THE INDEPENDENCE OF AMERICA.

BY JOHN RICHARD GREEN.

(From the "Short History of the English People.")

[JOHN RICHARD GREEN, English historian, was born at Oxford in 1837; graduated at Jesus College; became a clergyman, and in 1868 librarian to the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth. His earliest bent was toward studying the gems of English history, and after many short papers his "Short History of the English People" (1874) made him famous. In spite of an incurable disease and great weakness, and of ardent service in practical church work, he published "The Making of England" in 1882, and had nearly completed "The Conquest of England" (completed and published by his widow) when he died, March 7, 1883. He published some other works, and suggested the English Historical Review.]

THE Chatham ministry marked a new phase in the relation of public opinion to the government of the state. In 1766, as in 1756, Pitt had been called into office by "the voice of the people" at large. But in his former ministry the influence he drew from popularity could only make itself effective through an alliance with the influence which was drawn from political connection; and when the two elements of the administration became opposed, the support of the nation gave Pitt little strength of resistance against the whigs. Nor had the young king had much better fortune as yet in his efforts to break their rule. He had severed them, indeed, from Pitt; and he had dexterously broken up the great party into jealous factions. But, broken as it was, even its factions remained too strong for the king. His one effort at independence under Bute hardly lasted a year, and he was as helpless in the hands of Grenville as in the hands of Rockingham. His bribery, his patronage, his parliamentary "friends," his perfidy, and his lies had done much to render good government impossible and to steep public life in deeper corruption, but they had done little to further the triumph of the crown over the great houses. Of the one power, indeed, which could break the whig rule, the power of public opinion, George was more bitterly jealous than even of the whigs themselves. But, in spite of his jealousy, the tide of opinion steadily rose. In wise and in unwise ways the country at large showed its new interest in national policy, its new resolve to have a share in the direction of it. It showed no love for the king or the king's schemes. But it

retained all its old disgust for the whigs and for the parliament. It clung to Pitt closer than ever, and in spite of his isolation from all party support, raised him daily into a mightier power. It was the sense that a new England was thus growing up about him, that a new basis was forming itself for political action, which at last roused the great commoner to the bold enterprise of breaking through the bonds of "connection" altogther. For the first time since the revolution a minister told the peers in their own house that he defied their combinations.

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

rather than of any purpose to reopen the quarrel. Pitt's colleagues had as yet no design to reverse his policy. The one aim of the ministry which bore his name, and which during his retirement looked to the Duke of Grafton as its actual head, was simply to exist. But in the face of Chatham's continued withdrawal, of Townshend's death in 1767, and of the increasing hostility of the Rockingham whigs, even existence was difficult; and Grafton saw himself forced to a union with the faction which was gathered under the Duke of Bedford, and to the appointment of a tory noble as secretary of state. . . .

George the Third was able to set Chatham's policy disdainfully aside, and to plunge into a contest far more disastrous than his contest with the press. In all the proceedings of the last few years, what had galled him most had been the act which averted a war between England and her colonies. To the king the Americans were already "rebels," and the great statesman whose eloquence had made their claims irresistible was a "trumpet of sedition." George deplored in his correspondence with his ministers the repeal of the stamp acts. "All men feel," he wrote, "that the fatal compliance in 1766 has increased the pretensions of the Americans to absolute independence." But in England generally the question was regarded as settled, while in America the news of the repeal had been received with universal joy, and taken as a close of the strife. On both sides, however, there remained a pride and irritability which only wise handling could have allayed; and in the present state of English politics wise handling was impossible. Only a few months, indeed, passed before the quarrel was again reopened; for no sooner had the illness of Lord Chatham removed him from any real share in public affairs than the wretched administration which bore his name suspended the assembly of New York on its refusal to provide quarters for English troops, and resolved to assert British sovereignty by levying import duties of trivial amount at American ports. The assembly of Massachusetts was dissolved on a trifling quarrel with its governor, and Boston was occupied for a time by British soldiers. It was without a thought of any effective struggle, however, that the cabinet had entered on this course of vexation; and when the remonstrances of the legislatures of Massachusetts and Virginia, coupled with a fall in the funds, warned the ministers of its danger, they hastened to withdraw from it. In 1769 the troops were recalled, and all duties, save

one, abandoned. But with a fatal obstinacy the king insisted on retaining the duty on tea as an assertion of the supremacy of the mother country. Its retention was enough to prevent any thorough restoration of good feeling. A series of petty quarrels went on in almost every colony between the popular assemblies and the governors appointed by the crown, and the colonists persisted in their agreement to import nothing from the mother country. As yet, however, there was no prospect of serious strife. In America, the influence of George Washington allayed the irritation of Virginia; while Massachusetts contented itself with quarreling with its governor, and refusing to buy tea so long as the duty was levied.

The temper of the colonists was in the main that of the bulk of English statesmen. Even George Grenville, though approving the retention of the duty in question, abandoned all dream of further taxation. But the king was now supreme. The reappearance and attack of Chatham at the opening of 1770 had completed the ruin of the ministry. Those of his adherents who still clung to it, Lord Camden, the chancellor, Lord Granby, the commander in chief, Dunning, the solicitor-general, resigned their posts. In a few days they were followed by the Duke of Grafton, who, since Chatham's resignation, had been nominally the head of the administration. All that remained of it were the Bedford faction and the dependents of the king; but George did not hesitate to form these into a ministry and to place at its head the former chancellor of the exchequer, Lord North, a man of some administrative ability, but unconnected with any political party, steadily opposed to any recognition of public opinion, and of an easy and indolent temper which yielded against his better knowledge to the stubborn doggedness of the king. The instinct of the country at once warned it of the results of such a change; and the city of London put itself formally at the head of the public discontent. In solemn addresses it called on George the Third to dismiss his ministers and to dissolve the parliament; and its action was supported by petitions to the same effect from the greater counties. In the following year it fought, as we have seen, a battle with the house of commons which established the freedom of the press. But the efforts of the country failed before the paralysis of political action which resulted from the position of the whigs and the corruption of parliament. The deaths of Grenville and Bedford broke up two of the whig factions.

Rockingham with the rest of the party held aloof from the popular agitation, and drew more and more away from Chatham as he favored it. The parliament remained steady to the king, and the king clung more and more to the ministry. The ministry was, in fact, a mere cloak for the direction of public affairs by George himself. "Not only did he direct the ministry," a careful observer tells us, "in all important matters of foreign and domestic policy, but he instructed him as to the management of debates in parliament, suggested what motions should be made or opposed, and how measures should be carried. He reserved for himself all the patronage, he arranged the whole cast of administration, settled the relative places and pretensions of ministers of state, law officers, and members of the household, nominated and promoted the English and Scotch judges, appointed and translated bishops and deans, and dispensed other preferments in the church. He disposed of military governments, regiments, and commissions, and himself ordered the marching of troops. He gave and refused titles, honors, and pensions." All this immense patronage was persistently used for the creation and maintenance in both houses of parliament of a majority directed by the king himself; and its weight was seen in the steady action of such a majority. It was seen yet more in the subjection to which the ministry that bore North's name was reduced. George was, in fact, the minister through the years of its existence; and the shame of the darkest hour of English history lies wholly at his door.

His fixed purpose was to seize on the first opportunity of undoing the "fatal compliance of 1766." A trivial riot gave him at last the handle he wanted. In December, 1773, the arrival of some English ships laden with tea kindled fresh irritation in Boston, where the non-importation agreement was strictly enforced; and a mob in the disguise of Indians boarded the vessels and flung their contents into the sea. The outrage

was deplored alike by the friends of America in England and by its own leading statesmen; and both Washington and Chatham were prepared to support the government in its looked-for demand of redress. But the thought of the king was not of redress but of repression, and he set roughly aside the more conciliatory proposals of Lord North and his fellow-ministers. They had already rejected as "frivolous and vexatious" a petition of the assembly of Massachusetts for the dismissal of two public officers whose letters home advised the withdrawal of