George III.
The American War
(1760-1783).
The House of Hanover reigned without further contest. The Stuarts
had disappeared, borne forever by their misdeeds and misfortunes
far from the throne of their ancestors, and the young King George
III. peaceably succeeded his grandfather. Europe now, as well as
England, understood the importance of the change which had just
been accomplished. William III., called to the throne by the
English nation, had delivered it from an odious yoke and had
assured to it its religious and political liberties. He had
constantly remained a foreigner in the England which he served
gloriously and effectively without loving it. George I. and
George II. were Germans, elevated to the throne by the national
will, which was strong and wise, without sympathy and without
pleasure. They had remained Germans in manners and in speech.
England had grown under their rule; her institutions were
strengthened and developed. At the death of George II., thanks to
the illustrious man who, as an absolute master, had governed her
in freedom, she had become the arbiter of Europe, predominant in
America as well as in Asia. However, the English people's loyalty
of feeling had never been satisfied since the downfall of the
Stuarts, and the most obstinate of the Whigs, although
passionately opposed to all the attempts of the Jacobite
restoration, yet excused, in the depths of their heart, those who
had sacrificed all to their attachment towards the hereditary
monarch.
{256}
George III. was at last reigning, loved and respected beforehand,
and the painful trials of his life and his long reign never
caused him to lose the confidence and sympathy of his people. It
was the feeling of the whole nation as well as his own that the
young monarch expressed when he spontaneously said, in his first
speech from the throne: "Born and brought up in this country, I
glory in the name of Englishman, and it will be the pleasure of
my life to give happiness to a people whose fidelity and
attachment to myself I regard as the security and lasting honor
of my throne."
New counsels already began to spread, less violent against France
than those of Mr. Pitt. The young king had cordially received his
grandfather's ministers, asking them to continue in their duties
under him; but he had also admitted Lord Bute to the Privy
Council, and the favorite's intrigues already came in contact
with those of the Duke of Newcastle. Some weeks later, at the
moment of the dissolution of Parliament, Bute succeeded Lord
Holderness as secretary of state. Pitt, it is said, was not
consulted.
The haughty displeasure of the great minister had its influence
upon the tone of the negotiations then begun with France. The
Duke de Choiseul, burning to serve his country, although active,
restless, and courageous, still felt the necessity of peace. He
had proposed a congress. While Pitt delayed his answer, an
English squadron had blockaded Bellisle. A first assault, made on
the 8th of April by General Hodgson, was repulsed. The governor,
M. de St. Croix, had received no assistance, and, despite an
heroic resistance, he was forced to capitulate on June 7th, 1761.
It was almost at the same time that news was received of the
check of De Broglie and De Soubise at Minden, and of the
disastrous surrender of Pondicherry.
{257}
England's answer to the proposals of peace at last arrived. The
Duke de Choiseul had proposed to evacuate Hesse and Hanover,
demanding the restoration of Guadaloupe and Marie Galante, and of
Bellisle in exchange for Minorca. He accepted the conquest of
Canada and of Cape Breton, but in return he laid claim to all the
captures made at sea of the French merchant ships before the
declaration of war, and required an engagement that the English
troops, under the orders of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, should
not proceed to reinforce the Prussian army. The ultimatum was
modest, and was a bitter trial to the patriotic pride of M. de
Choiseul. Pitt's answer left no hope of peace. All the conquests,
all the captures, full liberty to aid the King of Prussia--such
was the language of the English minister. Dunkerque must be
razed, as a lasting monument of the yoke imposed on France. "So
long as I hold the reins of government," said Pitt, "another
Peace of Utrecht shall never sully the annals of England."
Pitt had well estimated the exhaustion and the fatigue of France.
He had not foreseen the influence which the accession of a new
monarch to the throne of Spain would exert upon her alliances.
Ferdinand VI. had died childless. His brother, Charles III. King
of Naples, had succeeded him. He brought to his hereditary
kingdom a quicker intelligence than that of the dead king, a
great aversion to England (of which he had lately reason to
complain), and the traditional attachment of his race for the
interests and glory of France. The Duke de Choiseul was adroit
enough to avail himself of these tendencies. In the distress in
which the war had thrown King Louis XV., at the moment when Pitt
rejected his ultimatum, insulting him by inacceptable proposals,
Spain generously entered the list.
{258}
The treaty, known under the name of the Family Compact, was
signed at Paris on the 15th of April, 1761. Pitt immediately
proposed to George III. to make sure of the Isthmus of Panama,
and to attack immediately the Philippine Islands.
It was the last straw for the tottering empire of the minister
who had been so long absolute in the council as well as in the
Houses. The cabinet had hardly accepted the harshness of the
conditions which he exacted from France. A declaration of war
with Spain was rejected by a large majority. Pitt arose. "I thank
you, gentlemen," said he, "for the support which you have often
given me, but it is the voice of the people which has called me
to public affairs. I have always considered myself as accountable
to it for my conduct. I cannot then remain in a position where I
shall be responsible for measures of which I have no longer the
direction." Several days later Pitt placed in the king's hands
the seals of office. George III. received him kindly. "Sad," he
said, "to part from so illustrious a servant." The haughty
minister burst into tears. "I confess, your Majesty," he said,
"that I expected the signs of your displeasure. Your Majesty's
kindness confounds and overwhelms me." Against the advice of his
friends, Pitt accepted a pension of three thousand pounds
sterling and a peerage for his wife, who became Lady Chatham. His
popularity in consequence suffered a slight blow, yet it remained
so great that at the annual lord mayor's dinner on the 9th of
November, all looks were turned toward the fallen minister, all
the applause was reserved for him, at the expense of the king and
of his young wife, Charlotte de Mecklenberg-Streglitz. This
popular triumph became insulting to the royal personages. "At
each step," said an eye-witness, "the crowd pressed around the
simple carriage where were to be found Pitt and Lord Temple. They
laid hold of the wheels; they embraced the servants, and even the
horses."
{259}
"Mr. Pitt will not make peace because he cannot make that which
he has given the nation reason to hope for," an acute observer of
the court, Bubb Doddington, had already said. On succeeding to
power, Lord Bute and the tories found themselves still driven by
public opinion to measures more violent than their tastes or
their intentions. France had made a supreme effort to reorganize
its army. In the month of January, 1762, the English government
declared war on Spain, striking from the first the most
disastrous blows at our faithful ally. The year had not gone by
before Cuba was already in the hands of the English, the
Philippine Islands ravaged, and galleons laden with Spanish gold
captured by British vessels. The campaign undertaken against
Portugal, always friendly to England, was productive of no
result. Martinique had followed the lot of Guadaloupe, which had
already been conquered by the English after an heroic resistance.
The war dragged on slowly in Germany. The death of the Czarina
Elizabeth and the brief occupation of the throne by the young
Czar Peter III., a passionate admirer of Frederick the Great, had
freed the King of Prussia from a dangerous enemy, and promised
him an ally faithful as well as powerful. The hope that the
Family Compact had for a time given to France was deceived. The
negotiations began again. On the 3d of November, 1762, the
preliminaries of peace were signed at Fontainebleau. France
abandoned all her possessions in America. Louisiana, which had
taken no part in the war, was ceded to Spain in exchange for
Florida, which was given over to the English.
{260}
Only the small islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon were reserved
for the French fisheries. A special stipulation guaranteed to the
Canadians freedom in Catholic worship. In exchange for engaging
not to introduce troops into Bengal, France recovered
Chaudernagore and the ruins of Pondicherry. Guadaloupe and
Martinique became again French. The English kept Tobago,
Dominique, St. Vincent, and Grenada. In Germany the places and
country occupied by France were to be evacuated. Like his
illustrious rival. Lord Bute insisted upon the demolition of
Dunkerque.
England's success had been great, and France's humiliation
profound, and yet it was not enough for the persistent hatred of
Pitt, now freed from the shackles of power, and at liberty to
allow full reign to his rancor against Lord Bute as well as to
his animosity toward our nation. He was disabled by gout, the
persistent scourge of his life; he had himself carried, wrapped
in flannel, to the House of Commons. Two of his friends led him
to his seat, and supported him during the first part of his
speech. Exhausted, he ended by sitting down, contrary to all
parliamentary usage. "I have come here at the risk of my life,"
he exclaimed, "to raise my voice, my hand, my arm against the
preliminary articles of a peace which tarnishes the glory of the
war, which betrays the dearest interests of the nation, and which
sacrifices public faith while deserting our allies. France is
chiefly, if not entirely, formidable to us as a maritime and
commercial power. What we gain in this respect is doubly precious
from the loss which results to her. America, gentlemen, has been
conquered in Germany; to-day you leave to France the possibility
of re-establishing her navy."
{261}
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.
{262}
All this disturbance and all this suffering ended for Germany in
the maintenance of the _statu 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.
{263}
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
called _The 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."
{264}
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.
{265}
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 without _arrière
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."
{266}
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.
{267}
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.
{268}
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.
{269}
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.
{270}
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).
{271}
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.]
{272}
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.
{273}
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."
{274}
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.
{275}
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."
{276}
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.
{277}
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."
{278}
"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;
https://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.
{279}
"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;
https://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."
{280}
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 of
_Congress_." "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 word _Congress_."
{281}
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 his
_Memoirs_. "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.
{282}
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."
{283}
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."
{284}
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."
{285}
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."
{286}
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.
{287}
The manifest favor of France had forever enrolled Lord Chatham
among the opponents of the recognition of American independence.
He carried to the House a proposal to cease hostilities and enter
upon a negotiation with the revolted colonies, under one sole
condition, that of submission to the mother-country. In the
violent discussion raised on this subject, Lord Suffolk desired
to defend the cruel practices of the Indian savages who were
tolerated in the service of Great Britain. Lord Chatham rose in
his place, forgetting that he had lately accepted the same
auxiliaries during the war against the French in Canada. "My
lords," he exclaimed, "have we heard aright? Men, Christians,
profane the royal majesty at the very side of the throne. God and
nature have placed these arms in our hands, you are told. I do
not know what ideas may be conceived of God and of nature, but I
know that these abominable principles are equally contrary to
religion and to humanity. What! shall the sanction of God and of
nature be attributed to the cruelties of the Indian
scalping-knife, to cannibal savages who torture, massacre,
devour--yes, my lords, who devour the mutilated victims of their
barbarous combats? And on whom have you let loose these infidel
savages? On your brothers in faith, in order to devastate their
country, in order to desolate their dwellings, in order to
extirpate their race and their name!"
{288}
The proposals of Lord Chatham were rejected, but the situation
had already changed. Shortly after the arrival of M. de la
Fayette in America, the battle of Brandywine, in which he had
taken part as major-general, had been disastrous to the
Americans; the young volunteer had been wounded. At Germantown
fate had been equally against the colonists, and they had been
forced to evacuate Philadelphia, the aim of General Howe's
operations. They had fallen back on Valley Forge. General
Washington had cleverly established his camp there for the
winter. Nevertheless, successes at other points counterbalanced
and even outweighed the reverses. On the frontiers of Canada the
English general Burgoyne, obstinate and presumptuous, had been
defeated by General Gates. Being deceived in his hope of being
succored by Howe or by Clinton, who was commanding at New York,
he was left to be surrounded by the English troops. Deprived of
provisions and supplies, without resources and without means of
communication, Burgoyne, at the end of his strength, was, after
an heroic resistance, forced to lay down arms and capitulate at
Saratoga, on the 17th of October, 1777. He obtained honorable
conditions, but the soldiers, while free to return to Europe,
were bound not to serve any more against America. Gates was an
Englishman; he did not wish to witness the humiliation of his
countrymen, and he did not assist at the defile of General
Burgoyne's troops. For the first time on American territory,
European arms were given up. The echo was immense in Europe, and
seconded Franklin's efforts at Paris. On the 6th of February,
1778, France officially recognized the independence of the United
States; a treaty of alliance was concluded with the new power,
which thus took rank among nations. Two months later, on the 13th
of April, a French squadron, under the command of Count
d'Estaing, set sail towards America, and soon hostilities were
being carried on in the British Channel between the French and
English ships, without declaration of war, owing to the natural
pressure of circumstances and the state of feeling in the two
countries.
{289}
At the very moment when France was according to the American
revolt that support which she had secretly afforded it for more
than two years, Lord North, forcing the hand of King George III.,
proposed two bills to Parliament, by which England renounced the
right to levy taxes in the American colonies and recognized the
legal existence of Congress. Three commissioners were to be sent
to the United States to treat concerning the conditions of peace.
"The humiliation and sorrow were great and were legible on all
countenances," said an ocular witness; "no one gave any sign of
approbation, and silence succeeded the minister's speech." The
propositions were, however, voted without serious opposition.
Necessity pressed upon all spirits with sad bitterness.
Public sentiment in England, as well as in Parliament, blamed the
weakness of the government. Lord North felt it, and on the 14th
of March, 1778, on the receipt of the French letter ironically
assuring King George III. of the continuation of Louis XVI.'s
peaceful intentions, the minister had advised the king to recall
his ambassador from Paris and to form a new cabinet at home. It
was with profound repugnance that the monarch consented to make
advances to Lord Chatham; the demands of the great orator were so
haughty that the negotiations remained suspended. The king made a
last appeal to Lord North. "Will you abandon me in the moment of
danger, like the Duke of Grafton?" he asked. The Duke of Richmond
had just made a proposition for the recall of the troops fighting
on land and sea in America (7th April, 1778).
{290}
He relied on the support of Lord Chatham, but anti-French passion
in this unbalanced and proud soul surmounted all abstract
considerations of right and justice. He had formerly said, "You
will never conquer America. Your efforts will continue vain and
powerless. If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, so long
as foreign forces marched against my country, I would never lay
down my arms--never! never!" The intervention of France in the
struggle had modified the views of the great minister who had so
long followed her with his hatred. He desired her, above all
things, to be humiliated and conquered. The recognition of
American independence became impossible, encouraged as it was by
the House of Bourbon. The Earl had himself carried to
Westminster, supported on one side by his son William, on the
other by his son-in-law, Lord Mahon. He was nothing more than the
shadow of himself--pale, emaciated, and with difficulty drawn
from his bed of suffering. He rose slowly, supported by his
crutch and leaning heavily on his son's shoulder. His voice was
hollow and failing, his words broken. The transient gleams of his
genius alone animated the supreme effort. "I thank God," said he,
"that I have been enabled to come here to-day to accomplish a
duty and to say what has heavily weighed upon my heart. I have
already one foot in the grave: I am going there soon. I have left
my bed to sustain in this House the cause of my country, perhaps
for the last time. I congratulate myself, my lords, that the
grave has not yet closed over me, and that I yet live to raise my
voice against the dismemberment of this ancient and noble
monarchy. My lords, his Majesty has succeeded to an empire as
vast in its extent as it is illustrious in its reputation. Shall
we tarnish its lustre by the shameful abandonment of its rights
and of its finest possessions? Shall the great kingdom which has
survived in its entirety the descents by the Danes, the
incursions of the Scots, the conquest of the Normans, which has
stood firm before the threatened invasion of the Spanish army,
fall to-day before the House of Bourbon? Truly, my lords, we are
greater than we were. If it be absolutely necessary to choose
between peace and war, if peace cannot be preserved with honor,
why not declare war without hesitation? My lords, everything is
better than despair; let us at least make an effort. If we are to
yield, let us yield like men."
[Image]
The Last Speech Of The Earl Of Chatham.
{291}
He let himself fall back on his seat exhausted and fainting. Soon
he tried to rise in order to answer the Duke of Richmond; his
strength failed him; for the last time the wavering flame of this
great torch had flung out its brilliancy. A weakness seized him.
The House, silent and anxious, surrounded him. They carried out
the great orator, the illustrious adversary of France who had
lately conquered her, and who was about to succumb while yet
following her "with his sad and inflexible looks." [Footnote 5]
[Footnote 5: Bossuet, _Sur le Cardinal de Retz_.]
Some days later he breathed his last in his country house at
Hayes, encompassed by national regret and respect, and soon
afterwards was buried at the expense of the state in Westminster
Abbey. He was to await his son there only twenty-seven
years--that son who was the enthusiastic witness of his glory,
the emulator of his eloquence and political virtues; who was
greater than he in the governance of his country, and who sleeps
at his feet without other monument than a simple name, "William
Pitt," without other epitaph than the funeral oration which his
father, with outstretched arm, seems constantly to pronounce over
his tomb.
{292}
The proposals of the Duke of Richmond had been rejected, but Lord
North's bills had excited great uneasiness in Washington's mind.
He knew better than any one else at what price the war had been
hitherto sustained; he dreaded for his country those concessions
which had no effect upon his own soul. He wrote immediately to
his friends, "Accept nothing that is not independence. We can
never forget the outrages which Great Britain has made us suffer;
a peace on other conditions would be a source of perpetual
broils. If Great Britain, impelled by her love of tyranny, sought
anew to bend our foreheads beneath the yoke of iron--and she
would do it, be certain, for her pride and ambition are
indomitable--what nation would hereafter believe in our
professions of faith and lend us her aid? It is now to be feared
that the proposals of England may have great effect in this
country. Men are naturally friendly to peace; and more than one
symptom leads me to believe that the American people are
generally tired of war. If it is so, nothing is more politic than
to inspire confidence in the country by putting the army on an
imposing footing, and giving a greater activity to our
negotiations with the European powers. I believe that at the
present hour France ought to have recognized our independence,
and that she is going to declare war immediately on Great
Britain."
From natural taste and from English instinct, Washington did not
care for France and had no confidence in her. M. de la Fayette
alone had been able to make conquest of his affection and esteem.
He raised himself, however, above his peculiar inclinations, and
felt the need of an efficient alliance with the great continental
powers which were enemies or rivals of England.
{293}
Congress had just declined all negotiation with Great Britain as
long as an English soldier remained on American soil. On all seas
the English and French fleets obstinately engaged each other. In
the naval combat in sight of Ouessant, on the 27th of July, 1778,
success remained doubtful. The English were accustomed to be the
conquerors, and Admiral Keppel was put on trial. The merchant
shipping of France, however, suffered great loss. On all sides
English vessels covered the sea.
Franklin had recently said, with penetrating foresight, "It is
not General Howe who has taken Philadelphia; it is Philadelphia
which has taken General Howe." The necessity of guarding this
important place had obstructed the operations of the English.
Upon the news of the alliance of France with the United States
and of the departure of Count d'Estaing's squadron, orders had
been given to evacuate the place and to fall back on New York.
Howe had been actively pursued by Washington, who had gained a
serious advantage over him at Monmouth. The victory would have
been decisive but for a jealous disobedience on the part of
General Lee. Sir Henry Clinton had taken the chief command of the
English army, being more active than his predecessor, while
himself insufficient to struggle against Washington. "I do not
know whether they cause fear to the enemy," said Lord North,
ironically; "what I do know is that they make me tremble whenever
I think of them." Washington established his camp thirty miles
from New York. "After two years of marches and countermarches,"
he exclaimed; "after vicissitudes so strange that no war,
perhaps, has ever presented their like since the commencement of
the world, what a subject of satisfaction and astonishment it is
for us to see the two armies returned to their starting-point and
the assailants reduced, in order to their defence, to recur to
shovel and pickaxe."
{294}
An expedition contrived by General Sullivan against Rhode Island,
which was still occupied by an English corps, had just failed, by
reason of a clever manœuvre of Admiral Howe. The weather was bad,
and the French admiral put into Boston to repair his damages. The
cry of treason was forthwith raised; a riot greeted the Count
d'Estaing: all the violence of the democratic and revolutionary
spirit seemed let loose against the allies, who had lately been
hailed with such warmth. The efforts of Washington, seconded by
the Marquis de la Fayette, were employed to re-establish harmony.
Borne away by an ill-considered reaction, Congress conceived the
idea of attempting, in conjunction with France, a great
expedition on Canada. Washington, being tardily consulted,
refused his assent; he preserved, in respect of French policy, a
prudent mistrust. "Shall we allow," wrote he to the president of
Congress, "shall we allow a considerable body of French troops to
enter Canada and to take possession of the capital of a province
which is attached to France by all the ties of blood, manners,
and religion? I fear that this would be to expose that power to a
temptation too strong for every government directed by ordinary
political maxims. ... I believe I can read on the faces of some
persons something besides the disinterested zeal of simple
allies: I am willfully deceiving myself; perhaps I am too much
given over to the fear of some misfortune; but above everything,
sir, and putting aside every other consideration, I am averse to
increasing the number of our national obligations."
{295}
The project against Canada was tacitly abandoned. The Marquis de
la Fayette set out for France, ever ardently attached to the
American cause, which he was soon to serve efficaciously in
Paris, with the government of Louis XVI.