but the views of Chatham, to which he pertinaciously adhered, created some hesitation in the ranks. Pownall, the former Governor of Massachusetts, who had now for some years sat in the House of Commons, lost no opportunity of asserting that, until the English Government was prepared to treat with the United States as an independent, sovereign Power, it was a matter of indifference what plans of conciliation might be proposed, since peace would not follow from them. But to some Englishmen even of this party the relinquishment of so grand a colonial empire seemed too great a sacrifice to be demanded or entertained. Such was undoubtedly the opinion of the majority, both in Parliament and the country; yet the idea of independence was becoming familiar to the public mind, and the adherents of that view daily increased in number. Shortly after the affair of Saratoga, General Gates wrote a remarkable letter to his friend, the Earl of Thanet-that in which, as already related, he spoke of his pride in being an Englishman. The object of his letter was to urge the encouragement of affectionate feelings towards England on the part of Americans, by at once abandoning a hopeless contest. "Spurn not the blessing which yet remains," he wrote. "Instantly withdraw your fleets and armies. Cultivate the friendship and commerce of America. Thus, and thus only, can England hope to be great and happy. Seek it in a commercial alliance. Seek it ere it be too late, for there only must you expect to find it." The letter was shown to Lord Chatham; but it did not in the slightest degree modify the opinion he had formed.

At the comparatively passionless distance of a century, it is not difficult to see that it would have been better to relinquish the struggle after the Convention of Saratoga. But if we place ourselves in the position of the men of that day, it will require no great effort of imagination to realise the bitterness of such a resolution. We judge too much, as we are apt to do in all these cases, by the light of subsequent events; and, knowing that at length we were compelled to acknowledge in 1783 what we might have acknowledged in 1778, hastily conclude that the reasons were not merely as strong, but as apparent, at the earlier as at the later date. But in 1778 it was not certain that success was impossible; and surely it was natural in a high-spirited nation, not wholly in the wrong, though grievously to blame at the outset of the quarrel, to disdain submission beneath a heavy blow. This may be pride; but it is a kind of pride in which great nations have never yet been wanting, nor ever will be until men shall have attained that degree of

moral perfection in which they will prefer goodness to power. It was because Lord Chatham was known to entertain this sentiment of Imperial dominion very strongly, and yet to be inclined towards a conciliatory policy, that he was now generally looked to as the man best fitted to assume the direction of affairs, especially in the probable event of a renewed war with France. The matter began to be talked over in political circles, and Chatham was sounded by some of his friends as to his willingness to accept office, if the King should send for him. Even Lord North himself hoped for such an arrangement, and informed his Royal master that it was his earnest wish to retire from a post the difficulties of which beset him sorely. He was resolved, however, first of all, to carry through the conciliatory proposals of which he had given notice.

The King was very eager that these proposals should be submitted to Parliament before the intention of France to support the Americans should be openly declared. It was on the 17th of February that Lord North disclosed his ideas on the subject to the House of Commons. After a speech of considerable length, in which he reviewed and defended his policy with respect to the colonies during the time he had held office, he asked leave to introduce two Bills tending to the settlement of the troubles in America. The first was entitled "A Bill for removing all Doubts and Apprehensions concerning Taxation by the Parliament of Great Britain in any of the Colonies" This Act expressly repealed the obnoxious tea-duty, and declared that in future the King and Parliament of Great Britain would not impose any duty, tax, or assessment whatever in the colonies, except only such as it might be expedient to impose for the regulation of commerce; the net produce of such duties to be always paid and applied to and for the use of the colony in which they should b levied. Thus-but too late-was the mischievous and despotic fiscal policy of Grenville abrogated and renounced. The object of the second Bill was to enable his Majesty to appoint five Commis sioners, with sufficient powers to treat with the insurgent colonies. These Commissioners would be authorised to confer with Congress as if it were a legal body, and competent by its acts and negotiations to bind all the colonies. They would be empowered to treat with the Conventions, Pro vincial Assemblies, or Colonial Congresses, and with individuals in their actual civil capacities or military commands; and they were to have the power of suspending hostilities, intermitting the operation of laws, granting pardons, rewards, and

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immunities, restoring charters and constitutions, and nominating Governors, judges, magistrates, &c., till the King's pleasure should be known. Instructions were to be given to the Commissioners to negotiate for some reasonable and moderate contribution towards the common defence of the Empire when reunited. Such contribution, however, was not to be insisted on as a sine quâ non ; but, should the Americans refuse it, they were not to complain if in future they received no support from the British Government. The Commissioners, in short, were to accept subject to Parliamentary sanction-almost any terms of reconciliation not amounting to absolute independence.

The effect of these proposals on the House was at once startling and chilling. It had not been supposed that Lord North would concede so much to the demands of the insurgent colonies-would so amply confess, in effect if not in terms, that his own and previous Ministries had sinned, and that

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the Americans were justified in the war which they were waging. For the concessions of Lord North amounted to all this, or were tantamount to what was even worse-namely, to a confession that England was impotent to assert her rights, and must perforce submit to treason, rebellion, and spoliation. No wonder the House looked grave, dejected, and thunderstruck. No wonder that some among the usual supporters of Government protested against what they regarded as a humiliation. No wonder the Opposition declared that with such a complete change of policy the Government ought to resign. The measures, however, were passed through both Houses without any actual resistance, together with a third, repealing, expressly and by name, the Massachusetts Charter Act. On the 11th of March, the King, seated on the throne, gave to all three Bills the Royal assent; and from that date the struggle entered on a new but not more prosperous stage.

Two days after the Royal assent had been given to the Conciliatory Bills-viz., on the 13th of March -the French Ambassador in London delivered to the Southern Secretary, Lord Weymouth, a note formally announcing the conclusion of a treaty of friendship and commerce between France and the United States. The American colonies were here spoken of as "in full possession of independence," and words were added expressing the persuasion of the King of France that the Court of St. James's would find in this communication new proofs of his Majesty's constant and sincere disposition for peace. It is impossible not to discern a touch of irony in these civil phrases; but absolute effrontery must have dictated what followed. The French monarch professed to feel assured that his Britannic Majesty would take effectual measures to prevent the commerce between French subjects

and the United States from being interrupted. For some weeks, the negotiation of a treaty with Franklin, Deane, and Lee had been well known to the English Cabinet; but at length it was authoritatively intimated. The mask was removed, and France appeared openly as the ally and patron of the revolted colonies of England.

This important fact threw on Lord North the necessity of very gravely considering his position as First Minister of the Crown. He felt his inability to cope with the incessant attacks of the Opposition, which would now derive additional force from the serious turn events had taken. Perhaps also he shrank from the terrible responsibilities of the coming time, and desired to cast them on other and broader shoulders. At any rate, he wrate to the King on the 14th of March, offering his resignation, and advising his Majesty

to send immediately for Lord Chatham. The great Earl-the great Commoner, he used to be called in the old days of the war in Canada-was not a favourite of George III. He belonged to the Whig aristocratical faction, and George was a Tory, bent on concentrating a good deal of power in his own hands, and on curbing the predominance of the oligarchy. While he was yet Prince of Wales, the King had formed a high opinion of the elder Pitt, and was even disposed to like him, as far as the rather cold nature and somewhat exaggerated independence of the statesman would permit of such a feeling. But a closer acquaintance only served to develop the wide divergence of their characters and aims; and Chatham, since he had been again in opposition, had flung forth so many and such bitter invectives against the Court, that the dislike of the King increased with tenfold vehemence. Accordingly, in replying to Lord North on the 15th of March, he alluded with great asperity to the party whom he termed "Lord Chatham and his crew," and declared that he would on no account send for the Earl with a view to his becoming Prime Minister, but was ready to welcome him and his friends with open arms, if they were willing to be placed in office as the allies and auxiliaries of Lord North and the existing Government.* In a note of the following day, his Majesty characterised Chatham as "that perfidious man a view not calculated to promote harmonious working with the person so described; but in fact the matter came to nothing, and Chatham was then within a few weeks of his death.

The first effect of the French communication to the Court of St. James's was seen in the withdrawal from Paris of the British Ambassador, Lord Stormont. This was followed by the departure of the Marquis de Noailles from London. In both Houses of Parliament a Royal Message was read, communicating the French note, and assuring them that his Majesty was firmly determined to maintain and assert the honour of his Crown. Addresses to the King were moved in the Upper and Lower Chambers, and carried by large majorities, after warm and angry debates, in which the Opposition called on the Government to resign, and give place to Lord Chatham, the only man capable of encountering the united power of France and Spain, and of reconciling the colonies to the mother country. In the House of Commons, however, Governor Pownall, as he continued to be called, reiterated his former conviction that nothing

* Earl Stanhope's History of England, chap. 57. The letter itself is printed in the Appendix to Vol. VI., pp. xxxvi.-vii.

but an unreserved acknowledgment of the independence of the United States would conciliate the Americans. If that acknowledgment were made, the colonists, he said, might enter into a federal treaty with the mother country-a treaty offensive, defensive, and commercial. This view found some supporters; but by far the greater number saw in any such concession, at the very moment when France was giving utterance to an implied threat, nothing but ignominy and disgrace. The temper of the nation was at boiling-point, and the advice of Opposition members did but add to its heat.

The treaty between France and the United States, which was signed at Paris on the 6th of February, provided that if Great Britain, in consequence of the alliance, should commence hostilities against France, the two countries should assist each other; that the independence of the United States should be effectually maintained, such being the essential and direct end of the alliance; that the two contracting parties should, each on its own part, and in the manner it might judge most proper, make all the efforts in its power against the common enemy, in order to attain the end proposed; that in case either of the contracting parties should commence a particular enterprise in which the concurrence of the other might be desired, such concurrence should be granted, as far as circumstances might permit ; that if any part of North America still professing allegiance to the crown of Great Britain should be reduced by the colonies, it should belong to the United States; that the King of France renounced for ever any claim to the Bermudas, or to those parts of the continent of North America which were ceded to Great Britain at the peace of 1763; that if France should conquer any of the British West India islands, they should be deemed her property; that neither of the contracting parties should conclude either truce or peace with Great Britain without the formal consent of the other; that they would not lay down their arms until the independence of the United States was formally or tacitly assured at the termination of the war; that there should be no after-claims for compensation, on one side or the other, whatever the event of the contest; that the King of France and the United States should invite or admit other Powers, who might have received injuries from England, to make common cause with them, and accede to the alliance; and that the two parties should guarantee mutually, from that time and for ever, against all other Powers, the possession of each other's territories in America, including whatever might be obtained from Great Britain by conquest during such war as might ensue.

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It is impossible to conceive anything more steeped in hostility to England than this treaty; and it can excite no surprise that, when its terms came to be known in the country against which they were aimed, a feeling of the most fiery indignation was aroused. The bare idea of conceding independence to the colonies under such circumstances was not to be borne. If such a proposition might by possibility have been entertained a few weeks earlier, no such thing was now conceivable. The descendants of Englishmen had made common cause with the hereditary foes of England, and had entered into a conspiracy for the spoliation and ruin of the British Empire. Such was the almost universal feeling of that day; and, granting a similar set of circumstances to arise once more, it would undoubtedly be the feeling of this day too. That a war with France was imminent, could not for a moment be questioned; and in this extremity the popular demand for Lord Chatham as the head of the State became every day more urgent. It was not a very wise demand. People forgot that the Lord Chatham of 1778 was a very different person from the William Pitt of twenty years earlier; that he was now old and infirm, weary and out of heart. His powers, physical and mental, had been decaying for some time, and, although he was still equal to a brilliant and effective speech, it is certain that, even had his life been spared, he could not have supported the incessant labours and anxieties of the Premiership at such a crisis, but that he would have broken down again as he broke down during his Administration of 1766-8. Still, most people concurred in regarding him as the fittest man for the emergency, and informal negotiations were carried on with the Earl in his retirement at Hayes, in Kent. Lord North communicated with him on his own account; several members of the Rockingham party also sent to him the expression of their earnest wishes. It is worthy of note that General Gates, in the letter to Lord Thanet before cited, spoke of Chatham as "the great State physician" whose skill alone could cure the maladies of England and America. Lord Mansfield, who hd been in rivalry with the statesman, now declared to Lord Holderness, with tears in his eyes, that, unless the King sent for the Earl of Chatham, the country would assuredly founder. The Earl himself, directly it became obvious that another ar with France was about to commence, had perLitted his eldest son, Lord Pitt, to re-enter the army, from which he had withdrawn him on the outbreak of the civil war in America; and the same patriotic devotion made him willing, notwithstanding the enfeebled state of his health, to assume

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the cares of government. But he would only take office as chief of the Administration-a demand which his previous services, and the high reputation he had acquired, gave him every right to make. The King, however, in whom firmness was generally carried to the extent of obstinacy, held to his resolve not to send for the Earl; and Lord North remained in power.

English historical writers have debated whether Lord Chatham, supposing him to have then taken office, and to have lived for a few years longer, could have succeeded in restoring the goodwill of the Americans, and in re-establishing the connection of the colonies with the old country. It has been urged in support of the affirmative view that Chatham was universally regarded in English America with love and veneration; that proposals which would have been rejected if made by any other public man would have found acceptance as coming from him; that the Congress had recently fallen very much in popular estimation, and was in many quarters held in actual disgust, on account of its factious spirit, its vindictive persecution of political opponents, and its cabals against Washington; that America was growing impatient of the burdens of the war, of the losses incurred by trade, and of the rapid depreciation of the paper money; that many, even among the patriots, were beginning to think peace desirable at some sacrifice; that the New Englanders, at any rate, could not like fighting side by side with Papists; and that the very fact of a treaty having been concluded with France might, with judicious management, have been made to rekindle the old filial sentiment towards England.* On a review of all the circumstances, however, there seems little probability that even Chatham, at that date, could have brought back the colonies to their forsworn allegiance. A few years earlier, he might perhaps have done so ; but the political leaders of America were by this time too much accustomed to the idea of independence to relinquish it voluntarily. After the great success of Saratoga, and the flattering triumph of u treaty with France, it is most unlikely that the prize which had been striven for during several years, and which now appeared almost within grasp, would have been abandoned, even at the solicitation of an old friend and patron. Short of absolute independence, which he was pledged never to grant, one does not see how Lord Chatham could have offered more than Lord North was now offering; and Lord North's Commissioners, as we shall

*History of England, by the late Earl Stanhope; who quotes, on the contrary side, Croker and Macaulay.