England and Virginia before it appeared elsewhere in America. The oppressive trade regulations bore upon manufactures and commerce; and since most of the manufactures were in New England, and the principal articles of export were New England timber and Virginia tobacco, those colonies first became exasperated. The Stamp Act, however, bore upon all, and from 1764 the backward colonies began to show the same wrathful temper. To preserve strict truth, the historian must not omit to state that a certain discreditable reason had its part in bringing about American resistance, as well as the just indignation at the selfish and arbitrary policy which ground the country down. A debt of eight or nine million pounds was owed to British merchants, and this debt, so some thought, in case of successful revolt, it might be possible to repudiate.1 1 Madison's View, XL, and Boucher, quoted by Chamberlain, "John Adams, the Statesman of the Revolution," p. 37. CHAPTER XIV. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION A STRUGGLE OF Character of 1776-1783. THE condition of things in the middle of the eighteenth century has been sufficiently set forth. George III had been educated carefully under the influence of his mother, a woman, who, like the members of German royal families at that time universally, exaggerated to the highest degree the prerogatives of the King. Her constant exhortation, "George, be a King," is said to have influenced her son much. Jacobitism had been utterly quenched in 1745. No other prince since Charles II had been hailed with such acclamation as George III, when he took his seat. Whereas the prestige of the Kings had been declining, prerogative and the jus divinum now began to be fashionable again. The Tories were in power, and the great Jacobite families, giving up at last the cause of the Stuarts, rallied round the Hanoverian prince, retaining all their old anti-popular ideas. George was fairly sensible, thoroughly brave, well-meaning, and sincerely anxious to bring about good for England, not postponing the interests of his kingdom, as his two predecessors had done, to those of his German electorate. He was, however, ignorant, narrow-minded, and arbitrary, and was determined to make himself as absolute as the Kings of Europe in general. He hesitated at no corruption, though he was himself honest, and by means of the "King's Friends," a great body in Parliament whom he won to himself by bribes, he grew very powerful. with the struggle. It is not right, however, to regard George III as a fair representative of the England of his time, nor to think that in the great war of the AmeriSympathy of can Revolution, of which on the British Englishmen side he was the central figure, Americans American were really fighting England. Says a modern English authority: 1" Of course, Americans regard independence as their great achievement. In this they are quite right. When, however, they proceed to regard independence as a victory gained over England, their enemy, they are surely egregiously in error. . . . At the time the United States were fighting for independence, England was fighting for her liberties: the common enemy was the Hanoverian George III and his Germanized Court.... When the news was brought to London that the United States had appealed to arms, William Pitt, an Englishman, if there ever was one, rose in his seat in Parliament, and with uplifted voice thanked God that the American colonists retained enough of English blood to fight for their rights. Nine Englishmen out of every ten outside of Court influence similarly rejoiced. Independence day is as much a red-letter day for every genuine Englishman as for every genuine American. And so it should be: Washington but trod in the footsteps 1 Westminster Review, March, 1889. CHAPTER XIV. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION A STRUGGLE OF George III. 1776-1783. THE condition of things in the middle of the eighteenth century has been sufficiently set forth. Character of George III had been educated carefully under the influence of his mother, a woman, who, like the members of German royal families at that time universally, exaggerated to the highest degree the prerogatives of the King. Her constant exhortation, "George, be a King," is said to have influenced her son much. Jacobitism had been utterly quenched in 1745. No other prince since Charles II had been hailed with such acclamation as George III, when he took his seat. Whereas the prestige of the Kings had been declining, prerogative and the jus divinum now began to be fashionable again. The Tories were in power, and the great Jacobite families, giving up at last the cause of the Stuarts, rallied round the Hanoverian prince, retaining all their old anti-popular ideas. George was fairly sensible, thoroughly brave, well-meaning, and sincerely anxious to bring about good for England, not postponing the interests of his kingdom, as his two predecessors had done, to those of his German electorate. He was, however, ignorant, narrow-minded, and arbitrary, and was determined to make himself as absolute as the Kings of Europe in general. He hesitated at no corruption, though he was himself honest, and by means of the "King's Friends," a great body in Parliament whom he won to himself by bribes, he grew very powerful. with the struggle. ... It is not right, however, to regard George III as a fair representative of the England of his time, nor to think that in the great war of the AmeriSympathy of can Revolution, of which on the British Englishmen side he was the central figure, Americans American were really fighting England. Says a modern English authority: 1 "Of course, Americans regard independence as their great achievement. In this they are quite right. When, however, they proceed to regard independence as a victory gained over England, their enemy, they are surely egregiously in error. At the time the United States were fighting for independence, England was fighting for her liberties: the common enemy was the Hanoverian George III and his Germanized Court. ... When the news was brought to London that the United States had appealed to arms, William Pitt, an Englishman, if there ever was one, rose in his seat in Parliament, and with uplifted voice thanked God that the American colonists retained enough of English blood to fight for their rights. Nine Englishmen out of every ten outside of Court influence similarly rejoiced. Independence day is as much a red-letter day for every genuine Englishman as for every genuine American. And so it should be: Washington but trod in the footsteps 1 Westminster Review, March, 1889. |