History of the English People Volume Viii Part 1

History of the English People.

Volume VIII.

by John Richard Green.

CHAPTER II

THE INDEPENDENCE OF AMERICA

1767-1782

[Sidenote: Growing influence of public opinion.]

The Chatham ministry marked a new phase in the relation of public opinion to the government of the State. In 1766 as in 1756 Pitt had been called into office by "the voice of the people" at large. But in his former ministry the influence he drew from popularity could only make itself effective through an alliance with the influence which was drawn from political connexion; and when the two elements of the administration became opposed the support of the nation gave Pitt little strength of resistance against the Whigs. Nor had the young king had much better fortune as yet in his efforts to break their rule. He had severed them indeed from Pitt; and he had dexterously broken up the great party into jealous factions. But broken as it was, even its factions remained too strong for the king. His one effort at independence under Bute hardly lasted a year, and he was as helpless in the hands of Grenville as in the hands of Rockingham. His bribery, his patronage, his Parliamentary "friends," his perfidy and his lies, had done much to render good government impossible and to steep public life in deeper corruption, but they had done little to further the triumph of the Crown over the great houses. Of the one power indeed which could break the Whig rule, the power of public opinion, George was more bitterly jealous than even of the Whigs themselves. But in spite of his jealousy the tide of opinion steadily rose. In wise and in unwise ways the country at large showed its new interest in national policy, its new resolve to have a share in the direction of it. It showed no love for the king or the king's schemes. But it retained all its old disgust for the Whigs and for the Parliament. It clung to Pitt closer than ever, and in spite of his isolation from all party support raised him daily into a mightier power. It was the sense that a new England was thus growing up about him, that a new basis was forming itself for political action, which at last roused the Great Commoner to the bold enterprise of breaking through the bonds of "connexion" altogether. For the first time since the Revolution a minister told the peers in their own house that he defied their combinations.

[Sidenote: Chatham's withdrawal.]

The ministry of 1766 in fact was itself such a defiance; for it was an attempt to found political power not on the support of the Whigs as a party, but on the support of national opinion. But as Parliament was then const.i.tuted, it was only through Chatham himself that opinion could tell even on the administration he formed; and six months after he had taken office Chatham was no more than a name. The dread which had driven him from the stormy agitation of the Lower House to the quiet of the House of Peers now became a certainty. As winter died into the spring of 1767 his nervous disorganization grew into a painful and overwhelming illness which almost wholly withdrew him from public affairs; and when Parliament met again he was unable either to come to town or to confer with his colleagues. It was in vain that they prayed him for a single word of counsel. Chatham remained utterly silent; and the ministry which his guidance had alone held together at once fell into confusion. The Earl's plans were suffered to drop. His colleagues lost all cohesion, and each acted as he willed. Townshend, a brilliant but shallow rhetorician whom Pitt had been driven reluctantly to make his Chancellor of the Exchequer, after angering the House of Commons by proposals for an increase of the land-tax, strove to win back popularity among the squires by undertaking to raise a revenue from America. That a member of a ministry which bore Pitt's name should have proposed to reopen the question of colonial taxation within a year of the repeal of the Stamp Acts was strange enough to the colonists; and they were yet more astonished when, on its neglect to make provision for compensating those who had suffered from the recent outbreak in due conformity to an Act of the British Parliament, the a.s.sembly of New York was suspended, and when Townshend redeemed his pledge by laying duties on various objects brought into American ports. But these measures were the result of levity and disorganization rather than of any purpose to reopen the quarrel. Pitt's colleagues had as yet no design to reverse his policy.

The one aim of the ministry which bore his name, and which during his retirement looked to the Duke of Grafton as its actual head, was simply to exist. But in the face of Chatham's continued withdrawal, of Townshend's death in 1767, and of the increasing hostility of the Rockingham Whigs, even existence was difficult; and Grafton saw himself forced to a union with the faction which was gathered under the Duke of Bedford, and to the appointment of a Tory n.o.ble as Secretary of State.

[Sidenote: His resignation.]

Such measures however only showed how far the ministry had drifted from the ground on which Pitt took his stand in its formation; and the very force on which he had relied turned at once against it. The elections for the new Parliament which met in 1768 were more corrupt than any that had as yet been witnessed; and even the stoutest opponents of reform shrank aghast from the open bribery of const.i.tuencies and the prodigal barter of seats. How bitter the indignation of the country had grown was seen in its fresh backing of Wilkes. Wilkes had remained in France since his outlawry; but he seized on the opening afforded by the elections to return and offer himself as a member for the new Parliament. To the surprise and dismay of the ministers he was returned for Middles.e.x, a county the large number of whose voters made its choice a real expression of public opinion. The choice of Wilkes at such a moment was in effect a public condemnation of the House of Commons and the ministerial system. The ministry however and the House alike shrank from a fresh struggle with the agitator. But the king was eager for the contest. After ten years of struggle and disappointment George had all but reached his aim. The two forces which had as yet worsted him were both of them paralysed. The Whigs were fatally divided, and discredited in the eyes of the country by their antagonism to Pitt. Pitt on the other hand was suddenly removed from the stage. The ministry was without support in the country; and for Parliamentary support it was forced to lean more and more on the men who looked for direction to the king himself. At a moment when all hope of exerting any influence seemed crushed by the return of Chatham to power, George found his influence predominant as it had never been before. One force of opposition alone remained in the public discontent; and at this he struck more fiercely than ever. "I think it highly expedient to apprise you," he wrote to Lord North, "that the expulsion of Mr. Wilkes appears to be very essential, and must be effected." The ministers and the House of Commons bowed to his will. By his non-appearance in court when charged with libel, Wilkes had become an outlaw, and he was now thrown into prison on his outlawry. Dangerous riots broke out in London and over the whole country at the news of his arrest; and continued throughout the rest of the year. In the midst of these tumults the ministry itself was torn with internal discord. The adherents of Chatham found their position in it an intolerable one; and Lord Shelburne announced his purpose of resigning office. The announcement was followed in the autumn by the resignation of Chatham himself. Though still prostrated by disease, the Earl was sufficiently restored to grasp the actual position of the Cabinet which traded on his name, and in October 1768 he withdrew formally from the ministry.

The withdrawal of Chatham however, if it shook the ministry, only rendered it still more dependent on the king; and in spite of its reluctance George forced it to plunge into a decisive struggle with the public opinion which was declaring itself in tumult and riot against the system of government. The triumph of Wilkes had been driven home by the election of a nominee of the great agitator as his colleague on a fresh vacancy in the representation of Middles.e.x. The Government met the blow by a show of vigour, and by calling on the magistrates of Surrey to disperse the mobs; a summons which ended in conflicts between the crowd and the soldiers, in which some of the rioters were slain. Wilkes at once published the letter of the Secretary of State with comments on it as a cause of bloodshed; and the ministry accepted the step as a challenge to combat. If his comments were libellous, the libel was cognizable in the ordinary courts of law. But no sooner had Parliament a.s.sembled in 1769 than the House of Commons was called to take the matter into its own hands. Witnesses were examined at its bar: the forms of a trial were gone through; and as Wilkes persisted in his charge, he was expelled as a libeller. Unluckily the course which had been adopted put the House itself on trial before the const.i.tuencies. No sooner was the new writ issued than Wilkes again presented himself as a candidate, and was again elected by the s.h.i.+re of Middles.e.x. Violent and oppressive as the course of the House of Commons had been, it had as yet acted within its strict right, for no one questioned its possession of a right of expulsion. But the defiance of Middles.e.x led it now to go further. It resolved, "That Mr. Wilkes having been in this session of Parliament expelled the House, was and is incapable of being elected a member to serve in the present Parliament"; and it issued a writ for a fresh election. Middles.e.x answered this insolent claim to limit the free choice of a const.i.tuency by again returning Wilkes; and the House was driven by its anger to a fresh and more outrageous usurpation. It again expelled the member for Middles.e.x; and on his return for the third time by an immense majority it voted that the candidate whom he had defeated, Colonel Luttrell, ought to have been returned, and was the legal representative of Middles.e.x. The Commons had not only limited at their own arbitrary discretion the free election of the const.i.tuency, but they had transferred its rights to themselves by seating Luttrell as member in defiance of the deliberate choice of Wilkes by the freeholders of Middles.e.x. The country at once rose indignantly against this violation of const.i.tutional law. Wilkes was elected an Alderman of London; and the Mayor, Aldermen, and Livery pet.i.tioned the king to dissolve the Parliament. A remonstrance from London and Westminster mooted a far larger question. It said boldly that "there is a time when it is clearly demonstrable that men cease to be representatives. That time is now arrived. The House of Commons do not represent the people." Meanwhile a writer who styled himself Junius attacked the Government in letters, which, rancorous and unscrupulous as was their tone, gave a new power to the literature of the Press by their clearness and terseness of statement, the finish of their style, and the terrible vigour of their invective.

[Sidenote: Parliamentary Reform.]

The storm however beat idly on the obstinacy of the king. The printer of the bold letters was prosecuted, and the pet.i.tions and remonstrances of London were haughtily rejected. The issue of the struggle verified the forebodings of Burke. If, as Middles.e.x declared, and as the strife itself proved, the House of Commons had ceased to represent the English people, it was inevitable that men should look forward to measures that would make it representative. At the beginning of 1770 a cessation of the disease which had long held him prostrate enabled Chatham to reappear in the House of Lords. He at once denounced the usurpations of the Commons, and brought in a bill to declare them illegal. But his genius made him the first to see that remedies of this sort were inadequate to meet evils which really sprang from the fact that the House of Commons no longer represented the people of England; and he mooted a plan for its reform by an increase of the county members, who then formed the most independent portion of the House. Further he could not go, for even in the proposals he made he stood almost alone. The Tories and the king's friends were not likely to welcome proposals which would lessen the king's influence. On the other hand the Whigs under Lord Rockingham had no sympathy with Parliamentary reform. As early as 1769, in his first political publication, their one philosophic thinker, Edmund Burke, had met a proposal to enlarge the number of const.i.tuents by a counter-proposal to lessen them. "It would be more in the spirit of our const.i.tution, and more agreeable to the fas.h.i.+on of our best laws,"

he said, "by lessening the number to add to the weight and independency of our voters." Nor did the Whigs shrink with less haughty disdain from the popular agitation in which public opinion was forced to express itself, and which Chatham, while censuring its extravagance, as deliberately encouraged. It is from the quarrel between Wilkes and the House of Commons that we may date the influence of public meetings on English politics. The gatherings of the Middles.e.x electors in his support were preludes to the great meetings of Yorks.h.i.+re freeholders in which the question of Parliamentary reform rose into importance; and it was in the movement for reform, and the establishment of corresponding committees throughout the country for the purpose of promoting it, that the power of political agitation first made itself felt. Political societies and clubs took their part in this quickening and organization of public opinion: and the spread of discussion, as well as the influence which now began to be exercised by the appearance of vast numbers of men in support of any political movement, proved that Parliament, whether it would or no, must soon reckon with the sentiments of the people at large.

[Sidenote: Publication of debates.]

But an agent far more effective than popular agitation was preparing to bring the force of public opinion to bear directly on Parliament itself.

We have seen how much of the corruption of the House of Commons sprang from the secrecy of Parliamentary proceedings, but this secrecy was the harder to preserve as the nation woke to a greater interest in its own affairs. From the accession of the Georges imperfect reports of the more important discussions began to be published under the t.i.tle of "The Senate of Lilliput," and with feigned names or simple initials to denote the speakers. The best known reports of this kind were those contributed by Samuel Johnson to the _Gentleman's Magazine_. Obtained by stealth and often merely recalled by memory, such reports were naturally inaccurate; and their inaccuracy was eagerly seized on as a pretext for enforcing the rules which guarded the secrecy of proceedings in Parliament. In 1771 the Commons issued a proclamation forbidding the publication of debates; and six printers, who set it at defiance, were summoned to the bar of the House. One who refused to appear was arrested by its messenger; but the arrest brought the House into conflict with the magistrates of London. The magistrates set aside its proclamation as without legal force, released the printers, and sent the messenger to prison for an unlawful arrest. The House sent the Lord Mayor to the Tower, but the cheers of the crowds which followed him on his way told that public opinion was again with the Press, and the attempt to hinder its publication of Parliamentary proceedings dropped silently on his release at the next prorogation. Few changes of equal importance have been so quietly brought about. Not only was the responsibility of members to their const.i.tuents made constant and effective by the publication of their proceedings, but the nation itself was called in to a.s.sist in the deliberations of its representatives. A new and wider interest in its own affairs was roused in the people at large, and a new political education was given to it through the discussion of every subject of national importance in the Houses and the Press. Stimulated and moulded into shape by free discussion, encouraged and made conscious of its strength by public meetings, and gathered up and represented on all its sides by the journals of the day, public opinion became a force in practical statesmans.h.i.+p, influenced the course of debates, and controlled, in a closer and more constant way than even Parliament itself had been able to do, the actions of the Government. The importance of its new position gave a weight to the Press which it had never had before. The first great English journals date from this time.

With the _Morning Chronicle_, the _Morning Post_, the _Morning Herald_, and the _Times_, all of which appeared in the interval between the opening years of the American War and the beginning of the war with the French Revolution, journalism took a new tone of responsibility and intelligence. The hacks of Grub Street were superseded by publicists of a high moral temper and literary excellence; and philosophers like Coleridge or statesmen like Canning turned to influence public opinion through the columns of the Press.

[Sidenote: Renewed strife with America.]

But great as the influence of opinion was destined to become, it was feebly felt as yet; and George the Third was able to set Chatham's policy disdainfully aside and to plunge into a contest far more disastrous than his contest with the Press. In all the proceedings of the last few years, what had galled him most had been the act which averted a war between England and her colonies. To the king the Americans were already "rebels," and the great statesman whose eloquence had made their claims irresistible was a "trumpet of sedition." George deplored in his correspondence with his ministers the repeal of the Stamp Acts. "All men feel," he wrote, "that the fatal compliance in 1766 has increased the pretensions of the Americans to absolute independence." But in England generally the question was regarded as settled, while in America the news of the repeal had been received with universal joy, and taken as a close of the strife. On both sides however there remained a pride and irritability which only wise handling could have allayed; and in the present state of English politics wise handling was impossible. Only a few months indeed pa.s.sed before the quarrel was again reopened; for no sooner had the illness of Lord Chatham removed him from any real share in public affairs than the wretched administration which bore his name suspended the a.s.sembly of New York on its refusal to provide quarters for English troops, and resolved to a.s.sert British sovereignty by levying import duties of trivial amount at American ports. The a.s.sembly of Ma.s.sachusetts was dissolved on a trifling quarrel with its Governor, and Boston was occupied for a time by British soldiers. It was without a thought of any effective struggle however that the Cabinet had entered on this course of vexation; and when the remonstrances of the Legislatures of Ma.s.sachusetts and Virginia, coupled with a fall in the funds, warned the ministers of its danger, they hastened to withdraw from it. In 1769 the troops were recalled, and all duties, save one, abandoned. But with a fatal obstinacy the king insisted on retaining the duty on tea as an a.s.sertion of the supremacy of the mother country. Its retention was enough to prevent any thorough restoration of good feeling. A series of petty quarrels went on in almost every colony between the popular a.s.semblies and the Governors appointed by the Crown, and the colonists persisted in their agreement to import nothing from the mother country.

As yet however there was no prospect of serious strife. In America the influence of George Was.h.i.+ngton allayed the irritation of Virginia; while Ma.s.sachusetts contented itself with quarrelling with its Governor and refusing to buy tea so long as the duty was levied.

The temper of the colonists was in the main that of the bulk of English statesmen. Even George Grenville, though approving the retention of the duty in question, abandoned all dream of further taxation. But the king was now supreme. The reappearance and attack of Chatham at the opening of 1770 had completed the ruin of the ministry. Those of his adherents who still clung to it, Lord Camden, the Chancellor, Lord Granby, the Commander-in-Chief, Dunning, the Solicitor-General, resigned their posts. In a few days they were followed by the Duke of Grafton, who since Chatham's resignation had been nominally the head of the administration. All that remained of it were the Bedford faction and the dependents of the king; but George did not hesitate to form these into a ministry, and to place at its head the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord North, a man of some administrative ability, but unconnected with any political party, steadily opposed to any recognition of public opinion, and of an easy and indolent temper which yielded against his better knowledge to the stubborn doggedness of the king. The instinct of the country at once warned it of the results of such a change; and the City of London put itself formally at the head of the public discontent. In solemn addresses it called on George the Third to dismiss his ministers and to dissolve the Parliament; and its action was supported by pet.i.tions to the same effect from the greater counties.

In the following year it fought, as we have seen, a battle with the House of Commons which established the freedom of the press. But the efforts of the country failed before the paralysis of political action which resulted from the position of the Whigs and the corruption of Parliament. The deaths of Grenville and Bedford broke up two of the Whig factions. Rockingham with the rest of the party held aloof from the popular agitation, and drew more and more away from Chatham as he favoured it. The Parliament remained steady to the king, and the king clung more and more to the ministry. The ministry was in fact a mere cloak for the direction of public affairs by George himself. "Not only did he direct the minister," a careful observer tells us, "in all important matters of foreign and domestic policy, but he instructed him as to the management of debates in Parliament, suggested what motions should be made or opposed, and how measures should be carried. He reserved for himself all the patronage, he arranged the whole cast of administration, settled the relative places and pretensions of ministers of State, law officers, and members of the household, nominated and promoted the English and Scotch judges, appointed and translated bishops and deans, and dispensed other preferments in the Church. He disposed of military governments, regiments, and commissions; and himself ordered the marching of troops. He gave and refused t.i.tles, honours, and pensions." All this immense patronage was persistently used for the creation and maintenance in both Houses of Parliament of a majority directed by the king himself; and its weight was seen in the steady action of such a majority. It was seen yet more in the subjection to which the ministry that bore North's name was reduced. George was in fact the minister through the years of its existence; and the shame of the darkest hour of English history lies wholly at his door.

[Sidenote: The Boston tea-riots.]

His fixed purpose was to seize on the first opportunity of undoing the "fatal compliance of 1766." A trivial riot gave him at last the handle he wanted. In December 1773 the arrival of some English s.h.i.+ps laden with tea kindled fresh irritation in Boston, where the non-importation agreement was strictly enforced; and a mob in the disguise of Indians boarded the vessels and flung their contents into the sea. The outrage was deplored alike by the friends of America in England and by its own leading statesmen; and both Was.h.i.+ngton and Chatham were prepared to support the Government in its looked-for demand of redress. But the thought of the king was not of redress but of repression, and he set roughly aside the more conciliatory proposals of Lord North and his fellow-ministers. They had already rejected as "frivolous and vexatious"

a pet.i.tion of the a.s.sembly of Ma.s.sachusetts for the dismissal of two public officers whose letters home advised the withdrawal of free inst.i.tutions from the colonies. They now seized on the riot as a pretext for rigorous measures. A bill introduced into Parliament in the beginning of 1774 punished Boston by closing its port against all commerce. Another punished the State of Ma.s.sachusetts by withdrawing the liberties it had enjoyed ever since the Pilgrim Fathers landed on its soil. Its charter was altered. The choice of its Council was transferred from the people to the Crown, and the nomination of its judges was transferred to the Governor. In the Governor too, by a provision more outrageous than even these, was vested the right of sending all persons charged with a share in the late disturbances to England for trial. To enforce these measures of repression troops were sent to America, and General Gage, the commander-in-chief there, was appointed Governor of Ma.s.sachusetts. The king's exultation at the prospect before him was unbounded. "The die," he wrote triumphantly to his minister, "is cast.

The colonies must either triumph or submit." Four regiments would be enough to bring the Americans to their senses. They would only be "lions while we are lambs." "If we take the resolute part," he decided solemnly, "they will undoubtedly be very meek."

[Sidenote: American resistance.]

Unluckily the blow at Ma.s.sachusetts was received with anything but meekness. The jealousies between colony and colony were hushed by a sense that the liberties of all were in danger. If the British Parliament could cancel the charter of Ma.s.sachusetts and ruin the trade of Boston, it could cancel the charter of every colony and ruin the trade of every port from the St. Lawrence to the coast of Georgia. All, therefore, adopted the cause of Ma.s.sachusetts; and all their Legislatures save that of Georgia sent delegates to a Congress which a.s.sembled on the 4th of September at Philadelphia. Ma.s.sachusetts took a yet bolder course. Not one of its citizens would act under the new laws.

Its a.s.sembly met in defiance of the Governor, called out the militia of the State, and provided arms and ammunition for it. But there was still room for reconciliation. The resolutions of the Congress had been moderate, for Virginia was the wealthiest and most influential among the States who sent delegates, and though resolute to resist the new measures of the government, Virginia still clung to the mother country.

At home the merchants of London and Bristol pleaded loudly for reconciliation; and in January 1775 Chatham again came forward to avert a strife he had once before succeeded in preventing. With characteristic largeness of feeling he set aside all half-measures or proposals of compromise. "It is not cancelling a piece of parchment," he insisted, "that can win back America: you must respect her fears and her resentments." The bill which he introduced in concert with Franklin provided for the repeal of the late Acts and for the security of the colonial charters, abandoned the claim of taxation, and ordered the recall of the troops. A colonial a.s.sembly was directed to meet and provide means by which America might contribute towards the payment of the public debt.

[Sidenote: Was.h.i.+ngton.]

Chatham's measure was contemptuously rejected by the Lords, as was a similar measure of Burke's by the House of Commons, and a pet.i.tion of the City of London in favour of the Colonies by the king himself. With the rejection of these efforts for conciliation began the great struggle which ended eight years later in the severance of the American Colonies from the British Crown. The Congress of delegates from the Colonial Legislatures at once voted measures for general defence, ordered the levy of an army, and set George Was.h.i.+ngton at its head. No n.o.bler figure ever stood in the forefront of a nation's life. Was.h.i.+ngton was grave and courteous in address; his manners were simple and unpretending; his silence and the serene calmness of his temper spoke of a perfect self-mastery. But there was little in his outer bearing to reveal the grandeur of soul which lifts his figure with all the simple majesty of an ancient statue out of the smaller pa.s.sions, the meaner impulses, of the world around him. What recommended him for command was singly his weight among his fellow-landowners of Virginia, and the experience of war which he had gained by service in border contests with the French and the Indians, as well as in Braddock's luckless expedition against Fort Duquesne. It was only as the weary fight went on that the colonists discovered, however slowly and imperfectly, the greatness of their leader, his clear judgement, his heroic endurance, his silence under difficulties, his calmness in the hour of danger or defeat, the patience with which he waited, the quickness and hardness with which he struck, the lofty and serene sense of duty that never swerved from its task through resentment or jealousy, that never through war or peace felt the touch of a meaner ambition, that knew no aim save that of guarding the freedom of his fellow-countrymen, and no personal longing save that of returning to his own fireside when their freedom was secured. It was almost unconsciously that men learned to cling to Was.h.i.+ngton with a trust and faith such as few other men have won, and to regard him with a reverence which still hushes us in presence of his memory. But even America hardly recognised his real greatness while he lived. It was only when death set its seal on him that the voice of those whom he had served so long proclaimed him "the man first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his fellow-countrymen."

[Sidenote: Declaration of Independence,]

Was.h.i.+ngton more than any of his fellow-colonists represented the clinging of the Virginian landowners to the mother country, and his acceptance of a military command proved that even the most moderate among the colonists had no hope now save in arms. The struggle opened with a skirmish between a party of English troops and a detachment of militia at Lexington on the nineteenth of April 1775; and in a few days twenty thousand colonists appeared before Boston. The Congress rea.s.sembled, declared the States they represented "The United Colonies of America," and undertook the work of government. Meanwhile ten thousand fresh English troops landed at Boston. But the provincial militia, in number almost double that of the British force which prepared to attack them, seized a neck of ground which joins Boston to the mainland; and though on the 17th of June they were driven from the heights of Bunker's Hill which commanded the town, it was only after a desperate struggle in which their bravery put an end for ever to the taunts of cowardice which had been levelled against the colonists. "Are the Yankees cowards?" shouted the men of Ma.s.sachusetts as the first English attack rolled back baffled down the hill-side. But a far truer courage was shown in the stubborn endurance with which Was.h.i.+ngton's raw militiamen, who gradually dwindled from sixteen thousand to ten, ill-fed, ill-armed, and with but forty-five rounds of ammunition to each man, cooped up through the winter a force of ten thousand veterans in the lines of Boston. The spring of 1776 saw them force these troops to withdraw from the city to New York, where the whole British army, largely reinforced by mercenaries from Germany, was concentrated under General Howe. Meanwhile a raid of the American General Arnold nearly drove the British troops from Canada; and though his attempt broke down before Quebec, it showed that all hope of reconciliation was over. The colonies of the south, the last to join in the struggle, had in fact expelled their Governors at the close of 1775; at the opening of the next year Ma.s.sachusetts instructed its delegates to support a complete repudiation of the king's government by the Colonies; while the American ports were thrown open to the world in defiance of the Navigation Acts.

These decisive steps were followed by the great act with which American history begins, the adoption on the 4th of July 1776 by the delegates in Congress after a fierce resistance from those of Pennsylvania and South Carolina, and in spite of the abstention of those of New York, of a Declaration of Independence. "We," ran its solemn words, "the representatives of the United States of America in Congress a.s.sembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rect.i.tude of our intentions, solemnly publish and declare that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, Free and Independent States."

[Sidenote: Saratoga.]

But the earlier successes of the colonists were soon followed by suffering and defeat. Howe, an active general with a fine army at his back, cleared Long Island in August by a victory at Brooklyn; and Was.h.i.+ngton, whose force was weakened by withdrawals and defeat and disheartened by the loyal tone of the State in which it was encamped, was forced in the autumn of 1776 to evacuate New York and New Jersey, and to fall back first on the Hudson and then on the Delaware. The Congress prepared to fly from Philadelphia, and a general despair showed itself in cries of peace. But a well-managed surprise and a daring march on the rear of Howe's army restored the spirits of Was.h.i.+ngton's men, and forced the English general in his turn to fall back on New York.

England however was now roused to more serious efforts; and the campaign of 1777 opened with a combined attempt for the suppression of the revolt. An army which had a.s.sembled in Canada under General Burgoyne marched in June by way of the Lakes to seize the line of the Hudson.

Howe meanwhile sailed up the Chesapeake and advanced on Philadelphia, the temporary capital of the United States and the seat of the Congress.

The rout of his little army of seven thousand men at Brandywine forced Was.h.i.+ngton to abandon Philadelphia, and after a bold but unsuccessful attack on his victors to retire into winter quarters on the banks of the Schuylkill, where the unconquerable resolve with which he nerved his handful of beaten and half-starved troops to face Howe's army in their camp at Valley Forge is the n.o.blest of his triumphs. But in the north the war had taken another colour. Burgoyne's movement had been planned in view of a junction with at least a part of Howe's army from New York; a junction which would have enabled him to seize the line of the Hudson and thus cut off New England from her sister provinces. But Howe was held fast by Was.h.i.+ngton's resistance and unable to send a man to the north; while the spirit of New England, which had grown dull as the war rolled away from its borders, quickened again at the news of invasion and of the outrages committed by the Indians employed among the English troops. Its militia hurried from town and homestead to a camp with which General Gates had barred the road to Albany; and after a fruitless attack on the American lines, Burgoyne saw himself surrounded on the heights of Saratoga. On the 17th of October his whole force was compelled to surrender.

[Sidenote: France and America.]

The news of this calamity gave force to the words with which Chatham at the very time of the surrender was pressing for peace. "You cannot conquer America," he cried when men were glorying in Howe's successes over Was.h.i.+ngton. "If I were an American as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms--never, never, never!" Then, in a burst of indignant eloquence he thundered against an outrage which was at that moment nerving New England to its rally against Burgoyne, the use of the Indian with his scalping-knife as an ally of England against her children. The proposals which Chatham brought forward might perhaps in his hands even yet have drawn America and the mother country together. His plan was one of absolute conciliation. He looked forward to a federal union between the settlements and Great Britain which would have left the Colonies absolutely their own masters in all matters of internal government, and linked only by ties of affection and loyalty to the general body of the Empire. But the plan met with the same scornful rejection as his previous proposals. Its rejection was at once followed by the news of Saratoga, and by the yet more fatal news that this disaster had roused the Bourbon Courts to avenge the humiliation of the Seven Years' War.

Crippled and impoverished as she was at its close, France could do nothing to break the world-power which was rising in front of her; but in the very moment of her defeat, the foresight of Choiseul had seen in a future straggle between England and her Colonies a chance of ruining the great fabric which Pitt's triumphs had built up. Nor was Pitt blind to the steady resolve of France to renew the fight. In every attempt which he had made to construct a Ministry he had laid down as the corner-stone of his foreign policy a renewal of that alliance with the Protestant States of North Germany against the House of Bourbon which could alone save England from the dangers of the Family Compact. But his efforts had been foiled alike by the resistance of the king, the timid peacefulness of the Whigs, and at last by the distrust of England which had been rooted in the mind of Frederick the Great through the treachery of Lord Bute.

[Sidenote: Death of Chatham.]

The wisdom of his policy was now brought home by the coming of the danger he had foreseen when the foresight of Choiseul was justified by the outbreak of strife between England and America. Even then for a while France looked idly on. Her king, Lewis the Sixteenth, was averse from war; her treasury was empty; her government, scared by the growth of new movements towards freedom about it, and fearful of endangering the monarchy by the encouragement these would receive from a union with the revolted Colonies, still doubted whether America had any real power of resisting Britain. It was to no purpose that from the moment when they declared themselves independent, the United States called on France for aid; or that Franklin pressed their appeal on its government. A year in fact pa.s.sed without any decisive resolution to give aid to the colonists. But the steady drift of French policy and the pa.s.sion of the French people pressed heavier every day on the hesitation of their government; and the news of Saratoga forced its hand. The American envoys at last succeeded in forming an alliance; and in February 1778 a treaty offensive and defensive was concluded between France and America.

Lord North strove to meet the blow by fresh offers of conciliation, and by a pledge to renounce for ever the right of direct taxation over the Colonies; but he felt that such offers were fruitless, that the time for conciliation was past, while all hope of reducing America by force of arms had disappeared. In utter despair he pressed his resignation on the king. But George was as obstinate for war as ever; and the country, stung to the quick by the attack of France, backed pa.s.sionately the obstinacy of the king. But unlike George the Third, it instinctively felt that if a hope still remained of retaining the friends.h.i.+p of the Colonies and of baffling the efforts of the Bourbons, it lay in Lord Chatham; and in spite of the king's resistance the voice of the whole country called him back to power. The danger indeed which had scared Lord North into resignation, and before which a large party of the Whigs now advocated the acknowledgement of American independence, only woke Chatham to his old daring and fire. He had revolted from a war against Englishmen. But all his pride in English greatness, all his confidence in English power, woke afresh at the challenge of France. His genius saw indeed in the new danger a means of escape from the old. He would have withdrawn every soldier from America, and flung the whole force of Britain into the conflict with France. He believed that in the splendour of triumphs over her older enemy England might be brought to terms of amity which would win back the Colonies, and that the English blood of the colonists themselves would be quickened to a fresh union with the mother country by her struggle against a power from which she had so lately rescued them. Till such a trial had been made, with all the advantages that the magic of his name could give it in England and America alike, he would not bow to a need that must wreck the great Empire his hand had built up. Even at this hour there was a chance of success for such a policy; but on the eve of Chatham's return to office this chance was shattered by the hand of death. Broken with age and disease, the Earl was borne to the House of Lords on the seventh of April to utter in a few broken words his protest against the proposal to surrender America. "I rejoice," he murmured, "that I am still alive to lift up my voice against the dismemberment of this ancient and n.o.ble monarchy. His Majesty succeeded to an Empire as great in extent as its reputation was unsullied. Seventeen years ago this people was the terror of the world." He listened impatiently to the reply of the Duke of Richmond, and again rose to his feet. But he had hardly risen when he pressed his hand upon his heart, and falling back in a swoon was borne home to die.

[Sidenote: England against Europe.]

How well founded was Chatham's faith in the power of Britain was seen in the strife that now opened. From the hour of his death England entered on a conflict with enemies whose circle gradually widened till she stood single-handed against the world. At the close of 1778 the Family Compact bore its full fruit; Spain joined the league of France and America against her; and in the next year the joint fleets of the two powers rode the masters of the Channel. They even threatened a descent on the English coast. But dead as Chatham was, his cry woke a new life in England. "Shall we fall prostrate," he exclaimed with his last breath, "before the House of Bourbon?" and the divisions which had broken the nation in its struggle with American liberty were hushed in the presence of this danger to its own existence. The weakness of the Ministry was compensated by the energy of England itself. For three years, from 1779 to 1782, General Elliott held against famine and bombardment from a French and Spanish army the rock fortress of Gibraltar. Although a quarrel over the right of search banded Holland and the Courts of the North in an armed neutrality against her, and added the Dutch fleet to the number of her a.s.sailants, England held her own at sea. In her Eastern dependency, where France sought a counterpoise to the power of Britain in that of the Mahrattas, freebooters of Hindoo blood whose tribes had for a century past carried their raids over India from the hills of the Western coast, and founded sovereignties in Guzerat, Malwa, and Tanjore, the tenacity and resource of Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General of British India, wrested victory from failure and defeat. Though the wide schemes of conquest which he formed were for the moment frustrated, the annexation of Benares, the extension of British rule along the Ganges, the reduction of Oudh to virtual dependence, the appearance of English armies in Central India, and the defeat of the Sultan of Mysore, laid the foundation of an Indian Empire which his genius was bold enough to foresee. Even in America the fortune of the war seemed for a while to turn. After Burgoyne's surrender the English generals had withdrawn from Pennsylvania, and bent all their efforts on the Southern States, where a strong Royalist party still existed. The capture of Charlestown and the successes of Lord Cornwallis in 1780 were rendered fruitless by the obstinate resistance of General Greene; but the United States remained weakened by bankruptcy and unnerved by hopes of aid from France.

[Sidenote: America and Ireland.]

Hardly a year however had pa.s.sed when the face of the war in America was changed by a terrible disaster. Foiled in an attempt on North Carolina by the refusal of his fellow-general, Sir Henry Clinton, to a.s.sist him, Cornwallis fell back in 1781 on Virginia, and entrenched himself in the lines of York Town. A sudden march of Was.h.i.+ngton brought him to the front of the English troops at a moment when the French fleet held the sea, and the British army was driven by famine in October to a surrender as humiliating as that of Saratoga. The news fell like a thunderbolt on the wretched Minister, who had till now suppressed at his master's order his own conviction of the uselessness of further bloodshed. Opening his arms and pacing wildly about the room, Lord North exclaimed, "It is all over," and resigned. At this moment indeed the country seemed on the brink of ruin. Humiliating as it was, England could have borne fifty such calamities as the surrender at York Town. But in the very crisis of the struggle with America she found herself confronted with a danger nearer home. The revolt of one great dependency brought with it a threatened revolt from another. In Ireland, as in the Colonies, England had shrunk from carrying out either a national or an imperial policy.

She might have recognised Ireland as a free nationality, and bound it to herself by federal bonds; or she might have absorbed it, as she had absorbed Scotland, into the general ma.s.s of her own national life. With a perverse ingenuity she had not only refrained from taking either of these courses, but she had deliberately adopted the worst features of both. Ireland was absolutely subject to Britain, but she formed no part of it, she shared neither in its liberty nor its wealth. But on the other hand she was allowed no national existence of her own. While all the outer seeming of national life was left, while Ireland possessed in name an army, a Parliament, a magistracy, the ma.s.s of the Irish people was as strange to all this life as the savages of Polynesia. Every Catholic Irishman, and there were five Irish Catholics to every Irish Protestant, was treated as a stranger and a foreigner in his own country. The House of Lords, the House of Commons, the magistracy, all corporate offices in towns, all ranks in the army, the bench, the bar, the whole administration of government or justice, were closed against Catholics. The very right of voting for their representatives in Parliament was denied them. Few Catholic landowners had been left by the sweeping confiscations which had followed the successive revolts of the island, and oppressive laws forced even these few with scant exceptions to profess Protestantism. Necessity indeed had brought about a practical toleration of their religion and their wors.h.i.+p; but in all social and political matters the native Catholics, in other words the immense majority of the people of Ireland, were simply hewers of wood and drawers of water for Protestant masters, for masters who still looked on themselves as mere settlers, who boasted of their Scotch or English extraction, and who regarded the name of "Irishman" as an insult.

[Sidenote: Irish Government.]

But small as was this Protestant body, one-half of it fared little better as far as power was concerned than the Catholics. The Presbyterians, who formed the bulk of the Ulster settlers, were shut out by law from all civil, military, and munic.i.p.al offices. The administration and justice of the country were thus kept rigidly in the hands of members of the Established Church, a body which comprised about a twelfth of the population of the island, while its government was practically monopolised by a few great Protestant landowners. The rotten boroughs, which had originally been created to make the Irish Parliament dependent on the Crown, had by this time fallen under the influence of the adjacent landlords, whose command of these made them masters of the House of Commons while they themselves formed in person the House of Peers. To such a length had this system been carried that at the time of the Union the great majority of the boroughs lay in the hands of a very few families. Two-thirds of the House of Commons, in fact, was returned by a small group of n.o.bles, who were recognised as "parliamentary undertakers," and who undertook to "manage" Parliament on their own terms. Irish politics was for these men a mere means of public plunder; they were glutted with pensions, preferments, and bribes in hard cash, in return for their services; they were the advisers of every Lord-Lieutenant and the practical governors of the country. The results were what might have been expected. For more than a century Ireland was the worst governed country in Europe. That its government was not even worse than it was, was due to its connection with England and the subordination of its Parliament to the English Privy Council. The Irish Parliament had no power of originating legislative or financial measures, and could only say "yes" or "no" to Acts laid before it by the Privy Council in England. The English Parliament too claimed the right of binding Ireland as well as England by its enactments, and one of its statutes transferred the appellate jurisdiction of the Irish Peerage to the English House of Lords. Galling as these restrictions were to the plundering aristocracy of Ireland, they formed a useful check on its tyranny. But as if to compensate for the benefits of this protection, England did her best from the time of William the Third to annihilate Irish commerce and to ruin Irish agriculture. Statutes pa.s.sed by the jealousy of English landowners forbade the export of Irish cattle or sheep to English ports. The export of wool was forbidden lest it might interfere with the profits of English wool-growers. Poverty was thus added to the curse of misgovernment; and poverty deepened with the rapid growth of the native population, a growth due in great part to the physical misery and moral degradation of their lives, till famine turned the country into a h.e.l.l.

[Sidenote: The Volunteers.]