than those of the open foes of their country, such as George Washington or John Adams.

In the second chapter the History of the American 'Revolution' really begins. Sir George Trevelyan undertakes to describe the causes which brought about-first of all, colonial dissatisfaction and grumbling, then active discontent, insolent language, and violent rioting on one side and attempted repression on the other; and, last of all, the calamity of civil war and the disruption of the empire. Before Fox had entered the House of Commons the Stamp Act of evil memory had been passed by George Grenville, and had been repealed by Lord Rockingham, but not until it had caused the bitterest animosity and created the most violent resistance among colonists hitherto perfectly loyal to the mother country. Along with the repeal, Parliament had passed "The Declaratory Act,' affirming its own sovereignty over the colonies and its right to make laws binding upon them in all cases whatsoever. The legislation of 1766 was received by the colonies with the heartiest welcome. They cared little apparently for a declaration of authority in theory, which in practice it was not intended to exercise. The Rockingham Whigs would probably have been glad to content themselves with a mere repeal of the Stamp Act, but the Ministry was not wholly of their complexion, and the King, and the House of Commons, and the people, had a strong dislike to what they regarded as the humiliation of yielding to the lawlessness and mob violence with which imperial authority in the colonies had been met. The Declaratory Act served to float' the repeal of the Stamp Act, and, without the former, it would probably have been impossible to pass the latter into law. All authorities agree that for the time being Lord Rockingham's policy was attended with complete success. Demonstrations of loyalty took place in the colonies, and Englishmen thankfully dismissed from their minds all thought of that American discontent and agitation which had so greatly troubled recent years.

We think that Sir George Trevelyan might well have discussed here much more fully than he has done the pros and the cons of the great question which divided so keenly Englishmen at home and in the American colonies. Opinion was not, of course, all one way at home; nor, for the matter of that, was it all one way in the colonies. At the present day we are agreed on both sides of the Atlantic that the claim of the British Parliament to

legislate for the American colonies was a claim opposed to the fundamental principles of English liberty-in short, that the Declaration of Independence was the corollary of the Bill of Rights. But we are dealing with the history of 120 years ago; and we should try to realise how the matters in dispute struck men at the time-in the days when the assertions of the Declaratory Act were required to render it possible for Englishmen to permit the repeal of the Stamp Duty, and when these assertions raised hardly an audible whisper of disaffection in the colonies themselves. It is curious that Sir George Trevelyan makes no mention whatever of what was so long considered on both sides of the Atlantic to be at the root of the whole question. For the most part the Englishmen who hated and denounced the Stamp Act, and conspicuously Lord Chatham, insisted on the difference between internal and external taxation. The right to tax was one thing; so Pitt always argued from first to last; the right to regulate, nay, to fetter trade, was another thing.

Let the Stamp Act be repealed,' he urged, 'absolutely, totally, and immediately, because it was founded upon an erroneous principle. At the same time let the sovereign authority of this country over the colonies be asserted in as strong terms as can be desired, and made to extend to every kind of legislation whatsoever. That we may bind their trade, confine their manufactures, and exercise every power whatsoever, except only that of taking their money from their pockets without their own consent.'

Lord Rockingham, advised by Burke, had far wider notions on the subject of trade; but Pitt, representing the views of British manufacturers, declared that he would not allow the Americans to make a horseshoe nail in their own country.*

It might, moreover, have been well to point out what George Grenville and his friends had to urge at the time on behalf of a policy which admittedly brought great disasters upon the country. He and many others thought it right that the American colonies should contribute in the future to the cost of their own defence. British power had relieved them, but perhaps only for a time, from the very real danger of French invasion. Great Britain was groaning under taxation. Would it not be a just and a wise policy to obtain from the colonies a regular contribution towards the defence of the empire, every shilling raised from the

* See Lord John Russell's 'Life and Times of C. J. Fox.'

colonies being spent within those colonies? After the peace of 1763, England had become an empire with widely scattered dominions, and it was hardly just that upon the much-taxed people of England alone should fall the burden of its whole military and naval defence. Two subsidiary armies had already been created, by the East India Company for the defence of India, and by the Irish Parliament for the defence of Ireland and the general assistance of the empire. Townshend and Grenville were resolved to place a third army in the colonies. Mr. Lecky, in his excellent little history, sums up the Grenville policy in three lines: Grenville resolved to enforce strictly the trade laws, to establish permanently in America a portion of the British army, and to raise by parliamentary taxation of America at least a part of the money which 'was necessary for its support.'

This policy was, we think, as unwise as it was disastrous; and it was persisted in long after abundant evidence had been given of its disastrous folly. Still, there is no reason for keeping out of sight the considerations which, in its own time, made that policy appear plausible to many men who were neither inveterately stupid nor incurably bad. And those who really wish to understand the times about which they read, owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Lecky for pointing out with judicial fairness what can be said on both sides of the great controversy, at all events in its earlier stages.

In August 1766, Lord Chatham took the place of Lord Rockingham, and under cover of a name which has elevated ' and adorned the annals of our Parliament, was formed a 'bad and foolish administration which woefully misdirected ' our national policy.'* On June 2, 1767, at the instance of Charles Townshend, Chancellor of the Exchequer, a duty of 3d. per lb. was laid upon tea imported into the American colonies. The Assembly of Massachusetts, in moderate language, petitioned the King in vain. Their petition was treated with contempt, and all the troubles caused by the Stamp Act, and more, again became rife throughout the colonies. This time, however, the King, and those to whom he mainly trusted, were determined not to yield. The Duke of Grafton soon succeeded Chatham, Lord Shelburne left the Ministry, and henceforward the narrow-minded and greedy faction of the Bedfords' exercised a fatal influence over his administration.†

Trevelyan, p. 33.

On this period additional light has been thrown by the valuable

To the dislike of Lord Chatham for the Rockinghams, which prevented their hearty co-operation in the service of the country, Sir George Trevelyan attributes the wretched policy which now prevailed. How differently would things have gone had Lord Chatham taken the command with Lord Rockingham, Lord John Cavendish, Savile, and Dowdeswell for his principal colleagues, and with Burke Chancellor of the Exchequer !

'Among the bright possibilities of history, very few can be entertained with better show of reason than a belief that the two nations might have kept house together with comfort, and in the end might have parted friends, if the statesman, whom both of them equally revered and trusted, would have thrown in his lot with that English party which, almost to a man, shared his wise views in regard to the treatment of our colonies, and sympathised with the love which he bore their people.' (P. 35.)

The England and the America of those days knew but little of each other, and Sir George Trevelyan more than accepts the views expressed by Franklin, of the disservice rendered to the Home Government by the ignorance, vanity, and narrow-mindedness of the representatives of the Crown in the colonies. Their office,' wrote Franklin, of the British Governors, makes them insolent, their insolence makes them 'odious, and being conscious that they are hated, they become 'malicious.' Our historian draws a sample portrait of the British Governor in describing Bernard, the Governor of Massachusetts, a partisan of imperial authority and a despiser of the popular party, who had 'proposed in cold 'blood,' after the repeal of the Stamp Act and before the imposition of the Tea Duty, to deprive Massachusetts of her Assembly, and who spent his time in sending home lists of royalists to be nominated in the place of the dismissed representatives, along with lists of patriots who were to be deported for trial to England. He called on the Bedfords for troops,' says Sir George, in a passage very characteristic of his style, as often and as importunately as ever the Bedfords themselves had called for trumps when a great stake was on the card-table.' He had plotted against the liberties of the country he was sent to govern. Since Machiavelli undertook 'to teach the Medici how principalities may be governed and 'maintained, no such body of literature was put on paper as that in which Sir Francis Bernard (for his services procured

6

work just published by Sir W. Anson, Bart.-viz., The Autobiography and Correspondence of the Third Duke of Grafton.'

him a baronetcy) instructed George the Third and his 'ministers in the art of throwing away a choice portion of a mighty empire.' The historian, in short, accepts 'in cold 'blood,' and highly colours the views taken in the heat of the struggle by Bernard's bitterest opponents. The patriots and agitators and rebels whom Bernard denounced, were, in truth, far better and much higher-minded men than the loyalist governor honestly supposed, and, on the other hand, we greatly doubt whether Bernard himself was quite the monster of malignity which he appeared in the excited imaginations of the patriots of the day. In Mr. Lecky's calmer narrative Bernard is described as an honest and 'rather able, but injudicious and disputatious man,' trying hard to do his duty both to his Government and the people. He had opposed the Stamp Act as inexpedient, while not questioning the right of Parliament to tax the colonies. He became, through no fault of his own, as the quarrel deepened, the representative of the hated British Authority, and it is natural enough, therefore, that his name should have been pursued with untiring virulence to the present 'day.'

But, setting aside the failings of British agents in the colonies, how, asks Sir George Trevelyan, could there possibly be any personal sympathy, any identity of public views, between those who governed in Downing Street and those who were governed in Pennsylvania and New England? A corrupt Ministry, representing a rotten and vicious society, on the one hand, and on the other a virtuous and primitive people, among whom great wealth had not yet come to destroy an equality of general comfort. Assuredly no comparison can be drawn between the old age of Lord Holland and of 'Franklin ; ' nor between, on the one hand, the dissipated, gambling youth of too many of the aristocratic statesmen of England, and, on the other hand, the strait and stern upbringing of the future liberators, orators, and rulers of 'America.' The contrast between the general corruption of English public and private life and the purity and simplicity of manners which prevailed in New England, is drawn in colours somewhat too strong, unless indeed it is intended to represent the great struggle with the colonies as simply a war between good and evil-New England representing the Good, and Old England the Wicked! Chatham's successes had built up a mighty empire. Streams of wealth from distant colonies flowed into England, and the days of Imperial Rome seemed to be returning. Men read their

6

VOL. CLXXXIX. NO. CCCLXXXVII.

T