I

CHAPTER IX.

1772-1778.

T remains for us to consider Chatham's later Amer

ican policy. Nothing is more remarkable than

the apathy which prevailed in England from the date of Townshend's budget till the penal measures of 1774. The world of politics and society was as blind to the great issue as that more brilliant society in Paris which discussed atheism and the fashions while the terrors of the Revolution were preparing. As Burke said, a robbery on Hounslow Heath excited more notice than the riots in America which threatened to dissever an Empire. The King realised that a great contest was impending, and called up his inexhaustible obstinacy for the struggle; the commercial classes knew that their prosperity was threatened, but their influence in Parliament was perhaps weaker during the ascendancy there of the King's friends" than at any period since the Revolution; the most experienced officers of the army and navy dreaded a possible war more than the bellicose orators of Westminster; but among the

leading politicians only Chatham, Burke, and Shelburne can be said to have realised the vital gravity of the problem which North wished solvere ambulando. The sentiments of Rockingham, Richmond, and the Cavendishes were true and sound, but the unavailing efforts of Burke to drag them from their fox-hunting and racing to St. Stephens are well known, and it is difficult to believe that the Whigs would have persisted in their masterly inactivity if they had seen the true issue. It would be a grave injustice to accuse them of hunting while Rome burned. Even Chatham from 1770 to 1774 seems to have paid little attention to what was occurring in the colonies, and during these years there is scarcely a mention of America in his correspondence.

This ignorance and apathy in England contrasts with a ferment of opinion in America, where men were slowly and cautiously considering their position, and comparing the claims of old association and tradition with the claims of the new order and society whose birth was heralded. It was a question momentous enough for each individual, whether his allegiance should be given to the Empire which seemed to have reached the height and summit of its power, or to the new State whose very existence as an united confederation was doubtful, and its greatness a matter of faith in the future. In one aspect the struggle was one between contending political principles, and in England especially it was a contest between "Revolution principles" and the system of oligarchic government, which was the actual result of the Revolution of 1689. But the Amer

ican Revolution was more than a tragic incident in the fight between parties which is the continuous occupation of the British race. It is true that many Americans, one third probably of the colonists, opposed the movement for separation, and that many Englishmen assisted the Americans in their resistance, but that which began as a civil war within the Empire became before its close a war between rival nations. The British race had lost its centre of common allegiance, and divided itself not into two parties but into two States. That was an even greater result of the struggle than the triumph of self-governing and democratic principles which the new State embodied. The American Loyalists were loyal to the Imperial connection, but they separated themselves from their fellow-colonists not because they approved the measures of Grenville and Townshend and North, but because their patriotic devotion to the Empire was even stronger than the love they felt for their own colonies. In the American patriots that balance of sentiment was reversed. In England parties were divided on more exclusively party grounds; there was an admixture of vulgar assertiveness of power which largely influenced the Bedford section of the Ministerial party, but so far as men were divided by thoughtful opinion and not by mere prejudice, it was on broad questions of Imperial policy. Viewed in the most favourable light, the ideas of George III. were that on grounds of Imperial expediency the colonies could not be trusted with self-government; that the central authority of the Empire must be maintained throughout its whole