten. Burke lost no opportunity of denouncing this resort on the
part of the British Government to a system of pin-pricks, where sword-
thrusts had failed. He condemned it as futile, and most impolitic; and
he did not shrink from reprobating it as cruel and unrighteous; for he
was one of those who was not afraid to follow where his conscience
led him.

When Lord Carlisle and his colleagues, leaving their mission un-
accomplished, withdrew themselves from Philadelphia to New York
in the wake of Sir Henry Clinton's retreating army, they were in a fit
of temper which was not without its excuses. They had been befooled
by the Cabinet Ministers who sent them across the ocean; and their
efforts to open a negotiation with Congress had been ignored by that
body with an indifference which bordered on contempt. Before taking
their passage back to England they exhaled their vexation, and en-
deavoured to salve their wounded dignity, by the issue of a valedictory
Proclamation which they circulated, in an enormous number of copies,
throughout the United States. They announced, in dark and ominous
terms, that the world must expect a change "in the whole nature, and
the future conduct, of the war," and that the British Government
would henceforward direct its efforts to desolate the country, and dis-
tress the people, of America.

This extraordinary production, which excited anger rather than un-
easiness among the Americans whom it was intended to frighten, was
read with consternation by all sensible men in Great Britain. The at-
tention of the House of Commons was called to the Manifesto by Coke
of Norfolk in the first of those brief and weighty utterances which,

421

for five-and-fifty years to come, were always heard with favour by an
assembly to whose taste both speech, and speaker, were in all points
precisely suited. He reminded his fellow-members that the plunder
and destruction of commercial towns, and defenceless fishing villages,
would invite reprisals which the Board of Admiralty had taken no
precautions to meet; and the young senator vehemently declared that,
apart from considerations of prudence and public safety, such modes
of warfare were repugnant to the humanity, and the generous courage,
which had in all times distinguished the British nation. A subordinate
member of the Government had provided himself with copious ex-
tracts from Puffendorf and Grotius to prove that the burning of un-
fortified towns, "which were the nurseries of soldiers," was perfectly
consistent with the accepted rules of war; but all the respect and
deference due to those antique pundits was swept away by the flood
of indignant rhetoric which poured from the lips of Edmund Burke.
"The extremes of war," he said, "and the desolation of a country,
were sweet-sounding mutes and liquids; but their meaning was ter-
rible. They meant the killing of man, woman, and child; — burning
their houses, and ravaging their lands, and annihilating humanity
from the face of the earth, or rendering it so wretched that death was
preferable. They exceeded all that the rights of war, as observed be-
tween civilised nations, would sanction; and, as no necessity could
warrant them, so no argument could excuse them." The impression
produced by Burke was so deep that the Prime Minister, and the At-
torney-General, rose successively to assure the House that an interpre-
tation had been placed upon the Manifesto which the words would
not bear; but they were roughly contradicted by Governor Johnstone,
who had been a brother Commissioner of Lord Carlisle, and who
therefore spoke with an authority which there was no gainsaying. He
had returned to England, breathing fire and fury against the Amer-
icans; and in consequence, for the first time in his life, he had been
graciously received at Court when he went to pay his respects to His
Majesty. Johnstone now told Parliament fiercely and repeatedly that,
whatever might be alleged to the contrary, the Proclamation most cer-
tainly did mean a war of destruction. "It meant nothing else; it could
mean nothing else; and, if he had been on the spot when it was
issued, he would himself have signed it. No quarter ought to be shown
to the American Congress; and, if the internals could be let loose on
them, he would approve the measure." No Minister of the Crown was
able to gainsay a man who knew so accurately what he was talking
422

about, and who, (as North and Wedderburn were both aware,) gave
expression to the exact sentiments held by their own strong-willed
and masterful Sovereign.

Burke performed a still more notable and durable service to man-
kind by his protest against the employment of savage auxiliaries in a
warfare between civilised Powers. His statesmanlike and impassioned
oratory produced an immediate effect upon the opinion, and an ulti-
mate and permanent change in the practice, of our own and other
nations. It was said at the time, and it has been repeated since, as an
excuse for Lord North's Government, that French and English com-
manders in former years had often taken the field, or more properly
speaking the forest, with a large contingent of Indian warriors in their
train. British generals had used red men as scouts for the purpose of
exploring the woods, and covering the flank of their columns, during
an advance through the wilderness; 6 and the Marquis de Montcalm,
in a sad hour for his good fame, led the Iroquois into battle at Fort
William Henry as a component part of his fighting force. But the
Indians had hitherto been exclusively employed in aid of regular op-
erations directed against an armed and disciplined foe. It was reserved
for Lord North and his colleagues to send them forth as executioners
to punish a civil population for the crime of rebellion. Cherokees and
Senecas, under injunctions sent from Downing Street, were subsidised
with public money, and bribed with food and brandy, and then
turned loose upon some peaceful country-side in Virginia or Pennsyl-
vania to work their will, and glut their ferocity, amidst a community
of English-speaking people who had not a single paid and trained sol-
dier to protect them; and these hordes of savages, on more than one
occasion, marched to the scene of slaughter and rapine under the orders
of a Loyalist officer who bore His Majesty's commission. Lord Chatham,
in the last months of his life, raised his voice in condemnation of this
barbarous,— and, as he maintained, this unprecedented,— policy; but
he got no satisfaction from a Secretary of State who seemed to have
peculiar views of his own about the Third Commandment. "It is al-
lowable," (replied the Earl of Suffolk,) "and perfectly justifiable, to
use every means which God has put into our hands." 7

6 Speech of the Earl of Chatham; Parliamentary History, volume XIX, page 411.

7 The real character of an Indian raid upon an unarmed and civilised population has
been forgotten in our time, for the very sufficient reason that the details and incidents
of those raids are indescribable in decent histories. But it is possible, without defiling the
printed page, to give a specimen of Indian barbarity. An interesting personal narrative
of General Sullivan's punitive march through the Seneca country in the Fall of 1779

423

That statement was made in the House of Lords in November 1777;
and, before the year was out, full particulars of the catastrophe of
Saratoga arrived in England. The history of Burgoyne's expedition
was one long object lesson on the military value, and moral character-
istics, of our Indian allies; and Burke chose an early opportunity for
driving that lesson home to the conscience of Parliament. He spoke
for more than three hours to a crowded and entranced assembly.
Strangers, including of course the newspaper reporters, had been rigor-
ously excluded from the Gallery; and, though Burke was urgently
entreated to publish his speech, he could not find the leisure, nor per-
haps the inclination, to rekindle in the solitude of his study that flame
of rhetoric which had blazed up spontaneously under the genial in-
fluence of universal admiration, and all but universal sympathy. It
was generally allowed that he had surpassed all his earlier perform-
ances. He left no aspect of the question untouched; he stated, in due
sequence, every important argument; and, when he let his fancy loose,
he traversed the whole scale of oratorical emotion, from the depth of
pathos to the height of unrestrained, audacious, and quite irresistible
humour.

Burke began by laying the solid foundation for his case in a series
of closely-reasoned passages of which only the outlines remain on rec-
ord. These Indian tribes, (he said,) had in the course of years been so
reduced in number and power that they were now only formidable
from their cruelty; and to use them for warlike purposes was merely
to be cruel ourselves in their persons. He called attention to the salient
distinction between their employment "against armed and trained sol-
diers, embodied and encamped, and against unarmed and defenceless
men, women, and children, dispersed in their several habitations" over
the whole extent of a prosperous and industrious district. He attributed
Burgoyne's defeat to the horror excited in the American mind by the
prospect of an Indian invasion. The manly and resolute determination

has recently been published in Philadelphia; and in the course of that march a small
party of Sullivan's people fell into the hands of the Indian warriors. "In this place,"
writes one of their comrades, "we found the body of the brave, but unfortunate, Lieu-
tenant Boyd, and one Rifleman, massacred in the most cruel and barbarous manner that
the human mind can possibly conceive, the savages having first put them to the most
excruciating torments by plucking their nails from hands and feet, and then spearing,
cutting, and whipping them, and mangling their bodies, and then cutting off the flesh
from their shoulders by pieces, tomahawking their heads from their bodies, and leaving
them a prey to their dogs. O Britain, behold, and blush!"

That was how the Indians treated their male captives. For the women they too often
reserved a yet more horrible fate.

424

of the New England farmers to save their families and their home-
steads from these barbarians led them "without regard to party, or to
political principle, and in despite of military indisposition, to become
soldiers, and to unite as one man in the common defence. Thus was
the spectacle exhibited of a resistless army springing up in the woods
and deserts." Indians, (said Burke,) were the most useless, and the
most expensive, of all auxiliaries. Each of their so-called braves cost as
much as five of the best European musketeers; and, after eating double
rations so long as the provisions lasted, they kept out of sight on a day
of battle, and deserted wholesale at the first appearance of ill-success.
They were not less faithless than inefficacious. When Colonel St. Leger
found himself in difficulties they turned their weapons, with insolent
treachery, against their civilised comrades; and over a circuit of many
miles around Burgoyne's camp they plundered, and butchered, and
scalped with entire indifference to the sex, the age, and the political
opinions of their victims. Burke told the story of the poor Scotch girl's
murder, on the eve of her intended marriage to an officer of the King's
troops, with an effect on the nerves of his audience which perhaps was
never equalled except by his own description, during the trial of War-
ren Hastings, of the treatment inflicted by the Nabob Vizier on the
Oude princesses. Many of his hearers were moved to tears; — a spectacle
which, in the British Parliament, is seen hardly once in a generation; 8
and Governor Johnstone congratulated the Ministry that there were
no strangers in the Gallery, because they would have been worked up
to such a pitch of excitement that Lord North, and Lord George
Germaine, must have run a serious risk from popular violence as soon
as they emerged into the street from the sanctuary of the House of
Commons.

And then Burke changed his note, and convulsed his audience by a
parody of Burgoyne's address to the Indians. It was a passage which
Horace Walpole, who had collected his knowledge of it in detached
morsels from many sources, pronounced to be a chej-d'ceuvre of wit,
humour, and just satire. "I wish," (he wrote,) "I could give an idea
of that superlative oration. How cold, how inadequate will be my

8 "Mr. Burke never displayed the powers of oratory so strongly as the other day
when the affair of the contracts with the Indians was agitated. His speech drew tears
from the whole House, particularly that part of it where he described the murder of
Miss McReay. I had not the pleasure of hearing him, as it is at present a standing order
that nobody is to be admitted into the Gallery." Letter from Sir Michael le Fleming;
Berkeley Square, Feb. 9, 1778.

425

fragment of a sketch from second, third, and thousandth hands!"
Burke related how the British general harangued a throng of warriors
drawn from seventeen separate Indian nations, who, so far from un-
derstanding the Burgoynese dialect, could not even follow the mean-
ing of a speech made in plain English; how he invited them,— by their
reverence for the Christian religion, and their well-known, and well-
considered, views on the right of taxation inherent in the Parliament at
Westminster,— to grasp their tomahawks, and rally round His Maj-
esty's standard; and how he adjured them, "by the same divine and
human laws," not to touch a hair on the head of man, woman, or
child while living, though he was willing to deal with them for scalps
of the dead, inasmuch as he was a nice and distinguished judge be-
tween the scalp taken from a dead person, and from the head of a
person who had died of being scalped. "Let us illustrate this Christian
exhortation, and Christian injunction," said Burke, "by a more famil-
iar picture. Suppose the case of a riot on Tower Hill. What would the
keeper of His Majesty's lions do? Would he not leave open the dens
of the wild beasts, and address them thus: 'My gentle lions, my hu-
mane bears, my tender-hearted hysenas, go forth against the seditious
mob on your mission of repression and retribution; but I exhort you
as you are Christians, and members of a civilised society, to take care
not to hurt man, woman, or child.' " Burke, like Mr. Gladstone after
him, was said to be deficient in humour;9 but a great orator depends
for his lighter effects not on a store of prepared jests and epigrams, but
on the unforced gaiety by which he himself is swayed at the moment,
and which he has the art and the power to diffuse among his hearers.
The walls of the chamber fairly shook with applause; Lord North him-
self "was almost suffocated by laughter"; and Colonel Barre declared
that, if Burke would only print the speech, he, on his part, would
undertake that it should be nailed to the door of every parish church
beneath the notice proclaiming a day of general fasting and humilia-
tion on account of the surrender of Saratoga. That speech would ex-
plain, far better than the homily of any courtly bishop, the real causes
of the disaster which had brought the nation to dust and ashes.

The oration on the employment of Indian auxiliaries, which by it-
self would have made the reputation of a senator, was for Burke noth-
ing more than a splendid interlude amidst his daily and nightly
labours in another field of politics. It was during the six years of this

*Boswell'f Tour to the Hebrides; August 15, 1773.
426

parliament that he established his claim to rank in English history
with Sir Robert Walpole, Sir Robert Peel, and Mr. Gladstone as a
financier and economist of the very highest order. The period of time
which he selected for making his attack upon corrupt and extravagant
expenditure may appear at first sight to have been imprudently chosen.
When the nation is engaged in an arduous war, a jealous and vigilant
guardian of the public resources has for the most part a thankless office.
Laxity of control, favouritism in the allocation of Government con-
tracts for stores and shipping, and even connivance in responsible quar-
ters with the grosser forms of peculation, are too often disguised under
the specious title of a large-minded patriotism which does not concern
itself about trifles when the safety of the country is in question; and
any public man, who stands forward in defence of thrift and probity,
is sure to be denounced as something little short of a traitor by all
those who are making excessive or dishonest profits out of the neces-
sities of the state. But the peers and commoners, who took part with
Edmund Burke in his crusade against jobbery and prodigality, were
silently conscious of the disinterestedness of their own motives, and
superbly indifferent to what was said about them by people whose ill
will was a compliment, and whose good word was the worst of libels.
The Duke of Richmond, and the Marquis of Rockingham, and the
Earl of Shelburne, and Sir George Savile, and Lord John and Lord
Frederic Cavendish, had each and all of them too unimpeachable a
character, and too large a stake in the welfare of England, to heed
the abuse of mercenary politicians who were paid for their votes by
parcels of scrip which they could sell at a premium of ten per cent,
on the morning after they were allotted, and of mercantile adven-
turers who supplied the Transport Department of the Admiralty with
unseaworthy vessels at five shillings in the pound above the market rate
of tonnage. The leaders of the Opposition discriminated carefully be-
tween the class of expenditure which it was their duty to provide,
and the class of expenditure which it was equally their duty to oppose.
They never thwarted or obstructed any well-conceived scheme for
strengthening the defences of the country. In the second year of the
French war a Bill for augmenting the Militia, laid before the House of
Commons on the twenty-first of June, was passed within the space of
four days after long bouts of work in what was described as "a putrid
atmosphere" by the^ members who inhaled it; and in the same week
a Bill for facilitating the enlistment of seamen was brought forward

427

after midnight, and carried through all its stages before the House
rose on the morrow.10 Burke and Fox, as well as all their political
allies and personal followers, opened the national purse-strings freely
to the requirements of military efficiency; while they ruthlessly ex-
posed, and fearlessly assailed, a system of financial practices ruinous to
the taxpayer, and gravely and increasingly dangerous to the liberties
of Britain.

Those liberties had been in jeopardy from the moment when George
the Third, in the full vigour of early manhood, and with a force of
will, and determination of purpose, which almost reached the level of
genius, set himself deliberately to build up a solid and enduring struc-
ture of personal government. To maintain in power ministers of his
own choice, irrespective of the estimation in which they were held by
their countrymen; to exercise his veto on legislation, not by announcing
through the mouth of the Clerk of the Parliaments that the King
would further consider the matter, but by contriving that the measures
which he disapproved should be defeated in the Lobby of one or an-
other of the two Houses; "to secure to the Court the unlimited and
uncontrolled use of its vast influence, under the sole direction of its
private favour;"11 those were the objects which he pursued, and at-
tained, by methods opposed to the spirit, but compatible with the
processes, of the Constitution. The King had the wit to see "that the
forms of a free, and the ends of an arbitrary, government," might be
reconciled by a course of action which avoided the outward show of
•despotism. Before he had been ten years on the throne he was in a fair
way to succeed where Charles the First and James the Second had
failed; and his policy, while less fraught with peril to the safety of
the monarch than was the policy of the Stuarts, was infinitely more
demoralising to the character of the nation. George the Third had no
occasion to march his Guards to Westminster, or commit the leaders
of the Opposition to the Tower of London, as long as he could make
sure of a parliamentary majority by an unscrupulous abuse of Govern-
ment patronage, and, (where need was,) by direct and downright
bribery. "The power of the Crown," said Burke, "almost dead and
rotten as Prerogative, has grown up anew, with much more strength,
and far less odium, under the name of Influence." Everything, (so this
famous patriot declared,) had been drawn from its holdings in the

10 Parliamentary History; volume XX, pages 915 to 969.

11 Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents. 1770.

428

country to the personal favour of the prince. That favour was the sole
introduction to office, and the sole tenure by which it was held; until
at last servility had become prevalent, and almost universal, "in spite
of the dead letter of any laws and institutions whatsoever." 12

The machinery of corruption was worked under the habitual and
minute supervision of the King; and with good reason. In previous
reigns the leaders of both parties, — Harley and Bolingbroke, and Wai-
pole, and Newcastle, — had bribed to keep themselves in office; and
now George the Third was bribing, on his own account, in order to
retain in his own hands the secure possession of autocratic power. The
unsavoury revelations that appear on almost every page of the royal
letters to Lord North enable us faintly to conjecture the character of
those still less avowable secrets which did not bear to be recorded in
black and white, and were reserved for a private conversation between
the monarch and the minister. The official correspondence which the
King most thoroughly enjoyed was that which he exchanged with Mr.
John Robinson, the Patronage Secretary of the Treasury, who was pro-
verbially known for as shrewd and shameless a trafficker in the human
conscience as ever priced a rotten borough, or slipped a bank-bill into
the palm of a wavering senator. All the departments of electoral and
parliamentary management were administered by this adroit and de-
voted servant beneath the close and constant inspection of the master's
eye. When a general election was in prospect the King began to save
up a special fund to meet the initial expenses of the contest.18 He knew
the circumstances of all the landed proprietors who had a borough at
their disposal; — which of them could afford to keep back one of his
two seats for a son or a nephew, and which of them was prepared to
part with both; how many of them would be content to take their
money in pounds, and how many would stand out for guineas. He
condescended even to those ignoble details which the least fastidious
of parlimentary candidates leaves to the sinister industry of a subor-
dinate agent. "Lord North," (he wrote,) "acquainted me with his wish
of supporting Mr. Powney for the borough of New Windsor. I shall
get my tradesmen encouraged to appear for him. I shall order, in con-
sequence of Mr. Robinson's hint, the houses I rent in Windsor to stand

^Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents.

13 "As die Dissolution is now fixed for Wednesday, August soth, I think it right to
transmit the money to you which completes up to this month the >£iooo per month I

have laid by The amount of the notes is ,£ 14000." The King to J. R.» Windsor

Castle; August 21, 1780.

429

in the parish rate in different names of my servants; so that will create
six votes." 14

When the King had got his nominees duly elected to Parliament he
did not abandon them to their own devices, but took excellent care
that they should perform his behests within the walls of Westminster.
Before he sat down to his early breakfast on the morning after a critical
division he already had looked to see whether any of their names were
missing on the list of ministerial voters. Tellers of the Exchequer, and
Storekeepers of the Ordnance, and Vice-Treasurers of Ireland, and Pay-
masters of Marines, and Rangers of the Royal Forests, and Registrars
of the Chancery of Barbadoes, and Brooms of the Bedchamber, and
holders of open pensions for life, and holders of secret pensions during
pleasure, and Clerks of the Board of Green Cloth, and the eight Lords
of Trade marching to order like the section of an infantry regiment,
and the whole crowd of place-holders from the King's Turnspit, who
hired a poor wretch at two shillings a week to perform his functions
in the Royal Kitchen,15 up to the Envoy Extraordinary at the Court
of Savoy, "who made a sinecure of his post, and left a secretary at
Turin, while he enjoyed his friends and his bottle in London"; 16 — these
remarkable senators, one and all, were perfectly aware that, while they
were free to neglect their official duties at Dublin, or Portsmouth, or
in the West Indies, or on tht Continent of Europe, they would have to
be inside the House of Commons when the door was shut, and the
question put, or their gracious sovereign would know the reason why.
When there were not enough well-paid appointments to go round the
whole circle of expectants those left out in the cold were conciliated by
a round sum in hard cash. "Mr. Robinson," said His Majesty, "shewed
his usual propriety in transmitting to me last night the list of speakers
in the debate, as well as of the division. I take this opportunity of send-
ing ;£6ooo to be placed to the same account as that sent on the 2ist of
August." 17 The means which the King employed were sanctified in
his own mind by the ideal perfection of the object at which he was
aiming. "It is attachment to my country," he wrote, "that alone actu-

14 This letter was addressed to the Secretary of the Treasury in May 1780. The mem-
ber for Windsor, as His Majesty's own local representative, got his full share of the
Secret Service money. "Mr. Powney," wrote Lord North to Mr. Robinson, "stipulated at
first for only £1000. He has, I believe, had £1500 or £2000. What does he want
now ?"

15 Speech of Earl Talbot, Lord Steward of the Household, April 16, 1777.

16 Evening Post of May n, 1779.

17 The King to J. R. Queen's House; March 6, 1781.

430

ates my purposes; and Lord North shall see that at least there is one
person willing to preserve unspoiled the most beautiful combination
that ever was."18 It was a combination which has presented itself
under a very different aspect to honest and discerning Englishmen.
"Of all ingenious instruments of despotism," said Sydney Smith, "I
must commend a popular assembly where the majority are paid and
hired, and a few bold and able men, by their brave speeches, make the
people believe that they are free."

The enormous, and perpetually growing, cost of this flagitious system
was ostensibly provided by the King himself from the resources at his
own command. George the Third called the tune, because he paid, or
was supposed to pay, for the music. A Civil List of three-quarters of
a million pounds a year had been settled on him, once for all, at the
commencement of his reign, and was exempt thenceforward from the
control of Parliament. He enjoyed, on the same agreeable conditions,
the receipts from the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster; whatever
surplus he could draw from the kingdom of Hanover, and the Bishopric
of Osnaburgh; lucrative Admiralty dues, and Crown rights, and vari-
ous odds and ends of taxation then regarded as perquisites of the mon-
arch;— as well as the hereditary revenues of Scotland, and the Civil
List of Ireland, which was a veritable gold mine of pensions and sal-
aries for obsequious English politicians who did as the King bade them
at Westminster. The entire sum exceeded a million annually, at a time
when the average expenditure of the country, in a year of peace, fell
considerably short of five millions.19 The English Civil List was encum-
bered with the stipends of the Judges, and with the outfit and main-
tenance of British Ministers abroad, whether they were living at their
posts in the capitals to which they were accredited, or whether they
were tippling, and voting, with the Bedfords in London; but other-
wise the whole of this colossal fund was at the absolute and unfettered
disposal of the monarch. It was amply sufficient to have maintained
the Court in regal splendour and overflowing comfort, and would have
enabled George the Third to give himself the satisfaction, (which the
greatest rulers of all ages and countries have regarded as their most
valued privilege,) of sparing something, in times of national emer-

18 The King to Lord North. Queen's House; April n, 1780, 15 min. past 8 a.m.

19 In the year 1767 the total expenditure of Great Britain, exclusive of charges con-
nected with the National Debt, amounted to £4,618,000; in 1768 to £4.235.00°; *&&
in 1769 to £4,304,000. Return of Public Income and Expenditure, Part I; of ordered
to be printed by the House of Commons in July 1869.

431

gency, to relieve the distress, and contribute to the safety, of the State.
The appanage of the throne was generous, and even magnificent, when
estimated by the standard of private incomes which then prevailed.
Lord Shelburne, who did not race or gamble, but who lived nobly in
town and country, gave it as his experience that "a man of high rank,
who looked into his own affairs, might have all that he ought to have,
all that could be of any use or appear with any advantage, for five
thousand pounds a year." But the disbursements of the Royal Estab-
lishment were in excess of two hundred thousand pounds annually;
and never were the current expenses of any household in more extrava-
gant disproportion to the wants and habits of the master.

George the Third lived very sparingly, — a conscientious ascetic amidst
a society which sadly needed examples of temperance. His boiled mut-
ton and turnips, and his jug of barley-water, on a hunting-day, and the
tea and bread and butter which sustained him during an afternoon of
hard toil following upon a morning of ceremonial duties, excited the
mockery of the idle, and the admiring envy of the wise.20 In other re-
spects his ways were those of a great English country gentleman with
the eyes of the world upon him. He liked to feel a fine horse under
him when he was galloping after his stag-hounds, and to see the villas
and garden-walls, which bordered the Western road, fly past his coach-
window as he drove in from Kew to take his seat at the head of a
Council-board. He knew good furniture from bad; he loved, with a
Platonic affection, the aspect of famous and classical books in tall edi-
tions and choice bindings; and there were consummate artists among
his subjects competent to gratify his taste in both particulars. He gave
his dress no less thought, and no more, than became a monarch. His
costumes were suited to the manifold, and very genuine, occupations
in which he was engaged; on occasions of State their materials were
costly, and their colours perfectly chosen; and, excellent husband that
he was, his wife could never be too richly and gaily bedecked to please
him.21 Everything that his private inclinations demanded, and all the
show of parade,, and luxury of hospitality, which the dignity of the

20 When Samuel Curwen, the Loyalist exile, was shown over the Queen's House at
Buckingham Gate, his special attention was called to a silver-gilt vessel, called the King's
Cup, in which the water-gruel was served which constituted George the Third's supper.

21 "The King's dress, as is customary on his Birth-day, was exceedingly plain. His
Majesty wore an unornamented green silk coat, and a diamond-hiked sword. The Queen
was very superbly dressed. Her cloaths were most richly embroidered with gold, and
trimmed with a border of flowers. On her head she carried nine very large jewels, and a
diamond crown of a beautiful form. Her stomacher was one broad glare of splendour."
London Evening Post. June 5, 1779.

432

British throne called upon him to display, might have been provided
for half the money which was squandered year by year within the pre-
cincts of his palaces.

In all that appertained to the management of his domestic affairs the
King was negligently, unfaithfully, or, at the very best, ignorantly and
incapably served. His Court, (to borrow a phrase from Edmund
Burke,) "had lost all that was stately and venerable in the antique man-
ners, without retrenching anything of the cumbrous charge of a Gothic
establishment." 22 The principal officers bore titles which came down from
those feudal ages when peers and prelates were waited upon by heredi-
tary Stewards, and hereditary Chamberlains, and even by hereditary
Cooks and Cellarers. The noblemen at the head of the chief depart-
ments knew as much, and as little, about the conditions of purveying
for the needs of a great modern household as their ancestors who stood
round the table at Runnymede. Below them, in the official hierarchy,
came a multitude of cadets of noble houses, and gentlemen of old
families, with an admixture of less well-born people who had been use-
ful to the Ministerial candidate at a contested election. Whatever might
be their social station, they all had been appointed for political reasons;
and for the same reasons they were seldom or never removed from
office on the score of idleness, or incompetence, or even on a grave sus-
picion of dishonesty. Every branch of the internal administration of
the royal palaces was absurdly over-manned; everybody, except the
humblest delegates and understrappers, was very lightly worked; and
the occupants of the best-paid places for the most part were not worked
at all. The household books were kept by two Treasurers, a Comp-
troller, a Cofferer, and a whole tribe of subordinate clerks and account-
ants. The royal clothes were in charge of the Master of the Robes, the
Keeper of the Wardrobe, the Keeper of the Removing Wardrobe, the
Groom of the Stole, the King's Valet, and the King's Valet's Deputy,
who knew a great deal more about the contents of the Dress Closet
than all his superiors together. It was the same in every corner of the
royal household. The Peers, on a notable occasion, were positively
thrilled by a frank outburst of irrepressible emotion from Earl Talbot,
who, in his vocation of High Steward, did his best to administer,
loyally and zealously, the department which he superintended. It was
difficult, (said that nobleman,) to keep in order the menial servants o£
the royal family, when the profits were enjoyed "by persons of a cer-
tain rank, and the services were performed by those of another." He

22Burkc*s Speech on Economical Reform; February n, 1780.

433

had attempted an economical reform in the early part of His Majesty's
reign by diminishing the number of daily dinners, the expense of
which it was impossible to regulate, and by granting instead a hand-
some subsistence allowance to some of the leading officials. But these
gentry now came back to the Palace at meal-times, and claimed to be
fed at the King's cost without forfeiting a single shilling of their
board-wages. They insisted, moreover, on eating at separate tables, no
less than twenty-three of which were spread daily in various apart-
ments of the Palace. The picking and stealing was incessant. The most
flagrant abuses were rampant in the kitchens, the butteries, the stables,
the wardrobe, and more especially in the royal nurseries; 23 and waste
and prodigality, as their inevitable consequence, had brought debt and
humiliation in their train. "His Lordship," we are told, "drew a most
melancholy picture of the domestic situation of the sovereign, and
how far his feelings, as a man and a master, were daily wounded. He
appealed to his brother Peers if there was one of them could rest
quietly on his pillow while he was conscious that his tradesmen were
made miserable on his account, and were threatened with bankruptcy
and ruin. The very coal merchant who supplied the royal household
had six thousand pounds due to him; and so it was in proportion with
all the other tradesmen. The poor menial servants, who had six quarters
of their wages due to them, how pitiable was their position! Their
complaints were sufficient to penetrate the most obdurate heart; and he
solemnly protested that his own situation was nearly as much to be
pitied, being necessarily obliged to hear these stories of distress and
wretchedness without having it in his power to alleviate or remove
them." Edmund Burke spoke well within the mark when he asserted
that not even a royal revenue could support "the accumulated charge
of ancient establishment, modern luxury, and parliamentary political
corruption."

Lord Talbot's statement of the profusion and malversation which
prevailed in the royal household was in no respect exaggerated; but

23 "Eleven tables," said Lord Talbot, "are kept for the nurses; there being so many
of that description. It is necessary each should have a separate table; for who could
trust two women at the same table, and expect that they should long agree?" A very
small part of this ridiculous expenditure went to feed the litde princes and princesses.
According to a London newspaper of the year 1780 "the Royal children, by his Majesty's
command, get up early, have bread and milk for breakfast, and dine on broth and
salads, seldom being allowed any butcher's meat, their solids being chiefly chickens.
They drink no liquor other than whey, and milk and water, and are sometimes indulged
with a glass of weak negus. Supper is the same as breakfast. In this manner, till within
two years the two eldest princes lived."

434

the true cause of His Majesty's financial difficulties must be sought in
another quarter. The deficit on the Civil List was not mainly due to
the money, and the money's worth, which was mis-spent or stolen at
Windsor Castle, and in the Queen's House at the bottom o£ the Green
Park, but to the far larger sums which had been continuously, delib-
erately, and only too effectively, devoted to the worst of purposes out-
side the Palace walls. The fact was that most of the ready cash which
ought by rights to have gone in paying the King's butcher, and grocer,
and coach-maker, had been consumed in buying Members of Parlia-
ment; in corrupting the daily Press; in subsidising needy men of let-
ters on a scale of remuneration much higher than their pens would
have commanded in the open market; and in persecuting authors,
publishers, printers, compositors, and printers' devils for their respec-
tive shares in the production of pamphlets and newspaper articles
which displeased the Court. Those ruinously expensive operations had
been in full swing ever since the date when the young King first made
up his mind to assert the power of the Crown by putting Pitt out,
and Bute in. George the Third speedily exhausted the hundred and
seventy thousand pounds of savings left him by his wise old grand-
father, who found it cheaper, as well as less troublesome, to govern
through a Minister possessing the confidence of Parliament and the
country; he emptied the Privy Purse; and he incurred in addition
heavy obligations which he was totally unable to meet. In February
1769 Parliament was asked for a cool half million to defray the King's
debts. The essential nature of the demand was analysed and exposed
by George Grenville and Barre in the one House, and by Lord
Chatham in the other. They openly affirmed,— what every one of their
hearers in his secret conscience knew to be true, — that the money,
which the British people had contributed in perfect good faith towards
supporting their monarch in ease and dignity, was used to debauch
the virtue of their own elected representatives, and to poison the wells
of politics. But the voice of warning and remonstrance was drowned
with clamour in the Commons, and stifled with chilling silence by
the Lords; for that worst of bad Parliaments contained hundreds of
borough-members, and scores of peers, who stooped to accept those
wages of servility the lavish provision of which had embarrassed, and
in the end had beggared, their royal master.

Those were halcyon days for the bribed and the briber; but, by the
time that the Civil List was again declared to be insolvent, a change
had come over the face of the waters. When in April 1777 the King

435

requested Parliament to enable him to discharge another debt of over
six hundred thousand pounds "incurred in the expense of his house-
hold, and of his civil government," it was evident that the whole rank
and file of the Opposition, and not their leaders only, had taken the
lesson of the past eight years to heart. The wording of the Royal
Message was insidious; but it did not beget belief, and it aroused
the resentment natural to men who are invited to take action injurious
to their own interests, and distasteful to their own feelings, on trans-
parently false pretences. When it was suggested that the Master of the
Horse, and the Treasurer of the Royal Chamber, should be called
upon to supply details of expenditure in their several departments
those functionaries returned for answer that they had "no material
suitable for that purpose," and that it was impossible for them to make
up any such accounts as the economists in the House of Commons de-
manded. But on the other hand it came out that within the last few
years a sum of six hundred thousand pounds, — as nearly as possible
the exact amount of the excess on the Civil List, — had been disbursed
under the head of Secret Service, for objects with which, in the great
majority of instances, no one was acquainted except the King, the
Prime Minister, and the Patronage Secretary of the Treasury. Further-
more it appeared that in a single twelvemonth there had been an in-
crease of seventy thousand pounds in the outgoings of the officer
charged with the payment of annuities, tenable during the King's
pleasure, to certain favoured members of both Houses, and their rela-
tives and dependants, whose names were, in the majority of cases,
concealed from public knowledge.24 The most innocent-minded of
politicians could not blind himself to the conviction that the Court
party, by bribing out of the resources of the Civil List, and then sum-
moning the House of Commons to pay the King's debts and ask no
questions, had obtained an unlimited power to draw upon the British
people for the means of suborning the British Parliament. There was
already a National Debt, to bear the cost of those foreign wars in
which the nation had been engaged; and now there was a Royal Debt
as well, incurred to supply the King with the means of carrying on an
internal war against those among his own subjects who did not share
his personal views on domestic and colonial politics. That war was
prosecuted by George the Third with exceptional zest and relish, as

M Annual Register of 1777, chapter 5 of The History of Europe; Parliamentary His-
tory, volume XIX, pages 103 to 187; Return of Pu&lic Income and Expenditure, July
1869.

436

is shown in his confidential letters to Lord North, which contain at
least ten words about the iniquities of Rockingham, and Chatham,
and Fox, and Burke, and Camden, for every three that are bestowed
upon the insolence of the Americans, or the treacheries of France and
Spain. The members of the Opposition would have been more, or less,
than human if they had silendy and obediently voted away large sums
of money to be expended in destroying their own careers, and en-
forcing a policy repugnant to their own cherished doctrines and prin-
ciples. It was incumbent on the real Whigs, who sat opposite Lord
North, to defend the independence of Parliament, the most vital article
of their time-honoured party creed, against the sham Whigs who sat
behind him.

When it became known that the Government intended to pay off
the King's debts, and increase the amount of his Civil List by a hun-
dred thousand pounds a year, Lord John Cavendish moved a Resolu-
tion preparing the way for a Parliamentary enquiry into the financial
aspects of the question. Wilkes took the floor, and addressed the House
at a length proportioned to that enormous amount of Secret Service
money which the King's ministers had spent over their reiterated at-
tempts to ruin him. He was heard by his brother members eagerly
and sympathetically at first, and patiently and respectfully to the end.
There was a general feeling that, having been wrongfully kept out-
side Parliament during so many years, he now had a right to make up
for his lost opportunities. When Wilkes had resumed his seat, and
handed his manuscript to the reporters, the argument rose to a level
worthy of the occasion. Burke was in his very happiest vein; and
Charles Fox,— the record of whose masterly performance occupies less
than three columns in the Parliamentary History, as against sixteen
columns of John Wilkes,— "made a speech that even courtiers allowed
to be one of his finest orations." 25 But the advocacy of Fox and Burke
was soon overshadowed in importance by an expression of opinion
from an unusual, and most unexpected, quarter. The proposals of the
Government were adopted after some long debates, and crowded di-
visions; and on Wednesday the seventh of May "the King, seated on
the throne, adorned with his crown and regal ornaments, and attended
by his Officers of State, the Lords being in their robes," commanded
the attendance of the Commons at the bar of the House of Peers.26
The Speaker, at the head of his flock, presented to His Majesty the

25 Walpole's Last Journals; April 18, 1777.

26 Parliamentary History; volume XIX, page 213.

437

Bill for the better support of the Royal Household, and then proceeded
to address the Sovereign in language which recalled the dignified
traditions of the great Parliaments in the first forty years of the seven-
teenth century. "At a time," he said, "of public distress, full of diffi-
culty and danger, their constituents labouring under burdens almost
too heavy to be borne, your faithful Commons postponed all other
business, and, with as much despatch as the nature of their proceed-
ings would admit, have not only granted to your Majesty a large
present supply, but also a very great additional revenue;— great, be-
yond example; great, beyond your Majesty's highest expense.27 All
this, Sir, they have done in a well-grounded confidence that you will
apply wisely what they have granted liberally."

Sir Fletcher Norton had correcdy interpreted the better mind of
the assembly over which he presided. When the Commons were once
again beneath their own roof, it was moved that his Address to the
King should be printed; and the motion was carried nem. con. — a
phrase which, in the Journals of Parliament, signifies that no sounds
of dissent were audible when the question was put from the Chair.
One member of the House, however, was not in harmony with
the general feeling. Rigby had behaved with unmeasured effrontery
throughout the discussions on the Civil List; 28 and now, on Friday
the ninth of May, while discoursing on a kindred topic, "he turned
with vehemence towards the Chair, and arraigned the conduct of the
Speaker with great acrimony," 29 The Speaker, in few and impressive
words, appealed to the Vote which stood on the Journals of the House
as a proof that the sentiments which he had expressed were the sen-
timents of the House, and not his own particular sentiments, as the
Paymaster of the Forces had asserted; but Sir Fletcher Norton's protest
only served to draw down a fresh, and fiercer, attack from the Right
Honourable Gentleman. "Mr. Rigby," according to the official account,

27 "Several members, who took notes of this speech, wrote 'wants' instead of 'ex-
pense.*' The supposed distinction between the force of those two words became the
text for much comment.

28 On an afternoon when Lord North had replied with courtesy to a great many ques-
tions from various quarters of the House about the details of the Civil List, Rigby got
up, and "attacked the Opposition very violently. No accounts, (he said,) were ever
given, or ought to be given. He was astonished how the Noble Lord could waste his
time in answering all the trifling questions which had been put to him. For his part, if
he were in the Noble Lord's situation, he would make it a rule never to answer a ques-
tion put by an individual member in his place.*' Parliamentary History; volume XIX,
page 156.

29 Parliamentary History; volume XIX, page 224.

438

"spoke of the Chair in terms very nearly bordering on disrespect, and
proceeded to great heat, which seemed to make the Treasury Bench
uneasy." Uneasiness deepened into positive panic when Charles Fox
started up, and, snatching his chance with the promptitude of a born
tactician, moved that "Mr. Speaker, in his speech to His Majesty, did
express, with just and proper energy, the zeal of this House for the
honour and dignity of the Crown." The Ministers tried every expedient
to divert Fox from his purpose. Welbore Ellis was put up to cajole
and entreat, and Thurlow to bully; but Fox replied that no power on
earth should induce him to withdraw his motion. "He was satisfied,"
(so the report runs,) "that the House would never consent to their
own degradation and disgrace in the person of their Speaker, nor
would contradict on a Friday what they had approved on the Wednes-
day immediately preceding. It had been said that the speech was not
grammar. If the speech was not grammar, it abounded in good sense,
and conveyed the true, unbiassed, sense of the House, and of every
man on either side who had not been bought over to a sacrifice of his
principles and his conscience." The fire and sincerity of the young
orator swept the air clear, and aroused cordial enthusiasm in the vir-
tuous and the honest, and a touch of penitence in some who had
dallied with corruption. Rigby himself was cowed, and grumbled out
the semblance of an apology; Fox saw his Resolution passed without
a division; and then, on the motion of an independent member, the
thanks of the House were specifically and unanimously voted to Mr.
Speaker for his speech to His Majesty. That was the first defeat in-
flicted upon the Court in the memorable series of parliamentary cam-
paigns which now was opening. The King had reason on his side
when, at fifteen minutes past ten on that same evening, he wrote to
the Prime Minister to say that Mr. Rigby would have done well to let
the matter rest.

When Edmund Burke consented to stand for Bristol he had told
his future constituents that he could not answer for his own abilities,
but that of his industry he was sure. That was no vain pledge; for
during the six years of his connection with Bristol City he set an ex-
ample which since his day has been followed by many, but surpassed
by none. It may be affirmed, broadly but truly, that Burke's course of
action between 1774 and 1780 elevated the conception of senatorial duty
to a higher level than it ever reached since the early days of the Long
Parliament, and conspicuously higher than it had maintained during

439

the fifteen years which had elapsed since George the Third ascended
the Throne. Those years had been wasted in a barren and acrimonious
struggle for place and salary. The King's Ministers, and the King's
Friends, could spare no attention to the accumulating arrears of cur-
rent legislation which the needs of the country imperatively demanded;
and the whole period of Personal Government had been sterile of all
fruit which did not, sooner or later, turn bitter in the mouth. It was
left for Burke to remove that reproach from the fair fame of the
House of Commons, and to prove what might be accomplished by a
private member, who was likewise a genuine patriot, amidst the din of
arms abroad, and the clash and clamour of selfish interests at home.
The worthy forerunner of Romilly, and Lord Ashley, and Richard
Cobden, he found leisure, in those crowded and noisy Sessions, to
initiate many valuable reforms, and to carry some of them to comple-
tion. Not the least noteworthy of his undertakings, and his successes,
was the extension of religious toleration to a great body of his fellow-
countrymen whose conduct had long ago ceased to afford any sort of
excuse for the cruel and insulting treatment to which they continued
to be subjected.

. The Roman Catholics of Great Britain had remained at the mercy
of those oppressive laws which dated from the time when their prede-
cessors were unfriendly to the dynasty established by the Great Revo-
lution. They still were forbidden to acquire land by purchase. The
entailed estates of heirs, who had been educated in Jesuit schools and
colleges on the Continent of Europe, were liable to forfeiture in favour
of the Protestant who stood next in the succession; and a Roman
Catholic priest, who officiated in the services of his Church, might be
condemned to imprisonment for life at the instance of a common
informer. Lord Mansfield and Lord Camden, — fearless and righteous
magistrates who were the ornaments of the two great parties in the
State,— -had done their utmost to protect the liberty and property of
these innocent people; and the Crown was not slow to grant a free
pardon in cases where the Courts of Justice had no choice except to
convict on evidence, and sentence the condemned man to a barbarous
punishment. The executive authority had every disposition to mitigate
the severities of the Statute Book; but Roman Catholics were tired of
living on sufferance; and they knew only too well that dormant laws
might at any moment be awakened into baleful operation by a sudden
frenzy of popular passion. They had long ere this begun to resent
the invidious and unfounded suspicion of disloyalty under which they
440

laboured; and now, when a new French war had broken out, and their
country was in dire peril, they had no mind to be accounted among the
enemies of England. In May 1779 a humble address was placed in
the King's hands by Lord Petre, who in the course of the following
autumn entertained his sovereign so royally during his inspection of
the Militia Camp upon Warley Common. It was signed by the Duke
of Norfolk, the Earls of Surrey and Shrewsbury, Lord Clifford, and
Lord Arundell, and a great multitude of peers and commoners, many
of whom bore names hardly less historical than those which headed
the list. These eminent representatives of their ancient faith united in
assuring His Majesty that, "in a time of public danger, when his sub-
jects could have but one interest, and ought to have but one wish and
one sentiment," they, and their co-religionists, held no opinions ad-
verse to his government, or repugnant to the duty of good citizens;
and they emphatically asserted their attachment to the civil constitution
of their country "as perfected by that Revolution which had placed his
illustrious house on the throne of these Kingdoms."

In face of such a declaration the penal legislation of King William
the Third was a scandal and an anachronism, which no leading man
on either side of politics was able to defend, or willing to perpetuate. A
time arrived, only too soon, when the great conservative reaction, at-
tendant upon the excesses of the French Revolution, terrified the ma-
jority of our statesmen,— including alas! Edmund Burke himself,—
into the paths of religious intolerance; but the earlier parliaments of
George the Third were notably free from any trace of bigotry. The
House of Commons contained many high-minded and thoughtful men
admirably capable of vindicating, by speech and action, the freedom of
the human conscience; and the rank and file of their colleagues, who
enjoyed the good things of the present moment, and who took a super-
ficial, and all too easy, view of moral problems, had at all events the
qualities of their defects, and were genuine Epicureans in their reluc-
tance to tyrannise over the beliefs of others. There was only one man
among them who could have written the Fifteenth and Twenty-first
Chapters of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; but they all
were readers of Gibbon's book, and few of them had any fault to find
with his treatment of ecclesiastical questions. Roman Catholics, who
petitioned for the relaxation of the penal laws, had no reason to an-
ticipate difficulties within the walls of Parliament; though the perils
which threatened them outside those walls were of a gravity which it
was impossible to exaggerate. A gay and good-humoured scepticism

441

was the tone among the upper ranks of society, while the middle and
lower classes were still swayed by intense and uncompromising emo-
tions. The prejudices and antipathies kindled by two centuries of
mutual persecutions and proscriptions still smouldered in many thou-
sand breasts; and the cry of No Popery, that most potent of all in-
citements to violence and disorder, only waited for a demagogue
unprincipled enough to raise it. But Edmund Burke, who was the
exact opposite of a demagogue, was diligent in the redress of grievances
even in cases where he was quite sure to suffer for it at the polling-
booth. He undertook to forward the claims of the Roman Catholics;
and he cared so much for the success of their cause that he was will-
ing to obey a sound instinct which taught him to keep his own per-
sonality in the back-ground. He began by enlisting the influence of
Charles Fox on behalf of his clients, which was no hard matter; for
throughout Fox's life any project, which appealed to his sense of jus-
tice and humanity, had all the greater fascination for him in proportion "
as the espousal of it seemed likely to damage his own political inter-
ests. A Catholic Relief Bill,— which Burke had suggested, and probably
had drafted, — was committed to the charge of Sir George Savile, on
the ground that such a proposal, "would come with more weight from
an opulent and respected country gentleman." 30 That was by no means
an exhaustive description of Savile's qualifications for the task; inas-
much as a long course of self-education in theological research had
made him unusually competent to handle such a topic.31 The intro-
duction of the measure was seconded by Dunning, the ablest of the
Opposition lawyers. The Bill, lucidly explained, and forcibly recom-
mended, traversed all its stages in the Lower House without a single
hostile vote, and almost without a cavil; and received, as it was, with
equal respect by the Peers, it became law within a bare fortnight of the
day that it had been laid on the table of Parliament.

Burke's exertions on behalf of the Roman Catholic community in
England produced an indirect consequence which was eminently grat-
ifying to his deeply-rooted affection for Ireland. He had an Irish heart;

30 Memoir of the Life and Character of the Right Hon. Edmund Bur\e, by James
Prior; London, 1826, volume I, chapter 6.

31 "Though Sir George Savile' s reason was sharp, his soul was candid, having none
of the acrimony or vengeance of party. He had a head as acutely argumentative as if it
had been made by a German logician for a model." Walpole's Memories of George the
Third, volume I, chapter 24. The distinguished part which Savile played in the debate
of February 1772 on Clerical Subscription in the Church of England is related in the
Ninth Chapter of The Early History of Charles James Fox.

442

and, Protestant as he was, he never could bring himself to believe that
the harsh and inequitable treatment inflicted upon the old religion
was conducive to the true interests o£ his native island. When he
crossed the Channel to seek his political future in London he left be-
hind him a state-paper, of remarkable merit, insisting upon the hard-
ship of that penal law under which the children of an Irish Roman
Catholic, in case they thought fit to announce their conversion to
Protestantism, could deprive their father of all power over the ultimate
disposition of his own estate, and in the meanwhile could plunder
him of half his income. The exposure and condemnation of that un-
speakable injustice had, in the year 1764, been Burke's political legacy
to Ireland; and by the summer of 1778 public opinion had grown ripe
for reform, and the example set at Westminster was copied in Dublin.
A measure of Roman Catholic Relief was introduced by Mr. Luke
Gardiner, one of the very few members of the Irish Parliament whose
principles, (according to the grudging testimony of Mr. Froude,) were
above suspicion.32 The Bill became law. The Roman Catholics paid
their gratitude in the quarter where gratitude was due; 33 and not the
Roman Catholics only, for the satisfaction felt by the best men of
both parties was embodied in a letter to Burke from the Speaker of
the Irish House of Commons. "On this happy event," (the Right
Honourable Gentleman wrote,) "I sincerely congratulate you, being
fully persuaded that it is of more real importance to our country than
any law that has been passed during my time."

It was not the only, or the most signal, service which Edmund Burke,
during those distracting years of internal tumult and foreign war, was
enabled to do for Ireland. The commercial welfare of that country had
been subordinated, — or rather, to speak more accurately, had been sacri-
ficed,— to the selfish interests of Great Britain. Just a century had

32 Mr. Froude goes on to say that Luke Gardiner, "as Lord Mountjoy, was to learn
the real meaning of Catholic Emancipation when he was piked and hacked to death
at New Ross." It is difficult to understand that Mr. Froude can have been serious in
attributing the Wexford outrages of 1798 to the circumstance that the sons of a Roman
Caholic landed proprietor were no longer permitted by law to rob their father. The Eng-
lish in Ireland, by James Anthony Froude; book VI, chapter i.

33 "That Address and Petition, which you left with me in the year 1764, was found
by us here so excellent a performance in every respect, and set forth our grievances in so
affecting a manner, that we happily resolved to begin our humble suit by laying it be-
fore the Viceroy, and requesting he would transmit it to be laid before His Majesty;
which, we are sure, made such an impression as was in a great measure productive of
what has since followed, far beyond expectations." John Curry to Edmund Burke, Esq.
Dublin, Aug. 18, 1778.

443

elapsed since merchant vessels built in Ireland, and owned and navi-
gated by Irishmen, had been excluded from the privilege of trading
with British colonies and plantations beyond the seas. Half a gen-
eration later the Parliament at Westminster, without so much as con-
sulting, or even forewarning, the Parliament at Dublin, placed on the
Statute Book an Act which intentionally, instantaneously, and irrep-
arably crushed to extinction the woollen industries of the dependent
island. The utter prostration of Irish commerce had never been more
painfully felt than during the earlier months of this French war. All
access to markets on the Continent of Europe was barred by the activity
of the American privateers; the monopoly of trade with the East and
West Indies was reserved as strictly as ever for Scotch and English
shipowners; and Belfast, and Cork, and Londonderry, and Waterford
might have been frontier towns on the confines of Bohemia for all the
advantage they derived from their proximity to the ocean. "Our trade
here," (wrote the Speaker of the Irish House of Commons from
Limerick,) "is entirely ruined. There is not a ship in our port, or the
least business doing." 34 The prospect had seldom appeared more hope-
less for Irish merchants and manufacturers, those helots of English
commerce; but the hour of their emancipation was already on the eve
of striking. A sincere and growing conviction that Ireland had been
shamefully used was noticeable in the British House of Commons, as
well as a consciousness that she was fast becoming too formidable to
be trifled with; and among the leading orators of that assembly was a
patriotic Irishman deeply versed in the philosophy, and the practical
bearings, of trade and finance in all their branches. "Burke," (said
Adam Smith,) "is the only man I ever met who thinks on economic
subjects exactly as I do, without any previous communications having
passed between us." A sincere and intelligent friend both of England
and Ireland, Burke appealed in his speeches not only to the fears, and
not only to the consciences, of his parliamentary colleagues. He di-
rected his main efforts to awaken in their minds a rational sense of
their true policy as custodians of the common and universal interests
of the British empire. After the question was finally decided he re-
viewed the course of the controversy in a published letter. "The part,"
(he wrote,) "to which I attached myself most particularly was to fix
the principle of a free trade in all the ports of these islands as founded

34 Right Hon. Edmund Sexton Pery to Edmund Eur\et Esq.; August 26, 1778.

444

in justice, and beneficial to the whole, but principally to this island of
Great Britain, the seat of supreme power." 35

Burke kept the claims of Ireland before the attention of the House
of Commons with an assiduity most unsuited to the Ministerial view
of appropriate times and seasons. As late as February 1779 Lord North
told Parliament that more than enough had already been done for
Ireland, and complained that the only evidence of her gratitude for one
boon was that she immediately proceeded to ask for another. Mr.
Burke, (we are told,) exploded the Noble Lord's argument with keen-
ness and satire. He exclaimed that such horrid reasoning was too gross
to dwell upon. "It was that narrow and illiberal policy which had lost
us America, and would in all probability, one day or another, endanger
the very existence of the British Empire."36 That day was not long
in coming. Ireland had been made disagreeably aware that King
George's Government was powerless to defend her, and that, for the
protection of her coasts and cities from insult and invasion, she must
rely on her own valour and her own resources.87 In April 1778 Cap-
tain Paul Jones appeared unexpectedly in St. George's Channel; made
prize of a Waterford brig, a Dublin merchant vessel, and two smaller
Irish traders; and ended by capturing, after a desperate engagement,
the only royal man-of-war which the Admiralty at Whitehall could
spare to mount guard over the commerce of Ulster. The effect on the
North-country Irish was instant and tremendous. That pugnacious race
of civilians was stirred into universal and spontaneous action by a pas-
sion of shame and resentment, accompanied by just that moderate dose
of panic which renders a brave man the most formidable of adversaries.
Forty thousand Volunteers, Presbyterians and Episcopalians alike, were
•speedily enrolled, and equipped for battle, with peers and great com-
moners, and in one case even a fighting bishop, for their colonels and
generals, and squires and squireens for their regimental officers. When
Paul Jones, in the course of the autumn, returned with a powerful

35 Letter to Thomas Burgh, Esq., -from Edmund Burfa; Beaconsfield, New Year's
Day, 1780.

^Parliamentary History; volume XX, page 137.

37 Mr. Thomas Conolly, a great Irish landlord, — who sat in the British Parliament,
•where he was held in high account, — complained to the House o£ Commons that "the
unfortunate kingdom of Ireland, which had no hand in the American War, and was
never to reap any benefit from it, lay exposed everywhere to the descent of the enemy."
Dublin itself, (he said,) had been open to invasion till the latter end of the summer of
1778, when two "Newcastle Cats," — or, in other words, two colliers from the Tyne, —
•were mounted with sixteen guns each, and stationed as guardships at the entrance of
4he harbour.

445

squadron, manned by two thousand sailors, he was informed by his
friends on shore that he would find himself in a hornets' nest if he
ventured to land an armed party at any point on the Irish seaboard.

Such an enterprise was beyond the courage of even a Paul Jones,
and he sailed away to the North-east coast of England, to reap fresh
laurels on an element where he was more at home. Disappointed of
any immediate prospect of a brush with a foreign enemy, the Irish
Volunteers determined to take advantage of so unique an opportunity
for extorting the redress of their national grievances from the reluctant
hands of a British ministry. On the fourth of November, the anniver-
sary of King William the Third's birthday, many thousand musketeers
paraded in front of his statue on College Green, firing volleys, waving
flags emblazoned with ominous and significant devices, and trailing
cannon placarded with the motto "Free Trade or This." King George
and his Cabinet were once more faced by the old difficulty,— much
nearer their own doors, and, if possible, in a more alarming shape.
Their regular army was on the other side of the Atlantic, engaged in
an attempt to enforce the payment of a customs-duty imposed upon
America by the Parliament of Great Britain; their home garrison was
composed almost exclusively of militia; and, if they insisted on main-
taining the right of taxing Ireland without her own consent, there
would be nothing for it but to leave Portsmouth and Plymouth bare of
troops, and transport all our militiamen across St. George's Channel
to fight the Irish Volunteers.

That was an extreme of folly too outrageous even for the Cabinet
which had invented the Boston Port Bill. Before the end of November
Parliament met at Westminster for the winter session; and the King's
Speech contained a passage indicating, with even more than the usual
circumlocution and obscurity, that his Government was prepared fa-
vourably to consider the demands of Ireland.38 Those hazy and per-
functory phrases were not enough to satisfy the House of Commons,
and the great majority of Edmund Burke's colleagues desired to have
a statement of the situation from a public man who understood the
nature of the Irish demands, and who had been consistent in his sup-
port of them. "Mr. Burke," (according to the official account,) "rose
to speak; but, finding a great difficulty in making himself heard on

38"i nave not fecn. inattentive to the state of my loyal and faithful kingdom of
Ireland; . . . and I recommend it to you to consider what further benefits and advantages
may be extended to that kingdom by such regulations, and such methods, as may most
effectually promote the common strength, wealth, and interests of all my dominions.'*

446

account of a violent cold and hoarseness, he sat down once or twice,
and would have declined speaking, had he not been pressed and so-
licited by the unanimous sense of the House of Commons." The House
was rewarded by hearing a fine explanation of the intrinsic justice and
expediency of those concessions into which Lord North and his col-
leagues had been frightened by a menace of rebellion. Three weeks
afterwards a colder, and less sympathetic, assembly listened while the
Prime Minister, in an unapplauded speech, introduced Resolutions
granting to Ireland the free export of her products and manufactures,
as well as the privilege of trading with the British colonies under ex-
actly the same conditions and restrictions as were enforced in the case
of Scotch and English vessels. Charles Fox, in his character of Opposi-
tion leader, uttered a few sentences of cautious and guarded approval;
but Burke,— the mark of all eyes, and the centre of all thoughts,—
remained in his place tranquil and silent, with the silence of a wise
man who has gained his point, and who leaves well alone.

James Boswell, who watched his contemporaries intently, and not
ungenerously, has put upon record his impressions of Burke a little
before this period of his public career. "Few men, if any," said Boswell,
"enjoy continual happiness in this life. I have a kind of belief that
Edmund Burke does. He has so much knowledge, so much animation,
and so much fame." 39 There seldom has been a more striking exem-
plification of Bacon's profound saying that great persons have need
to borrow other men's opinions to think themselves happy. Burke had
his private difficulties and troubles, the full extent of which was known
only to himself; and he bore them as became a man, without impa-
tience, and with few complaints. During these very years, — when his
action in the House of Commons afforded a model to all time of an
industrious, a useful, and an honoured senator, — his relations with his
constituents were a never-failing source of trouble and anxiety. The
business men of Bristol had for some while past been sore and uneasy
on account of the growing importance of Liverpool, which was rapidly
dispacing their city from the proud position of the second port in the
kingdom, after London. But Bristol still retained its hold upon the
trade with our West Indian islands, which was a source of exceptional
profit to the whole community, and not to the richer merchants only;
and the citizens of Bristol now learned with anger and dismay that the
gains of what had been virtually a local monopoly must henceforward
be shared with the capitalists and shipowners of Cork, Belfast, and

39 Boswell to Temple; Edinburgh, 12. August, 1775.

447

Waterford.40 It was true that the Act for the Relief of Irish Com-
merce was a Government measure, introduced and carried by the chief
of the Cabinet himself; but, as long as human nature remains what it
is, people who dislike a law will always vent their wrath upon an
eminent public man who has been an honest and earnest advocate of
the unpopular policy, rather than upon the time-serving Minister who,
at the eleventh hour, has been forced by the pressure of circumstances
to adopt that policy as his own. Burke's sincerity was his crying sin
in the view of the Bristol electors. He might, (so he remarked in
caustic terms,) have successfully faced his constituents if he had been
a rival to Lord North in the glory of having refused some small in-
significant concessions, in favour of Ireland, to the arguments and sup-
plications of English members of Parliament; and if then, "in the very
next session, on the demand of forty thousand Irish bayonets," he had
made a speech two hours long to prove that his former conduct was
founded upon no one right principle of policy, justice, and commerce.
"I never," added Burke, "heard a more elaborate, more able, more
convincing, and more shameful speech. The debater obtained credit,
but the statesman was disgraced for ever." 41

There was yet another question of prime importance on which
Bristol was out of touch with its illustrious representative. The Roman
Catholic Relief Bill had been accepted by the governing powers of the
country with absolute unanimity. It met the approbation, (to quote
Burke's words,) of "the whole House of Commons; the whole House
of Lords, the whole Bench of bishops; the King; the Ministry; the
Opposition; all the distinguished clergy of the establishment; all the
eminent lights, (for they were consulted,) of the dissenting churches.
This according voice of national wisdom ought to be listened to with
reverence." But the payment of that long out-standing debt to justice
and mercy was very differently regarded by a large section of the
British people. The newspapers, most of which then reflected public
opinion with singular fidelity, were outspoken in condemnation of the
Catholic Relief Act; and journalists of either party strove to throw
the responsibility for so unpopular a measure upon their political op-
ponents. Whig writers laid the blame upon the Court. What, (they
asked,) could induce His Majesty to accept the hospitality of Lord

40 Bristol shop-keepers, the very class of voters who had been Edmund Burke's heart-
iest supporters, had long been accustomed to invest their savings in a larger or smaller
venture on board vessels bound to Barbadoes or Jamaica.

^Letter from Edmund Burfa to John Merlott, Esq., an eminent merchant of the
City of Bristol.

Petre? The company of a Roman Catholic ought to be shunned by
the King of England like the plague. How could his throne be estab-
lished in righteousness unless he paid respect to the established religion
of the country? Was the Court of England to become the abode of
those Jesuits whom even Roman Catholic monarchs had banished from
the countries which they governed? Was history to be read backwards?
Was Queen Mary to be accounted as a saint, and the Paris and Irish
massacres as a fiction? 42 The Ministerialist papers followed suit, and
fastened the discredit of the obnoxious policy upon the leaders of the
Opposition. The King, (they wrote,) governed the Church, as well as
the State; and Sir George Savile had incurred the guilt of spiritual
High Treason when he moved His Majesty to show indulgence to-
wards believers in Transubstantiation. Roman Catholics were heretics;
and no heretic could be a faithful subject. Let Sir George Savile, and
his abettors, prove that heresy and allegiance were compatible; and
English Churchmen might then be freed from the apprehension of
having their throats cut by Papist assassins.43

The most envenomed shafts in the arsenal of party warfare were
directed against Edmund Burke, who was held up to execration as the
author of a deep-laid plot contrived for the ruin of the Protestant re-
ligion. All the other conspirators, (it was alleged,) were puppets in
his hand, while he himself was an Irish papist, and a Jesuit in disguise.
For many consecutive months he was branded in the columns of the
ministerial journals by the significant nickname of "The son of St.
Omer." That spiteful story soon made its way down from London to
the West of England, and Burke found it incumbent on him to ex-
plain the motives of his public conduct before a crowded meeting
assembled in the Guildhall at Bristol. The oration which he there de-
livered has taken rank among the celebrated speeches of the world.
He protested, in lofty and almost contemptuous language, that he and
his political associates had done justice to Roman Catholics, not be-
cause they themselves were Roman Catholics, but from their extreme
zeal for the Protestant religion, which was "utterly disgraced" by the
penal laws enacted in the year 1699; and from their rooted hatred to
every kind of oppression, under any colour, or upon any pretence what-
soever.44 On the same occasion he defined the limits of the obligations

^London 'Evening Post of November 1778. Letter signed by Aratus in the same
newspaper.

43 Morning Post; May 30, 1778.

44 The same line of thought has since been more pithily expressed by an English
prelate. Dr. Mackarness, the Bishop of Oxford, when denouncing the Bulgarian atrocities

449

which, as a member o£ Parliament, he owed to his constituents. He
was ready, (so he assured them,) to perform their reasonable behests
at any sacrifice of health and comfort; but his conscience was his own,
and on high questions of public policy he was bound to follow the
road towards which, in his judgment, the interests of the nation
pointed. If the people of Bristol wanted a member who would obey
their orders as blindly and submissively as Lord North, and his col-
leagues, obeyed the orders of the King, they must look for some one
else than Edmund Burke to represent them. "It is the plan of the
Court," he said, "to make its servants insignificant. If the people
should fall into the same humour, and should choose their servants on
the same principles of mere obsequiousness and flexibility, and total
vacancy and indifference of opinion in all public matters, then no part
of the State will be sound, and it will be vain to think of saving it."

A statesman, who is not so entirely absorbed by ambition as to lose
sight of everything else that makes life worth having, will always set a
high value on the enforced holiday which falls to his lot when his
political adversaries are in power. The freedom and the leisure, which
may be called the sweets of Opposition, were keenly appreciated by the
group of eminent men who did their utmost to counteract the policy
of Lord North's government; and none amongst them was endowed
with such a capacity for rational enjoyment, such a wealth of intellec-
tual resources, such an ardent and varied interest in all the circum-
stances of daily life, and such complete and unalloyed satisfaction in
his domestic surroundings, as Edmund Burke. In his Buckinghamshire
homestead, which was situated within a short walk of the river
Thames at the exact point of its rarest beauty, and encompassed by
his few hundred acres, every square yard of which was familiar to
him, he had no reason to envy the richest of the great landholders who
looked up to him as their political mentor. Most of them played at
farming; but Burke's domain was not too large for the inspection of
the master's eye, and the minute details of agriculture were at once
his business, and his pastime. He knew, as exactly as any nobleman's
bailiff, what it cost to produce his wheat, his hay, his barley, and his
bacon, and what they would fetch, on any given week, in the local
market; and his voluminous letters on the processes and statistics of

in the autumn o£ 1876, defended himself from the charge of being actuated by religious
prejudice against the Mahomedan faith. "We sympathise," he said, "with the oppressed
nationalities in European Turkey not because they are Christians, but because we are
Christians."

450

rural industry, which occupied much of his time on a wet day, when
nothing was doing out of doors, may still be read with pleasure and
profit. He never was dull, and never solitary. A morning's drive
brought the friends of his choice down from London; and in the in-
tervals between their visits he found company worthy of himself on
the shelves of his library. He was intensely happy with a beloved
wife,45 and a son sufficiently graced by nature to arouse fond and
extravagant hopes in the most partial and indulgent of fathers. His
strong Irish sense of family clanship was displayed in his relations to
a brother and a cousin, whom he treated with fraternal confidence and
affection, and an absence of censoriousness carried to a degree of tol-
erance which unfortunately cannot be accounted among his virtues.
The three kinsmen all lived together, keeping a common purse, a
well-stocked cellar, and a bountiful table, and driving about the coun-
try behind a team of four black horses. A Bristol constituent, who was
honoured by an invitation to Beaconsfield, found them still at break-
fast at eleven o'clock in the morning. "They had," (so this gentleman
wrote,) "no form about them. Everyone was at liberty to do as he
pleased, and was as free and easy as if the house was his own."

Such was Edmund Burke's home, which he had arranged in all
respects precisely to his liking; and he desired nothing better than to
spend in that secure and peaceful retreat the whole of every month that
he was not engaged in debating at Westminster. But, after he became
member for Bristol, he no longer remained at his own disposal. His
constituents regarded him in die light of a universal providence for
the accomplishment of their personal, and sometimes extremely selfish,
ends and objects; and there was no business so intricate and onerous
that they scrupled to impose it on his overburdened shoulders. He
could not have believed, (he said,) how very little interest they felt in
the general line of public conduct observed by their representative,
and how exclusively they judged him by his merits as their special
agent in their private affairs.46 As soon as each parliamentary session
came to a close Burke's real troubles began. He was forced to apologise,
almost abjectly, for reserving a very few idle days, and tranquil nights,

*5 Richard Champion, Burke's favourite and faithful political ally, presented Mrs.
Burke with a Bristol tea-service of his own exquisite manufacture. A good many years
ago some of the pieces sold "for thrice their weight in solid gold." The largest of them
bore a Latin inscription signifying that they were dedicated to Jane Burke, the Best of
British Matrons.

46 Edmund Burke to Richard Champion; June 26, 1777*

451

to recover himself from the immense fatigues of his senatorial labours.
"I really," (he pleaded on one such occasion,) "should have gone to
town to look after all sorts of business with minuteness and vigour;
but, in truth, I want a little fresh air, and repose of mind, and exercise
of body. For a long time I have had very little of any of them. I am
not yet a week in the country. Forbear with me a little, and I will pay
thee all."

The Bristol traders had no mercy on him. They deluged him with
commissions; and they were seldom at the pains of collecting before-
hand such information as would enable him to perform their errands
without undue and excessive drudgery to himself. He devoted an en-
tire fortnight of one hard-earned vacation to getting their tobacco out
of bond. He carried through a lengthy negotiation on behalf of a ring
of soap-dealers who could not so much as supply him with the name
and address of the Master of the Soap-makers Hall. In order to obtain
leave for a merchant-ship to sail for the West Indies he was forced
to make himself acquainted with the intricate questions of seamen's
wages and of demurrage, with no assistance whatever from the owner
of the vessel.47 The most distasteful, and disquieting, of all his obliga-
tions was the necessity for repeated migrations to, and from, the West
of England. He descanted to Lord Rockingham on the "horrid ex-
pense" of these expeditions of two hundred miles in a post-chaise, and
on the dangers which an unprotected traveller was liable to encounter.
Burke was robbed by two highwaymen, on Finchley Common, when
on his way to Bristol; but no gentleman of the road would have found
it worth his while to stop him on his homeward journey, for he al-
ways returned with empty pockets. His presence in their city was a
reminder to his constituents that they had a claim on his money, as
well as on his services. Five guineas for the nurse of a baby for whom
he had been asked to stand as sponsor, an offer of fifty guineas re-
ward for the discovery of a miscreant who had set fire to the ware-
houses on the Avon quay,48 the presentation to an influential elector of
a service of Bristol porcelain "on which was expended all the resources
of the art," and the provision of a grand banquet to his political ad-

& "You did not," (so Burke represented to his correspondent,) "send the number of
men or tonnage. I set the tonnage down at a hundred and seventy, and the men at
twenty, inclusive of the master and the mate."

48 Burke was urgently advised by his friends at Bristol to adopt this course because his
political adversaries had been putting about that he was in sympathy with the enemies
of England.

452

herents, with fourteen orthodox Whig toasts to follow; — those were
some examples of the ceaseless, and heterogeneous calls upon Burke's
slender income. A more costly sacrifice still was the futile consumption
of his time, his peace of mind, and his energies. The members of both
parties in Bristol, while they were agreed upon nothing else, united in
demanding his frequent presence in their midst. His friends were sin-
cerely desirous to accost and welcome their member, and his opponents
wanted to have him amongst them in order to humiliate and affront
him. They inserted paragraphs in the London newspapers to the effect
that Mr. Burke represented Bristol, not on the ground of his property
or his social position, but by virtue of his pamphlets and speeches, and
that it was therefore high time for him to gratify his constituents with
less stingy specimens of his oratorical talent. It was said that he held
himself too stiffly, and esteemed his conversation too valuable to be
wasted upon people of ordinary cleverness. He was, (so the accusation
ran,) the first member for Bristol who had omitted to make a round
of calls on the freeholders in the course of every twelvemonth, and to
dine, as much richer men than himself had been willing enough to
dine, every afternoon, for weeks together, with the Mayor and Cor-
poration of the most hospitable and luxurious municipality in Eng-
land. Burke defended himself from these imputations in a fine passage
of earnest, but calmly worded, remonstrance. "My canvass of you," (so
he reminded his constituents,) "was not on the Exchange, nor in the
County Meetings, nor in the clubs of this city. It was in the House
of Commons; it was at the Privy Council; it was at the Treasury; it
was at the Admiralty. I canvassed you through your affairs, and not
your person. I was not only your representative as a body. I was the
agent, the solicitor, of individuals; and, in acting for you, I often ap-
peared rather as a shipbroker than as a member of parliament."

Burke led a severe existence, and it told visibly on his physical
strength, and his vital powers. He was wasted, (he said,) by fatigue
and want of sleep, which in his case was always attendant on heavy
labour.49 He confessed to a very old friend, who had known him well
in Ireland, that his present life was nothing better than a warfare.
His bodily condition had an injurious effect upon his political action.
Over-work and over-worry, as was inevitable with such a temperament,
betrayed him into occasional outbreaks of sudden, and very formidable,

4d Edmund Burke to Joseph Harford; April 4, 1780.

453

anger.50 When his nervous system was unduly strained, his rhetoric
became too emphatic, the vehemence of his language was exaggerated
almost to grotesqueness, and metaphors and similes poured from his
lips in a turbid and incessant stream; — for, like smaller men, when
weary and out of sorts he seemed unable to bring his speeches to a
finish. Joseph Galloway, the same American Loyalist who bore reluc-
tant witness to the ascendancy which Charles Fox exercised over the
House of Commons, thus wrote of Edmund Burke: "He cannot watch
the passions, or accommodate himself to the temper, of his audience.
He plays with the most difficult subject. He leads it through the wind-
ing mazes of his fancy. He places it in a thousand lights. He gives it
an infinity of colours. We admire for a time the splendour of the
dress; but the eye becomes tired with the glare. His purpled robes re-
semble a patched garment. He often debases the sublimest thought by
the coarsest allusion, and mingles vulgarity of idiom with the most
delicate graces of expression." It is impossible to deny that such a
criticism was well founded, and that Burke, during the period of the
American War, was already not sufficiently careful to keep the quality
of his speaking up, and the quantity down. Nor did he mend of his
faults as the years rolled on. Fox was more acceptable to his hearers;
and, so far as parliamentary success is the test of eloquence, Burke
was surpassed in his earlier days by Chatham, and in later life by
Chatham's famous son. But at his best, and at his third and fourth
best, he was a noble orator. "What," asked Sheridan, "will they think
in after times of the public speaking of this age when they read Mr.
Burke's speeches, and are told that, in his day, he was not accounted
either the first, or second, speaker?"

The fall of Charleston and the treason of Arnold now claim the
attention of Trevelyan. Recounting the traitor Arnold's disillusioning
experiences in England after the war, the author concludes: "It would
have been well for him if the memory of his existence upon earth could
have perished with him. The time arrived when the mind of America
was once again stirred from its depths by the secession of the Southern
States. Her historians then had something fresh to write about; but

50 It was admitted by a journalist of his own party that "the amiableness of Mr.
Burke's disposition, the pleasantness of his nature, and the benevolence and liberality of
sentiment which marked his character in private life, made his friends the more regret,
and his enemies rejoice at, the want of judgment, and the violence of temper," which
were too often observable in his public conduct. London Evening Post of June 1779.

454

during the whole of the intermediate period between 1782 and 1861
their industry was almost entirely concentrated upon the events and
personages of the War of Independence. The Revolutionary heroes,
great and small, received each of them his allotted meed of national
gratitude; while the name of Benedict Arnold, which once promised
to be only less renowned and honoured than that of George Washing-
ton, was regarded by three generations of his fellow-countrymen as a
byword for treachery!'

455

CHAPTER XVI

THE LEAGUE OF NEUTRALS.
THE PLIGHT OF THE NATION

Trevelyan now ta\es the reader to 'France for an appraisal of the
diplomacy of the Comte de Vergennes, France's foreign minister, the
statesman principally responsible for French assistance to the American
insurgents and for his country's ultimate commitment to war against
Britain. "Vergennes was glad to warm his hands at the fire which
ravaged his neighbour's premises" Trevelyan observed, "but he had no
intention of allowing the flame to die down for want of fuel!' Against
him England's foreign minister, Lord Wey mouth, was regarded in the
chancelleries of Europe "as little better than a nullity" Tribute is paid
to John Adams' able role in wooing the Dutch, once war had broken
out between England and Holland, and then the focus is placed on
the role of the neutrals in the expanding war.

VERGENNES, on one important respect, was the most fortunate of
all statesmen who ever conceived, and directed, an ambitious foreign pol-
icy; for he had the cleverest of mankind, and of womankind also, to
second his endeavours. While on the one hand he acted in concert with
Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams, the two typical representatives
of an approaching democratic era, on the other hand he enjoyed the
ardent cooperation of Frederic the Great, and Catherine the Second, —
two despotic monarchs whose names will be remembered till the end
of time as the very personification of political ability and worldly
success.

Frederic the Great wished well to America because he wished ill to
George the Third; and, if he had given vent to his grudge against the
King of England by openly espousing the claims of the revolted col-
onists, he would have carried the public opinion of Germany with

456

him. Germany, divided administratively between an almost countless
multitude of petty dynasties, was beginning to feel the influence of a
common national sentiment whenever the national mind was strongly
excited by an interest in external events. The trend of German thought
was everywhere visible in that native literature which the greatest of
German rulers held in such light account. "A language," (so King
Frederic wrote to d'Alembert,) "only deserves to be studied for the
sake of the good authors who have made it famous, and good authors
we have none; although, when my time comes to walk in the Elysian
Fields, I shall be able to recommend myself to the Swan of Mantua by
bringing to his notice the fables of Gellert, and the idyls of a German
named Gessner." But a more genuine and virile school of literature
than that of Gessner and Gellert was already at work throughout the
Fatherland; and the intellectual product of the age was deeply coloured
by a passion for liberty both in Europe, and beyond the seas. Klopstock
the veteran poet of his nation, Herder in the prime of his powers, and
Schiller in the youthful vigour of his splendid reputation, idealised the
American character, envied what they regarded as the purity and sim-
plicity of American manners, and were fervent partisans of American
independence. Lessing, for all that he was State Librarian to the Duke
of Brunswick, had the manliness publicly to protest against the send-
ing of German soldiers across the ocean to crush a young nationality
with which Germany had no cause of quarrel. "I would say more,"
(Lessing added,) "for the people are thirsting to hear the truth; but
silence is commanded by the sovereign whom I serve." And Goethe,
with the insight of genius, had pronounced the obscure and remote in-
cident, generally known as the Boston massacre, to be a central date in
the history of the world; and from that time forward, till the end of
his very long life, he was in the habit of estimating the probable suc-
cess of every great national movement by its likeness or dissimilarity to
the spirit and methods of the American Revolution.1

Frederic, a true German at heart, felt a patriot's disgust for the prac-
tice of selling the sons of Germany to be military serfs of a foreign
potentate; but he had no inclination whatever to go crusading on be-
half of American liberty. He had just emerged scatheless and tri-

1 The feeling in Germany is described in the second chapter of Mr. Bancroft's Intro-
duction to his Collection of State Papers from the French Archives. Far and away his
best book, it had the honour of being translated, and published in French, by the Comte
de Circourt. Bancroft, as a young man, had been to all intents and purposes a German
student at the University of Gottingen; and he knew Goethe intimately.

457

umphant, from a war which he had most reluctantly undertaken in
order to preserve Bavaria from the rapacity of Austrian ambition. Vast
armies had faced each other for many months in Bohemia and Silesia.
There had been manoeuvres and counter-manoeuvres, which led in
some cases to a few paltry skirmishes; but Frederic, to the intense dis-
appointment of his younger generals and colonels, had attained the
object of his efforts without a battle, and without disbursing half as
much money as King George contrived to throw away over each of his
unsuccessful campaigns against the American insurgents. Frederic's old
sword was now once again in the scabbard; and there he was deter-
mined that it should remain. He had long ago had his fill of fighting;
and he was obsessed, and almost haunted, by a horror of war, and su-
premely indifferent to that which men, with less experience than him-
self of the stern and terrible reality, affected to regard as its glory and
its joy. "Let the French," he said, "if they can manage to exterminate
the English, perform their Te Deums in Notre Dame, and sing psalms
about the tongues of their dogs being red with the blood of their en-
emies. In the peaceful regions which I inhabit we leave all such in-
cantations to Hurons and cannibals." "The scene in America," (he
elsewhere wrote,) "reminds me of those gladiatorial combats which
the Romans watched with calm and pitiless amusement. I fought in
the Circus quite long enough. It is now the turn for others." With
this resolution implanted in his breast Frederic persistently declined to
join the coalition against England. He did not abstain from unfriendly
and disobliging acts which the English Government was too much
harassed and preoccupied openly to resent; but he altogether repudi-
ated the notion of emptying his treasury, and mobilising his army, in
defence of American freedom. Like Prince Bismarck after him, he
flatly refused to hazard the life of a single Pomeranian grenadier for
the prosecution of an object which did not immediately affect the in-
terests of Prussia. He kept the diplomatic emissaries of Congress at
arm's length, — which in itself was no easy matter. He withheld from
them his permission to borrow money in Berlin; and the most gen-
erous concession which their importunity could extract from his Minis-
ters was a promise that His Majesty would not be the last power in
Europe to recognise their national independence.2 Frederic, after his
own ironical fashion, was a man of his word. He undoubtedly was not
the last to recognise the independence of America; but it cannot be

2 The Baron de Schulcnberg to Arthur Lee; Berlin, December 18, 1779.

458

denied that he postponed recognition until Great Britain herself had
set him the example.

King Frederic's fighting days were over; but none the less his ill-
will was a very formidable disadvantage to any contemporary sover-
eign unfortunate enough to have incurred his displeasure. The position
which he had won for himself in the European world is described by
an unexceptionable witness of high capacity, and with good opportuni-
ties for observation. James Harris, afterwards the first Earl of Malmes-
bury, was British Minister at Berlin during the early stages of the
American Revolution. Already, at the age of four-and-twenty, he had
entered the second lap of a brilliant career in the race for honour. As a
mere youth, when in charge of the embassy at Madrid, he had gained
the confidence of our Foreign Office by his admirable handling of the
controversy relating to the Falkland Islands; and he continued to
serve his country with unbroken success until the day when he was
pronounced by no less an authority than Prince Talleyrand to have
been the ablest British diplomatist of his very able generation. Harris
was an English statesman of the fine old school, sparing of emotion,
and unsensational in his style of speech and writing; and the informa-
tion contained in his official despatches may be accepted as the plain
truth, and nothing over. In the year 1776 he transmitted to the Secre-
tary of State a confidential account of the feeling entertained by
Prussians towards their veteran monarch, whom he himself did not
greatly love. "They consider," he said, "a word, or smile, from His
Majesty as a boon; and, by never rewarding them according to their
merits, they are taught to believe they have no merit at all. The su-
perior endowments nature has given him, and the pre-eminence which
he constantly affects, make them look up to him as a divinity." A
precisely similar effect was produced upon all foreigners, from Royalty
downwards, who came within the attraction of Frederic's company
and conversation. "I never," (so Harris wrote,) "heard of any man so
endued with the gift of persuasion as His Prussian Majesty." The
preparations at Potsdam, for the reception of the most eminent visitors,
were judged by the English ambassador to have been trumpery and
sordid; and yet the King evinced no uneasiness on that account in the
presence of his guests, sure as he was, "from his own reputation, and
from the minds on which he was to operate, that a smile from him
will have more effect than the expending of all the money in his
coffers."3

3 Mr. Harris to Lord Suffolk; Berlin, i8th March, and 27th July, 1776.

459

Personal contact was not needed in order to bring men under the
spell of King Frederic's personal influence. His predominance in
Europe had been acquired by an immense effusion of human blood,
and it was now maintained by a lavish consumption of a less costly
fluid. Opinions have differed with regard to his merits as a poet and
an historian, and his excursions into the field of literature have been
criticised with unsparing severity; but no author of any mark, and
most certainly no author who himself has been a statesman and an
administrator, ever failed to admit that Frederic the Great's private
letters possessed the inestimable quality of being adapted to secure the
object for which they were written. They came with authority from the
pen of one who was the master of two hundred thousand soldiers, the
owner of a treasure in gold equal to three times the annual revenue
of his kingdom, and the victor of Rossbach, Zorndorff, and Leuthen;— •
and at the same time they were models of vigour and wit, of penetrat-
ing intuition, and profound, if dearly bought, knowledge of human
nature. Frederic kept the European world in his own way of thinking
by a continuous stream of brief and bright notes, or copious epistles,
which it amused him to write, and which were read with pleasure
and conviction. He corresponded regularly, and often, with his own
ambassadors abroad, with the leading ministers of foreign govern-
ments, with the most distinguished of those French philosophers who
moulded the thought of the epoch, and with royal ladies not a few;
for the relentless satirist of Madame de Pompadour, and Elizabeth of
Russia, could be courteous, and even charming, to women whose tal-
ents he admired, or whose character he respected. Whatever else his
letters might contain they were pretty sure to be freely sprinkled with
cutting remarks about the American policy of Lord North and his
brother ministers, with sarcastic comments on their primitive notions
of military strategy, and with marvellously accurate predictions as to
the final issue of rie struggle. Nor was the King of England himself
treated with the indulgence which royalty is supposed to owe to roy-
alty; for Frederic's biting denunciations of George the Third closely
resemble the most telling passages in the Declaration of Independence,
selected with an eye to literary effect, and seasoned with Gallic salt.
Frederic's correspondents were too proud of his confidence to keep
his letters to themselves. His compact and pointed sayings, and his
irreverent epigrams, soon made themselves wings across the ocean;
and every expression of his contempt for German princes, who sold
their troops to fight against American liberty, was eagerly welcomed
460

in Puritan New England, where he had long been admired as the
champion of Protestantism against Catholic Austria, and among the
Germans of Pennsylvania, who worshipped him as their national
hero.4 The Prussian monarch, and the Republicans of the New World,
were united by the most binding of all ties, — their detestation of a
common enemy. The gratitude of Americans towards Frederic the
Great was cheaply earned, and has lasted to this very hour. He ran
no risks, and made no sacrifices, for their cause, and he was apt to
forget their very existence as soon as they had ceased to serve his pur-
pose; 6 and yet room has been found for his statute at Washington,
while the unfortunate King of France, who went to war for America
with consequences which ultimately were fatal to his own life, and
his own dynasty, has had no monument erected to his memory in any
American town or city.

There was no country in Europe where Frederic's influence counted
for more than in Russia. The foreign policy of the Empress Catherine
had long been watched with tremulous anxiety by both parties in the
great controversy that shook the world. Impregnable against foreign in-
vasion; containing an apparently inexhaustible supply of docile, brave,
and hardy soldiers; abounding in all the materials required for the
construction and equipment of navies before the days of steam, —
Russia by herself would have been a formidable enemy, and a valuable
ally, even if unsupported by those smaller Northern powers which
obeyed her guidance, and were her satellites in peace and war. The
resources of that vast community were at the absolute disposal of the
reigning monarch. There was no check on Catherine's autocratic will
except the opinion, and inclinations, of the courtiers by whom she
was surrounded; and it was well worth the while of any foreign gov-
ernment to send the best man on whom it could lay its hand to repre-
sent its policy, and push its interests, at St. Petersburg. Harris was
accordingly transferred thither from Berlin, and he did not relish the
change. The Russian climate was worse than trying, and the times
were such that he never ventured to apply for leave of absence from
his post. He could not live anywhere near within his salary in a
society where incomes were enormous, and hospitality profuse; and

^Frederick, the Great and the United States; by J. G. Rosegarten, Lancaster, Pennsyl-
vania, 1906.

5 "I am now so busy with Bohemia, and Saxony, and Silesia, and Moravia that I
hardly so much as remember there are Americans in the world.*' King Frederic to the
Dowager Queen of Denmark; 12 September, 1778.

461

where claret and champagne, and fine clothes, and good furniture,
and handsome carriages, and trained domestics were exotic luxuries
imported at a fabulous cost. But the principal cause of his discomfort
was the moral, rather than the material, aspect of the things around
him; for the interior of the Russian Court, (to use his own words,)
was one continued scene of debauchery, iniquity, and corruption.6 An
affectionate husband, whose wife was everywhere his companion, and
a clean-minded gentleman, he was disgusted and sickened by the par-
ticular form of tattle and gossip which then constituted the party
politics of the Russian capital. It may have been bad enough for a
respectable diplomatist at Versailles to feel himself under the necessity
of observing the humours, and flattering the vanity, of Louis the Fif-
teenth's mistresses; but the Court of Catherine the Second swarmed
with a yet more scandalous, and a far more numerous, tribe, — the
lovers, and ex-lovers, and lovers on pension, and lovers on probation,
of Her Imperial Majesty. It was to the honour of Sir James Harris that
he served his country gallantly and faithfully, and not altogether un-
successfully, without soiling his fingers in that mire, "I have," he
wrote, "a sufficient sense of the character with which I am invested
not to commit it by mixing in any of the disgraceful intrigues with
which I am surrounded, and for the embarking in which I find my-
self radically improper." 7

Sir James Harris, in his confidential despatches, more than once
remarked upon the extraordinary contrast between the aspect of Russia
as surveyed from within, and from without. Those, (he said,) who
were behind the scenes at St. Petersburg, were astounded at the dis-
honesty and inefficiency of the administration; while, on the other
hand, "to those who live out of Russia, and who only can form their
judgment of the Russian court from the great events which its inter-
ference and weight everywhere produce, it must appear as if it was
conducted with superior judgment, and defective in no one essential
point." The solution of the problem lay in the personal qualities of
Catherine herself, who to a masculine coarseness and audacity in vice
united a masculine force of mind, and a masculine obstinacy in ad-
hering to a plan, and intrepidity in the execution of it. The great good
fortune of the Empress, (so the English ambassador reported,) joined
to her resolution and her parts, might always be relied upon to com-
pensate for the dearth in Russia of skilled generals and expert states-

6 Mr. Harris to Sir Joseph Yorke; Petersburg, ist May, Old Style, 1778.

7 Harris to the Earl of Suffolk; Petersburg, aoth (sist) July, 1778.

462

men. No higher compliment was ever paid to our own Elizabeth.8
Harris had been glad to escape from Berlin; but he found, to his
sorrow, that he was not yet quit of Frederic. The predilection for the
King of Prussia was so strong in official circles at St. Petersburg that
His Majesty's course of action, at any given crisis, was an unfailing
indication of the measures which were sure to be ultimately adopted
by the Russian Government.9 Russian Princes and Field Marshals,
who had been on their travels, seldom failed to return from Potsdam
infatuated by Frederic's "affability and goodness," and as firmly de-
voted to Prussian interests as the most loyal of his Prussian subjects.10
Their admiration for Frederic did not displease their own royal mis-
tress, who, with all her faults, was not prone to petty jealousy. The
concord between the rulers of Russia and Prussia was of old date,
and based on firm foundations. There was a difference between their
ages of seventeen years, in the contrary direction from that which
Catherine the Second usually sought in the case of her male friend-
ships; and something which nearly approached the filial might be
observed in her attitude towards Frederic. Thirty years before he had
been the patron and military chief of her father, an insignificant prince
in Northern Germany; he had engineered for her the august and ex-
alted marriage which, though certainly no love-match either then or
afterwards, was the starting-point of her immense career; and he had
sanctioned the young bride's change of religion to the Greek Church
with an amused indifference which was all his own. From the time
that Catherine assumed the sceptre her relations with the Prussian
King steadily increased in cordiality, and mutual confidence. The pair
regarded themselves as set apart from the common run of sovereigns;
both of them thoroughly and intimately understood their own, and
the other's, interests; and they knew that they had far more to gain
by hearty co-operation than by senseless rivalry. They already had
been partners, — and, when they saw occasion for it, accomplices and
fellow-conspirators, — in enterprises of great moment of which some
were laudable, and almost all were lucrative. More especially they
shared between them the dark and secret memories connected with
their partition of Poland,— an incomplete operation which, if it only
had stopped at that earliest stage, would have been infinitely less of a
calamity both for the spoiler and the despoiled.

8 Harris to Sir Joseph Yorke; Petersburg, and (isth) February, 1778.

9 Harris to Sir Robert Murray Keith; Petersburg, 27th February, O.S., 1778.

10 Harris to Lord Suffolk; Berlin, 27th July, 1778.

463

For some while after the American question had forced itself upon
the notice of the world Catherine's sympathies were on the balance;
but her views gradually assumed shape and consistence, and she even-
tually embarked upon a carefully considered, and very original, line of
policy which had a potent, and an ever growing, effect upon the course
and issue of the war. Like other great and famous personages in
ancient and modern history she cherished a favourite theory which
she pursued with the ardour of a devotee, and the minute and patient
industry of a specialist. Intent upon her aggressive schemes against
the Mohammedans she did her utmost on system to remain at peace
with the Christian Powers, — or those which passed for such, — on the
Continent of Europe; and, if war broke out between any of these
Powers, she made it her vocation to defend the privileges and im-
munities of all nations, great and small, which had refrained from
taking an active part in the conflict. Catherine possessed a solid
knowledge of international law; and, whenever the mistress of so
many legions thought fit to raise a legal point in favour of neutrals,
the jurists of the belligerent nations were bound to give her a respect-
ful hearing.11

In the late winter of 1779 an occasion arose when the Empress was
called upon to show her mettle. A Russian trader, chartered tor
Malaga, and laden with wheat, had been intercepted off the coast of
Andalusia by the Spanish cruisers. On the pretext that her cargo
had been destined to revictual the English garrison of Gibraltar the
vessel was carried into Cadiz, the corn was sold by public auction, and
the crew imprisoned. When the news reached St. Petersburg Catherine
ordered fifteen line-of-battle ships, and five frigates, to be got ready
for sea; and Prince Potemkin, who was a warm friend of England,
assured Sir James Harris, "with an impetuous joy, analogous to his
character," that the fleet was being fitted out with the express object of
chastising the Spaniards, whose insolence, and arbitrary behaviour,
Her Imperial Majesty would not tolerate. There was surprise and
vexation at Potsdam, and nothing short of a panic in the Cabinet of
King Louis the Sixteenth. If Russia fell foul of Spain, the naval
coalition against England would be in evil case. Frederic promptly took
the matter in hand, and exerted himself as strenuously as if his own

11 Catherine's legal acquirements were not confined to the pages of Vattel. In the
summer of 1779 she honoured Sir James Harris by holding with him a long conversa-
tion on English gardening, "in which/' he wrote, "the Empress is a great adept. From
this we got to Blackstone, where she soon had me out of my depth; as I believe she
would many a Circuiter, being most perfectly mistress of our laws and Constitution."

464

kingdom was in peril. He wrote to Versailles that everything depended
upon instant and full reparation being made to Russia for the insult
offered to her flag; and his letter, — a more forcible document than any
despatch likely to be concocted in the French Foreign Office,— was
very judiciously passed on to Madrid, where it at once brought the
Spanish Government to reason and repentance. And then the King
of Prussia, striking while the iron was hot, took care in his com-
munications with Russia to' point the moral of the incident. He
warmly applauded the readiness shown by the Empress Catherine to
defend the rights of neutrals by force of arms; but he begged her to
keep in mind that England, and not Spain, was the tyrant of the seas.
The King of Prussia for many months past had been exhorting the
Northern Courts to resent and resist the high-handed proceedings of
the British Admiralty. Every government, (he said,) which possessed
a mercantile navy should take active measures for its protection, and
should refuse to abandon the property of its subjects to the "brigandage
and cupidity" of these domineering islanders.12 That was violent lan-
guage; but it was none too strong for those to whom it was addressed.
The trade of all States on the coasts of the Baltic, and the North Sea,
had been more than half ruined by a war in which they themselves
were not engaged as principals. A Danish or Swedish merchantman,
with hemp, or tar, or timber, or grain on board, — and those were the
staple commodities of the North of Europe,— was always liable to be
stopped, and searched, by a British frigate. The question whether the
goods were contraband was decided offhand by a post-captain with
no legal training, who was arbiter in a cause which nearly concerned
his own pocket, and his own reputation at Whitehall as a smart and
zealous officer; and, if his judgment was unfavourable, the unlucky
vessel was taken by a prize crew into a British port. Remonstrances
poured in through the ordinary diplomatic channels from Copen-
hagen, and Stockholm, and Hamburg, and Liibeck, and Bremen; but
no satisfaction could be obtained from the English Foreign Office be-
yond a haughty answer to the effect that His Majesty's Ministers were
bound to abide by their own interpretation of the law.13 The general
sentiment of the Northern Powers was extremely hostile to Great

12 Frederic to the Queen Dowager of Denmark; January i, 1779.

13 In an important conversation, held in December 1778, Harris expounded the British
theory of belligerent rights to Count Panin, the Prime Minister of Russia. "Count
Panin," (so Harris reported,) "did not admit my reasoning. He said, smiling, that be-
ing accustomed to command at sea, our language on maritime objects was always too
positive, and that he wished we had followed the example of France."

465

Britain, and very favourable to the French Government which pro-
fessed, and observed, a much more liberal and considerate policy in
dealing with the rights of neutrals. But the smaller States were help-
less unless they could find a patron and a champion; and the Comte
de Vergennes repeatedly approached Catherine of Russia with earnest
appeals to undertake that office. The Empress, (he declared,) would
gain much glory, and would give a noble proof of equity and mag-
nanimity, if she made common cause with her weaker neighbours in
forcing England to renounce a system which was destructive to Euro-
pean commerce.14

The British Cabinet at last began to recognise the danger of the
situation, and Sir James Harris was commissioned to inform Count
Panin that our naval officers had received special orders to refrain
henceforward from detaining and searching Russian merchantmen.
That, in the conception of the Bedfords, was a most flattering and se-
ductive counter-bid for the good graces of the Empress Catherine; but
they were not so well acquainted as King Frederic, and the Comte
de Vergennes, with the character of the sovereign whom their offer
was intended to conciliate. Catherine, on one side of her nature, was
a grasping and unscrupulous woman of business, who had lent a
prodigious impulse to those acquisitive tendencies of the Russian Gov-
ernment which have transformed the map of the world to its own ad-
vantage. But there was a romantic vein in her composition; and she
sometimes was willing to pose, on a grandiose scale, as a paragon and
a model of chivalry and generosity. She was the true grandmother of
that Czar Alexander who in 1813, and 1814, stood forth against the
Emperor Napoleon as the Liberator of Europe.

The concession of special indulgences and facilities to Russian com-
merce produced a result diametrically opposite to that which had
been contemplated by the British Foreign Office. Catherine refused to
purchase immunity for herself by the sacrifice of her less formidable
neighbours, and she speedily and openly threw in her lot with theirs.
On the eighth of March 1780 she issued a proclamation asserting, on
behalf of neutrals, those rights and securities which were recognised by
France, and denied by Great Britain; and the lead given by Russia
was followed by Sweden and Denmark with suspicious and significant
promptitude. The three Governments bound themselves mutually to
equip, and keep on foot, a combined fleet in certain fixed proportions,

14 See the despatches printed in Doniol's Twelfth Chapter on "Les Commencements
de la Ligue des Neutres" in the Third Volume of his History

466

and to exact a strict retaliation for every one of their trading vessels
which was seized by the cruisers of any belligerent Power.15 That
threat, though ostensibly of universal application, in point of fact was
addressed only to Great Britain; and for the British Government it
became a source of vast embarrassment, and terrible and ever-increas-
ing peril. The example of the Baltic States was imitated by all the naval
countries of Europe. The Netherlands acceded to the Armed Neu-
trality before the year was over. Prussia gave in her adhesion in May
1781, and the German Empire in the following October. Portugal,
that ancient ally of England, moved in the same direction reluctantly,
and by successive steps; but she was not strong enough to stand out,
and stand alone, and in the summer of 1782 Portugal likewise joined
the ranks of our potential enemies.16 By that time the Ottoman Porte
was the only great Power whose disposition towards us still remained
undecided; and, as the war went on, even the Turk found it neces-
sary to put himself in the fashion, and take his place among the armed
protectors of the Rights of Neutrals. Such was the pass to which our
country had been brought by the statesmen who were entrusted with
her guidance. "The wisdom of these counsellors," wrote a London
journalist, "surpasses the possibility of human estimation* They have
created a war with America, another with France, a third with Spain,
and now a fourth with Holland. A nation or two, more or less, does
not seem to be a matter of the least consideration with them. The
candle they have lighted in America may, and probably will, make a
dreadful fire in Europe."

Never has there been a more remarkable proof of the maritime
aptitudes of our countrymen than was afforded by this long and
arduous contest. They held their own at sea against half the naval
Powers of the world in arms, while hampered and distressed by the
ill-will and ill offices of all the others. But the complete isolation of
England, — which made the assertion of her supremacy on the ocean
a more difficult, and therefore a more honourable, task, — entirely par-
is "Orders have been given at Stockholm to fit out three ships of seventy guns, and
three of sixty guns, on which they are working night and day. Four of them are lying
at Malmoe already." London Newspaper of October 1780.

16 In October 1780 access to Portuguese harbours had been forbidden to armed ves-
sels of all nations. This was a matter of unimportance to American privateers-men who
had all the ports of Spain, and France, and Holland, to choose from for the replenishment
of their stores, and the sale of their prizes; but it was a serious blow to British cruisers
which had no house of call, or place of refuge, between Falmouth and Gibraltar.

467

alysed her military operations on land. It was not the fault o£ her
soldiers. As far as the quality of her regimental officers, and her rank
and file, was in question there seldom had been a better army for its
size than the British army in America. Englishmen had been opposed
to Englishmen in a succession of desperate encounters until their stand-
ard of fighting had been raised to so high a point as to astonish not
only their adversaries, but themselves also, on the first serious occasion
when they came face to face with a foreign enemy. The same had been
the case when, very soon after our civil wars were over, Cromwell's
pikemen charged the Spaniards at Dunkirk as they had been accus-
tomed to charge at Marston Moor, and Naseby, and Preston, and
Worcester; and the same result would almost undoubtedly have en-
sued, at the close of the war of the Secession in America, if the Em-
peror Louis Napoleon had not prudently shipped his army back to
France before the veterans of Antietam, and Gettysburg, and Spottsyl-
vania came in their scores of thousands to see what the French were
doing in Mexico.

The occasion in question took place on the eighteenth of December
1778, when a powerful French force, which had been landed on the
island of Saint Lucie from d'Estaing's fleet, was routed by fifteen
companies of British infantry with a slaughter so awful as to excite
the compassion of the victors. The affair lasted three hours. A hundred
and eighty English were killed and wounded, and four hundred
Frenchmen were buried on the field. Our officers declared with pride
that their own people had shot as coolly and accurately as they them-
selves had been shot at from the redoubt on Bunker's Hill; although
at Saint Lucie the English, for the most part, did not fire from behind
defences. The grenadier battalion was commanded by the young fel-
low who had distinguished himself in so many of Sir William Howe's
battles,— Major Harris of the Fifth Foot. "It was in this action that
the Fifth," (so the regimental record runs,) "acquired the privilege
of wearing a white plume in the cap, having taken from the bodies of
the slain French grenadiers, the advance and elite of the enemy's
force, as many white feathers as sufficed to equip every man in the
regiment with the new decoration." Saint Lucie has not yet been for-
gotten in that famous corps, or in the Northern county with which
it has always been connected. In August 1898, when the battalion made
a parade march through Northumberland, "the plume fell unnoticed
from the bearskin of one of the captains. It was brought to him by
an agricultural labourer, who remarked as he handed it in, 'Mustn't

lose this, Sir; or you'll have to go back to Saint Lucie for another.' "
A like spirit was exhibited throughout the war whenever, and
wherever, our troops came into collision with a European antagonist.
Britons still remember,— they still can see in their National Gallery,
admirably depicted by the hand of an American colonist,— the repulse
of the French attack upon Jersey in January 1781, and the heroic death
of that British officer whose energy saved the island. Nor did British
artillerymen ever perform a more splendid service than when they
destroyed the floating batteries at Gibraltar, and inflicted upon the
combined fleets and armies of France and Spain a catastrophe which
wrecked the hopes, and ruined the credit, of their commanders.17 But
Gibraltar, and Jersey, and Saint Lucie were nothing more than epi-
sodes in a gigantic struggle for existence, during which Britain was
standing on her defence, not with invariable success, in every quarter
of the globe; and the character of the war was such that no aggressive
operations on European soil were so much as attempted by the British
Government. Over the whole continent of Europe England had not a
single friendly port at which to disembark a military expedition, or a
friendly tract of country to serve her as the base for a campaign. Our
militia were barely sufficient for the protection of our home shores;
and our only expeditionary force was the fine and numerous army
which was fighting, or idling, on the American side of the Atlantic
Ocean, and which, for the purposes of European warfare, might as
well have been quartered in another planet. It was a very different
story from the days when the armies of Queen Anne, and George the
Second, marched and conquered on the mainland of Europe, in con-
cert with large and well-disciplined contingents of allies, led by famous
captains, and inspired by a hearty enthusiasm for a common cause.
"One cannot," wrote Horace Walpole in 1780, "be always in the year
1759, and have victories fresh and fresh for every post-day. We now
have camps at home instead of conquests abroad. I remember an old
ironic song of Dick Estcourt's :

'How with bloody French rags he has littered poor Westminster
Hall,

O slovenly John, Duke of Marlborough!'"

17 "Glory in war is not always the prize o£ success. It is often the consolation for de-
feat, when defeat is due to misfortune, and not to fault. * * * But at Gibraltar, in place
of glory, our generals and admirals reaped nothing but shame." Those words were writ-
ten by the Due des Cars, who was in attendance upon the Comte d'Artois when that
prince travelled all the way from Versailles to see Gibraltar taken.

469

No one, (said Walpole,) would have occasion to make that complaint
against any of the present generals.

There remains on record a striking instance of the feelings which
prevailed among the best of our countrymen, irrespective of party
politics, during that anxious and absorbing crisis of our history. Wil-
liam Cowper, after many years of melancholy silence and seclusion,
had recently taken his place once more among his fellow-men, and,
at the mature age of seven-and-forty, had entered upon a fruitful career
of literary activity. As far as his nature was capable of partisanship he
was a supporter of Lord North's Government. He began by dashing
off a spirited satire upon the politicians of the Opposition, which came
nearer to being a lampoon than any other production of his kindly
and graceful pen. He took occasion to commemorate the valour and
resolution displayed by Englishmen, under circumstances of unexam-
pled difficulty and peril, in a noble apostrophe to England.

"A world is up in arms, and thou, a spot
Not quickly found, if negligently sought,—
Thy soul as ample as thy bounds are small,—
Endure'st the brunt, and dare'st defy them all."

But Cowper, all the more because he loved and admired his country,
was cruelly disappointed as he compared her present with her past.
In 1770,— when his mind clouded over, and passing events became to
him as though they were not, — he had left Britain in an undisputed,
and apparently assured, position as the first nation in the world; and
now, in the summer of 1778, he emerged from his protracted retire-
ment to find her the object of universal, implacable, and too often
triumphant, hostility. The glorious roll of our victories in the Seven
Years' War had been for William Cowper an unfailing source of
personal pride and satisfaction. "When poor Bob White," (he wrote
in January 1781,) "brought me the news of Boscawen's success off the
coast of Portugal, how did I leap for joy! When Hawke demolished
Conflans I was still more transported. But nothing could express my
rapture when Wolfe made the conquest of Quebec. I am therefore, I
suppose, not destitute of true patriotism; but the course of public
events has of late afforded me no opportunity to exert it. I cannot re-
joice, for I see no reason; and I will not murmur." In obedience to
that religious belief which coloured his thoughts, and guided his con-
duct, Cowper was firmly persuaded that the best hope for national
470

recovery lay in an amendment of national morals, and in a devout
and humble submission to the will, and the behests, of a Divine Provi-
dence. "It takes," he said, "a great many blows to knock down a great
nation; and, in the case of poor England a great many heavy ones
have not been wanting. They make us stagger indeed; but the blow
is not yet struck that would make us fall upon our tyiees. That fall
would save us."

471

CHAPTER XVII

THE COUNTY ASSOCIATIONS.
THE LORDS LIEUTENANTS

After reviewing the civil war waged in the Carolina*, Trevelyan
returns once again to the scene in England. He shows the manifest
absurdity of the then existing electoral system, and demonstrates how
rotten boroughs controlled by the King's own faction provided in
Parliament the \ind of men who "formed a solid phalanx of drilled
and disciplined partisans,— bound to the Ministry by close ties of ma-
terial interest, impervious to argument, caring not one straw for public
opinion, and standing in no awe whatever of their own constituents,
who had been sold to them, li\e a parcel of serfs, attached to the soil,
by the previous owner of their borough. When a division was called
they went forth into the Lobby, or remained seated in the body of the
House, at a whispered word of command from the Secretary of the
Treasury. They cheered Lord North's speeches; they placed his Bills
on the Statute Boo\; and they voted him all the national money which
he demanded in the well-grounded expectation that a substantial por-
tion of it would sooner or later find its way into their own pockets."
Nonetheless reform was in the air, and when it came, its voice was
heard in the rural counties.

NGLAND was in dire straits; but her case was not hopeless if only
the English people possessed the common sense, and the political en-
ergy, to work out their own salvation. It was a happy feature in our
national life that the standard of public duty, and of personal honour,
was still as high in the English counties as in the best days of our
history. The Knights of the Shire, on both sides of politics, were not
inferior in station and character to the Cavalier and Puritan gentlemen
who were elected to serve in the two famous parliaments of the year
472

1640. A Whig county member, at the period of the American war,
was usually a rural magnate like Humphrey Sturt of Dorsetshire, or
John Parker of Devonshire, or Edward Eliot of Cornwall,— old family
names which are now merged in the tides of Peerages. The Tory
county member, meanwhile, was sometimes a converted Jacobite, and
almost always a sturdy fox-hunter, who wanted nothing from the
Patronage Secretary of the Treasury; who had his own notions about
public matters; and who kept his hands clean, and his conscience in
his own control. A typical specimen of the class was the senior member
for Lincolnshire, Lord Brownlow Bertie, uncle to the Duke of An-
caster, who, though inclined to the Ministry, frequently quitted the
House when the question was not such "as he could vote for agreeably
to his own feelings." x A county elector very generally liked and es-
teemed his members, even when he differed from them in politics;
and the members had good cause to be proud of their constituents.
The freeholders, as a rule, were not above enjoying the fun of a con-
tested election. They drank their favourite candidate's health in a
great deal of his own ale, and allowed themselves to be carried to the
polling-town, at his expense, in a post-chaise with four horses; but
they gave him their vote because he was a trustworthy party man,
and an esteemed friend and neighbour. It was useless to send down to
such a constituency a rich West Indian planter, or a Nabob from
Bengal, or a voluble lawyer with his eye on the Woolsack, or a
sprightly young courtier with a portmanteau full of Civil List guineas.

"A beardless boy comes o'er the hills,

WiJ uncle's purse, and a' that;
But we'll have ane frae 'mang oursel's,
A man we ken, and a' that."

Such was the sentiment expressed by Robert Burns in the finest of all
his election songs; and such was the dominant feeling in nine out of
ten of our English counties.

The freeholders of Hertfordshire, and Monmouthshire, and Norfolk,
and Yorkshire, and Northamptonshire had little in common with the
sham electors in a Cornish proprietary borough, where the advowson
of the constituency, which conveyed the privilege of appointing two
British senators to every parliament, could be bought at a few days'

1 London Evening Post for May 1779.

473

notice for thirty thousand guineas down.2 The voters of the English
shires exercised the franchise under an honourable sense of individual
responsibility. They were proudly conscious that their counties were
die last refuge of English freedom and English self-respect, and that
they themselves were acting on behalf of millions of their fellow-
countrymen who, at a grave crisis in the fate of the nation, had no
adequate means for making their opinion felt. As the American diffi-
culty unfolded itself in more and more alarming proportions it became
apparent to reflective minds that the best hope for Great Britain was a
measure of parliamentary reform which would largely increase the
number of representatives allotted to populous and independent com-
munities. Lord Chatham was the first to suggest that a third member
should be added to every county "as a balance to the mercenary bor-
oughs;" and Turgot, in a letter of great length, and of very remark-
able power, informed one of his friends in England that the same line
of thought had led him to the same conclusion. "If," he wrote, "in
your political agitations you would reform your Constitution by mak-
ing elections annual, and by granting the right of representation in a
more equal manner, your gain from the American Revolution would
perhaps be as great as that of America herself; for your liberty would
remain to you, and your other losses would be soon repaired." 3 That
was the view of the two wisest statesmen, and ablest administrators, in
the two leading nations of the world; but it was very far from being
the view of the Bedfords. When young William Pitt, holding his
father's creed, and aspiring to carry out his father's policy, proposed
to add several representatives to the metropolis, and assign another
Knight of the Shire to every county, Rigby told the House of Com-
mons, briefly and roughly, that he would rather see more members
given to Old Sarum, "where there was but one house," than to London,
which in his judgment had quite enough members already.

"We are all well," (wrote Edmund Burke in September 1779,) "as
far as we can be so in the present dreadful state of anxiety to every
man in the nation except those they call Ministers." A sense of public
danger, and private distress and poverty, was just then seldom ab-

2 A careful calculation, made with full knowledge of the circumstances, in or about
the year 1863, proved that the price, or fancy-price, of a borough returning one mem-
ber to Parliament had by that time risen to sixty thousand pounds. In this case the seat
was soon afterwards disfranchised by Mr. Disraeli, and the purchaser lost his money.

3 Reply of Lord Chatham to an Address from the Common Council of London; June
i, 1770. Lord Chatham to Lord Temple; April 17, 1777. Turgot to Doctor Richard
Price; Paris, March 22, 1778.

474

sent from the reflections of all thoughtful Englishmen. There have
been few periods in our history when so large a proportion of our
people kept a jealous, an attentive, and a most intelligent watch upon
the course of public events. England was bound hand and foot by
the trammels of an inequitable political constitution; but her mind was
active and uncontrolled. That trait in the national character is finely
and faithfully depicted in another letter which, two years previously.
Burke had addressed to one of his Bristol supporters. "You will not,"
he there said, "listen to those who tell you that these matters are
above you, and ought to be left entirely to those into whose hands the
King has put them. The public interest is more your business than
theirs; and it is from want of spirit, and not from want of ability,
that you can become wholly unfit to argue or to judge upon it." The
inhabitants of those great industrial constituencies which had retained
their independence, their self-respect, and their integrity, thoroughly
understood the nature of the existing crisis, and had detected the
source from which emanated the flood of calamity that overspread
the land. They clearly saw that the time had arrived when it be-
hoved them to take their fate into their own hands, and declare
an open and uncompromising war against secret influence, and par-
liamentary corruption. The long and arduous contest on which they
now entered,— -with sad and heavy hearts, but with inflexible resolu-
tion,— was marked by striking and unexpected alternations of success
and failure. But the will of the people at last prevailed as against the
power of the Court; and the country was rescued, only just in time,
when it already stood upon the brink of ruin.

In December 1779 a political agitation, on a scale surpassing any-
thing which was reached until the crisis of the Reform Bill of 1832,
rose like a thunderstorm from the blue, and spread with startling
rapidity throughout our island. Yorkshire, with its vast acreage; its
wealth of coal and iron; its woollen industries, which so recently
topped the markets of the world, but which never again could flourish
until the country was once more at peace; — and, above all, with its
manly, shrewd, and masterful, but law-abiding population; — stood to
the front as a worthy fugleman of that spontaneous national move-
ment. On the last day but one of the old year the freeholders of
Yorkshire were convened in County Meeting. They attended in force,
undeterred by the inclement season, and by the formidable distances
which most of them had to travel. They knew the road to York; for,
when a general election came, every qualified householder of the

475

three Ridings, in whatever corner of those six thousand square miles
his dwelling stood, had been under the necessity of finding his way
to the provincial capital in order to cast his vote. Six hundred land-
owners, and millowners, and graziers, and farmers, and tradesmen
crowded the body of the hall; while among them, and opposite to
them, sat the Dukes of Devonshire and Rutland; the Marquis of
Rockingham; the Earls of Scarborough, and Effingham, and Egre-
mont,— together with Earl Fitzwilliam of Wentworth House, and of
County Wicklow in Ireland, who by himself was more of a potentate
than three out of four of the lesser German princes. When doubts
were thrown in the House of Lords upon the respectability of the
Yorkshire meeting, Rockingham, suiting his arguments to his audi-
ence, affirmed that there were persons present on that occasion, "within
the compass of a single room, who possessed landed property to the
amount of eight hundred thousand pounds per annum." Side by side
with the peers, and on an equality with them, were such commoners
as Mr. Edward Lascelles of Harewood, and Sir James Lowther, and
Sir George Savile. The distinguished group included the heirs and
namesakes of three out of the seven noblemen who, in June 1688, at
deadly hazard to their own lives and estates, had signed the invitation
to William of Orange. The Opposition journals triumphantly enumer-
ated a large contingent of clergymen of the Established Church who
dignified the assembly by their presence, and who evinced a zealous
interest in the proceedings; but even a Whig historian must admit that
this free manifestation of Whig sentiment in such an unusual quarter
may have been encouraged by the aspect of the patrons of so many
hundred livings who were arrayed in serried ranks upon the platform.
The hall was crammed to its utmost capacity, but the meeting was not
packed in the sense in which that term is so often used. Any freeholder,
whatever were his political opinions, might come, and stay, and speak,
and vote if he could find seat or standing room; and the longest, and
certainly the most provocative, address came from the mouth of a sup-
porter of the Government.

The extreme view held by the Court party was expounded by Mr.
Leonard Smelt, the sub-governor of George the Third's two eldest
sons, and a well-known talker in London society. He began by protest-
ing that it was strange presumption to refer to His Majesty as a
servant of the public,— a name which, (it may be remarked in passing,)
even so autocratic a monarch as James the First regarded as among
the proudest of his titles to honour. Mr. Smelt vehemently declared
476

that King George was the best patriot, or rather the only patriot, in the
nation; and that, if any grievances existed, they arose from the Crown
having too little power rather than too much. He told the manufac-
turers, who did not take the information kindly or quietly, that, so
far from being ruined by the war, they were not taxed heavily enough;
and he then went on to apostrophise, in what he intended to be scathing
language, the great territorial proprietors who had lent their counte-
nance to the popular movement. "When those," he said, "who possess,
from hereditary claim only, all the distinctions of society, and who
have a thousand of their fellow-creatures employed on hard work to
contribute to their ease and luxury, talk of the equality of men, and
their right to change the government under which they live, all subor-
dination, all order, all decency is at an end." Sir George Savile, — who
could split hairs, and chop logic, with the best when the subject de-
manded it,— summed up the case against Personal Government in the
plain and downright style that suits the taste of Yorkshire; and a peti-
tion to the House of Commons, drawn up beforehand by his skilful
pen, was read to the meeting, and adopted amidst a tempest of ac-
clamation. The gist of the matter was contained in a single sentence.
The petitioners, (so it was represented,) observed with grief, that, not-
withstanding the calamitous and impoverished state of the nation,
much public money had been improvidently squandered, and many
individuals enjoyed sinecure places, and pensions unmerited by public
service; by which means the Crown had acquired a great and uncon-
stitutional influence which, if not checked, might soon prove fatal to
the liberties of the country. The Ministerial press pronounced the docu-
ment to be an overt act of treason, which rendered its author liable to
the condign penalties inflicted upon the Jacobites after the rebellion of
1745. "The battlements of York," wrote tie Morning Post, "will be the
first ornamented, and will speedily be dismantled of the remains of the
unhappy insurgents to make room for some heads of the true viper-
breed of Rockinghams and Saviles." It was a prophecy which missed
fulfilment; and the city of York, as all good North-countrymen know,
contains to this hour a very different memorial of that historical
County Meeting. Sir George Savile died in 1784; and within the
cathedral, against the outer wall of the choir, amidst architecture as
august and beautiful as any in the Kingdom, his statue was erected by
subscription as a mark of "the public love and esteem of his fellow-
citizens." He is there represented leaning on a pillar, with a scroll in
his hand which purports to be the Petition of the Freeholders of the

477

County of York. The conception, and the framing, of that famous in-
strument, in the judgment of Savile's own generation, constituted the
most important national service which he rendered during his hon-
ourable and serviceable career.4

The fire which had been kindled in the North set the whole coun-
try in a blaze. Within a week,— and a week was no long time for news
to consume in travelling before the days of Macadam, let alone of
George Stephenson,— the action taken by the Freeholders of Yorkshire
was known over the whole district which now is styled Greater Lon-
don. Several important noblemen, with the Duke of Portland at their
head, prevailed upon the Sheriff of Middlesex to summon a County
Meeting, which was held at Hackney on the seventh of January 1780.
Hackney was then a pleasant semirural resort described by the Gazet-
teers of the period as among "the earliest of the adjacent villages in-
habited by the more opulent merchants of the metropolis." A petition
was unanimously voted which prayed the House of Commons, in set
terms, to adopt measures for the reduction of the too great and uncon-
stitutional influence of the Crown, and for restraining the enormous
abuses in the expenditure of public money. Hertfordshire followed
suit, and Sussex, and Surrey, and Cumberland, and Norfolk, and the
County Palatine of Chester; and, before the year was much older, the
electors of no fewer than twenty-six of the English shires, in County
Meeting assembled, had spoken their minds with the utmost frankness,
but with no extravagance of language. The business of the day was
not unfrequently crowned by a jovial banquet of English beef and
venison, with a long list of significant and suggestive political toasts
which most certainly were not drunk in home-made English wines.
The discussions in these County Meetings were always serious and
orderly, and entirely free and open; but there was little difference of
Opinion when the matter came to a vote. In Somersetshire, where North
himself was Lord Lieutenant, the Court and the Cabinet did not find a
single supporter. The Earl of Sandwich had thought it worth his while
to attend the proceedings at his county-town in person. He brought
down with him a motley train of sham Huntingdonshire freeholders
with fictitious qualifications, — a Government contractor, two mem-
bers of the Greenwich Hospital staff, some officials from the General

4 An amusing account of the Yorkshire meeting may be found in a sprightly letter to
Horace Walpole from an eyewitness, the Reverend William Mason. What appears to be
a full report of Mr. Smelt's speech is given in the collection of pamphlets at the Athe-
naeum Club.

478

Post Office, the Receiver of Waifs and Strays on the High Seas, a son
of the King's Gardener, and one of the King's Beef-eaters. But the
genuine electors of Huntingdonshire did not allow themselves to be
browbeaten, and still less to be out-voted. "On the holding up of
hands," (we are told,) "there appeared a prodigious majority for the
petition. Lord Sandwich then attempted to divide the company, but
the majority was so large that his friends were obscured." The North-
umbrians met at Morpeth, where the only hands held up against the
petition were those of "Mr. Trevelyan's curate," and a stray Scotchman
from across the Border, whose name was mis-spelled by the reporters.
The Duke's Steward, when he observed the tone of the meeting, had
come to the conclusion not to oppose the motion; and later in the after-
noon there was a marked contrast, in point of festivity, between the
social gatherings of the two rival parties. "The Duke's servants dined
together, sullen and discontented; while the most perfect good humour,
the greatest harmony, and the most determined and independent spirit
pervaded the whole company who supported the petition." 5

Meetings and speeches are essential to the promotion of a cause; but
all great movements, whether political or religious, depend largely for
success upon the machinery of their internal organisation, and upon the
silent and continuous labour which it is now the fashion to call spade-
work. That truth was well known to Wesley, and Wilberforce, and to
Daniel O'Connell, and Richard Cobden, and all other masters in the
art of moulding and guiding public opinion; and it obtained full recog-
nition from the able statesmen who, in the later years of the American
war, engineered a national agitation against the excessive power of the
Crown. The Freeholders of Yorkshire, before they left their hall, had
appointed sixty of their number as a permanent committee "to carry
on die necessary correspondence for effectually promoting the object
of the Petition, and likewise to prepare the plan of an Association
to support such other measures as would restore the freedom of Par-
liament." In the course of the next week Middlesex nominated a
Committee of Correspondence and Association, consisting of fifty gen-
tlemen "distinguished by rank, fortune, ability, or popularity;" and the
example was followed by much the largest number of the petitioning

5 The details of the Huntingdonshire and Northumberland meetings are taken from
a London newspaper. A general history of the movement appears in a very long note, on
pages 1370 to 1373, of the twentieth volume of The Parliamentary History. Allusions to
the County Meetings are as frequent in the fashionable literature, and private corre-
spondence, of the year 1780 as allusions to the proceedings of the Anti-Corn Law League
in the spring and summer of the year 1845.

479

counties. George the Third and Lord North had no liking for the
County Meetings, but they were still more gravely alarmed and per-
turbed by the County Associations. The traditions left by the Long
Parliament, and the Civil War, were nearer and fresher by a hundred
and thirty years then than now; and the very name of County Asso-
ciations recalled ominous memories of those Associated Counties which
had bred an Oliver Cromwell, and had contributed almost as much as
the City of London itself to overset the Stuart dynasty. The East of
England seemed as hot against the Crown in 1780 as ever it had been
in 1642. Norfolk, and Suffolk, and Essex, and Cambridgeshire, and
Herts, and Hunts, had all petitioned; and all except one were send-
ing delegates to the General Convention of the Associated Counties,
Towns, and Cities. For most of the great urban communities which,
in one shape or another, had retained the privilege of popular repre-
sentation, and which were accustomed to the play of active politics,
eagerly and unhesitatingly threw in their lot with the popular cause.
The Marquis of Rockingham, who always was careful to make good
his assertions by facts and figures, informed the House of Lords that
the Petition from the city of York had been signed by nine hundred
and twenty persons, although not more than nine hundred and
seventy-two had polled at the last election, which had been warmly
contested.6 Meetings had been held, and petitions voted, by the town
of Nottingham with its seventeen hundred freemen and freeholders;
by Newcastle upon Tyne with its two thousand five hundred burges-
ses, each of whom was a member of a Guild; 7 by Gloucester with its
three thousand resident electors; and by the City of London, and the
City of Westminster, situated in critical proximity to the doors of the
King's Palace and the Houses of Parliament, and containing between
them more registered voters than any other ten borough constituencies
in the island.

The lighter aspects of the Economical Reform movement of 1780
are amusingly portrayed in the letters of the Reverend William Mason,
a Canon of York Cathedral, and an admired poet, as poets then went.
One of his most amusing pieces was a Birthday Ode, of a very un-
courtierlike complexion. He told Lord Harcourt, (impudently enough,

® Parliamentary History; XX, 1350.

7 Out of 2166 electors, who polled at the Newcastle contest of 1774, 186 belonged to
the Guild of Merchants, 235 to the Guild of Butchers, 322 to the Guild of Smiths, and
132 to the Guild of Barber Surgeons. There were Hoastmen, and Mariners, and Felt-
makers, and Pewterers, and Cordwainers, by the score; but only three Unattached
Burgesses.

480

seeing that Lord Harcourt was a King's aide-de-camp,) that an Ode
conceived in such a spirit, and sung in the Chapel Royal, with the
whole choir joining in the execution, would have more effect than all
the County Petitions together. Canon Mason, like other amateur agi-
tators, was all for sensational methods. "Nothing can save us," (so he
wrote to Horace Walpole,) "but what the people will never have the
spirit to resolve upon. I don't mean a civil war, but a civil and pacific
resolution not to pay any taxes. For instance, an exciseman comes to
demand my post-chaise tax. I suffer him to bear home on his shoulders
my pianoforte. * * * How do you like my system? I know you dis-
like it, because you would sooner be taxed ten shillings in the pound
than part with Cardinal Wolsey's hat, or Harry the Eighth's clock-
weight." Mason's advice was not adopted. Never, before or since, has
there been a great political movement more free from the taint of
folly or criminality. There were no outrages; there was no turbulence;
no weapons were employed except arguments; the most outspoken
opponents were accorded a respectful hearing in the most crowded
public meetings; and the triumph of the cause came all the sooner on
that account, and was all the more sweeping and decisive. The same
freedom from lawlessness and violence, and the same complete and
ungrudged success, were repeated, a century afterwards, in the case
of the movement for the enfranchisement of the County Householder.

Some leading men of the Opposition, among whom was Edmund
Burke, were at first disinclined to expect much assistance to their cause
from the action followed by the County Freeholders. They could not
forget the fate of the great petition from the Congress at Philadelphia
in the summer of 1775, which, if accepted in the spirit wherein it had
been offered, would have ended the American war. Drawn up by
John Dickinson, the most eminent of Colonial Loyalists, subscribed by
leading politicians of both parties, and carried across the Atlantic by
no less a special messenger than William Penn's grandson, it had been
cast aside as so much waste paper when it reached its destination in
London. The exhibition of indifference and disregard which, in that
supreme instance, was set by the King and the Ministry, had been
imitated in like cases by the House of Commons. "The great consti-
tutional remedy of petition," wrote Edmund Burke, "is fallen into
discredit already, by being thrown into the House, and neglected
ever after." 8

There seemed very little hope than an exception would be made in

8 Edmund Burke to Richard Champion, Esq.; January 295 1780.

481

favour of the Yorkshire Freeholders. Elaborate misrepresentations, go-
ing far beyond the limits of veracity, had been diligently circulated
for the purpose of discrediting their Petition before it was presented
to Parliament. The Ministerialist newspapers circumstantially assured
their readers that these Freeholders were the dregs of mankind, and
that the Petition agreed upon at the meeting had been hawked about
the country until it was "scrabbled over with the marks of drunken
and illiterate ploughmen," and then sent up to Westminster "to lie at
a blind alehouse" where it had been signed by as many Yorkshire
ostlers as could be spared from their work in the London livery stables.
Sir George Savile however, nothing daunted, discharged his mission
to Parliament on the eighth of February 1780. The matter could not
have been entrusted to a more respected and influential advocate.
Charles Fox long afterwards, drawing upon the reminiscences of a
lifetime, told his nephew Lord Holland that Savile was the best
speaker who had never held office.9 But Savile's character was more
efficacious even than his eloquence. He acquired, at an early age, a
silent and uncontested authority over his parliamentary colleagues;
and it was acknowledged by the more combative and factious mem-
bers of his own political connection that his walking out, or staying
away, was fatal to the success of any party motion.

Savile's speech, on this occasion, was well reasoned, and singularly
manly and dignified, as became a country gentleman who always did
his duty to his constituents and to the nation with no personal ends
of his own to serve. He laboured under difficulties, for he had been
extremely unwell, and his voice was weak, and far from clear; but
the House was "remarkably still and attentive," and such was the
silence prevailing along every bench that not a single word was lost.10
He brought forward ample evidence to refute the allegation that the
Reform movement had been "instigated by a few incendiaries operat-
ing upon simple and credulous people in hedge alehouses." He de-
scribed that movement as "the result of the common feeling" of all
ranks and all classes, — the voice of the true Yorkshire, which had
already met with an echo in other parts of the country. On this point
he grew warm, and even vehement; but, except when he was vindicat-
ing the honour of his county, his remarks were in a high degree

8 Fox, when making this remark, coupled together the names o£ Sir George Savile,
and William Windham. But it must be remembered that Windham eventually became
a Secretary o£ State; whereas Savile lived, and died, a private member.

10 Parliamentary History; XX, 1374.

482

courteous and conciliatory. He argued that there was nothing in the
wording of the Petition which reflected on either political party, and
that both parties might do themselves honour by adopting it. "The
noble Lord at the head of the Government," said Savile, "if he has a
mind, can by one nod induce a majority of this House to grant the
prayer of this petition; or, if he pleases, he can put it off with an
abundance of ingenuity and address. I call upon the noble Lord to
speak out like a man, and to declare whether he means to countenance
and support this Petition or not." North, when his turn came, replied
shortly and very quietly. He acknowledged that the Petition had
been properly introduced, and deserved to meet with "a fair and candid
attention;" but it was noticed that he studiously abstained from saying
anything which could be construed into an expression of willingness
to approve the prayer.

There the matter should by rights have ended. But the subject was
novel, and very interesting; there was a crowded House, just in the
mood to enjoy a fine speech; and Charles Fox was not the man to
disappoint his brother members. He rose to the occasion; and his per-
formance was such that the pressmen, who were taking down his
words in the Gallery, interspersed their report with short phrases
testifying to the wonder and delight which his animation and his in-
genuity evoked. London, for some days afterwards, was talking about
the extraordinary success of the peroration in which Fox gave his
followers the watchword for the momentous parliamentary campaign
that now was opening. "I cannot imagine," (so the last score, or so,
of his sentences ran,) "that any objection can possibly be made to this
Petition. But some may say; 'Are we sinners above all that went be-
fore us, like those upon whom the Tower of Siloam fell? Are we
more corrupt than other parliaments, which were never pestered with
petitions of this kind?' No: I do not suppose you are; but, though
former parliaments were as bad as you, — and none, more than your-
selves, are aware of the full severity of that comparison, — there was
this difference that, in those days, the people did not know it. Now
they perhaps do not see it, but they fed it. They feel the pressure of
taxes. They beg you not to lay your hand so heavily upon them, but
to practise all reasonable economy. We on this side of the House
recommend and enforce their applications. Let Ministers hearken to
the petitions of the people, even though they are commended to their
notice by members in opposition. Let them grant their requests, and
the whole glory of so popular a compliance will be theirs. We all

483

remember in what loud strains their praises were sounded for con-
ceding to the people of Ireland what the people made good for them-
selves with their own muskets. I will put the controversy between
Ministers, and gentlemen on this side of the House, on the same issue
on which the wisest of men rested the determination of the dispute be-
tween the women, each of whom claimed the living child, and dis-
owned the dead one. We say to Ministers: Tou misapply the public
money. Nay, you do worse; you apply it to bad purposes.' Ministers
say to us: Tou want our places;' and thus the charge of corruption is
given and retorted. Come now; let us see whose child Corruption
is. Opposition are willing, are desirous, that it should be sacrificed;
and Ministers have often made similar professions. The time has come
to prove the sincerity of both. Let us see who will now acknowledge,
let us see who will father, this dear but denied child Corruption." It
may be doubted whether the most eloquent of divines, in any pulpit,
has ever put King Solomon's Judgment to more effective rhetorical
use; and the House of Commons unanimously ordered that the Peti-
tion from Yorkshire do lie upon the Table with a heartiness, and an
emphasis, which were very inadequately expressed by that antiquated
formula.11

The feeling against Lord North's Government was intensified by
the deep dissatisfaction with which Englishmen resented the anomalies
and abuses of their electoral system. The pioneer in the movement
against all that was amiss in our parliamentary representation was a
man who deserves more lively public gratitude, and more intelligent
public recognition, than have hitherto fallen to his lot. The fame of
Major John Cartwright is now very dim; and few, perhaps, of those
Londoners whose daily business takes them past his rather melancholy
and depressing statue, in a Crescent to the north of Oxford Street,
ever thinks of him as a valiant champion of popular rights, to whose
courageous and lifelong efforts it is largely due that they themselves
have a citizen's voice in the government of their native country. John
Cartwright was as much the father of Parliamentary Reform as Gran-
ville Sharp was the prime author of the agitation against African

11 Ministerial journalists, after the debate on Savile's motion, quoted Charles Fox's
boyish speeches at the time of the Middlesex Election as being inconsistent, (which they
most unquestionably were,) with what he was now saying about the respect due to na-
tional opinion outside the walls of Parliament. Fox himself would have been the first
to allow it.

slavery. Cartwright had been a brave, and most competent, fighting
sailor in Chatham's war; but, when hostilities broke out between
England and her colonies, he donned the red coat in place o£ the
blue, and made himself as efficient an officer on land as he had been
on board ship. The militia battalion, of which he was the life and
soul, speedily became a model of discipline, good conduct, and mili-
tary spirit. Cartwright had refused to draw his sword against the
liberties of America; he pleased himself by reflecting that he was now
engaged in defending the liberties of Great Britain against the despotic
and arbitrary Government of France; and his frank and manly avowal
of his convictions did him no harm either with his military, or his
naval, superiors in those liberty-loving days. He retained the friend-
ship and confidence of his old admiral, Viscount Howe; and he was
held in high esteem by that Lord Percy who had covered the British
retreat from Lexington, who had borne a distinguished part in the
capture of Fort Washington, and who now was the general in com-
mand of the military district in which Cartwright's battalion lay. The
officers of that battalion respected their Major none the less on ac-
count of his political opinions. "I have shown my colonel," (he wrote
in September 1775,) "a drawing I have made of a regimental button.
The design consists of a Cap of Liberty resting on a book, over which
appears a hand holding a drawn sword in its defence. The motto is
Tor our Laws and Liberty.' " The device was well liked; and the but-
ton continued in use in the Nottinghamshire Militia for many years
afterwards. Cartwright survived to see darker days; and he eventually
resigned his commission because he had given offence in high quar-
ters by approving, — as an Englishman, (so it might be thought,) could
hardly fail to approve, — the destruction of the Bastille.

Cartwright endured his full share of the persecution directed against
humble people of Liberal opinions during the long years of repression
and reaction which followed on the French Revolution; but all who
have studied the personal history of the time cannot fail to be struck
by his moral superiority to certain other radical reformers of those
sad, and rather sordid, days. He belonged to a class who are never
too numerous in politics, for he was an enthusiast with plenty of com-
mon sense, and altogether exempt from what then were the besetting
faults of the agitator. He had none of Cobbett's fierce and aggressive
egotism, of Henry Hunt's loose morality, of William Godwin's want
of delicacy in affairs of money. Cartwright was generous with his
purse, instead of being a beggar or a borrower; and he was always

485

ready with his praise and sympathy for others, instead of exacting
from them a tribute of flattery and admiration for himself. Singularly
forgiving towards his detractors, and even his calumniators, he did
his best to sweeten the acridness of political controversy; and his
simple and lofty nature, more persuasive than his arguments, gave him
an assured influence over most of those with whom he came into
personal contact. Home Tooke declared in conversation that half a
dozen men of Major Cartwright's firmness, in as many of the English
counties, would have stopped the American war. In the year 1776 Cart-
wright published a treatise on Parliamentary Reform which was almost
the first of its class.12 It was marked by a violence and exuberance of
language which the writer of it soon learned to regret, — and which
he had plenty of time to tone down, for during eight-and-forty years
to come he was busily engaged in issuing pamphlets, and making
speeches, on the selfsame topic. The passage in his earliest book which
attracted most attention was his pointed reproof to Whig magnates
in both Houses of Parliament who attacked the Ministry on subsidiary
questions instead of going to the root of the matter, and advocating an
extension of free and equal electoral privileges to the whole com-
munity. Any leading man of the Opposition, (said Cartwright,) who
should not immediately pledge himself by the most explicit declara-
tions in favour of Parliamentary Reform, was nothing better than a
factious demagogue, careless of the true interests of his country as long
as he himself could hope to come in for a share of power and plunder.
That was not the style in which a great nobleman, who had con-
descended to espouse the popular cause, expected, or liked, to be writ-
ten about by a member of his own party. The Duke of Richmond,—
with the book in his pocket, turned down at the offending page,— in-
troduced himself to the author, and complained of the uncharitableness
of throwing doubts upon his integrity, and upon the purity of his
motives. He was agreeably surprised by the calmness and gentleness of
his reception. That pair of gallant and honest men soon arrived at a
common understanding which ripened into a close friendship; and the
Duke did not rest satisfied until he had proved his sincerity by intro-
ducing into the House of Lords a Bill for equal electoral districts,
manhood suffrage, and annual parliaments.
Towards the commencement of the year 1780 the burgesses of Not-

12 "Though a younger man than yourself, I am your senior in Reform. You first pub-
lished on that subject in 1776. I published in 1774." Earl Stanhope to J. Cartwright,
Esq.; December 17, 1815.

tingham chose Cartwright as their delegate to the Convention of Asso-
ciated Counties and Cities, where his influence at once became visible,
and, before long, predominant. A vigorously drafted pronouncement
in favour of Parliamentary Reform began to make its appearance
among the resolutions submitted to public meetings, and on the lists of
toasts which were honoured at public dinners; and the text-book of
the agitation was a slashing manifesto from Cartwright's pen, entitled
"The People's Barrier against Undue Influence and Corruption." This
unforeseen addition to the party programme was not welcomed by
Edmund Burke. The question of Parliamentary Reform, for which,
at all times in his life, he had no feeling except most sincere repug-
nance, would in his opinion frighten back a great number of mod-
erate and judicious people into the Ministerial ranks, and, (at the very
best,) would distract attention from that question of Economical Re-
form which he had so near his heart. Burke's view of a political sit-
uation is always best given in Burke's own words. "I am sorry to see,"
(he wrote in April 1780,) "that the Committee, when they met in
London, had turned their thoughts towards a change in the constitu-
tion, rather than towards the correction of it in the form in which
it now stands;" and a few months afterwards he characterized parlia-
mentary reformers as visionary politicians; — " schemers, who do us
infinite mischief by persuading many sober and well-meaning people
that we have designs inconsistent with the constitution left us by our
forefathers."13 Burke's apprehensions were shared by several of the
great Whigs who immediately surrounded Lord Rockingham; but,
while these worthy gentlemen were hesitating and grumbling, and
lecturing each other in private letters of inordinate length, of the sort
which renders so many political biographies such dreary reading, their
followers promptly, and almost unanimously, took the matter into their
own hands. An agitation in support of Parliamentary Reform went
briskly forward, side by side with an agitation for a revision of our
national expenditure; and the combined movement was stimulated by
dislike of the American war, and by a growing sense of the mortal
peril in which the nation stood. It was the awakening, and up-rising,
of that class of citizens whom, in his own time and country, President
Lincoln used to call "the plain people." The great body of industrious
and independent Englishmen was at last conscious of its own strength,

!3 Edmund Burke, Esq., to Joseph Hartford, Esq.; April 4, 1780. Edmund Burke,
Esq., to Joseph Hartford, Esq., Sheriff of Bristol; December 27, 1780.

487

and firmly resolved to employ that strength for the rescue and re-
generation of England.

The Court and the Ministry were surprised, almost to bewilderment,
by this sudden and unprecedented manifestation of national sentiment.
The Bedfords, in particular, had no bounds to their indignation; and
their wishes, if not their intentions, were reflected in that portion of
the London press which they subsidised and inspired. The Ministerial
newspapers did not scruple to bring fierce and reckless charges of
treason and disloyalty against patriotic statesmen who were endeavour-
ing to save the King, and his kingdom, from the consequences of an
untoward policy. They accused Lord Rockingham of scheming to
overturn the throne; and, with more exquisite absurdity still, they de-
nounced Edmund Burke as a sworn foe of the British constitution,
and a hater of the kingly office. "It is to be hoped," they wrote, "that a
Great Personage may conceive so just and spirited a resentment of
the indignities offered to Majesty by a certain Republican Marquis,
and his Hibernian pensioner, as never to admit them to his counsels
again." They foretold, with an air of speaking by authority, an ap-
proaching campaign of vengeance against all who attacked the Cabinet
by speech or pen. It was positively announced that Ministers had fully
determined to take proper steps against every mouth, and every printed
paper, which had sought to stir up revolt among the people. Editors
and publishers of Opposition newspapers were soon to learn that some-
thing more serious than imprisonment would be the reward of their
seditious writings. "Fortunately for our country we happen to be very
amply provided with a certain very necessary, and highly essential,
ingredient for putting a finishing climax to rebellion. We have hemp,
— hemp in abundance." It was idle talk, which did not even rise to
the dignity of being seriously mischievous. England was in no mood for
a Bloody Assize, inaugurated for the purpose of keeping Mr. Rigby,
and Mr. Welbore Ellis, in office. The condition of public feeling was
such that assailants of the Government enjoyed too much licence,
rather than too little. They wrote more audaciously and pungendy
than ever; and yet press prosecutions, which had been so frequent dur-
ing the fight over the Middlesex Election, had long ago fallen into
complete abeyance. The Crown Lawyers were well aware that juries
would refuse to convict for bold attacks upon parliamentary corrup-
tion, and for searching criticisms on the conduct of the war, which
most people read with pleasure, and which everybody knew to be
true; and the Cabinet feared the printers much more than the printers

feared the Attorney-General. No twelve citizens who could be got
together in a box, would agree to send an Opposition newswriter to
jail for reflecting upon Lord George Germaine's American strategy, or
on the private morals of Lord Sandwich, or on Mr. John Robinson's
method of securing a majority in the House of Commons; but on the
other hand they were ready enough to lay by the heels a Ministerial
newswriter who traduced a leading statesman of the Opposition as a
traitor to his country, and a rebel to his Sovereign,

The Ministerial press might bluster and threaten; but the Ministers
themselves were perfectly well aware that, in the last resort, they did
not possess the physical force to keep the country down. For a warn-
ing of the perils in which they would be involved, if they were rash
enough to embark upon a proscription of their political adversaries,
they had only to cast their eyes across the Irish Channel. In England,
as in Ireland, the requirements of the American war had reduced the
regular army to very small dimensions; in England the main burden
of national defence now lay upon the Militia, as in Ireland it lay upon
the Volunteers; and in England, as in Ireland, the smartest and most
efficient, and incomparably the most popular and influential, officers of
the auxiliary forces were members of the Opposition party. Savile him-
self, and Lord Scarborough, and Lord Lumley, who between them led
the Reform movement in Yorkshire, held commissions in the West
Riding battalion of Militia, which was popularly known as "Sir George
Savile's regiment." Such colonels as the Earl of Derby, and the Duke
of Devonshire, had spared no money or trouble to provide for the
health and comfort of the tenants and neighbours whom they com-
manded in camp and garrison; they had brought to their military
duties the ardour of private citizens, and the zest and freshness of a
new and engrossing occupation; and they had made themselves as
capable as the best professional soldiers for every legitimate purpose
of warfare. The rank and file of the Militia battalions were eager to
come to blows with the French and Spaniards; but they had no
desire whatever to coerce or punish their own countrymen, and least
of all their own colonels, for conducting a political movement in
strictly constitutional fashion.

George the Third was not blind to the risks of the situation, which
he regarded as formidable, but not irremediable; and, where the King
thought that he saw his way clear before him, he was never afraid to
act. In those days of slow and uncertain locomotion, when the central
Government for the most part confined itself to the management of

national affairs, while tie provinces were strongly and solidly organ-
ised on an antique and feudal basis, the Lord Lieutenant of a county
was a very great man indeed. In addition to his other important func-
tions he was titular chief of the militia, and selected the subalterns from
among those young squires who were ambitious to hold a commission
in the local regiment. The ablest of these high dignitaries, and by many
degrees the most obnoxious to the Court, was the Duke of Richmond.
The King, who looked upon him as a personal enemy, was loth to
entrust him with so large a share of military power. Richmond, fore-
seeing that Sussex, of all counties, would be the most exposed to the
dangers of a French invasion, had a scheme for raising twenty-four
additional companies of local infantry; and that proposal, (in George
the Third's view,) would enable the Duke "to bring forward his own
creatures." It so befell that in August 1779 this hot-headed, and very
self-willed, nobleman committed an indiscretion which the King, with
some reason, pronounced to be a flagrant disobedience to orders; and
Lord North was directed to eject the Duke of Richmond from his
position as Lord Lieutenant of Sussex, and take advice about the
proper person to be appointed as his successor. "I can never," (wrote
His Majesty,) "admit the idea that his expulsion is wrong lest it
should make Opposition Lords resign their Lieutenancies. If this
should actuate them to such a step, the sooner that office of dignity
is in more friendly hands in every county the better." The Lieutenancy
of Sussex was thereupon offered to three peers in turn; but the feeling
of the whole district was such that they all thought it prudent to
decline the honour, and the Duke of Richmond was left in secure
possession of his office.

On the eighth of February 1780 the Earl of Shelburne moved for a
Committee of Enquiry into the Public Expenditure in a speech of ex-
ceptional scope and power. He took into the Lobby a large following,
which included Henry Herbert, who was tenth Earl of Pembroke, and
the Marquis of Carmarthen. Pembroke was an officer of the King's
Bedchamber, and Lord Lieutenant of Wiltshire; while Carmarthen
was head of the Queen's Household, and Lord Lieutenant of York-
shire. These noblemen knew what was expected of them, and they
both voluntarily resigned their Court employments; but, to their vast
surprise, they were ejected from their Lord Lieutenancies,— Carmar-
then on the morning of the division, and Pembroke on the morrow.14

14 The Marquis of Carmarthen, during the lifetime of his father the Duke of Leeds,
sat in the House of Lords as Baron Osborne. A few days after the Yorkshire meeting

490

The King made it the occasion for the assertion of a high and far-
reaching doctrine. "I cannot choose/' (so he told Lord North,) "that
the Lieutenancy of Wiltshire should be in the hands of Opposi-
tion." England is still so much the same country that it is easy for us
to judge the effect produced upon the nerves of our great-great-grand-
fathers by such a summary course of action. Stupendous would even
now be the commotion excited in political circles if a pair of modern
peers were deprived of their Lieutenancies as a punishment for voting
in a party division against the Government of the day. The Lords
Lieutenants, as a class, were very proud of the influence and authority
attached to their office; they valued the distinction only less than the
Garter; and their indignation knew no bounds when two of their
number were cashiered with as little ceremony as a couple of tide-
waiters or excisemen in a Ministerial borough who had polled for the
Opposition candidate.

The transaction was exposed and reprobated in Parliament by the
Earl of Shelburne, who had introduced the motion which Lord Car-
marthen and Lord Pembroke had supported to their cost, and who
resented the treatment inflicted upon them as a personal insult to him-
self. He urged his contention with fearless logic, and unsparing acri-
mony; Lord Camden discoursed with judicial gravity on the excesses
and encroachments of arbitrary power; and the Duke of Richmond
made a terrible example of a foolish peer who had punctuated every
•stage of the American controversy with blundering phrases, and who
on this occasion surpassed himself by alluding to noble Lords on the
Opposition benches as "enemies of the Crown." The veterans of de-
bate exerted themselves to the top of their abilities; but the speech
of the afternoon came from an unaccustomed quarter. The Duke of
Devonshire, although well on in life, had never opened his mouth in
the House of Lords. He felt all that reluctance to address a public
assembly which others of his race, with much to say that was worth
hearing, have with difficulty conquered. On this occasion, however,
he spoke, and spoke out. Though he had hitherto, (he said,) been
silent about politics, which were disagreeable to his taste and temper,
he should think himself base and degenerate if he remained any longer
indifferent, for at the existing crisis he was sincerely of opinion that
the Ministry were not capable of retrieving the affairs of the country,

he had sent a letter to the Committee "approving in general of their proceedings, but
making some objection to the scheme of Association, and to the proposed Committees
of Correspondence." History of Europe in the Annual Register for 1780; chapter 5.

491

and were very unequal to the task they had in hand. "I approve," he
said, "of the County Meetings, and consequently of the Associations,
without which the petitions would be of no avail. I have nothing to
hope for except the peace, prosperity, and welfare of my native coun-
try; and I have no temptation to encourage domestic broils, or civil
confusion. I have a considerable stake to lose, and can be no further
a gainer than as an Englishman interested in the preservation of the
Constitution, and in the invaluable rights, liberties, and principles
derived from it." We are told that the whole House listened in pro-
found silence while the Duke addressed it "with a firmness and
facility which seldom accompany a maiden speech, and in a tone of
voice and energy which plainly evinced the sincerity of his convictions,
and the warmth of his sentiments." 15

The political atmosphere was overcharged with electricity; and men,
who did not neglect or scorn the teachings of history, waited in anxiety
for the storm to break. The poet Cowper, in the most telling passage
of an interesting letter, pointed out an essential resemblance in the
results of the policy of George the Third and Charles the First. He
noticed how "the undue extension of the influence of the Crown,
the discountenancing and displacing of men obnoxious to the Court,
though otherwise men of unexceptionable conduct and character," and
the wasteful expenditure of public money, were features common to
both periods; and he bade his correspondent observe that the same
causes had already begun to produce the same effects as in the reign
of the most unhappy of British monarchs. "It is long," wrote Cowper,
"since I saw Lord Clarendon's account of it; but, unless my memory
fails me much, I think you will find that the leaders of the discon-
tented party, and the several counties in their interests, had a good
understanding with each other, and devised means for the communi-
cation of intelligence much like our modern committees of correspond-
ence. * * * So many gentlemen of the first rank and property in the
Kingdom, resolutely bent upon their purpose, — their design professedly
so laudable, and their means of compassing it so formidable,— would
command attention at any time. A quarrel of this kind, even if it
proceeded to the last extremity, might probably be settled without the
ruin of the country, while there was peace with the neighbouring
kingdoms; but while there is war abroad, — such an extensive war as
the present, — I fear it cannot."

15 Parliamentary History; XXI, 223.
492

CHAPTER XVIII

Fox AND ADAM.

ECONOMICAL REFOBM.

THE DUNNING RESOLUTION

jfx MOST important truth, which is borne in upon a careful ob-
server by the experience of a long life passed in the handling, and the
contemplation, o£ public affairs, is that an outburst of popular en-
thusiasm cannot be created lightly, and does not come by wishing. A
genuine, a wide-spread, and an effective interest in political questions
recurs at longer intervals of time than sanguine politicians please
themselves by believing; but there is no doubt whatever that, dur-
ing the early months of the year 1780, the mind of the nation was
at last alert and alive, and had begun once more to concern itself with
the pursuit of a national ideal. Sickened by a long course of misgov-
ernment, and weary of an exhausting, and, (for any good purpose that
could thenceforward be served by it,) an objectless war, many, and
very many, Englishmen looked for the salvation of their country to
better laws, and to wiser rulers. The tide was rising fast; and Charles
Fox swam strongly, and with no apparent effort, on the summit of
the wave. It was the most brilliant, the most prosperous, and the hap-
piest period of his chequered existence. He enjoyed, beyond his deserts,
the favour and indulgence of his contemporaries; and he had an ample
share of that miraculous good fortune which, in the history of cele-
brated men, so often falls to the lot of youth. Nothing seemed impos-
sible to his fresh and clear intuition, his native audacity, and his in-
domitable energy; and he succeeded as those succeed who cannot so
much as contemplate the prospect of failure.

When matters were at their very worst at home and abroad Fox
never faltered in his assured persuasion that all would yet go well with
England. His cheery patriotism brightens and enlivens a long series
of letters to Fitzpatrick in which his boyish handwriting reads as easily

493

as print; and it must be admitted that some of the phrases which he
employed were still boyish enough. That intimate and unstudied cor-
respondence gives a vivid account, drawn hot and hot from the most
authentic sources, of the hopes, though not the fears, of the most
critical juncture which our national history records between the time
of the Great Armada, and the time when Napoleon lay encamped
along the cliffs of Boulogne. On the twenty-seventh of August 1779
Fox wrote to his friend from Mr. John Parker's mansion at Saltram
in Devonshire, on a day when a hostile fleet, numbering between sixty
and seventy sail of the line, was hourly expected back in the English
Channel, and when the only naval force immediately available for the
defence of our coast was Admiral Darby's squadron in Torbay. "I
shall dine," he said, "on board Jervis, Wednesday, and from thence
proceed to London according as, upon the general face of things, I
think anything likely to happen here. The fleet today was a most
magnificent sight; * * * and, faith, when one looks at it, and thinks
there is a possibility of its coming to action in a day or two, on se sent
emu beaucoup. If some things were otherwise at home, and the fleet
was commanded by Keppel, one should feel very eager indeed when,
even in the present damned state of things, one cannot help feeling
something at the sight of it. It seems to be the opinion that, if they
do come, Darby will make some sort of fight with them in the narrow
part of the Channel;"— and in the peril and excitement of that fight
Captain Jervis had faithfully promised that Charles Fox should share.
A week afterwards Fitzpatrick informed Fox that Lord North con-
templated resignation. "I thank you for your letter," was the reply,
"and think the news it contained the best possible; for I really think
there is now a possibility of saving the country if these foolish people
will give up the thing to those who know better. Between this and the
next campaign there is time for increasing the navy incredibly, or for,
(what would be much better,) making a peace; which we should dare
to do, and these poor devils dare not."

Throughout the whole of the year 1779 Fox, with few to help him,
had been at no small pains to hearten and to unite his party. The
clever men and women, who informed George Selwyn of what was
passing in the ranks of the Opposition, were all in the same story. In
the middle of May James Hare told his old crony that nothing impor-
tant was stirring, although Charles was "in excellent wind," and all
the more so for being out of place. A fortnight later on the Countess
of Upper Ossory wrote that she herself was fairly sick of politics, but
494

that "others would grieve if there was not a Charles Fox to spirit
them up." Ceaselessly and strenuously at work as long as the House
of Commons was sitting, Fox spent the recess in a course of multi-
farious activities directed towards a well-defined and, (as the result
proved,) an attainable object. His published and unpublished letters
to Richard Fitzpatrick supply an indication, though far from a com-
plete list, of his journeyings to and fro over the South of England, and
of the great country-houses to which he carried, in rapid succession,
his inspiring and most acceptable presence. A peer or squire, who
judged that a visit from his eloquent and seductive leader would
stimulate political feeling in the district, knew that the best way to
make sure of his man was to send him intelligence of a flight of wood-
cocks; and Charles Fox attracted round him all the Whigs of the
neighbourhood as certainly as the woodcocks attracted Charles Fox.
Wherever he went he exerted his powers of persuasion over the task
of keeping his parliamentary supporters up to the mark, and cajoling
young men of wealth and leisure to stand as candidates at the general
election which was now imminent. He was constant in his attendance
at every place of resort where politicians congregated. He was much
in Norfolk, which, next to Yorkshire, was the head-quarters of the
Rockingham connection; and more especially at Keppel's manor-house,
where he was never tired of talking with the Admiral, and, (if the
man's own account can be trusted,) with the Admiral's gamekeeper.
Halfway through October it was announced in the Fashionable In-
telligence that the Honourable Mr. Fox had driven into Salisbury
Camp on a Review-day in a phaeton with four horses. He was often
at Newmarket, whence he maintained a watchful eye upon an ambi-
tious project for changing the parliamentary representation of the
neighbouring University. "Jack Townshend," (so Lord Carlisle re-
ported to Selwyn,) "meets with more success at Cambridge than was
expected, but I have no idea that Administration can be beat where
there are so many parsons. Charles is sanguine; but that he sometimes
is when reason and cool sense cannot support him." All the same,
when the general election arrived, the event showed that Charles was
right. His peregrinations in the course of that busy twelvemonth were
on such a scale that his friends were at a loss to conjecture where he
found money to pay for his post-horses. "Charles," said Lord Carlisle,
"tells me that he has not now, nor has had for some time, one guinea,
and is happier on that account." The inner secrets of his financial
transactions were disclosed to nobody except to Richard Fitzpatrick, as

495

may be learned from certain passages in their mutual correspondence
which do not tend to edification. None the less, befofe another year
had elapsed, the empty pockets of Charles Fox aroused the cupidity of
an unlucky highwayman who apparently took him for a portly and
solvent citizen, with no liking or aptitude for a personal encounter. His
prowess on that occasion, which was quite in character, established his
popularity among the very numerous class of people who, whenever
they started on an expedition in chaise or saddle, were haunted and
pre-occupied by the terrors of the road.

Then came the County Meetings; and the young champion, with a
group of experienced strategists to advise him, and a host of devoted
followers to back him, flung himself with renewed ardour into the
thickest of the fray. The agitation for economy and reform acquired
strength and impetus during the opening weeks of the year 1780; and
on the second of February, — at the exact point of time when the centre
of interest was transferred from provincial towns and cities to the floor
of Parliament, — a public meeting, of dimensions hitherto unknown in
England, was convoked in Westminster Hall, which the citizens of
Westminster still occasionally used as a place of assembly for the trans-
action of their local business. The Opposition claimed that a sur-
prisingly large proportion of the fifteen thousand electors of the bor-
ough were gathered together beneath that famous roof; but any veteran
of the platform, who has been accustomed to amuse himself during
the duller moments of a public meeting by making a rough computa-
tion of the numbers in front of him, will distrust the estimate of en-
thusiastic partisans.

A very large gathering, however, it undoubtedly was; and the
whole space in that vast chamber, over which the human voice could
reach, was covered by a sea of eager faces. The dais was crowded with
Townshends, and Grenvilles, and Bentincks, and Cavendishes; Charles
Fox took the Chair; and a petition, framed on the same lines as the
Address of the Yorkshire Freeholders, was moved by Alderman Saw-
bridge, and seconded by John Wilkes, Two passages in the Chairman's
speech may still be read in full He commented with unfeigned indig-
nation upon the attempt made by Lord North and his colleagues to
find -a respectable precedent for their own extravagance and profusion.
When defeat, (he said,) and shame, and dismay, pursued them in
every quarter, — when their efforts grew weak and languid in propor-
tion as their expenses increased, — they were led by curiosity, as well as
by concern, to enquire into the financial history of the past; and they
496

ascertained to their satisfaction that Mr. Pitt, in the height of the Seven
Years' War, had spent almost as much public money as themselves.
"It was indecent," cried Fox, "for Ministers to charge the ever mem-
orable Earl of Chatham with the only blemish that can be discovered
in his character, without at the same time associating with his ex-
travagance his wisdom, his exertions, and, above all, his success." The
speech was crowned with a peroration which, according to the lifelong
habit of that most workman-like of debaters, kept the argument con-
tinuous and unbroken up to the moment when he resumed his seat.
"Do not," he said, "be deterred by the word 'Associations.' There is
nothing unconstitutional in the term. With Associations you have it
always in your power to maintain the independence in which you
were born, and to compel the body whom you have entrusted with
your rights to do you justice. Without Associations you must fall a
sacrifice to that corruption which has given the Crown an influence
unknown to any former period in our history. Permit this influence to
be increased, and the country will be enslaved. Destroy it, and the Eng-
lish Constitution will never be overthrown." It was some time, accord-
ing to the testimony of the reporters, before the necessary silence was
recovered "owing to the heartfelt and vehement expression of the
audience, quickened and impelled by the powerful eloquence of the
gentleman who had just addressed them." When tranquillity was re-
stored Mr. Fox was proposed, and acclaimed, as the Opposition candi-
date for Westminster; and he signified his acceptance of the offer. If
he could have foreseen the troubles and vexations which his connection
with that constituency drew down upon him in no distant future even
Charles Fox might have thought twice before committing himself to
an irrevocable decision.

The growing intensity of political feeling once more brought into
prominence an ugly feature in the manners of the day. At ordinary
times a large amount of common sense, and good nature, underlay the
noise and roughness of our parliamentary proceedings. But none the
less a public man was always liable to be involved in a duel; and, in
that thorough-going generation, the English duel was not a sham
encounter. There is still in existence a most curious list of the fatal cas-
ualties that occurred during the war with our revolted Colonies. Ac-
cording to this record, which is drawn up with much care and accuracy,
two hundred and forty-seven officers of the Royal army and navy were
killed in American battle, and no fewer than twenty-nine in private
duel.

497

Among Lord North's supporters in the House of Commons was a
certain William Fullarton, an Ayrshire landed proprietor, who had
responded handsomely to the call which the War Office made upon
the patriotism of the country after the disaster at Saratoga. He had
raised a battalion of infantry at his own expense, and largely from
among his own tenants, and had been duly rewarded with a Lieu-
tenant-colonelcy in the regular army. It so happened that the Earl of
Shelburne entertained a strong objection, on public grounds, to the
practice of conferring high military rank upon untried civilians; and
he commented in the House of Lords upon Colonel Fullarton's claims
and antecedents in sharp, and, (as it turned out,) in most undeserved
terms of depreciation.1 Conscious of merit, and hot and headstrong by
nature, Fullarton brought his personal grievance to the notice of the
House of Commons in a speech which violated the most elementary
usages of Parliament, and which positively bristled with improprieties
of language. Fox called him to order for referring to the Earl of Shel-
burne by name, and for charging that nobleman with deliberate false-
hood. Rigby struck in on the one side, and Colonel Barre, who was
quite as far removed from a peacemaker as Rigby, on the other; and
the whole chamber was soon in a ferment which called for the inter-
vention o£ the Prime Minister. North was seen at his very best on
such occasions. He complimented Fullarton on his martial spirit, and
excused his vehemence; but he strongly recommended his own rule of
treating hostile criticisms, uttered in another place, with indifference
and disdain. Noble Lords, (said North,) were apt to be extremely
personal in their remarks about members of the House of Commons,
and some of them had a habit of making very free with himself. An
epithet, for instance, had lately been applied to him which he had al-
together refused to view as an affront, because a moment's consider-
ation reminded him that a certain Noble Lord, "who had dubbed him
'a thing called a Minister,' would not have the smallest objection to
become that very thing himself."

It was impossible to continue wrangling in face of a rebuke sweet-
ened by so much wit, and such good temper. The matter dropped, and
the House proceeded to business; but on the following day the entire
speech which Fullarton had intended to deliver, but was not permitted
to finish, appeared in the columns of the Public Advertiser. Lord Shel-

1 Colonel Fullarton soon had an opportunity for displaying remarkable military ca-
pacity in a campaign against the forces of Hyder Ali, and Tippoo Saib, in the East
Indies.

498

burne's course of action was described in the printed report as menda-
cious, insolent, and cowardly; and he was openly charged with being
in treasonable correspondence with the enemies of his country. Fuliar-
ton sent a servant to Shelburne's house with a copy of the newspaper,
and a verbal message demanding an immediate answer. London opin-
ion was prepared to condemn and resent an insult offered by a much
younger man, of no great mark in the world, to a peer who had been
a Secretary of State under Lord Chatham, and who himself belonged
to the class from which Prime Ministers are drawn. It was a case
where Shelburne need not have allowed himself to be dragooned into
a quarrel; but in earlier days he had been a brave soldier who had
fought his way, from grade to grade, up to that rank in the army
which Fullarton had attained at a single bound; and he had a sol-
dier's feeling about giving and accepting a challenge. Without a mo-
ment's hesitation he sent down word to Fullarton's servant that there
was no answer, except that he desired his master to meet him in Hyde
Park at five o'clock the next morning. Shelburne came attended by
Lord Frederick Cavendish, his former brother in arms in the German
war; while Fullarton brought with him Lord Balcarres, who, in the
final battle on Bemis's Heights, had rivalled Benedict Arnold in cour-
age and conduct. Two shots were exchanged without effect; but at the
second fire Fullarton, aiming to kill, wounded his adversary slightly in
the groin. Balcarres and Cavendish, who were authoritative judges o£
what honour required, thereupon insisted that the duel should stop,
although Shelburne haughtily and firmly declined to go through the
form of a reconciliation.2

Lord Shelburne's affair had been preceded by another political duel
which was even more sensational, and which came nearer still to a
fatal issue. William Adam, like Colonel Fullarton, was a Scotch coun-
try gentleman, of Maryburgh, in the County of Kinross. His father
was the eldest among those four celebrated brothers who earned the
gratitude of their own, and succeeding, generations by their skill and
taste in the arts of domestic architecture and ornament. He' himself
was one of the two members representing the two electors of Gatton,
in Surrey. It was a position which allowed him to have a free hand in

2 Lady Shelburne was in the room when Colonel Fullarton's letter was put into her
husband's hands, but she was kept in ignorance of its contents. "She did not," said a
newspaper, "know a word o£ the affair till it was entirely over. It was her brother, the
Honourable Mr. Fitzpatrick, who broke it to her. She was expecting." Such was indeed
the case. The great Lord Lansdowne, the political patron of Macaulay, and, (in his later
life,) of Robert Lowe, was born in the July after the duel.

499

the House o£ Commons; and, during the earlier sessions o£ the existing
parliament, he voted frequently against the Ministry. A good fellow
as ever breathed, he possessed the same kindly nature as his grandson
of the same name, — that Sir William Adam whose patient and dis-
interested exertions contributed so much to the success of his party in
the general election of 1880, and who is still remembered with affection
by his surviving associates and opponents.

Earl Russell who, when a student at Edinburgh University, must
have known Mr. Adam well, (for that gentleman lived to the age of
eighty-seven,) describes him as endowed with an "openness of tem-
per, and cordiality of disposition, which peculiarly suited Mr. Fox."
But the friendship between the two men had a stormy, and most
inauspicious, beginning. When Parliament assembled for the Winter
Session of November 1779 Ministers were very hard put to it in the
debate on the Address; and they were not a little comforted when Mr.
Adam announced that it was his intention to desert the Minority, and
support the Cabinet. The reasons which he gave for adopting that
course were not flattering to either of the two parties. He frankly
admitted that the Government had failed miserably; but he confided
to the House that, among those gentlemen who stood as candidates for
office, he could not single out one by whom the State was likely to be
better guided than by its present rulers. He beheld, (he said,) a politi-
cal phenomenon, — an unsuccessful Ministry, and a discredited Opposi-
tion. Fox who, as he well might, resented a speech so insulting to
himself and his allies, descended upon Adam with the sweep and
force of a tornado. "I do not know," he exclaimed, "how the Govern-
ment will receive this awkward and paradoxical tribute; but I know
very well what would happen if I myself were a Minister, and if a man
were to approach me, and say: 'Sir, I cannot defend you on the ground
of your conduct, which is so replete with absurdities and inconsisten-
cies that all my abilities cannot palliate them. But I will tell you what
I can do to serve you. I will inform the world that the men who
oppose you are more ignorant, and more inconsistent, than yourself.'
I for my part, on hearing such an address, should instantly reply: 'Be-
gone, wretch, who delightest in libelling mankind, and insulting him,
whom you profess to defend, by saying to his face that he certainly
is infamous, but there are others more infamous still/" Nothing, it
must be allowed, could less resemble the language which Lord North
was in the habit o£ employing towards members of the Opposition
who came to him with a proffer of their support.
500

Adam was distressed and shocked at being exhibited as a monster
of depravity to an amused and excited audience, with no section o£
which, at that moment, he himself was in political agreement. He
called Fox to account in a quiet and dignified letter, and begged him
to inform the public, through the press, that he had not meant "to
throw any personal reflection upon Mr. Adam." Fox,— who knew that
there would be no end to it if he once began apologising, under
pressure, to the victims of his rhetoric, — replied that he was unwilling
to put anything into the newspapers relating to a speech which, in his
view, required no explanation whatever. A meeting in Hyde Park
was accordingly arranged for Monday the twenty-ninth of November.
The tragical part of the business, in Charles Fox's estimation, was
over and done with when he had been successfully extracted from his
warm bed by candle-light on a winter's morning. He was accompanied
on to the ground by Richard Fitzpatrick; while Adam chose as his
second Colonel Humberston, of the family of Seaforth and Mackenzie,
who shortly afterwards met his death in the wildest of Mahratta bat-
ties. The distance was measured off at fourteen paces. Colonel Fitz-
patrick, as in duty bound, instructed his cousin to stand sideways,
protecting his exposed flank with his pistol-arm, in the stiff and con-
strained attitude portrayed in contemporary engravings of famous
duels. But Fox would have none of it. He was as thick, (he said,) one
way as the other; and he planted himself, full and square, in face of
his antagonist. His life, in all human probability, was saved by his
careless and offhand courage. When shots had been exchanged, with
no result that was visible to Mr. Adam or the two colonels, an at-
tempt was made to reconcile the opponents; but Fox remarked calmly
that it was no place for apologies. After Adam had taken one more
shot Fox discharged his pistol in the air, and made his peace with a
few well-chosen words. Then, but not till then, he told the others that
he believed himself to have been wounded at the first fire. He had,
in truth, been hit in the very centre of his body. The bullet had
struck the buckle of his waist-band,— which, in the case of Charles
Fox, was necessarily an article of solid construction, — and had dropped
to the ground after inflicting an insignificant, and not very painful,
contusion. "Of all duels," wrote Horace Walpole, "this was the most
perfect. So much temper, sense, propriety, and natural good nature,
on a base of firmness and spirit, never were assembled." 3

3 A brief and precise statement of all that occurred was drawn up for publication,
and signed by both of the seconds. Fox, according to oral tradition, told Adam that he

501

The news of what had taken place in Hyde Park was all over Lon-
don by breakfast-time. "Half the town was reading the correspondence
in Charles Fox's room the whole morning." His innumerable friends
had been exceedingly anxious; and for some while to come they were
very angry. When Lord Shelburne's duel supervened on the top of
Charles Fox's a most unpleasant suspicion began to pervade society.
People recalled the bloodthirsty pertinacity with which, in days not
very remote, the life of Wilkes was sought by duellists who, in two
cases out of three, were Scotchmen.4 "You have seen," (wrote Horace
Walpole,) "Mr. Fox's combat with highwaymen in the papers. At first
I concluded they were not highwaymen, but Highlanders, and that
Messrs. Adam and Fullarton were ambitious of further preferment."
An anonymous journalist, writing with savage irony, pretended to
have read a War Office advertisement for a number of marksmen who
had been regularly trained, and were sure of hitting within twelve
feet distance; "and who may rely upon it that they will not be sent
abroad, as they are destined for home service." 5 That imputation was
most unjust as regarded Adam; and Fullarton, at the worst, was a
quarrelsome man with an exaggerated idea of his own importance.

On the twenty-second of March 1780 Sir James Lowther brought the
matter before the House of Commons; and that House has often been
invited to consider points of Privilege which concerned it less. "He by
no means," (so he assured his hearers,) "wished to put men of spirit
into a dishonourable situation. It had been his own misfortune, more
than once, to be engaged in a duel; and, whenever he was so called
upon, he trusted that he would show himself ready to do what was
proper. But he now was speaking as a Member of Parliament, and an
advocate for freedom of debate. If free debate were to be interpreted
into personal attack, and questions of a public nature were to be de-
cided in private combat, Parliament would soon resemble a Polish
Diet." William Adam then rose to his feet. The attention of the House
was immediately fixed upon him; and, before he sat down, he had
regained the sympathy and good-will of all his parliamentary col-
leagues. "Amidst the unwelcome sensations," (he said,) "occasioned

must have loaded with "Government powder," the strength and efficacy of which had
recently been impugned in parliamentary debate. But there is no printed or written au-
thority for the story; and it is perhaps too good to be true.

4 The man who nearly killed Wilkes, in a barbarous and cold-blooded encounter
which came little short of an attempt at murder, was probably an Englishman; but he
was a dependant of Lord Bute, and an officer in the Princess Dowager's Household.

5 London Evening Post of March 1780.

502

by the revival of that unfortunate affair in which he himself had been
implicated, he found some comfort in the opportunity afforded him of
doing justice to the character of his opponent, and of asserting in the
hearing of so respectable an assembly that he had found in him a
manliness, and an honour, which equalled those transcendant abilities
that had won him the admiration of every member of the House, and
of none in a more eminent degree than himself." Fox, being what he
was, in all likelihood never received a compliment which afforded him
more lively pleasure. The Coalition of 1783, which brought ruin and
disaster upon so many politicians, proved nothing less than a God-send
to William Adam; for it enabled him to reconcile his loyalty towards
Lord North with his affection for Charles Fox, whose staunch and
devoted adherent he became, and remained, until the death of his
beloved chief absolved him from his allegiance.

Fox's speech in Westminster Hall was the crowning event of the
agitation in the country; and by that time both Houses were filling up
fast after a substantial Christmas holiday which almost everybody had
further prolonged on his own account. The honour of opening a par-
liamentary campaign, marked by striking and diversified turns o£
fortune, and overcharged with historical interest, was claimed by a
man admirably fitted for the responsibility which he had undertaken.
The Earl of Shelburne was a statesman endowed with strong char-
acter, and rare talents, marred by faults which impaired his usefulness
when alive, and which have rendered him vast disservice with poster-
ity. He laboured, and his memory still labours, beneath an imputation
of duplicity and disingenuousness for which it is not altogether easy
to account. Shelburne's political alliances were seldom long-lived, and
a cloud of discomfort and distrust was apt to overspread the serenity
of his private friendships. At an age which in modern politics^ passes
for youth he had twice held exalted office, and in both cases his rela-
tions with his Cabinet colleagues had begun by being strained, and
had ended by being internecine. But the most notable example of his
constitutional inability to work harmoniously and amicably with
others was still in the future. Those mutual suspicions and jealousies,
which smouldered, or blazed up, between Lord Shelburne and Charles
Fox while they were Secretaries of State together in Lord Rocking-
ham's second administration, were destined to produce results more
important and far-reaching than anything which ever happened, be-
fore or since, in the history of British party. Fox's obstinate refusal

503

to serve under Shelburne, after Rockingham had been removed by
death, led to a succession of consequences which altered the whole
course of politics, and condemned the Whigs to an all but unbroken
half-century of banishment from place and power. It was the fatal
and irreparable mistake of Fox's life. A quiet member of the Whig
party, who was more concerned about the welfare of his cause than
about the ambitions and susceptibilities of his leaders, might have
been pardoned for thinking that it would have been no such terrible
calamity if either Colonel Fullarton's, or Mr. Adam's, pistol had car-
ried the bullet home.

With all his defects and angularities Lord Shelburne was a public
man of the first order, to whose very valuable qualities the world has
done scanty justice. He has been cleverly, and not inaptly, described
by Mr. Disraeli as one of the suppressed characters of English history.
Throughout the entire period covered by the American difficulty Shel-
burne was a power in the State, — a scourge to the ineptitude, and a
spur to the indolence, of its rulers. He had been the most troublesome
and restless of bedfellows in office, but the independence and isolation
of Opposition were pre-eminently suited to his self-willed and self-
reliant nature. His acquaintance with affairs was deep and wide; his
judgment was almost unerring; and he never shrank from taking a
bold and direct line of his own, which other men, if they chose, were
at liberty to follow. Shelburne was actuated by the instinctive patriot-
ism of a genuine aristocrat, who identified himself with the prosperity
and honour of a nation in which he held an assured and conspicuous
position. He was versed in European diplomacy, and in the military ad-
ministration of our own, and other, countries; but his special strength
lay in a familiar acquaintance with the principles and details of fi-
nance. He belonged to that very small class of politicians who refuse
to apply two methods, and two measures, to the management of their
private property, and to the care which they bestow upon the public
income and expenditure. Shelburne was an open-handed giver, and he
never failed to maintain the standard of well-ordered splendour in
which it became a nobleman to live. But he had a practical and first-
hand knowledge of his own affairs. He supervised the control of his
estates in England and Ireland, and of his establishments in town and
country, on a system of exact and rational economy; and he put in
practice the same system, and no other, when dealing with the pecu-
niary interests of the nation. "He retained," we are told, "three or four
clerks in constant pay and employment under his own roof, who were
504

solely occupied in copying State papers and accounts;" and he had at
his elbow no less capable an adviser than Doctor Richard Price, who
was among the best informed, and most sober-minded, political econ-
omists o£ the age.

On the eighth of February 1780 Shelburne moved for the appoint-
ment of a Committee consisting of members of both Houses who
possessed neither employment nor pension, to examine without delay
into the Public Expenditure, and the mode of accounting for the
same; to report upon the manner of making Government contracts;
and to consider the expediency of abolishing all offices, old and new,
which had no duties attached to them, of curtailing exorbitant salaries,
and of applying the money thereby saved "to lessen the present ruin-
ous expenditure, and carry on the present war against the House of
Bourbon." The words of the Resolution had the true ring about them;
and the orator, — for, when he had his heart in the matter, a genuine
orator Shelburne was, — explained his proposal to the House of Lords
in a speech of considerable but not superfluous length, and of excep-
tional knowledge and power. He understood his subject, and he thor-
oughly knew his audience. He did not even attempt to convince those
among his hearers who made a trade of politics. Ignoring the whole
flock of Court officials, and holders and expectants of sinecures and
pensions, and Barons desirous of being made Viscounts, and Bishops
on the watch for a chance of being translated, he addressed his argu-
ments to those independent noblemen who attended Parliament, not
for the purpose 'of pushing their own fortunes, but in the hope of do-
ing something towards saving the nation from imminent disaster, and
only too probable ruin. Close and eager attention was paid to his
searching analysis of the fiscal situation in its bearing upon the future
of the landed interest. Shelburne gave it as his opinion that the country
gentlemen of England would never have sanctioned the American
policy of the Ministry if they could have foreseen that they were com-
mitting the British Treasury to an expenditure which would eventually
lead to the mortgaging of their own estates in perpetuity; inasmuch as
it was upon them, and upon their heirs after them, that, in one shape
or another, the burden of taxation must ultimately lie. His Majesty's
Government, (he said,) was now fighting four simultaneous wars on
borrowed money. Every successive twelvemonth was more costly, and
every successive loan was made on worse terms, than the last; and
nothing could in the end avert an overwhelming financial calamity
except a general peace, "of which, (he greatly feared,) there was not

505

the most distant prospect." This gloomy anticipation was corroborated
by "an affirmative and significant nod" from Lord Sandwich, who
was seated on the front bench opposite with a score of proxies in his
pocket; and it was a piece of by-play which did not fail to impress
the House. What remained of the debate added little to the effect of
Shelburne's speech, and detracted nothing from it. When the question
was put to the vote his Resolution was supported by twenty Earls and
Marquises, and eight Dukes, although Earls and Dukes were less
plentiful then than now.

The Opposition lords, — encouraged by the adhesion of some among
their brother peers who hitherto had been supporters, or even mem-
bers, of the Government,— had done their duty well and manfully.
They had protested, as citizens, against a policy by the consequences
of which they were at least as gravely affected as any other class of
Englishmen. But the House of Commons was the special and ordained
arena for financial debate; and the self-appointed champion of the
nation's financial interests, whose hands the County petitions had been
designed to strengthen, sat, and to the end of his career continued to
sit, in that assembly. On the eleventh of February 1780, before an over-
flowing and profoundly attentive audience, Mr. Burke unfolded his
Plan for the better Security of the Independence of Parliament, and
the Economical Reformation of the Civil and other Establishments.
That plan was embodied in five separate Bills, which their author ex-
plained in an oration of the length demanded by the importance and
complexity of his subject. It was a plan, (to use his own stately words,)
laid not in official formality, nor in airy speculation, but in real life,
and in human nature. It was a plan which weakened no function of
Government, but on the contrary gave it greater vigour. It provided
the Minister of Finance with the means of orderly method and com-
prehensive foresight. It extinguished secret corruption almost to the
impossibility of its existence. It destroyed "direct and visible influence
equal to the offices of at least fifty members of Parliament; and, lastly,
it secured that the provision made by the nation for the comfort and
dignity of His Majesty, and His Majesty's family, should not be
diverted to the political purposes of the Minister. These," said Burke,
"are the points on which I rely for the merit of the plan. I pursue econ-
omy in a secondary view, and only as it is connected with these great
objects." Burke, nevertheless, confidently promised that his scheme of
retrenchment would restore to the public Exchequer, in hard cash, a
sum of between two and three hundred thousand pounds a year; while

the system of account and control which he proposed to institute would
be in itself, to all future time, "a great revenue." During the last years
of peace, which immediately preceded the American rebellion, the
expenditure of the country, exclusive of the interest on the Debt, had
stood somewhere near the figure of five millions annually. A propor-
tional reduction from the so-called peace budgets of our own day,— -if
another Edmund Burke were to arise in the present House of Com-
mons,—might fairly be computed at seven millions a year; and seven
millions a year would be no contemptible saving.

Burke's speech, like his speech on the Conciliation of America, has
taken rank in our national literature on a level with Bacon's Essays,
and Milton's Areopagitica, and the first quarto volume of Gibbon's
History. No oration, however skilfully edited and corrected, can please
and satisfy a reader if it failed to delight and impress the hearers who
were present at its delivery; and the reception accorded to Edmund
Burke's exposition of his plan of Economical Reform was of a nature
which left him nothing to desire. An immense crowd of members sat
and stood, listening, and learning, and enjoying while he rolled out
his vivid and picturesque, but most accurate and businesslike, catalogue
of financial abuses, and while he descanted upon their intimate rela-
tion to the good fame and efficiency of Parliament. He earnestly be-
sought the House to adopt a self-denying ordinance on an extensive
scale; to abolish unearned, and to dock half-earned, salaries and pen-
sions; and thereby to withdraw from all Cabinets, then and afterwards,
the material means of corruption and illegitimate influence. That, in
Burke's view, was the only course of action which could re-establish
Parliament in the esteem and confidence of the nation. It was idle,
(he said,) to complain of the language which had been used at some
of the County meetings. "We are told that the petitioners were violent.
Be it so. Those who are least anxious about your conduct are not those
who love you the most. We have furnished to the people of England,
— indeed we have, — some real cause for jealousy. Let us free ourselves
at once from everything that can increase their suspicions, and inflame
their just resentment. Let the Commons in Parliament assembled be
one and the same thing with the Commons at large. Then indeed shall
we be truly great. Respecting ourselves, we shall be respected by the
world."

After holding his audience during more than three hours he wound
up what he had to say with a few unadorned sentences, pitched in a
quiet strain; and, when Edmund Burke spoke calmly and simply un-

507

der the stress of deep emotion, his words always possessed a strange
and mysterious charm. The House remained spell-bound. Fox took off
his hat to second the motion. North, embarrassed, and a great deal
more than half-convinced, stated it as his belief that no other gentle-
man could have been equal to the task so ably performed by the
Honourable Member, "although he had the happiness to know that
there were many then present who had very brilliant parts." For him-
self, he certainly should not hinder the bringing in of the first among
the five Bills; but he expressly reserved his liberty to oppose it at one
or another of its subsequent stages. Lord George Gordon, the vainest
of fools, who had all the will in the world to be mischievous, thought
fit to attack Burke's speech as unconstitutional. He saw most plainly,
(so he declared,) that the whole business was a juggle concerted be-
tween the worthy Member for Bristol, and the noble Lord in the blue
ribbon at the head of the Government; and, to the disgust of all his
colleagues, he insisted on challenging a vote. The Noes were ordered
to keep their seats; while the crowd of Ayes, — according to the clumsy
arrangement for taking a division which prevailed then, and for more
than fifty years afterwards, — packed themselves with difficulty into the
dark and comfortless Lobby. Lord George who, to the credit of Par-
liament, could not secure a teller, remained behind in the solitude of an
empty House. Burke's speech was printed and published, and ran
through several editions. There is agreeable testimony to the effect
which it produced upon a mind that was well worth convincing.
William Cowper had recently been engaged upon a rhymed piece of
political satire, one stanza of which, neither better nor worse than the
rest of the poem, was evidently directed against Edmund Burke. To-
wards the end of February Cowper despatched to his friend William
Unwin a letter which contained the following passage. "When I wrote
last I was a little inclined to send you a copy of verses entitled 'The
Modern Patriot,' but was not quite pleased with a line or two, which
I found it difficult to mend. At night I read Mr. Burke's speech in the
newspaper, and was so well pleased with his proposals for a reforma-
tion, and with the temper in which he made them, that I began to
think better of his cause, and burnt my verses."

Burke's oration was an arsenal of facts and statistics which provided
his followers with an abundant store of weapons for waging as hot a
parliamentary campaign as ever was fought between two hosts of
combatants not unequally matched in number; for the Ministerial
majority, which had stood at two hundred in the first Session of the
508

existing Parliament, had by this time as good as disappeared. A few
days afterwards Sir George Savile moved for an account of all Patent
Places for life, or lives, and for the salaries and fees thereto attached;
as well as of all pensions granted by the Crown, specifying the amount
of such pensions, and the times when, and the persons to whom, they
had been granted. It was notorious that such a Return would have
disclosed the names of many Peers and Commoners, and the female
relatives of many others, who were gratified by quarterly doles of
money which might at any moment be withdrawn at the pleasure of
the Sovereign. Lord Nugent, as spokesman for the Ministry, resisted
the motion on the ground of delicacy; and in the course of two long
discussions no more plausible argument could be discovered for with-
holding information which Parliament was indubitably entitled to re-
ceive. "There were," said Lord Nugent, "many Lady Bridgets, Lady
Marys, and Lady Jennies, who would be much hurt at having their
names entered in the proceedings of that House as pensioners of State."
Lord Nugent's appeal was received with derision, and the general
feeling was such that Lord North found himself obliged to come in
person to the rescue. He interposed an amendment limiting the scope,
while it did not directly traverse the substance, of Savile's Resolution;
but all the authority of the Prime Minister, together with a speech of
marvellous wit and fire from Mr, Attorney General Wedderburn,
were required in order to save the Government from disaster by a
majority of two votes in a House of three hundred and eighty mem-
bers. Those figures indicated a sudden and significant displacement of
the political balance.

There was another class of people who were more unpopular even
than the pensioners and sinecurists. Government contractors,— with
their brand-new wealth, and their privileged opportunities for facile,
and in many cases ill-gotten, gains,— had no friends in any quarter;
and the most disliked and suspected among them were those who had
seats in the House of Commons. For the contractor, on the one hand,
was bound to obey the Minister for fear of losing his contract; while
the Minister submitted to the exactions, and winked at the peculations,
of the contractor for fear of losing a vote. Honest senators, without
distinction of party, were resolutely determined to do away with an
abuse which was incompatible with effective administrative control,
and a stain upon the honour of Parliament. A Bill for Restraining any
Member of the House of Commons from being concerned in any Gov-
ernment Contract, "unless the said Contract had been made at a public

509

bidding," was carried rapidly, silently, and unanimously through all its
stages; and Lord North recognised that it would be highly imprudent
to court rebuff in a Chamber where he felt that power was slipping
from him. The Contractors Bill went up to the House of Lords; and
the Ministers, with much ado, and some scandal, contrived to defeat
it in that smaller and more manageable assembly.

Burke had seldom been heard to greater advantage than during the
debates on the separate provisions of his Bill for the better Regulation
of His Majesty's Civil Establishments. On the thirteenth of March the
Committee reached a Clause dealing with the Lords of Trade, who
were eight in number, all of them with seats in Parliament, and each
of them drawing a salary of a thousand pounds a year. There was a
tradition of long standing that the claims of literature were not to be
neglected in making appointments to the Board of Trade. Locke had
sat there, and Addison, and Prior,— -and Charles Townshend, whose
vivacious drollery had never been more unbridled than when he was
enlarging on the farcical character of his duties as a Commissioner of
Trade and Plantations. Lord North, to do him justice, had placed upon
the Board as presentable a show of authors as he could find in the
ranks of his parliamentary supporters. The patriarch among them was
Mr. Soame Jenyns, who was almost co-aeval with the century. He had
written much in prose and verse; but he is chiefly known by the title,
rather than by the contents, of his principal work, "A Free Enquiry
into the Nature and Origin of Evil." Among the other Commissioners
was Lord Carlisle, the smallest of poets, or poetasters; Mr. William
Eden, whose qualification to be classed as a literary man consisted in
certain "Letters on Public Affairs," in defence of the Government,
which were addressed to Lord Carlisle; and Edward Gibbon, whose
nomination as a Lord of Trade did something to excuse and dignify
the most flagrant and grotesque of existing jobs.6 Burke approached
the subject in a spirit of high comedy. He professed a desire to rescue
a company of eminent writers from dry and irksome functions which
distracted them from loftier studies, and more congenial labours. As an
Academy of Belles Lettres, (he said,) he held them hallowed. As a
Board of Trade he wished to abolish them. That Board, to his view,
was a crow's nest in which nightingales were kept prisoners: and his

e 'The fancy of a hostile orator," said Gibbon, "may paint in the strong colours of
ridicule 'the perpetual adjournments, and the unbroken vacation/ of the Board of Trade.
But it must be allowed that our duty was not intolerably severe, and that I enjoyed many
days, and weeks, of repose without being called away from my library to the office."

510

design was to restore the nightingales to their liberty in the hope that
they might sing the more delightfully. Aroused by the sympathy and
applause of his audience, which has often inspired lesser men, Burke
positively revelled in the freedom and licence of Committee. He spoke
as often as he chose, and each successive apologist for the Board of
Trade was overwhelmed by the exuberance of his diction and imagina-
tion, and by the irresistible play of his satire. "I can never," (so Gib-
bon confessed,) "forget the delight with which that diffusive and
ingenious orator was heard by all sides of the House, and even by
those whose existence he proscribed. The Lords of Trade blushed at
their own insignificancy; and Mr. Eden's appeal to the two thousand
five hundred volumes of our Reports served only to excite a general
laugh." At a quarter past two in the morning the Committee at length
divided, and voted for abolishing the Board by two hundred and seven
as against a hundred and ninety-nine.

Burke had exhorted men of all parties to lay aside their differences,
and address themselves in common to the salutary work of lightening
the burden of taxation, and restoring the purity of the national senate;
and he had met with a response which surprised himself, and the
statesmen with whom he acted. A change had come over the surface of
politics which indicated that the public mind was stirred by an under-
current of deep and sincere conviction. The leaders of the Opposition
could henceforward rely upon the unbounded enthusiasm of their
habitual followers, and they might likewise count on the support of a
large contingent of new allies. Encouraged by success, they determined
to push the great controversy of their generation towards a decisive
issue. Hitherto they had been engaged in storming the outworks, and
they now proceeded to attack the citadel itself. The moment was ripe,
in their opinion, for eliciting from the House of Commons a solemn
protest against the encroachments of royal influence upon the accepted
theory, and the long-established working, of the Constitution. John
Dunning, the first of living advocates, was entrusted with the conduct
of the business; and it could not have been placed in more appropriate
hands. He had made his way into the front rank of his profession
through a course of that poverty and hardship to which strong men,
who have succeeded in life, look back with honourable pride and satis-
faction. The Earl of Chatham, who did not love gentlemen of the
long robe, had declared that Dunning was something very superior to
a mere lawyer, although at the same time his legal knowledge was

such that he was "the law itself." Chatham made him his Solicitor
General; and, after Chatham had gone into retirement, and his Min-
istry,—ostensibly led by the Duke of Grafton, but in reality impelled
and guided by the more unscrupulous of the Bedford party,-— had
embarked upon a violent and unconstitutional policy, Dunning found
himself altogether out of sympathy with his colleagues. He returned
to his private practice at the Bar, where he thenceforward maintained
a pre-eminence, both at Equity and Common Law, which no one pre-
sumed, or, (such was the respect felt for his character and his attain-
ments,) even desired to dispute. George the Third's dislike of him
was notorious; and no Minister, of the moral type which under that
monarch was the indispensable qualification for office, ventured so
much as to suggest that John Dunning ought in justice and decency
to be made a King's Counsel. And so, for twelve years to come, there
was witnessed the unusual spectacle of a barrister who, but for his
own scruples, might long ago have been Lord Chancellor, pleading
in a stuff gown before the tribunal of England's greatest Judge; and
Lord Mansfield honoured Dunning with a deference and consideration
which reflected even greater honour upon Lord Mansfield himself.
Dunning, throughout all those years, held a commanding position in
Parliament, where he sat for the borough of Calne, free from trouble,
anxiety, and expense, with Barre for his colleague; for Lord Shelburne,
like his son and grandson after him, made a discriminating use of his
electoral influence.

On the sixth of April 1780 the House of Commons resolved itself
into a Committee to consider the Petitions from the County Meetings,
and Dunning took that opportunity for bringing forward two stringent
Resolutions aimed against the excessive power of the Court. The de-
bate which ensued was signalised by no very rare display of eloquence;
but it was rendered memorable by the supreme importance of the topic,
and by the succession of extraordinary incidents which occurred in a
House packed to suffocation, and boiling over with excitement. Dun-
ning's speech, plain-spoken and powerfully argued, wrought an effect
upon his hearers which obviously and imperatively necessitated an im-
mediate reply from a responsible Minister; but the oratorical resources
possessed by the Government for meeting such an emergency had by
this time fallen very low indeed. When the House of Commons
wanted persuading and convincing it was utterly useless to put up
either Rigby or Lord George Germaine. Welbore Ellis was a non-
entity; and, though Dundas and Wedderburn were both of them
512

admirable debaters, they were more esteemed for their talents than for
their character. Moreover they were Crown Lawyers; and the country
gentlemen of those days preferred to be told what they ought to do by
one of themselves. There remained the Earl of Nugent, a Vice Treas-
urer of Ireland, who more than once had been selected to defend the
Ministry during those critical discussions upon Economical Reform.
Nugent was a jolly, rollicking Irishman, very rich indeed in acres and
money, who had made the most of a world which liked him rather
more than it respected him.7 He spoke well, as such men speak; and
his speeches are still readable, if it were only for the sake of the flashes
of indiscretion by which, at one point or another of their progress,
they were pretty sure to be enlivened. In his reply to Dunning Nugent
contrived to hit upon an argument which convulsed the House with
wonder and amusement. "Could any gentleman," (he demanded,)
'lay his hand upon his heart, and declare that this was peculiarly the
time which called for the diminution of the influence of the Crown?
America was lost. He would speak out. He was willing to repeat his
words. He feared that America was irretrievably lost. The American
war had proved a wrong measure. He himself had supported the war,
and he was not ashamed to own that he had been in the wrong. But
after a series o£ failures, and disappointments, and untoward accidents,
followed by a war with France, and closely followed again by a war
with Spain, with great loans, and heavy taxes, to contend that the
influence of the Crown ought to be diminished was, in his opinion,
to the last degree preposterous." Any one who has sat in the House
of Commons may imagine for himself the chorus of ironical cheering
with which each sentence of this blundering confession on the part
of a Minister was greeted from the Opposition benches, and not from
the Opposition benches only.

Lord Nugent had given away the case for the Government; and
worse was still to follow. Some weeks previously a fierce quarrel had
arisen between Lord North, and the Speaker of the House of Com-
mons, over an obscure and rather painful question of personal in-
terests.8 During the Committee on Dunning's Resolutions Sir Fletcher
Norton remained seated on a bench near the Chair as a private mem-

7 Lord Nugent has won for himself a cheerful memory in literature as the donor of
the Haunch of Venison which suggested Goldsmith's inimitable poem.

8 Parliamentary History; XXI, 258-277. The part played by Fox upon this occasion
was an instance of his skill in the management, — or, to speak more truly, the creation,
— of a parliamentary opportunity.

5*3

her. Long observation had taught him to read the pulse of the House;
and he felt that an opportunity had at last arrived for paying off his
arrear of grudges against the Cabinet and the Court. Rising in his
place he began with what the Ministry might well regard as an hypo-
critical expression of reluctance to take sides in a party controversy.
But he soon warmed to his work; and, at the close of a slashing speech
in favour of the motion, he wound up by declaring that the people of
England, "in their constituent and collective capacity," had a full right
to petition the House, and were entitled to redress if they put forward
their grievances in a peaceable and constitutional manner. "The Com-
mittee," he said, "must either agree with the Resolution, or at once
reject the petitions; and, if there were any gentlemen present who felt
themselves moved to adopt the latter course, he wished them joy in
going down to their Constituents after having voted the allegations
made by many thousands of the people of England to be false and ill-
founded." The intervention of the Speaker was not to the taste of fair-
minded men; but his bellicose and dictatorial language intimidated
waverers into voting against the Government, and removed all sense
of restraint from the younger hot-heads of the Opposition.

When it came to the Prime Minister's turn to speak he was no
longer in his usual placid temper. He had suffered much while he was
being attacked by Sir Fletcher Norton, and still more while he was
being defended by Lord Nugent; he scented defeat in the air; and he
looked forward to a very unpleasant interview with his royal master
at an early hour on the morrow. He lost command of himself, and
did not succeed in maintaining his hold upon that crowded and tur-
bulent assembly. Lord North was betrayed by an access of vexation
into asking whether he was justly chargeable as the author of the
national misfortunes, "whereupon many gentlemen cried across the
House, 'You are! You are!' " The worst moment of a bad half-hour
was when he upbraided the Opposition with pursuing measures likely
to overturn the Constitution. He was called to order angrily and
vociferously, and a number of members demanded that the Prime
Minister's words should be taken down by the Clerk at the Table. The
Lord Advocate, coming to the assistance of his leader, proposed an
insignificant amendment on Dunning's first Resolution, in the double
hope of confusing the issue, and of prolonging the discussion on the
chance that something might be gained by delay.9 Dundas was a

9 Parliamentary History; XXI, 366. The Lord Advocates of Scotland, by George W. T.
Omond; Volume II, page 99.

master of parliamentary wiles, but he had to reckon with a more con-
summate tactician than himself; for Charles Fox instantly rose to his
feet, and accepted the amendment with ominous alacrity. The Govern-
ment had no choice but to proceed forthwith to a division; and a mo-
rion, couched in the words "That it is necessary to declare that the
influence of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be
diminished," was carried by two hundred and thirty-three votes to
two hundred and fifteen. From that day forward the terms of Dun-
ning's Resolution became a catchword in politics. Such a string of tell-
ing phrases never again captivated the fancy of the public until, in the
Reform agitation of 1832, the country resounded to the cry of "The
Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill" The Government were
supported by twenty-seven members for Cornish boroughs, and twenty-
seven of the sham representatives for Scotland; while the majority
contained only five of the one class, and six of the other. Above sixty
English county members voted for the Resolution, and eight against
it. There spoke the free voice of the true England.10

Dunning's Resolution ranks in importance with the Petition of
Rights, and the Declaration of Right, as an expression of the national
opinion on the most vital of all constitutional questions; for it laid
down the principle that the country should be ruled by Ministers who,
—like Pitt, and Peel, and Palmerston and Gladstone,— depended, not
on the favour of the Sovereign, but on the confidence of an unbought
and unbribed Parliament. It was the death-wound of Personal Gov-
ernment, which thenceforward floundered and struggled helplessly
until, after no long while, it perished and disappeared. Personal Gov-
ernment had endured for nearly twenty years, and had left a record
as turbid and barren as any equal period in our history. There had
been a protracted dearth of useful and beneficent legislation, while
the attention of King George and his Ministers had been absorbed in
the conduct of two undertakings the first of which had ended in
ridiculous, and the second in ruinous, failure. They had brought the
country to the brink of revolution in order to keep Wilkes out of
Parliament: and now for six years past, Wilkes had been seated in Par-

10 Parodies on Dunning's Resolution, for a long time to come, were very fashionable
in the newspapers. "That Lord George Gordon has been cracked, is cracked, and ought
not to be allowed to go about." "That General Conway has been a trimmer, is a trim-
mer, and ought to be trimmed." More than thirteen years afterwards poor Gibbon,
jesting to the last, wrote to his friend Lord Sheffield that the cruel ailment, which was
very soon to kill him, "had most stupendously increased, was increasing, and ought to
be diminished."

liament securely and comfortably, enjoying a high popularity among
his brother members, and occupying as a debater very much more than
his due share of the public time. Such had been the issue of the con-
test over the Middlesex Election; and not less nugatory, and far more
disastrous, was the attempt made by the King and the Cabinet to
enforce their colonial policy upon the people of America. Already, ten
months previously to the date of Dunning's Resolution, George the
Third himself had admitted, in a confidential letter to the Prime
Minister, that any man who alleged the Tea Duty to be worth all the
evils which had arisen from it "was more fit for Bedlam than for a
seat in the Senate." That conclusion was exactly what Burke and Fox,
before ever the American rebellion broke out, had tried to impress
upon Parliament in the plainest of plain language.11

11 George the Third to Lord North; Kew, June u, 1779.

516

CHAPTER XIX

THE GOBDON RIOTS.
THE GENERAL ELECTION

JL HE Spring session of the year 1780 was "a session in which un-
expected victories, and unaccountable defeats, alternately raised and
sank the hopes of the contending parties from the highest pitch of
exultation to the lowest state of despondency. The point of decision
seemed more than once quivering, and hanging only by a hair."1
Those are the words of a contemporary historian; and never was a
more faithful description written. The Opposition leaders had hitherto
been carried forward by a rush of headlong success; and they now
were destined to experience the bitterness of unforeseen and, — for any-
thing that appeared on the surface,— quite inexplicable repulses and
misadventures.

On the fourteenth of April Sir Fletcher Norton informed Parlia-
ment that he had long been unwell, and that his health had at last
entirely given way. He treated his hearers to a long narrative of his
various maladies with a minuteness of detail testifying to the interest
felt by an eighteenth century House of Commons in all that related
to the symptoms of gout. The King believed him to be malingering.
"I have not," said His Majesty, "the smallest doubt that the Speaker
has pleaded illness to enable the Opposition to pursue their amuse-
ment at Newmarket next week." But Sir Fletcher Norton most as-
suredly was not shamming, inasmuch as his enforced absence from
the Chair, (and well he knew it,) was the salvation of a Government
which he cordially detested. "Nothing," it was said, "ever happened
more fortunately for any Administration than the illness, at this pecu-
liar juncture, of the Speaker of the House of Commons." Lord North
proposed and carried an adjournment over the next ten days, and dur-

1 History of Europe in the Annual Register for 1780; towards the end of chapter 8.

517

ing all that interval o£ time the subterranean operations of Mr. John
Robinson, the Patronage Secretary of the Treasury, were pursued with
a skill and an industry the results of which soon became evident.
When the House re-assembled Dunning moved an Address praying
that His Majesty would be graciously pleased not to prorogue the
parliament until proper measures had been taken to correct the abuses
complained of by the petitions of the people; and that motion was
rejected by a majority of fifty votes in a House so large that the most
sanguine opponent of the Ministry could not blind himself to the con-
viction that it must be regarded as a test division.

Charles Fox, beside himself with astonishment and vexation, poured
forth, in an assembly seething with excitement little short of fury, a
flood of declamation which has been described as "the keenest Philip-
pic" that perhaps ever was spoken within those walls. "Philippic" was
the right term to use, for no passage in the Second Oration against
Antony exceeded in vehemence and pungency the ironical compli-
ments which Fox paid to the habitual followers of the Government,
and his crushing denunciations of those fickle senators who had sup-
ported Dunning on the first occasion, and has opposed him on the
next. Fox exclaimed that he had no quarrel whatever with the two
hundred and fifteen gentlemen who, on the sixth of the month, voted
that the influence of the Crown had not increased, and ought not
therefore to be diminished. Their conduct, (he said,) was open and
direct, and all of a piece from first to last. They had sold themselves
for office; but, base as the tenure of their places was, they had one
virtue on which to pride themselves, — that of fidelity, gratitude, and
consistency. To all their other demerits they had not added the ab-
surdity and treachery of one day resolving an opinion to be true, and
the next day of declaring it to be a falsehood. They had not taken in
their patron, or their friends, with false hopes and delusive promises.
But when he contemplated another set of men who sat upon the
benches around him, (and he was sorry for it,) — men who voted first
one way, and then another, — he was at a loss for words to convey the
sentiment with which he viewed them. Nevertheless, before Charles
Fox finally resumed his seat, he had contrived to discover language
strong enough to express his feelings; and he wound up the fourth
speech he made on that afternoon and evening by telling those gentle-
men that their conduct "amounted to desertion and abandonment of
their declared principles, and of their solemn promises plighted in
that House to their constituents, and to the people at large; con-

duct which, when considered in that light, was scandalous, base,
treacherous, shameful, and disgraceful." That fierce invective, delivered
under the impulse of passion, and on the spur of the moment, was
the eloquent objurgation of an angry orator rather than the grave
and measured rebuke which should have issued from the lips of a
responsible party leader. But there are few men of ardent genius, and
masterful nature, who can take a terrible disappointment lightly at the
age of one-and-thirty; and Charles Fox was not among them.

The King had been annoyed, and alarmed, as much as so very
resolute a monarch was capable of alarm, by the signs of disaffection
which showed themselves in the Government ranks during the first
eight or nine weeks of the session. He told Lord North, in manly and
dignified words, that Dunning's Resolutions were aimed at some one
more exalted than the Prime Minister. "I wish," he remarked, "that
I did not feel at whom they are personally levelled." He put on record
his surprise that men "should so far lose their reason" as to attack
the constitution of the Board of Trade; and he signified his grave dis-
pleasure at the miserable majority which had barely saved the Crown
Pensioners from exposure to the comments of newspapers, and the re-
sentment of the taxpayer. He reminded his Minister of the determined
attitude, and the drastic remedies, by which, sixteen years before, at
the height of the Wilkes controversy, Mr. Grenville had brought a
mutinous House of Commons to reason over the question of General
Warrants. Lord North, (said His Majesty,) would have done well
to imitate that loyal and courageous example. On another occasion,
when the Government had been beaten by two hundred and fifteen
votes to two hundred and thirteen, the King sat down to his desk be-
fore breakfast next morning in order to express his dissatisfaction with
those five gentlemen of the Ministerial party who had reached the
House of Commons just too late for the division. George the Third,
like Charles the First, had his question of The Five Members to settle.
His method of dealing with it, though less sensational, was much
more effective than that adopted by his predecessor; and, before the
end of April, he was once more in secure command of a parliamentary
majority.

The weight of the royal hand was felt in the Lobby of the House
of Commons. The reaction set in, and all through May it waxed
stronger every week. Lord North easily defeated a proposal brought
forward by General Conway for Quieting the Troubles in America,
Burke was repeatedly out-voted in Committee, until, on the eighteenth

5*9

of the month, he withdrew his Bill for the Reformation of the Civil
Establishments with a few melancholy sentences of resignation and
despair. The King watched with grim approval the discomfiture of
his political adversaries; but he never forgave, and never again trusted
a House of Commons which had been guilty of passing a Resolution
reflecting upon the increased power of the Crown. That House had
got out of control once, and might at any moment get out of control
again. King George was in a hurry to see the last of the existing Par-
liament; and he was sanguine enough to hope better things from its
successor. "If," he wrote, "I had the power of oratory of Demosthenes,
or the pen of an Addison, I could not say more on the subject than
what I can convey in the following few lines. I am conscious that, if
Lord North will resolve with spirit to continue in his present employ-
ment, with the assistance of a New Parliament I shall be able to keep
the present constitution in its pristine lustre."2 His Majesty was de-
termined to proclaim a Dissolution at the earliest convenient oppor-
tunity; and that opportunity suddenly presented itself in a strange
shape, and from an altogether unlooked-for quarter. Events of star-
tling, and even appalling, character swept like a whirlwind over the
face of party politics at home, and diverted public attention, for the
time being, from the perils of colonial rebellion and foreign war.

Very grave consequences arose from the vacillation displayed by
Lord North's Government with regard to the Roman Catholic Relief
Act of the year 1778. That great and just law had a transient moment
of apparent popularity, during which the Cabinet laid claim to a full
share in the credit of the measure. Dundas, the Lord Advocate for
Scotland, speaking on behalf of Ministers in the House of Commons,
made a voluntary promise to extend the benefits of toleration beyond
the Border by repealing those penal Statutes which were still in force
against the Roman Catholics of Scotland. A motion disapproving of
the proposed change in the law was brought forward in the General
Assembly of the Scotch Church; but it was vigorously opposed by Doc-
tor William Robertson, the celebrated historian, and was defeated by a
substantial majority. That vote was the high-water mark of religious
tolerance in the region north of Tweed. An Association of people who
styled themselves The Friends of the Protestant Interest lost not a
moment in setting on foot a fiery agitation against the project for
"granting to Roman Catholics the privilege of purchasing, and suc-
ceeding to, landed property." The Edinburgh populace, the most formi-

2 George the Third to Lord North; May 19, 1780. •
520

dable of all mobs, was invited to outrage and disorder by a handbill
artfully composed, and printed and distributed with an attention to
the dictates of economy which had a flavour of North British thrifti-
ness.3 A tumult arose at the appointed place and hour. A Roman
Catholic chapel was demolished; a house, in which the priest occupied
a flat, was plundered, and burned to the ground; and the military
authorities were only just in time to preserve Principal Robertson's
dwelling from the same fate.4

The effect upon the nerves of Lord North and his brother Ministers
was instantaneous. These rulers, who had committed the British nation
to another Seven Years' War in order to punish a riot on the Quayside
at Boston, surrendered what they had solemnly declared to be their
convictions and intentions at the first breath of sedition in the streets
of Edinburgh; and Dundas was commissioned to announce in Parlia-
ment that all attempts to procure an Act in favour of Scotch Roman
Catholics would be laid aside "until time, and cool persuasion, should
remove the unhappy prejudices" entertained towards them by their
Protestant fellow-countrymen.5 This abandonment of principle, at the
bidding of violence, was the signal for an outburst of fanaticism all the
island over. The responsible government had deserted its post, and the
rabble of bigotry poured unopposed through the breach. Protestant
Associations were formed in town and country; and a petition for the
revocation of the Savile Act was circulated through England, and
signed with tens of thousands of real, and imaginary, names. The
centre of the movement was soon transferred from the committee-
room, and the pulpit, to the gin-shop and the tavern; and money was
freely spent on inflaming the evil passions of the vulgar by methods

3 "Please to read this carefully, keep it clean, and drop it somewhere else." That was
the postscript appended to the hand-bill.

4 Doctor Robertson, all through his life, gave frequent proofs of his breadth of mind,
and his indomitable combativeness. In 1745, at the age of four-and -twenty, he left his
first Manse to fight the Pretender. General Cope refused to admit him and his parish-
ioners into the ranks, on the ground that they were "too undisciplined;*' — although it is
not easy to see how, at the very worst, they could have run away faster than the rest
of General Cope's army. When the Reverend John Home produced his tragedy of
Douglas, Robertson led the minority of eleven to two hundred which protested against
the condemnation levelled by the Church of Scotland at a clergyman who had written
for the stage. But perhaps the most striking instance of the Doctor's courage was the
letter in which, — when he was Principal of Edinburgh University, and Moderator of the
General Assembly, — he assured Gibbon of his admiration for The Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire, and his hope that the volume, in spite of the outcry raised against
it in clerical quarters, would be as widely read as it deserved.

5 Parliamentary History, XIX, 1142; XX, 280.

521

which had little in common with honourable politics, and still less
with Christianity. Then the King's Ministers saw their opportunity,
and, regardless of consistency, and defiant of ordinary decency, they
took steps to encourage the spread of religious hatred, and turn it to
their own advantage. The word was passed round; and for many
months afterwards, until a general election had come and gone, the
subsidised Government journals were employed in writing down the
statesmen of the Opposition as allies and accomplices of the Papacy.
"How generous it is of the Ministry," (so Fox complained to Edmund
Burke,) "to publish hand-bills, and fill their papers with abuse of me
on this popery-subject, I leave it for them to consider. Since I began
my letter I have laid my hand on one of the hand-bills, and inclose it
to you; though, God knows, it is not worth the groat you will have to
pay for it."

That was an unworthy proceeding on the part of an English Min-
istry. The sequel was not slow in coming. On the second of June 1780
a vast procession, marshalled and headed by Lord George Gordon,
carried the monster petition to Westminster, where the Houses were
beset by a mischievous and ferocious crowd, containing, as the day
wore on, an ever smaller proportion of good Protestants, and a larger
contingent of extremely bad citizens. Commoners, and peers, and more
particularly bishops, who had shown favour to the Catholic claims,
were brutally assaulted on the way to their duties, and some of them
narrowly escaped being torn in pieces. Then began the last Reign of
Terror which London ever witnessed. That city had seen one such
night on the eleventh of December 1688, after the news got abroad
that King James had fled; but in June 1780 there was a full week of
licence and disorder. The places of worship of the obnoxious creed,
including the private chapels of foreign ambassadors, were sacked and
destroyed with every circumstance of insult and impiety. The homes
of Roman Catholic noblemen, gentlemen, and merchants were in-
vaded, and their living rooms, and store-rooms, and, (before every-
thing else,) their cellars, were searched and gutted; — an expressive
phrase which was supposed to have come into familiar use during
that dreadful week, although it had been employed in literature, three
generations back, by no less a master of English than John Dryden.6
The warehouses of a Roman Catholic distiller, who manufactured on
an extensive scale, were emptied of their contents; and the street was

6 "A troop of cut-throat guards were sent to seize
The rich men's goods, and gut their palaces."

522

flooded with raw spirits, which were swallowed with maddening, and
in many cases fatal, effects by a multitude of wretches whose frenzy
did not require the aid of stimulants. The Bank of England was twice
attacked, and only rescued from pillage by sharp fighting. The prisons
were stormed and wrecked, and their inmates set at liberty as a rein-
forcement to, the army of disorder. Shops were closed, and markets
vacated and silent; and prudent householders chalked up "No Popery"
on their shutters, and walked abroad with the Protestant colours in
their hats,— -bedizened, (said Horace Walpole,) "with blue ribbons like
a May-day garland."

The vengeance of the lawless fell with severity upon those members
of the community who came forward in defence of the law; whether
they were upright and intrepid judges like Lord Mansfield; or stipen-
diary magistrates, like Sir John Fielding, brave enough to keep their
Courts open for the summary trial of offenders; or honest tradesmen
who had ventured to give evidence against depredators and incen-
diaries. The menace of the insurrection was especially directed against
the statesmen of the Opposition, whom ignorant and credulous people
had been taught to regard as so many Popish conspirators. The great
Whig mansions were barricaded and loopholed, and defended by
armed retainers, and Serjeants' parties of regular infantry. "For four
nights," said Edmund Burke, "I kept watch at Lord Buckingham's, or
Sir George Savile's, whose houses were garrisoned by a strong body of
soldiers, together with numbers of true friends, of the first rank, who
were willing to share their danger. Savile House, Rockinghajaa House,
Devonshire House to be turned into garrisons! We have-^flil served the
country for several years, — some of us for near tJbdrty,---with fidelity,
labour, and affection: and we are obliged to put ourselves under mili-
tary protection for our houses and our persons."7 There seemed no
end to the agony and humiliation of the imperial city. On the sixth
night of the disturbances a large part of London was still in possession
of the mob. Six-and-thirty distinct and separate conflagrations could
be counted from one spot of observation; and the rattle of musketry
was heard in many quarters, since the tpwn was filling fast with
troops, who by this time had begun to use their deadly weapons to
effective purpose. Two days, and nights, had still to elapse before the
revolt was finally quenched in blood, and frowned in liquor; for three
or four hundred of the rioters had been shot down, and a great, but

7 Edmund Burke to Richard Shackleton; Tuesday night, June 13, 1780.

523

unknown, number had died of drink, or perished in the ruins of the
burning houses.

The Opposition leaders had signalised themselves by their calm-
ness and self-possession during the whole of these frightful and be-
wildering events. In the House of Peers, on the first day of the riots,
as one noble lord, after another, made his way into the Chamber with
his face pale and bruised, and his coat in tatters, and his wig awry,—
and while the roar of the furious multitude was heard through the
windows, — the Duke of Richmond was in possession of the floor. Un-
moved by any emotion except anger he haughtily declared that, how-
ever many partisans of disorder "were at that moment thundering at
the door, and hallooing in his ears," he could only say that he had
voted with sincere conviction for the Bill of which they complained,
and that, were they ten times as numerous, he would never consent to
vote otherwise. And then, setting aside that aspect of the matter as a
trivial incident, he entered upon a clear, minute, and very copious ex-
planation of his plan for annual parliaments, like a great preacher who
quietly proceeds with his sermon when there has been an alarm of fire
in a crowded church. Burke, — after he had stowed away his books
where they could be safe from destruction, and had placed his wife
beyond the reach of danger, — dismissed a party of soldiers whom the
Government, handsomely enough, had sent to protect his residence,
"I thought," he said, "that, in the scarcity of troops, they might be
better employed than in looking after my paltry remains." Next day
he showed himself in the streets, alone and unguarded, not concealing
his identity, and talking courteously and seriously with the more de-
cent wearers of the blue cockade.8 He made his way to Westminster
through the densest of the throng, and there delivered his mind to his
brother members. "I spoke my sentiments," (he wrote,) "in such a way
that I do not think I have ever, on any occasion, seemed to affect the
House more forcibly. However, such was the confusion, that they
could not be kept from coming to a resolution which I thought un-
becoming and pusillanimous, which was that we should take that
flagitious petition, which came from that base gang called The Prot-
estant Association, into our serious consideration." And, again, it was

8 Richard Burke wrote thus to his brother's principal constituent. "We are all, rhank
God, hitherto safe. Edmund, who delivered himself, with his name, into their hands,
is safe, firm, and composed. Some blame him. The house yet stands. I rather think it
will go to-night, if their other more important objects do not divert them." Richard
Burke to Richard Champion; June 7, 1780, in what was London.

524

admitted on all hands that no one showed himself more energetic
in the cause of order than John Wilkes. The Lord Mayor of London
disgraced himself by his timidity and slothfulness, and was afterwards
called upon by the Attorney General to account for his gross neglect
of duty; another important civic dignitary ordered the constables of his
Ward to mount the Protestant colours, and took care to be seen arm
in arm with Lord George Gordon; but Alderman Wilkes sat in Court
daily, during all the stated hours, committing for trial a long list of
culprits who had been caught red-handed. He went in person through
a bad quarter of the town to arrest the printer of a seditious handbill;
and, to the intense amusement of contemporary mankind, he was re-
ported, (though he always stoutly denied it,) to have arrested persons
"under General Warrants issued on anonymous information." It re-
mains an open question whether the individual in all London, who
displayed the greatest coolness and courage during that awful crisis,
was King George the Third himself, or the man among his twelve
million subjects whom His Majesty loved the least.

Burke, and Sir George Savile, and the Duke of Richmond, were ill-
rewarded for their exertions in defence of the law, and were mis-
represented to the world as the prime instigators of a barbarous raid
upon those very Roman Catholics whose civil rights they had advo-
cated with so much eloquence and pertinacity. As soon as tranquillity
had been restored, and Lord George Gordon securely lodged in the
Tower, the Ministerial press, with significant unanimity, fell to ac-
cusing the parliamentary Opposition of having organised and financed
the riot in the hope that it would enlarge its dimensions, and assume
the character of a revolution. The only evidence adduced was in the
shape of unfounded rumours, and baseless assumptions, artfully scat-
tered up and down the columns of printed matter which recorded
the authentic news of the day.9 The cue was given by a paragraph in
the Morning Post, a journal notoriously in close alliance with the
Treasury. "The miscreants," (so the allegation was worded,) "who
have been defacing and destroying with the most savage brutality,
were not summoned to the work of villainy solely by the traitorous

9 One newspaper reported that "the French Ambassador at the Hague had said con-
fidently that, within the space of two months, we should hear of London being burned
to the ground," — a piece of information which he was supposed to have learned "from
a certain nobleman in treasonable correspondence with the foes of his country;" and a
chimney-sweep, who was directing the operations of the rioters, had been seen to pull
out of his pocket a handful of shillings which he only too probably had received from
a well-known member of the Opposition.

525

trumpet of Lord George Gordon. The rest of the patriot tribe laid the
foundation-stone, and Lord George has but completed the pile of in-
famy and treason." So outrageous an indictment had never been con-
cocted since the Emperor Nero charged the Christians with setting
Rome in flames. But the opponents of Lord North, unlike those prim-
itive martyrs, were by no means a helpless or long-suffering folk. The
City of London, — most of whose inhabitants were at once staunch
friends of order, and determined enemies of the Ministry, — was all
alive with indignation and resentment. The Court of Common Coun-
cil had been convoked to pass a well-earned vote of thanks to the
City Militia, and present a pair of colours to the Associations of Horse
and Foot Volunteers who had evinced zeal and prowess in the sup-
pression of the tumult.10 The offensive passage in the Morning Post
was on the same occasion brought to the notice of the Council, and
a resolution was carried in favour of prosecuting the publishers of the
newspaper which had cast a false and odious imputation upon eminent
public men whom their fellow-citizens held in respect and honour.

Shabby things have often been done, and not on one side only, in
the interests of party; but perhaps the shabbiest proceedings on record
were the tactics employed by Lord North's Government in the sum-
mer of the year 1780. On the one hand the leaders of the Opposition
were credited by the Ministerial press with the authorship of the
Roman Catholic Relief Act in order to alienate from them the sup-
port of ultra Protestants at the impending general election; and on
the other hand they were accused of having organised and financed
those anti-Catholic riots which had set London in flames. But men
who expect nothing short of fair play from opponents, and who count
upon winning popular favour, and popular support, in exact propor-
tion to their deserts, had better keep out of public life. There were
symptoms which indicated that the dismay and disgust, felt by all
respectable persons during the week that London lay at the mercy of
the wreckers, had produced a temporary, but most undeniable, set-back
to the fortunes of the Opposition. The Court, though not the Cabinet,
was enjoying a turn of genuine popularity. Law and order had been
imperilled by the supineness and timidity of the men in office, who
had failed in the most elementary duty of rulers,— the protection of
society. But the situation had been saved by the personal interposition

10 Their services met with inadequate recognition from the regular army. An officer
of the Footguards had been overheard to say that, if the Volunteers behind him would
ground their arms, he was not afraid of the mob in front.

526

of the King; and George the Third, for good or for evil, was recog-
nised to be a more important factor in the government of the country
than all his Ministers together.

The most instructive and universal lesson which history teaches is
that mob violence, by an inevitable and natural reaction, increases the
prestige of arbitrary authority; and the effect which the disturbances
had wrought on public opinion was acknowledged in manful and
plain-spoken terms by the leading Opposition newspaper. "One good
circumstance for Administration," (thus the Evening Post confessed,)
"is that, previous to the Riots, the public were anxious about the fate
of the County petitions, the result of the American war, and the suc-
cess of our fleets. The whole of these important matters now, like
wisdom, 'sleepeth in a fool's ear;' while association for domestic
defence, Lord George Gordon, who is to be hanged, and such-like
tales, form almost the whole of public conversation." Within a few
weeks after the suppression of the Gordon riots it became matter
of notoriety in the London clubs that writs, summoning a new House
of Commons, had already been prepared for issue. Horace Walpole
told his friend Mason that, according to information which had
reached him, Parliament was to have been dissolved on the ninth of
August, but that the announcement had been delayed in the hope
that every post might bring news of a successful battle on sea or
land. "A leaf of laurel," he said, "no bigger than one shred of a daisy,
would give wing to the Proclamation that lies ready to fly." Walpole's
surmise was correct; but the policy of waiting for a possible victory
was condemned as infinitely foolish by the two most powerful, and
knowing, members of the Cabinet. The Earl of Sandwich represented
to Mr. John Robinson that Rigby was exceedingly eager and anxious
about the speedy, or rather immediate, dissolution of Parliament. "I
think," (continued Sandwich,) "all your reasons for delay are weak.
Our opponents are depressed. The nation is set against riots and rioters
of all kinds. Events have been favourable beyond conception. Will
you wait to give our enemies time to rally and re-unite, and for some
blow in our military operations to turn the tide of popularity against
us?" Sandwich and Rigby carried the day; and on the first of Septem-
ber 1780, towards the end of the sixth year of its life, the Parliament
was dissolved.11
For months past everybody had been anticipating a Dissolution; and

11 Letter of August i, 1780, from The Papers of the Marquess of Abergavenny, as
published by the Historical Manuscripts Commission in the year 1887.

527

yet, when the Proclamation at last appeared, it "operated like a thun-
der-clap, with respect to its suddenness and surprise, on those who
were not in the secret." 12 A stratagem which put to sleep the vigilance
of the Opposition was engineered by the King himself, who had noth-
ing to learn about the conduct of a General Election, and who knew
the value of a three days' start in a house-to-house canvass as well as
any local party manager in England. His Majesty despatched to the
Prime Minister a letter of instructions covering four sheets of paper,
and marked "Most Private." He expressed his desire that Parliament
should be prorogued, with every circumstance of publicity, until the
fourth day of October, and that the writs, without any hint of the step
which was in contemplation having been allowed to transpire, should
go forth on the first day of September. There was no need, in his
opinion, that Lord North should deprive himself of a well deserved,
and most necessary, holiday. "On the contrary," (wrote the King,) "I
recommend that you should have it publicly given out that you have
gone into Kent for three weeks or a month. You might stay in Kent
until the 28th of August, and return to Bushy on that day, unknown,
and unexpectedly; for, while you and the Ministers are still in and
about town, a momentary Dissolution is expected." The King's own
preparations were in a state of forwardness, although the last few
touches remained to be given. "I will tell Sir Patrick Crawford," (he
said,) "that, if he can secure the second seat at Arundel, undoubtedly
a friend is ready to give £3000; but that I doubt he will find that
they must give Lord Surrey one member." A week afterwards His
Majesty sent Mr. John Robinson a packet of banknotes, to the amount
of fourteen thousand pounds, under cover of a letter; and then he
awaited the event with the calmness of an experienced general on the
eve x)f a campaign, who is conscious that he has neglected nothing
which can minimise disappointment, and ensure success,13

The opponents of the Ministry were scattered all over the island at
their own, or other people's, rural mansions; at race-meetings and
county-ball gatherings, in the Pump-rooms at Bath and Buxton, and
on the Pantiles at Tunbridge Wells. Not a few among them, as soon
as the parliamentary session ended, had hastened down from West-
minster to do active duty with their militia regiments. Sir George
Savile, on the strength of a private assurance that all idea of an im-
mediate Dissolution had been abandoned, was in camp on Ranmer

12 History of Europe in the Annual Register for 1781; chapter 8.

13 Papers of the Marquess of Abergavcnny; pages 33, 34.

528

Common. "The shortness of the time," we are told, "allotted for the
election increased the difficulties and disadvantages to those who were
at a distance from their boroughs or interests." So many express mes-
sengers had been sent off into every part of England, to convey the
writs, and warn the Ministerial candidates, that a sufficient supply of
horses could not be procured even by the Post Office. The demand
for chaises was so great that it was not unusual to see three passengers
in the same carriage, behind a postillion mounted upon a single horse.
That was not the style in which Charles Fox, and his political asso-
ciates, had been accustomed to travel. While aspirants to parliamentary
honours were plunged in worry and discomfort the constituents lived
in clover. At Taunton in Somersetshire, for a considerable time past,
five pounds of beef, and six quarts of strong beer, had been issued
daily to each voter; and in scores of boroughs, and dozens of counties,
an elector might call for liquor at the candidate's expense during all
the time that the political Saturnalia lasted. It was a bad September
for the partridges. "The dissolution of parliament," (so a journalist
noted,) "is a sad blow to the preservation of game. Every man who
has a vote can have leave to shoot by only asking for it." A slight, but
not imperceptible, addition to the prevailing turmoil resulted from
an electoral process which, under the terms of our Constitution, was
carried on simultaneously with the election of a House of Commons.
It was a process which in those days, though not altogether in ours,
had very little serious meaning for anybody. "The ridiculous practice,"
said the Morning Post, "of dissolving the Convocation, and calling a
new one, which will never sit, continues still an insult to common
sense, and is to a New Parliament what the Clown is to the panto-
mime." Those were strong expressions for the columns of a high Tory
newspaper; and they bear significant testimony to the ecclesiastical
apathy which marked the whole middle period of the eighteenth
century.14

14 The amount of liquor for which a candidate was obliged to pay was for him a
less grave matter than the amount o£ liquor which he was called upon to consume.
In 1780 two young Whigs o£ the Opposition successfully contested Cambridgeshire
against the sitting member, Sir Sampson Gideon, "whose expenses for this month," (so
one of his friends reported,) "have been enormous, beyond all belief. Sending my
servant on a particular message to Sir Sampson, he found him in bed, not well, and
probably half asleep. * * * I wonder, indeed, that he is alive, considering the immense
fatigue, and necessary drinking, he must undergo." This form of tyranny had not al-
together died out in the later days of Lord Palmerston. On an evening in the London
season of 1865 the author was told, by a refined and fastidious man of letters and
fashion, that he had been canvassing Hertfordshire all day, and that he had been
obliged to accept thirteen glasses of sherry since breakfast. And what sherry!

529

The election of 1780 was full of personal interest; for several famous
members of the House of Commons changed their constituencies un-
der circumstances which throw an informing light upon the national
manners, and upon the politics of the time. Burke's position at Bristol,
—irksome, and almost intolerable, as from the very first it was,— had
at length become untenable. He was a poor man; and a contest for
the representation of the great seaport cost, day for day, almost as much
as a small war. The expenses of his election in 1774 had been cheer-
fully and proudly defrayed by his local supporters. But by the year
1780 our colonial trade had been destroyed, and our foreign trade
more than half ruined, as a consequence of that American policy
which Burke had always condemned and resisted; and his friends at
Bristol, however willing, were totally unable to find the requisite
funds. Moreover there were deeper, and more sinister, causes operat-
ing against Edmund Burke's prospects as a candidate than the mere
want of money. Many of his constituents, for selfish reasons of their
own, resented his vigorous protest against the cruel abuses under
which the poorer class of debtors suffered. A very much larger num-
ber had never forgiven him his efforts for the removal of penal laws
against their Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen, and for the redress
of commercial injustice to Ireland. His intimate knowledge of those
two questions, — fired by enthusiasm, and decked out by elequence, —
had produced a decisive effect upon the public mind. The remedial
measures, which had been placed on the Statute Book, were undoubt-
edly either introduced, or accepted, by Lord North's Government, and
sanctioned by the general, or unanimous, adhesion of Parliament. But
Burke, though only a private member, was so great a man that the
anger aroused in certain quarters by that humane and equitable legis-
lation was most unfairly concentrated upon his single person. The
impertinence of his detractors went to such a point that he was called
upon, as a penance for his misdeeds, to rise in his place in the House
of Commons, and propose the repeal of the Roman Catholic Relief
Act. "Am I," (he indignantly asked,) "to be the only sour and nar-
row-hearted bigot out of five hundred and fifty-eight gentlemen? Not
one but Lord George Gordon, for purposes of his own, ever objected
to the Act in question, opposed it, or proposed any repeal of it what-
soever; and am I to make myself the dupe of a dirty faction at Edin-
burgh, because their miserable agents have set on a rabble of miscreants
here to insult the parliament, to demolish Newgate, and attempt to
530

plunder the Bank?"15 That was a touch of Burke's familiar style
when he was writing in confidence to a private correspondent; and
he soon found occasion to state the case as between himself, and the
city of Bristol, in spoken words which will endure as long as men
read English.

On the eighth of September 1780 Burke addressed a Town Meeting
in the Guildhall at Bristol. The speech was beyond criticism and above
praise; and it is too symmetrically constructed, and continuously ar-
gued, to justify the quotation of detached passages. It should be stud-
ied, and re-studied, by every public man, (Conservative or Liberal,
for Edmund Burke was both,) as an exposition of the principles which
ought to govern the relations of a member and his constituents. When
Burke had had his say he presented himself as a candidate, first at the
Council House, and then on the Exchange. A very short canvass, (in
the course of which one of his opponents died suddenly,) satisfied him
that under no circumstances would the choice of the electors fall upon
himself; and on the day of nomination he gave up the contest, and
bade farewell to Bristol in a few sentences attuned to a strain that has
seldom been heard on the hustings.16 The feeling with which the news
was received by all gallant and honourable men, to whatsoever party
they might belong, is exemplified in a letter scribbled off by ^Charles
Fox at the most exciting moment of his own hard-fought election. "In-
deed, my dear Burke," he hastened to write, "it requires all your
candour and reverse of selfishness, (for I know no other word to ex-
press it,) to be in patience with that rascally city; for so I must call it
after the way in which it has behaved to you." Burke did not remain
long outside Parliament, for Lord Rockingham invited him to resume
his former seat at Malton in the North Riding, where he was wel-
comed back with a genuine Yorkshire greeting. "Every heart," (said
the Evening Post,) "seemed to rejoice that the services of this truly
great man were restored to the nation. The concourse of people that
assembled from the neighbouring towns on this occasion was prodi-

15 Edmund Burke Esq. to John Noble Esq.; Charles Street, August 11, 1780. ^

16 "I have served the public for fifteen years. I have served you in particular r for ; «.
What is passed is well stored. It is safe, and out of the power of fortune. What is to
come is in wiser hands than ours, and He, in whose hands it is, ^J^J™^*
is best for you and me that I should be in parliament, or even in the world. The ^meian
choly event of yesterday reads to us an awful lesson against being too much troubled

' about any of the objects of ordinary ambition. The worthy g^neman, who has been
snatched from us at the moment of the election, and in the ™ddle o : ttoe icomesi,
his desires were as warm, and his hopes as eager, as ours, has feelingly told us
shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue."

531

gious, and the day was spent in the utmost festivities." Burke can
hardly be blamed if his experience during the year 1780 confirmed him
in his belief that the evils which beset the State ought to be cured by
other means than by adding to the representation of populous con-
stituencies, and disfranchising the smaller boroughs.

Admiral KeppePs fate was watched by politicians, not of his own
party only, with a friendly attention for which leisure is seldom found
during the selfishness and hurry of a general election. Eighteen months
previously he had been thrust, sorely against his will, into sensational
prominence and unexampled popularity; and, — modest, generous, and
forgiving that he was, — he retained until his dying day, which was
not very far distant, the affection of his countrymen. But he had
enemies and ill-wishers, and now their chance had once more come.
Keppel sat for the borough of Windsor, and the King was determined
to have him out of it. Racy stories were current of His Majesty's some-
what clumsy, but very effective, industry as a canvasser that would be
quite incredible if it were not for the evidence in his own handwriting
which recent times have brought to light. Early in April he informed
the Secretary of the Treasury that he should make it his business "pri-
vately to sound the inhabitants of the borough," and report the result
to the central office in Downing Street; and it must be allowed that
the royal methods of ascertaining and influencing local opinion were
more direct than dignified.17 As the day of election approached he
gave orders that each of his houses in the town should stand on the
rate-book in the name of one or another of his servants, and he made
arrangements by which, at the cost of some discomfort to themselves,
they should qualify as inhabitants of the borough. Keppel, under
grievous temptation, bore himself like a loyal subject, and a man of
fine honour. In a speech from the hustings he alluded to a rumour of
the King's interference in the election. "This," he said, "cannot be be-
lieved. It ought not to be believed. It must not be believed." 18

17 Lord Albemarle relates a family tradition to the effect that the King visited the
shop of a silk mercer, who was a sworn Keppelite, "and said in his usual quick man-
ner, 'The Queen wants a gown, — wants a gown. No Keppel! No Keppel!' "

18 The King's correspondence with Mr. John Robinson, in reference to his Windsor
houses, is given by the Historical Manuscripts Commission among the other Abergavenny
papers. The London Evening Post entered into particulars. "Colonel Egerton and Colo-
nel Conway, — gentlemen who have splendid apartments in the Castle, — being rated
for some stables in the town, slept each of them in a dirty bed in a neighbouring house
in order to become inhabitants. The King had purchased some houses in the town,
and sent Mr. Ramus, and some of his musicians, to sleep there one night Two days
before the election they paid the rates for these houses, instead of the King."

532

The royal bakers, and brewers, and butchers polled against the Ad-
miral to a man. He was beaten by sixteen votes, and the opponent who
had ousted him was soon afterwards appointed Ranger of Windsor
Little Park. As soon as the news got abroad a large deputation from
Surrey waited upon the defeated candidate, and he was forthwith put
in nomination for the county, and elected by a majority of over five
hundred. Those Surrey voters who resided in Windsor raced home to
announce the victory. Keppel informed Lord Rockingham that the
cannon were soon firing, and the bells ringing, and that almost every
dwelling throughout the borough was lighted. "I have been told," he
wrote, "that His Majesty said that it would possibly be 'a busy night,'
and had recommended a serjeant and twelve privates to patrol the
streets with loaded arms." But Keppel had partisans in the neighbour-
hood who could not have been shot however badly they might mis-
behave themselves. The Prince of Wales, and Prince Frederick, took
pains to express to all Keppel's friends their extreme satisfaction at his
success; and the little Duke of Sussex, (as he long afterwards informed
Lord Albemarle,) was locked up in the royal nursery for wearing
Keppel colours. One sentence in the Admiral's Address of Thanks to
the Electors of Surrey was read with special interest and sympathy.
"After the example of your fathers," he wrote, "you have taught
wicked men the ill husbandry of injustice, and the folly of attempting
public, undisguised, oppression in a country whose liberties have in
very memorable instances been strengthened and improved by the
wrongs of the obscurest individual in it." That much notice Keppel
took, and no more, of the treacherous and unrelenting persecution
which he had endured from a British Ministry ever since he went to
sea in command of a British fleet in obedience to the pressing request
of his Sovereign.

A man of genius, almost as celebrated as Edmund Burke himself,
lost a seat in Parliament, and was subsequently provided with another,
under conditions most characteristic of the period. Gibbon had always
been on friendly terms with Mr. Edward Eliot, his cousin by marriage,
a Cornish squire whose borough interest was exorbitant out of all
proportion to his not inconsiderable landed property. At the general
election of 1774 Eliot,— not indeed for nothing, but in return for a
much smaller sum of money than he would have expected from any
one except a clever and promising member of his own family, — sent
his relative to the House of Commons as one of the members for
Liskeard. "There," wrote Gibbon, "I took my seat at the beginning

533

of the memorable contest between Great Britain and America, and
supported, with many a sincere and silent vote, the rights, though not
perhaps the interests, of the mother-country." When the 1774 Parlia-
ment was a twelvemonth old, Mr. Eliot left his family borough of
St. Germans in order to sit for Cornwall; and the freeholders of
Cornwall, like the great majority of county freeholders all the island
over, had no love for the American policy of the Cabinet. Their sen-
timents were shared to the full by Mr. Eliot; and accordingly, as soon
as Parliament was dissolved in September 1780, he gravely and sol-
emnly warned his unlucky cousin that, by the support which he had
given to Lord North, he had forfeited the confidence of his constit-
uents. Gibbon understood the inner meaning of that ominous com-
munication. "Mr. Eliot," (so he afterwards explained to the world in
one of his multitudinous autobiographies,) "was now deeply engaged
in the measures of Opposition; and the electors of Liskeard are com-
monly of the same opinion as Mr. Eliot." 19 Gibbon accepted his doom
in a letter gracefully phrased, and as manly and self-respecting as the
situation comported. "I have not attempted," he said, "to shake your
decided resolution; nor shall I presume to arraign the consistency of
the Electors of Liskeard, whom you so gravely introduce. You are un-
doubtedly free as air to confer, and to withdraw, your parliamentary
favours." That was how Edward Gibbon wrote when he doffed the
panoply of the classic historian. It was a serious blow to his personal
fortunes. If he ceased to be a Member of Parliament he must very
soon cease to be a Lord of Trade; and without an official salary he
could not afford to live in England, and still less in London, until he
had secured a competence b} the completion, and publication, of the
last three among the six volumes of The Decline and Fall. But Lord
North entertained for his eminent supporter a kindness which Gib-
bon long afterwards repaid by a nobly expressed tribute of gratitude
and fidelity; 20 and the historian ere long re-entered the House of
Commons as the nominee for a Government borough. "My new con-
stituents of Lymington," (he wrote in July 1781,) "obligingly chose
me in my absence. I took my seat last Wednesday, and am now so
old a member that I begin to complain of the heat and length of the
Session."
Far and away the most important event in the general election of

19 Memoir E of Mr. Murray's edition, page 322.

20 Preface to the Fourth Volume of the Quarto Edition of the Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire.

534

1780, — whether considered in its bearing upon the American question,
or on Charles Fox's position in the House of Commons and the coun-
try,—was the contest for the representation of the City of Westminster.
The Government were at much pains to strengthen their hold upon
that vast electorate; and they had secured a pair of candidates very
hard to beat. With excellent judgment they put forward Sir George
Rodney, who at that precise moment would have been chosen by
acclamation in almost any free and independent constituency through-
out Great Britain. He possessed every qualification for uniting the
suffrages of all parties. He was a personal adherent of the King, and
had expended very large sums of money, which he could ill afford to
spare, in fighting His Majesty's electioneering battles; and yet all the
world was aware that he positively abominated Lord Sandwich, — a
piece of knowledge which was in itself a passport to the favour of his
fellow-countrymen. The First Lord of the Admiralty had spited and
ill-used Rodney in the past; and it was not until the fifth year of the
war drew towards a conclusion that, in the dearth of capable naval
commanders, public opinion at length insisted on the neglected officer
being employed at sea. It soon became evident that in this veteran of
sixty-two years old, with an impaired constitution, and a broken for-
tune, the nation had got hold of a most competent, and, (what in
those disastrous times was rarer still,) a lucky admiral. Early in Jan-
uary 1780 Rodney captured five-and-twenty Spanish merchantmen,
together with the whole of their escort. A week afterwards, in the
neighbourhood of Cape St. Vincent, he attacked Don Juan Langara's
squadron in a style which Englishmen had begun to fear was obsolete,
taking four seventy-gun ships with all their crews, and sending three
others into the air, or to their last berth among the breakers. Then,
before many more days had elapsed, he accomplished his special mis-
sion of revictualling the garrison of Gibraltar. General Eliott, the hero
of that immortal defence, was already experimenting in his own per-
son on the amount of sustenance which could keep body and soul to-
gether, and had brought himself down to four ounces of rice a day,
when a brig ran the gauntlet of the blockade with the tidings that
Rodney was at hand with a victorious fleet, and a supply of beef, and
flour, and beer, and biscuit which would suffice for many months to
come.

When the King dissolved Parliament in September 1780 Rodney
was on board his flag-ship, in face of the enemy, three thousand miles
away on the further side of the Atlantic Ocean; but the mere name

535

o£ him was worth more than the bodily presence of any other possible
candidate. The second choice of the Ministry fell upon one of the
ex-members for Westminster, the son and heir of the Duke of New-
castle, "Thomas Pelham Clinton, commonly called Lord Thomas Pel-
ham Clinton," — and, more commonly still, the Earl of Lincoln. The
Duke apparently regarded that imposing cluster of famous political
names as a sufficient donation on the part of his family towards the
success of the election; and he steadfastly refused to subscribe to the
party funds. "If Mr. Fox stands," (so Lord North told the Secretary of
the Treasury,) "we shall have much trouble, and more expense, which
will all fall on us. Neither Lincoln nor Rodney will contribute." Ready
cash was equally necessary in the opposite camp. It was all Charles
Fox could do if he found enough silver to pay for his hackney-coaches;
but his political associates came to his help with well-advised liberality.
Ever since he entered Parliament at the age of nineteen he had been
sitting for boroughs which contained few houses, or, (in one case,) no
houses at all. That was all very well while he was playing the fool,
more brilliantly than it has ever been played before or since, during his
first half-dozen Sessions. But he now was the leader of a strong party,
and the most popular champion of a great cause; and he would carry
much more weight as the chosen representative of Westminster, with
its myriad of electors, than as member for Midhurst, or even for
Malmesbury. In the year 1830 the assailants of West Indian slavery,
and the advocates of Parliamentary Reform, subscribed scores of thou-
sands of pounds to bring in Henry Brougham for the premier county
of Yorkshire; and that circumstance has always been regarded as one
of the most honourable episodes in Brougham's career. And so, at a
not less grave crisis in the fortunes of England, Lord Rockingham
and his friends, with open purses, and clear consciences, rallied to the
assistance of Charles Fox at Westminster.

Fox had lately been engaged in the novel occupation of paying at-
tention to his bodily health, which those who knew him best did not
regard as a very hopeful enterprise. "Charles," wrote one of his asso-
ciates, "is not yet well, and is advised going to Bath. He talks of going
tomorrow; but I am afraid he will not conform to his physician's
advice; and they say, unless he lives very abstemiously, the waters will
do him more harm than good." How Charles Fox maintained the
character of an invalid must always be matter for conjecture. His next
authentic appearance on the surface of history is recorded in a letter
from the Duke of Queensberry, who gave him what no doubt was far

536

too good a dinner at Amesbury in Wiltshire. The Duke's report to
George Selwyn was to the effect that Charles thought himself the bet-
ter for Bath, but had not yet recovered his voice. It was the thirty-first
of August, and Fox was then on his way to Bridgewater, where he
had been invited by the local Whigs to stand for their borough. He
distrusted his chances of success at Westminster, and was not sorry
to have a second string to his redoubted bow.21 Fox was still in the
West of England when, like all who were not in the secret, the an-
nouncement of the Dissolution took him by surprise. He at once
dashed off a letter to Richard Fitzpatrick in the offhand, but very
businesslike, terms which marked all his communications to his near-
est friend, and with plenty of full-stops to make his meaning clear.
"For God's sake, my dear Dick," (he wrote,) "lose no time in calling
the Westminster Committee, and beginning the Canvass if necessary.
Do let all the gentlemen who really wish to serve me know how very
necessary their appearance is. Some of the Cavendishes particularly. If
I find I can leave this place without any material injury I will be in
town tomorrow. But if you think I can be absent from Westminster
for a few days I could get the Election here on Wednesday, and stay
till then, which would be of use. Pray send me word directly what you
think, and do not leave town unless it is absolutely necessary, for you
will be of infinite use." 22

Fox lost no time in following his letter to London. He arrived in
tearing spirits; and, whatever might have been amiss with his voice,
there was quite enough of it to serve his purposes. During three full
weeks to come he kept the town agog with excitement, and had vitality
to spare for the encouragement of his followers in the provinces. Eng-
land was still ruled by an aristocracy; and the most important person-
ages in Westminster were certain great noblemen who were ground
landlords, or who, at the very least, had family mansions in London,
with a host of tradesmen dependent on their custom. Charles Fox was
a recognised authority among people of rank and fashion, and in-
comparably their prime favourite. Day after day his pen was busy,—
writing to the Duke of Rutland about "Mr. Ramsden the optician,
who says that he will not vote unless applied to in your Grace's
name;" begging Lord Ossory to propose him at the Nomination, and
enquiring whether he knew of any way of getting at Mr. Cheese, the
statuary in Piccadilly; and using every endeavour to place himself in

21 The Revd. Dr. Warner to George Selwyn; September i, 1780.

22 Unpublished letter from Fox to Fitzpatrick, dated Bridgewater, Sep. i.

537

communication with the young Duke o£ Bedford, who had property
of immense value within the constituency, and who owned the very
ground upon which the famous Westminster Hustings were erected.
Although a grandson of the nobleman who had given his name to the
political connection of which Sandwich, and Rigby, were the orna-
ments the new duke himself was not "a Bedford." He soon became,
and ever after remained, a staunch Foxite; and he is still honourably
remembered as a brave friend of liberty in evil days. The ladies were
interested in the election as never before, and few among them had
the heart to do anything which could injure the prospects of Charles
Fox. He hoped, (he said,) to prevent the Dowager Duchess of Bed-
ford from speaking against him, even if she would not speak for him;
and the Morning Post, chivalrously and prettily enough, admitted that
"from the moment when the Duchess of Devonshire mounted the
hustings every voter was a slave." 23

Charles, over and above his own election, had taken upon himself
the cares of another exciting contest in which he felt a sort of fatherly
interest, inasmuch as the candidate whose fortunes he promoted had
only just turned two-and-twenty. Many frequenters of White's and
Brooks's, — and those not always the most studious and learned among
them, — had been persuaded by Fox into paying their fees as Masters
of Arts until the general election was past and gone; and now, in the
breathless intervals of his own canvass, he found time to hunt them
up, and pack them off to vote for Jack Townshend in the Senate-
house at Cambridge. On the ninth of September Selwyn was in-
formed, in a very doleful letter, that the boldest boy who ever was
seen had been returned for the University "by the help of a great
number of profligate young fellows who had kept their names in
on purpose."24

23 The Duchess of Northumberland, who had electioneered much in Westminster,
did not know her business nearly as well as the Duchess of Devonshire. "Her Grace,"
said William Whitehead, the Poet Laureate, "goes most condescendingly out of her
sphere, shakes every basketwoman by the hand, and tells them with a sigh that she
cannot, what she wishes to do, give them meat and drink in abundance; for that, in
these newfangled times, would be bribery and corruption."

24 Thirty years afterwards Lord Palmerston became Member for the University of
Cambridge. He was a Tory Minister, well liked by his political opponents; a distin-
guished son of the great college of St. John's, in which the strongest corporate spirit has
always prevailed; and a celebrated leader of fashion in London. He was said at the time
to have owed his election to "the Whigs, the Johnians, and the Dandies." The Marquises
of Townshend were Johnians; and the College, (as may be seen in Gunning's Reminis-
cences of Cambridge?) was devoted to their family.

538

Charles Fox had plenty of aristocratic influence on his side, as well
as plenty against him; but his best advocate was himself. He was the
most irresistible of canvassers. He had not an atom of condescension,
or of conscious affability, about him. Respecting his brother-man, and
without respect of persons, he was the same everywhere, always, and
to everybody. Frank and cheery, he enjoyed the sound of his own
voice, and the sympathy of his company, whether he was talking to
one, or to ten thousand; and he made no pretence of being indifferent
to the good-will and applause of his fellows. In a letter to Edmund
Burke, written during the heat of this election, he referred incidentally
to the acclamations that were dinning in his ears, "for which," (he
said,) "you know I have as much taste as any man;" and no one who
can recall what he himself was at thirty will think any worse of
Charles Fox for that honest confession. Londoners, great and small,
repaired every afternoon to Covent Garden, as eagerly as to a prize-
fight or a horse-race, in order to hear him flood the Market with the
torrent of his oratory. A partisan of the Government has left an ac-
count of what took place on the eighth of September, the second day
of the polling. "Charles Fox," wrote Dr. Warner, "keeps us all alive
here with letters, and paragraphs, and a thousand clever things. I saw
him to-day upon the hustings, bowing, and sweltering. A great day
he has made of it. Fox 1168. Rodney 994. Lincoln 573." 25 On the
eleventh of the month Rodney outstripped his competitors, and thence-
forward always kept the first place; but it mattered little who was head
of the poll as long as Lord Lincoln stayed at the bottom of it. Many
electors, whose chief concern was the credit of the borough of West-
minster, adopted the course of dividing their votes between the two
most distinguished candidates; and, when the poll finally closed on
the twenty-second of September, the numbers were 4230 for Rodney,
3805 for Fox, and 3070 for Lincoln. The town went fairly mad. After
Fox had returned thanks the populace pulled the hustings to pieces,
and ran away with the materials, — for which the three candidates had
paid, or owed, a great deal of money. Fox was chaired, and carried
in triumph through the whole of the constituency, and there was a
specially exuberant demonstration at the foot of St. James's Street, just
outside the main gate of the Royal Palace. Not a few of those who
had voted against Fox were pleased, or at all events amused, by the

25 Whenever The Critic was played during the Westminster Election Mr. Puffs gag
at the end o£ the First Act was a memorandum "to support Sir George Rodney in the
Daily Spy, and to kill Charles Fox in the Morning Post."

539

result of the election. The eminent naval officer who acted as proxy
for Rodney in his absence, and who shared Rodney's sentiments to-
wards the First Lord of the Admiralty, did not even pretend to regret
that Lord Sandwich's candidate had been defeated. Like a jolly sailor,
he could see no reason against taking his share in the fun. "Admiral
Young," (wrote a backer of Fox,) "dined with us, which we consider
as an acknowledgment that Rodney was more indebted to us for
support than to the Court, which was certainly true." There were
other banquets to follow; but the first of them was enough for Ed-
mund Burke. He had come up to London, and had stopped there, at
his friend's disposal, as long as there was serious work to do; but he
had no appetite for the festive side of politics, and he soon took him-
self off, with a sense of profound relief, to his farm and his library in
Buckinghamshire.26

Seven fresh Barons were made in a single batch, which was a very
large creation indeed in days when a peerage was still a rare distinc-
tion. A hundred and thirteen new men entered the House of Com-
mons, most of whom were acceptable to the Court. "The Minority
members," (said the Evening Post,) "have been mustered; and 'we are
sorry to acquaint the public that their numbers will not exceed one
hundred and seventy, which must leave a great majority in favour
of Administration." On the last day of October the Commons assem-
bled to choose a Speaker. Lord North, as was well within his rights,
opposed the re-election of Sir Fletcher Norton; and, with less excuse,
he put forward as his candidate Charles Wolfran Cornwall, in reward
for having acted as a tool of the Government in their attempt to sup-
press the reporting of critical debates. So strong a Ministerialist, and so
acute a judge, as Henry Dundas, the Lord Advocate of Scotland, ac-
knowledged that "the dignity of Parliament, according to the general
opinion, had been much let down." It would have been well, (he
wrote,) if the Speakership had gone to Mr. Frederick Montagu, a
respected member of the Opposition; for in his person both parties
would concur in maintaining the decency and order of the House.27
The debate was keen, and some of the speeches were grave and im-
pressive; but Rigby scornfully repudiated the notion of introducing
lofty principles of morality and patriotism into the discussion of such

26 "The hurry of Fox's election, the business, the company, the joy, the debauch, al-
together made me extremely desirous o£ getting out of town; and I hurried off without
writing to you, or to anyone." Burke to Champion; Beaconsfield, September 26, 1780.

27 Private Letter from Henry Dundas to Mr. John Robinson; November 3, 1780.

540

a topic. "As to the mighty secret," he said, "and the true cause of
moving for a new Speaker by one side of the House, and supporting
the old Speaker by the other, it was reducible to a very simple fact;
and, when put into plain English, and stripped of the dress of elo-
quence and the ornaments of oratory, was no more than this: 'We'll
vote for you, if you'll be for us.' " Lord North carried his man by a
majority of seventy; and that division supplied an accurate measure
of the relative strength of the rival parties in the new House of Com-
mons. The general election had been a blow to the leaders of the
Opposition which it required all their fortitude and patience to face.

Meantime, as British taxes soared, loan followed loan in quic\
succession, and consols shran\ in price, military and naval affairs
were going adversely for the "British. In Europe, Minorca fell to the
Spaniards, while in America the long-anticipated military and naval
cooperation of France and the United States finally paid rich dividends
in the form of the combined operation that brought about the sur-
render of Cornwallis at Yorfyown on October 19, 1781. For England
it was truly a "World Turned Upside Down," the tune that tradi-
tion has assigned the British band when the troops marched out to
surrender.

541

CHAPTER XX

THE BEGINNING OF THE END.
THE TWENTY-SEVENTH OF MARCH

JL HROUGHOUT the summer and autumn of 1781 America hung
above the Western horizon like a red ball of fire; and the war, which
there was in progress, seemed to the imagination of Englishmen as
mysterious and unintelligible as if it were taking place on the surface
of the planet Mars. There prevailed an instinctive impression that our
military operations on that continent were guided by no fixed and
rational plan of action, and were inspired by no well-founded expecta-
tion of victory. That view was ably and consistently maintained in
the pages of the Whitehall Evening Post, a most respectable news-
paper which made it a duty to warn and advise, rather than to attack,
the Government. Our force in the field, (it was there said,) was broken
up into no fewer than four very small armies, manoeuvring so far
apart as to be unable to afford each other the least assistance, and
all of them at a great distance from New York, which itself was
narrowly watched by the main American army, as well as by a French
army, posted in the immediate vicinity of the city.

Halfway through October it became known in England that Ad-
miral Graves had been worsted in a sea-fight at the mouth of the
Chesapeake, and had retired to New York, leaving a powerful French
fleet in undisputed possession of the Virginia waters. From that mo-
ment forward the public apprehension, hitherto vague and undefined,
concentrated itself upon the peril which threatened Lord Cornwallis.
"We have continually," (wrote the Whitehall Post,) "expressed great
anxiety for the fate of that brave and noble Lord, and his little army
of heroes. These fears have grown on us into downright dread and
terror as the season advanced, and the scenes of action developed
themselves under that dark and gloomy veil which Ministers en-
deavour to throw over all our national affairs." Horace Walpole sent
542

word to Sir Horace Mann at Florence, through a safe channel, that
we were at the last gasp in America, and that he was prepared to learn
the worst news about Lord Cornwallis. "I would not," he wrote, "say
so much as this but by your own courier; for I have too much fierte to
allow to enemies even what they know." Selwyn suggested to Lord
Carlisle that it would be an instructive exercise for his son and heir,
little George Howard, to compare the plight of Lord Cornwallis to
the plight of the unhappy Nicias after the defeat of the Athenian fleet
in the Great Harbour of Syracuse. The poor boy was still young for
a course of Thucydides, even when studied through the medium of
Rollin; but it must be acknowledged that, in the essential features of
the two stories, it would be impossible to light upon a more complete
and ominous parallel. The case was put by Gibbon in the pithy lan-
guage of an historian who had depicted scores of critical situations, in
many lands and many centuries, but never one more fraught with
menace. "We all," (he wrote to Lord Sheffield,) "tremble on the edge
of a precipice; and, whatever may be the event, the American war
seems now to be reduced to very narrow compass both of time and
space."

On the twenty-fifth of November 1781 a packet-boat, which had
carried a passenger of state from Dover to Calais, brought back a
French Gazette with a full account of the capitulation of Yorktown.
Among the profound and complex feelings which the news excited
one sentiment was prominent, spontaneous, and universal throughout
the nation. Nobody blamed Lord Cornwallis, and everybody was sorry
for him. The war in America had not been so rich in military reputa-
tions that England could afford to bear hard upon the most accom-
plished and chivalrous of all her generals. Seldom had the British
infantry been taken into action in such artistic and dashing style, and
seen through their work with such close attention to the varying as-
pects of the fray, as at Brandywine, and Camden, and Guildford
Court House; and, whether correct or incorrect, there was a firm
persuasion among Cornwallis's countrymen that, if he had all along
been in chief command, and if Lord George Germaine had been for-
bidden to meddle, the issue of the struggle with our revolted Colonies
might have been very different.

To be captured with his army has generally been accounted the ruin
of a general's fame, and the end of his professional career. Such was
the experience of Burgoyne at Saratoga, and of Mack at Ulm, and of
Dupont at Baylen; but it was otherwise with Cornwallis. In the au-

543

tumn of 1794, when the French Republic was proving itself too strong
for its adversaries, the three ablest among our Ministers were united in
their desire that the Marquis of Cornwallis should be placed in chief
command of the British and Austrian armies in Flanders. That was
the view of Pitt, and of Grenville, and notably of William Windham,
who had a knowledge of war most unusual in an English statesman,
and who was then living at the Duke of York's head-quarters, in face
of the enemy, in order to see with his own eyes where the responsibility
for our disasters lay. King George, unfortunately for the success of our
arms, made the question into a matter personal to himself, and would
not allow his own son to be superseded; but, both before and after
that date, whenever and wherever the highest qualities of the warrior
and the ruler were demanded, Cornwallis was always sent to the front
in preference to others. Nor did he ever fail to justify the confidence
reposed in him. He made a fine record in India, and in Ireland, and
again in India, where he died in harness; and yet,— though public
gratitude, and public affection, attended him from first to last,— he
seldom was more respected and beloved than when in March 1782 he
landed in England, a paroled prisoner, fresh from the disaster at
Yorktown.1

Only two days after the fatal tidings from America arrived in Lon-
don Parliament was assembled to listen to a King's Speech which had
been very hastily rewritten to suit the altered circumstances. How deep
was the despondency which prevailed in the Ministerialist ranks may
be judged by a contemporary letter from a supporter of the Govern-
ment who voted with his party to the very last. Anthony Storer, one
of the members for the borough of Morpeth, was a man of fashion
and pleasure, "the best dancer and skater of his time," and a frequent
and familiar guest in the Prime Minister's household. On the evening
before the Session opened Lord North, as then was customary, called
together a meeting of his followers. "I had attended the Cockpit to-
night/' said Storer, "where there were a great many long faces. What
we are to do after Lord Cornwallis's catastrophe, God knows; or how

1 On September the iQth, 1794, Windham, who then was Secretary at War in Pitt's
Government, addressed a confidential letter to the Prime Minister from the British
head-quarters in the field. "It is a game," (he wrote,) "of great skill on either side. If
I could, by wishing, set down the general of my choice, I should certainly choose, as
the player of that game, my Lord Cornwallis. His authority would do more to correct
the abuses of the army. His experience would conduct it better. Should an action be
brought on, the army under him would infallibly act with a degree of confidence more,
I am sorry to say, than it does under the Duke of York."

544

anybody can think there is the least glimmering of hope for this nation
surpasses my comprehension. * * * The Speech from the Throne con-
tains the same Resolution, which appeared in times when we seemed
to have a more favourable prospect of success, of continuing the war,
and of claiming the aid of Parliament to support the rights of Great
Britain. Charles has a Cockpit to-night as well as Lord North." 2 On
the next afternoon, in the House of Commons, when the Seconder of
the Address resumed his seat, Fox plunged straight into the heart of
the American question; and in due course of time he reached the topic
which was uppermost in the thoughts of all his hearers. "The whole
conduct of Lord Cornwallis," (he said,) "was great and distinguished.
While enterprise, activity, and expedition were wanted no man had
more of these qualities. At last, when prudence became necessary, he
took up a station which, in any former period of our history, would
have been a perfect asylum, and planted himself on the edge of the
sea. In former wars the sea was regarded as the country of an English
commander, to which he could retire with safety, if not with fame.
There he was invincible, whatever might be his strength on shore; and
there Lord Cornwallis stationed his army, in the hope of preserving
his communication with New York, — nay, with the city and port of
London. But even this was denied him, for the ocean was no longer
the country of an Englishman; and the noble Lord was blocked up,
though planted on the borders of the sea." The effect of those weighty
and telling sentences was all the stronger because, up to that point in
the speech, the name of the First Lord of the Admiralty, the real and
principal culprit, had not been so much as mentioned.

Storer, as in friendship and loyalty bound, sent an account of the
debate to Lord Carlisle, the patron of his borough, "Charles Fox," (he
wrote,) "who did not speak as well as he usually does according to the
opinion of many, yet in mine was astonishingly great. I never attended
to any speech half so much, nor ever did I discover such classical
passages in any modern performance. Besides that, (I own,) he con-
vinced me. * * * I did not hear Mr. William Pitt, which I regret
very much, as it is said he has even surpassed Charles, and greater
expectations are formed from him even than from the other." Pitt
had indeed spoken impressively, calling upon the Ministers to break
through the silence in which their plans for the future were shrouded;
asking whether gentlemen were still disposed to place their trust in

2 The Cockpit of old Whitehall Palace stood on the opposite side of the street from
the Banqueting House, in front of the present Treasury.

545

men who hitherto had made so bad a use of the confidence o£ Par-
liament; and blaming the Government for insisting upon the presenta-
tion of an Address so worded as to tie Parliament down to the prose-
cution of a war of the impropriety, absurdity, injustice, and ruinous
tendency of which every man then present was convinced. "The mo-
ment Mr. Pitt sat down a buzz of applause pervaded the House;" and
within the fortnight he was up again, addressing the Commons "with
his usual force and elegance." There was only one thing, (he affirmed,)
in which Ministers seemed to be agreed, and that was in their resolu-
tion to destroy the empire which they were called upon to save. "This
he feared they would accomplish before the indignation of a great and
suffering people should fall upon their heads in the punishment which
they deserved; and, (said the Honourable Gentleman in a beautiful
conclusion,) may God only grant that that punishment may not be so
long delayed as to involve within it a great and innocent family, who,
though they can have no share in the guilt, may, and most likely
will, be doomed to suffer the consequences!" It would have been inter-
esting to watch King George's countenance while he was reading that
audacious peroration in the columns of the newspaper over his early
breakfast on the following morning.

The sentiments of patriotic Englishmen of both parties, and of no
party, are faithfully reproduced for us in William Cowper's letters.
Ever since he had been in a condition to resume an interest in public
affairs he had clung, in spite of occasional disillusions and disappoint-
ments, to his cherished belief that the Royal policy would ultimately
prevail; but his judgment was too sound to withstand the evidence of
Yorktown, and he communicated his change of view to John Newton
in quiet and explicit terms. If the King and his Ministry, (he wrote,)
could be contented to close the business there, it might be well for Old
England; but, if they persevered, they would find it a hopeless task.
"These are my politics; and, for aught I can see, you and we by our
respective firesides,-— though neither connected with men in power,
nor professing to possess any share of that sagacity which thinks itself
qualified to wield the affairs of Kingdoms,— can make as probable
conjectures, and look forward into futurity with as clear a sight, as
the greatest man in the Cabinet."

The current of William Cowper's prose ran strong and clear; but
his deepest emotions found their natural expression in verse. Patriot-
ism, informed by manly common sense, and dignified and purified by
religious conviction, has seldom attained a higher level than in the
546

seventy or eighty couplets which may be read midway between the
commencement, and the close, of his Table Talk.

"Poor England! Thou art a devoted deer,
Beset with every ill but that o£ fear.
The nations hunt. All mark thee for a prey.
They swarm around thee, and thou stand'st at bay,
Undaunted still, though wearied and perplexed.
Once Chatham saved thee; but who saves thee next?"

He might well ask that question. There was a member of Lord
North's Cabinet whose name had long been a proverb for prosperous
mediocrity. The Right Honourable Welbore Ellis began to draw salary
as a Lord of the Admiralty in the year 1747, and he had been drawing
salary ever since. He was now Treasurer of the Navy, a post of which
the profits, undoubtedly very large, were estimated by the Opposition
at twenty thousand pounds a year. "He has," wrote one of his critics,
"a great deal of importance in his manner, and that sort of bowing,
cringing politeness which, with the affectation of business, has imposed
upon every king, and every minister, and has kept him always in place.
His influence at Court must be very considerable, when, during the
course of three years, he could get an Irish Barony for his eldest
nephew, an Irish bishoprick for his second, and a Commissionership
of Customs for the third."3 But the advantages which Ellis had
secured for himself, and for his family, would have been dearly bought,
in the estimation of a self-respecting man, by the disagreeable promi-
nence to which his political advancement condemned him. For a gen-
eration and a half in the annals of London society he was a stock
object of ridicule to all the wittiest people of his own rank in both
the two parties. As far back as 1763 Horace Walpole met him walk-
ing in the meadows near Strawberry Hill, and found him "so emptily
important, and distilling paragraphs of old news with such solemnity,"
that he did not know "whether it was a man, or the Utrecht Gazette."
Five years later on Lord Carlisle, in a letter from Rome, was com-
plaining to George Selwyn about the high price of antique marbles.
"Do you think," he asked, "that the sarcophagus of such a man as
Welbore Ellis will ever be sold for twopence? and yet here they ask

3 History of the Members of the House of Commons; London Evening Post, May 1779.
Ellis had twice been Vice-Treasurer of Ireland, with very large emoluments from the
Irish Treasury, although he did not reside in Ireland, but at Pope's villa on the Thames
near Twickenham, where he altered, and spoiled, the Garden.

547

ten pounds for those of persons not at all more famous." But inferior
organisms have their place in the world of politics, as in the world
of nature. Members of the House of Commons had long ago come to
regard Ellis as one of the established institutions of the country, and
they listened with tolerance to a patriarch who had bored their grand-
fathers in the days when Mr. Pelham was Prime Minister. On those
frequent occasions when Parliament was in a tumult over a Ministerial
scandal too bad to be defended by argument, Ellis, "the Forlorn Hope
of the Treasury Bench," would rise in his place, with a conciliatory
smile on his countenance, and pour forth a stream of irrelevant truisms
and commonplaces until the first fury of the storm had abated.

When, as the central calamity in a long and unbroken series of
disasters, the surrender of Lord Cornwallis appeared in the London
Gazette it was a foregone conclusion in every quarter, and most of all
among Lord George Germaine's colleagues in the Cabinet, that Lord
George Germaine must go. No one had a word to say in defence of
the disgraced and discredited soldier who, as American Secretary, had
misdirected two gallant armies to their ruin from his office in Down-
ing Street, three thousand miles across the water. The Minden Court-
Martial, when taken in connection with Saratoga and Yorktown,
formed a triple burden too heavy for any reputation in the world to
bear. The King might have replaced the departing Minister by a far
more efficient successor if he had been willing to subordinate his own
personal likes and dislikes to the safety of the State. In either House
of Parliament there were distinguished soldiers, who at the same time
were popular statesmen and tried administrators; but none of them
would accept that obligation of implicit subservience to the Royal will,
and wholesale adoption of the Royal policy, which their monarch de-
manded from all his Ministers. If the Archangel Michael had come
down from heaven, with an offer to marshal the hosts of England for
battle, George the Third would have felt no hesitation in rejecting his
services unless he had voted with the Court on the question of the
Middlesex Election. In the absolute dearth of public men who were
compliant, as well as capable, the King fell back upon the resources of
his existing Cabinet, and appointed Welbore Ellis to the post of Secre-
tary of State for the American Department. And so it came to pass
that an old official hack, who was now approaching his hundred and
fortieth quarter-day, was commissioned by his Sovereign to fill the
part of Chatham at a crisis far graver than that which, in June 1759,
Chatham himself had been called upon to encounter.

548

The Ministers knew not which way to turn. Fox was cutting their
case to ribbons in debate, and Pitt was thundering away like a re-
incarnation of that terrible cornet of horse who, five-and-forty years
before, had been too much for the nerves even of Sir Robert Walpole.
Dundas the Lord Advocate, — one of the most impudent and unscrupu-
lous, and perhaps one of the ablest, politicians of his own, or any
other time,— viewed their cause as hopeless, and already meditated
desertion. From this moment forward, whenever he rose for the osten-
sible purpose of defending his colleagues, he adopted with extraordi-
nary skill a line of argument more embarrassing to the Court and
Cabinet than the direct assaults of the Opposition orators. The Livery
of London voted a Grand Remonstrance against that prolongation of
the American war which had been indicated in the Speech from the
Throne. "They besought the King to remove both his public and
private counsellors, and used these stunning and memorable words:
Your armies are captured. The wonted superiority of your navies is
annihilated. Your dominions are lost" 4 A crowded meeting of West-
minster electors assembled in Westminster Hall to consider an Address
to the Throne very similar to that which had emanated from the
Livery; and it was almost certain that, if Parliament continued sitting,
the example of the metropolis would be imitated in all free and inde-
pendent constituencies throughout the country. Englishmen, irrespec-
tive of party, were determined that Lord Cornwallis should not be
made a scapegoat for the sins of his official superiors; and Chancellor
Thurlow told the King that notice had been given of no fewer than
twelve separate motions of censure on Lord Sandwich in one or an-
other of the two Houses. The Prime Minister and Mr. John Robinson,
between them, could hit upon no better resource than to adjourn
Parliament over Christmas until the fourth week of January 1782.
"Good God!" cried Mr. George Byng. "Adjourn now, when we ought
to sit even during the holidays to inquire into the late miscarriage!"
Mr. Thomas Townshend and Mr. Charles Fox recalled to the memory
of their brother members the parallel state of things in December 1777;
— how Parliament, in face of a very solemn protest from the Earl of
Chatham, was adjourned for the space of six weeks in consequence of
a personal assurance from Lord North that "neither France, nor Spain,
had the least intention to molest us;" how the whole of the ensuing

*Last Journals; December 4, 1781. The italics are Horace Walpole's. The phrase
"private counsellors" was a reference to the legend concerning the secret influence of
the Earl o£ Bute.

549

January was spent in preparations against an imminent invasion of
our island; and how, in the first week of February 1778, a Treaty
of Amity and Alliance was signed between the Royal Government of
France and the United States of America. But the House of Com-
mons can never bring itself to look with disfavour upon the proposal
of a holiday; and, in spite of all that Fox could urge, the motion for
an adjournment was carried.

It was an ill-advised step on the part of Ministers. Over and above
their natural desire for a respite from parliamentary attack they were
prompted by the hope of a military or naval success which might do
something to repair their tattered credit. Sanguine expectations had
been aroused, not in Government circles only, by the knowledge that
Admiral Kempenfeldt had received orders to intercept the Comte de
Guichen's fleet on its way out to the West Indies. But the Earl of
Sandwich, in the face of repeated warnings from non-official sources,
had provided Kempenfeldt with only twelve ships of the line, although
a much stronger force just then was at the disposal of the Admiralty;
and, when the French hove in sight, they had with them twenty men-
of-war, five of which carried a hundred and ten guns apiece. Kempen-
feldt, who was a better seaman than his opponent, captured a good
many of Admiral de Guichen's store-vessels and transports, but did not
venture to risk an engagement with his fighting fleet. The waste of
that unique opportunity for inflicting a deadly blow on the naval
power of France was felt and resented by the British public almost as
keenly as a lost battle. When Parliament met after the Christmas recess
the House of Commons, at the instance of Charles Fox, resolved itself
into a Committee to inquire into the Causes of the Want of Success
of the British Navy; and his speech displayed a breadth of knowledge,
and an acuteness of observation, which proved him to be a thorough
master of his subject. On the seventh of February 1782, as soon as the
Committee was formed, "the clerks, one relieving the other, read
through all the papers that had at various times been laid upon the
table in consequence of motions made by Mr. Fox. The reading of
these papers took up three hours." Mr. Fox then brought forward five
charges of culpable negligence against the Earl of Sandwich, and pro-
posed a vote of personal censure on that noble Lord which was sup-
ported by a hundred and eighty-three members against two hundred
and five. A fortnight afterwards, returning to the assault, he moved
that, in the opinion of the House, His Majesty's naval affairs had been
greatly mismanaged in the course of the year 1781, and he was defeated

550

by less than a score of votes in a House of about four hundred and
sixty members.5

All through December 1781 there had been heavy and even betting
whether Germaine or Sandwich would be offered up as the earliest
sacrifice for the propitiation of an outraged and angry public. It was
noticed that Sandwich, for the first time in his life, looked worn and
harassed. His colleagues were impatient to be rid of him, but the King
was determined to keep him; and, when the King and the Ministers
differed, His Majesty usually contrived to carry the day.6 Horace Wai-
pole, an onlooker who understood the game, was of opinion that Fox
would do well henceforward to leave Lord Sandwich alone. "I told him
of it," said Walpole, "and of his wasting his fire on a secondary char-
acter, whom all the rest were willing to sacrifice. I advised him to
make his push at Lord North, as, if the key-stone could be removed,
the whole edifice would fall." Fox listened to the advice with a cour-
tesy which flattered the giver; but he knew his House of Commons
by heart, and he had already perceived that the time had come for
giving the Ministry its coup-de-grdce. His plan of campaign met the
approval of his associates, and the next four weeks witnessed as ani-
mated and sustained a conflict as ever was fought out by constitutional
methods within the walls of any senate. Votes of want of confidence
were brought forward in rapid succession by leading members of the
Opposition, were discussed in short and sharp debates, and were de-
cided by extraordinarily narrow majorities. Charles Fox directed the
operations with rare sagacity and self-command. The political extrava-
gancies of his early youth had been many and notorious, and mistakes
of a more fatal and irreparable character lay ahead of him in the near
future; but, at this period o£ his career, his parliamentary strategy and
tactics were nothing short of faultless. He kept himself mostly in the

5 In the eleventh chapter of his Influence of Sea Power upon History Admiral Mahan
remarks that the Ministry sent out Kempenfeldt with only twelve ships, although a
number of others were stationed in the Downs for what Fox justly called "the paltry
purpose" of distressing the Dutch trade. "The various charges made by Fox,'* (so
Mahan writes,) "which were founded mainly on the expediency of attacking the Allies
before they got away into the ocean wildnerness, were supported by the high professional

• opinion of Lord Howe, who of the Kempenfeldt affair said: *Not only the fate of
the West Indies, but the whole future fortune of the war, might have been decided,
almost without a risk, in the Bay of Biscay/"

6 "Your friends," (wrote James Hare to Lord Carlisle,) "really make too bad a
figure at present. Their keeping Lord Sandwich is madness; but I believe his dismissal
does not depend on them. If it did, he would soon be removed."

551

background; and it was only when a critical moment came that he
spoke, briefly and authoritatively, not so much to instruct his audience
about the merits of the case as to explain and recommend the practical
course of action which it behoved them to adopt.

Fox was the less tempted to exert his faculty for persuasion because
unanswerable and irresistible arguments were pouring in upon the
House of Commons from every quarter of the compass. In the third
week of March news arrived that the Comte de Grasse had captured
from us the island of St. Kitts, and that Port Mahon, the capital of
Minorca, had surrendered, after a prolonged siege, to a French and
Spanish army. Lord Sandwich was very generally held responsible for
the fate of Minorca, and most people were inclined to think that, ex-
actly a quarter of a century before, Admiral Byng had been shot for
less. "In whatever light," (wrote a vigorous pamphleteer,) "we may
view the American dispute, there is a point upon which every person
in Great Britain is agreed, which is that all our defeats and misfortunes
have been owing to the mismanagement of the navy. If any man had
said six months ago that Minorca would change its master, without
surprise or stratagem, by the slow advances of the dull Spaniard, with
all the opportunities and means that heart could wish to find relief, he
would have been esteemed an enemy to his country, and a spy for
France and Spain. The House of Bourbon has now the entire posses-
sion of the empire of the Mediterranean." The loss of Minorca, no
light blow in itself, presaged a still greater misfortune; for the fall of
Gibraltar was a conceivable, and even probable, calamity which was
seldom absent from the minds of Englishmen, but about which they
did not love to talk.

Fox, who was exceedingly busy behind the scenes of the political
theatre, kept a watchful eye upon all his followers. He spared no pains
to inform himself where his people were to be found, and to get them
into the Lobby at the right moment. Never had his appeals to parlia-
mentary truants, — to their wives, their brothers, and, (in case of neces-
sity,) even to their parents, — been more urgently worded, and more
persuasive and efficacious. The personal popularity which Charles Fox
enjoyed outside the borders of his own party had a recognisable effect
upon the turn of affairs during those eventful weeks. Among the large
number of Ministerialists who went over to the Opposition, or who
remained neutral, was Mr. Crawford of Auchinanes. "The Fish,"
wrote Selwyn, "did not vote last night, which he was much impatient
to discover to Charles, with one of his fulsome compliments." It was
552

an ill-natured way of putting it; and the more so because Selwyn
confessed that he himself was convinced by Fox's speech, and had
voted against his conscience on as important an issue as ever was sub-
mitted to Parliament.7 The most alert and enterprising of Fox's lieu-
tenants,— or, (to speak more accurately,) of his allies, — was William
Pitt. "He is at the head," said George Selwyn, "of a half-dozen young
people, and it is a corps separate from that of Charles's; so there is an-
other Premier at the starting-post, who as yet has never been shaved."
That must have been the most enjoyable episode of Pitt's parliamentary
existence. He was always active, and always prominent. He told in
the divisions, he spoke nine times in less than two months, and his
speeches never failed to keep the House alive. On one occasion he
announced, to an audience which doubted whether to admire or laugh,
that he was firmly resolved not to accept office below the Cabinet. On
another occasion he surprised, and less than half pleased, those of his
brother members who sat for proprietary boroughs, by exhorting them
to have regard for the feelings and and interests of their constituents;
although he himself, (it must be admitted,) had no constituent worth
mentioning except Sir James Lowther. And he took about with him
in his pocket a scheme of Parliamentary Reform which, before the
Session ended, he came within twenty votes of carrying into law.
Reformers, (it has been well remarked,) never again had so good a
division till the year 1831.

On the twenty-second of February 1782 General Conway moved an
Address praying His Majesty that the war on the Continent of North
America might no longer be pursued for the impracticable purpose of
reducing the inhabitants of that country to obedience by force. Con-
way's record on the American question was dear and consistent. In
the year 1766 he had proposed, and carried, the repeal of the Stamp
Act; and in 1775 he refused to serve against the colonists without
forfeiting the confidence and good-will of his brother soldiers. Con-
way's valour was above proof, and his authority on strategical ques-
tions stood very high. During his earlier campaigns, foregoing his
immunities as a staff-officer, he had plunged over and over again into
the rough and tumble of cavalry combat; and in the Seven Years'

7 The tone which Selwyn always used when writing of Crawford was most unjust.
Crawford, though too prone to introspection and self-pity, was a man of wit and ability,
and a true friend to all the Fox connection. His letters to Lord Ossory, — for whose
sister, the young widow of poor Stephen Fox, he had entertained a deep and hopeless
affection, — prove that he sincerely repented his past support of the American war.

553

War, as Major General and Lieutenant General, he had participated
with credit in arduous and important operations both by sea and land.
The House of Commons listened with respectful attention to his
searching analysis of the military situation. He showed how, — at a
time when our shores were under constant threat of invasion, and
when there were no spare troops for the relief of our Mediterranean
garrisons, or for aggressive operations on Euopean soil, — we main-
tained on the other side of the Atlantic a far larger British army than
the Duke of Marlborough, or Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, had
ever led to victory in Flanders or Germany; 8 and how nevertheless, at
the crucial moment of the campaign, Clinton and Cornwallis could
muster for combat only fourteen thousand rank and file between
them. He adjured the Ministry to explain how the strength of our
American army had been frittered away in the past, and to indi-
cate, at least in outline, their warlike policy for the future. Welbore
Ellis, who had no answer ready, rambled on in a helpless and be-
wildered strain which provoked derision in some quarters, and com-
passion in others; and the case was not mended by the interposition
of Mr. Jenkinson, the Secretary at War. Jenkinson announced that it
was the intention of the Government to convert the war in America
into "a war of posts;" and he then proceeded to state, for the infor-
mation of Honourable Gentlemen, what he meant by that expression.
"His idea was that we were to keep no regular army in the field; but,
in keeping those posts we had, we might add others to them when-
ever they should be found advantageous to us; thus affording us the
means of attacking the enemy if an opportunity served of doing it
with success." It was a cheerless programme for the eighth year of a
war which professed to be a war of re-conquest, and it altogether
failed to arouse the enthusiasm of Parliament. Lord North escaped
defeat by a bare majority of one vote in a House of three hundred and
ninety members. Eight months previously a proposal, to all intents

8 On this point I am allowed to quote a private letter from Colonel Gerald Boyle.
When Sir Guy Caricton succeeded Sir Henry Clinton at New York he took over the
Royal troops in America, diminished, (it must be remembered,) by the seven thousand
soldiers who had been captured with Lord Cornwallis. "A Return of the Army under
Sir Guy Caricton," writes Colonel Boyle, "shows him to have had quite 31,000 of all
ranks under his command, besides 2300 British and German recruits en route to join
him. General Haldimand had about 4000 in Canada.** I take this last opportunity of
expressing my admiration of Colonel Boyle's researches into the Revolutionary War,
and his infinite kindness in placing the fruit of those researches at my disposal.

554

and purposes the same motion, had been rejected by a hundred and
seventy-two votes to ninety-nine, — which was as nearly as possible in
the proportion o£ seven to four.

On the twenty-fifth of February Lord North introduced his Budget.
He asked for a Loan larger by a million than the enormous Loan of
the preceding year. The Three Per Cents had dropped to 54, and, in
order to raise thirteen millions of ready money for present needs,
the nation was saddled with an obligation to repay twenty-four mil-
lions whenever the Debt came to be liquidated. Those new taxes
which North proposed, though vexatious in kind, were insignificant
in amount. The war was being fought on credit; and there was a limit
even to the credit of Great Britain which, unless a change came over
the face of politics, would erelong be reached. Our fighting services
in the current year cost three millions more than in the last year, and
five millions more than in the last year but one.9 The war in Europe
had gone against us; the attitude of the Northern Powers was hostile
and minatory; and, after Yorktown, all prospect of recovering our
rebellious Colonies by arms was further off than ever. Such were the
circumstances under which, if the King had his way, England was
never to make peace with America as long as the Chancellor of the
Exchequer could negotiate a loan on the money-market. Our people
had come to regard the Cabinet as the shareholders of a coal-mine on
the sea-coast, when the water which floods the galleries begins to taste
of salt, would regard a board of Directors who persisted in trying to
pump out the German Ocean. Parliament at last took the matter into
its own hands, and stopped the Ministers in their mad career. It was
not a day too soon for the interests of the Treasury. Lord Sheffield,—
the friend of Gibbon, a staunch adherent of Lord North, and a spe-
cialist in the statistics of foreign and colonial commerce, — reckoned
that the increase of the National Debt entailed on Great Britain by the
American war, and by the wars arising out of it, amounted to forty-
five times the average annual value of British exports to the American
colonies during the six years that preceded the military occupation of
Boston. That is the measure, as expressed in arithmetical figures, of

9 During the period anterior to the American trouble the cost of the Army, Navy, and
Ordnance Services together did not much exceed three million pounds per annum. In
1780 that cost had risen to near fifteen millions; hi 1781 it reached seventeen millions;
and in 1782 it passed the point of twenty millions. By the year 1787 Mr. Pitt, as Prime
Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer, had brought it down again to four millions
and a quarter. It is a figure to make a modern economist's mouth water.

555

the foresight and capacity displayed by George the Third and his
chosen servants.10

Two days after the presentation of the Budget Conway, in accord-
ance with notice given, repeated his former motion with a slight
change of form, but no change in substance. It was a night when a
vote would be a vote; and the Opposition had assembled in full force,
and in a determined mood. Fox had summoned all his friends around
him.11 Many of the Ministerialists had scruples about opposing Con-
way; and many were inclined to support him, including certain young
politicians who had a shining and honourable future before them.
Such was William Wilberforce, who had been elected for Hull al-
most immediately after he came of age, and who had begun his par-
liamentary career by voting with the Government. And such, again,
was Sir Gilbert Elliot, afterwards that Earl of Minto who, during
seven critical years, was a wise, a conscientious, and a most successful
Governor General of India. His father was the late Sir Gilbert Elliot,
by far the ablest among the King's Friends; but the son did not in-
herit any love for the King's system. Burke's great speech on Eco-
nomical Reform had captured all his sympathies. "From that time,"
we are told, "dated his friendship with Mr. Burke, which soon ripened
into warm and reciprocal affection. But it was not till the Spring of
1782 that he finally abandoned all hope of a favourable issue to the
American War."12

The supreme hour had struck. Conway put together a weighty and
conclusive argument, to which Lord North replied in the doleful and
desponding accents of a man who had lost faith in his own cause. It
was a severe ordeal for him to face a phalanx of such antagonists
without a single speaker of the first order to aid and abet him. Thur-
low had been in the House of Lords for some years past. Wedderburn,

10 Observations on the Commerce of the American States, by John Lord Sheffield;
with an Appendix containing table of the Imports and Exports of Great Britain to and
from all Ports, from 1700 to 1*783. London; 1784.

11 "Your Grace may be very sure," (so Fox wrote to an eminent nobleman,) "that,
after what I have heard of Lord Edward's health, and with the regard I have for him,
I should not think of wishing him to come to town unless I thought his presence might
be very material indeed. * * * I have not written to Lord Edward himself because I
had rather you should judge of the propriety of his coming than he, who might be
apt to think himself more able to bear it than he really is. If he can come without
danger of hurting himself I really think it very material he should. If he cannot, I am
sure you yourself can not be more averse to his coming than I should be." It is almost
unnecessary to say that Lord Edward came.

12 That is the account of Sir Gilbert Elliot's change of view, as given by the Countess
of Minto in her admirable biography of her great-uncle.

556

the most eloquent of Law Officers, had recently left the House of Com-
mons, and had taken refuge from coming evils in the Chief Justiceship
of the Common Pleas; and it was Mr. Attorney General Wallace who,
on behalf of the Government, moved that the debate should be ad-
journed until that day fortnight. Mr. Pitt denounced him for trifling
with the common sense of Parliament; Mr. Sheridan "delighted the
House with a most admirable piece of satire;" and Mr. Fox "in a few
minutes set the matter in issue in a most clear and forcible point of
view. He urged the propriety of the motion made by the Honourable
General, and exposed the paltry stratagem to which Ministers were
reduced, in the last moments of their existence, to gain a short week,
or a day, of breath." 13 At half past one in the morning a division was
taken on the Attorney General's motion for adjournment, and the
Government was beaten by nineteen votes. "It was the declaration,"
(wrote Edmund Burke,) "of two hundred and thirty-four members.
I think it was the opinion of the whole." Burke rightly interpreted the
feeling of the assembly. The original motion was put, and agreed to
in silence; and five days afterwards Conway clenched the matter by
carrying, without opposition, a Resolution to the effect that all who
advised or attempted, the further prosecution of offensive war upon
the Continent of America should be considered as enemies to His
Majesty, and to the country. No more important decision was ever
deliberately, and unanimously, made by the House of Commons.14

The centre of political interest was henceforward transferred from
the House of Commons to the Royal Closet. The Government had
suffered a crushing defeat; but there was one behind the Government
who had no inclination whatever to accept that defeat as final. The
Opposition leaders had long been aware that, when contending with
the Ministry, they were contending with the King. Some months
previously Charles Fox had thrilled the House by a fine quotation

^Parliamentary History, XXII, 1081-1084. After the speeches of the mover, and the
Prime Minister, the rest of the debate was very cursorily reported.

14 Lord North, in a private letter to Lord Dartmouth, commented severely^ on Con-
way as having grieved and insulted a monarch who was "his best benefactor." Readers
of the Wilkes controversy may be puzzled to understand on what foundation that charge
of ingratitude was based. Lord Stanhope, who has no love for the memory of Wilkes,
states in his History that "the most eminent lawyers of the day, headed by Chief Justice
Pratt," on consideration held General Warrants "to be utterly illegal." And yet, as a
punishment for recording a vote against the legality of General Warrants, the King
dismissed Conway from his place in the Bedchamber, and deprived him of the Colonelcy
of a Regiment which had been conferred upon him as a reward for distinguished
services in the field.

557

from Dante. The Prime Minister, (he said,) was a man of experience.
He was naturally inclined to moderation and mildness. "How then
was he induced to become so strenuous a supporter of the American
war? He might put an answer in the noble Lord's mouth from
an Italian poet: 'My will to execute this deed is derived from Him who
has both the will and the power to execute it. Ask no further
questions.' " 15

But North's capacity for passive obedience was at last exhausted.
Before eleven o'clock in the morning after the division on Conway's
motion he informed the King that he could no longer remain in
office. George the Third was endowed with a clear insight into the
relative values of public men; and he was not mistaken in his belief
that Lord North was indispensable. If he commissioned Welbore Ellis,
or Rigby, or Lord Nugent, or Jenkinson to lead the House of Com-
mons,— and he no longer had any others to choose from, — the Minis-
terial party would have gone to pieces within the week. The King
endeavoured to recall North to his duty by frequent interviews, and
by a series of brief and unstudied letters full of historical interest, and
more remarkable still in their bearing on human character. Stern
reproofs, and vehement expostulations, alternated with dark allusions
to an unexplained course of action by which the Royal chagrin and
displeasure would be manifested to the world. "I am resolved," he
wrote, "not to throw myself into the hands of Opposition at all events,
and shall certainly, if things go as they seem to lead, know what my
conscience, as well as honour, dictates as the only way left for me." 16
The King's repugnance to acknowledge the United States as an in-
dependent nation was fixed and resolute as ever. He regarded the dis-
pute with his rebellious Colonies as a matter personal to himself; and,
if only Parliament had stood by him, he would have fought America
as long as he was able to press a sailor, or raise a guinea. George the
Third would have been more in his place as a monarch if he had
been born four or five centuries before his own epoch. Although he
was altogether devoid of the military intuition, and the statesmanlike
astuteness, of the First and Third Edwards, he had as high a courage,
and a temper as hot, as any Plantagenet that ever swore by the Splen-
dour of God. But he had met his match in an adversary with a will not

15 Inferno; m, 95.

18 His Majesty, (according to some historians,) had imagined, and had even begun
to put in train, a scheme for withdrawing himself out of England, and retiring to his
Hanoverian dominions. Authentic evidence on that point is wanting.

558

less strong, and an intellect far more vivid, than his own. "Here is a
man," said Doctor Johnson, "who has divided the Kingdom with
Caesar, so that it was a doubt whether the nation should be ruled by
the sceptre of George the Third, or the tongue o£ Fox;" and in March
1782 matters had come to such a pass for England that the brave
old Tory, the author of "Taxation no Tyranny," rejoiced that Fox
had got the better of his Sovereign.

The Prime Minister was inexorable, and the King submitted to his
fate. After three more weeks of damaging speeches, and crowded and
significant divisions, Lord North, exhibiting his habitual good taste
and good temper amidst a scene of confusion and excitement, an-
nounced that His Majesty had come to a full determination to choose
other Ministers. "For himself," (he said,) "he hoped to God, whoever
those Ministers might be, they would take such measures as should
tend effectually to extricate the country from its present difficulties,
and to render it happy and prosperous at home, successful and secure
abroad." On Wednesday the twenty-seventh of March 1782 the mem-
bers of the new Government attended a Levee at Saint James's Palace.
"I could not go to Court," wrote George Selwyn. "My temper would
not permit. I could have seen my Royal Master on the scaffold with
less pain than insulted as he has been to-day." 17

A crowd of Londoners, who had no sinecures to lose, pointed out to
each other the occupants of that line of chariots with more friendly and
hopeful feelings than those which actuated poor George Selwyn. Rock-
ingham kissed hands as First Lord of the Treasury. Lord John Caven-
dish became Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Duke of Richmond
Master of the Ordnance, and General Conway Commander-in-Chie£
of the Forces. Lord Camden was President of the Council, and Dun-
ning Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, with a seat in the House
of Peers as Baron Ashburton. The Privy Seal was given to the Duke
of Grafton. Thomas Townshend was Secretary at War, Barre Treas-
urer of the Navy, and Sheridan Under Secretary of State; while Jack
Townshend received the Civil Lordship of the Admiralty,— -an office
which is the due of youth. Dundas, who had trimmed at the right

17 Gibbon, in strong contradistinction to Selwyn, took his misfortune like the philoso-
pher that he was. When the Board of Trade was abolished he wrote: "I have been
prepared for this event, and can support it with firmness. I am not without resources;
and my best resource is in the cheerfulness and tranquillity of a mind which in any
place, and in any situation, can always secure its own independent happiness. * * *
Next Wednesday I conclude my forty-fifth year, and, in spite of the changes of Kings
and Ministers, I am very glad that I was born."

559

moment, remained Lord Advocate; and the King was allowed to in-
sist upon keeping Lord Thurlow as his Chancellor. The most impor-
tant people in the new Administration were the two Secretaries of
State, the Earl of Shelburne, and Charles Fox. On the last occasion
that Fox went to a Levee he had brought with him an Address from
the Citizens of Westminster. "The King took it out of his hand with-
out deigning to give him a look or a word. He took it as you would
take a pocket-handkerchief from your valet-de-chambre, without any
mark of displeasure or attention, or expression of countenance what-
ever, and passed it to his Lord in waiting, who was the Duke of
Queensberry." Times had now changed with Charles Fox; and Charles
Fox, like a man of sense, had changed a little with the times. He
rented a house north of Piccadilly, close to that occupied by Crawford
of Auchinanes, the reformed and sobered companion of his early years,
in whose rather depressing company, for some while to come, he was
content to live. James Hare relates that Fox seldom now looked in at
Brooks's, and never dined there, "to the disappointment of those
members who had paid up arrears of four or five years' subscription in
order that they might enjoy the society of a Minister." It was noticed
that the London world, which hitherto had never called him anything
but "Charles," began henceforward to speak of him as "Mr. Fox."

Fox, who intended to take the settlement of the Irish difficulty under
his own special charge in Parliament, had a great deal to do with the
Irish appointments. The Duke of Portland was sent as Viceroy to
supersede the Earl of Carlisle at Dublin Castle, with Richard Fitz-
patrick, — the lifelong confidant of Fox, and an Irishman to the heart's
core, — for his Chief Secretary; and Charles, who was not the man to
leave an old friend out in the cold, contrived to procure the Steward-
ship of the Household for Lord Carlisle. A most judicious and popular
selection, which had an immediate influence for good upon the
fortunes of England, was the nomination of Keppel as First Lord of
the Admiralty. Confidence and alacrity at once revived throughout the
whole Naval Service, Famous sailors, Whig and Tory, emerged from
their retirement at the invitation of a superior on whose personal
loyalty they could rely, and showed their welcome faces once more in
Whitehall, and on the quarterdeck. Admiral Harland took his seat at
the Board, where he was almost as useful as at sea. Lord Howe hoisted
his flag on the Victory, the finest vessel in the Channel Fleet; and
Admiral Barrington gladly and proudy served under him as the second
in command in a quarter where, some years before, he had refused
to command in chief.
560

The day was past and gone when the annual appearance of a com-
bined French and Spanish armada in the Channel sent the British
fleet into harbour with the regularity of an autumn manoeuvre. Bar-
rington, while cruising in the Bay of Biscay, sighted a convoy laden
with men for the re-inforcement, and with spars and rigging for the
re-equipment, of the Bailli de Suffren's much battered squadron in the
East Indies; and, after a smart chase, and a sharp night battle, in which
Captain Jervis gained much honour, the British admiral captured a
vessel or two of the Line, and thirteen out of nineteen transports and
store-ships. Howe himself went outside the Scilly Islands to look for
the Jamaica merchant-fleet, the arrival of which was awaited at Bristol,
and in the City of London, with anxiety justified by a cruel experi-
ence. There was joy and relief on 'Change when it was known that
the most skilful of English sailors had brought the Jamaica fleet safe
home almost beneath the guns of the enemy; and the news was none
the less acceptable because part of the cargo which it carried was the
Comte de Grasse, whom Rodney was sending back as a prisoner of
war from the West Indies. And in the middle of October 1782, by
consummate seamanship, and just as much fighting as was essential
for the accomplishment of his purpose, Lord Howe conducted to a
successful issue the re-provisioning of the Gibraltar food-stores, and
the re-filling of the powder magazine which on the previous thirteenth
of September had been emptied with such memorable effect against
the Due de Crillon's floating batteries. Lord Howe's exploit reduced
the French and Spanish commanders to despair, and was a prelude
to the final abandonment of the siege.

On the twentieth of March 1782 Fox addressed to the House of
Commons, and the country, some remarks of weighty import. "It had
given him," he said, "great pleasure to hear an Honourable Member
say, in a thin house, that he hoped, if His Majesty's Ministers were
removed, those who should be appointed in their room would no
longer govern by influence and corruption, and that, if persons who
had been in Opposition came in, they would religiously adhere to
their Opposition principles, and not let it be a mere change of hands
without a change of measures." 18 The words of Fox were repeated,
and enforced, in eloquent and excellent speeches by Burke and Con-
way; and, now that they had all three become Ministers, they pro-

l* Parliamentary History, XXII, 1221, The Member to whom Fox referred was prob-
ably the Honourable Charles Marsham, afterwards the Earl of Romney. He sat for Kent;
and he was one of those independent country gentlemen who, in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, were the salt of politics.

561

ceeded without delay to make their words good. Burke, more to the
disadvantage of Lord Buckingham's reputation than of his own, had
been left outside the Cabinet; but he was appointed to the most lucra-
tive post in England, and probably in the world, for he became Pay-
master General of the Forces in the room of Rigby. It was an office
which had enabled a long succession of holders to enrich themselves
beyond what ought to have been the dreams of avarice by speculating
with the balances of public money lying, far longer than they should
lie, at their private bankers. Mr. Pitt indeed, as far back as the year
1746, had haughtily refused to traffic in funds which did not properly
belong to him, and had paid the interest accruing from the balances
into the Exchequer; but Burke went even further, and did not rest
until he had made a root-and-branch reform of the objectionable
system. He allotted himself a fixed, and not immoderate, salary; and
his well-considered arrangements increased the national revenue by
nearly fifty thousand pounds a year, a full half of which would other-
wise have passed into his own pocket

Those disinterested motives, which inspired Burke as an individual,
pervaded the Government as a whole. The Administration of the day
had hitherto exercised a commanding influence at elections through
the votes of Tide-waiters, and Gaugers, and Coastguardsmen distrib-
uted over scores of boroughs with more regard for the political domi-
nance of the party in power than for the protection of the Revenue.
Meanwhile the House of Commons swarmed with Ministerial mer-
cenaries,— sinecurists, and semi-sinecurists, and Court-officials, and fa-
voured contractors, and loan-mongers, and armament-mongers; and
holders of secret pensions, dependent on pleasure, whose very names
were studiously concealed from the public knowledge; and salaried
occupants of colonial appointments who never visited their colony dur-
ing the entire lifetime of a Parliament The turn had now come for
Lord Rockingham and his colleagues to profit by these monstrous
abuses; but they were patriots of another cast from their predecessors,
and they lost no time in divesting themselves of advantages which,
in their view, did not conduce to the honour of the rulers, or to the
welfare of the ruled. Within the first few months of their Ministe-
rial existence they placed on the Statute Book Sir Philip Clerke's
Contractors Bill; Mr. Crewe's Bill forbidding Revenue Officers from
Voting at Elections; the most valuable provisions of Mr. Burke's Bill
for the Better Regulation of His Majesty's Civil Establishments, for
the Limitation of Pensions, and for the Suppression of sundry Use-
562

less, Expensive, and Inconvenient Offices, as well as Lord Shelburne's
Bill compelling Persons, holding Places in the West Indies and Amer-
ica, to reside there. The same House of Commons which, when
Lord North was its leader, had rejected all such measures by large
majorities, accepted them from Charles Fox in silence, and almost
with unanimity. The largest minority recorded against any of those
admirable laws numbered only fourteen votes. There is no more
striking instance of the vital truth that a Government, which marches
boldly along the path of probity, will always take the House of Com-
mons with it. A noteworthy compliment has been paid to Lord Rock-
ingham and his associates by an author distinguished for his compre-
hensive knowledge of our political history, and for his rare impar-
tiality. If a Government, (so Mr. Lecky writes,) is to be estimated
by the net result of what it has achieved, it must be acknowledged that
few Ministries have done so much to elevate, and to purify, English
public life as the Administration which came into power when Lord
North fell.

And thus the Ministers, who had brought our country down from
the heights of glory and prosperity to the Valley of the Shadow of
Disaster, at length were expelled from office, and were succeeded by a
Government pledged to restore the independence of Parliament, to
re-establish the naval supremacy of Great Britain, to pacify Ireland,
and to end the quarrel with America.

VALETE, QtTOTQUOT ESTIS,
AMICI MEI IN UTRAQTJE ORA

563

INDEX

Absentee (landlords) Tax, Irish, 106-

107, 108

Account of Negotiations in London for
effecting a Reconciliation between
Great Britain and the American
Colonies, 166 fn.

Acland, (Captain) John Dyke, 155, 164
Acton, Lord, xvi
Adam, Robert, 403 fn. 17
Adam, William, 499-503
Adam brothers, 399
Adams, John (the elder), 30-31, 53
Adams, John, 1-2, 9, 23, 24, 30-34, 63,
73-74, 81-82, 128, 133, 138, 139, 142,
182 fn., 337 fn., 350 fn., 351
on diplomatists, 335 and fn.
Adams, John Quincy, 55
Adams, Samuel, 6, 42, 63, 71, 72-73, 84,

113, 182

Adamses, the brace of, 130
Admiralty, mismanagement of, under

Sandwich, 247, 305
Albemarle, Lord (George Thomas

Keppel, Earl of), 201, 532 fn. 17
Alembert, Jean le Rond d', 352
Almack's, 105, 269, 278, 390, 408
American colonies:
British policy towards, i ff.
conditions in, prior to war, i ff.
George the Third's plans for harass-
ment of, 365-366
internal difficulties of, 364
readiness for war in, 149, 150
representation for, debate over, 120
Americans:

character of, 44-45
chivalry of, 135

education of, 25-26
education of women, 54-55
Amherst, (General) Sir Jeffrey, 168-170,

221, 245, 252, 374

Chatham's instructions to, 373 fn. 7
reports to Chatham, 374-375
Ancien Regime, L' (by Taine), 310 fn.

18

Anecdotes of the American Revolu-
tion, Alexander Garden's, 47-48
Anson, Sir William, 327 fn. 5
Anson, Lord (George, Baron) > 253
Anspach, Margrave of, 302, 380
anti-war sentiment in England, 257-258
Aranda, Comte d', 354
Armed Neutrality, The, 303, 456 if.,

466-467
Arnold, (General) Benedict, 44, 223-

224, 271, 454-455
Artois, Comte d', 312
Arundell, Lord, 441
Autobiography and Political Corre-
spondence of the Du%e of Grajton
(ed., Anson), 327 fn. 5

Bailli de Suffren, see Suffren
Balance of Power, doctrine of, 295 fn.
Balcarres, Lord (Alexander, Earl), 499
Bancroft, George, 43 and fn., 59 fn.,

129 and fn., 137 fn., 204 fn., 316

fn., 336 fn.
Barber of Seville, 324
Bariatinski, Prince, 354
Barillon, de, 205
Barre (Colonel) Isaac, 45, 75, 119, 122,

126, 222, 375, 392, 426, 435, 498>

512, 559

565

Harrington, (Admiral) Samuel, 560,

561
Barrington, Lord (William Wildman,

Viscount), 91-92, 94, 102, 193, 232,

38i

Bate, Henry ("Parson Bate"), 213
Bathurst, Henry, Earl, 387
Beattie, (Dr.) James, Essay on...

Truth, 166

Beauchamp, Lord, 17
Beauclerk, Topham, 404
Beaumarchais, et Son Temps (by de

Lom&iie), 324 fn.
Beaumarchais, Pierre Augustin Caron

de, xxii, 322-328, 344 fn. 37, 354,

355, 358

Bedford, Duke of, 538
Bedfords, the, 8, 13, 45, 82, 90-91, 94,

164, 212, 381, 474, 488
description of, 367
Bentham, Jeremy, 115
Bentley, Thomas, 373 fn. 6
Bernard, (Governor) Sir Francis, 12-13,

62-63

betting, 260-261, 309, 408
Biographical Sketches of the Loyalists

of the Revolution (by Sabine), 80

fn. 17, 137 fn. ii
Blackett, Sir Walter, 240-243, 244
Blackstone's Commentaries, 58, 464 fn.
Board of Trade and Plantations, Burke's

criticism of, 279, 510-511
Bonaparte en Italic (by Bouvier), 307

fn. 15
Boscawen, (Admiral) Edward, 315,

358, 374
Boston:

blockade of, by Americans, 193
by English, 129
English garrison in, 8-9, 57 ff., 63,

130

English opinion of, 117, 269
George the Third's view of, 7-8
Loyalist refugees' nostalgia for, 267-

268

nomination of Council for, 118-119
punishment of, for non-importation

act, 116 ff.

566

support of, by Salem and Marble-
head, 131 ff.

reaction to Revenue Acts, 7

reprisals of patriots of, 177

refusal of citizens to work for
English, 183

Tories in, 184-185
Boston Massacre, 72-74, 97, 123, 182,

457

Boston Port Act, 127, 136 ff.
Boston Tea Party, 131, 261
Bosville, Mr., of Thorpe Hall, 247 fn.
Boswell, James, 161 fn., 262-263, 276

fn. 28, 426 fn., 447
Bouvier, Felix, Bonaparte en Italic, 307

fn. 15
Bowes, Andrew Robinson (Stoney),

242, 244

Boyle, (Colonel) Gerald, 554 fn.
Braddock, (General) Edward, 199
Brandywine, 294, 363
bribery in government, 429 ff.
Brillat-Savarin, Anthelme, 52
Brindley, James, 24
Bristol, as Burke's constituency, 439 ff.,

530-531

Brooke, John, xix
Brooks's Club, xxii, 61, 277-278, 309,

407, 408, 410-412, 560
Brown, Lancelot ("Capability"), 399-

400

Brunswick, Duke of, 344
Bunker's Hill, 192-193
Burgoyne, (General) John, 122, 126,

171-172, 208, 226, 239, 543
at Saratoga, 358, 363, 424-426
Burke, Edmund, 3, 4, 19, 45, 58-61, 62
fn., 74, 77, 98, 100, 101-107, 114,
119, 122-123, 125-126, 148, 161,
175, 226-227, 392, 418-454 passim,
524, 562

against restraint of trade, 159
against use of Indians, 423-427
and Bristol, 439 ff., 530-531
and Fox, 418 ff.
as economist, 426 ff .
on Board of Trade, 510-511
on Gordon riots, 523

on parliamentary reforms, 487 ff.,

506-508, 510 £E.
on right of petition, 481
speeches and writings of, 282-284
Wesley's attack on, 291
work for religious toleration, 440-443,

449
Observations on a late publication,

etc., 77 fn., 420 fn. 4
Speech on Conciliation, etc., 419
Speech on Economical Reform, 433

fn.
"Thoughts on the Cause of the

Present Discontents," 282-283, 419,

428 fn. n, 429 fn. 12
Burke, Richard, 524 fn.
Burnet, (Bishop) Gilbert, 280 fn. 36
Burney, Fanny, 286, 401
Burns, Robert, 473
Bute, Lord (John Stuart, Earl of), 206,

213, 224-225, 226, 329, 330, 368, 381,

403 fn. 17

Butterfield, Herbert, xix
Byles, (Doctor) Mather, 135-136
Byng, George, 549
Byng, (Admiral) John, 552
Byron, Lord, 57

Caermarthen, Lord, 120

"Calm Address to our American Colo-
nies by the Reverend John Wesley,
M.A., A," 291, 292

Cambridge, Gage's seizure of military
stores at, 175-177

Camden, Lord (Charles Pratt, Earl),
45, 75? I4^, (Lord Chief Justice
Pratt, 214, 215 fn. 18), 386, 402-
403, 440, 491, 559

Canada, cession of, 314

Canning, George, 353

Carleton, (General) Sir Guy (Baron
Dorchester), 221, 248, 250, 271, 554
fn.

Carlisle, Lord (Frederick Howard, Earl
of), 9, 3<>, 79, *°8, 198, 4<>7, 408 fn.,
42i? 495, 5io, 543, 547-548, 560

Carlyle, James, 31

Carlyle, Thomas, 313, 314-315

Carmarthen, Marquis of, 490, 491

Caron, Pierre Augustin, see Beaumar-
chais

Cars, Due des, 305 fn. 12, 306

Cartwright, (Major) John, 253-255
on parliamentary reform, 484-487

Catherine the Second, Empress of
Russia, 461-467 passim

Cavendish, Lord (General) Frederick,
250, 499

Cavendish, Lord Frederick (assassi-
nated 1882), xiv

Cavendish, Lord John, 4, 104, 105, 161,
40i, 437, 559

Cavendish family, Burke's opinion of,
251

Champion, Richard, 148, 451 fn. 45

Chandler, Clark, 133

Character of Charles Fox, The (by
Godwin), 393 fn.

Charles the Third (of Spain), 336

Chasles, Philarete, Le Dix-huitieme
Siecle en Angleterre, 349 fn., 351
fn. 48

Chatham, Lord (William Pitt, ist Earl
of), 3-4, 14, 45, 48-49, 107-109, in,
123-124, 141, 144-147 155, 163-167
passim, 202, 206, 214, 221, 223, 231,

3p9, 315, 37i, 39^, 435, 497
against use of auxiliaries, 380; of

Indians, 423

and Frederic the Great, 329
attacks by Tory journalists, 379-380,

386-387

character of, 371-373
death and funeral of, 249, 384-388
French admiration for, 298-299
grandfather of, 372 fn.
maritime strategy of, 374
planning of campaigns by, 373-374
relations with colonies, 375-376
Chaumont, Ray de, 350 fn.
Chesterfield, Lord (Philip Dormer

Stanhope, Earl of), 102
Chevalier, E., 305 fn. 10, n
chivalry of Americans, 135

567

Choiseul, Due de, 304-309
building up of navy by, 304-306
dismissal of, 308-309

Christie, Ian R., xix

Churchill, Charles, 16, 227

City of London, wartime feeling in the,
231-239

Clare, Lord (John Fitzgibbon, Earl of),
24 fn.

class distinctions, absence of in Amer-
ica, 26-27

clergy (American) and politics, 135-
136, 292

Clerke, Sir Philip, 562

Cleveland, Grover, xii

Clifford, Lord, 441

Clinton, (Governor) George, 39

Clinton, (General) Sir Henry, 172,
292-293, 554 and fn.

Clive, (Lord) Robert, 106, 168, 221

Cobden, Richard, 479

cod fishery, bill excluding colonies
from, 156-157

Coke of Norfolk, Thomas, 402, 404,
408, 409, 421-422

Colbert, Jean Baptiste, 305

colonial administrators, 11-13

Colonial Convention of Virginia, 138

colonial soldiers:
English view of, 185
quality of, 185-186

colonial troops, pursuit of English by,
190-192

colonies, see American colonies

Commentaries (on the law of Eng-
land), Blackstone's, 58, 464
fn.

Commissioners of Trade and Planta-
tions, literary qualifications of,
510-511

Committee of Correspondence, Mas-
sachusetts, 184

Committee of Public Safety, 179

Committee of Safety, 134

Committees of Correspondence, 84,

129, 179
in England, 257

conciliation attempts, 150-156, 167 ff.

568

Concord and Lexington, fighting at
and British retreat from, 189-
192

Condemned Sermon (by Dodd), 265
Condorcet, Marquis de, 321, 352
Congress, First Continental (1774),

138-142
Second Continental (1775), petition

of, 481

Congress of Vienna, xii, 353
Considerations on the American En-
quiry of the year 1779 (by Gal-
loway), 394 fn.

Consols, fluctuations of, 239, 360, 541
Contractors Bill, 509-510, 562
Conway, (General) Henry Seymour,
45, 75> 89, 90, 119, 122, 245-247,

392, 519
motions to end war, 553-554, 556-557

559

Cooper, (Dr.), 76
Corbett, Julian Stafford, England in

the Seven Years' War, 374 fn., 376

fn.

Cornwall, Charles Wolfran, 540
Cornwallis, Lord (General) Charles,

Marquis of, 195, 239, 541, 542-545*

548, 549, 554
after Yorktown, 543-544
correspondence, interception of, 112 ff.
correspondence of Lady Sarah Lennox,

389 fn.
Correspondence of William Pitt...,

The ed. by Gertrude Selwyn Kim-
ball), 376 fn.

County Associations, 479 ff., 497
County Meetings, 475-480, 498
Courts of Justice, 132
Cowper, William, 16, 94, 95-96, 376-377>

470, 508
change of views after Yorktown, 546-

547

Cradock, Joseph, 108-109
Crawford (of Auchinanes), John, 552,

560

Crawford, Sir Patrick, 528
Crillon, Due de, 561
Crimean war, 210

Croker, John Wilson, 213 fn., 385 fn.

20

culinary art, English, 405-406
culture in England, mid-i8th century,

402-404
Cumberland, William Augustus, Duke

of, 229, 245, 250

Curwen, Samuel, i6£n. 9, 100, 239-240,
refugee in England, 264, 265-266

269-272, 432 fn* 20
Curwen's Journal, 270 fn,, 271-272
Gushing, Thomas, 84

Dana, Francis, 338

Dante, quotation from, 558

Darby, Admiral, 494

Dartmouth, Lord (William Legge, Earl
of), 11, 79> 83, 92, 93-97* "4, «7-
127, 166, 167

Dartmouth College, 96

Dartmouth Manuscripts, 117

De Lancey, General, 264

De Peyster, (Colonel) James, 264 fn.

Deane, Silas, 344, 34$

Declaration of Independence, 299-300,
301

Declaration of Right, 515

Declaratory Act of 1766, 145

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
The History of the (by Gibbon),
441, 521 fn. 4, 534

Derby, Earl of, 489

desolation of country, Manifesto threat-
ening (by Carlisle's mission), 421-

423

Devonshire, Duchess of, 538 and fn. 23
Devonshire, Duke of, 489, 491-492
Dialogue of the Dead, 222
Dickinson, John, 150, 481

"Farmer's Letters," 6
Diderot, Denis, 352
diplomacy:

Adams on, 335 and fn.

canons of, 334-335

originality of American, 334
discussion, freedom of, in England, 259

ff.
dissolution of Parliament, 527-529

Dix-huitieme Siecle en Angleterre, Le
(by Chasles), 349 fn., 351 fn. 48
Dodd, (Doctor) William, 29 fn. 13, 265
Dolphin (ship), 356
Donation Committee, 183
Doniol, Henri, Histoire de la participa-
tion de la France a I'etablissement
des £tats-Unis d'Amerique, 310 fn.
19, 314 fn., 316 fn. 26-27, 317 fn.
30, 319 fn., 328 fn. 6, 336 fn. 19,
344 fn. 38

Drake, Sir Francis, 221
Du Barry, Madame, 308, 325
Duchess of Malfi, The, 58
Dudingston, Lieutenant, 83
duels, political, 497-503
Fox-Adam, 499-503
Fullarton-Shelburne, 498-499
Dumas, Matthieu, 20, 22-23
Dundas, Henry, 160-162, 512, 514, 520,

521, 540, 549. 559-5^0
Dunning, John, 442, 5II-5I5> 5*8, 559
Dunning's Resolutions, 512-516, 519
Durham, (Shute Barrington) Bishop
of, 91

Early History of Charles James Fox,
The (by Treveiyan), xiv, xv, 14
fn., 215 fn. 19, 442 fn. 31
East India Company, 85-86, 88, 168
economic reforms:
Burke's bills for, 506-508, 510 flF.
Savile's Resolution for, 509
Shelburne and, 505-506
Eden, William, 510
education in America, 25-26

of women, 54-55
Effingham, Earl of, 249-250
election, general (1780), 528-541
Eliot, Edward, 533, 534
Eliott, General, 535
Elliot, Sir Gilbert, (Earl of Minto), 155-

156, 556

Elliot, Hugh, 340, 341
Ellis, Welbore, 154-155* 439, 4»8, 512,

554

description of 547-54°
Elton, James, 122 fn.

569

fimile (Rousseau's novel), 350-351
emissaries, American, rebuffs of, 337 ff.
selection of, 334-336

foreign, secret reports of, 205
Encyclopaedia, French, 310
England:

comparison with later Rome, 15

conditions in, before war, i ff .

duels in, 497 ff .

position in 1763 and 1777, 367-368

situation in July 1778, 362

time of crisis in, 493

war-weariness in, 493
England in the Seven Years' War (by

Corbett), 374 fn., 376 fn.
English in Ireland, The (by Froude),

443 *n- 32
English "Newspapers (by Fox-Bourne),

212 fn.

Eon, Chevalier d', 325
Essay on the Nature and Immutability

of Truth (by Dr. Beattie), 166
Estaing, (Admiral) Comte d', 468
Eton, life at, 27-29
European views of Revolution, 299-303
"Evening Post," London, 212, 218 fn.

21, 229 fn., 294, 357 fn. 57, 379 fn.,

385 fn. 19, 527, 531, 540

Fairfax, George William, 192 fn. 13
Falkland Islands, dispute over, 308, 309,

459

"Farmer's letters," 6
Feiling, Sir Keith, xix
Ferdinand, Prince, of Brunswick, 250,

386

Fielding, Sir, John, 265, 523
First Continental Congress, 138-142
fishing rights in North American

waters, 157-164
Fitzpatrick, (Colonel) Richard, 395,

415, 404, 495, 501, 537
Fleming, Sir Michael de, 27, 425 fn.
flogging in British army, 70-71, 237-238
Florida Blanca, Count, 336
Foley, Edward, 309
Foote, Samuel, 401

570

foreign affairs, Congressional handling

of, 334 ff.

Fothergill, Dr. John, 167, 168
Fox, Charles James, xv, xx-xxii, 27-30
passim, 91, 100, 105, 109, 124-127,
146, 147, 175, 208, 222, 389 ff., 437,
439, 442, 493-496> 5J5, 518-519, 536-
540, 549, 551-553, 557-558

auction of books and furniture, 279,
407

charges against Sandwich, 550-551,
559-560

duel with Adam, 499-503

election of 1780, 536 ff.

journeyings of, 495-496

and ladies, 415-416, 538

on Cornwallis, 545

poem attributed to, 277

reform of, 392, 408

speech against restraint of trade, 159-
160

style of debate, 393-394, 396 ff .

turning point of career, 151-154, 156

at Westminster Hall Meeting, 496-

497

Fox, George, 57
Fox, Stephen, 126-127
Fox-Bourne, H. R., 212 fn.
France, American sympathies in, 312
humiliations after Seven Years' War,

303-304
Francis, Sir Philip, 51, 107-108, 121,

416
Franklin, Benjamin, i, 6-12 passim, 24-

25, 30, 35-42, 46-47, 51, 52 fn., 53,

77, 79, 84, 86, 109-115 130, 165 ff.,

303, 335 360
as diplomatist, 352-353
in Paris, 342-354, 355, 35®
inventions of, 348
rebuke of Arthur Lee, 346-347
religion of, 351 fn. 48
Franklin Correspondence, 77
Frederic (II) "the Great" of Prussia,

200, 205-207, 307, 328-333, 358-359,

364, 456-467 passim
attitude toward America, 456-459, 461
and Catherine of Russia, 461 ff.

and George the Third, 329-330, 460
rebuff of Lee by, 339-342
Free Thoughts on the Present State of
Public Affairs (by Wesley), 290 £n.
French admiration of Britain, 296-297
French army, condition of, 306-307

reform of, 307-308
French Revolution, 261, 328, 336 fn. 21,

352 fn.
Friends of the Protestant Interest, The,

520, 524
Froude, James Anthony, The English

in Ireland, 443 fn. 32
Fullarton, (Colonel) William, 498-499

Gage, (General) Thomas, 71, 117, 129,

131, 132, 169-170, 173-178 passim,

186-187, 189

seizure of arms at Cambridge, 175
Galloway, Joseph, 393-394, 454
Garden, Alexander, Anecdotes of the

American Revolution, 47-48, 67 fn.
Gardiner, Luke, 443
Garibaldi, xiv
Garrick, David, 265
Gaspee (schooner), 82-83, 95
Gates, (General) Horatio, 44
"Gazeteer and New Daily Advertiser,"

204 fn. 9, 212

Gellert, Christian Fiirchtegott, 457
George Seltvyn and his Contemporaries,

198 fn.

George the Second, 329, 367
George the Third, 3, 30, 45-47, 58, 75,

92, 143, 166, 225, 328, 329, 364-365,

5i9> 527

and Frederic of Prussia, 329-330, 460
and power of the Crown, 428-439
and the Lords Lieutenants, 489 ff.
dealings with military men, 170-171
Dissolution of Parliament by, 520-528
hatred of Chatham, 381-382
opinion of Boston, 7-8, 117
Germaine, Lord George (Sackville), 45,
103, 118, 119 fn., 216, 220, 292,
293, 512
blamed for defeats, 543, 551

Gessner, Salomon, 457
Gibbon, Edward, 29, 99, 137 fn. 10,
151, 276-279, 288, 357 fn. 57, 387,
441, 510, 511, 521 fn. 4, 543
and Charles Fox, 278, 390
in election of 1780, 533-534
poem against, 277
Gibbons, Grinling, 399
Gibraltar, French defeat at, 469

reprovisioning of, 561
Gladstone, William Ewart, xiv-xv, 226

fn. 31, 426, 427

Gluck, Christoph Willibald von, 308
Godwin, William, The Character of

Charles Fox, 393 fn.
Goethe, 371, 457
Goezman, Judge, 324
Goldsmith, Oliver, 401, 513 fn. 7
Gordon, Lord George, 508, 522, 525,

526, 527

Gordon riots, 522-527
gout, i8th century interest in, 517
governing class, rural life of, 399-402,

404
Government contractors, bill to limit,

509-510 "
Gower, Lord (Granvillc, Earl of), 75,

91
Grafton, (Augustus Henry Fitzroy)

Duke of, 4, 8, 29, 74, 75-76, 89, 327

fn. 5, 368, 419, 512, 559
Graham, see Lynedoch
Granby, Lord (John Manners, Marquis

of), 75, 89^°, I05> 163-164, 168,

3*3

Grasse, (Admiral) Comte de, 552, 561
Grattan, Henry, 393
Graves, (Admiral) Thomas, 542
Graydon's Memoirs, 333 fn. 14
Greene, Nathaniel, 42-43, 47, 364
Grenville, George, 2, 3, 60-61, 75, 77

fn., 82, 222 fn., 261, 435
Greyhound (frigate), 228
Grimaldi, Marquis de, 336 fn. 19
Grotius, Hugo, 422
Guichen, (Admiral) Comte de, 550
Gustavus the Third, 209 fn,
gutting of homes, 522

571

Haldimand, General, 554 fn.

Hale, Lord, History of the Common

Law, 32

Halifax, Lord, 92
Halifax, Sir Thomas, 236
Hallowell, Benjamin, 133
Hamilton, Alexander, 42
Hampden, John, 104, 222
Hancock, John, 59, 63, 72-73, 81, 155,

179, 182

Hancock, Thomas, 81
Harcourt Papers, 400 fn. 10
Hardwicke, Lord (Philip Yorke, Earl

of), 29

Hardy, (Admiral) Sir Charles, 417
Hare, James, 494, 551 fn. 6, 560
Harland, (Admiral) Sir Robert, 560
Harley, Thomas, 236
Harlow, George, 27
Harris, Major, 468
Harris, Sir James (Earl of Malmes-

bury), 29, 340, 459, 461-463* 4&t>

466

Harvard College, 26, 68
Hawke, (Admiral) Sir Edward, 75, 82,

89, 90, 253, 315, 358, 586
Haydon's Autobiography, 419 fn. 2
Heath, (General) William, 191, 193
Helv£tius, Madame, 352
Henry, Patrick, 138
Herder, Johann Gottfried, 457
Hesse, Landgrave of, 344, 380
Hillsborough, Lord (Viscount of), 6,

n> 75
Histoire de la Marine Frangaise, 305 fn.

10, II

historians of the period, 274-282
History of England from the Accession

of James the First to that of the

Brunswic^ Line, n fn. 5
History of England in the Eighteenth

Century (by Lecky), xii, 381 fn. 14,

395 &.
History of Scotland (during the Reigns

of Queen Mary and King James

VI), Robertson's, 274
History of the Common Law (by

Hale), 32

572

History of the English People, At 261

fn.
History of (the Reign of) Charles V,

Robertson's, 274, 275
Hoare, Prince, 252 fn.
Holland, Lady, 134
Holland, Lord (Henry Fox, Baron),

28, 30, 79, 396
Holland, Lord (Henry Richard Fox,

Baron), 390
Hollis, Thomas, 68-69
Holmes, Wendell, no fn.
Home, Rev. John, 521 fn. 4
Hopkins, (Chief Justice) Stephen, 83
Home Tooke, John, 15-16, 215 fn. 20,

486

Hortalez and Company, 327
Hotham, Sir Beaumont, 387 fn. 24
Houdetot, Madame d', 351
House of Commons, visitors' impres-
sions of, 396-397
Howard, John, 24
Howe, Lord (George Augustus), 65,

66, 137, 171
Howe, John, 267
Howe, Joseph, 267 fn. 15
Howe, (Admiral) Richard, Earl, 166,

253-254, 305, 560, 561
Howe, (General) Sir William, 171,

194, 196, 199, 221, 292, 551 fn. 5
Hudibras, 57
Hume, David, 64, 173, 204, 222 fn.,

276-277

Humphrey Clinfyr, 15 fn.
Hunt, Leigh, 216
Huntingdon, Lady (Selina Hastings,

Countess of), 93, 96
Hutchinson, (Governor) Thomas, ni-

112, 113-114, 151* l65» 264
Hyde, Lord (Thomas Villiers, Baron),

166

Indians, use of, 423-427

Influence of Sea Power upon History,

The, 305 fn. n, 315 fn.
intellectual Renaissance in France, 310-

311
Interior Cabinet, see Thane's Cabinet

Ireland, hardships of, 443-447
pro-American feeling in, 303
Izard, Ralph, 338, 346

James, Henry, xvii-xviii
James the Second, 57, 130
Jefferson, Thomas, 42, 301, 347
Jenkinson, Mr. (Secretary at War), 554
Jenyns, Soame, "A Free Enquiry into
the Nature and Origin of Evil,"
510

Jervis, (Captain) John, 494, 561
Joan of Arc, 341 fn. 30
John Home's Diary of his Journey to
London in company with David
Hume, 277 fn.

Johnson, Mr. (of Connecticut), 78
Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 102, 213, 253 fn.
and David Hume, 276 fn. 28
as political writer, 287-289
opinion of Americans, 262-263, 288
opinion of Ministry (1782), 370
"Taxation no Tyranny," 288, 289,

291, 559

Johnson's Club, 405 fn. 19
Johnston, (Governor) Gabriel, 152
Johnstone, (Governor) George, 122
Jones, (Captain) Paul, 366, 445-44$
Joseph the Second, Emperor, 312, 330-

331
Journal and Letters of the late Samuel

Curwen, 260 fn. 2
Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (by

Boswell), 276 fn. 28, 426 fn.
Junius, 7, 29, 46, 51, 74, 203, 284

Kempenfeldt, (Admiral) Richard, 550,

551 fn. 5

Kennett, White, 280, fn. 36
Keppel, (Admiral) Augustus, 245, 294,

495

in election of 1780, 532-533, 560
Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb, 457
Kosciusko, 311

Lafayette, Marquis de, 20, 23, 311
Lake Champlain, battle of, 271

Lamballe, Marie Therese, Princesse de,

320

Langara, Don Juan, 535
Landsdowne, Lord, 499 fn.
Lascelles, Edward, 476
Lavoisier, Antoine Laurent, 352
law, study of, in America, 58-59, 71
Lecky, W.E.H., xii, 3, 81 fn. 18, 367,

381 fn. 14, 395 fn., 563
Lee, Arthur, 260, 337, 344, 354-355
as ambassador to Spain, 337
in Paris, 346-347
personality, of, 346
rebuff of, in Berlin, 339-342
Lee, (General) Henry, 47
Lee, Richard Henry, 138, 337
Lee, William, 337-338
Lees of Westmoreland County, 337
Legitimists, 336 and fn. 21
Lennox, Lady Sarah, 389
Leslie, Colonel, 187
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 457
"Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol," 283
letters and pamphlets, opinion influ-
enced by, 284-285
Lexington (ship), 356
Lexington, fighting at, see Concord

and Lexington
riot after news of, 256
Life and Correspondence of Major

Carttvright, 254 fn. 32-34
Life and Writings of Turgot, The, 319

fn.

Life of Adam Smith, 52 fn., 273 fn. 25
Life of Doctor Franklin (by Jared

Sparks), 353 fn. 52
Life of General Sir Robert Wilson, 247

fn.
Life of Lord Lynedoch (by Dclavoye),

171 fn.

Life of Lord Mansfield, 215 fn 18
Life of Samuel Johnson, LLJ).f The

(by Boswell), 213 m., 263 fn. 7
lightning-conductors, Franklinfs, 348 m,
Ligonier, Lord (John, Earl), 90 fn.
Lincoln, Earl of (Lord Thomas Pelham

Clinton), 536, 539
Literary Club, 408

573

Literary History (of the American Rev-
olution), Prof. Tyler's, 141 fn.,
1 60 fn., 269 fn.
Literature (periodical), 208 fn.
Lives of Andrew Robinson Bowes and
the Countess of Strathmore, The,
242 fn.
Lives of the Lord Chancellors (by Lord

Campbell), 403 fn. 15
Lives of the Poets (by Dr. Johnson),

289

Livingston, Robert R., 335 fn.
Lomenie, Louis de, Beaumarchais, et

Son Temps, 324 fn.
London, riots in:
after Lexington, 256
Gordon riots, 522-527
"London Chronicle," 213
London Daily Advertiser, The 294 fn.
''London Gazette," 200, 212, 213, 260,

548

Long Island campaign, 221, 239
Lord Advocates of Scotland (by

Omond), 161 fn., 514 fn.
Lord Roctyngham's Memoirs, 202 fn. 5
Lords Lieutenants, 489 ff.
Loughborough, Lord, see Wedderburn
Louis the Fifteenth, 308, 309
Louis the Sixteenth, 310, 315, 316, 317,

326-327, 355

Louisburg, siege of, 162-163
Lowther, Sir James, 476, 502, 553
Loyal Militia, 186-187
Loyalists, 133 if.

Loyalists of the American Revolution,
Biographical Sketches of the (by
Sabine) 60 fn., 80 fn. 17, 137 fn. n,
184 fn., 267 fn. 14
Lumley, Lord, 489
Luttrell, Temple, 397
Lynedoch, Lord (Thomas Graham,

Baron), 171

Lyttleton, Lord (George, Baron), 280,
386-387

Macartney, Sir George, 99-100
Macaulay, (Mrs.) Catharine, 11 fn. 5,
279-282

574

Macaulay, Hannah More, xii-xiii
Macaulay, Lord (Thomas Babington),

xiii, xvi, xvii, 3, 218 £n. 22, 229 fn.,

280 fn. 36, 357 fn. 57
Mackrabie, Alexander, 51, 53 fn., 54,

60, 67-68

Magnanime (ship), 253, 254
Mahan, (Admiral) Alfred Thayer, 163

fn., 305 fn. ii, 315 fn., 551 fn. 5
Malesherbes, Chretien Guillaume de

Lamoignon de, 321
Malmesbury, Lord, see Harris, Sir

James

Malpkquet, 231
Maltzan, Comte de, 200 fn. 4, 205, 206

fn., 328 fn. 8, 330 fn., 340
Manchester, Duke of, 145
Mann, Sir Horace, 260 fn. 4
Walpole's correspondence with, 272-

273, 543

manners in America, 19 ff .
Mansfield, Lord (William Murray, Earl

of), 214, 226, 235 fn., 266 fn. 12,

381, 440, 512, 523
manufacturing in the colonies, 77
March, Earl of, 400, 407
Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria,

320 fn.

Marie Antoinette, 312-313, 320, 325, 331
Markham, (Archbishop) William, 102,

236 fn. 4
Marlborough, (John Churchill) Duke

of, 231, 469

Marriage of Figaro, 324
Marryat, (Captain) Frederick, 235 fn.
Mason, Rev. William, 104-105, 250, 280,

480-481
Massachusetts:

annulment of charter of, 119
dissolution of Assembly of, 130
justice in, administration of, 119-120
resistance to oppression by, 131-133
"Massachusettensis," 184
Maurepas, Comte de, 313-314, 317, 327
Melville, Lord, 171
Memoir of the Life and Character of

the Right Hon. Edmund Burfa
(by Prior), 442 fn. 30

Memoir of the Eight Honourable Hugh

Elliot, 341 fn. 31
Memoires of George the Second (by H.

Walpole), 396 fn.
Memoires par M. Le Comte de Segur,

(etc.), 297 fo-> 307 fn. 16
Memoirs of Granville Sharp Esq., 252

fn.

Memoirs of John Home Too\e, 15-16
Memoirs of Major-General Lee, 64 fn.
Memoirs of Sir Philip Francis, 51, 53 fn.
Memoirs of the Reign of King George

the Third (by Walpole), 305 fn.,

308 fn., 314 fn., 442 fn. 31
mercenary troops, public opinion of,

301-302

Mercy, Comte de, 320
Meredith, Sir William, 75
Mesdames de France, 324
Michelet, Jules, 317
Militia, augmentation of, 427-428

need for, 489

Minden Court-Martial, 548
Minorca, loss of, 552
Minto, Earl of, see Elliot, Sir Gilbert
Minute-men, 179, 180, 190
Mitchell, Sir Andrew, 340
"Mohairs," 67
Monckton, Robert, 250
Monmoutfi Court House, battle at, 293,

294, 363

Monroe Doctrine, 359
Montagu, Admiral, 82, 83
Montagu, Frederick, 540
Montcalm, (General) Marquis de,

423

Montcalm and Wolfe, 65-66, 163 fn.,
186 fn.

Montesquieu, 32, 310

Montgomery, (General) Richard, 221-
222, 223

Moore, Sir John, 170-171

Morellet, Abbe (Andre), 207, 299

Moritz, Charles P., Travels . . . through
. . . England in 1782, 21-22, 397 fn.
6

"Morning Chronicle and London Ad-
vertiser," 212, 294

''Morning Post and Daily Advertiser,"
213, 216, 379, 399 fn., 525-526, 529,
538

Morris, Richard B., introduction by,
xi-xxiii

Mulgrave, Lord, 61

musket, new French, 307

Mutiny Act, 180-181

Namier, Sir Lewis, xviii-xix, xxii
National Debt (1782), 555-556
Nationalism, principle of, 296 fn. 2
Navy, British, decline of, under Sand-
wich, 247, 305
Navy, French, strengthening of, 304-

3o6

Necker, Jacques, 355

Nelson, Henry Loomis, 208 fn.

Nelson, Lord, 253 fn.

neutrality, violations of, 302-303

neutrals, English violation of rights of,

46^467
New England, Parliament's view of

character of, 117
Newcastle, Duke of, 536
newspapers, 211-223

censorship of, 214-216

threats against, 488-489
Newton, John, 24, 93-96, 546
Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, 280 fn.

37

Noailles, Marquis de, 344, 361
nobility, careers of, 18-19
non-importation agreements, 77, 95,

148-149
Norfolk, Duke of (Charles Howard),

441

North, Lord (Frederick), 18, 74, 75,
89, 9i, 92, 99, "4, n7-ii9> 129,
156 £E., 222, 238, 368, 381, 385, 392,
419, 483, 494, 498, 510, 513-519
passim, 528, 540, 556, 558
and Gibbon, 534
and the National Debt, 555
conciliation attempts, 152-154
fall of, 207, 212, 559
North, Roger, 214, 215 fn. 18
"North Briton," 212, 215 fn. 18, 216

575

Norton, Sir Fletcher, 438, 513-514, 517,

540

Northumberland, Duchess of, 538 fn. 23
Nugent, Lord, 509, 513, 514

Oakes, Lieutenant, 233-234

Observations on a late publication in-
titled "The Present State of the
Nation" (by Burke), 77 fn., 420
fn. 4

"Observations on a late State of the
Nation," 282-283

Observations on the Commerce of the
American States (by Sheffield),
555-556 and fn. 10

O'Connell, Daniel, 479

odes, parodies of, 218-220

CEil de Bceuf, 312

officers (British), character of, 64-68
refusal of to fight colonists, 244-255,

485
disorderliness of younger, 256

Oldmixon, John, 280 fn. 36

Oliver, (Lieutenant-Governor)

Andrew, 111-112, 113-114, 176

Oliver, (Chief Justice) Peter, 263

Oliver, Thomas, 267 fn. 14

Omond, G. W. T., Lord Advocates of
Scotland, 161 fn., 514 fn.

Osgood, Herbert L., xvii

Ossory, Countess of, 203 fn. 8, 260 fn.

5

Ostermann, Count d', 338 fn. 23
Otis, James, 155

Palmerston, Lord, 538 fn. 24

Panin, Count, 465 fn. 13

"Paper of Hints for Conversation," 167

Pares, Richard, xix

Parkman, Francis, 65-66, 163 fn., 186

fn.

Parliament, confusion in, after York-
town, 548-550
parliamentary reform:

agitation for, 474 ff., 496-497

Burke's plans for, 506-508, 510 £E.

Cartwright on, 484-487

Fox on, 483-484

576

Savile on, 482-483
Turgot's advice on, 474

Parr, Samuel, 403

Peel, Sir Robert, 427

Peggy Stewart (brig), 149

Pembroke, Lord (Henry Herbert, Earl
of), 490, 491

Penal Acts of 1774 against Boston, 116

ff., 140
against Roman Catholics, 440-443

pensioners and sinecurists, 509, 510-511

People's Barrier against Undue In-
fluence and Corruption," (by Cart-
wright), 487

Percy, (General) Lord Hugh, 191, 192,
193, 254, 485

Personal Government, policy of, 201 ff.,
297 ff., 368, 515; see also power
of the Crown and George the
Third

Pery, Edmund Sexton, Viscount, 444
fn.

Peters, Dr. Samuel, 184

Petition of Rights, 515

Petre, Lord, 441, 448-449

Philadelphia, English evacuation of,
295

physicians, treatment of, 136

Physiologic de Gout, 52

Piccinni, Niccolo, 308

Pitt, James Charles, 383

Pitt, Lord (John) army service of,

248-249, 383, 385
in Parliament, 385 fn. 19

Pitt, William (the elder), see Chatham

Pitt, William (the younger), 44, 65,
248 fn. 19, 249, 261, 383, 419, 474,
545-546, 553

"Polecat Detected, The," see Shebbeare

Political Life of Viscount Barringtont
The, 193 fn.

political literature, 282 ff.

Pomeroy, Seth, 185-186

Pompadour, Madame dc, 304, 308, 314
fn., 323, 329, 460

Poor Richard's Almanac, 40, 348

Port Act, see Boston Port Act

Portland, Duke of, 560

Potemkin, Prince, 464

power of the Crown, 428-439, 477, 497

Pownall, (Governor) Thomas, 61, 62

fn., 119, 122, 153

Pratt, Lord Chief Justice, sec Camden
press, subsidizing of the, 379 ff .
Preston, Captain, 73, 74, 76, 81, 120,

182

Price, Doctor Richard, 285, 505
Priestley, Joseph, 114
Princeton College, 139
Prior, James, 442 fn. 30
privateering, 302, 356-357 and fn. 57
Prohibitory Act, 227
Protestant Association, The, see Friends

of the Protestant Interest, The
Prussian military training, 339-340
"Public Advertiser," 212, 498-499
"Public Ledger," 213
Pufrendorf, 422
Pulaski, (General) Count, 311
Putnam, Israel, 42, 59, 65, 137, 150, 177
Putnam, James, 53

quartering of soldiers, 123
Quarterly Review, 385 fn. 20
Queensberry, Duke of, 30
Quiberon Bay, battle in, 253-254
Quincy, Josiah, 73

Rae, John, 52 fn., 273 fn. 25
Raikes, Robert, 24
Rangers, Putnam's, 65
Rawdon, Lord, 247 fn.
Rawlins, William, 80 fn. 17
Raynal, Abbe", 355

refugees, American, in England, 263 ££.
Reminiscences of James Carlyle, 31 fn.
Revolutionary Anecdotes, 67 fn.
Revenue Acts of 1767, 4 ff.
Rhododendron Walk, 400 fn. 10
Richmond, Duke of, 99, 100, 101, 104,
106, 209-210, 216, 401, 486, 491,

524, 559

as Lord Lieutenant of Sussex, 490-491
Ridley, Sir Matthew White, 244
Riedesel, (General), Baron Friedrich

Adolph von, 9, 21

Rigby, Richard, xxii, 17-18, 98, 102,
154-155, 1^2, 164, 165, 438-439,
474, 488, 498, 512, 527, 540-541,
562

Rivington, James, 220

Robertson, (Doctor) William, 274-276,
520, 521 and fn. 4

Robinson, John, 429, 489, 518, 527, 528,

549

Robinson, Sir Thomas, 403 fn. 17
Rochford, Lord, 75, 325
Rockingham, Lord, xx, 2-4, 61, 98, 99-

101, 109, 123, 145, 155, 283 fn.,

419, 476

Ministry of, 559-563 passim
on parliamentary reform, 487, 488
Rodney, (Admiral) George Brydges,

3o6, 535-536, 539, 540, 561
Roman Catholics, oppression of, 440-

. 443, 449
riots against, 520-527

Roosevelt, Theodore, opinion of
Trevelyan, xi

Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 310, 349, 350

Rowlandson, Thomas, 411

Royall, Isaac, 134-135

Rules and Regulations for the Mas-
sachusetts army, 180

Russell, Earl, 500

Ruville, Albert von, William Pitt, Earl
of Chatham, 376 fn.

Sabine, Lorenzo, Biographical Sketches
of the Loyalists of the Revolution,
60 fn., 80 fn. 17, 137 fn. u, 184 fn.,
267 fn. 14

Sackville, Lord George, see Germaine

St. Clair, (General) Arthur

Saint Lucie, battle of, 468-469

St. Vincent, Lord John Jervis, Earl of,
147, 253 fn.

Salem, Colonel Leslie's attempt on, 187

Saltonstall, Colonel, 134

Sandwich, Lord (John Montagu, Earl
of), xxii, 2, 29, 41, 82, 83, 162-163,
167, 232-233, 478-479, 489, 527, 535,

552
charged with negligence, 550-551

577

Saratoga, battle of, 292, 358, 548
Savile, Sir George, 104, 106, 107, 243,

298, 392, 442, 449, 476, 528-529
character of, 482
in militia, 489
memorial of, 477-478
on reforms, 482-483, 509 £E.
Savile Act, petition against, 521
Sawbridge, John, 122, 232-235, 280, 496
Sayre, Stephen, 339
Schiller, 457
scholarship in English universities, 273-

274

Schulenburg, Baron de, 339 fn. 25
Scotch, English dislike of the, 224-230,

256

Scott, Sir Walter, 276 fn. 28
scouting expedition in New England,

English, 187-189
Segur, Comte de, 20, 22, 23, 26, 55-56,

310-311, 350
Selwyn, George, 9, 30, 79, 198, 269,

390, 400, 406, 409, 494, 495, 543,

552-553, 559
Seven Years' War, 172, 206, 231, 250,

296, 304, 329> 379, 386, 470
Sewall, Jonathan, 32, 34, 133
Sharp, Granville, 251-253

agitation against slavery by, 484
Shebbeare, John, xxii, 286-287
Sheffield, Lord (John Baker Holroyd,

Earl), 79, 543
Observations on the Commerce of

the American States, 555-556 and

fn. 10
Shelburne, Lord (William Petty Fitz-

maurice, Earl of), xx, 8, 28, 75,

123 fn., 207, 299, 354, 403 fn. 17,

490, 491, 498-499, 503-506, 560,

563

character of, 503-505
economic reform, 505-506
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 557, 559
ships, conditions aboard English, 253

fn.

"Short Account of a Short Administra-
tion," 98, 283
Shrewsbury, Earl of, 441

578

Sinclair, Sir John, 273

slave trade, condemnation of, by colo-
nies, 140-141

slavery, Granville Sharp's fight against,

251-252

Lord Mansfield's declaration, 266 fn.
12

Sloane, Sir Hans, no

"slovenly John," see Marlborough

Smelt, Leonard, 476-477

Smith, Adam, 24, 52 fn., 273, 444

Smollett, Tobias, 15, 235 fn., 305

smuggling, 78-80

Somerset (slave), 266 fn. 12

Sons of Liberty, 7, 100, 136, 177

Sorel, Albert, 300 fn.

Spain, situation of, 336

Sparks, Jared, Life of Doctor Fran\-
lin, 353 fn. 52

Spectator, The, 45

Speech on Conciliation with America
(Burke), 283, 419

Stamp Act, object of the, 60
repeal of the, 1-5, 88, 97, 117, 155,
369

Stanhope, Lady Hester, 372 fn.

Stanhope, Lord, 163 fn.

Steeven/s Facsimiles, 387 f n. 24

Stephen Popp's Journal, 301 fn.

Stephens, Walter, 319 fn.

Steuart, Charles, 266 fn. 12

Stewart, Dugald, 275 fn.

Storer, Anthony, 544-545

Stormont, Viscount, 316-317, 345, 361

Strafford, Earl of, 201

Strathmore, Countess of, 242

Stringer, (Reverend) William, 128 fn.

Suffolk, Earl of, 145, 163, 341 fn. 31,

423
Suffren, (Bailli) Pierre Andre de, 306,

56i

Sullivan, (General) John, 423 fn. 7
Surrey, Earl of, 441
Sykes, John, 234 fn.

Table Tafy (by Cowper), 547
Taine, H. A., L'Ancien Regime, 310 fn.
18

Talbot, Lord (Richard Tyrconnel, Earl

of)> 433-434
Talleyrand, Prince, 459
Task, The, (by Cooper), 16, 377
'Taxation no Tyranny" (by Dr. John-
son), 288, 289, 559
abbreviated version, 291
taxes, Canon Mason's plan for non-
payment o£, 481
tea-drinking in America, 85-86
Tea-duty, 4 £., 74-76, 79, 86-87, 123,

143, 515

Burke's oration against, 125-126
George the Third on, 515
Thackeray, William M., 242
Thane's Cabinet, 225-226
Thanksgiving, 181
Thomas Maurice, Memoirs of, 403 fn.

16

Thornton, John, 93, 96
"Thoughts on the Cause of die Present

Discontents" (Burke), 282-283, 419,

428 fn. n, 429 fn. 12
'Thoughts on the late Transactions

Respecting the Falkland Islands,"

287-288
Thurlow, Lord (Edward, Baron), 83,

98, 387, 439, 549> 55£ 5&>
Tories, American, 16
town-meetings, prohibition of, 118-119,

132
Townshend, Charles, xxi, 4, 34, 46, 60,

74, 99 126, 222 fn., 510
Townshend, Jack, 495, 538, 559
Townshend, Thomas, 287, 549, 559
Transvaal war, 210

Travels in America, by Davis, 10 fn. 3
Travels . . . through . . . England in

1782 (by Moritz), 397 fn. 6
Treaty of Paris (1763), 296, 304 fn., 314
Treaty of Paris (1778), 359, 360
Treaty of 1782, 353
Trenton and Princeton victories, results

of, 194-195. 199

Trevelyan, Caroline (Philips), xiii-xiv
Trevelyan, Sir Charles, xiii
Trevelyan, George Macaulay, xiv, xvi
Trevelyan, Sir George Otto, xi-xxiii

Trevelyan, Sir John, 242, 243, 244

Tubbs, John, 235

Tucker, Doctor Josiah, Dean of Glou-
cester, 285-286, 318 fn. 32

Turgot^ Anne Robert Jacques, 121, 316-
32i? 33i, 352

Turner, Frederick Jackson, xvii

Tyler, (Professor) Moses Coit, i fn.,
141 fn., 160 fn., 269 fn,

Vassall, John, 134

Vattel's Law of Nations, 334 464 fn.
Verac, Ambassador, 338 fn. 23
Vergennes, Comte de, 314-317. 3*8, 322,

323 fn., 327, 332, 344, 354, 358,

456, 466

Victory (ship), 560
Virginia, condemnation of skve trade

by, 140-141
Volpato, 404 fn.
Voltaire, 56 fn., 200, 310, 321, 323, 349,

359. 38o

wagers about war, 260-261, 309
wages in America, 51-53
Wallace, Attorney General, 557
Walpole, Horace, xxii, 17, 30, 43, 100,
108, 119 fn., 146-147, 151, 203, 260,
279, 280, 299 fn., 314 fn., 321, 372,
384, 387, 405, 407, 411, 425, 501,

527. 55i
Walpole, Sir Robert, 18, 372, 379, 427,

549

"war of posts," theory of, 554
Warburton, (Bishop) William, 2
Ward, George Atkinson, 260 fn. 2
warlike stores, trade in, 302
Warner, Dr., 539
Warren, James, 128
Warren, Joseph, 55, 176, 179, 182, 191
Warren, (Admiral) Sir Peter, 162
wars of England, reasons for, 295
war-weariness in England, 493
Washington, George, 30, 43-44, 60, 91,

138, 150, 192, 367
military reputation of, 194-197
remaking of Continental army by,

196-197

579

Washington, George (cont.)
treatment of by English newspapers,

223

Watson, George, 131-132
Watt, James, 24
Wayne, Anthony, 366
Webster, John, 58 fn.
Wedderburn, Alexander (Lord Lough-
borough), 45, 98, 114, 1 15» IX9 fa-9
151, 161, 163, 509, 512, 556-557
Wedgwood, Josiah, 24
Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, ist Duke

of, 171, 194

Wentworth, (Governor) John, 266-267
Wesley, John, 24, 92-93, 96, 210, 240,

479

attitude toward America, 289-292
Westminster Hall Meeting, 496-497
Weymouth, Lord (Thomas Thynne,

Viscount), xxii, 2, 75, 327 fn. 5,

456

Wharton, (Doctor) Francis:
Digest of International Law, 353 fn.

51
Diplomatic Correspondence, 333 fn.

15
Introduction, 343 fn. 34, 345 fn. 40,

347 &• 43

Whitefield, George, 39, 40, 92
Whitehall Evening Post, 542
Whitehead, William, 538 fn. 23
White's (club), 408
Wilberforce, William, 479, 556
Wilkes, John, 46, 62, 94-95, 108, 120,

152, 212, 215 fn. 18, 216, 227, 325,

403, 437, 496, 502, 5i5-5i6, 525
William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (by

Albert von Ruville), 376 fn.
William the Third, 231, 441
Wilson, Doctor, and Mrs. Macaulay,

280-281

Wilson, (General) Sir Robert, 237 fn.
Windham, William, 544 and fn.
Wolfe, (General) James, 66, 168, 221,

222, 223, 250, 374
women, education of, 54-55

American chivalry toward, 135
'World Turned Upside Down," 541
Wyndham, Sir William, no

"Yankee Doodle," 183
York, Duke of, 544 and fn.
Yorktown, 374, 541, 543> 5
Young, Admiral, 540
Young, Arthur, 24, 79

580

(continued, from front flap)

aspect. Xlie focus is on politics, man-
ners, and. ideas, the areas where Tre-
velyan's master touch is most apparent
and wherein he is generally considered,
to have made his most enduring con-
tribution. In the words of the editor,
"no other volumes have succeeded- in
capturing as faithfully the drama, the
wit, and the manners of the generation
that governed and lost the first British
Empire"; and while the account does
full justice to the Patriot cause, "no-
where else will one find a more sym-
pathetic treatment of the British oppo-
nents of King and Ministry, whose
stand may be said to have turned, a
revolution in America into a civil war
in England."

The work, which was an interna-
tional event in history and belles lettres
when it appeared, has been out of print
for a number of years and has never
before been available in one volume.
A whole new generation of read.ers
may now enjoy, in Henry James'
words, the "literary temper" of Tre-
velyan's work, "this beautiful quality
of composition, and feeling of the
presentation, grasping reality all the
whole, and controlling and playing
with detail."

Jacket el&sign by Chris Simon

McKAY COMPANY, INC.
New York:

CD ;

103717

THE

AMERICAN
REVOLUTION

GEORGE OTTO TREVELYAN

A reissue in one volume of a six-volume work,
ited. arranged and with an introduction and notes b)

RICHARD B. MORRIS

KNKl'R MORRIS I'ROl l.SSOR OK HISTORY. COLUMBIA 1'N1VKR>