Well-meaning people in England found it difficult to understand the
intensity of feeling in America. Britain had piled up a huge debt in
driving France from America. Landowners were paying in taxes no less
than twenty per cent of their incomes from land. The people who had
chiefly benefited by the humiliation of France were the colonists,
now freed from hostile menace and secure for extension over a whole
continent. Why should not they pay some share of the cost of their own
security? Certain facts tended to make Englishmen indignant with the
Americans. Every effort had failed to get them to pay willingly for
their defense. Before the Stamp Act had become law in 1765 the colonies
were given a whole year to devise the raising of money in any way which
they liked better. The burden of what was asked would be light. Why
should not they agree to bear it? Why this talk, repeated by the Whigs
in the British Parliament, of brutal tyranny, oppression, hired minions
imposing slavery, and so on. Where were the oppressed? Could any one
point to a single person who before war broke out had known British
tyranny? What suffering could any one point to as the result of the tax
on tea? The people of England paid a tax on tea four times heavier than
that paid in America. Was not the British Parliament supreme over the
whole Empire? Did not the colonies themselves admit that it had the
right to control their trade overseas? And if men shirk their duty
should they not come under some law of compulsion?
It was thus that many a plain man reasoned in England. The plain man in
America had his own opposing point of view. Debts and taxes in England
were not his concern. He remembered the recent war as vividly as did the
Englishman, and, if the English paid its cost in gold, he had paid his
share in blood and tears. Who made up the armies led by the British
generals in America? More than half the total number who served in
America came from the colonies, the colonies which had barely a third
of the population of Great Britain. True, Britain paid the bill in money
but why not? She was rich with a vast accumulated capital. The war,
partly in America, had given her the key to the wealth of India. Look
at the magnificence, the pomp of servants, plate and pictures, the parks
and gardens, of hundreds of English country houses, and compare this
opulence with the simple mode of life, simplicity imposed by necessity,
of a country gentleman like George Washington of Virginia, reputed to be
the richest man in America. Thousands of tenants in England, owning no
acre of land, were making a larger income than was possible in America
to any owner of broad acres. It was true that America had gained from
the late war. The foreign enemy had been struck down. But had he not
been struck down too for England? Had there not been far more dread in
England of invasion by France and had not the colonies by helping to
ruin France freed England as much as England had freed them? If now the
colonies were asked to pay a share of the bill for the British army that
was a matter for discussion. They had never before done it and they
must not be told that they had to meet the demand within a year or be
compelled to pay. Was it not to impose tyranny and slavery to tell
a people that their property would be taken by force if they did not
choose to give it? What free man would not rather die than yield on such
a point?
The familiar workings of modern democracy have taught us that a great
political issue must be discussed in broad terms of high praise or
severe blame. The contestants will exaggerate both the virtue of
the side they espouse and the malignity of the opposing side; nice
discrimination is not possible. It was inevitable that the dispute with
the colonies should arouse angry vehemence on both sides. The passionate
speech of Patrick Henry in Virginia, in 1763, which made him famous,
and was the forerunner of his later appeal, "Give me Liberty or give me
Death," related to so prosaic a question as the right of disallowance
by England of an act passed by a colonial legislature, a right
exercised long and often before that time and to this day a part of the
constitutional machinery of the British Empire. Few men have lived more
serenely poised than Washington, yet, as we have seen, he hated the
British with an implacable hatred. He was a humane man. In earlier
years, Indian raids on the farmers of Virginia had stirred him to
"deadly sorrow," and later, during his retreat from New York, he was
moved by the cries of the weak and infirm. Yet the same man felt no
touch of pity for the Loyalists of the Revolution. To him they were
detestable parricides, vile traitors, with no right to live. When we
find this note in Washington, in America, we hardly wonder that the
high Tory, Samuel Johnson, in England, should write that the proposed
taxation was no tyranny, that it had not been imposed earlier because
"we do not put a calf into the plough; we wait till he is an ox," and
that the Americans were "a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful
for anything which we allow them short of hanging." Tyranny and treason
are both ugly things. Washington believed that he was fighting the one,
Johnson that he was fighting the other, and neither side would admit the
charge against itself.
Such are the passions aroused by civil strife. We need not now, when
they are, or ought to be, dead, spend any time in deploring them. It
suffices to explain them and the events to which they led. There was
one and really only one final issue. Were the American colonies free to
govern themselves as they liked or might their government in the last
analysis be regulated by Great Britain? The truth is that the colonies
had reached a condition in which they regarded themselves as British
states with their own parliaments, exercising complete jurisdiction in
their own affairs. They intended to use their own judgment and they were
as restless under attempted control from England as England would have
been under control from America. We can indeed always understand the
point of view of Washington if we reverse the position and imagine what
an Englishman would have thought of a claim by America to tax him.
An ancient and proud society is reluctant to change. After a long and
successful war England was prosperous. To her now came riches from India
and the ends of the earth. In society there was such lavish expenditure
that Horace Walpole declared an income of twenty thousand pounds a year
was barely enough. England had an aristocracy the proudest in the world,
for it had not only rank but wealth. The English people were certain of
the invincible superiority of their nation. Every Englishman was taught,
as Disraeli said of a later period, to believe that he occupied a
position better than any one else of his own degree in any other country
in the world. The merchant in England was believed to surpass all others
in wealth and integrity, the manufacturer to have no rivals in skill,
the British sailor to stand in a class by himself, the British officer
to express the last word in chivalry. It followed, of course, that the
motherland was superior to her children overseas. The colonies had no
aristocracy, no great landowners living in stately palaces. They had
almost no manufactures. They had no imposing state system with places
and pensions from which the fortunate might reap a harvest of ten or
even twenty thousand pounds a year. They had no ancient universities
thronged by gilded youth who, if noble, might secure degrees without the
trying ceremony of an examination. They had no Established Church with
the ancient glories of its cathedrals. In all America there was not even
a bishop. In spite of these contrasts the English Whigs insisted upon
the political equality with themselves of the American colonists. The
Tory squire, however, shared Samuel Johnson's view that colonists were
either traders or farmers and that colonial shopkeeping society was
vulgar and contemptible.
George III was ill-fitted by nature to deal with the crisis. The King
was not wholly without natural parts, for his own firm will had
achieved what earlier kings had tried and failed to do; he had mastered
Parliament, made it his obedient tool and himself for a time a despot.
He had some admirable virtues. He was a family man, the father of
fifteen children. He liked quiet amusements and had wholesome tastes. If
industry and belief in his own aims could of themselves make a man
great we might reverence George. He wrote once to Lord North: "I have no
object but to be of use: if that is ensured I am completely happy."
The King was always busy. Ceaseless industry does not, however, include
every virtue, or the author of all evil would rank high in goodness.
Wisdom must be the pilot of good intentions. George was not wise. He was
ill-educated. He had never traveled. He had no power to see the point of
view of others.
As if nature had not sufficiently handicapped George for a high part,
fate placed him on the throne at the immature age of twenty-two.
Henceforth the boy was master, not pupil. Great nobles and obsequious
prelates did him reverence. Ignorant and obstinate, the young King was
determined not only to reign but to rule, in spite of the new doctrine
that Parliament, not the King, carried on the affairs of government
through the leader of the majority in the House of Commons, already
known as the Prime Minister. George could not really change what was the
last expression of political forces in England. The rule of Parliament
had come to stay. Through it and it alone could the realm be governed.
This power, however, though it could not be destroyed, might be
controlled. Parliament, while retaining all its privileges, might yet
carry out the wishes of the sovereign. The King might be his own Prime
Minister. The thing could be done if the King's friends held a majority
of the seats and would do what their master directed. It was a dark day
for England when a king found that he could play off one faction against
another, buy a majority in Parliament, and retain it either by paying
with guineas or with posts and dignities which the bought Parliament
left in his gift. This corruption it was which ruined the first British
Empire.
We need not doubt that George thought it his right and also his duty to
coerce America, or rather, as he said, the clamorous minority which was
trying to force rebellion. He showed no lack of sincerity. On October
26, 1775, while Washington was besieging Boston, he opened Parliament
with a speech which at any rate made the issue clear enough. Britain
would not give up colonies which she had founded with severe toil and
nursed with great kindness. Her army and her navy, both now increased
in size, would make her power respected. She would not, however, deal
harshly with her erring children. Royal mercy would be shown to those
who admitted their error and they need not come to England to secure it.
Persons in America would be authorized to grant pardons and furnish the
guarantees which would proceed from the royal clemency.
Such was the magnanimity of George III. Washington's rage at the tone of
the speech is almost amusing in its vehemence. He, with a mind conscious
of rectitude and sacrifice in a great cause, to ask pardon for his
course! He to bend the knee to this tyrant overseas! Washington himself
was not highly gifted with imagination. He never realized the strength
of the forces in England arrayed on his own side and attributed to the
English, as a whole, sinister and malignant designs always condemned by
the great mass of the English people. They, no less than the Americans,
were the victims of a turn in politics which, for a brief period, and
for only a brief period, left power in the hands of a corrupt Parliament
and a corrupting king.
Ministers were not all corrupt or place-hunters. One of them, the
Earl of Dartmouth, was a saint in spirit. Lord North, the king's chief
minister, was not corrupt. He disliked his office and wished to leave
it. In truth no sweeping simplicity of condemnation will include all the
ministers of George III except on this one point that they allowed to
dictate their policy a narrow-minded and ignorant king. It was their
right to furnish a policy and to exercise the powers of government,
appoint to office, spend the public revenues. Instead they let the King
say that the opinions of his ministers had no avail with him. If we ask
why, the answer is that there was a mixture of motives. North stayed in
office because the King appealed to his loyalty, a plea hard to resist
under an ancient monarchy. Others stayed from love of power or for what
they could get. In that golden age of patronage it was possible for a
man to hold a plurality of offices which would bring to himself many
thousands of pounds a year, and also to secure the reversion of offices
and pensions to his children. Horace Walpole spent a long life in
luxurious ease because of offices with high pay and few duties secured
in the distant days of his father's political power. Contracts to supply
the army and the navy went to friends of the government, sometimes
with disastrous results, since the contractor often knew nothing of
the business he undertook. When, in 1777, the Admiralty boasted that
thirty-five ships of war were ready to put to sea it was found that
there were in fact only six. The system nearly ruined the navy. It
actually happened that planks of a man-of-war fell out through rot and
that she sank. Often ropes and spars could not be had when most needed.
When a public loan was floated the King's friends and they alone were
given the shares at a price which enabled them to make large profits on
the stock market.
The system could endure only as long as the King's friends had a
majority in the House of Commons. Elections must be looked after. The
King must have those on whom he could always depend. He controlled
offices and pensions. With these things he bought members and he had to
keep them bought by repeating the benefits. If the holder of a public
office was thought to be dying the King was already naming to his Prime
Minister the person to whom the office must go when death should occur.
He insisted that many posts previously granted for life should now be
given during his pleasure so that he might dismiss the holders at will.
He watched the words and the votes in Parliament of public men and woe
to those in his power if they displeased him. When he knew that Fox,
his great antagonist, would be absent from Parliament he pressed through
measures which Fox would have opposed. It was not until George III was
King that the buying and selling of boroughs became common. The King
bought votes in the boroughs by paying high prices for trifles. He
even went over the lists of voters and had names of servants of the
government inserted if this seemed needed to make a majority secure.
One of the most unedifying scenes in English history is that of George
making a purchase in a shop at Windsor and because of this patronage
asking for the shopkeeper's support in a local election. The King was
saving and penurious in his habits that he might have the more money to
buy votes. When he had no money left he would go to Parliament and
ask for a special grant for his needs and the bought members could not
refuse the money for their buying.
The people of England knew that Parliament was corrupt. But how to end
the system? The press was not free. Some of it the government bought
and the rest it tried to intimidate though often happily in vain. Only
fragments of the debates in Parliament were published. Not until 1779
did the House of Commons admit the public to its galleries. No great
political meetings were allowed until just before the American war and
in any case the masses had no votes. The great landowners had in their
control a majority of the constituencies. There were scores of pocket
boroughs in which their nominees were as certain of election as peers
were of their seats in the House of Lords. The disease of England
was deep-seated. A wise king could do much, but while George III
survived--and his reign lasted sixty years--there was no hope of a wise
king. A strong minister could impose his will on the King. But only time
and circumstance could evolve a strong minister. Time and circumstance
at length produced the younger Pitt. But it needed the tragedy of two
long wars--those against the colonies and revolutionary France--before
the nation finally threw off the system which permitted the personal
rule of George III and caused the disruption of the Empire. It may thus
be said with some truth that George Washington was instrumental in the
salvation of England.
The ministers of George III loved the sports, the rivalries, the ease,
the remoteness of their rural magnificence. Perverse fashion kept them
in London even in April and May for "the season," just when in the
country nature was most alluring. Otherwise they were off to their
estates whenever they could get away from town. The American Revolution
was not remotely affected by this habit. With ministers long absent in
the country important questions were postponed or forgotten. The crisis
which in the end brought France into the war was partly due to the
carelessness of a minister hurrying away to the country. Lord George
Germain, who directed military operations in America, dictated a letter
which would have caused General Howe to move northward from New York
to meet General Burgoyne advancing from Canada. Germain went off to the
country without waiting to sign the letter; it was mislaid among other
papers; Howe was without needed instructions; and the disaster followed
of Burgoyne's surrender. Fox pointed out, that, at a time when there
was a danger that a foreign army might land in England, not one of the
King's ministers was less than fifty miles from London. They were in
their parks and gardens, or hunting or fishing. Nor did they stay away
for a few days only. The absence was for weeks or even months.
It is to the credit of Whig leaders in England, landowners and
aristocrats as they were, that they supported with passion the American
cause. In America, where the forces of the Revolution were in control,
the Loyalist who dared to be bold for his opinions was likely to be
tarred and feathered and to lose his property. There was an embittered
intolerance. In England, however, it was an open question in society
whether to be for or against the American cause. The Duke of Richmond,
a great grandson of Charles II, said in the House of Lords that under no
code should the fighting Americans be considered traitors. What they did
was "perfectly justifiable in every possible political and moral
sense." All the world knows that Chatham and Burke and Fox urged the
conciliation of America and hundreds took the same stand. Burke said of
General Conway, a man of position, that when he secured a majority in
the House of Commons against the Stamp Act his face shone as the face of
an angel. Since the bishops almost to a man voted with the King, Conway
attacked them as in this untrue to their high office. Sir George Savile,
whose benevolence, supported by great wealth, made him widely respected
and loved, said that the Americans were right in appealing to arms. Coke
of Norfolk was a landed magnate who lived in regal style. His seat of
Holkham was one of those great new palaces which the age reared at
such elaborate cost. It was full of beautiful things--the art of
Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, and Van Dyke, rare manuscripts, books,
and tapestries. So magnificent was Coke that a legend long ran that his
horses were shod with gold and that the wheels of his chariots were of
solid silver. In the country he drove six horses. In town only the King
did this. Coke despised George III, chiefly on account of his American
policy, and to avoid the reproach of rivaling the King's estate, he
took joy in driving past the palace in London with a donkey as his
sixth animal and in flicking his whip at the King. When he was offered
a peerage by the King he denounced with fiery wrath the minister through
whom it was offered as attempting to bribe him. Coke declared that if
one of the King's ministers held up a hat in the House of Commons and
said that it was a green bag the majority of the members would solemnly
vote that it was a green bag. The bribery which brought this blind
obedience of Toryism filled Coke with fury. In youth he had been taught
never to trust a Tory and he could say "I never have and, by God, I
never will." One of his children asked their mother whether Tories were
born wicked or after birth became wicked. The uncompromising answer was:
"They are born wicked and they grow up worse."
There is, of course, in much of this something of the malignance of
party. In an age when one reverend theologian, Toplady, called another
theologian, John Wesley, "a low and puny tadpole in Divinity" we must
expect harsh epithets. But behind this bitterness lay a deep conviction
of the righteousness of the American cause. At a great banquet at
Holkham, Coke omitted the toast of the King; but every night during the
American war he drank the health of Washington as the greatest man on
earth. The war, he said, was the King's war, ministers were his tools,
the press was bought. He denounced later the King's reception of the
traitor Arnold. When the King's degenerate son, who became George IV,
after some special misconduct, wrote to propose his annual visit to
Holkham, Coke replied, "Holkham is open to strangers on Tuesdays." It
was an independent and irate England which spoke in Coke. Those who
paid taxes, he said, should control those who governed. America was not
getting fair play. Both Coke and Fox, and no doubt many others, wore
waistcoats of blue and buff because these were the colors of the
uniforms of Washington's army.
Washington and Coke exchanged messages and they would have been
congenial companions; for Coke, like Washington, was above all a farmer
and tried to improve agriculture. Never for a moment, he said, had
time hung heavy on his hands in the country. He began on his estate the
culture of the potato, and for some time the best he could hear of it
from his stolid tenantry was that it would not poison the pigs.
Coke would have fought the levy of a penny of unjust taxation and he
understood Washington. The American gentleman and the English gentleman
had a common outlook.
Now had come, however, the hour for political separation. By
reluctant but inevitable steps America made up its mind to declare for
independence. At first continued loyalty to the King was urged on the
plea that he was in the hands of evil-minded ministers, inspired by
diabolical rage, or in those of an "infernal villain" such as the
soldier, General Gage, a second Pharaoh; though it must be admitted that
even then the King was "the tyrant of Great Britain." After Bunker Hill
spasmodic declarations of independence were made here and there by local
bodies. When Congress organized an army, invaded Canada, and besieged
Boston, it was hard to protest loyalty to a King whose forces were
those of an enemy. Moreover independence would, in the eyes at least of
foreign governments, give the colonies the rights of belligerents and
enable them to claim for their fighting forces the treatment due to a
regular army and the exchange of prisoners with the British. They could,
too, make alliances with other nations. Some clamored for independence
for a reason more sinister--that they might punish those who held to the
King and seize their property. There were thirteen colonies in arms
and each of them had to form some kind of government which would work
without a king as part of its mechanism. One by one such governments
were formed. King George, as we have seen, helped the colonies to make
up their minds. They were in no mood to be called erring children who
must implore undeserved mercy and not force a loving parent to take
unwilling vengeance. "Our plantations" and "our subjects in the
colonies" would simply not learn obedience. If George III would not
reply to their petitions until they laid down their arms, they could
manage to get on without a king. If England, as Horace Walpole admitted,
would not take them seriously and speakers in Parliament called them
obscure ruffians and cowards, so much the worse for England.
It was an Englishman, Thomas Paine, who fanned the fire into
unquenchable flames. He had recently been dismissed from a post in
the excise in England and was at this time earning in Philadelphia a
precarious living by his pen. Paine said it was the interest of America
to break the tie with Europe. Was a whole continent in America to be
governed by an island a thousand leagues away? Of what advantage was
it to remain connected with Great Britain? It was said that a united
British Empire could defy the world, but why should America defy the
world? "Everything that is right or natural pleads for separation."
Interested men, weak men, prejudiced men, moderate men who do not really
know Europe, may urge reconciliation, but nature is against it. Paine
broke loose in that denunciation of kings with which ever since the
world has been familiar. The wretched Briton, said Paine, is under a
king and where there was a king there was no security for liberty.
Kings were crowned ruffians and George III in particular was a sceptered
savage, a royal brute, and other evil things. He had inflicted on
America injuries not to be forgiven. The blood of the slain, not less
than the true interests of posterity, demanded separation. Paine called
his pamphlet Common Sense. It was published on January 9, 1776. More
than a hundred thousand copies were quickly sold and it brought decision
to many wavering minds.
In the first days of 1776 independence had become a burning question.
New England had made up its mind. Virginia was keen for separation,
keener even than New England. New York and Pennsylvania long hesitated
and Maryland and North Carolina were very lukewarm. Early in 1776
Washington was advocating independence and Greene and other army leaders
were of the same mind. Conservative forces delayed the settlement, and
at last Virginia, in this as in so many other things taking the
lead, instructed its delegates to urge a declaration by Congress of
independence. Richard Henry Lee, a member of that honored family which
later produced the ablest soldier of the Civil War, moved in Congress on
June 7, 1776, that "these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be,
Free and Independent States." The preparation of a formal declaration
was referred to a committee of which John Adams and Thomas Jefferson
were members. It is interesting to note that each of them became
President of the United States and that both died on July 4, 1826, the
fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Adams related
long after that he and Jefferson formed the sub-committee to draft the
Declaration and that he urged Jefferson to undertake the task since "you
can write ten times better than I can." Jefferson accordingly wrote
the paper. Adams was delighted "with its high tone and the flights of
Oratory" but he did not approve of the flaming attack on the King, as
a tyrant. "I never believed," he said, "George to be a tyrant in
disposition and in nature." There was, he thought, too much passion for
a grave and solemn document. He was, however, the principal speaker in
its support.
There is passion in the Declaration from beginning to end, and not the
restrained and chastened passion which we find in the great utterances
of an American statesman of a later day, Abraham Lincoln. Compared with
Lincoln, Jefferson is indeed a mere amateur in the use of words. Lincoln
would not have scattered in his utterances overwrought phrases about
"death, desolation and tyranny" or talked about pledging "our lives, our
fortunes and our sacred honour." He indulged in no "Flights of Oratory."
The passion in the Declaration is concentrated against the King. We do
not know what were the emotions of George when he read it. We know that
many Englishmen thought that it spoke truth. Exaggerations there are
which make the Declaration less than a completely candid document. The
King is accused of abolishing English laws in Canada with the intention
of "introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies." What had
been done in Canada was to let the conquered French retain their own
laws--which was not tyranny but magnanimity. Another clause of the
Declaration, as Jefferson first wrote it, made George responsible for
the slave trade in America with all its horrors and crimes. We may doubt
whether that not too enlightened monarch had even more than vaguely
heard of the slave trade. This phase of the attack upon him was too much
for the slave owners of the South and the slave traders of New England,
and the clause was struck out.
Nearly fourscore and ten years later, Abraham Lincoln, at a supreme
crisis in the nation's life, told in Independence Hall, Philadelphia,
what the Declaration of Independence meant to him. "I have never,"
he said, "had a feeling politically which did not spring from the
sentiments in the Declaration of Independence"; and then he spoke of
the sacrifices which the founders of the Republic had made for these
principles. He asked, too, what was the idea which had held together the
nation thus founded. It was not the breaking away from Great Britain. It
was the assertion of human right. We should speak in terms of reverence
of a document which became a classic utterance of political right and
which inspired Lincoln in his fight to end slavery and to make "Liberty
and the pursuit of Happiness" realities for all men. In England the
colonists were often taunted with being "rebels." The answer was not
wanting that ancestors of those who now cried "rebel" had themselves
been rebels a hundred years earlier when their own liberty was at stake.
There were in Congress men who ventured to say that the Declaration
was a libel on the government of England; men like John Dickinson of
Pennsylvania and John Jay of New York, who feared that the radical
elements were moving too fast. Radicalism, however, was in the saddle,
and on the 2d of July the "resolution respecting independency" was
adopted. On July 4, 1776, Congress debated and finally adopted
the formal Declaration of Independence. The members did not vote
individually. The delegates from each colony cast the vote of the
colony. Twelve colonies voted for the Declaration. New York alone was
silent because its delegates had not been instructed as to their vote,
but New York, too, soon fell into line. It was a momentous occasion and
was understood to be such. The vote seems to have been reached in the
late afternoon. Anxious citizens were waiting in the streets. There
was a bell in the State House, and an old ringer waited there for the
signal. When there was long delay he is said to have muttered: "They
will never do it! they will never do it!" Then came the word, "Ring!
Ring!" It is an odd fact that the inscription on the bell, placed there
long before the days of the trouble, was from Leviticus: "Proclaim
liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof." The
bells of Philadelphia rang and cannon boomed. As the news spread there
were bonfires and illuminations in all the colonies. On the day after
the Declaration the Virginia Convention struck out "O Lord, save the
King" from the church service. On the 10th of July Washington, who
by this time had moved to New York, paraded the army and had the
Declaration read at the head of each brigade. That evening the statue
of King George in New York was laid in the dust. It is a comment on the
changes in human fortune that within little more than a year the British
had taken Philadelphia, that the clamorous bell had been hid away for
safety, and that colonial wiseacres were urging the rescinding of the
ill-timed Declaration and the reunion of the British Empire.