Peace was voted notwithstanding. Lord Bute had felt the need of support in the House of Commons against the thundering eloquence of Pitt. He had called Henry Fox, who lacked neither adroit eloquence nor insidious manipulations. His personal experience had taught him to judge men severely. The aged Lord Grey was asked in our time who was the last English minister susceptible of being corrupted. He unhesitatingly answered, "Lord Holland."
England had achieved a glorious peace. She was fatigued from her long efforts, and resolved henceforward to leave to the continental powers the care of settling their own quarrels. Austria and Prussia alone were left, the first to enter the lists, the only nations which retained a serious interest in the questions in dispute. Frederick the Great had based new hopes on the young czar, and a caprice of fortune had robbed him of his support. Catherine II., Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst, was on bad terms with her husband. She took advantage of the indiscretions of Peter III. to excite a military insurrection against him. He was deposed, and shortly after died in his prison. Catherine was proclaimed sovereign in his place. The new sovereign was bold, ambitious, and as unscrupulous in her greed for power as in her private life. She remained neutral between Prussia and Austria. The states were at the end of their resources, the population decimated. In ten years Berlin had lost a tenth of her population, and thirty thousand of her inhabitants owed their subsistence to public charity. The two sovereigns agreed to an interchange of conquests.All this disturbance and all this suffering ended for Germany in the maintenance of thestatu quo. France was exhausted, deprived of her most flourishing colonies, degraded in her own eyes as well as in those of Europe. She had dragged Spain along in her misfortune. England alone emerged triumphant and aggrandized with booty. She had gained forever the Empire of India, and for some years at least almost the whole of civilized America obeyed her laws. She had gained what we had lost, not by the superiority of her arms, nor even of her generals, but by the natural and innate force of a free people skillfully and nobly governed.
The peace had been accepted by the nation as well as by the Houses, but ill-will existed against Lord Bute, a Scotchman and favorite, who was attacked on all sides, both in pamphlets and in Parliament. More jealous of his influence with the royal family than he was of power, Lord Bute resolved to resign. He had written to one of his friends: "Isolated in a cabinet which I have formed, having no one to support me in the House of Lords but two peers, who are friends of mine, with my two secretaries of state maintaining silence, and the Lord Chancellor, whom I placed in his position, voting and speaking against me, I find myself upon ground which is undermined beneath me, and which makes me dread not only to fall myself, but to drag my royal master with me in my fall. It is time that I should retire." George Grenville succeeded him in power, and Fox passed to the House of Lords with the title of Lord Holland.
A brother-in-law of Pitt, who had never submitted to his domination, George Grenville was bold, presumptuous, and short-sighted, violent in his methods and methodical in his administration. The defects of his temper and character caused serious embarrassments to the government which he directed, and drew down great mishaps upon England. He pursued with obstinacy John Wilkes, the pamphleteer, and proposed to apply the stamp tax to the American colonies.
John Wilkes, born in London in 1727, Member of Parliament for Aylesbury, blustering, ruined, corrupt, hideous in personal appearance, and given over to the most unbridled licentiousness of life, had sought a means of re-establishing his fortunes by founding a skillfully and audaciously edited journal, which he calledThe North Briton. Lord Bute had already been violently attacked by Wilkes, who was secretly encouraged, it is said, by Lord Temple; but no prosecution had been directed against him. In proroguing Parliament at the end of April, 1763, the king congratulated himself on the happy termination of the war; "so honorable," he said, "for my crown, and so happy for my people." Wilkes' journal attacked the speech in his forty-fifth number, dated April 23d. Eight days after, in spite of his parliamentary privilege, Wilkes was arrested at his own house and conducted to the Tower, where he remained some days in secret. In passing under the gloomy gate, Wilkes ironically asked to be lodged in the room which had formerly been occupied by the father of Lord Egremont, one of the ministers who had signed the order for his arrest. As soon as his friends received permission to visit him, Lord Temple and the Duke of Grafton hastened to see him. The public feeling overcame the dislike which the character of the accused generally inspired, and transports of joy broke out in the crowd when the Chief Justice, Sir Charles Pratt, firmly pronounced his acquittal. "We are all of the opinion," he said, "that a libel does not amount to a breach of the public peace. The most that can be said is that it tends to it, without being in consequence subject to the penalties of the law. I order that Mr. Wilkes be released."
For seven years to come, under different phases—sometimes in France, under pretext of obtaining cure for a wound received in a duel; sometimes in London as candidate for the House of Commons; outlawed by the Middlesex magistrates for his indecent pamphlets; chosen by the city as one of its representatives—John Wilkes was almost constantly before the public, sustained by the most diverse partisans, honest or corrupt; absorbed in those public liberties which they considered outraged in his person, or sympathetically interested in the audacious impiety which bore without blushing the banner of moral or political license. It was the error and the fault of the government to have alienated public opinion by imprudent prosecutions, thus assuring to Wilkes a popularity in no way deserved. When at last he died, in 1797, the venal and debauched pamphleteer had for a long time fallen into the obscurity and contempt from which he should never have emerged.
The Stamp Act has left its date and its ineradicable trace on the history of England, and of the world. Already for a long time under the influence of the rapid development of their prosperity and resources, the American colonies proudly defended their privileges, resenting the offensive investigations of the revenue officers, while admitting the right of the mother-country to that monopoly of commerce which they succeeded in violating by an active contraband trade. Submitting without trouble to the external taxes intended to regulate the commerce, the Americans claimed entire independence as regarded other duties.In 1692 the General Court of Massachusetts resolved that no tax could be imposed upon his Majesty's colonial subjects without the consent of the governor, the council, and the representatives assembled in General Court. It was this fundamental principle of the liberties of Great Britain, as well as of her colonies—that an English subject could not be taxed without his consent—that was openly violated in 1765 by the proposition of Mr. George Grenville. This financial expedient had been previously suggested to Sir Robert Walpole, but he answered with his usual good sense, "I have Old England already on my hands; do you suppose I wish to encumber myself in addition with New England? He will be a bolder minister than I who will assume that."
Grenville was naturally bold, as Cardinal de Retz said of Anne of Austria, because he was neither prudent nor far-sighted. He was at once absolute and without tact. The extension to the colonies of the stamp tax had been voted almost without opposition. Mr. Pitt himself had not protested. Thoughtlessly, and in consequence of the financial embarrassment brought on by the war, the English government, without systematic scheme, and withoutarrière pensée, had committed itself to a fatal line of policy in which the national pride was to sustain it too long. The taxes were light and could not entail any suffering on the colonists. They were the first to recognize this themselves. "What is the matter, and what are we disputing about?" said Washington in 1766. "Is it about the payment of a tax of threepence a pound on tea being too burdensome? No, it is the principle alone which we contest."
A general and speedily riotous protestation was made in 1765, in New England, in the name of the rights of the colonies, unjustly violated by the pretensions of the metropolis. At Boston the people arose and broke into the house of the distributors of stamped paper. The ships which happened to be in port lowered their flags to half-mast, in token of mourning, and the church bells sounded the funeral toll. At Philadelphia the inhabitants spiked the cannons on the ramparts. At Williamsburg the House of Burgesses of Virginia resounded with the most violent menaces, and in the midst of the discussion of the Stamp Act, Patrick Henry, who was still very young, uttered these words: "Caesar found his Brutus, Charles I. his Cromwell, and George III. … !" "Treason! treason!" cried the royalists. "And George III. will doubtless profit from their example," retorted the young orator. The remonstrance which he had proposed was voted.
The attitude of the American people and the numerous petitions which revealed it had warned Pitt of the danger. He openly attacked the cabinet and called for the repeal of the Stamp Act. "The colonists," said he, "are subjects of this kingdom, entitled equally with yourselves to the special privileges of Englishmen. They are bound by English laws, and to the same extent as we. They have a right to the liberties of this country. The Americans are the sons, and not the bastards, of England. When we agree in this House to the subsidies to his Majesty, we dispose of that which belongs to ourselves; but when we impose a tax on the Americans, what are we doing? We, the Commons of England, give what to his Majesty? Our personal property? No. We give the property of the Commons of America. It is a contradiction of terms. I demand that the Stamp Act be repealed, absolutely, completely, immediately; that the reason of the repeal shall be proclaimed.The principle on which the act was based was false. At the same time let the supreme authority of this country over her colonies be clearly affirmed in the most decided terms that can be imagined. We can bind their commerce, restrain their manufactures, and exercise our power under every form. We cannot, we should not, take the money in their pockets without their consent."
The honor of obtaining from the English Parliament the repeal of an unjust measure was reserved for a new and more moderate minister. George Grenville, beaten and overthrown, remained obstinately attached to the cause on which he had entered. "If the tax were still to impose, I should impose it," said he; "the enormous expenses that were caused by the German war have made it necessary. The eloquence which the author of this proposal brings to bear to-day against the constitutional authority of Parliament renders it indispensable. I do not envy him his applause. I take pride in your hisses. If the thing were still to do, I should begin again."
Twice already since George Grenville had taken the reins of power, the king, soon wearied of his arrogant rule, had asked Pitt to free him from it. The new reason for disagreement had just increased the bitterness between George III. and his minister. The monarch, suffering and ill, had felt the first attacks of that malady which was at recurrent intervals to cloud his faculties, and which at last plunged him into an insanity that only ended with his life. Barely recovered, the young king, with touching firmness and resignation, himself proposed to his ministers the question of a regency. The Prince of Wales was not yet three years old. The act prepared by George Grenville and his colleagues excluded the princess dowager from the regency on the ground that she was not of the royal family.The hatred and jealousy inspired by Lord Bute, which always operated strongly upon both mother and son, had suggested the singular interpretation of the legal text. For a moment the king agreed with a melancholy sweetness; but the insult offered his mother soon wounded him, and he resolved to escape at last from the tyranny which weighed upon him. Formerly he feared the junta of the great Whig lords. It appeared to him less formidable than George Grenville and the Duke of Bedford. The Duke of Cumberland, in the king's name, visited Mr. Pitt, who was sick and detained in the country. Pitt refused to assume the direction of affairs without the assistance of Lord Temple. The latter was particularly hostile to Lord Bute, and personally compromised in relation to the king. George III. would not submit. Negotiations resulted finally in the formation of a Whig cabinet, which was really honest and dull. The Marquis of Rockingham was its chief. It was in his service and as his private secretary that Edmund Burke for the first time took part in public affairs and entered Parliament.
The only important act of Lord Rockingham's ministry was the repeal of the Stamp Act, accompanied by a contradictory declarative clause which proclaimed the right of Parliament to bind by its decrees the colonies under any circumstances whatever. This fruitful seed of new dissensions passed unperceived in the first outburst of American joy and of the triumph of the friends of liberty in England. Mr. Pitt was already on the threshold of power. Lord Rockingham, involved with a new party, which was known under the name of the king's friends, saw his authority rendered powerless and his honest intentions feebly fulfilled.The king desired to get rid of the Whigs at any price, without being obliged to submit again to George Grenville. Pitt once more agreed to become prime minister, but to the great astonishment and universal regret of his friends he abandoned at the same time the supreme empire which he had exercised in the House of Commons and entered the House of Lords with the title of Lord Chatham.
The cabinet which the new earl had formed was composed of diverse and contradictory elements. His powerful hand alone could preserve unity. "Lord Chatham," said Burke, "has composed a ministry so odd and hybrid, he has put together a checker-board so curiously divided and combined, he has constructed so strange a mosaic of patriots and conservatives, of the king's friends and of republicans, of Whigs and Tories, of perfidious friends and avowed enemies, that, strange as the sight may be, he is not sure of where he can put down his foot, and is unable to keep it there."
Lord Chatham found this out himself. In spite of the haughtiness of his character, he felt that the wind of popularity did not bear him as in the past upon its powerful wings. He was sick, defiant, and jealous of his colleagues, and ill at ease at the bottom of his heart in the new atmosphere of the House of Lords. He had conceived large projects for the reform of the administration in India. He caused an investigation to be proposed in the House of Commons, and the proposition came from Alderman Beckford, who did not form part of the administration. Soon after he withdrew to the country. Strange rumors spread abroad as to his state of mind. Lady Chatham refused absolutely to allow any of his colleagues to have access to him.The discords within the cabinet increased, and the feebleness and the hitches of the government became more striking. Charles Townshend, a brilliant orator, witty and clever, had just died at the age of forty-three. Intrigues multiplied in the Houses and at court. The king renewed his entreaties to Lord Chatham. "I am ready," said he, "to go find you, if it is impossible for you to come to see me." Gout had again attacked the prime minister, replacing, we are assured, a more cruel malady. Lord Chatham finally consented to receive the Duke of Grafton. "I expected to find him very sick," writes the duke in his memoirs, "but his condition exceeded all that I had imagined. The sight of this great intellect, overwhelmed and weakened by suffering, would have profoundly affected me, even if I had not been for a long time sincerely attached to his person and his character." As a matter of fact and practically, the Duke of Grafton had become prime minister many months before Lord Chatham finally resolved, in October, 1768, to send in his resignation. Sir Charles Pratt, now Lord Camden, and the honor of the bench as well from the purity of his character as from his oratorical talent, still held up the tottering ministry. The importance of Lord North, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, continued to increase from day to day.
Melancholy is the spectacle of a great light which is going out, and of a power once supreme losing its influence over men. Lord Chatham had the good fortune to cast a final gleam before falling forever. After two years of a mysterious retreat, he reappeared in public life in 1769, and the Duke of Grafton's ministry could not withstand his attacks. Lord North, still young, and without high political ambition, of an amiable character, and personally agreeable to the king, had just accepted the heavy burden of power (January, 1770).Lord Chatham pretended to see in this new combination that persistent influence of Lord Bute which was a favorite theme for the attacks of the pamphleteers, whether it was a question of John Wilkes, or of that mysterious writer, still hidden after more than a hundred years, under the name of Junius. "Who does not know," he cried, "that Mazarin, though absent from France, was always there; and do we not know an analogous case? When I was recently called to public service, I hastened upon the wings of my zeal. I agreed to preserve a peace which I detested—a peace which I should not have made, but which I was resolved to maintain because it had been made. I was credulous, I admit, but I was taken in; I was deceived; the same mysterious influence still existed. My cruel experience has at length painfully convinced me that behind the throne there is hidden something greater than the throne itself."
The situation of affairs in America became each day more serious. On his accession to office. Lord Chatham had consented to extract a revenue from the colonies. A customs law had established taxes upon tea, glass, and paper, creating a permanent administration for collecting external imposts. The distinction which the colonists had previously established was thus turned against them, and they abandoned it forever. The time for legal fictions was past. [Footnote 1]
[Footnote 1: Cornelis de Witt's History of Washington.]
In truth there was already between the government of George III. and the colonies something besides a constitutional and financial question. The Americans were no longer simple subjects of the metropolis, merely struggling against such an abuse of power or such a violation of right. It was one people aroused against the oppression of another people, whatever might be the form or the name of that oppression. Still attached to the mother country by the ties of a secular fidelity, and ardently refraining from all aspirations towards independence, they were still dominated by a supreme sentiment—love for the American country, for its grandeur, its liberty, its force. "You are taught to believe that the people of Massachusetts is a rebel people, uprisen for independence," wrote Washington as late as the 9th of October, 1774. "Permit me to tell you, my good friend, that you are deceived, grossly deceived. I can assure you, as a matter of fact, that independence is neither the desire nor the interest of that colony, nor of any other on the continent, separately or collectively. But at the same time you may be sure that not one of them will ever submit to the loss of those privileges, of those precious rights which are essential to every free state, and without which liberty, property, and life are deprived of all security."
America did not fall below her destiny. "From 1767 to 1774," says Cornelis de Witt, in his history of Washington, "there were formed everywhere patriotic leagues against the consumption of English merchandise and the exportation of American products. All exchange between the metropolis and the colonies ceased. In order to drain the sources of England's riches in America, and to constrain it to open its eyes to its folly, the colonists recoiled before no privation and no sacrifice. Luxury had disappeared. Rich and poor accepted ruin rather than abandon their political rights." "I expect nothing more from the petitions to the king," said Washington, already one of the firmest champions of American liberties, "and I should oppose them if they were to suspend the non-importation agreement.As sure as I live, there is no alleviation to be expected for us except from the distress of Great Britain. I think, or at least I hope, that we retain sufficient public virtue to refuse everything except the necessities of life in order to obtain justice. That we have the right to do, and no power on earth can force us to alter our conduct before it has reduced us to the most abject slavery." … And he added, with a stern sense of justice, "As to the non-importation agreement, that is another thing. I admit that I have my doubts as to its legitimacy. We owe considerable sums to Great Britain. We can only pay them with our products. In order to have the right to accuse others of injustice we must be just ourselves; and how could we be so while refusing Great Britain to pay our debts? That is beyond my conception."
All minds were not so firm, nor all souls so just as Washington's. Resistance still continued legal, and the national effort was still retained within the limits of respect. The excitement became more lively every day, irritation more profound and more passionate. Order still reigned in almost all the colonies. Only at some principal places, and especially at Boston, the popular enthusiasm offered a pretext to the violence of George III. and his ministers. Jefferson himself, upon the eve of the drafting of the Declaration of Independence, wrote to Mr. Randolph, "Believe me, my dear sir, there is not a man in the whole British Empire who cherishes the union with Great Britain more heartily than I; but, by the God that made me, I should cease to exist sooner than accept that union on the terms which Parliament proposes. We lack neither motives nor power to declare and sustain our separation. 'Tis the will alone that fails us, and that increases little by little under the hand of our king."
When he was still Sir Charles Pratt, Lord Camden had once said, in 1759, to Franklin, who was charged with the management of the colonies' affairs in London, "In spite of all that you say of your loyalty, you Americans, I know that one day you will sever the bonds which unite you to us, and that you will raise the flag of independence." "No such idea exists, and it will never enter into the head of Americans," answered Franklin, "unless you maltreat them very scandalously." "That is true, and it is precisely one of the causes which I foresee, and which will bring about the consummation."
Lord Camden's prediction was sorrowfully fulfilled in England. Faults succeeded faults. The measures of the metropolitan government, whether indecisive or violent, increased the excitement of the colonies. All the new imposts had been abolished with the exception of the tax on tea, maintained from pride and for the purpose of sustaining a principle without hope of receiving from it a serious revenue. American resistance was immediately concentrated on the importation of tea. At the end of November, 1773, two vessels arrived from England and appeared before Boston. They were laden with tea. Their captains received orders to leave the harbor. They waited for a permit from the governor. The populace boarded them, pillaged the ships, and threw the chests of tea into the sea. George III. and his ministers had not understood the nature of the movement which was agitating America. They thought that they could chastise a riot by new rigors.The rights of the port of Boston were withdrawn, and the ancient charter of Massachusetts was rescinded. "I will tell you what the Americans have done," said Lord North; "they have maltreated the officers and subjects of Great Britain; they have despoiled our merchants, burnt our ships, refused all obedience to our laws and our authority. We have used a long patience in respect to them. It is time to adopt another line of conduct. Whatever may be the consequences, we must resign ourselves to running some risks, without which all is lost."
It was in the name of the eternal principles of justice and of liberty that Lord Chatham and his friends of the opposition protested against the measures adopted with reference to the colonies. "Liberty," said the great orator, passionately, employing in the struggle the remnant of his failing strength; "liberty is arrayed against liberty. They are indissolubly united in this great cause. It is the alliance of God and nature, immutable and eternal as the light in the firmament of heaven! Beware! Foreign war hangs over your heads by a light and fragile thread. Spain and France are watching your conduct, waiting the result of your errors. Their eyes are turned upon America, and they are more occupied with the disposal of your colonies than with their own affairs, whatever they may be. I repeat to you, my lords, if his Majesty's ministers persevere in their fatal designs, I do not say that they can alienate from him the affections of his subjects, but I affirm that they are destroying the greatness of the crown. I do not say that the king is betrayed; I say that the country is lost."
Young Charles Fox, second son of Lord Holland, who held an inferior office in the administration, had embraced the cause of the American colonies. Lord North wrote to him, on the 22d of February, "Sir—His Majesty has judged it wise to revise the Treasury Commission. I do not see your name there. [Signed] NORTH." The opposition received him into its ranks with joy. He had already given proof of the faults of his character and of the licentiousness of his life, yet at the same time he had secured the attachment of numerous and faithful friends, by his frank and open good-nature and by the generosity and sweetness of his soul. He had inspired in his adversaries a great admiration for his oratorical ability and the inexhaustible fertility of his wit. The young rival who was soon to dispute the pre-eminence with him and to vanquish him had not yet appeared on the horizon, except to sustain the feeble footsteps of his infirm father. The last time that Lord Chatham appeared in Parliament he was supported on the arm of the second William Pitt. Debates followed one another in the English Houses of Parliament. The opposition and the government exchanged proposals, which were conciliatory or perfidious, liberal or arbitrary, sustained in turn by the most eloquent voices. No measure, no speech, availed or could henceforth avail, to calm the growing irritation of the colonies. New England and Virginia, the sons of the Puritans and the descendants of the Cavaliers, marched at the head of the national movement, animated by the same spirit, however different were its manifestations. It was from Virginia that the call to arms came. Washington had said, with his usual moderation, "I do not pretend to indicate exactly what line it will be necessary to draw between Great Britain and the colonies, but I am decidedly of opinion that it will be necessary to draw one and to secure our rights definitively." Patrick Henry, less scrupulous and more ardent, uttered the war-cry. "We must fight," said he loudly, at the opening of the year 1775, at the session of the Virginia Convention; "an appeal to the sword and the God of armies is all that is left us." Already, in 1774, a general congress of all the provinces had met at Philadelphia, announcing a new session for the following year. Political resistance had henceforth found its centre. The day of armed resistance had come.
It was time for action. On the 18th of April, 1775, in the night, the choicest corps of the garrison of Boston went out of the town, by order of General Gage, governor of Massachusetts. The soldiers were as yet ignorant of their destination, but the "Sons of Liberty" had divined it. The governor had caused the gates of Boston to be shut. Some of the inhabitants, however, had found means of escape. They had spread the alarm in the country, and already the men were repairing to the posts designated beforehand. As the royal troops, approaching from Lexington, were confident of laying hands on two of the principal agitators, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, they stumbled in the night against a body of militia who guarded the way. The Americans remaining immovable before the command to withdraw, the English soldiers, led by their officers, fired. Some men fell. The war between England and America was entered on. The same evening Colonel Smith, in seeking to take possession of the supply depot formed at Concord, saw himself successively attacked by detachments hastily raised in all the villages. He retired in disorder, even as far as the shelter of the cannon of Boston. Some days later the town was besieged by an American army, and Congress, assembled at Philadelphia, appointed Washington general-in-chief of all the forces of the united colonies—"of all those which have been or which shall be raised there, and of all others which shall volunteer their services or shall join the army in order to defend American liberty and repulse every attack directed against her."
"There is a spectacle as fine as, and not less salutary than, that of a virtuous man struggling with adversity: it is the spectacle of a virtuous man at the head of a good cause and assuring its triumph. God reserved this good fortune for George Washington." [Footnote 2]
[Footnote 2: M. Guizot,Etude sur Washington.][Essay on the Character and Influence of Washington in the Revolution of the United States of America; page 13; http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/60668]
Born on the 22nd of February, on the banks of the Potomac, at Bridge's Creek in Virginia, the new general belonged to a good family of Virginia planters, descended from those country gentlemen who had formerly caused the English revolution. He lost his father at an early age, and was brought up by his mother, a distinguished woman, for whom he always preserved as much tenderness as respect. He had undergone in his youth a free and rough life as a land-surveyor. At the age of nineteen, during the war in Canada, he had taken his place in the militia of his country, and we have seen him fighting brilliantly by the side of General Braddock. When the war ended, his haughty discontent concerning a question of military rank brought him home again. His eldest brother was dead, and had left him the Mount Vernon estate. He settled there, became a great agriculturist and sportsman, was loved and esteemed of everybody, and was already the object of the confidence as well as the hopes of his fellow-citizens.
"Capable of raising himself to the highest destinies, he had been able to ignore himself without suffering from it, and to find in the cultivation of his land the satisfaction of those powerful faculties which were sufficient for the command of armies and the founding of a government. But when the occasion offered, when the necessity arrived, without effort on his part, without surprise on the part of others, the wise planter was a great man. He had in a high degree the two qualities which, in active life, render a man capable of great things. He knew how to believe firmly in his own idea, and to act resolutely according to what he thought, without fearing the responsibility of his action." [Footnote 3]
[Footnote 3: M Guizot,Etude sur Washington.][Essay on the Character and Influence of Washington in the Revolution of the United States of America; page 60; http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/60668]
He was moved and disquieted, however, at the beginning of the struggle, the burden of which was going to weigh on his shoulders. He did not unhesitatingly accept the choice of Congress. He did not delude himself either in his own regard, or in relation to his country, and the resources which were at his disposal. "I know my unfortunate position," wrote he to one of his friends. "I know that much is expected of me; I know that, without troops, without arms, without supplies, without anything that a soldier needs, almost nothing can be done; and what is very mortifying, I know that I can only justify myself in the eyes of the world by declaring my needs, by disclosing my weakness, and by doing wrong to the cause which we serve. I am determined not to do it!" Washington had resolutely accepted the bitterness of power in the heart of a revolution. "Among great men, if there have been those who have shone with more dazzling splendor," said M. Guizot, "no one has been put to a more complete proof—that of resisting in war and in government, in the name of liberty and in the name of authority, king and people, of commencing a revolution and of finishing it."
When the new general arrived before Boston in order to take command of the confused and undisciplined masses which crowded into the American camp, he learned that an engagement had taken place on the 16th of June, on the height of Bunker's Hill, which overlooked the town. The Americans had seized the positions, and had so bravely defended themselves there that the English had lost more than a thousand men before removing their batteries. Some months later, Washington was master of all the surroundings, and General Howe, who had replaced General Gage, was obliged to evacuate Boston (17th of March, 1776).
On the day after the battle of Bunker's Hill, and as a last effort of fidelity towards the metropolis. Congress had voted (July 1, 1775) a second petition to the king, which was called the Olive Branch, and which Richard Penn was charged with conveying to England. A numerous and considerable faction in the American assemblies were strongly in favor of loyal union with the mother-country. "Gentlemen," Mr. Dickinson, deputy from Pennsylvania, had recently said, "in the reading of the project of a solemn declaration, justifying the taking up of arms, there is only a single word of which I disapprove, and it is that ofCongress." "And for my part, Mr. President," said Mr. Harrison, rising, "there is in this paper only a single word of which I approve, and it is the wordCongress."
The petition of the thirteen united colonies received no answer. At the opening of the session on the 25th of October, 1775, the king's speech was clearly menacing. The Duke of Grafton had tendered his resignation as keeper of the privy seal. "I ventured to communicate our apprehensions to the king," wrote he in hisMemoirs. "I added that the ministers, themselves in error, were drawing his Majesty into it. The king deigned to expatiate on his projects, and informed me that a numerous body of German troops was going to be united to our forces. He appeared astonished when I replied that his Majesty would perceive too late that the doubling of these troops would only increase the humiliation without attaining the proposed end." Lord George Sackville, who had become Lord George Germaine, had been charged with the direction of American affairs. He was haughty and violent. Public sentiment, strongly excited by the taking up of arms by the Americans, began to express itself in addresses and loyal declarations. George III., his ministers and his people marched together against the rebellion of the colonies. Alone and for various reasons the Whig opposition in Parliament struggled against the rising tide of national irritation. The Prohibition bill had just been voted, interdicting all commerce with the thirteen revolted colonies, and authorizing the capture of vessels or merchandise which belonged to Americans, and should become the property of the conquerors. The arguments were as violent as the measures. The chancellor, Lord Mansfield, distinguished among all the judges, recalled the sentence of the great Gustavus to his troops during the German campaign: "My boys, you see those men down there: if you do not kill them, they will kill you."
The resolution was taken in America as well as in England. "If every one was of my opinion," wrote Washington in the month of February, 1775, "the English ministers would learn in a few words to what we wish to come. I would proclaim simply and without circumlocution our grievances and our resolve to obtain their redress.I would tell them that we have long and ardently desired an honorable reconciliation, and that it has been refused us. I would add that we have comported ourselves as faithful subjects, that the spirit of liberty is too powerful in our hearts to permit us ever to submit to slavery, and that we are firmly decided to break every bond with an unjust and unnatural government, if our serfdom alone can satisfy a tyrant and his devilish ministry; and I would say all that to them in no covert terms, but with expressions as clear as the sun's light at full noon."
The hour of independence was at last come. Already as a termination of their proclamations, instead of "God save the King!" the Virginians had adopted this proudly significant phrase, "God save the liberties of America!" Congress resolved to give its true name to the war against the metropolis, sustained for three years by the colonies. After a discussion which lasted for three days, the proposition drawn up by Jefferson for the Declaration of Independence was adopted with unanimity—"unanimity unfortunately slightly factitious." [Footnote 4]
[Footnote 4: Cornelis de Witt, History of Washington.]
To the solemn preamble affirming the eternal rights of peoples to liberty as well as justice, followed an enumeration of the grievances which had forever alienated from the sovereign of Great Britain the obedience of his American subjects. "We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America assembled in general congress, invoking the Supreme Judge to witness the rectitude of our intentions, do solemnly publish and declare in the name of the good people of these colonies that the united colonies are and have a right to be free and independent states, that they are disburdened of all allegiance to the crown of Great Britain, and that every political bond between them and Great Britain is and ought to be entirely dissolved. … Full of a firm confidence in the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually devote to the maintenance of this Declaration our lives, our fortunes, and our most sacred possession, our honor."
In America the solemn Declaration of Independence did not cause a lively emotion; the lot had been cast for the Americans since the day when they had taken up arms. At the opening of Parliament on the 31st of October, King George III., while deploring the decisive act by which the rebels had broken all the bonds which attached them to the mother-country, and rejected attempts at conciliation, ended his appeal to the fidelity of the nation with these words: "A single and great advantage will flow from the frank declaration of their intentions by the rebels; we shall be henceforth united at home, and all will understand the justice and necessity of our measure. I have not, and I cannot have, in this cruel struggle, any other desire than the true interest of all my subjects. Never has a people enjoyed a good fortune more complete or a government more lenient than have the revolted provinces. Their progress in all the arts of which they are proud, give them sufficient proof of it; their number, their wealth, their strength on land and sea, which they deem sufficient to resist all the power of the mother-country, are the unexceptionable proof of it. I have no other object than to deal them the benefits of the law in the liberty which all English subjects equally enjoy, and which they have fatally exchanged for the calamities of war and the arbitrary tyranny of their chiefs."
The calamities of war indeed were weighing on the United States of America. The attempt against Canada directed by Arnold had completely failed; oftentimes during the rough campaign of 1776 Washington had believed the cause lost. He had seen himself under the necessity of abandoning positions of which he was master, in order to fall back on Philadelphia. "What would you do if Philadelphia were taken?" he was asked. "We should retreat beyond the Susquehanna River; then, if necessary, beyond the Alleghany Mountains," replied the general, without hesitation. By an unhoped-for good luck for the future destinies of America, General Howe, in spite of the reinforcements constantly arriving from Europe, allowed the war to spin out, relying on time and the rigors of the season to weary the courage of the rebel troops. He had deceived himself as to the efficacy of the national feeling, still more as to the hardihood and indomitable perseverance of the general. At the end of the campaign, Washington, suddenly assuming the offensive, had in succession beaten the royal troops at Trenton and at Princeton. This brilliant action had reinstated the affairs of Americans, and prepared the formation of a new army. On the 30th of December, 1776, Washington was invested by Congress with the full powers of a dictator. He had claimed them for a long time, with that modest and proud authority which looked simply to the patriotic end without heed of popular clamors. "If the short time left us in which to prepare and execute important measures," he had written to the President of Congress, "is employed in consulting Congress about their opportunity, so evident to all; if we wait until it has caused its decisions to reach us at a distance of a hundred and forty miles, we will lose precious time and we will fail of our end. It may be objected that I claim powers which it is dangerous to confer; but for desperate evils extreme remedies are necessary. No one, I am convinced, has ever encountered so many obstacles in his way as I."
America began to feel the need of external support in the terrible struggle she had just engaged in. Already agents had been sent to France to sound the intentions of the government in relation to the revolted colonies. M. de Vergennes leaned toward secret aid. M. Turgot advised the most strict neutrality. "Leave to the insurgents," said he, "full liberty to make their purchases in our ports, and to procure by means of commerce the supplies, even the money of which they have need. To furnish them secretly with these would be difficult of concealment, and this step would excite just complaint on the part of the English." The Minister of Foreign Affairs, under the influence of the Duke de Choiseul, had for a long time founded great hopes on the dissensions which should burst forth between England and her colonies. Faithful to tradition, the first clerk, M. de Ragneval, presented a remarkable memorandum which precluded hesitation. One million, speedily followed by other aid, was poured for the Americans into the hands of Beaumarchais, who was ardently engaged in the cause of American independence, in the service of which he had then put forth all the resources of the most fertile and busy mind. "I would never have been able to fulfill my mission here without the indefatigable, intelligent, and generous efforts of M. de Beaumarchais," wrote Silas Deane to the secret committee, whose agent he was. "The United States are more indebted to him in every respect than to any other person on this side of the ocean."
Franklin had come to join Silas Deane. Already well known in Europe, where he had fulfilled several missions, his great scientific reputation and his clever and wise devotion to his country's cause had prepared the way to a worldly success which the skillful negotiator was well able to make subserve the success of his enterprise. Soon the French government began to remit money directly to the agents of the United States. Everything tended to a recognition of their independence. In spite of the king's formal prohibition, numerous French volunteers set out to serve the cause of liberty in America. The most distinguished of all, M. de la Fayette, arrested by order of the court, had evaded the surveillance of his guards, leaving his young wife, who was on the point of her confinement, in order to embark on a ship which he had secretly purchased. He landed in America in the month of July, 1777.
England was irritated and uneasy. Lord Chatham, quite recently sick and almost dying, more implacable than ever in pursuing everywhere the influence and intervention of France, exclaimed, with the customary exaggeration of his powerful and passionate talent, "Yesterday England could yet resist the world; to-day no one is insignificant enough to show his respect for her. I borrow the words of the poet, my lords, but what his lines express is no fiction. France has insulted you: she has encouraged and sustained America; and whether America be in the right or not, the dignity of this nation demands that we repulse with disdain the officious intervention of France. The ministers and ambassadors of those whom we call rebels and enemies are received at Paris; they treat there of the reciprocal interests of France and America. Their natives are sustained there, and supplied with military resources, and our ministers allow it and do not protest. Is this sustaining the honor of a great kingdom, which formerly imposed law on the House of Bourbon?"
[Image]Franklin.