A History of the Four Georges and of William IV Volume III Part 7

The electors of Middles.e.x did pet.i.tion against the subst.i.tution of the despised Luttrell for the adored Wilkes. The consideration of the pet.i.tion was the occasion for one of the most memorable debates that can be recorded of an age rich in memorable debates. On the one side the influence of the Ministry and the influence of the King induced Blackstone to deny himself and to falsify those principles of const.i.tutional law with which his name is a.s.sociated. On the other side principles as little honorable but a far acuter political perception urged Wedderburn, who was nominally a King's man, to go over to the popular cause with the air of a Coriola.n.u.s. On the one side Fletcher Norton upheld the authority of the resolution. On the other side George Grenville argued against it with an ac.u.men which showed that an able lawyer might have {132} been a great lawyer. In that famous debate Burke spoke at his best, and yet the event of that debate was not the speech of Burke, was not the speech of the experienced politician, of the seasoned statesman, of the famous man of letters, but the speech of a young man who was almost a boy, the speech of Charles James Fox. All who have written on the debate agree in their admiration of the speech of one who, as far as Parliament was concerned, was but a raw lad and who nevertheless held his own on a point of law against experienced lawyers, in statesmans.h.i.+p against Grenville, and in eloquence against Burke.

[Sidenote: 1769--Unpopularity of George the Third]

Of course the pet.i.tion of Middles.e.x was rejected; the election of Luttrell was confirmed. On the day of the confirmation the King prorogued Parliament in a foolish speech in which he seemed to think that he had gained a victory. But if the King and the Ministry believed or hoped that in expelling Wilkes from Parliament they had got rid of Wilkes for good and all; if they believed or hoped that in thus degrading Wilkes they would deprive him of his popularity with the people or even diminish that popularity, they were speedily to be undeceived and bitterly disappointed. Both King and ministers knew their business very badly; with limitations of intelligence which would have been disastrous to the conduct of a small shop, they came in this instance, as in other instances, within measurable distance of wrecking a royalty. It is probable that Franklin, shrewd, cool observer though he was, went too far when he wrote in his journal that if George the Third had had a bad private character, and John Wilkes a good one, the latter might have turned the former out of his kingdom. But it is certain that the signs of the King's unpopularity were now as significant as were the signs of Wilkes's popularity. It had been said that at this time a good half of the King's subjects preferred Wilkes to their King. The estimate is probably under rather than above the fact. Wilkes was placed in the position of being the champion of all the rights and liberties that Englishmen most prized; the King in the {133} position of being their most uncompromising, most obstinate opponent.

Thus, while honors were offered daily to the prisoner of the King's bench, insults were daily offered to his royal enemy. The King could scarcely go abroad without becoming the object of a demonstration of popular disfavor, and even in his palace he could not escape from deputations empowered to protest against the conduct of his ministers.

In all parts of the kingdom public meetings were held, and from these public meetings pet.i.tions poured in upon the King calling upon him to dissolve his Parliament. It has been truly observed that the custom of holding public meetings for the discussion of public grievances dates from this period. On two solemn occasions the Lord Mayor of London, accompanied by the sheriffs, presented addresses to the King remonstrating against the action of the House of Commons. To the first address the King replied that it was disrespectful to him, injurious to Parliament, and irreconcilable to the principles of the Const.i.tution.

After which reply he could think of nothing better, nothing more kingly to do than to turn round to his courtiers and burst out laughing. He treated the second address with the same insolence, an insolence which provoked from the Lord Mayor an uncourtierly reply which reminded the King that those who endeavored to alienate the King's affections from his subjects were violators of the public peace and betrayers of the Const.i.tution established by the glorious Revolution. Those words were afterwards inscribed in gold upon the monument of the mayor who spoke them. If those words, and words of like purport and temper, at first moved the King to laughter, they soon exasperated him past laughing.

Once he clapped his hand to his sword-hilt and declared that he would sooner have recourse to that than grant a dissolution. The tension of public feeling can best be estimated when a const.i.tutional sovereign on the one side could dare to make such a remark; when a representative of the people like Colonel Barre on the other side could dare in the House of {134} Commons to say that disregard of public pet.i.tions might lead the people to think of a.s.sa.s.sination.

While the King was insulted and insulting, and longing to stifle opposition by the sword, John Wilkes in his prison was receiving new proofs of the place he held in public affection. He was elected alderman for the Ward of Farringdon Without. We are told that his table at the prison was daily supplied with the most rare and costly delicacies, presented to him by his admirers. The mysterious Chevalier d'Eon sent him a present of Russian smoked tongues, with the whimsical wish that they could have the eloquence of Cicero, and the delicacy of Voltaire, to do him honor. Friendly revellers sent him hampers of the wine he liked the best. More serious gifts were laid at his feet. For a while money literally rained in upon him. The leading Whigs provided him with an income. n.o.bles and great ladies sent him large sums. A number of politicians banded together under the t.i.tle of the Society for Supporting the Bill of Rights, and raised a great deal of money, much of which went in meeting some of the heavy debts with which Wilkes was embarra.s.sed, much of which went in keeping up the princely way of living which suited Wilkes's temperament, and which was perhaps not unsuited to the part he was playing as the rival of a prince. In the public press, on the platform, on the stage, his influence was enormous. His good pleasure sent politicians to Parliament; his good pleasure made London sheriffs, made provincial mayors. While the false rumor that he was the author of "The Letters of Junius" only swelled the volume of his fame, the author of those letters was adding to Wilkes's pride and power by public champions.h.i.+p and by private letters, choking with an adulation that seems strange indeed from so savage a pen. If Garrick dared for a moment to run counter to popular feeling, as a little earlier he had dared to disdain the praise of Churchill, he had to give way in the case of Wilkes, as he had given way in the case of Wilkes's poet. The very name of Wilkes drove men on both sides of the quarrel into a kind of frenzy. Alexander Cruden, of the "Concordance," {135} showed his devotion to his King and his dislike of Wilkes by carrying a large sponge with him whenever he walked abroad in order that he might wipe out the ominous number, forty-five, whenever he saw it chalked up. As the number was chalked up everywhere by the Wilkites, Cruden soon found the task beyond his powers. It was lucky for him that he got no harm in his zeal, lucky for him that he did not come across that militant clergyman who pulled the nose of a Scotch naval officer for attacking Wilkes and then met his man in Hyde Park and wounded him.

[Sidenote: 1770--A fight for the liberty of the Press]

On April 17, 1770, Wilkes's term of imprisonment came to an end.

Wilkes immediately started for Bath to avoid a demonstration in London; but London was illuminated in his honor, and in a great number of provincial towns his release was celebrated with all the signs of a national holiday. If he had been a hero in prison, he was no less a hero out of it. He moved from triumph to triumph. While alderman he won a victory over the Court and the Commons which did much to establish the liberty of the press in England. The House of Commons, in a foolish attempt to suppress reports of the debates in Parliament, tried to arrest certain printers. Wilkes and the Lord Mayor took the printers' part; advised them to conceal themselves; and in their turn arrested those who, in obedience to a royal proclamation and the orders of the House, arrested the printers.

The House of Commons committed the Lord Mayor and Alderman Oliver to the Tower, and summoned Wilkes to appear at the bar. Wilkes coolly replied that as he was a member of Parliament, and as he was not addressed as a member of Parliament should be, and ordered to attend in his place according to custom, he should ignore the summons. The House made a second and yet a third order for his appearance, each of which Wilkes treated with disdain. It is a significant proof of the power of Wilkes's popularity that the House did not take any steps to punish his contumacy. While it affected to find a consolation in the a.s.surances of the King that Wilkes was "below the {136} notice of the House," it had to endure as best it might an affront resentment of which would only have added to Wilkes's popularity. The honors paid to the Lord Mayor and the alderman during their imprisonment showed only too plainly that hostility to the Court and the Parliamentary majority was heroism in the eyes of the majority of the citizens of London.

Once again Wilkes had won the day. From that time forward Parliament put no embargo upon the publication of reports of its debates. Fresh honors were showered on Wilkes. He was elected sheriff. He was presented by the Court of Common Council with a silver goblet, designed according to his own wish with a representation of the death of Caesar, and graced with the ominous motto from one of the poems of Churchill:

May every tyrant feel The keen deep searchings of a patriot steel,

a citation which, taken in conjunction with Barre's wild talk in the House about a.s.sa.s.sination, was sufficiently significant of the temper of the time.

[Sidenote: 1774--Wilkes Lord Mayor of London]

Wilkes had been alderman; he had been sheriff; he was now to bear the crown of civic honors. He was put in nomination for the office of Lord Mayor. The Court party made a desperate effort to defeat him. They had tried and failed to prevent him from being elected to Parliament.

They had tried and failed to prevent him from being made alderman, from being made sheriff. They now tried with all their might to prevent him from being made Lord Mayor. Wilkes had much to fight against. There were defections from his own party. The once devoted Horne had squabbled with his idol over money matters, and was now as venomous an enemy as he had been a fulsome partisan. Alderman Townshend, an ex-Lord Mayor, strained all his influence, which was great in the City, against Wilkes. A wild rumor got about at one time, indeed, that Townshend had settled the difficulty of the Court forever by challenging Wilkes and shooting him dead. The story had no foundation, but for a moment it flattered the hopes of Wilkes's {137} enemies and fluttered the hearts of Wilkes's friends. The opposition ended as opposition to Wilkes always ended. Twice he was placed at the head of the poll, and twice the Court of Aldermen chose another candidate. The third time, in the election of 1774, Wilkes was at last chosen as Lord Mayor by the Court of Aldermen in despite of the unwearied efforts of the Court party to defeat him. "Thus," wrote Walpole, "after so much persecution by the Court, after so many attempts upon his life, after a long imprisonment in jail, after all his own crimes and indiscretions, did this extraordinary man, of more extraordinary fortune, attain the highest office in so grave and important a city as the capital of England, always reviving the more opposed and oppressed, and unable to shock Fortune and make her laugh at him who laughed at everybody and everything!" It has been well said by Mr. Fraser Rae that the significance of election to the office of Lord Mayor was very much greater more than a hundred years ago than it is now. Then the Chief Magistrate of the City was not necessarily a man who had pa.s.sed through certain minor offices and who rose by routine to fill the highest. At that time the Corporation was a political power, which ministers had to take into account, and which sovereigns had to propitiate. A greater triumph than the mayoralty followed in quick succession. At the general election of 1774 Wilkes came forward again, and for the fifth time, as candidate for Middles.e.x. This time he was not opposed.

Luttrell abandoned an impossible position and did not stand. Ten years after Wilkes's first appearance in the House of Commons he returned to it again in triumph as the member for Middles.e.x and the Lord Mayor of London.

And here, on the top of his triumph, Wilkes may be said to drop through the tissue of our history. He was to live nearly a quarter of a century longer, three-and-twenty years of a life that was as calm and peaceful as the hot manhood that preceded it had been vexed and unquiet. Although he lives in history as one of the most famous of the world's agitators, he had in his heart little affection {138} for the life of a public man. And the publicity of the civic official was especially distasteful to him. He hated the gross festivals, the gross pleasures, the gross display of City life. He sickened of the long hours spent in the business of mayoralty; he sickened yet more of the pleasures incidental to mayoralty. Though he remained in Parliament for many years, and conducted himself there with zeal, discretion, and statesmans.h.i.+p, and always, or almost always, proved himself to be the champion of liberty and the democratic principle, he did not find his greatest happiness in public speeches and the triumphs and defeats of the division lobby. What he loved best on earth was the society of his daughter, between whom and himself there existed a friends.h.i.+p that is the best advocate for Wilkes's character. And he loved best to enjoy that society in the kind of sham cla.s.sic retirement which had so powerful an attraction for so many of the men of the eighteenth century. His cottage in the Isle of Wight, with its Doric column to the manes of Churchill, with its shrine to Fortuna Redux, was his idea of the ancient city of Tusculum.

His tastes and pleasures were the tastes and pleasures of a man of letters. He affected a curious kind of scholars.h.i.+p. The hand that had been employed upon the _North Briton_, now devoted itself to the editing of cla.s.sic texts; the intellect that had been a.s.sociated with the privately printed "Essay on Woman" was now a.s.sociated with privately printed editions of Catullus which he fondly believed to be flawless, and of Theophrastus, whose Greek text it pleased him to print without accents. In his tranquil old age he made himself as many friends as in his hot manhood he had made himself enemies. Those who had most hated him came under the spell of his attraction, even the King himself, even Dr. Johnson. His interview with Dr. Johnson is one of the most famous episodes in the literary and political history of the last century. His a.s.surance to King George that he himself had never been a Wilkite is in one sense the truest criticism that has ever been pa.s.sed upon him. If to be a Wilkite was to entertain {139} all the advanced and all the wild ideas expressed by many of those who took advantage of his agitation, then certainly Wilkes was none such. But he was a Wilkite in the better sense of being true to his own opinions and true to his sense of public duty. When he expressed the wish to have the words "A friend to liberty" inscribed upon his monument, he expressed a wish which the whole tenor of his life, the whole tone of his utterances fully justified. And if he was loyal to his principles he could be chivalrous to his enemies. Almost his last public appearance was at the general election of 1796, when he came forward, with a magnanimity which would have well become many a better man, to support the candidature of Horne Tooke at Westminster, of the man who, after having been his fawning friend, his fulsome flatterer, had turned against him with the basest treachery and the bitterest malignity.

There may have been, surely there must have been, a vein of irony in the words in which Wilkes complimented the apostate and the turncoat as a man of public virtues. But the irony was cloaked by courtesy; if the action smacked of the cynic, at least it was done in obedience to the behest to forgive our enemies.

[Sidenote: 1797--Death of Wilkes]

On November 38, 1797, the old, worn, weary man, who had worked so hard and done so much, welcomed, in his capacity of Chamberlain of the City of London, Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson to the honorary freedom of the City. The setting star saluted the rising star. Nelson was then thirty-nine. He had been at sea since he was twelve. He had voyaged in polar seas and tropic waters. He had fought the Americans. He had fought the French. "Hate a Frenchman as you would the devil" was his simple-minded counsel of perfection. He had fought the Spaniards. He had lost an eye at Calvi. He had lost an arm at Santa Cruz. He was ten years married. His love, his error, his glory, Emma Hamilton, Carracioli, Trafalgar, were yet to come.

Less than a month later, in the late December, 1797, John Wilkes was dead. He was seventy years old. For nearly forty years he had lived unknown, unheeded. For {140} ten years he was the most conspicuous man in England, the best hated and the best loved. For twenty years more he was an honored public and private citizen. He will always be remembered as one of the most remarkable men of a century of remarkable men.

{141}

CHAPTER LI.

CHARLES JAMES FOX.

[Sidenote: 1749-1768--A champion of popular rights]

One of the most immediate results of the Wilkes controversy in the House of Commons was to draw attention to a young man who had entered Parliament at the General Election of 1768 while he was still considerably under age. The young member for Midhurst made himself conspicuous as the most impa.s.sioned opponent of Wilkes. A strenuous supporter of Luttrell outside the walls of Westminster, inside those walls the boy who represented the fict.i.tious const.i.tuency of Midhurst distinguished himself by the easy insolence with which he a.s.sailed Wilkes and the popular cause which Wilkes represented. He delighted in informing the delighted majority in the House that he, for his part, "paid no regard whatever to the voice of the people." When Burke condescended to notice and to rebuke the impertinence of a youth of nineteen, he little thought that the lad whom he reproved would come to be a far more extreme advocate of popular rights than he himself, or that the chronicle of the century in recording the names of those who made themselves prominent for the utterance of democratic opinions should place the name of John Wilkes far below the name of Charles James Fox.

It would not be easy to imagine a worse training for a youth intended for the service of his country and destined to contend for the honors of the State than the life that was lived by Charles James Fox from early boyhood to early manhood. It was not in the power of his father, Henry Fox, Lord Holland, to set before his son the example of a parent whose public life was pure, admirable, and honorable. But in the domestic circle Lord Holland was {142} a very different man from the corrupt and juggling politician known to the world. In the domestic circle his affections and his tendernesses were his most conspicuous traits, and in the domestic circle he was as unfortunate for his children through his very virtues as outside it he was unfortunate by reason of his vices. Fox was a loving husband, but he was an adoring father, and the extremest zeal and warmth of his adoration was given to his son Charles James. The child was from the first precocious, alert, and gifted beyond his years, and the father fostered and flattered the precocity with a kind of wors.h.i.+p that proved, as it was bound to prove, disastrous. It seems to have been Henry Fox's deliberate belief that the best way to bring up a spirited, gifted, headstrong child was to gratify every wish, surrender to every whim, and pander to every pa.s.sion that ebullient youth could feel. The anecdotes of the day teem with tales of the fantastic homage that Fox paid to the desires and moods of his imperious infant. He made him his companion while he was still in the nursery; he allowed him to be his master before he had fairly left it. Never was the creed of Thelema acted upon more consistently and persistently than by Lord Holland towards Charles James Fox. It is an astonis.h.i.+ng proof of the strength and innate goodness of the childish nature that it was not ruined outright, hopelessly and helplessly, by the worst training ever given to a son by a father. That it did Fox infinite harm cannot be denied and was only to be expected. That it failed entirely to unbalance his mind and destroy his character only serves to show the sterling temper of Fox's metal. His youth was like his childhood, petted, spoiled, wayward, capricious, and captivating. Every one loved him, his father, his father's friends, the school companions with whom he wrote Latin verses in praise of lovely ladies with lovely names. All through his life the love of men and the love of women was given to him with a generosity that was only equal to the lovable nature that compelled and commanded it. His career is one record of unrivalled precocity. As a child he had been his father's friend rather than his father's plaything; as a {143} lad he was his father's travelling companion, and learned from that father the pleasant art of sowing wild oats not with the hand but with the whole sack. He returned to England a proficient gambler, a finished rake, the dear friend of famous men, the darling of beautiful women, to enter, before he was of age, upon that political career in which it seemed certain that if he would follow in his father's steps he might hope for more than his father's fortunes. If Charles Fox had been quite cankered by his father's care, if the essence of his genius had been corruptible, he might have given the King's friends a leader as far removed from them as Lucifer from his satellites, and contrived perhaps--though that indeed would have been difficult--to ama.s.s almost as much money as he was able to spend with comfort. To judge by the young man's initial enterprise, his Parliamentary career promised to be as brilliant and as brutal as any king who hated Chatham and hated Wilkes and hated the American colonies could possibly desire. The furious intolerance of his maiden speech was happily, however, only like that false dawn familiar to travellers in the East. The true sunrise was yet to come. But for six years he was as consistent in his support of Lord North and the policy that North represented as for the rest of his career he was consistent in opposition to it.

[Sidenote: 1768--Fox's scholars.h.i.+p]

The life of Fox recalls, in its brilliant activity, in its no less brilliant scholars.h.i.+p, the dazzling careers of some of those Italian princes who were equally at home and equally distinguished in the battlefield and in the library, equally happy in handling their weapons or in turning the pages of the latest volume from the presses of Aldus that renewed the youth of some masterpiece of Greece or Rome. Fox's scholars.h.i.+p would have been remarkable in a man whose days and nights were devoted to scholars.h.i.+p alone. It was little less than marvellous in a man who gave a large part of his days to the fiercest political fights of a fiercely political age and a large part of his nights to the fascination of the card-table, the disasters of the dice-box, and the pursuit of the sweet, elusive shadow which is {144} called pleasure. Fox's love for literature was indeed its own reward. In the darkest hours of a life that tasted the bitterness of many public and many private sorrows he could steep his vexed spirit in the sweet waters watched by the Muses, and arise cleansed, inspirited, and comforted. Though he saw those public honors that his genius deserved denied, though he lost those chances of command by which he could best have served his country, though his own fault wrecked his fortune and his own follies wasted his substance and delivered the home of his glorious youth into alien hands, he could turn from troubles that would have broken the spirit and cracked the heart of a less heroic fighter, to find solace and consolation in the golden music of the "Odyssey" and the majestic cadences of Virgil.

Fox loved the cla.s.sics with the pa.s.sion of a poet, not with the patience of a pedant, and found that n.o.ble rapture in the human beauty of Euripides which Parson Adams found in the divine grandeur of Aeschylus. But if his reading in the literatures of Greece and Rome was wide and deep, it was not limited to the literatures which the world calls cla.s.sic. France, Italy, Spain, offered him their best, and found him a worthy wors.h.i.+pper, the faithful lover and loyal student of all that was best in each. He was the comrade of Don Quixote as he was the comrade of Orlando Furioso and the comrade of Gil Blas. But he was never one of those who exalt the laurels of other lands to the neglect of those of their own. He knew English literature and loved English literature as well as if he had never scanned a Latin line or conjugated a Greek verb or read a page of Moliere, or Calderon, or Metastasio. He knew Chaucer as well as it was possible for any one then or for generations later to know Chaucer, and he appreciated him as few have appreciated him before or since. The poets of his own time were as dear to him in their degree as the singer of England's morning song. It is hardly necessary to say that he was as familiar with Shakespeare as every one should be and as very few are. Only one arc was wanting to the circle of his splendid {145} culture, only one string was lacking to the bow of his prodigious reading. There was a great literature growing up in a neighboring country of which Charles Fox knew nothing, and of which we cannot doubt that he would have rejoiced to know much. It is curious that in a country which had been ruled for three successive reigns by German sovereigns, the German language was entirely neglected and the glorious dawn of German literature entirely ignored. While Fox was still a young man, playing at love, playing at cards, playing at politics, and through all these diversions adding to that mighty store of learning, and training his mind in the finest and most intimate judgments upon the Greek and Roman poets, Germany had been enriched by the masterpiece of the greatest critic since Aristotle, and was fostering the golden youth of the greatest poet since Shakespeare. It would have amazed Fox, as it would have amazed every English scholar then living, if he could have been told that the spirit of the antique world was to be renewed in a country which had given them four generations of phlegmatic princes, and in a language of which few scholars in England knew a single word.

[Sidenote: 1768--Fox's quarrel with Lord North]

Fox's term of adherence to North and to North's policy was not too happy a time for the nominal superior. A hot-headed young Lord of the Admiralty resigned his office in a huff, and was not without difficulty persuaded to return to office as Commissioner of the Treasury. The breach between Fox and North was bridged over, but the bridge was frail. The two men eyed each other with disfavor. Fox a.s.serted his independence by occasionally voting against the minister, by consorting with Burke. After the death of Lord Holland, North revenged himself by dismissing Fox from office in a letter famous for its insolent brevity.

For a time Fox still accorded to the ministry an uncertain support, but he was drifting in thought and speech and action in the inevitable direction of his genius. The hour came when he took his seat on the Opposition benches, and a.s.serted himself as a {146} formidable opponent of the Government. A quarrel across the Atlantic gave him the opportunity to prove that the principles which men of to-day would call Liberal principles had gained one of their greatest and one of their most eloquent champions.

{147}

CHAPTER LII.

ON THE CHARLES RIVER.

[Sidenote: 1765-74--Lord Hillsborough]

While the battle had been raging over Wilkes at home, the cloud of trouble had been growing larger and larger abroad. The discontent of the American colonies increased in direct ratio with the determination of the home Government to ignore or to override that discontent. The King was fortunate, or believed himself to be fortunate, in finding among his ministers the aptest instrument he could desire for striking at the Americans. Lord Hillsborough, the Secretary of State, was one of those men who appear to be inspired by a very genius of perversity.

He had a power of misunderstanding a political situation and underestimating a political crisis which, if it could only have been reversed, would have earned him a foremost place among the statesmen of his time. But his perversity was of like temper with the perversity of the King, and Lord Hillsborough was admirably qualified to interpret the King's dislike of his American subjects and to make himself the mouthpiece of the anti-Colonial feeling which had been steadily growing up in the House of Commons since the days when the repeal of the Stamp Act had known its season of brief popularity.

The comparative temperance and lucidity of the Rockingham period seemed now indeed remote and memorable. Exasperation and not conciliation appeared to be the persistent note of England's colonial policy. It was England's misfortune to be peculiarly ill served on both sides of the Atlantic by those who were intrusted with the conduct of colonial affairs. It would be hard to say whether the provincial governors abroad or the ministers at home were least capable of understanding the people with whom they {148} had to deal, or were most to blame for their actions in the face of a danger that their own folly had brought about. With a man like Lord Hillsborough for Secretary of State in London, with a man like Bernard for Governor of Ma.s.sachusetts in Boston, it is not to be wondered at now, and it ought not to have been wondered at then, that the colonies refused to crystallize into tranquillity. Francis Bernard was a man of certain ability, certain gifts, and uncertain good intentions. But he was, as we have seen, a perfervid Tory, a zealous champion of the royal prerogative, a profound believer in the wisdom of minimizing, if not abrogating, the privileges of which the colonists, and especially the colonists of Ma.s.sachusetts, were so proud. It was Bernard's peculiar fortune to be not merely the supporter but the adviser of the English Ministries in almost all the series of disastrous actions towards their colonies. Bernard was inspired by a kind of furious folly in his words and deeds. Unhappily, this kind of furious folly was not confined to the colonial governor.

Lord Hillsborough was no less foolish and no less dangerous than Bernard. Horace Walpole described Hillsborough as nothing more than a pompous composition of ignorance and want of judgment. He certainly was hopelessly ignorant of America, and he certainly showed a hopeless want of judgment in his dealings with the Americans. Hillsborough backed up Bernard in his blunders and his braggadocio with the light heart that comes of an empty head. He backed up Bernard with a steady zeal that would have been splendid if it could have been made to serve any useful purpose. Where Bernard was bellicose and bl.u.s.tering, Hillsborough bl.u.s.tered and was bellicose in his turn. It was Hillsborough's honest, innate conviction that the American colonists were a poor-spirited, feeble-hearted, and still more feeble-handed pack of rascals, braggarts whom a firm front discomfited, natural bondsmen to whom it was only necessary, as in the old cla.s.sic story, to show the whip to awe them into cringing submission. This theory found its fittest formula a little later, when Hillsborough, speaking for the Government he adorned, and {149} inspired by a more than usual afflatus of folly, declared that "we can grant nothing to the Americans except what they may ask with a halter round their necks." It is difficult to believe that a reasonable minister, endowed with a sufficient degree of human ability to push his way from office to office and from t.i.tle to t.i.tle, could have known so little of the history of his own country and the characteristics of his own countrymen as to think that any of England's children were easily to be frightened into ignominious supplication. But Hillsborough undoubtedly did think so, and he always acted consistently in support of his strong conviction that the independent colonists were nothing more than a mob of cowardly malcontents. He acted on this conviction to such good purpose that his name has earned its place of honor with that of Grenville, of Townshend, and of Wedderburn, in the ill.u.s.trious junta who were successfully busy about the sorry business of converting a great empire into a small one.

[Sidenote: 1766--The Mutiny Act]

After the Stamp Act had raised its crop of disturbance and disorder, the Government extended to the colonies the measure called the Mutiny Act, for the quartering of troops and providing them with necessaries.

The Legislature of New York refused to execute this Act, on the ground that it involved the very principle of taxation which had just been abandoned by the repeal of the Stamp Act. It made provision for the troops in its own way, and calmly ignored the Act of Parliament.

Parliament retorted in due course by pa.s.sing a bill by which the Governor, Council, and a.s.sembly of New York were prevented from pa.s.sing any law whatsoever until they had complied with the letter and the spirit of the Mutiny Act. This measure was loudly applauded in England, even by some who had shown themselves very friendly to the grievances of the colonists. When New York found that her great deed was too great, and, bending before the anger of Parliament, reluctantly complied with the terms of the Mutiny Act, there were not wanting observers to point out that the lesson, though only addressed to one colony, was of significance to all, and that an inevitable surrender was the proof {150} of the hopeless inferiority of the colonies when brought into direct contest with the supreme power. These jubilations were as short-lived as they were untimely. If New York was weak and wavered, Ma.s.sachusetts was more firm of purpose. She sternly refused to comply with the terms of the Mutiny Act. She went farther still in defiance of the Government. She issued a circular to the other colonies, calling upon them very frankly and very clearly to co-operate in taking some united course for the purpose of obtaining redress for the recent acts of the English Government. This was the second instance of deliberate combination for a definite end among the colonies, and it caused much disquiet and more irritation to the Government. Lord Hillsborough, always in favor of what he believed to be firm measures, immediately sent Governor Bernard instructions to have the offending circular rescinded. Governor Bernard would have been only too glad to obey, but obedience was not easy.

[Sidenote: 1770--The Boston ma.s.sacre]

Bernard could command, but Ma.s.sachusetts could refuse to give way.

When Bernard retaliated by dissolving the Ma.s.sachusetts Legislature, colony after colony replied to his action by applauding the conduct of Ma.s.sachusetts and condemning Lord Hillsborough. The English Government answered the protests of Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, Georgia, and New York by creating a new office especially to deal with the colonies, and by appointing Lord Hillsborough to fill the post. Everything that could be done on the English side of the Atlantic by those in power to show those on the American side of the Atlantic that they might look in vain for justice or for consideration from authority was done. Lord Hillsborough was under the impression that a little firmness--what he called firmness--would soon bring the colonists to their senses, but every mail that came across the Atlantic showed that Lord Hillsborough's theory was unsupported by facts. Now it was the news that the seizure of John Hanc.o.c.k's sloop "Liberty" for a breach of the revenue laws had brought about a riot in Boston in which the Commissioners of Revenue had to fly for their lives. Now it was the news of {151} a great convention in Faneuil Hall to protest against the troops which Hillsborough, at the request of Bernard; poured into Boston. Now it was the news of daily increasing hostility between the citizens of Boston and the British soldiers quartered in the town. It was evident, even to Hillsborough, that a dangerous spirit had been aroused in America, but he still believed that America could be easily frightened or chastised into good behavior. He proposed to enforce an old law of Henry the Eighth by which the colonists offending could be s.h.i.+pped across the Atlantic for trial in England. All that was best and most eloquent in the House of Commons protested against such folly, and did not protest in vain. Some small concessions were made in a half-hearted and grudging way to the Americans. Governor Bernard was recalled. Some of the obnoxious taxes were repealed, though Lord North was not to be persuaded to abandon the tax on tea. These poor concessions were made known to the colonists in a more than usually uncivil and injudicious letter from Lord Hillsborough. The concessions were too trivial and they came too late. If Boston had its brief day of rejoicing when Bernard took his departure, the men of Boston were soon to be occupied with other thoughts than of banners and bonfires.

The bad feeling between the people and the military grew worse, and at last displayed itself in active hostility. March 5, 1770, was a memorable day in the history of Boston. Three thousand miles away Lord North was moving in Parliament for the repeal of all the American duties with the single and fatal exception of the tax on tea. In Boston a small quarrel between some of the citizens and certain British troops under the command of Colonel Preston suddenly blazed up into a dangerous collision. Some of the soldiers fired. Several citizens were killed, several more wounded. There was an angry call to arms, and a general civil attack upon the military was only with difficulty prevented by the Lieutenant-Governor, who ordered the arrest and imprisonment of Colonel Preston and the soldiers under him. These duly underwent a trial whose conduct and whose issue reflect the highest honor {152} upon Boston. The soldiers were defended by no less prominent a man and conspicuous a patriot than John Adams; and, thanks to John Adams, Colonel Preston and six of his men were acquitted, and only two of the soldiers convicted of manslaughter. But if the people of Boston were willing that even their enemies should be tried fairly, and fairly acquitted, they were not willing to allow the events of that day to pa.s.s into oblivion. A public funeral was accorded to the victims of the Boston Ma.s.sacre, and the grim name for a grim deed was for long years later solemnly and publicly commemorated.

The bad news of the Boston Ma.s.sacre was followed to England by the bad news of the business of the "Gaspee." The "Gaspee" was an English wars.h.i.+p employed to enforce the Revenue Acts along the Rhode Island coast. Its commander, Lieutenant Duddington, took an active delight in his duty which brought him into perpetual antagonism with a people who regarded elusion of the revenue laws as their privilege and prerogative. One night the "Gaspee," pursuing the Providence packet, that had refused to lower her colors in salutation as she pa.s.sed, ran aground in shallow water and lay fast bound for the night. The news of her insolence to the Providence packet and of her present plight flew abroad all over Providence. After sundown a number of the townspeople of Providence, well armed and stern of purpose, rowed from the town to the stranded "Gaspee," boarded her, and overcame the ineffectual resistance of her crew. In the scuffle Duddington was badly wounded.