XXX. declined to have any thing to do with enforcing the As- CHAPTER sociation. While the Convention was sitting, the Quak er yearly meeting, assembled at Philadelphia, put forth a 1775 'testimony," in which their members were called upon 66 "to unite in abhorrence of every measure and writing" "tending to break off the happy connection of the colonies. with the mother country, or to interrupt their just subordination to the king." The religious sentiments of the other leading sects were not without a certain effect on politics. The Congregational ministers of New England, an intelligent and very influential body, headed at this period by Chauncy and Cooper, of Boston, cherished a traditionary sentiment of opposition to British control-a sentiment strengthened, of late years, by the attempts of the English Society for the Propagation of the Gospel to build up Episcopacy in New England by supporting there some thirty Episcopal missionaries. An unseasonable revival of the scheme for a bishop in the colonies had recently excited a bitter controversy, in which, since Mayhew's death, Chauncy had come forward as the Congregational champion-a controversy which could only tend to confirm the Congregational body in hostility to the extension of English influence. The larger part of the Presbyterians, the most numerous sect in the middle colonies, derived their origin from the dissenting sections of the Scottish Church. For the most part, they had the same political sympathies with the Congregationalists of New England. The recent union of the old and new light synods in a single synod at Philadelphia had tended to give concentration and unity to this sect. Witherspoon, an eminent Scottish clergyman, who had arrived some years before to take charge of the College of New Jersey, was presently sent a dele XXX. CHAPTER gate to Congress, of which body he became an active member. The native-born Presbyterians were almost 1775. all stanch Whigs; but the Scotch traders and merchants, numerous in the southern colonies, adhered gen erally to the Tory side. The Episcopal clergy throughout the colonies leaned, with very few exceptions, to the support of the crown; and in the middle and northern provinces their flocks were chiefly of the same way of thinking. In the southern colonies, where episcopacy was the established and prevailing form of worship, religion, uninflamed by sectarian contention, seems to have exercised very little influence over political opinions. The scheme, indeed, for an American bishop, so far from meeting with any count enance in Virginia, was denounced by the Assembly as "the pernicious project of a few mistaken clergymen.” The Episcopalians were more numerous and influential in New York than in any other northern province; and, for some years past, New York had evinced a degree of backwardness. The moderate Assembly, chosen in 1769, and still in existence, declined to sanction the Jan. 16. proceedings of the late Continental Congress, or to apFeb. 23. point delegates to the new one. Yet they did by no means abandon the colonial cause; a petition to the king, a memorial to the House of Lords, and a representation and remonstrance to the Commons, were forwarded to their agent, Edmund Burke-documents not materially different in their tone from those adopted by the Continental Congress. In Georgia, the committee of Christ Church parish Jan. 18. called a Convention to meet at the same time with the Assembly. But only seven out of the twelve parishes were represented; and the influence of Governor Wright was still sufficient to prevent the adoption by that prov ince of the American Association. CHAPTER XXXI. VIEWS AND MEASURES OF THE BRITISH MINISTRY AND XXXI. ENCOURAGED by information from America, de- CHAPTER rived from officials whose opinions were greatly influenced by their wishes, Lord North and his colleagues be- 1774. lieved that a little firmness and energy on the part of the mother country would shake the resolution and break up the apparent union of the colonies. Even in New England and Virginia a considerable number of the wealthy and respectable were known to be warmly attached to the mother country, though overborne and silenced, for the present, by the violence of the opposite party. In New York the friends of the crown were strong; many landed proprietors and merchants adhered to that side; a considerable part of the inhabitants consisted of recent emigrants, whose habits of loyalty were less easily shaken; while among those born in the province there prevailed a strong prejudice against the people of New England, sufficient, it was believed, to prove a serious obstacle to any hearty co-operation. The Quakers, so numerous and influential in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, and not without weight in North Carolina were known to be generally CHAPTER opposed to violent measures. The Germans, numerous XXXI. in Pennsylvania and the Carolinas, ignorant of the En1774. glish language, and unaccustomed to political rights or discussions, did not fully enter into the feelings of the English colonists. The Scotch Highlanders, settled in New York, North Carolina, and Georgia, were very ignorant and very loyal. The arts of Governor Martin had secured the attachment of the North Carolina Regulators, from whom several loyal addresses had already been received. New England, New Jersey, and Penn sylvania were known to be deeply imbued with republican ideas; but the law of primogeniture which prevailed in New York and the South, co-operating with the institution of slavery, had raised up in those provinces a local aristocracy, whose opinions and feelings, as it was thought, could not, without the greatest difficulty, allow them permanently to co-operate with the democratic population of the other colonies. Should their union remain perfect, the united re sources of the colonies were deemed wholly inadequate to any obstinate or lengthened resistance. With the usual bravado of military men, British officers boasted how, at the head of a few regiments, they could march from one end of America to the other. Even if the Americans dared to fight at all, which those officers pr fessed very much to doubt, one or two battles, it was believed, would quell their proud spirit, and make them glad to accept of peace on almost any terms. Of all the British speakers and writers who exercised their pens and tongues on what had now become a question of universal interest, only one had the good sense and good feeling to recommend a peaceful separation. This was Dean Tucker, a pamphleteer of that day, who had put forth several tracts in relation to the pending contro XXXI. versy. He proposed that Parliament, by a solemn act, CHAPTER declaring them to have forfeited all the privileges of British subjects by sea and land, should cut off the re- 1774 bellious provinces from the British empire; with provision, however, for granting pardon and restoration to either or all of them, on their humble petition to that effect. Had this pacific plan been adopted, Great Britain would still have retained in America a large party of influential adherents. The furious hatred which the war generated a hatred which has not yet wholly died out-would not have been excited against her. The colonies, differing among themselves, might have adopted, in consequence, different lines of policy. At the worst, they could only have been lost, and that without the expenses of a war, and the mutual antipathy which the war produced. But this scheme, so different from vulgar expedients, was denounced on all sides as the height of folly. Even the philosophic Burke, whose philosophy, however, was always bounded by precedent, scouted it as "childish." A general election had recently taken place in Great Nov. 30. Britain, but the result boded no good to the colonies. Parties in the new House of Commons stood very much as before. Lord North, and his colleagues in the ministry, had an overwhelming majority. Ministers not · only were sure of support from Parliament, and from the personal feelings of the king, strongly bent upon bringing the colonies to unconditional submission, they were also sustained by the general sentiment of the British people, by whom the stigma of rebellion was already af fixed to the conduct of the colonists. Yet there was not wanting, both in and out of Parliament, a very respectable minority opposed to subduing the colonists by force, and anxious to promote an amica |