of his country were to be the consequence of her claim to the right of taxing the colonies, he would be the first to say, Let her perish!"* One Dr. Price, a Dissenting minister-who in after years styled the organizers of the Reign of Terror "heavenly philanthropists ❞— persistently preached and wrote against the wickedness of the Government in attempting to maintain control over the colonies, and for these patriotic utterances he was presented with the freedom of the city of London in a gold box. The American Congress, too, rewarded the efforts of the worthy doctor by conferring upon him the citizenship of the United States, and inviting him to remove with his family to America, where he was promised a lucrative office. The offer was declined by Price, on the plea of age and failing energy, in a letter in which he eulogized the Congress as "the most respectable and important assembly in the world;" and in which he predicted "a shocking catastrophe" to Great Britain as the result of her decadence and her crimes.7

Josiah Wedgwood, the exalted potter, added his voice to the general clamor; lamenting the decadence of his country, but rejoicing that it was only Great Britain that was doomed to destruction, and that the virtuous Americans were destined to be free.† Wedgwood, like Price, Priestley, and many other English Whigs, was a secret correspondent and spy for the American Disunion chiefs; and he seems to have done even more than his colleagues in sowing treasonable sentiments among the laborers and artisans of the provinces, thus making it impossible to obtain recruits from that class. However, Wedgwood was not so open in his advocacy of rebellion as were many of his colleagues. He was enjoying the patronage of the Court in the sale of his wares, and he seems to have been very much alive to his own interests. Conspicuous in his opposition to

*William Baker to Burke, October 22, 1777: Burke's Works, Vol. I., p. 353.

†Letter to Thomas Bentley early in 1778.

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these men and to other Nonconformist ministers-if rightly he may be called a Nonconformist-was John Wesley, who, by exhortation as well as by his pen,* endeavored to regenerate the failing loyalty of his countrymen, and to show that the American insurrectionists were not animated alone by an unselfish love of their species, but rather by a desire for self-aggrandisement. The Muse, too, was awakened to energy by the acclamations of the friends of America" in the cause of the oppressed colonists. Robert Burns wrote some stanzas, which, I suppose, it would be heresy to call doggerel, yet for which it would be difficult to find a term more appropriate, in praise of Montgomery and other Revolutionary commanders and politicians, and in derision of the ministers. One Jones (later Sir William, the Oriental scholar) also felt impelled to express his overcharged feelings in verse. He wrote some lines in which "Virtue," accompanied by "Truth," "Reason," "Valor" and "Justice," was depicted as abandoning enslaved Britain and crossing the Atlantic to take up her residence on the banks of the Delaware, there to instruct American youth how to wield "th' avenging steel" over the heads of British tyrants.

No secrecy was deemed necessary in the expression of these and kindred sentiments by those who cherished them or professed to cherish them. The same inward suggestions," wrote a friend of Burke, "which determined us originally to resist these measures [of opposition to the colonial insurrectionists] ought to confirm us in an inflexible, unrelenting, public and avowed opposition to them." Accordingly, they were openly avowed, and unscrupulously, as well as inflexibly and unrelentingly, urged upon the people and received by them as if they were the most patriotic of utterances. Any journal, pamphlet or book advocating the cause

*See Wesley's pamphlet, A Calm Address to the Inhabitants of England.

+William Baker to Burke, October 22, 1777: Burke's Works, Vol. I., p. 353.

of the revolting colonists, or in praise of their leaders, was sure of a favorable reception by the English public and a ready sale. That of Dr. Price, The Justice and Policy of the War with America, more conspicuous for its partizanship than for its trustworthy statements, in a short time reached a circulation of more than sixty thousand. A poem written in praise of Washington, published in London at a high price, also reached a very great circulation. This work was published when the war had been raging for five years. One may

imagine the reception of a poem in praise of Jefferson Davis or Robert E. Lee, in Boston, say, in 1864! After the conflict at Lexington a subscription for the benefit of "the widows and orphans of our beloved American fellow-subjects inhumanly murdered by the King's troops at or near Lexington and Concord,"* was raised in London and the proceeds transmitted to Franklin. In that contest many British soldiers were killed, but there was no thought of raising money for the benefit of their widows and orphans-they had been fighting for their king and country.

Nor were the actions of the ministers less remarkable than those of the Opposition. Called upon to conduct a war against a well-organized rebellion, whose leaders were animated by the most implacable animosity to the Government and possessed great resources, and who already were in treaty with a foreign power with a view to an offensive alliance, they prepared for the conflict after the manner of a schoolmaster quelling the outbreak of mischievous scholars. They placed the command of the army and navy in the hands of two brothers, both of whom had declared their belief that it was wrong to coerce the revolting colonists; and the portfolio of war in the hands of one who had declared that they never could be subdued by force of arms.8 Therefore, a resort to arms must be held in abeyance; an inveterate rebellion were best subdued by proclamation.9

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*John Horne Tooke, in the Evening Post.

Certainly these were remarkable conditions, conditions which should not be overlooked by those who desire to obtain a clear view of the facts of the American Revolution. They continued with but slight amelioration until the consummation of the alliance of France with the revolted colonists. Then ensued a partial return to sanity; patriotism no longer was confined to a few officers of the army and navy. But many

years were to pass, another revolution was to begin and end, before Britain was healed of the wounds inflicted upon her by her own sons in their party dissensions consequent upon the colonial revolt.

French writers who assert that the American colonists were indebted to France for the attainment of their independence make no unwarrantable boast, for without French military and naval assistance that independence could not have been attained. Yet, as that assistance would not have been afforded but for the action of the Opposition party in England, and as that party never tired in its efforts to make that assistance effectual and to prevent the taking of effective means to suppress the insurrection, more truthfully it can be said that American independence was the gift of the English Whigs.

CHAPTER VI.

AMERICAN PATRIOTISM AND SELF-SEEKING.

DID one heart animate the whole body of the colonists? Were the American Disunionists inspired by those benevolent and disinterested principles, that inflexible love of freedom, attributed to them by their British admirers and abettors? Were they intellectually and morally superior to the peoples of Europe, as asserted by their historians? Was the Revolution achieved with that benign tranquillity affirmed by Mr. Bancroft? Did new forms of virtue, fidelity to principle, unselfishness, a strange elevation of feeling and dignity of action pervade the masses of the American people at the period of the Revolution?

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All observers testify to the intense jealousy existing between the provinces before, during and after the Revolution. Fire and water," we are told by a traveller who visited the colonies a few years before the open agitation for Disunion began, are not more heterogeneous than the different colonies in North America. Nothing can exceed the jealousy and emulation which they possess in regard to each other. Were they left to themselves there would soon be a civil war from one end of the continent to the other."* A traveller of the previous decade gives similar testimony, and notes with astonishment the fact that the several provinces were so careless of their common interest that, on such occasions as one of them being overrun by the enemy, the others not only refused to

*Andrew Burnaby, Travels Through the Middle Settlements, etc.; Pinkerton's Voyages, Vol. XIII., p. 752.