ENGLAND AND AMERICA. III: THE LOSS OF AMERICA
On May 17, 1778, Lord North, "with deep dejection in his countenance,"
had laid before the House of Commons a plan of conciliation, similar to
Burke's resolution which two years earlier he had arrogantly rejected,
in which a Bill was proposed to enable the King to appoint commissioners
with sufficient powers to treat, consult and agree upon the means of
quieting the disorders now subsisting in certain of the colonies in
America. The three commissioners appointed had been unwisely chosen.
Lord Carlisle, though clever enough, had hitherto been known only as a
man of pleasure, and William Eden had recently denounced American
Independence in the House of Commons; while George Johnstone, who was
well acquainted with American affairs, was foolish enough at the outset,
through an intermediary, to offer a bribe of L10,000 to Read, a leading
member of Congress, "as a condition of bringing about a reunion between
Great Britain and her colonies." Read announced this attempt upon his
honesty in Congress. "I am not worth purchasing, but, such as I am," he
said indignantly, "the King of Great Britain is not rich enough to do
it."
Such a commission was foredoomed to failure. The whole country cried
aloud for Chatham, and the public desire was endorsed by North, who
again tendered his resignation to the King, who, however, would only
consent to receive Chatham as a minister subordinate to North. "I
declare in the strongest and most solemn manner," George wrote to his
minister, "that though I do not object to your addressing yourself to
Lord Chatham, yet that you must acquaint him that I shall never address
myself to him but through you, and on a clear explanation that he is to
step forth to support an administration wherein you are First Lord of
the Treasury.... I will only add, to put before your eyes my most inward
thoughts, that no advantage to this country, no present danger to
myself, can ever make me address myself to Lord Chatham or any other
branch of the Opposition.... Should Lord Chatham wish to see me before
he gives his answer, I shall most certainly refuse it."[176] Chatham
could not be expected to serve under North, and the negotiations ended
forthwith, leaving behind them in many minds, however, the feeling that
the final victory of the Americans would not be an unmixed evil for the
mother country, since, apparently, on the issue of the war depended the
question, far more vital than the independence or subordination of the
colonies, whether the King would be able to establish his system of
government by personal influence. "I had as little doubt, but if the
conquest of America should be achieved," said Walpole, "the moment of
the victorious army's return would be that of the destruction of our
liberty."[177]
[176] _Correspondence of George III with Lord North._
[177] _Last Journals_, March, 1778.
No responsible statesman believed that England could succeed in
enforcing her will upon the colonies, let the struggle end as it might.
"As for conquering America, without foreign troops, it is entirely
impossible; and I think it pretty near a certainty that the rebels will
be in possession of all America by the Spring," Anthony Storer wrote to
Lord Carlisle, on December 29, 1775. "By the news of Fort St. John's and
Chambley, and the investiture of Quebec, their diligence and activity is
wonderful, and it must end in the possession of all North America. They
have taken a store-ship, and have several ships at sea. _De peu a peu
nous arrivons_; if they go on so another year--_fuit Ilium ingens
gloria_--we shall make but a paltry figure in the eyes of Europe. Come
to town, and be witness to the fall, or the re-establishment of our
present Empire."
Fox thought that the best use that could be made of the success at Long
Island would be to make conciliatory overtures. "It is become still more
necessary than ever to produce some manifesto, petition, or public
instrument upon the present situation of affairs; either to exhort his
Majesty to make the only proper use of his victory, by seizing this
opportunity of making advantageous offers of accommodation or to express
openly and fairly to him the well-grounded apprehensions that every man
must entertain from the power of the Crown in case his Majesty should be
able to subdue the American Continent by the force of his army,"[178]
Fox wrote on October 13, 1776, to Lord Rockingham; who, in his turn in
1778 said to Chatham, "I conceive that America will never again consent
to this country's having actual power within that continent." "As to
conquest, my Lords, it is impossible," Chatham, himself said in
Parliament on May 30, 1777, speaking on his motion to stop hostilities.
[178] Albemarle: _Memoirs of Rockingham_.
Chatham, of course, had all along been opposed to the war. Speaking in
1775 of General Gage's inactivity, he said it could not be blamed, for
it was inevitable. "But what a miserable condition is ours, where
disgrace is prudence, and where it is necessary to be contemptible!" he
said. "You must repeal those Acts [the Boston Ports and Massachusetts
Bay Bills], and you _will_ repeal them. I pledge myself for it, that you
will repeal them. I stake my reputation on it. I will consent to be
taken for an idiot if they are not finally repealed. If," he concluded,
with a grave warning, "if the ministers persevere in misleading the
King, I will not say that they can alienate the affections of his
subjects from the Crown; but I will affirm that they will make the crown
not worth his wearing. I will not say that the King is betrayed; but I
will pronounce that the kingdom is undone."[179] No wonder the King
heaped upon the statesman, who endeavoured so eloquently to thwart his
plans, every objectionable epithet; referred to him as "that perfidious
man," and "a trumpet of sedition;" and said of his motion in 1777 to put
an end to the war: "Lord Chatham's motion can have no other use but to
convey some fresh fuel to the rebels. Like most of the other productions
of that extraordinary brain, it contains nothing but specious words and
malevolence."[180]
[179] _Chatham Correspondence._
[180] _Correspondence of George III with Lord North._
But while Chatham wished for peace, he had no desire for unconditional
surrender on the part of his country, and when on April 7, 1778, the
Duke of Richmond moved the Independence of America, Chatham, protesting
"against the dismemberment of this ancient and most noble monarchy,"
made the last of the long series of eloquent speeches that adorn the
all-too-barren records of Parliamentary debates. "Before the Duke of
Richmond began, Lord Chatham entered the House, leaning on the arms of
his son William and his son-in-law, Lord Mahon. He bowed with much
courtesy to the peers, who, standing up out of respect, made a lane for
him to pass to his seat. He wore a suit of rich black velvet, and very
full wig. He was covered up to the knees in flannel. He looked pale and
emaciated, but his eyes retained all their native fire. When the Duke
sat down, Lord Chatham rose to oppose the motion. He made a rhetorical
speech, and declared it was probably the last time he should be able to
enter the walls of the House. The Duke of Richmond replied with much
tenderness. Chatham stood up again, attempted to speak, and sank down in
an apoplectic fit."[181] He was removed to the house of one of the
officers of Parliament, was in a few days sufficiently recovered to bear
the journey to his seat at Hayes, and there died on May 11. It is
characteristic of George III that the only remark he made _a propos_ of
the sudden illness of the great orator was an appeal to Lord North: "May
not the political exit of Lord Chatham incline you to remain at the head
of affairs?"[182]
[181] Albemarle: _Memoirs of Rockingham_.
[182] _Correspondence of George III with Lord North._
After Chatham's death, Lord North, Burke, and Fox united to pay tribute
to his career, while Parliament undertook to pay his debts, settled
L4,000 a year for ever to the title of Chatham, and voted a public
funeral. "I was rather surprised the House of Commons have unanimously
voted an address for a public funeral and a monument in Westminster
Abbey for Lord Chatham," wrote the ungenerous monarch, "but I trust it
is voted as a testimony of gratitude for his rousing the nation at the
beginning of the last war ... or this compliment, if paid to his general
conduct, is rather an offensive measure to me personally."[183] The
King's feelings were well known, with the result that the Court was
sparsely represented at the funeral, and as Gibbon said indignantly,
"Government tried to secure the double odium of suffering the thing to
be done, and of not doing it with a good grace."
[183] _Ibid._
"I should have been greatly surprised at the inclination expressed by
you to retire," George III had written to Lord North on January 31,
1778, "had I not known that, however you may now and then despond, yet
that you have too much personal affection for me, and sense of honour,
to allow such a thought to take any hold on your mind."[184] Now that
Chatham had gone, North could no longer point with clearness to a
successor. "The small party which Chatham had headed could not hope to
form a government of themselves since they had lost their chief. The
Whigs, under Lord Rockingham, had, in great measure, at least committed
themselves to the independence of America, and on that ground Lord North
could not but deprecate their return to power. There was henceforth no
great statesman to lead to that middle path, that course of conciliation
without compromise, which Chatham had pointed out, and perhaps might
have trodden."[185] Circumstances alter cases, and the difficulty of
naming a successor was so great that North yielded again to the King's
commands and entreaties, and was prevailed upon to remain in office.
[184] _Correspondence of George III with Lord North._
[185] Mahon: _History of England_.
Slowly the rights which had caused the breach were abandoned. "I assure
you, at least so it appears to me, that American politics are very much
altered," Anthony Storer wrote to Lord Carlisle, on December 14, 1775.
"Taxation and the exercise of it are totally renounced. You never hear
the right mentioned, but in order to give it up."[186] The whole power
of the Opposition was put forward to force the Government into a pacific
path. "We have tried our strength," said Lord Camden; "we find ourselves
incapable of conquest; and as we cannot subdue, we are determined to
destroy."
[186] _Selwyn: His Life and Letters._
While all England desired peace, the King was still determined to
continue the war, unless the victorious colonists would surrender! "No
man in my dominions desires solid peace more than I do," he wrote to
Lord North on June 11, 1779. "But no inclination to get out of the
present difficulties, which certainly keep my mind very far from a state
of ease, can incline me to enter into the destruction of the empire.
Lord North frequently says that the advantages to be gained by this
contest could never repay the expense. I own that any way, be it ever so
successful, if a person will sit down and weigh the expense, they will
find, as in this last, that it has impoverished the state enriched; but
this is only weighing such points in the scale of a tradesman behind his
counter. It is necessary for those whom Providence has placed in my
station to weigh what expenses, though very great, are not sometimes
necessary to prevent what would be more ruinous than any loss of money.
The present contests with America I cannot help seeing as the most
serious in which any country was ever engaged. It contains such a train
of consequences that they must be examined to feel its real weight.
Whether the laying a tax was deserving all the evils that have arisen
from it I should suppose no man could allege without being thought
fitter for Bedlam than a seat in the senate; but step by step the
demands of America have risen. Independence is their object, which every
man, not willing to sacrifice every object to a momentary and inglorious
peace, must concur with me in thinking this country can never submit to.
Should America succeed in that, the West Indies must follow, not in
independence, but for their own interest they must become dependent on
America. Ireland would soon follow, and this Island reduced to itself,
would be a poor island indeed."[187]
[187] _Correspondence of George III with Lord North._
After this definite declaration of the King's intention, the Prime
Minister again made an effort to resign, only to have his application
treated as his previous ones had been. "Lord North's application to
resign within two days of the prorogation I can see in no other light
than as a continuance of his resolution to retire whenever my affairs
will permit it," George wrote to him on June 16, 1779, "for I never can
think that he, who so handsomely stood forward on the desertion of the
Duke of Grafton, would lose all that merit by following so undignified
an example." Again North yielded to his royal master's expressed wish,
and he was somewhat encouraged by the accession of strength to the
King's party in the new Parliament, which was at once shown by the
defeat of the proposal to re-elect Sir Fletcher Norton, who had angered
George by his speech when presenting the Commons' grant in 1777.
The King, too, took heart again at the increase of his influence in the
House of Commons. "I can never suppose this country so far lost to all
ideas of self-importance as to be willing to grant American
Independence,"[188] he wrote to Lord North in March, 1780; but everybody
else realised that peace must be made at any cost. Though Parliament had
been bought, the country was aroused; and, although the position of the
Government was temporarily strengthened in October by the victory of
Cornwallis over Gates in South Carolina, the surrender of the English
General at Yorktown on October 19, 1781, sealed the fate of the
ministry. The news arrived in England on November 25, 1781, two days
before the meeting of Parliament, but even now the King would not yield:
"The getting a peace at the expense of a separation from America is," he
still declared, "a step to which no difficulties shall ever get me to be
in the smallest degree an instrument."[189] Indeed, the only visible
sign of his distress on receiving the news was shown by the omission in
a letter to Lord George Germaine of the mention of the hour and minute
of his writing, an observance he never omitted. "I have received, with
sentiments of the deepest concern, the communication which Lord George
Germaine has made me, of the unfortunate result of the operations in
Virginia," he wrote. "I particularly lament it, on account of the
consequences connected with it, and the difficulties which it may
produce in carrying on the public business, or in repairing such a
misfortune. But I trust that neither Lord George Germaine, nor any
member of the Cabinet, will suppose, that it makes the smallest
alteration in those principles of my conduct which have directed me in
past time, and which will always continue to animate me under every
event, in the prosecution of the present contest."[190]
[188] _Correspondence of George III with Lord North._
[189] _Correspondence of George III with Lord North._
[190] Wraxall: _Historical Memoirs of My Own Times_.
"The aspect of affairs at the close of 1780 might indeed well have
appalled an English statesman. Perfectly isolated in the world, England
was confronted by the united arms of France, Spain, Holland, and
America; while the Northern league threatened her, if not with another
war, at least with the annihilation of the most powerful weapon of
offence. At the same time, in Hindostan Hyder Ali was desolating the
Carnatic and menacing Madras; and in Ireland the connexion was strained
to its utmost limit, and all real power had passed into the hands of a
volunteer force which was perfectly independent of the Government, and
firmly resolved to remodel the constitution. At home there was no
statesman in whom the country had any real confidence, and the whole
ministry was weak, discredited and faint-hearted. Twelve millions had
been added this year to the national debt, and the element of disorder
was so strong that London itself had been for some days at the mercy of
the mob."[191] But while George III insisted upon prosecuting the
war--he had by his firmness broken up the Whig phalanx, was it
conceivable that he should give way to the colonists?--and North, in
spite of his better judgment supported him,[192] the Opposition, was
every day gathering fresh adherents. "A sense of past error, and a
conviction that the American war might terminate in further destruction
to our armies, began from this time rapidly to insinuate itself into the
minds of men. Their discourse was quite changed, though the majorities
in Parliament were still quite ready to support the American War, while
all the world was representing it to be the height of madness and
folly."[193] "To-morrow," Selwyn wrote on June 11, 1781, to Lord
Carlisle, "I find a motion is to come from Fox concerning America, to
which he may, contrary to his expectation or wishes, find in the friends
of Government an assent. People now seem by their discourse to despair
more of that cause than ever. There has been wretched management,
disgraceful politics, I am sure; where the principal blame is the Lord
only knows; in many places, I am afraid."[194]
[191] Lecky: _History of England_.
[192] In November, 1779, Lord Gower resigned his office on the ground
that the war "must end in ruin to his Majesty and the country"; and
North, after informing the King that he had endeavoured to dissuade his
colleague from leaving the ministry, added: "In the argument Lord North
had certainly one disadvantage, which is that he holds in his heart, and
has held for three years past, the same opinion with Lord Gower."
[193] Duke of Grafton: _Autobiography_.
[194] _George Selwyn: His Life and Letters._
Fox on June 12 moved that the House should resolve itself into a
Committee to consider the American War, at the same time moving a
further resolution that the Government should take every possible
measure to conclude peace with the colonies. "The only objection made to
my motion," he declared in the course of debate, "is that it must lead
to American independence. But I venture to assert that _within six
months of the present day_, ministers themselves will come forward to
Parliament with some proposition of a similar nature. I know that such
is their intention, I announce it to the House." The resolution was lost
by 172 to 99; but the end was near."
"The attention of every one is confined to our situation in America,"
Anthony Storer wrote to Carlisle on November 26, 1781. "The Speech from
the Throne contains the same resolution which appeared in times when we
seemed to have a more favourable prospect of success, of continuing the
war, and of claiming the aid of Parliament to support the rights of
Great Britain." This was absurd and could not be countenanced. An
address to the King moved by Conway on February 22, 1782, petitioning
the King to stop the war, was only rejected by a single vote, and the
Government were obliged to accept a resolution asserting the
hopelessness of reducing America; while on March 20, North anticipated
a motion for his dismissal by announcing his resignation.
Under ministers pledged to peace, even the King saw that hostilities
could not be continued. Lord Rockingham began negotiations with the
United States, and these were brought to a successful conclusion by Lord
Shelburne. The treaty was signed in 1783, and the blow was the greatest
ever sustained by the King. "I that am born a gentleman," he said to
Thurlow, "shall never rest my head on my last pillow in peace and quiet,
as long as I remember the loss of my American colonies."
George contrived, however, by his tactful reply to the address of John
Adams, on the arrival of the latter as the first Ambassador from the
newly recognised United States to the Court of St. James's, to regain
his dignity and to impress his old enemy as well as his subjects with
the sense of his majesty that he could always introduce on occasions of
state. "Sir," said Adams, when presenting his credentials, "the United
States have appointed me their minister plenipotentiary to your Majesty,
and have directed me to deliver to your Majesty this letter, which
contains the evidence of it. It is in obedience to their express
commands that I have the honour to assure your Majesty of their
unanimous disposition to cultivate the most friendly and liberal
intercourse between your Majesty's subjects and their citizens, and of
their best wishes for your Majesty's health and happiness, and for that
of your royal family. The appointment of a minister from the United
States to your Majesty's Court will form an epoch in the history of
England and America. I think myself more fortunate than all my
fellow-citizens, in having the distinguished honour to stand in your
Majesty's royal presence in a diplomatic character, and I shall esteem
myself the happiest of men if I can be instrumental in recommending my
country more and more to your Majesty's royal benevolence, and of
restoring an entire esteem, confidence, and affection, or, in better
words, 'the old good-nature and the good old humour,' between people
who, though separated by an ocean, and under different governments, have
the same language, a similar religion, a kindred blood. I beg your
Majesty's permission to add that, although I have sometimes before been
intrusted by my country, it was never in my whole life in a manner so
agreeable to myself." To this George replied courteously, though the
effort to be conciliatory must have cost him much: "Sir, the
circumstances of this audience are so extraordinary, the language you
have now held is so extremely proper, and the feelings you have
discovered so justly adapted to the occasion, that I must say, that I
not only receive with pleasure the assurance of the friendly disposition
of the United States, but that I am very glad the choice has fallen upon
you to be their minister. I wish you, sir, to believe, and that it may
be understood in America, that I have done nothing in the late contest
but what I thought myself indispensably bound to do, by the duty which I
owed to my people. I will be very frank with you. I was the last to
conform to the separation; but the separation having been made, and
having become inevitable, I have always said, as I say now, that I would
be the first to meet the friendship of the United States as an
independent power. The moment I see such sentiment and language as yours
prevail, and a disposition to give this country the preference, that
moment, I shall say, let the circumstances of language, religion and
blood, have their natural lawful effect."[195]
[195] Letter of John Adams to John Jay, American Secretary of State for
Foreign Affairs, June 9, 1783.