The Wars Between England and America

lready severely strained, reached an end. Its members felt-and most of the English people felt with them-that to submit to such an act of violence was impossible. Every

hiefly by arguments, reproofs, and, as it seemed to most Englishmen,

ith the Whig opposition, he was undoubtedly the best-known American, and among the most influential. Now, in 1774, having to present a petition from Massachusetts to the Privy Council for the removal of Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson, Franklin found it an awkward feature of the case that the colony's charges were based on private letters which he himself had in some way acquired and sent to Bos

wnall and Chatham repeated his arguments, but without avail. The Ministerial party saw no danger, and felt nothing but the contempt of an irritated aristocracy. The original ideals of a general colonial reform were now lost sight of; the men responsible for them had all passed off the stage; Grenville, Townshend, and Halifax were dead, and North, careless and subservient to George III, Hillsborough, Suffolk, Sandwich, and Rochford-all noblemen, and in many cases inefficient-did not see beyond the problem of coercing noisy and troublesome rioters, indistinguishable from the followe

destroyed. The next altered the government of Massachusetts Bay by making the councillors appointive instead of elective, by placing the appointment and removal of all judicial officers entirely in the hands of the governor, by placing the selection of jurors in the hands of the sheriffs and prohibi

ants, and the religious situation needed definition. The Quebec Act altered the government of the province by the creation of an appointive council, authorized the Catholic Church to collect tithes, and allow the French to substitute an oath of

y a tariff in the colonies. If Parliament was to be allowed to crush the prosperity of a colonial seaport, to centralize a hitherto democratic government created by a royal charter, and to remove royal officers from the scope of colonial juries, it was clear that the end of all the powers and privileges wrung from royal or proprietary governors by generations of struggle was at hand. Yet the striking feature in this punitive legislation was that the North Ministry e

cted not merely in Massachusetts but in every colony. The town of Boston refused to vote compensation, and was immediately closed under the terms of the Port Act. Expressions of sympathy and gifts of provisions came pouring into the doomed community; while public meetings, legislatures, p

a petition to the King, addresses to the people of England, the people of Quebec, and the people of the colonies, but not to Parliament, since they denied its right to pass any such laws as those under complaint. The Congress further drew up a declaration of rights which stated sharply the colonial claims, namely, that Parliament had no right to legislate for the internal affairs of the separate colonies. It also adopted a plan for putting commercial pressure on England by forming an Association whose members pledged themselves to consume no English products, and organize c

forms that the new councillors and judges dared not serve. More radical action followed. When Gage, having caused the election of a legislature, prorogued it before it had assembled, the members none the less gathered. Declaring that the Regulating Act was invalid, they elected a council, appointed a committee of safety, and named a receiver of taxes. On February 1, 1775, a second Provincial Congress was chosen by the towns, which had not even a nominal

gs were redressed, all those whose interests or whose loyalty revolted at the idea of civil war became alarmed at the danger. Soon men of such minds began to print pamphlets, according to the fashion of the time, and to attempt to prevent the radicals from pushing the colonies into seditious courses. But the position of these conservatives was exceedingly difficult, for they were obliged to apologize for the home

e of the Non-importation Association, were shelved. So far as the policy of the Ministry may be described, it consisted of legislation to increase the punishment of Massachusetts Bay and extend it to other colonies, and to offer a conditional exemption from Parliamentary taxation. Both houses of Parliament declared Massachusetts Bay to be in rebellion, and voted to {61} crush all resistance. An Act was passed on March 30, to restrain the trade of New England, shutting off all colonial vessels from the fisheries, and forbidding them to trade with any country but England or Ireland. By a second Act, in April, this restriction was extende

n required him to break up these threatening bases of supplies. On April 19, 1775, he sent out a force of 800 men to {62} Lexington and Concord-towns a few miles from Boston-with orders to seize or destroy provisions and arms. They accomplished their purpose, after dispersing with musketry a squad of farmers a

, a band of men surprised Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain, taking the cannon for use around Boston. In every other colony militia were organized, officers chosen and arms collected, and almost everywhere, except in Quaker Pennsylvania and in proprietary Maryland, the governors and royal officials fled to the seacoast to take refuge in royal ships of war, or resigned their positions at the command {63} of

Samuel Adams and John Adams, his cousin, felt that the time for parley was at an end, that nothing was to be hoped for from the North Ministry, and that the only reasonable step was to declare independence. Others still hoped that George III would realize the extent of the crisis and be moved to concessions, while yet others, who hoped

ppointed Washington to command the troops near Boston as a Continental commander, adopted a report censuring the conciliatory proposition in bold language, and issued an address justifying with extravagant rhetoric the taking up of arms. Still more daring, it went so far as to arrange to pay the so-called "Continental army" by means of bills of credit, redeemable by the united colonies. Later, in 1775

rom the rifles, muskets, and fowling pieces of the defenders. Two frontal attacks were thus repelled with murderous slaughter; but a third attack, delivered over the same ground, was pushed home, and the defenders were driven from their redoubt. Never was a victory more handsomely won or more dearly bought. The assailants lost not less than 1,000 out of 3,000 engaged, including 92 officers. The Americans lost only 450, but that was almost as large a proportion. It was obvious to any intelligent officer that the Americans might have been cut off

lacked all military conceptions. The elementary idea of obedience was inconceivable to them. Washington's irritation over the perfectly unconcerned democracy of the New Englanders was extreme; but he showed a wonderful patience and tenacity, and by sheer persistence began to create something like a military organization. Yet, even after months of drill and work the army remained little more than an armed mob. At

olt, two bodies of men, in the autumn of 1775, made their way across the border. One, entering Canada by way of Lake Champlain, occupied Montreal, and then advanced against Quebec, where it was joined by the other, which, with great hardships, had penetrated through the wilderness of northern Maine. The commanders, Richard Montgomery, Benedict

hen Parliament met in November, 1775, the opposition, led as usual by Burke, made one more effort to avoid civil war; but the Ministerial party rejected all proposals for conciliation, and devoted itself to preparing to crush the rebellion. On December 22, an Act became law which, if enforce

he step of hiring German mercenaries from the lesser Rhine princes-Hesse, Waldeck, and others,-at a rate per head with a fixed sum for deaths. This practice was customary in wars when England was obliged to protect Hanover from the French; but to use the same method against their own kindred in America was looked upon with aversion by many English, and aroused ungovernable indignation in all Americans. It seemed to show a callousness toward all ties of blood and speech which rendered any hope of reconciliation futile. The war was not, in f

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who opposed all civil war, those who were willing to fight to defend rights but who were unwilling to abandon hopes of forcing England to surrender its claims, and those whose businesses and connections were closely interwoven with the mother country and all the radicals on the other. Unfortunately for

onary cause. Violence and intimidation rapidly made themselves felt. Loyalists were threatened, forced by mobs to sign the Association; their houses {71} were defiled, their movements watched. Then [Transcriber's note: Their?] arms were taken fr

s of the natural right of men to exercise full self-government and to change their form of government when it became oppressive, the colonies, in this famous document, imitated the English Declaration of Rights of 1689 in drawing up a bill of indictment against George III's government. In this can be discovered every cause of resentment and every variety of {72} complaint which the thirteen colonies were ready to put forward. Practically all were political. There were allusions in plenty to the wrangles between governors and assemblies, denunciations of the parliamentary taxes and the coercing Acts, but no

s than that now enjoyed by the great colonial unions of Canada, Australia, and South Africa. It may be assumed, of course, that unless Parliament exercised complete authority over internal as well as external matters-to employ the then customary distinction-there was no real imperial bond. Such was the position unanimously taken by the North Ministry and the Tories in 1776. But in view of the subsequent history of the English colonies it seems hardly deniable that some relationship similar to the existing colonial one might have been perpetuated had the Whig policy advocated by Burke been adopted, a

moderate, hesitating, and at worst irritating. Its action threatened to destroy the practical independence of the colonial assemblies; but the danger was political. Even the five "intolerable Acts" inflicted hardship

ers were unable to conceive of any value in colonies which were not in the full sense dependencies, and were narrowly limited by the economic ideas of their time and the social conventions of their class. Since the colonies had developed, unchecked, their own political li

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