signed at Versailles a treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive, between France and the United States. Dr Franklin not long afterwards left England for America, disgusted with the conduct of the British ministry, and not very well pleased with that of the states he represented. By the cabinet he was contemned as a violent American; while some of the more hot and impatient of his countrymen feared lest his partiality for England might prevent him from acting with sufficient vigour in the crisis which all could see was rapidly approaching. Other agents were appointed, and the catastrophe came swiftly on.

The intemperate proceedings of the ministry derived no countenance from the acts or speeches of the colonists. The language of the different assemblies was invariably respectful, though firm. As late as November 1774, the first congress of the American people, assembled at Philadelphia, in its address to the king, thus unanimously expressed itself:-'We ask but for peace, liberty, and safety; we wish not a diminution of the prerogative, nor do we solicit the grant of any new right in our favour: your royal authority over us, and our connection with Great Britain, we shall always cheerfully and zealously maintain.' Washington, in a letter to Captain Robert Mackenzie, gave the following testimony:-'You are taught to believe that the people are rebellious, setting up for independency, and what not. Give me leave, my good friend, to tell you you are abused— grossly abused. Give me leave to add, and I think I can answer for it as a fact, that it is not the wish of any government here, separately or collectively, to set up for independence; but this you may at the same time rely on, that none of them will ever submit to the loss of those valuable privileges which are essential to the happiness of every free state, and without which life, liberty, and property are rendered totally insecure.' Jefferson himself thus wrote to Peyton Randolph, president of the first congress :— 'Believe me, my dear sir, there is not throughout the British empire a man who more cordially cherishes a union with Great Britain than I do; but, by the God that made me, I will cease to exist before I accept that union upon the terms proposed by the parliament! and in this I believe I speak the sentiments of America. We want neither motives nor power to effect a separation--the will alone is wanting.' So general, indeed, was the expression of loyal attachment to the parent country, and of a desire to remain at peace and amity with her, that Lord Camden remarked upon it with some surprise to Dr Franklin, and predicted that the tone of the colonists would soon change into a demand for independence. 'Not,' replied Franklin, whose almost fanatical anxiety to maintain what he deemed the unity' of the British empire-that 'costly and beautiful vase' -is so well known-' not unless we are scandalously treated.' 'It is precisely because I foresee that you will be so treated,' rejoined his lordship, ' that I make that prophecy.'

6

Many eloquent voices, it is consolatory to remember, were raised on behalf of those distant Englishmen, even in the parliaments which backed the insanity of ministers by such overwhelming majorities. Chatham, Burke, Fox, vehemently combated the right of parliament to tax America. Lord Chatham in a few striking sentences placed the matter in a clear and vivid light. He supposes the House of Commons to be enacting a 'supply' bill : We, your majesty's faithful Commons of Great Britain, give and grant to

These outrageous proceedings, which it is impossible to palliate, much less to justify, were carried with a very high hand indeed. Mr Ballon, the agent for Massachusetts, was refused a hearing by the House of Commons; and the respectful prayer of the Americans resident in London, that honourable gentlemen' would not drive a long-suffering and gallant people to the last resources of despair,' was treated with contemptuous indifference. The truth was, the ministry were determined to put down all resistance by force, and they replied only by a lofty and disdainful silence to every effort made to turn them from their fatal course.

The colonists were thoroughly persuaded that the outrage in Boston harbour was but a pretext eagerly seized upon by the ministry to carry into effect a long-since-foregone determination—that of restricting the general liberties of America. This suspicion derived countenance from the previous discovery of a number of letters written by Governor Hutchinson and Judge Oliver of Massachusetts to Mr Whately, a member of parliament, and secretary to the minister, Mr George Grenville. Hutchinson and Oliver urged upon the ministry that the colonists were not fit 'for what are called English liberties,' and recommended the adoption of measures to modify, in a despotic sense, the popular constitutions of the American provinces. This treasonable correspondence-it was surely nothing less in a moral point of view, coming from men who had sworn to respect and maintain those liberties?—had been placed in Dr Franklin's hands by a Dr Hugh Williamson, with an injunction to keep secret the source from which he obtained it. Franklin immediately transmitted them to America, where their publication produced an immense sensation; and the impeachment of Governor Hutchinson was soon afterwards demanded. Dr Franklin, whose incessant and zealous efforts to heal the unhappy differences between the mother country and the colonies had been warmly and frequently acknowledged by the most eminent persons-amongst others, by Chief-Justice Pratt, the judge who first held that 'general warrants' were illegal, and better known as Lord Camden-was summoned before the council relative to the demand of impeachment. The abuse with which the single-minded and amiable philosopher was assailed by Wedderburne, the attorneygeneral, afterwards Lord Loughborough, a man now only remembered because he did abuse Dr Franklin, is an amusing specimen of the virulence of a loose-tongued lawyer, salaried to exhibit simulated indignation. First charging Franklin with having obtained the letters by fraudulent and corrupt means—' unless, indeed, he stole them from the person who stole them' -Wedderburne thus proceeded: 'I hope, my lords, you will brand this man for the honour of his country, of Europe, of mankind. . . Into what company will he hereafter appear with an unembarrassed face, or the honest expression of virtue? I ask, my lords, if the revengeful temper attributed by poetic fiction only to the bloody African is not surpassed by the coolness and apathy of the wily American?' This rabid nonsense, according to Dr Priestley, threw the lords of the council into ecstasies of mirth : Lord Gower laughed; and the only man who behaved with decency was Lord North.' Franklin listened to it all in silence, returning not a word; only, when he took off the court suit of Manchester spotted velvet which he had worn on the occasion, he mentally resolved never to put it on again; nor did he break that resolution till the 6th of February 1778, when he

6

even

your majesty-what? our own property? No; but the property of the Commons of America!' And yet this nobleman, who placed the intolerable assumption of the parliament in so clear a view, with the same breath maintained, in the strongest terms, 'that parliament might bind the trade of the colonists, confine their manufactures, and exercise over them every right except that of taking their money without their consent.' Strange obliquity of vision, that could not see how 'binding their trade, confining their manufactures,' was as much taking their money without their consent as any direct means could be! The nervous eloquence of the noble earl, the conciliatory suggestions of Burke, arrayed as they were in gorgeous and sounding periods, made no impression on the infatuated ministry. They were determined to ride rough-shod over the colonies, and they confidently anticipated a certain and easy victory. Nothing in this wretched business appears more ludicrous than the notion which noble lords, generals, and other official personages entertained of the personal cowardice of the British colonists. Doubtless they must have had some theory of the enervating effect of the climate of America upon the Anglo-Saxon race; for if there was one point upon which they were all fully agreed, it was that the descendants of the Puritans, of the Solemn-League-and-Covenant men, would not fight! Cowardly, undisciplined, and incapable of discipline," the country gentlemen' were night after night assured the Americans were. General Burgoyne, who had dramatised Richard Cœur de Lion in a now forgotten operetta, and who afterwards made a splendid American campaign, ending at Saratoga, declared that a, regiment of disciplined English soldiers might march without encountering any serious opposition throughout the length and breadth of the land. Another authority pronounced 'that four or five frigates would effectually settle the business." My Lord Sandwich was quite jocular upon the subject. Suppose,' he said, 'the colonies abound in men--what then? They are raw, undisciplined, and cowardly. I wish, instead of forty thousand or fifty thousand of these brave fellows with which we are threatened, they would produce two hundred thousand. If they did not run away, which there is little doubt they would, they would assuredly starve themselves into compliance with our measures.' Compare this vapouring with the long, dull, melancholy silence which pervaded the ranks of the 'country gentlemen' at the conclusion of Lord North's speech in the House of Commons, February 17, 1778, in the third year of the war, and after the surrender of boasting Burgoyne, in which the minister formally renounced the right to tax America, and restored the constitution of Massachusetts, whilst 'too late-too late,' surged through the dullest brain in the assembly, and avoid, if you can, a feeling of profound humiliation that such men should have had power to hound against each other two kindred peoples, whose great past, and, we will hope, still greater future, are so essentially and intimately blended and associated with each other. The 'country party,' however, though with much pouting, carried the 'conciliatory' measures of the minister with the same decisive numbers as they had his coercive bills; and the majority against the thirteen United States remained firm and intact, till the day they were formally recognised as 'a free, sovereign, and independent state.'

In common justice and candour, we must here record that this persistent

subserviency to ministers on the part of the great country party, to whose sound constitutional maxims we are taught to look in any real national extremity for practical wisdom and guidance, was once during these events in slight and momentary danger of interruption. It arose thus :-His majesty George III., in a speech from the throne, informed the Houses that, in testimony of his affection for his people, who could have no cause in which he was not equally interested, he had sent to Gibraltar and Port Mahon a portion of his Electoral troops.' This was of course done with the benevolent intention of liberating the British garrisons for war-service in the colonies. Strange to say, this paternal consideration of the king for his subjects, as Lord North termed it, the country gentlemen viewed with highly constitutional indignation. Ministers might send Hessians, Hanoverians, Pandours, Croats, to slay and trample the British people of America; they might even employ Indian savages, as they did, for that purpose. All that was proper and constitutional; but to partially garrison Gibraltar and Port Mahon with foreign troops was a violation of British liberties; and unless some pledge was given that this paternal act would not be drawn into a precedent, they, the country gentlemen, would deem it their unpleasant duty to withdraw a portion at least of their gracious countenance from the administration. An implied pledge was given: the Germans went to America, and all was well.

A plea in mitigation of the conduct of the British ministry is frequently set forth, which it may be as well at once to dispose of. It is this-that no human foresight could have predicted the issues of the war; and that, however untowardly events ultimately occurred, there was a fair and reasonable prospect of success at the outset of the contest. This excusatory plea will not bear a moment's serious examination. In the first place, no person acquainted with the requirements and exigencies of modern warfare could hope to overcome nearly three millions of people, three thousand miles distant, provided they were but moderately true to themselves, by any force which Great Britain or any other power could send against them. But apart from this consideration, let any person glance at the state of Europe at the time, and say whether the colonists had not a perfect right to calculate on the support of the chief powers in the event of a serious conflict with England? The recent 'glorious' peace of 1763-thanks to the triumphs of Wolfe in America, Clive in India, and the brilliant successes of the British fleets-had stripped France of Canada, the whole of Louisiana east of the Mississippi, and her possessions in the East Indies, besides various islands of more or less commercial value. Spain had also been humbled, and despoiled of Minorca and various colonial sovereignties. Victories, however splendid, ever create more enemies than they destroy, and who could doubt that these countries, humbled in their self-love, but untouched in substantial power, would seek to avenge their losses and defeats the instant a favourable opportunity presented itself? Then Holland had humiliations inflicted by the giant of the seas to wipe out; and the other secondary naval powers naturally regarded the maritime supremacy of Great Britain with envious dislike. The spurious liberalism of the courts of St Petersburg and Berlin, of Catherine the Great' and Frederick the 'Great,' who partitioned Poland, and patronised Voltaire,

F

1