1

Grahame's Hist. of the United States , iv. 94, 95. Hutchinson's Hist. of Massachusetts Bay from 1749 to 1774, p. 101.

1

Bancroft's Hist. of the United States , i. 525.

2

Letter to Two Great Men on the Prospect of Peace.

1

Remarks on the Letter Addressed to Two Great Men , pp. 30, 31.

2

Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts Bay from 1749 to 1774, p. 100. Hardwicke, however, is said to have been governed exclusively by commercial considerations.

3

‘Their jealousy of each other is so great, that however necessary a union of the colonies has long been for their common defence and security against their enemies, and how sensible soever each colony has been of that necessity, yet they have never been able to effect such a union among themselves, nor even to agree in requesting the mother country to establish it for them. Nothing but the immediate command of the Crown has been able to produce even the imperfect union but lately seen there of the forces of some colonies. If they could not agree to unite for their defence against the French and Indians … can it reasonably be supposed there is any danger of their uniting against their own nation, which protects and encourages them, with which they have so many connections and ties of blood, interest, and affection, and which, it is well known, they all love much more than they love one another?’—Canada Pamphlet, Franklin's Works , iv. 41, 42.

1

Hildreth's History of the United States , ii. 496.

1

Burnaby's Travels in North America. Pinkerton's Voyages , xiii. 725, 728, 749. Gerard Hamilton, in a letter written in 1767, said: ‘There are in the different provinces above a million of people of which we may suppose at least 200,000 men able to bear arms; and not only able to bear arms, but having arms in their possession unrestrained by any iniquitous game Act. In the Massachusetts Government particularly, there is an express law by which every man is obliged to have a musket, a pound of powder, and a pound of bullets always by him, so there is nothing wanting but knapsacks (or old stockings, which will do as well) to equip an army for marching.’— Chatham Correspondence , iii. 203.

2

Ramsay's Hist. of the American Revolution , i. 40. Hildreth, ii. 486. Grahame, iv. 94.

1

See a very remarkable pamphlet of Franklin, called Cool Thoughts on the present Situation (1764), advocating the abolition of the proprietary government in Pennsylvania. Franklin's Works , iv. 78–93.

1

In Carolina a law had been passed depriving the Dissenters of their political privileges, but it was repealed by the King in Council. Franklin's Works , iv. 84. Franklin adds: ‘Nor is there existing in any of the American colonies any test imposed by Great Britain to exclude Dissenters from office. In some colonies, indeed, where the Episcopalians, and in others the Dissenters, have been predominant, they have made partial laws in favour of their respective sects, and laid some difficulties on the others, but those laws have been generally, on complaint, repealed at home.’—P. 88.

2

See his evidence before Parliament in 1766. Franklin's Works , iv. 169.

1

Hutchinson's Hist. of Massachusetts Bay , pp. 84, 85.

2

The Swedish traveller Kalm, who visited North America in 1749 and 1750, was much struck with this dislike to co-operation. He says: ‘Each English colony in North America is independent of the other. … From hence it happens that in time of war things go on very slowly and irregularly here; for not only the sense of one province is sometimes directly opposite to that of another, but frequently the views of the Governor and those of the Assembly of the same province are quite different. … It has commonly happened that while some provinces have been suffering from their enemies, the neighbouring ones were quiet and inactive and as if it did not in the least concern them. They have frequently taken up two or three years in considering whether they should give assistance to an oppressed sister colony, and sometimes they have expressly declared themselves against it. There are instances of provinces who were not only neuter in these circumstances, but who even carried on a great trade with the Power which at that very time was attacking and laying waste some other provinces.’—Pinkerton's Voyages , xiii. 460, 461.

1

Grahame, iii. 13.

2

Franklin's Work , i. 177.

1

Grahame, iv. 145–147.

2

The following is the judgment of that usually very acute observer, Burnaby, who travelled through the colonies in 1759 and 1760. ‘Fire and water are not more heterogeneous than the different colonies in North America. Nothing can exceed the jealousy and emulation which they possess in regard to each other. The inhabitants of Pennsylvania and New York have an inexhaustible source of animosity in their jealousy for the trade of the Jerseys. Massachusetts Bay and Rhode Island are not less interested in that of Connecticut. The West Indies are a common subject of emulation to them all. Even the limits and boundaries of each colony are a constant source of litigation. In short, such is the difference of character, of manners, of religion, of interest of the different colonies, that I think, if I am not wholly ignorant of the human mind, were they left to themselves, there would soon be a civil war from one end of the continent to the other; while the Indians and negroes would with better reason impatiently watch the opportunity of exterminating them altogether.’—Pinkerton, xiii. 752. Otis, one of the earliest and most considerable of the American patriots, wrote in 1765: ‘God forbid these colonies should over prove undutiful to their mother country. Whenever such a day shall come, it will be the beginning of a terrible scene. Were these colonies left to themselves to-morrow, America would be a mere shambles of blood and confusion before little petty states could be settled.’— Answer to the Halifax Libel , p. 16.

1

According to Grahame (iv. 125), in 1763 it contained upwards of 500,000 persons. The North American Gazetteer (2nd edit. 1778) estimates its population at upwards of 600,000.

1

Reports of the Board of Trade on the Establishments in America (1766). American Papers, MSS., Record Office. See, too, a letter of Hutchinson in the American Remembrancer 1776, part i, p. 159.

1

See the very unfavourable picture given by Burnaby; Pinkerton, xiii. 742, 743. Winterbotham's Present Situation of the United States (1795), ii. 236. Burke's European Settlements in America , ii. 300.

2

See a curious passage in the Life of Adams prefixed to his Familiar Letters to his Wife , pp. x, xiv. Tucker says of America: ‘In no country, perhaps, in the world are there so many lawsuits.’— Letter to Burke , p. 26. So, too, Burke: ‘In no country, perhaps, in the world is the law so general a study. The profession itself is numerous and powerful, and in most provinces it takes the lead. The greater number of the deputies sent to Congress were lawyers. … I have been told by an eminent bookseller that in no branch of his business, after tracts of popular devotion, were so many books as those on the law exported to the plantations.’— Speech on Conciliation with America , See, too, Burke's European Settlements in America , ii. 304. The passion for the law steadily increased, and in 1787 Noah Webster wrote: ‘Never was such a rage for the study of law. From one end of the continent to the other the students of this science are multiplying without number. An infallible proof that the business is lucrative.’—Webster's Essays , p. 116.

1

24 Geo. II. c. 53. Another law to facilitate recovery of debts from America was made in 1732 (5 Geo. II. c. 7). See on this subject Tucker's Letter to Burke , pp. 29–31. Bolles' Financial History of the United States , pp. 29, 30.

1

Winterbotham's View of the United States , ii. 3, 4.

2

Story's Constitution of the United States , i. 90, 166.

3

Observations on the State of the Nation.

4

Burnaby in 1759 reckons the population of Boston at from 18,000 to 20,000. Pinkerton, xiii. 744. Adams in his Diary, Works , ii. 213, estimates it at 16,000. Winterbotham, some years after the Revolution, reckons it at 18,038. In the North American Gazetteer , it is placed as high as 30,000, but this is certainly an exaggeration.

5

Grahame's Hist . iv. 129,130. Burke's European Settlements , ii. 183.

1

Tyler's Hist. of American Literature , ii. 206.

2

Chastellux (Eng. trans.), Travels in North America in 1780–1782 , ii, 180.

1

Documents relating to the Colonial History of New York procured in Holland, England, and France , vii. 500, 705, 760, 774, 796, 797, 906, 979. New York is described by most of the writers on America I have already quoted. J. Adams gives a very unfavourable picture of the manners of its inhabitants. He writes: ‘With all the opulence and splendour of this city [New York] there is very little good breeding to be found. We have been treated with an assiduous respect, but I have not seen one real gentleman, one well-bred man, since I came to town. At their entertainments there is no conversation that is agreeable; there is no modesty; no attention to one another. They talk very loud, very fast, and all together. If they ask you a question, before you can utter three words of your answer they will break out upon you again and talk away.’—Adams' Diary, 1774. Works , ii. 353. On the condition of education in New York, see Tyler's Hist. of American Literature , ii. 206, 207.

1

Winterbotham, ii. 439.

2

Kalm's Travels in North America. Pinkerton, xiii. 395, 396.

3

Franklin's Life , pp. 148–155. Kalm's Travels. Pinkerton, xiii. 391. As early as 1741, the Quaker, Thomas Chalkley, had lamented the falling away of Pennsylvanian Quakers in this respect. See his curious Life, Travels, and Christian Experiences (ed. 1850), pp. 362, 363.

1

Kalm's Travels. Pinkerton, xiii. 494.

1

Burnaby's Travels. See, too, Kalm's Travels , ten years earlier, and the North American Gazetteer , arts. ‘Pennsylvania’ and ‘Philadelphia.’ There is a very graphic description of Philadelphia, evidently by an eye-witness, in that curious book, the Life of Bampfylde Moore Carew , published in 1749, 1750.

2

The same custom, however, appears to have prevailed in England. Junius, in one of his private letters to Wilkes, alludes to it. ‘I appeal to Miss Wilkes, whose judgment I hear highly commended, would she think herself much indebted to her favourite admirer if he forced a most disagreeable partner upon her, for a long winter's night, because he would not dance with her himself?’ See on this custom the remarks of Twisleton, Twisleton and Chabot's Handwriting of Junius , p. 235.

3

Chastellux's Travels , i. 278.

1

Kalm. Pinkerton, xiii. 512.

2

Compare, on the population of Virginia, Burnaby; Pinkerton, xiii. p. 711; Grahame, iv. 122; Winterbotham.

1

Winterbotham, iii. 112.

1

Chastellux, ii. 189.

2

Noah Webster, who was one of the best of the early economists of America, wrote in 1790: ‘In Virginia and Maryland I should question whether a tenth of the land is yet cultivated. In New England more than half the whole is cultivated, and in Connecticut scarcely a tenth remains in a wild state.’—Webster's Essays , p. 365.

3

Chastellux, ii. 190.

4

Ibid. pp. 28, 29.

5

Ibid. pp. 192, 193.

1

Burnaby. Pinkerton's Voyages , xiii. 714, 715.

2

Chastellux, ii. 193–195. There is an excellent description of Virginian society in Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry. See, too, Grahame, iv. 122–124. Webster's Essays , pp. 361–364. Story's Constitution of the United States , i. 29–33.

3

Sparks' Life of Washington. Washington's Works , i. 133.

4

Hildreth, ii. 559.

1

Burnaby. Pinkerton, xiii. 712–714. Wirt's Life of Henry.

2

Adams mentions in 1774 a Catholic gentleman named Carroll (one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence) who lived at Annapolis, in Maryland, as a man of the first fortune in America. ‘His income is 10,000 l. a year now, will be 14,000 l. in two or three years they say; besides, his father has a vast estate which will be his.’—Adams' Works , ii. 380.

3

Story's Constitution of the United States , i. 165, 166. In 1777 Adams writes that in Maryland ‘they have but few merchants. They are chiefly planters and farmers; the planters are those who raise tobacco, and the farmers such as raise wheat, &c. The lands are cultivated and all sorts of trades are exercised by negroes or by transported convicts, which has occasioned the planters and farmers to assume the title of gentlemen, and they hold their negroes and convicts—that is, all labouring people and tradesmen—in such contempt, that they think themselves a distinct order of beings. Hence they never will suffer their sons to labour or learn any trade, but they bring them up in idleness or, what is worse, in horse-racing, cock-fighting, and card-playing. … The object of the men of property here, the planters, &c., is universally wealth. Every way in the world is sought to get and save money; land jobbers, speculators in land; little generosity to the public, little public spirit.’—Adams' Works , ii. 436.

1

Pinkerton's Voyages , xiii. 750.

2

Ibid. xiii. 500. It must be remembered, however, that the slaves in America were not only negroes and convicts. Many of the poor emigrants from Europe sold themselves to the planters for a term of years, and sometimes in this way paid their passage.

1

Webster's Essays , pp. 339, 366. This was published in 1790.

2

Pinkerton, xiii. 660.

3

Tyler's Hist. of American Literature , ii. 304. Miller, however, gives a much lower estimate ( Retrospect of the Eighteenth Century , iii. 90–92).

4

Harvard, William and Mary, Yale, New Jersey, King's, Philadelphia, and Rhode Island.

5

Tyler, ii. 305, 306.

6

Miller, iii. 191, 192, 194.

7

See Sabine's American Loyalists , p. 35.

8

Miller's Retrospect , iii. 230.

1

Webster's Essays , 338, 360.

2

‘The most important business in civil society is in many parts of America committed to the most worthless characters. … Education is sunk to a level with the most menial services. … Will it be denied that before the war it was a frequent practice for gentlemen to purchase convicts who had been transported for their crimes and employ them as private tutors in their families?’—Ibid. pp. 17–19. See, too, pp. 55, 338.

3

Ibid. p. 30.

1

In that curious book, the Life of Bampfylde Moore Carew , which was published in 1749, and which shows great personal knowledge of America, it is said: ‘There are five printing houses [in Boston], at one of which the Boston Gazette is printed, and comes out twice a week. The presses here are generally full of work, which is in a great measure owing to the colleges and schools for useful learning in New England, whereas at New York there is but one little bookseller's shop, and none at all in Virginia, Maryland, Carolina, Barbadoes, or any of the sugar islands,’ p. 199. As late as 1760 it is said that ‘there were no Greek types in the country, or if there were that no printer knew how to set them.’—Tudor's Life of Otis , p. 16.

2

Franklin's Life , p. 99.

3

Miller's Retrospect of the Eighteenth Century , iii. 236, 237, 282. This book contains an admirable account of the early intellectual history of the colonies. See, too, Hildreth's Hist. of the United States , ii. 513.

1

Chastellux, i. 153, 154. Mémoires de Lafayette , i. 25. See, too, the very engaging picture of Pennsylvanian morals and manners in the Mémoires du Comte de Ségur .

1

Letters on Indian affairs form a very large proportion of the papers (Plantations, General) on America in the Record Office. The most valuable have been printed in the admirable collection of Documents relative to the Colonial History of New York , published by order of the Legislature of that State. See e.g. vol. vii. pp. 602, 637–641, 837, 838, 946–948, 953–977.

2

Ibid. vii. 969, 970. Sir W. Johnson mentions that he was himself present when one of the missionaries, preaching to the Indians, ‘delivered as his text, “For God is no respecter of persons,” and desired it to be explained to them; the interpreter (though the best in that country) told the Indians that “God had no love for such people as them,” on which I immediately stopped him and explained the text, as I did the rest of his discourse, to prevent farther mistakes; had I not been present the error must have passed, and many more might have been committed in the course of the sermon.’

1

7 and 8 William III. cap. 22. Story's Constitution of the United States , i. 139, 147–149.

1

Story's Constitution of the United States , i. 174.

1

Hildreth, ii. 517.

2

Story, i. 158.

1

The law about the last three articles varied. They were sometimes among the enumerated, sometimes among the unenumerated articles.

1

Grahame, iv. 79.

1

Letters of Governor Bernard on the Trade and Government of America , p.4. See, too, Franklin's Causes of American Discontents before 1768. Works , iv. 250, 251. Wealth of Nations , book iv. ch. iv., vii.

2

Wealth of Nations , book iv. ch. vii. See, too, Gentz On the State of Europe before and after the French Revolution (English trans.), pp. 295–308. ‘Ever since the discovery of America,’ says Dean Tucker, ‘it has been the system of every European Power which had colonies in that part of the world, to confine (as far as laws can confine) the trade of the colonies to the mother country. … Thus the trade of the Spanish colonies is confined by law to Old Spain, the trade of the Brazils to Portugal, the trade of Martinico and the other French colonies to Old France, and the trade of Curaçoa and Surinam to Holland. But in one instance the Hollanders make an exception (perhaps a wise one), viz. in the case of Eustatia, which is open to all the world.’—Tucker's Four Tracts , p. 133.

1

Kalm. Pinkerton's Voyages , xiii. 700.

1

Hildreth. ii. 498. Macpherson's Annals of Commerce , iii 330 Arnold's Hist. of Rhode Island , ii. 227, 235, 236.

1

Otis tells a story of a man who possessed one of these writs, being summoned by a judge for Sabbath-breaking and swearing, and avenging himself by searching the house of the judge from top to bottom.—Tudor's Life of Otis , p. 67. A very full abstract of the great speech of Otis against the writs of assistance will be found in this work—a remarkable book from which I have derived much assistance. See, too, Adams' Works , i. 57, 58, ii. 524, 525.

1

Bancroft, i. 502, 503. Grahame, iv. 87, 88.

1

Hutchinson, pp. 97, 98. Tudor's Life of Otis , pp. 118–122.

1

Otis, Rights of the British Colonies asserted (3rd ed. 1766), p. 37.

2

See Knox's Extra-official Papers , ii. 29. Almon's Biographical Anecdotes , ii. 81–83. Bedford Correspondence , iii. 210. Walpole's George III . iii. 32. Mr. Bancroft has collected with great industry all the extant evidence of this plan.

1

Grenville Papers , ii. 114.

2

Bancroft, ii. 178. See, too, Massachusettensis , Letter iii. According to Sabine, ‘Nine-tenths probably of all the tea, wine and fruit, sugar and molasses, consumed in the colonies, were smuggled.’—Sabine's American Loyalists , i. 12.

1

Arnold's Hist. of Rhode Island , ii. 246.

1

Macpherson's Annals of Commerce , iii. 171–177, 192. Bancroft. Grahame. Letters of Governor Bernard.

1

4 Geo. III. 15, 26, 27, 29. Macpherson's Hist. of Commerce , iii. 395–401. Grahame, iv. 169–176. Tudor's Life of Otis , p. 165.

1

Trumbull's Hist. of the United States , pp. 455–467. Hildreth, Grahame, Hutchinson.

2

Otis, Rights of the Colonies p. 97.

1

See on this negotiation Franklin's letters to Shirley, with the prefatory note.—Franklin's Works , iii. 56–58. Thackeray's Life of Chatham , ii. 56, 57. The Controversy between Great Britain and her Colonies Reviewed (1769), pp. 194–198. Bancroft, i. 195–198.

1

By the Charter the Sovereign engaged never to levy any tax in Pennsylvania, ‘unless the same be with the consent of the proprietors or chief governor or Assembly, or by Act of Parliament in England.

1

As Dr. Johnson wittily though somewhat offensively wrote: ‘We do not put a calf into the plough: we wait till it is an ox.’

1

The Controversy between Great Britain and her Colonies , pp. 196, 197.

2

See a very able statement of the dissension among the colonies in The Controversy between Great Britain and her Colonies , pp. 93–97. Governor Franklin (the son of Benjamin Franklin), in a speech to the Assembly of New Jersey in 1775, said: ‘The necessity of some supreme judge [to determine the quota of each province to the general expense] is evident from the very nature of the case, as otherwise some of the colonies might not contribute their due proportion. During the last war I well remember it was ardently wished by some of the colonies that others, who were thought to be delinquent, might be compelled by Act of Parliament to bear an equal share of the public burdens. … When the Assembly in 1764 was called upon to make provision for raising some troops on account of the Indian war, they declined doing it for some time but on condition a majority of the eastern colonies so far as to include Massachusetts Bay should come into his Majesty's requisition on the occasion. But as none of the Assemblies of the New England Governments thought themselves nearly concerned, nothing was granted by them, and the whole burden of the expedition then carried on fell on Great Britain and three or four of the middle colonies.’—See Tucker's Letter to Burke , pp. 49, 50.

1

Franklin's Works , iv. 89, 90.

1

Almon's Biographical Anecdotes , ii. 88–92.

1

Almon's Biographical Anecdotes , ii. 82–92. In the reply of the Massachusetts Assembly to Mauduit, the following passage occurs: ‘The actual laying the stamp duty, you say, is deferred till next year, Mr. Grenville being willing to give the provinces their option to raise that or some equivalent tax, “desirous,” as he was pleased to express himself, “to consult the ease, and quiet, and the goodwill of the colonies.”’ ‘This suspension,’ the letter adds, ‘amounts to no more than this, that if the colonies will not tax themselves as they may be directed, the Parliament will tax them.’—Mauduit's View of the New England Colonies , pp. 95–100. In The Controversy between Great Britain and her Colonies , which was perhaps the ablest statement of the case against the colonies, and which was written by Knox, the Under-Secretary of State, and one of Grenville's confidential writers, it is said: ‘Mr. Grenville, indeed, went so far as to desire the agents to acquaint the colonies that if they could not agree among themselves upon raising a revenue by their own Assemblies, yet if they all, or any of them, disliked stamp duties, and would propose any other sort of tax which would carry the appearance of equal efficacy, he would adopt it. But he warmly recommended to them the making grants by their own Assemblies as the most expedient method for themselves.’—P. 199. Burke, however, states that Grenville in the many debates on the Stamp Act never made this apology for himself, that he always expressed his dislike to the system of raising money by requisitions to the colonial Assemblies, and his preference for parliamentary taxation, and that it is therefore impossible he can have recommended the colonies to tax themselves, though he may have urged them to agree upon the tax which they would wish Parliament to propose (Speech on American Taxation). It appears, however, evident from the Massachusetts letter that although Grenville was inexorable about the right of Parliament to tax the colonies, the colonists understood him to have intentionally left it open to them to prevent the exercise of that right by raising the money themselves. All that politicians in England really wanted was an American contribution to the defence of the Empire. See, too, the statement of Garth, the Agent of South Carolina; Bancroft, ii. 211; and that of Franklin, Works , i. 291, 292; iv. 194.

1

Annual Register , 1765, p. 33.

2

See the Virginian Address, Grahame, iv. 180.

1

See Knox's Extra-official Papers , ii. 24, 25, 31–33. Hutchinson's Hist. of Massachusetts , p. 112. In his Notes on the United States , Sir Augustus Foster, who was English Secretary of Legation at Washington, 1804–1806, mentions that both Jefferson and his successor in the Presidency, Madison, expressed their belief that ‘the timely concession of a few seats in the Upper as well as the Lower House would have set at rest the whole question.’ Lord Liverpool was accustomed to say that no serious resistance to the Stamp Act would have been made, if Grenville had carried it at once without leaving a year for discussion. See Quarterly Review , No. cxxxv. p. 37.

1

See Grahame, iv. 188.

1

5 Geo. III. c. 12.

1

Burke's speech on American taxation, April 1774. The following is Horace Walpole's sole notice of the measure: ‘There has been nothing of note in Parliament but one slight day on the American taxes, which Charles Townshend supporting, received a pretty heavy thump from Barré, who is the present Pitt and the dread of all the vociferous Norths and Rigbys, on whose lungs depended so much of Mr. Grenville's power.’ Walpole to Hertford, Feb. 12, 1765. Beckford, some years later, mentioned that he had opposed the Stamp Act.— Cavendish Debates , i. 41.

1

H. Cromwell to Thurloe, February 24, 1657. Thurloe State Papers , vi. 820.

1

Considerations on the Dependencies of Great Britain (by Sir Hercules Langrishe), Dublin, 1769, p. 75.

2

5 Geo. III. c. 45.

1

See Story's Constitution of the United States , i. 175, 176.

2

See Tudor's Life of Otis , pp. 424–433.

1

Holmes‘ Annals of America , 1765. Grahame's Hist. iv. Annual Register , 1765. Adams’ Diary, Works , ii. 156.

1

Documents relating to the Colonial Hist. of New York , vii. 770–775.

1

Albemarle's Life of Rockingham , i. 185–203.

1

Albemarle's Life of Rockingham , i. 269.

2

Ibid. i. 256.

1

Parl. Hist. xvi. 133–137; Walpole's Memoirs , ii. 296; Burke's Correspondence , i. 100.

1

Chatham Correspondence , ii. 363–372. Rockingham next day wrote to the King: ‘The events of yesterday in the House of Commons have shown the amazing power and influence which Mr. Pitt has whenever he takes part in debate.’—Albemarle's Life of Rockingham , i. 270.

1

Parl. Hist. xvi. 178.

2

Grenville Papers , iii. 353, 362, 365. Albemarle's Life of Rockingham.

1

6 Geo. III. c. 11, 12.

1

Albemarle's Life of Rockingham , i. 250, 292, 299–302, 314, 321. Annual Register , 1766. Grenville Papers , iii. 353–370.

1

Thus Shelburne reported to Pitt, December 21, 1765. ‘The prejudice against the Americans on the whole seemed very great, and no very decided opinion in favour of the ministry.’— Chatham Correspondence , ii. 355. Walpole says: ‘As the accounts from America grew every day worse, the ministers, who at first were inclined to repeal the Act, were borne down by the flagrancy of the provocation.’— Memoirs of George III. ii. 221.

1

Albemarle's Life of Rockingham , i. 305. Charles Fox, in a speech which he made on December 10, 1777, fully corroborated this assertion, and declared that ‘it was not the inclination of Lord Rockingham, but the necessity of his situation, which was the cause of the Declaratory Act.’— Parl. Hist. xix. 563. The Duke of Richmond, who on all American questions was one of the most prominent members of the Rockingham party, said in 1778, ‘that with respect to the Declaratory Act, any reason that ever weighed with him in favour of that Act was to obtain the repeal of the Stamp Act. Many people of high principles would never, in his opinion, have been brought to repeal the Stamp Act without it; the number of those who opposed that repeal, even as it was, were very numerous.’— Chatham Correspondence , iv. 501, 502.

2

Franklin's Works , iv. 176.

1

Adams' Diary. Works , ii. 203. Adams' biographer says the colonists ‘received the repeal of the Stamp Act with transports of joy, and disregarded the mere empty declaration of a right which they flattered themselves was never to be exercised. The spirit of resistance immediately subsided, and a general tranquillity prevailed until the project of levying internal taxes upon the people of the colonies by Act of Parliament was resumed in England.’ Ibid. i. 81, 82. Burke in his great speech in 1774 on the American question, speaking of the repeal of the Stamp Act, said: ‘I am bold to say, so sudden a calm, recovered after so violent a storm, is without parallel in history.’ The testimony of Hutchinson is equally decisive. ‘The Act which accompanied it [the repeal of the Stamp Act] with the title of “Securing the Dependency of the Colonies,” caused no allay of the joy, and was considered as mere naked form.’ Hist. of Massachusetts Bay , p. 147.

1

Macpherson's Annals of Commerce , iii. 446, 447.

2

Thackeray's Life of Chatham , ii. 263.

1

Annual Register , 1766, p. 114.

1

See Hutchinson, p. 254.

1

He proposed that thirty representatives should be sent from the continental colonies, and fifteen from the islands.— Letters of George Bernard , p. 34.

1

‘The whole body of courtiers drove him [Charles Townshend] onwards. They always talked as if the King stood in a sort of humiliated state until something of the kind should be done.’—Burke's Speech on American Taxation (1774).

1

Bancroft, iii. 28. Fitzmaurice's Life of Shelburne , ii. 3–5.

1

See vol. iii. p. 301.

2

‘The forming of an American fund to support the exigencies of government in the same manner as is done in Ireland, is what is so highly reasonable that it must take place sooner or later. The most obvious manner of laying a foundation for such a fund seems to be by taking proper care of the quit lands, and by turning the grants of land to real benefit.’—Fitzmaurice's Life of Shelburne , ii. 35.

3

There are two accounts of this speech: the first in a letter from Lord Charlemont to Flood (Jan. 29), Chatham Correspondence , iii. 178, 179; the other in a letter from Shelburne to Chatham (Feb. 1), Ibid. iii. 182–188. See, too, Grenville Papers , iv. 211, 222, and the extracts from the Duke of Grafton's Memoirs in Lord Stanhope's History , v. App. xvii. xviii.

1

Chatham Correspondence , iii. 188, 189.

2

Ibid. p. 193.

1

7 Geo. III. c. 59.

2

Ibid. c. 41.

3

Walpole's Memoirs of George III. iii. 28.

1

7 Geo. III. c. 46, 56.

1

See the ‘Cause of American Discontents before 1768.’—Franklin's Works , iv. 250, 251.

2

See a powerful statement of the abuses in Ireland in the Farmer's Letters , No. 10.

3

In a private letter written by General Huske, a prominent American who was residing in England in 1758, there is an extraordinary, though probably somewhat overcharged, account of English appointments in America. ‘For many years past. … most of the places in the gift of the Crown have been filled with broken Members of Parliament, of bad if any principles, pimps, valets de chambre, electioneering scoundrels, and even livery servants. In one word, America has been for many years made the hospital of Great Britain for her decayed courtiers, and abandoned, worn-out dependents. I can point you out a chief justice of a province appointed from home for no other reason than publicly prostituting his honour and conscience at an election; a livery servant that is secretary of a province, appointed from hence; a pimp, collector of a whole province, who got this place of the man in power for prostituting his handsome wife to his embraces and procuring him other means of gratifying his lust. Innumerable are instances of this sort in places of great trust.’—Phillimore's Life of Lyttelton , ii. 604. In Parliament Captain Phipps, speaking of America, said, ‘Individuals have been taken from the gaols to preside in the seat of justice; offices have been given to men who had never seen America.’— Cavendish Debates , i. 91.

1

Hildreth, ii. 540.

2

Bancroft, iii. 116, 140.

1

In their petition to the King they say, With great sincerity permit us to assure your Majesty that your subjects of this province ever have, and still continue to acknowledge your Majesty's High Court of Parliament, the supreme legislative power of the whole Empire, the superintending authority of which is clearly admitted in all cases that can consist with the fundamental rights of nature and the Constitution.’ ‘Your Lordship,’ they wrote to Shelburne, ‘is too candid and just in your sentiments to suppose that the House have the most distant thought of independency of Great Britain.’ ‘So sensible are the members of this House,’ they wrote to Rockingham, ‘of their happiness and safety in their union with and dependence upon the mother-country, that they would by no means be inclined to accept of an independency if offered to them.’ The true Sentiments of America, as contained in a Collection of Letters sent from the House of Representatives of Massachusetts Bay to several Persons of High Rank in this Kingdom. London, 1768.

2

Bancroft. Hutchinson.

1

Flood, in a letter to Charlemont, describing a debate in which almost all the chief speakers in Parliament had exerted themselves, says that ‘Burke acquitted himself very honourably,’ but there was ‘no one person near Townshend. He is an orator. The rest are speakers.’— Original Letters to Flood , p. 27. Walpole, in his numerous allusions to his speeches, describes him as greatly superior to Burke in brilliancy and spontaneity of wit, to Chatham in solid sense, and to every other speaker in histrionic power.— Memoirs of George III. See especially, ii. 275; iii. 23–27. Sir George Colebrooke said that ‘Nobody excepting Mr. Pitt possessed a style of oratory so perfectly suited to the House’ (Walpole's George III. iii. 102). And Thurlow described him as ‘the most delightful speaker he ever knew.’—Nicholls' George III. p. 26.

1

Townshend is now chiefly remembered by the singularly beautiful character of him in Burke's speech on American taxation. Horace Walpole say of him, ‘He had almost every great talent and every little quality. … With such a capacity he must have been the greatest man of this age, and perhaps inferior to no man in any age, had his faults been only in a moderate proportion.’— Memoirs of George III. iii. 100. See, too, Sir G. Colebrooke's character of him. Ibid. pp. 100--102. In an able paper in the North Briton (No. 20) it is said of him, ‘He joins to an infinite fire of imagination and brilliancy of wit, a cool and solid judgment, a wonderful capacity for business of every kind, the most intense application to it, and a consummate knowledge of the great commercial interests of this country, which I never heard were before united in the same person.’

1

Holmes' American Annals, Massachusetts Bay , pp. 189, 190. 1768. Hutchinson's Hist. of

2

Ibid. p. 188.

1

Arnold's Hist. of Rhode Island , ii. 288.

2

Ibid. p. 297.

3

Ibid. p. 294.

1

The life of S. Adams has been written with great elaboration and unqualified eulogy by W. V. Wells, and Bancroft adopts a very similar view of his character. Several facts relating to him will be found in Hutchinson's Hist. of Massachusetts Bay , pp. 294, 295.

1

Letters of Governor Bernard, pp. 55–60.

1

Bancroft.

1

Parl. Hist. xvi. 477–487. Cavendish Debates , i. 192–194.

1

Hildreth, ii. 553.

2

The Massachusetts Agent, De Berdt, wrote to the Assembly in July 1768, describing an interview with Hillborough. ‘He assured me, before the warm measures taken on your side had come to their knowledge he had settled the repeal of those Acts [for the taxation or coercion of America] with Lord North the Chancellor, but the opposition you had made rendered it absolutely necessary to support the authority of Parliament.’— Massachusetts State Papers , p. 161.

3

Grahame, iv. 297.

1

See Hutchinson's Hist. of Massachusetts Bay , pp. 350, 351, 422, 423.

1

Holmes. Bancroft. One of the later accusations against the English soldiers was, that they impaired the purity of the American pronunciation of English. Noah Webster, in his curious essay on the ‘Manners of the United States’ (1787), says: ‘I presume we may safely say that our language has suffered more injurious changes in America since the British army landed on our shores than it had suffered before, in the period of three centuries.’—Webster's Essays , p. 96.

1

In allusion to the British custom of flogging soldiers.

1

The commemoration was kept up till 1783, after which it was replaced by that of the 4th of July. Tudor's Life of Otis , p. 462.

1

See on this episode, Adams' Works , i. 97–114, ii. 229–233; Hutchinson's Hist, of Massachusetts Bay ; Hutchinson's letters to Bernard, and the Histories of Hildreth and Bancroft. Mr. Bancroft in his account of this transaction appears to me to exhibit even more strongly than usual that violent partisanship which so greatly impairs the value of his very learned History. Outside Boston the verdict seems to have given much satisfaction. Hutchinson wrote (Dec. 1770): The reception which has been given to the late verdicts everywhere except in Boston has been favourable beyond my hopes. I expected that the court and jury would be censured, but they are generally applauded.’— American Remembrancer , 1776, part i. p. 159.

2

Tudor's Life of otis , p. 118. According to Dr. Price ( On Civil Liberty , p. 101), not more than one exeoution had taken place in Massachusetts Bay in eighteen years. The annual average of executions in London alone for twenty-three years before 1772 was from twenty-nine to thirty—Howard On Prisons , p. 9.

1

10 Geo. III. 17.

2

See Cavendish Debates , i. 198, 222.

1

Stedman, i. 74. Hutchinson says: ‘By taking off 12 d. , which used to be paid in England, and substituting 3 d. only, payable in the colonies, tea was cheaper than it had ever been sold by the illicit traders, and the poor people in America drank the same tea in quality at 3 s. the lb. which the people in England drank at 6 s. ’— Hist, of Massachusetts Bay , p. 351.

2

Parl. Hist. xvi. 852–874; Cavendish Debates , i. 484–500.

3

‘If these duties [those in Townshend's Act] had been paid upon exportation from England and applied to the purpose proposed, there would not have been any opposition made to the Act. It would have been a favour to the colonies. The saving upon tea would have been more than the whole paid on the other articles. The consumer in America would have paid the duty just as much as if it had been paid upon importation.’— Hist. of Massachusetts Bay , p. 179. I have already quoted the opinion of Franklin to much the same effect.

1

See Lord North's strong statement of the reluctance with which he maintained any part of the duties. Pari. Hist. xvi. 854; Cavendish Debates , i. 485, 486. The speech of George Grenville in this debate, as reported by Cavendish, is particularly worthy of attention.

1

Parl. Hist. xvi. 855.

1

A full account of this transaction will be found in Mr. Arnold's very interesting History of Rhode Island , ii. 309–320. Mr. Arnold has given a curious letter describing it, by Ephraim Bowen, one of the party who captured the ‘Gaspee.’

1

Bancroft, iii. 461.

2

12 Geo. III. c. 24.

1

Burke's ‘Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs.’ Works , vi. 122. See, too, Franklin's Works , i. 413, 414.

2

Franklin's Works , vii. 399–404.

3

‘All the land in England is in fact represented. … As to those who have no landed property in a county, the allowing them to vote for legislators is an Impropriety.’—Political Observations,’ Franklin's Work , iv, 221.

1

Franklin's Works , vii. 357.

2

Ibid. viii. 30, 31. After the Stamp Act, Franklin expressed his opinion in a pithy sentence to Ingersoll, who was then returning to America. ‘Go home and tell your countrymen to get children as fast as they can.’

3

Ibid. pp. 78, 79.

1

See the letters of Oct. 26, 1769, and May 7, 1767.

1

Sparks' Continuatum of Franklin's Life.

2

Bancroft.

1

See vol. iii. p. 249. Burke's Works , ix. 148.

2

Grenville Papers , iii. 99, 311, 312.

1

See Franklin's own vindication of his proceedings, with the accompanying notes. Works , iv. 404—455.

1

Fur—a thief.

1

On the extraordinary popularity of Franklin at this time, see the letter of Dr. Rush, quoted in Sparks' Continuation of the Life of Franklin.

2

Life of Franklin. Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors , viii. 14–19. Chatham Correspondence , iv. 322, 323.

3

By the previous law (12 Geo. III. c. 60) a drawback of three-fifths of the duty had been allowed.

1

13 George III. c. 44.

2

Hutchinson notices that Hancock's uncle had made his large fortune chiefly by smuggling tea from St. Eustatia. Hist. of Massachusetts Bay , p. 297. See, too, Sabine's American Loyalists , i. 9.

1

Tucker's Political Tracts.

1

Thackeray's Life of Chatham , ii. 274.

2

Ibid. ii. 279.

1

Franklin's Works , iv. 432.

1

The East India Company had clearly seen the absurdity of the transaction, and offered that the Government should retain a duty of sixpence in the pound on exportation, provided it consented to repeal the duty of threepence in the pound paid in America. Parl. Hist. xviii. 178.

1

Annual Register , 1774, p. 62. The King himself wrote (Nov. 1774): ‘We must either master them [the colonies] or totally leave them to themselves, and treat them as aliens.’— Correspondence of George III. i. 216. As early as Jan. 1769 Hussey, the Attorney-General to the Queen, said in Parliament, ‘I have my doubts whether there should ever be a strict union between the colonies and the mother country; I have doubts whether they are a real service or a burthen to us; but I never had a doubt as to our right to lay an internal tax upon them.’— Cavendish Debates , i. 197.

2

Annual Register , 1774, p. 53.

1

14 George III. c. 19.

2

Ibid. c. 45.

1

14 George III. c. 39.

1

14 George III. c. 64.

2

Ibid. c. 83.

3

According to General Carleton, the Governor, Canada contained 150,000 Catholics, and less than 400 Protestants; and the French Catholics greatly preferred having their trials determined by judges to having them determined by juries, and had not the least desire for any popular assemblies.— Parl. Hist. xvii. 1367, 1368.

1

See a curious account of this celebration in Tudor's Life of Otis , pp. 26–29. It degenerated into a violent contention between different parts of Boston. When the Americans invaded Canada in 1775, Washington forbade the commemoration, lest it should irritate the Canadian Catholics. Sparks' Washington , iii. 144.

2

Tudor's Life of Otis , pp, 446, 447.

1

See the report of Bishop Sherlock to the King in Council, on the Church in the Colonies.— Docoments relating to the Colonial History of New York , vii. 360–369. Much information about the condition of the Episcopalians in America will be found in the correspondence between Archbishop Seeker and some American clergymen in the same volume. According to Sherlock, the Episcopalian ministers in America were chiefly Scotch and Irish. A great number of them appear to have been educated in Dublin University. The Massachusetts Assembly, writing in 1768 to their Agent in England, against the taxation of America by England, say: ‘The revenue raised in America, for aught we can tell, may be as constitutionally applied towards the support of prelacy, as of soldiers and pensioners;’ and they add: ‘We hope in God such an estal lishment will never take place in America.’—Wells' Life of S. Adams , i. 200.

1

Petition to Lord Hillsborough from the Anglican clergy of New York and New Jersey, Oct. 12 1771. MSS. Record Office.

1

This was one of the charges brought against Dr. Byles, a well-known Tory clergyman in Boston. He answered his accusers: ‘I do not understand politics, and you all do. … You have polítícs all the week: pray let one day in seven be devoted to religion. … Give me any subject to preach on of more consequence than the truths I bring to you, and I will preach on it next Sabbath.’ Lafayette mentions how, ‘ayant taxé un ministre anglican de ne parler que du ciel,’ he was much gratified on the following Sunday by hearing from the pulpit a denunciation of the ‘execrable house of Hanover.’— Mém. de Lafayette , i. 38. See, too, on the use made of days of ‘fasting and prayer’ for the purpose of exciting the revolutionary feeling, Tucker's Life of Jefferson , i. 54, 55.

1

Moore's Diary of the American Revolution , i. 37–52, 138. This very interesting book is a collection of extracts from the contemporary newspapers on both sides of the question, and gives a vivid picture of the social condition of the colonies. See, too, Force's American Archives (4th series), i. 747, 748, 767–769, 795, 1260–1263.

1

Massachusettensis, or Letters on the present Troubles of Massachusetis Bay , Letters I., IV.

2

Ibid. Letter III. These very remarkable letters were written by Leonard, one of his Majesty's Council. The author was himself driven from his house in Taunton, and bullets were fired into it.—Moore's Diary , i. 38. Among the numerous persons who were at this time driven into exile was Dr. Cooper, President of King's College in New York, and the most distinguished Episcopalian in America. He had written something on the loyalist side, and accordingly received a letter threatening his life, and was soon after compelled to fly half-dressed over the college fence, to take refuge in an English ship of war, and ultimately in England— Documents relating to the Colonial History of New York , viii. 297.

1

Even Otis, who had been the first to denounce the commercial restrictions as unconstitutional, and who repudiated writs of assistance as the creation of the English Parliament, maintained—not very consistently—that Parliament had a real legislative authority in America, and he deprecated in the strongest language any measure tending to separation. ‘The supreme Legislative,’ he wrote in 1765, ‘represents the whole society or community, as well the dominions as the realm; and this is the true reason why the dominions are justly bound by such Acts of Parliament as name them. This is implied in the idea of a supreme sovereign power; and if the Parliament had not such authority the colonies would be independent, which none but rebels, fools, or madmen will contend for.’— Answer to the Halifax Libel , p. 16. The same doctrine is laid down with equal emphasis in the Farmer's Letters : ‘The Parliament unquestionably possesses a legal authority to regulate the trade of Great Britain and all its colonies. Such an authority is essential to the relation between a mother country and its colonies. … We are but parts of a whole, and therefore there must exist a power somewhere to preside and preserve the connection in due order. This power is lodged in the Parliament.’—Letter II.

2

Story's Constitution of the United States , i. 178, 179. Jefferson says that about the middle of 1774 he maintained that the relations of England to the colonies were similar to those of England with Scotland before the Union, or of England with Hanover at present, but he only found one person to agree with him.— Autobiography .

1

Journal of the Proceedings of the Congress held at Philadelphia, Sept . 1774. See, too, the account of the debates in Adams' Diary .

1

He said to Chatham that, ‘having more than once travelled almost from one end of the continent to the other, and kept a great variety of company—eating, drinking, and conversing with them freely, I have never heard In any conversation, from any person, drunk or sober, the least expression of a wish for a separation, or hint that such a thing would be advantageous to America.’—Negotiations in London. Franklin's Works , v. 7.

2

See on this subject Washington's Works , ii. 401, 496–502.

1

Journal of the Proceedings of the Congress held at Philadelphia, Sept . 5, 1774.

2

See other instances in Grahame, iv. 392, 395.

1

Ramsay, i. 220

2

March 3 and 15, 1776. See Washington's Works , iii. 347, 348.

3

Examination of Joseph Galloway , p. 4.

4

Adams' Works , ii. 512.

5

Ibid. p. 513. In a confidential letter from New York, dated Aug. 7, 1775, Governor Tryon said: ‘I should do great injustice to America were I to hold up an idea that the bulk of its inhabitants wishes an independency. I am satisfied (not to answer for our Eastern neighbours) a very large majority, particularly in this province, are utter enemies to such a principle.’— Documents relating to the Colonial History of New York , viii. 603.

1

See Washington's Works , ii. 501.

2

Speech of Chase. Adams' Works , ii. 383.

1

Adams' Works , ii. 362.

2

Tudor's Life of Otis , pp. 256, 257.

3

Ibid. p. 428.

4

Correspondence of George III. with Lord North , i. 194, 195.

1

Correspondence of George III. with Lord North , i. 164.

2

See their opinions in Tudor's Life of Otis , p. 428.

3

Parl. Hist. xviii. 446, 447. See, too, the very similar speech of Rigby. Walpole's Last Journals , i. 481.

1

Ramsay, i. 143. See, on the remarkable loyalty shown by the New York Assembly at this time, a striking letter of Lieutenant-Governor Colden to Lord Dartmouth (Feb. 1, 1775) in the Documents relating to the Colonial History of New York , viii. 531, 532.

2

Adolphus, ii. 211.

3

Adams, ii. 385.

1

Adams' Works , ii. 384.

2

Bee a graphic account of the differences in Congress in Adams' Works , ii. 850, 410.

1

Adams' Works , ii. 387–389. Galloway's Examination , pp. 47–49.

1

Adams' Works , ii. 410, 419.

2

Ramsay, i. 180.

1

Chatham Correspondence , iv. 352.

1

Chatham Correspondence , iv. 403, 404. See, too, Gibbon to Holroyd, Feb. 25, Annual Register , 1775, pp. 95–98. Walpole's Last Journals , i. 463, 464.

1

See e.g. Lord Russell's Lifs of Fox , i. 85, 86.

2

See his very able speech, Parl. Hist , xviii. 322–329.

1

This letter is printed in the Documents relating to the Colonial History of New York , viii. 545–547. Force's American Archives (4th series), ii. 27, 28.

1

See General Gage's despatch. American Remembrancer , 1776, part ii., pp. 132, 133. Ramsay, Stedman, and Bancroft.

1

John Adams, describing his life at Philadelphia to his wife, in December 1775, says: ‘The whole Congress is taken up almost, in different committees, from seven to ten in the morning. From ten to four, or sometimes five, we are in Congress, and from six to ten in committees again. I don't mention this to make you think me a man of importance, because not I alone, but the whole Congress, is thus employed.’—Adams' Familiar Letters , p. 127.

1

Autobiography. Adams' Works , ii. 503. ‘It is almost impossible,’ wrote Adams, ‘to move anything but you instantly see private friendships and enmities, and provincial views and prejudices, intermingle in the consultation.’—Ibid. ii. 448.

1

Adams' Works , ii. 459.

2

Ibid. ii. 466, 469, 472.

1

Adams' Works , ii. 474.

1

See Adams' Diary. Works , ii. 415.

1

See Greene's German Element in the American War , pp. 142–144.

1

See Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry.

1

Stedman, i. 133.

2

See Adolphus, ii. 239. Ramsay, i. 238.

3

Compare Lord Stanhope's Hist. vi. 76, and Bancroft, Hist. of the United States , viii. 176, 177.

4

Bancroft.

1

‘The New Englanders,’ wrote Montgomery, ‘are the worst stuff imaginable for soldiers. They are homesick. Their regiments are melted away, and yet not a man dead of any distemper. There is such an equality among them that the officers have no authority, and there are very few among them in whose spirit I have confidence. The privates are all generals, but not soldiers, and so jealous that it is impossible, though a man risk his person, to escape the imputation of treachery.’—Bancroft, Hist. of the United States , viii. 185. The day after the capitulation of Montreal, Montgomery wrote to General Schuyler: ‘I am exceedingly sorry that Congress has not favoured me with a committee; it would have had great effect with the troops, who are exceedingly turbulent, and even mutinous. … I wish some method could be fallen upon of engaging gentlemen to serve. A point of honour and more knowledge of the world to be found in that class of men would greatly reform discipline, and render the troops much more tractable.’—Washington's Works , iii. 180, 181. Washington writes (Jan. 31, 1776): ‘The account given of the behaviour of the men under General Montgomery is exactly consonant to the opinion I have formed of these people, and such as they will exhibit abundant proofs of in similar cases whenever called upon. Place them behind a parapet, a breastwork, stone wall, or anything that will afford them shelter, and from their knowledge of a firelock they will give a good account of the enemy; but I am as well convinced as if I had seen it, that they will not march boldly up to a work, nor stand exposed in a plain.’—Ibid. p. 277. See, too, p. 285. The failure and death of Montgomery, Washington ascribed to the system of short enlistments, ‘for had he not been apprehensive of the troops leaving him at so important a crisis, but continued the blockade of Quebec, a capitulation, from the best accounts I have been able to collect, must inevitably have followed.’—Ibid. p. 278.

1

Stedman. Bancroft. Ramsay, i. 252.

1

Parton's Life of Franklin , ii. 100.

2

See a letter of Governor Tryon, Documents relating to the Colonial History of New York , viii. 647.

1

Thus J. Adams in 1775 gives an account of an interview with some gentlemen from Georgia. ‘These gentlemen give a melancholy account of the State of Georgia and South Carolina. They say that if 1,000 regular troops should land in Georgia, and their commander be provided with arms and clothes enough, and proclaim freedom to all the negroes who would join his camp, 20,000 negroes would join it from the two provinces in a fortnight. … Their only security is that all the King's friends and tools of Government have large plantations and property in negroes, so that the slaves of the Tories would be lost as well as those of the Whigs.’—Adams' Works , ii. 428.

2

Washington's Works , iii. 175.

3

Force's American Archives (4th series), i. 1349, 1350.

1

March 28, 1775. MSS. Record Office (Plantations, General).

2

Documents relating to the Colonial History of New York , viii. 656, 657. See, too, a letter of the Provincial Congress, dated April 4, 1775, to a New England missionary, urging him to use his influence to make the Indians take up arms against the English. Washington's Works , iii. 495.

3

July 18, 1775. MSS. Record Office.

4

In a speech to the Indians, August 30, 1775, Stuart said: ‘There is a difference between the white people of England and the white people of America; this is a matter which does not concern you, they will decide it among themselves.’—MSS. Record Office (Plantations, General). In August 1775 the commissioners sent by the twelve colonies had a long interview with the chiefs of the six nations, and gave them an elaborate account of the motives which had united them against England. They added, however: ‘This is a family quarrel between us and Old England. You Indians are not concerned in it. We do not wish you to take up the hatchetagainst the King's troops. We desire you to remain at home and not join either side, but keep the hatchet buried deep.’— Documents relating to the Colonial History of New York , viii. 619. See, too, the Secret Journals of Congress , July 17, 1775.

1

Documents relating to the Colonial History of New York , viii. 636. See Secret Journals of Congress , June 27, 1775.

2

July 24, 1775, Lord Dartmouth wrote to Colonel Johnson: ‘The unnatural rebellion now raging in America calls for every effort to suppress it, and the intelligence his Majesty has received of the rebels having excited the Indians to take a part, and of their having actually engaged a body of them in arms to support their rebellion, justifies the resolution his Majesty has taken of requiring the assistance of his faithful adherents the six nations. It is, therefore, his Majesty's pleasure that you lose no time in taking such steps as may induce them to take up the hatchet against his Majesty's rebellious subjects.’— Documents on the Colonial History of New York , viii. 596. General Gage wrote to Stuart (September 12, 1775) telling him to hold a correspondence with the Indians, ‘to make them take arms against his Majesty's enemies, and to distress them all in their power, for no terms are now to be kept with them.’ ‘The rebels,’ he continues, ‘have themselves opened the door. They have brought down all the savages they could against us here, who with their riflemen are continually firing on our advanced sentries.’—MSS. Record Office. On October 24, 1775, Stuart sent ammunition to the savages according to instructions, adding: ‘You will understand that an indiscriminate attack upon the province is not meant, but to act in the execution of any concerted plan, and to assist his Majesty's troops or friends in distressing the rebels.’—Ibid. On November 20, 1775, Lord North said in Parliament: ‘As to the means of conducting the war, he declared there was never any idea of employing the negroes or the Indians until the Americans themselves had first applied to them; that General Carleton did then apply to them, and that even then it was only for the defence of his own province.’—Parl. Hist. xviii. 994.

1

Adams' Works , x. 87. Many particulars about the strength of the loyalist party will be found in Mr. Sabine's very interesting book, The Loyalists of America .

2

Parl. Hist. xviii. 123–129. Sparks' Life of Washington. Force's American Archives (4th series), i. 773, 957.

1

Adams' Works , ii. 420.

2

One of the most remarkable documents relating to the state of opinion in America is the examination of Galloway (late Speaker of the House of Assembly in Pennsylvania) by a Committee of the House of Commons, June 16, 1779. As a loyalist, his mind was no doubt biassed, but he was a very able and honest man, and he had much more than common means of forming a correct judgment. He says: ‘I do not believe, from the best knowledge I have of that time [the beginning of the rebellion], that one-fifth of the people had independence in view. … Many of those who have appeared in support of the present rebellion have by a variety of means been compelled. … I think I may venture to say that many more than four-fifths of the people would prefer an union with Great Britain upon constitutional principles to that of independence.’ Galloway was asked the following question: ‘That part of the rebel army that enlisted in the service of the Congress—were they chiefly composed of natives of America, or were the greatest part of them English, Scotch, and Irish?’ Galloway answered: ‘The names and places of their nativity being taken down, I can answer the question with precision. There were scarcely one-fourth natives of America—about one-half Irish—the other fourth were English and Scotch.’ This last answer, however, must be qualified by a subsequent answer, that he judged of the country of the troops by the deserters who came over, to the number of between 2,000 and 3,000, at the time when Galloway was with Sir W. Howe at Philadelphia. I have no doubt that in the beginning of the war the proportion of pure Americans in the army was much larger, as it was chiefly recruited in New England, where the population was most unmixed. It is stated that more than a fourth part of the continental soldiers employed during the war were from Massachusetts. See Greene's Historical View of the American Revolution , p. 235. Galloway's very remarkable evidence was reprinted at Philadelphia in 1855. In his Letters to a Nobleman on the Conduct of the War , Galloway reiterates his assertion that ‘three-fourths of the rebel army have been generally composed of English, Scotch, and Irish, while scarcely the small proportion of one-fourth are American, notwithstanding the severe and arbitrary laws to force them into the service.’—P. 25.

1

See a curious note in Washington's Works , iii. 8.

2

Chastellux, Travels in North America , Eng. trans. i. 332.

3

American Remembrancer , 1776, part i. p. 25.

1

Washington's Works , iii. 176.

2

Ibid. p. 279.

3

Ibid. p. 243; see, too, p. 151.

4

Ibid. p. 280.

5

Ibid. pp. 200, 201, 281.

1

Washington's Works , iii. 240, 280.

2

Ibid. p. 191.

3

Washington's letters are full of complaints on the subject. I will quote a few lines from a letter of Nov. 28, 1775. ‘Such a dearth of public spirit, and such want of virtue, such stockjobbing and fertility in all the low arts to obtain advantages of one kind or another in this great change of military arrangement, I never saw before, and pray God's mercy that I may never be witness to again. … I have been obliged to allow furloughs as far as fifty men to a regiment, and the officers, I am persuaded, indulge as many more. … Such a mercenary spirit pervades the whole that I should not be at all surprised at any disaster that may happen. … Could I have foreseen what I have experienced, and am likely to experience, no consideration upon earth should have induced me to accept this command.’ (Washington's Works , iii. 178, 179.) ‘No troops,’ he writes in another letter,’ were ever better provided or higher paid, yet their backwardness to enlist for another year is amazing. It grieves me to see so little of that patriotic spirit which I was taught to believe was characteristic of this people.’ (Ibid. p. 181.) ‘The present soldiery are in expectation of drawing from the landed interest and farmers a bounty equal to that given at the commencement of this army, and therefore they keep aloof.’ Ibid. p. 188.

1

General Trumbull wrote to Washington, Dec. 1775: ‘The late extraordinary and reprehensible conduct of some of the troops of this colony impresses me and the minds of many of our people with grief, surprise, and indignation. … There is great difficulty to supportliberty, to exercise government, to maintain subordination, and at the same time to prevent the operation of licentious and levelling principles, which many very easily imbibe. The pulse of a New England man beats high for liberty; his engagement in the service he thinks purely voluntary, therefore when the time of enlistment is out he thinks himself not holden without further engagement. This was the case in the last war. I greatly fear its operation amongst the soldiers of the other colonies, as I am sensible that it is the genius and spirit of our people.’ Ibid. p. 183.

1

According to Bancroft, Gage had never more than 6,500 effective troops, though his nominal force, including sailors and loyalists, was estimated at 11,500 men. Washington at this time had nominally 17,000 men, but never more than 14,500 fit for duty. (Bancroft, Hist, of the United States , viii. 42–44.) Still the British troops were regular soldiers, well provided with all munitions of war, while the Americans were almost undisciplined and singularly destitute of all that was required.

1

Washington's Works , i. 164.

2

Ibid. iii. 221, 222.

3

Ibid. iii. 285.

1

American Remembrancer , 1776, part ii. p. 281. It is evident from Washington's letters that the estimates in the American Remembrancer greatly exceeded the truth.

1

See the American Remembrancer , 1776, part i. pp. 238–241.

1

Washington's Works , iii. 276, 347.

1

Life and Correspondence of Joseph Reed , i. 148.

1

16 Geo. III. c. 5.

1

Adams' Life, Works , i. 201.

1

Adams' Life, Works , i. 200–203.

2

As early as Aug. 11, 1765, the King had written to Conway: ‘The only method that at present occurs to me by which the French can be prevented settling on the coast of Newfoundland would be the having a greater military force in that island, but the economical, and I may say injudicious, ideas of this country in time of peace, make it not very practicable, for a corps ought on purpose to be raised for that service, we having more places to garrison than we have troops to supply.’ He adds that we are ‘very unable to draw the sword.’— British Museum. Eg. MSS. 982.

On August 26, 1775, he wrote to Lord North: ‘The misfortune is, that at the beginning of this American business there has been an unwillingness to augment the army and navy. I proposed early in the summer the sending beating orders to Ireland; this was objected to in the Cabinet; if it had then been adopted, the army would have been at least 2,000 or 3,000 men stronger at this hour.’— Correspondenceof George III. with Lord North , i. 265, 266.

1

Adolphus, ii. 159.

2

The Political Life of Lord Barrington , pp. 162–164.

1

General Lloyd, who was one of the best English writers on the art of war, maintained that England, in consequence of her possession of Canada, might have completely crushed the four provinces of New England by operating vigorously on the line of country (about 150 miles) extending from Boston to Albany, or to some other point on the Hudson River; and he thought that, in the existing condition of opinion in America, if New England were subdued, the rest of the colonies would all submit. The impossibility, however, of subduing them by land measures, if they did not, he clearly showed. See a remarkable chapter on the American war in his ‘Reflections on the Principles of War,’ appended to his History of the Seven Years' War.

1

Political Life of Lord Barrington , pp. 146–186.

1

See on the terms of this bargain, Correspondence of George III. with Lord North , i. 258–260, 266, 267, 294, 295. Frederick the Great is said to have marked his opinion of the transaction by claiming to levy on the hired troops which passed through his dominions the same duty as on so many head of cattle.

1

Adams' Works , i. 207, 208, 217, 218; Story's Constitution of the United States , bk. ii. ch. i.; Jay's Life , by his son, i. 43.

1

Chatham Correspondence , iv. 134, 135. Cavendish Debates , ii. 447. Parl. Hist. xvii. 122.

2

Walpole's Last Journals , i. 17.

1

12 Geo. III. c. xi.

1

Correspondence of George III. with Lord North , i. 99, 100. Parl. Hist. xvii. 423.

1

Correspondence of George III. with Lord North , i. 91.

1

Russell's Life of Fox , i. 4.

1

Mdme. du Deffand to H.Wal-pole. See Correspondence of Fox , i. 149.

2

Ibid. i. 224, 225. Fox appears, however, to have drunk less, or to have borne drink better, than several of his leading contemporaries. Sir Gilbert Elliot, in a letter to his wife, says: ‘Fox drinks what I should call a great deal, though he is not reckoned to do so by his companions; Sheridan excessively, and Grey more than any of them. … Pitt, I am told, drinks as much as anybody, generally more than any of his company, and that he is a pleasant, convivial man at table.’—Lady Minto's Life of Sir G. Elliot , i. 189.

3

Russell's Life of Fox , iii. 78.

4

See Walpole's Last Journals , ii. 480, 502, 503, 598, 599.

1

Walpole's Last Journals , ii. 4.

1

Butler's Reminiscences , i. 159.

1

See the admirable description of this riot in Sir George Trevelyan's noble volume on the early life of Fox.

1

Parl. Hist. xvii. 293.

2

Correspondence of Fox , i. 63, 64.

3

Jesse's Life of Selwyn , iii. 11.

4

Correspondence of Fox , i. 70–87, Russell's Life of Fox , i. 33–38.

1

Malcolm's Life of Clive , ii. 187.

1

Mill, book iv. ch. v.

1

Malcolm's Life of Clive , ii. 335–338.

2

Mill, iv. 7.

1

Mill, book iv., chap. vii.; see, too, chap. v.

1

Malcolm's Clive , iii. 101–103

1

7 Geo. III. c. 48.

2

Ibid. c. 49.

3

Ibid. c. 56, 57. See Macpherson's Annals of Commerce , iii. 463–466.

1

Adolphus, i. 301, 302.

2

9 Geo. III. c. 24.

3

Wealth of Nations , bk. v. ch. i. part iii.

4

Annual Register , 1773, p. 65.

1

Wealth of Nations , bk. iv. ch. vii.

1

13 Geo. III. c. 9. Annual Register , 1773, pp. 73–76.

1

See Parl. Hist. xvii. It is curious to contrast the wild language of these speeches with the admirable summary of the arguments against the Government proposal in the Annual Register and in the protests of the dissentient peers, which were probably all written by Burke.

2

Parl. Hist. xvii. 567.

1

Ann. Reg. 1773, p. 76.

2

Malcolm's Life of Clive , iii. 313–316.

3

Ibid. 289.

1

13 Geo. III. c. 63, 64; Parl. Hist. xvii. 928, 929; Annual Register , 1773, pp. 95–105; Mill's History of British India , bk. iv. ch. ix.

1

The King himself was very hostile to Clive. He wrote to North, May 22, 1773: ‘I own I am amazed that private interest could make so many individuals forget what they owe to their country, and come to a resolution that seems to approve of Lord Clive's rapine.’ Correspondence of George III. with Lord North. See, too, Fox's Correspondence , i. 92.

1

See Burke's Works , xiii. 141–146.

2

See Annual Register , 1773, p. 107. Malcolm's Memoirs of Clive , iii. 359, 360. The account in the Parl. Hist. xvii. 881. 882, represents the motion of censure as having been carried, but this appears to be an error. Walpole ( Last Journals , i. 243–245) mentions several speeches which are not given in the Parl. Hist.

1

See Malcolm's Memoirs of Clive. Mill's Hist. of British India, Parl. Debates , vol. xvii., and the admirable account of Indian affairs in the Annual Register.

2

Annual Register , 1762, p. 113.

3

Thus in 1769 Abel Proffer was convicted at the Monmouth Assizes for barbarous treatment of a Jew. He had placed him before a large fire with his hands tied behind him, to roast, and then stuffed hot bacon down his throat.— Annual Register , 1769, p. 93. In the same year we read that ‘On Saturday morning a Methodist preacher, who had disturbed the peace of the city of Gloucester with his enthusiastic rant, was flogged through the streets by order of the mayor.’—Ibid. p. 108.

1

Hallam's Hist. of England , ch. iv.

2

13 Car. II. st. i. c. 12.

1

Blackstone, bk. iii. ch. vii.

2

Ibid. bk. iv. ch. xv., xix. In the debate about Ecclesiastical Courts in 1813, one of the speakers mentions a case of defamation in which ‘the defendant had been acquitted before the Commissary Court of Surrey, but was afterwards found guilty in the Court of Arches and condemned to do penance, and then came a dispensation from performance, for which he had to pay 95 l. ’— Annual Register , 1813, p. 56.

3

Several curious particulars about Church discipline in England in the eighteenth century will be found in Abbey and Overton's very interesting work on The English Church in the Eighteenth Century , ii. 52–54, 506–509.

1

See Jacob's Law Dictionary , art. ‘Excommunication.’ Tom lin's Law Dict. art. ‘Excommunication.’

1

Howard on Prisons (3rd ed.), p. 416.

2

Disney's Life of Sykes , 199, 200, 373, 374.

3

27 Geo. III. c. 44.

4

Parl. Debates , xxi. 99, 100, 295–303.

5

53 Geo. III. c. 127.

1

See the noble speech of Lord Mansfield, Parl. Hist. xvi. 313–327. Campbell's Chief Justices , ii. 511–514. Stephens on the Constitution , pp. 337, 338.

1

Parl. Hist. xvii. 250.

2

Watson's Autobiography , i. 65, 66.

3

Meadley's Life of Paley , pp. 47–50, Append. 3–46. In his Moral Philosophy , book iii. ch. xxii., Paley justified subscription, but strongly denied that it bound the subscriber to believe every proposition contained in the Articles, or all the theological opinions of their compilers. The Articles, he maintained, were intended by the Legislature to exclude abettors of Popery, Anabaptists, and members of sects hostile to episcopacy, and the intention of the Legislature is the measure of the obligation of the subscriber.

4

Walpole's Last Journals , i. 7–13.

1

See both of these arguments in the speech of Sir Roger Newdigate, Parl. Hist. xvii. 255, 256.

1

Parl. Hist. xvii. 276–279.

2

Correspondence of George III. with Lord North , i. 89; ii. 378.

3

Burke, in a letter to Lady Huntingdon, promising to oppose the petition, says: ‘My sentiments in regard to the petition of the clergy praying to be relieved from subscription to the 39 Articles, are in opposition to the opinions of nearly all my own party.’— Life of the Countess of Huntingdon , ii. 287.

1

‘What is that Scripture to which they are content to subscribe? They do not think that a book becomes of divine authority because it is bound in blue morocco, and is printed by John Basket and his assigns? The Bible is a vast collection of different treatises. A man who holds the divine authority of one may consider the other as merely human. … There are some who reject the Canticles—others six of the Epistles. The Apocalypse has been suspected even as heretical, and was doubted of for many ages. … The Scripture is no one summary of doctrines regularly digested, in which a man could not mistake his way. It is a most venerable but most multifarious collection of the records of the divine economy, a collection of an infinite variety of cosmogony, theology, history, prophecy, psalmody, morality, apologue, allegory, legislation, ethics, carried through different books, by different authors, at different ages, for different ends and purposes.’—Burke's Works , x. 20, 21.

2

Parl. Hist. xvii. 246–296. Burke's Works , x. 3–21.

1

Life of the Countess of Huntingdon , ii. 285–288. Walpole's Last Journals , i. 376.

1

Parl. Hist. xvii. 441, 443, 770–772, 786–790.

2

Correspondence of George III. with Lord North , i. 101.

3

19 Geo. III. c. 44. See Belsham's Life of Lindsey , pp. 66, 67.

1

Walpole's Last Journals , i. 374–379.

1

‘James II. lost his crown for such enormities. The prince that wears it to the prejudice of that family is authorised by a free Parliament to do what James was expelled for doing ! A prince cried up like Charles I. for his piety is as favourable to Papists as Charles was, and has a bench of bishops as unjust to the Presbyterians, as propitious to Papists, as Charles had. And George III. has an army, which Charles had not.’—Walpole's Last Journals , i. 378. The poet Cowper wrote (Feb. 13, 1780) about the resemblance of the reigns of George III. and of Charles I., ‘especially the suspicion that obtains of a fixed design of Government to favour the growth of Popery.’—See Albemarle's Life of Rockingham , ii. 393.

2

Walpole's Last Journals , i. 541.

1

It was repealed by 14 Geo, III. c. 58. See, for much information on this subject, Creasy's Hist, of the Constitution , 257–260.

2

12 Geo. III. c. 20.

3

1 & 2 Geo, IV. c, 18.

4

Blackstone, book iv. c. 18.

5

Parl. Hist. xvii. 448–450.

6

23 Geo. III. c. 51.

7

Parl. Hist. xvii. 1291–1297. See, too, Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors , viii. 22–24.

8

59 Geo. III. c. 46.

9

3 & 4 William IV. c. 42.

1

British Chronicle , Feb. 23, 1761.

2

Gentleman's Magazine , 1772, p. 339.

3

31 Eliz. c.7. See Blackstone, book iv. c. 13.

4

Observations on a Scheme for the Maintenance of the Poor, in a Letter to Thomas Gilbert (Chester 1776), pp. 21, 22. The law was repealed by 15 Geo. III. c.32.

5

Phillimore's Hist. of Geo. III. p. 68. 54 Geo. III. c. 108.

1

According to Burke (speech at Bristol in 1780), two or three years. Burke's Works , iii. 389. Oliver says his imprisonment lasted four years. (Collections illustrating the Hist. of the Catholic Religion in Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, &c. pp. 14, 15.) Lord Shelburne alluded to this case in a speech in 1778. ‘Mr. Malony, a priest of the Roman Catholie persuasion, had been apprehended and brought to trial by the lowest and most despicable of mankind, a common informing constable of the City of London. He was convicted of being a popish priest, and the Court were reluctantly obliged to condemn him (shocking as the idea was) to perpetual imprisonment. His Lordship was then in office, and though every method was taken by the Privy Council to give a legal discharge to the prisoner, neither the laws then in force would allow of it, nor dared the King himself to grant him a pardon. He, however, with his colleagues in office, was so perfectly persuaded of the impolicy and inhumanity of the law, that they ventured to give him his liberty at every hazard.’— Parl. Hist. xix. 1145.

1

Oliver's Collections illustrating the History of the Catholic Religion , p. 33. Gentleman's Magazine , 1767, pp. 141, 142. Butler's Memorials of the English Catholics. Butler states (ii. 64) that in 1780 he ascertained that a single house of attorneys in Gray's Inn had defended more than twenty priests under prosecution for their religion, and had defended them in most cases gratuitously. Butler does not say over how long a period these prosecutions were diffused. I suspect the time must have included at least the whole reign of George III., and that the defence of all the Catholic cases must have fallen to this firm.

2

See his very curious charge in Campbell's Chief Justices , ii. 514–516. In 1776 Dunning moved in the Court of King's Bench for informations against two Middlesex justices of the peace, who had refused to compel two persons charged with being Roman Catholies, to take the oaths. Mansfield refused the injunction, and at the same time expressed his disapproval of the attempt to revive the severities of the penal code.— Annual Register , 1776, p. 191.

3

Oliver, p. 15.

1

Burke's Works , iii. 389. Butter's Memorials of the English Catholics , ii. 72, 73.

2

State and Behaviour of English Catholics from the Reformation to the Year 1781, pp. 121, 122.

1

18 Geo. III. c. 60.

1

Campbell's Chief Justices , ii. 516.

2

Several curious letters on this subject will be found in the St. James's Chronicle for 1765. The alarm at the alleged increase of Popery led the House of Lords in the next year to pass a motion requesting the bishops in their several dioceses to obtain from their clergy an account of the Catholics in each parish. See Gent. Mag. 1767, p. 429.

1

Burke's Correspondence , ii. 350, 351.

2

Croker's Boswell , p. 648.

1

Letters to the Countess of Ossory , June 7, 1780.

1

In 1776—four years before the Gordon riots—Dr. Johnson had said: ‘The characteristic of our own Government at present is imbecility. The magistrates dare not call the Guards for fear of being hanged. The Guards will not come for fear of being given up to the blind rage of popular juries.’—Croker's Boswell , p. 509.

1

See Campbell's Chancellors , viii. 41–43. Jesse's Memoirs of Geo. III. ii. 276–279.

2

See Lord Loughborough's Charge, Ann. Reg. 1780, p. 281.

1

The three most detailed contemporary accounts of these riots are: the Narrative of the late Disturbances in London and Westminster , by William Vincent, of Gray's Inn (the real writer of this, which is the fullest account of the riots, was Thomas Holcroft); the Annual Register of 1780, which also contains reports of the trials of the chief rioters; and an anonymous Narrative of the Proceedings of Lord George Gordon and the Persons assembled under the Denomination of the Protestant Association (London, 1780). The poet Crabbe witnessed some of the scenes, and especially the capture of Newgate, and he describes them in a letter in his biography, which is unfortunately imperfect. Horace Walpole and Wraxall were both witnesses of the scenes on Black Wednesday. The first has described them very fully in his letters to Lord Strafford and to the Countess of Ossory; and the second in his Memoirs. See also a letter from Dr. Warner in Jesse's Life of Selwyn , iv. 327–335, and the interesting journal of the Moravian, James Hutton.—Benham's Life of Hutton , pp. 530–536. I need scarcely refer to the admirable narrative of Dickens, in Barnaby Rudge , based upon Holcroft, Walpole, and the Annual Register.

1

See e.g. the two well-known poems of Cowper on the burning of Lord Mansfield's library.

1

See Cumberland's Memoirs , ii. 35, 36, 48.

2

Miscellaneous Works , ii. 241. ‘Rien,’ wrote Madame du Deffand, ‘n'est plus affreux que tout ce qui arrive chez vous. Votre liberté ne me séduit point. Cette liberté tant vantée me paraît bien plus onéreuse que notre esclavage.’—Walpole's Letters , vi. 88. In one of the letters of Maria Theresa to Marie Antoinette (June 30, 1780) she speaks with great dislike of a contemplated visit of the Emperor to England: ‘Surtout après la terrible émeute, inouïe entre les puissances civilisées qui vient de se passer. Voilà cette liberté tant prônée—cette législation unique. Sans religion, sans mœurs, rien ne se soutient.’—Arneth, Correspondance secrète de Marie-Therèse et Marie-Antoinette , iii. 444. Hillsborough, in a private letter to Buckinghamshire, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, speaks of ‘the dreadful and unaccountable insurrection which for four days together has made such devastation in this town, and threatened not less than a total destruction of it.’—June 10, 1780. MSS. Record Office.

1

Walpole's Last Journals , i. 88, 122, 128. Ann. Reg. 1772, 90, 91, 109, 110.

2

Lord Russell thinks that ‘the abrupt dissolution prevented any influence being exercised by American affairs on the temper of the elections,’ and he quotes a speech of Lord Suffolk, who said he advised the dissolution, foreseeing that if it were delayed the Americans would take steps ‘to influence the general election by creating jealousies, fears, and prejudices among the mercantile and trading part of the nation.’—Russell's Life of Fox , i. 70, 71. According to Walpole, one reason of the premature dissolution was, that ‘the advices from America, though industriously concealed, were so bad that great clamour was feared from the American merchants and trading towns.’— Last Journals , i. 399. At the same time the American Coercion Acts were among the most conspicuous measures of the Government in the late Parliament, and they must necessarily have had a considerable part in determining the votes of the electors.

1

Walpole's Last Journals , i. 436.

1

Walpole's Last Journals , iii. 3. Donne's Correspondence of George III. i. 281, 282. Thackeray's Chatham , ii. 307, 308.

1

Correspondence of George III. and Lord North , i. 170.

2

See Correspondence of Fox , i. 223.

3

Ibid. i. 122, 123.

4

Ibid. p. 26.

1

Walpole's Last Journals , ii. 4.

2

Correspondence of Fox , i. 298.

3

Chatham's Correspondence , iv. 401.

4

As Franklin wrote: ‘Sixteen Scotch peers and twenty-four bishops, with all the Lords in possession or expectation of places, when they vote together unanimously, as they generally do for ministerial measures, make a dead majority that renders all debating ridiculous.’—Franklin's Works , v. 46.

1

See a valuable note by Mr. Donne in the Correspondence of George III. and Lord North , i. 267–271.

2

See the very remarkable and impartial analysis of English opinion (very probably written by Burke) in the Annual Register , 1776, pp. 38, 39.

3

Ibid. p. 38. See, too, on the apathy of the trading classes at this time, Walpole's Last Journals , ii. 6; Burke's Correspondence , ii. 50; Correspondence of George III. and Lord North , i. 235, 236, 272, 273.

4

Walpole's Last Journals , ii. 90, 91.

1

Last Journals , ii. 22, 23.

2

Walpole in one place even asserts that the Presbyterians and other Dissenters in England ‘were entirely passive,’ being bribed or sold by their leaders, though those in Ireland were active on the American side’ (ibid. 84, 85); and in another place he says, the Dissenters, though on the whole American, ‘were yet kept quiet by pensions to their chiefs.’—Ibid. pp. 323, 324.

1

See Donne's notes to the Correspondence of George III. and Lord North , i. 279, 280, ii. 401.

2

Burke's Correspondence , ii. 2.

1

Burke's Correspondence , ii. 48–50.

2

Ibid. pp. 68, 69.

1

Chatham Correspondence , iv. 420.

2

Walpole's Last Journals , i. 459.

3

Parl. Hist. xviii. 998. Cart-wright, who in the next generation became so prominent as a parliamentary reformer, refused a naval appointment at this time because it would imply service against the Americans. Life and Correspondence of Major Cart-wright , i. 75, 81.

1

Parl. Hist . xviii. 1076.

2

Adolphus, ii. 253. Annual Reg. 1776, p. 41.

3

Annual Register , 1776, pp. 41–43, 126. Walpole's Last Journals , i. 502, 503, ii. 23.

4

Franklin's Life , p. 401.

5

Annual Register , 1777, p. 211.

6

Ibid. 1776, p. 15. Fox's Correspondence , i. 142. Adolphus, ii. 241.

1

Correspondence of Geo. III. i. 269.

2

Annual Register , 1776, p. 39. The same character seems to have extended to the Scotch in America. ‘The Irish in America,’ it was said, ‘with a few exceptions were attached to independence. … The Scotch, on the other hand, though they had formerly sacrificed much to liberty in their own country, were generally disposed to support the claims of Great Britain.’—Ramsay's History of the American Revolution , ii. 311. Ramsay adds, however, that the ‘army and the Congress ranked among their best officers and most valuable members some individuals of that nation.’—Ibid. Adams notices the strong opposition of the Scotch, who were settled in Virginia, to the measures taken by the Congress in 1775.—Adams' Diary, Works , ii. 431.

3

Annual Register , 1776, p. 39.

1

Walpole's Last Journals , i. 446. Thackeray's Chatham , ii. 286.

2

See Annual Register , 1776 p. 39.

3

Blackstone, book i. c. xiii.

1

2 & 3 Anne, c. 19. Parl. Hist . xv. 875; Clode's Military Forces of the Crown ii. 15–19. The last Act for impressment for the army appears to have expired in 1780.

2

Parl. Hist . xv. 875–923.

3

56 Geo. III. c. 100.

4

May's Const. History of England . Hume, in his Essay ‘On some remarkable Customs,’ called attention to the great anomaly of impressment in a free country.

1

Annual Register , 1770, p. 161.

2

See the Life of Bampfylde Moore Carew (1749), pp. 128–130.

3

Annual Register , 1770, p. 147.

4

Ibid.

1

Annual Register , 1770, p. 149.

2

Ibid. 1779, pp. 204, 215, 216.

3

Parl. Hist. xix. 238.

1

See several instances of the kind in Andrews' XVIII. Cent. p. 209–212. Phillimore's Hist. of Geo. III. pp. 60, 61. Annual Register , 1767, p. 82.

2

Grahame's History of the United States , iii. 295–300.

3

Arnold's Hist. of New England , ii. 255, 256. See, too, on the pressing in New England, the very carious Journal of Thomas Chalkley from 1697 to 1741 (ed. 1850), pp. 313, 314, and Hutchinson's Hist. of Massachusetts Bay , p. 231.

1

Annual Register , 1770, pp. 157, 161, 162, 169, 174; 1771, pp. 16, 67, 68, 70.

2

See vol. ii. p. 133. In 1770, in order to escape the necessity of pressing, several of the chief towns subscribed additional bounties for sailors who enlisted voluntarily. Annual Register , 1770, pp. 150, 163.

3

Walpole's Memoirs of Geo. III. iv. 181. Chatham Correspondence , iii. 480, 481; iv. 22, 43. Adolphus, i. 459. Junius' Letters (signature Philo-Junius). Campbell's Chief Justices , ii. 419. Chatham said: ‘I believe every man who knows anything of the British navy will acknowledge that, without impressing, it is impossible to equip a respectable fleet within the time in which such armaments are usually wanted.’—Thackeray's Chatham , ii. 217.

4

Walpole's Last Journals , ii. 75, 77, 81.

1

Clode's Military Forces of the Crown , ii. 12–15.

2

16 Geo. III. c. 43. Walpole's Last Journals , ii. 38. Annual Register , 1776, p. 163.

3

My knowledge of this subject is derived from the ‘Government Correspondence’ in the Irish State Paper Office. On March 30, 1776, Lord Harcourt, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, wrote to the Secretary of State, Lord Weymouth, complaining that the gaols in Ireland were full of convicts under sentence of transportation, ‘as no merchant will contract to convoy them to America whilst the present rebellion subsists.’ He proposed, therefore, to pardon such of them as were fit and serviceable men, ‘on condition of their entering into his Majesty's land and sea service, as I shall direct.’ Weymouth answered (April 23, 1776): ‘The measure proposed by your Excellency for granting pardons to prisoners who may be found, on proper examination, to be fit for the sea or the land service, has been of late in many instances pursued here, and his Majesty approves of your granting pardons to prisoners in the several gaols of Ireland under these circumstances. But it will occur to your Excellency how necessary it is, that the enlisting officers should, in the strongest manner, be enjoined to examine and report, before the pardon shall be granted, whether the prisoners are really fit for service, as a discharge cannot so properly be granted. It should also be observed that when they are engaged, particular care should be taken to secure this kind of recruits, and that they be considered rather in a different light from those who enter voluntarily.’

1

It does not appear to have been only the British troops who were recruited from the prisons. Speaking of the Germans in the British service, Goltz wrote to Frederick (March 13, 1777), ‘Les recrues hessoises sont en grande partie des malfaiteurs détachés de la chaîne.’—Circourt, Action Commune de la France et de l'Amérique , iii. 81.

1

Letter of B. Franklin, Nov. 29, 1769. American Remembrancer , 1775, p. 52. In a speech in 1775 Lord North said: ‘If he understood the meaning of the words Whig and Tory, he conceived that it was the characteristic of Whiggism to gain as much for the people as possible, while the aim of Toryism was to increase the prerogative. In the present case, Administration contended for the right of Parliament, while the Americans talked of their belonging to the Crown. Their language, therefore, was that of Toryism.’— Parl. Hist. , xviii. 771.

1

Adolphus, ii. 309.

1

These views were privately expressed by the Duke of Richmond to his brother-in-law, Mr. Connolly, in a remarkable letter dated Nov. 1776, in the possession of the late Sir Charles Bunbury, who kindly allowed me to make use of it. In Jan. 1778, Richmond declared in Parliament his readiness to acknowledge American independence. (Walpole's Last Journals , ii. 182.)

2

Fox's Correspondence , i. 142–147.

3

In March 1778, he writes: ‘I had as little doubt but if the conquest of America should be achieved, the moment of the victorious army's return would be that of the destruction of our liberty.’—Walpole's Last Journals , ii. 241.

4

In defending his conduct on the American question, he says: ‘He certainly never could, and never did, wish the colonists to be subdued by arms. He was fully persuaded that if such should be the event, they must be held in that subdued state by a great body of standing forces, and perhaps of foreign forces. He was strongly of opinion that such armies, first victorious over Englishmen, in a conflict for English constitutional rights and privileges, and afterwards habituated (though in America) to keep an English people in a state of abject subjection, would prove fatal in the end to the liberties of England itself.’—‘Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs,’ Burke's Works , vi. 124.

1

Burke's Correspondence , ii. 112–120.

1

Washington's Works , iii. 466

1

Stedman's History of the American War , i. 207.

2

Washington's Works , i. 187; iv. 66.

3

Howe's Narrative , p. 45. I must, however, warn the reader that the English and American authorities are hopelessly disagreed about the exact numbers engaged in Long Island, and among the Americans themselves there are very great differences. Compare Ramsay, Bancroft, Stedman, and Stanhope.

1

Washington's Works , iv. 74.

1

In a letter dated Aug. 17, 1776, a loyalist who had escaped from New York wrote: ‘Every means of defence has been concerted to secure the city and whole island of New York from an attack of the royal army. Should General Howe succeed in that enterprise, his antagonist, Mr. Washington, has provided a magazine of pitch, tar, and combustibles, to burn the city before he shall retreat from his present station.’—Moore's Diary of the Revolution , i. 288. On Aug. 23, Washington wrote to the Convention of New York that ‘a report now circulating that if the American army should be obliged to retreat from this city, any individual may set it on fire,’ was wholly unauthorised by him.—Washington's Works , iv. 58.

2

Life and Correspondence of Joseph Reed , i. 235.

3

Washington's Works , iv. 85, 86. This letter was written on Sept. 5, 1776.

4

Life of J. Reed , i. 218.

1

‘The Congress having resolved that it [New York] should not be destroyed.’—Washington's Works , iv. 86.

2

See, on this fire, the description sent by Governor Tryon to Lord George Germaine, in the Documents relating to the History of New York , viii. 686, 687, and some interesting contemporary accounts in Moore's Diary , i. 311–315. See, too, Washington's Works , iv. 100, 101. Stedman speaks of the conflagration as the accomplishment of a settled plan of the Americans formed before the evacuation, and he states that several cartloads of bundles of pine-sticks dipped in brimstone were found next day in cellars to which the incendiaries had not time to set fire. He adds that about 1,100 houses were burnt.—Stedman's Hist. i. 208, 209. In that very interesting book the History of New York by the loyalist Judge Jones, who was present when the event took place, there is an account of the conflagration in which it is attributed without any question to the revolutionists (Jones's History of New York , i. 120, 121); and the editor has collected a great number of contemporary documents supporting the same conclusion (pp. 611–619). General Greene had predicted that, if Washington was obliged to retire, ‘two to one, New York is laid in ashes.’— Life of J. Reed , i. 213.

1

Stedman, i. 206, 207. See, too, the Life of Reed , i. 243.

2

See Washington's Works , iv. 8, 7, 37, 89, 90, 105.

1

Washington's Works , iv. 72, 73, 89, 94, 95, 157.

2

Ibid. p. 162.

3

Ibid. i. 207; iv. 73.

4

Franklin to the Committee of Foreign Affairs, May 26, 1779.— American Diplomatic Correspondence , iii. 88–91.

5

Ramsay, i. 295.

1

Moore's Diary , i. 288.

2

Washington's Works , i. 181.

3

Governor Tryon to Lord George Germaine, July 8, 1776.— Documents relating to the History of New York, viii. 681.

4

‘I am sorry to say that from the best information we have been able to obtain, the people of Long Island have since our ovacuation gone generally over to the enemy and made such concessions as have been required; some through compulsion, I suppose, but more from inclination.’—Washington to Trumbull, Washington's Works , iv. 88. Moore's Journal , i. 304.

5

Documents relating to the Hist. of New York , viii. 681, 687.

6

Jones's Hist. of New York , i. 107, 108.

1

Washington's Works , iv. 118, 119.

2

On Feb. 11, 1777, Governor Tryon wrote to Lord George Germaine from New York: ‘The success that accompanied my endeavour to unite the inhabitants of this city by an oath of allegiance and fidelity to his Majesty and his Government has met my warmest wishes; 2,970 of the inhabitants having qualified thereto in my presence,. … I have the satisfaction to assure your lordship, as the invitation to the people to give this voluntary testimony of their loyalty to his Majesty and his Government was made even without a shadow of compulsion, it gave me peculiar satisfaction to see the cheerfulness with which they attended the summons. I believe there are not 100 citizens who have not availed themselves of the opportunity of thus testifying their attachment to Government. The mayor, since I went through several wards, has attested fifty more men (and is daily adding to the number), which makes the whole sworn in the city 3,020, or 3,030, which, added to those attested on Staten Island, in the three counties on Long Island, and in Westchester county … makes the whole amount to 5,600 men. … I have assured the General that should he remove all his troops from the city, there would not be the least risk of a revolt from the inhabitants, but on the contrary was confident large numbers would take a share in the defence of the town against the rebels.’— Documents relating to the Colonial History of New York , viii. 697.

1

Washington's Works , iv. 132. ‘One unhappy stroke will throw a powerful weight into the scale against us, enabling General Howe to recruit his army as fast as we shall ours; numbers being so disposed and many actually doing so already’ (p. 134). In another letter he reports that he has learned from Long Island that ‘the enemy are recruiting a great number of men with much success,’ and expresses his fear that ‘in a little time they will levy no inconsiderable army of our own people’ (p. 127). See, too, on the American loyalists, pp. 519–523, and Galloway's Examination.

1

Some attempts to estimate the number of loyalists who actually took arms will be found in Sabine's American Loyalists , 58–61.

1

See a long list of these Acts of Attainder in Sabine's American Loyalists , pp. 78–81. See, too, Jones's History of New York , ii. 269, 270.

1

Compare the letters of Col. Guy Johnson in the Documents relating to the Colonial History of New York , vol. viii. (especially pp. 656, 657), and a note in Washington's Works , iii. 407. Ramsay ( History of the American Revolution , ii. 138) attributes the fidelity of the Canadian Indians chiefly to the impression the expulsion of the French had made upon their minds, and to the nonimportation agreement of 1774, which put it out of the power of the Americans to supply the Indians with the articles of commerce they chiefly valued. There is a striking statement of the unwavering fidelity of the Mohawks to England during the war, of the great sufferings they endured for her, and of the ungrateful way in which they were abandoned at the peace, in Jones's History of New York , i. 75, 76.

1

Secret Journals of Congress , May 25, June 17, July 8,1776.

2

Washington's Works , iii. 430, 431, 460. See, too, v. 273, 274.

3

Ramsay, ii. 139.

1

A disgraceful affair occurred in Canada in the summer of 1776, when several American prisoners were killed and others plundered by Indians after capitulation, and the English officer declared his inability to control the savages. (Washington's Works , iv. 1, 2.) Feb. 15,1777, Col. Guy Johnson wrote to Lord George Germaine: ‘The terror of their name without any acts of savage cruelty will tend much to the speedy termination of the rebellion.’— Documents relating to the Colonial History of New York , viii. 699. On April 21, 1777, Governor Tryon wrote to Secretary Knox: ‘I am exactly of opinion with Colonel La [Corne] St. Luc, who says: “Il faut lacher les sauvages contre les miserables rebels, pour imposer de terreur sur les frontiers. Il dit de plus (mais un peu trop pour moi), qu'il faut brutalizer les affaires; assurement il est bien enragée de la mauvais traitement qu'il a reçu de les aveugles peuples”’ ( sic ). Ibid. p. 707. On March 12,1778, Col. Johnson wrote to Lord George Germaine: ‘It is well known, my lord, that the colonies solicited the Indians early in 1775; that they proposed to make me prisoner, that they carried some Indians then to their camp near Boston, as they did others since, who were taken in the battle on Long Island; that the tomahawk which is so much talked of is seldom used but to smoak through or to cut wood with, and that they are very rarely guilty of any cruelty more than scalping the dead, in which article even they may be restrained. It is also certain that no objection was made to them formerly; that the King's instructions of 1754 to General Braddock, and many since, direct then being employed, while some of the American colonies went further by fixing a price for scalps. Surely foreign enemies have an equal claim to humanity with others. … I am persuaded. … that I can restrain the Indians from acts of savage cruelty.’ Ibid, pp. 740, 741. See, too, on this subject, the note in Washington's Works , v. 274–276. Governor Pownall, who was intimately acquainted with Indian affairs, said ‘the idea of an Indian neutrality is nonsense—delusive, dangerous nonsense. If both we and the Americans were agreed to observe a strict neutrality in not employing them, they would then plunder and scalp both parties indis criminately.’

1

Annual Register , 1777, p. 122.

2

Cooper's History of the Navy of the United States , i 76, 77, 89, 90, 101, 102.

1

Adams's Familiar Letters , p. 208. See, too, pp. 220, 226, 230.

2

Arnold's History of Rhode Island , ii. 386.

3

American Diplomatic Correspondence , i. 248.

4

Ibid. p. 262. See, too, American Remembrancer , 1776, part ii. p. 267.

5

American Diplomatic Correspondence , ii. 93.

1

American Diplomatic Correspondence , i. 243.

2

Chastellux, Travels in North America , i. 199–201. According to a note, however, appended to the English translation of this book, a large part of the great fortune of Morris was due to other causes, and especially to the manner in which (without actual dishonesty) he employed his position of Financier-General to the colonies, to subserve his private interests. See, too, Bancroft's Hist. of the United States , x. 566, 567.

3

Arnold's Hist. of Rhods Island , ii. 388, 389.

1

Ramsay, i. 312. Hildreth, iii. 159.

1

For the fullest particulars about this remarkable man see an interesting monograph called The Treason of Charles Lee , by George H. Moore (New York, 1860). The life and writings of Lee were published in one volums in 1794.

2

Washington's Works , iv. 202, 203.

1

Washington's Works , iv. 212.

2

Ibid. p. 213.

3

Ibid. p. 215.

4

Ibid. p. 223.

1

Washington's Works , iv. 230, 231, 234.

2

Ibid. p. 238.

3

Ibid. p. 184.

4

Ibid. pp. 116, 117. One regimental doctor was drummed out of his regiment at the American camp at Harlem for selling the soldiers certificates that they were unfit for duty, at the rate of 8 d . a man.—Moore's Journal , i. 315.

1

Washington's Works , iv. 236.

1

Thus Governor Tryon writes to Lord G. Germaine, Dec. 31, 1776, giving the report of two of his Majesty's Council who had just returned from Connecticut: ‘They tell me, from the intelligence they had opportunities to collect, they are positive a majority of the inhabitants west of Connecticut river are firm friends to Government. This report I can give the more credit to from the number of Connecticut men that enlist in the provincial corps now raising.’— Documents relating to the Colonial History of New York , viii. 694.