Another English friend was David Hartley. He was constant and even
pertinacious on our side, although less prophetic than Pownall, with
whom he coöperated in purpose and activity. His father was Hartley
the metaphysician, and author of the ingenious theory of sensation,
who predicted the fate of existing governments and hierarchies in
two simple sentences: “It is probable that all the present Civil
Governments will be overturned”; “It is probable that the present
forms of Church Government will be dissolved.”[470] Many were alarmed.
Lady Charlotte Wentworth asked the prophet when these terrible things
would happen. The answer was: “I am an old man, and shall not live to
see them; but you are a young woman, and probably will see them.”[471]
The son was born in 1729, and died at Bath in 1813. During our
Revolution he sat in Parliament for Kingston-upon-Hull. He was also
the British plenipotentiary in negotiating the Definitive Treaty
of Peace with the United States. He has dropped out of sight. The
biographical dictionaries afford him a few lines only. But he deserves
a considerable place in the history of our Independence.
John Adams was often austere, and sometimes cynical, in his judgments.
Evidently he did not like Hartley. In one place he speaks of him
as “a person of consummate vanity”;[472] then, as “talkative and
disputatious, and not always intelligible”;[473] and in still another
place remarks, “Mr. Hartley was as copious as usual;”[474] and when
appointed to sign the Definitive Treaty, “It would have been more
agreeable to have finished with Mr. Oswald.”[475] And yet, when writing
most elaborately to the Comte de Vergennes on the state of affairs
previous to the final campaign, he introduces opinions of Hartley
at length, saying that he was “more for peace than any man in the
kingdom.”[476] Such testimony may well outweigh the other expressions,
especially as nothing of the kind appears in the correspondence of
Franklin, with whom Hartley was much more intimate.
The “Parliamentary History” is a sufficient monument for Hartley. He
was a frequent speaker, and never missed an opportunity of pleading our
cause. Although without the immortal eloquence of Burke, he was always
clear and full. Many of his speeches seem written out by himself. He
was not a tardy convert, but began as “a new member” by supporting
an amendment favorable to the Colonies, 5th December, 1774. Then, in
March, 1775, he brought forward “Propositions for Conciliation with
America,” which he sustained in an elaborate speech, where he avowed
that the American question had occupied him for some time:--
“Though I have so lately had the honor of a seat in this House,
yet I have for many years turned my thoughts and attention to
matters of public concern and national policy. This question of
America is now of many years’ standing.”[477]
In this speech he acknowledges the services of New England at
Louisburg:--
“In that war too, Sir, they took Louisburg from the French,
single-handed, without any European assistance: as mettled
an enterprise as any in our history; an everlasting memorial
of the zeal, courage, and perseverance of the troops of New
England. The men themselves dragged the cannon over a morass
which had always been thought impassable, where neither
horses nor oxen could go; and they carried the shot upon their
backs. And what was their reward for this forward and spirited
enterprise,--for the reduction of this American Dunkirk? Their
reward, Sir, you know very well: it was given up for a barrier
to the Dutch.”[478]
All his various propositions were negatived; but he was not
disheartened. Constantly he spoke,--now on the Budget, then on the
Address, and then on specific propositions. At this time he asserted
the power of Parliament over the Colonies, and he proposed, on the
2d November, 1775, that a test of submission by the Colonists should
be the recognition of an Act of Parliament enacting “that all the
slaves in America should have the trial by jury.”[479] Shortly
afterwards, on the 7th December, 1775, he brought forward a second set
of “Propositions for Conciliation with America,” where, among other
things, he embodied the test on slavery, which he put forward as a
compromise; and here his language belongs not only to the history of
our Revolution, but to the history of Antislavery. While declaring that
in his opinion Great Britain was “the aggressor in everything,”[480]
he sought to bring the two countries together on a platform of human
rights, which he thus explained:--
“The act to be proposed to America, _as an auspicious beginning
to lay the first stone of universal liberty to mankind_, should
be what no American could hesitate an instant to comply with,
namely, that every slave in North America should be entitled to
his trial by jury in all criminal cases. America cannot refuse
to accept and to enroll such an act as this, and thereby to
reëstablish peace and harmony with the parent state. _Let us
all be reunited in this, as a foundation to extirpate slavery
from the face of the earth. Let those who seek justice and
liberty for themselves give that justice and liberty to their
fellow-creatures._ With respect to the idea of putting a final
period to slavery in North America, it should seem best that
when this country had led the way by the act for jury, that
each Colony, knowing their own peculiar circumstances, should
undertake the work in the most practicable way, and that they
should endeavor to establish some system by which slavery
should be in a certain term of years abolished. _Let the only
contention henceforward between Great Britain and America be,
which shall exceed the other in zeal for establishing the
fundamental rights of liberty to all mankind._”[481]
How grand and beautiful!--not to be read without gratitude! The motion
was rejected; but among the twenty-three in its favor were Fox and
Burke.
During this same month the unwearied defender of our country came
forward again, declaring that he could not be “an adviser or a
well-wisher to any of the vindictive operations against America,
because he thought the cause unjust; but at the same time he must be
equally earnest to secure British interests from destruction”; and he
thus prophesies:--
“The fate of America is cast. You may bruise its heel, but you
cannot crush its head. It will revive again. _The New World
is before them. Liberty is theirs._ They have possession of a
free government, their birthright and inheritance, derived to
them from their parent state, which the hand of violence cannot
wrest from them. If you will cast them off, my last wish is to
them, May they go and prosper!”[482]
Again, on the 10th May, 1776, he vindicated anew his original
proposition; and here again he testifies for peace and against
slavery:--
“For the sake of peace, therefore, I did propose a test of
compromise, by an acceptance, on the part of the Colonists,
of an Act of Parliament which should lay _the foundation for
the extirpation of the horrid custom of slavery in the New
World_.… My motion was … simply as an act of compromise and
reconciliation; and, as far as it was a legislative act, it was
still to have been applied in correcting the laws of slavery
in America, which I considered as repugnant to the laws of the
realm of England, and to the fundamentals of our Constitution.
Such a compromise would at the same time have saved the
national honor.”[483]
All gratitude to the hero who at this early day vowed himself to the
abolition of slavery! Hartley is among the first of Abolitionists,
with hardly a predecessor except Granville Sharp, and in Parliament
absolutely the first. Clarkson was at this time fifteen years old,
Wilberforce sixteen. Only in 1785 Clarkson obtained the prize for the
best Latin essay on the question, “Is it right to make men slaves
against their will?”[484] It was not until 1791 that Wilberforce moved
for leave to bring in a bill for the abolition of the slave-trade. It
is no small honor for one man to have come forward in Parliament as
an avowed abolitionist, while at the same time a vindicator of our
independence.