WILLIAM PITT

The great commoner, who conducted the Seven Years' War, the first struggle between autocracy and free institutions for the Mississippi Valley in which England and the American Colonies drove the soldiers of the French king from the American continent. Pitt fought not only foreign autocracy but British autocracy as well; for, recognizing the colonial opposition to King George III as a fight for liberty, he said in Parliament: "I rejoice that America has resisted. . . . If ever this nation should have a tyrant for a king, six millions of freemen, so dead to all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would be fit instruments to make slaves of the rest"

THE DUKE OF ROCKINGHAM

One of the group of British statesmen believing in free institutions who took over the control of the British Government when the surrender of Yorktown finally forced the fact home to King George and his following that not only had he failed to limit the rights and freedom of the colonists but, in trying to do so, he had lost them as colonists. The king, moreover, had lost control of his own Government into the hands of men who sympathized with the colonists-their sympathy found utterance in Parliament and even in his own householdand who were firm and powerful enough to put him within proper constitutional limitations from which neither he nor any of his successors have ever emerged

The United States of America is an independent World Power, not only a congregation of people. And this power is an immense cooperative company dedicated to the proposition of freedom from political, personal, or intellectual slavery. And as a corporate body it has had its struggle in a world swayed by many evil and hostile as well as ignorant and misguided forces. It has had its existence to defend, its noble aspirations to fulfil, as well as its material and not always ideal ambitions to satisfy.

In an international crisis threatening the very existence of complete civilization, if not races, in which we as a people and a government are called upon to take part, it is a question of the utmost importance for us to know not only who our relatives are and where we got our

threatened, and what countries defended, the ideals and the territory we are here to maintain. It is to these last that we shall have to look for comfort in the show-down coming. And by virtue of the very standards of conduct that we profess it is to them that we owe our utmost assistance in time of need. Active national gratitude is a virtue hitherto unknown. But until recently so was good faith and frankness and forbearance. If the principle enunciated by Roosevelt that in international affairs the United States will act precisely as a strong and honorable man does in private life, and maintained by Wilson in his patient, unselfish, and just attitude toward all mankind— if this principle has any real meaning and value, it signifies the advent of an entirely new era in the realm of diplomacy. If this is a living force, gratitude has its place beside self

The last king of England who tried to maintain autocracy. The battle-ground he chose was the American Colonies. He not only found opposition there in arms but such opposition at home among the liberal elements which recognized the struggle as one for liberty that he was unable to raise armies in England and had to hire Hessians and had to put up with public rejoicing even in the House of Commons over his defeats in America. The success of the Revolution was accompanied and helped by the success of the liberal-minded in England, and the independence of the Colonies was marked also by the end of the king's effort to restore the "royal prerogative" in England

interest in determining the course of our actions. It is my purpose to examine the record and disclose exactly what part the British people and Government have played in our own national development, and the actual influence they have exerted upon our struggle for stable existence and progress in democracy. In doing this I shall stick to the historical drama and disregard some of the subtle and powerful forces that have moulded our life. Yet it remains true, that in all probability a few simple heartfelt traditions, memories, and ties such as the Knights of the Round Table, the courage of Richard Coeur de Lion, and the homilies of Lord Bacon have had more to do with our life, liberty, and conceptions of happiness than all the wars and alarums, ultimatums, and high counsels of state, to be found in the library.

For instance: I know a boy whose entire

COUNT DE VERGENNES

The able minister of Louis XVI who worked assiduously against the rising tide of republicanism. He was willing to aid the rebellious colonies of the most liberal country in Europe to independence, but he had so little sympathy with democracy that he wished to limit the United States to the seaboard and to establish colonies under the autocratic rule of France and Spain in the Mississippi Valley and farther west to prevent the growth of free institutions. He proposed this plan to England, but what might have appealed to George III did not appeal to the British ministers who had succeeded in reducing monarchy to its constitutional limits

Battle of Bunker Hill and the cunning villainy of Lord North. But he will not release his ownership of the Black Watch at Waterloo, or his inheritance of the sea, handed him from his cradle in the ballads of the fleet. The long bowmen of Agincourt and the Light Brigade at Balaclava belong to him, with Little John and the Black Prince. This is the stuff that we are made of.

To the serious student of our government and to the statesmen whose privilege it has been to mould its course, the outstanding fact of all our history has been that the Nation was founded for the express purpose of maintaining those rights which our forefathers claimed as Englishmen. They conceived that their inheritance included Magna Charta, the bill of rights, and the writ of habeas corpus. That a thousand years of battle for independence of personal action, liberty of conscience, and freedom of speech conducted by their forebears and witnessed by the Reformation and the flight of the Stuarts, and the collapse of the royal prerogative and the

and the ultimatum of no taxation without representation.

A careful survey of our state documents reveals one striking fact at the outset. This is that without exception those countries which have had liberal and parliamentary govern

ments have ever regarded us with favor. And it is equally true that not only have we never been attacked by such, but there never has been the slightest inclination on the part of any one of them to challenge either our supremacy in this hemisphere or the principles of our system of government. This is the more emphasized by the fact that the attitude of the rulers of the selfsame countries have changed from friendly to hostile as the control passed from republican to royal hands. It is not a new or whimsical notion, this aversion we have for kings. Nor, as we shall see, is a crafty, long-planned, and treacherous scheme to undermine all liberal government and seize upon the golden wastes of America to add a diadem to an autocratic crown a novelty.

Even before we became an independent nation the spread of free institutions into the interior of this continent was threatened. Louis XIV meant to extend his autocratic sway over the region of the Mississippi. Pitt, on the other hand, believed in colonies of freemen as opposed to the colonial system of the European monarchies. the European monarchies. When he took the reins of government the war in America was to settle the fate of the continent-whether the great interior of America was to become a feudal colony of the French king or commonwealths of freemen. The fall of Quebec ended the menace

of the French king for the time and the free institutions controlled the continent. This was the first round in the struggle to extend freedom to the Mississippi Valley. But the king of England did not understand either England or America and began his long and disastrous effort to build up the "royal prerogative." The means he tried was the Stamp Act.

If ever this nation should have a tyrant for a king, six millions of freemen, so dead to all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would be fit instruments to make slaves of the rest."

If King George III of Hanover had had the united support of all Englishmen, and if his ideals were those unanimously held on the British Isles, our adventures toward democracy with the English would have ended in 1775. Ignorant of the stormy history, sturdy character, and stubborn independence of the men he intended to subdue, King George undertook to strengthen the arbitrary power and the "royal prerogative" of the House of Hanover.

dom, that on that contest her success was not possible. Her principles, her traditions, her liberty, her constitution, all forbade that arbitrary rule should become her characteristic."

In the struggle between freedom and the king business the revolutionists in the colonies and the supporters of liberty in England fought King George, the colonists on the field of battle and the English in Parliament.

When America refused to submit to the Stamp Tax in 1766, Pitt rose in the House of Commons and said:

"I rejoice that America has resisted.

He struck a snag in the military ability of George Washington and the French Alliance. But what scuttled his ship were his subjects at home. When King George failed in his designs to insure the royal power the colonies had their independence and the British had ended the last attempt of a British king to become an autocrat.

These simple, undeniable facts absolutely change out of recognition the popular conception of the Revolution. This is of enormous importance in considering our relations with the English. If it had been true that the people of Britain were of a mind to enslave the American Colonies, and had attacked them with all their might upon their rebellion, there would not only be a great gulf between them now, but independence would not have been accomplished as it was. And if the British nation had been united against us, even after a successful war, our diplomacy would not have been able to form a state of

the consequence and promise of the American union in 1783.

These facts are the A. B. C. of real history.

In his attempt to turn the overwhelming power of the British Empire against America, King George failed miserably and utterly. All attempts to raise volunteers to fight us raised nothing but jeers. In the face of great popular support for the Colonies throughout the British Isles, voiced openly and violently, not only in tavern and highway, but unanimously by the strongest minds in the kingdom, and finding utterance in Parliament and even in his own household, he was powerless to conscript armies. He was confined in his military operations to such mercenaries as he could hire in Germany and the professional army under his orders at the beginning of the trouble. Nor was he able to count fully on the professional army. A great many of the best officers, some of them sons of the greatest families in the Empire, refused to serve. It was thoroughly understood by many in England that George Washington was fighting one of the great chain of battles that have marked the progress of civil liberty in the Anglo-Saxon world. The fall of Yorktown marked the fall of George III. Control of events passed from his hands into the hands of British ministers whose convictions were one with those of Hamilton, Adams, and Benjamin Franklin. And this explains the unique circumstances under which the peace was concluded. An understanding was reached upon a basis of mutual confidence and fair dealing that has had no parallel in the history

of the world. The astounding spectacle was presented to the amazed courts of Europe of the great Empire of Great Britain sending as peace commissioner to Paris a private gentleman, Richard Oswald, who had placed his fortune at the disposal of the rebellious Colonies, and

whose only qualification, as stated by Lord Shelburne, was that he was an intimate and trusted friend of Benjamin Franklin. Moreover, Shelburne wrote Franklin that if Richard Oswald wouldn't do, to let him know who would. Oswald, and later David Hartley, another confidante of Franklin and champion of the Colonies, concluded the negotiations.

It was as well for the infant republic that Shelburne and Pitt and Fox and Rockingham believed in its destiny and sympathized with its ideals. These hailed the coming expansion and power of an American democracy. Their

avowed policy was to yield the utmost, that the United States might be friendly to the mother country without fear or complaint; and to give it every encouragement to grow powerful and great, against the time when every son of William the Norman and Harold the Saxon should face the final struggle with autocracy. The cause of liberty to-day is reaping the benefit of the coöperation of the two countries in its defense. In the great councils of Europe where the world was being partitioned, those dark days of 1783, it was the support of the liberals in Europe that made us a nation instead of a sea-coast province.

The king of France, through his minister, Vergennes, and the king of Spain, our allies in