CHAPTER XVI

THE EMPIRE DISMEMBERED

CORNWALLIS's defeat virtually secured independence to the American revolutionaries. The strength of the loyalists had gradually been sapped. The reign of terror had done its worst, and those who had not already found refuge within the British lines were fain to accept the domination of the "patriots."

They had this comfort, and this alone: in the face of this terrible disaster their King was with them. George's fortitude and equanimity were unshaken.

Entertaining some political friends to dinner, Germain received a note from the King. All eyes were upon him as he tore open the seal. They wondered how their sovereign would take the news. A moment later the host remarked to Lord Walsingham, "The King writes just as he always does, except that I observe he has omitted to mark the hour and minute of his writing with his usual precision."

"I have received," wrote George, "with sentiments of the deepest concern the communication which Lord George Germain has made me of the unfortunate result of the operations in Virginia. I particularly lament it on account of the consequences connected with it, and the difficulties which

it may produce in carrying on the public business, or in repairing such a misfortune. But I trust that neither Lord George Germain nor any member of the Cabinet will suppose that it makes the smallest alteration in those principles of my conduct which have directed me in past time, and which will always continue to animate me under every event in the prosecution of the present contest."1

In two days Parliament was to meet. It had become necessary to alter and almost to reconstruct the King's Speech, which had been prepared. On the 27th of November the King opened the session. Retaining a firm confidence, he said, in the wisdom and protection of Divine Providence, and firmly convinced of the justice of his cause, he had no doubt but that by the concurrence and support of Parliament, by the valour of his fleets and armies, and by a vigorous, animated, and united exertion of the faculties and resources of his people, he should be able to restore the blessings of peace to his dominions.2

Shelburne, Fox, and Burke reopened their heavy artillery, yet the King could still command respectable majorities in both Houses. "Those persons," declared Fox, "who might chance to be ignorant that the speech from the throne was the composition not of the sovereign himself, but of a Cabinet Council, would set it down as containing the sentiments of some arbitrary, despotic, hard-hearted, and unfeeling monarch, who, having involved his subjects in a 1 Huish, p. 417.

2 Parliamentary History, vol. xxii. col. 637.

FOX'S DIATRIBE

ruinous and unnatural war to glut his feelings of revenge, was determined to persevere in it in spite of calamity and even of fate. Divest the speech," said Fox, "of its official forms, and what was its purport? 'Our losses in America have been most calamitous. The blood of my subjects has flowed in copious streams. The treasures of Great Britain have been wantonly lavished. The load of taxes imposed on an over-burthened country is become intolerable. My rage for conquest is unquenched, my revenge unsated, nor can anything except the total subjugation of my revolted American subjects allay my animosity.' As for Ministers," he added, they were a curse to their country; they had made Great Britain an object of scorn and derision to the nations of the earth. But," said Fox, "the time will surely come when an oppressed and irritated people will firmly call for signal punishment on those whose counsels have brought the nation so near to the brink of destruction. An indignant nation would surely in the end compel them to make some faint atonement for the magnitude of their offences on a public scaffold."

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North's reply to this diatribe was forcible and dignified, and should have been as convincing in 1781 as it is to-day. He observed that Ministers had been accused of having instituted and persevered in the American war for the purpose of adding to the influence of the Crown. The charge was both "Did not men know," he asked, wished to be governed by the Assemblies, and that they went

injurious and unjust. "that the Americans King and their own

to war because they would not be governed by the legislature of Great Britain?" It was not to increase the influence of the Crown, but for the sake of the Constitution-for the sake of preserving the supremacy and just rights and privileges of the Parliament of Great Britain-that the war with the Colonies had been carried on. A melancholy disaster had befallen British arms in Virginia, "but were we on that account to lie down and die? No! it ought rather to rouse, to urge, to impel, to animate us into action. By bold and united exertions everything might yet be saved. By dejection and despair everything must inevitably be lost." He had been threatened during the debate, he said, with impeachment and the scaffold, but that threat should not deter him from doing his utmost to preserve the rights and legislative authority of Parliament. The war with America had been unfortunate, but it was not on that account necessarily an unjust one.1

The address was carried by a large majority, although as was inevitable there were already some Tories ready to retreat.

George wrote to North the following morning that he was not at all surprised that some principal members had wavered in their sentiments as to the measures to be pursued. "Many men chose rather to despond on difficulties than see how to get out of them. I have already directed Lord George Germain to put on paper the mode that seems most feasible for conducting the war that every member of the Cabinet may have his pro1 Parliamentary History, vol. xxii, cols. 715-17.

1

A WEAKENED MINISTRY

positions to weigh by themselves, when I shall expect to hear their sentiments separately, that we may adopt a plan and abide by it. Fluctuating counsels, and taking up measures without connecting them with the whole of this complicated war, must make us weak in every part. With the assistance of Parliament I do not doubt, if measures are well connected, a good end may yet be made to the war. If we despond, certain ruin

"The warmth of the House," wrote Walpole to Mann, "is prodigiously rekindled, but Lord Cornwallis's fate has caused no ground to be lost by the Ministry. Eloquence is the only one of our qualities which does not seem to have degenerated rapidly." On the same evening George wrote to his Minister: "I cannot say I expected the debate of to-day would have been so short, considering the great love modern orators have of hearing themselves speak; the division was certainly a very good one; and I have no doubt, when men are a little recovered of the shock felt by the bad news, and feel that if we recede no one can tell to what a degree the consequence of this country will be diminished, that they will then find the necessity of carrying on the war, though the mode of it may require alterations."

Victories at this stage could only arrest the progress of decay. The weakening of the Ministry had begun, and one or two British maritime reverses accelerated accelerated the process. Sandwich was bitterly attacked. The unpopularity of Lord George