The years which followed the Seven Years' War were a time of peace for a great part of the Continent, in the course of which a memorable change took place in European polity. It was the age of what may be called the Repentance of Monarchy. That which had been selfish, oppressive, and cruel became impersonal, philanthropic, and beneficent. The strong current of eighteenth-century opinion left the State omnipotent, but obliged it to take account of public, as distinct from dynastic, interests. It was employed more or less intelligently, for the good of the people. Humanity contended for the mastery with ambition. It was still a despotism, but an enlightened despotism. The competent expert more than ever was supreme, but he was influenced by great writers—Locke, Montesquieu, Turgot, Beccaria, Adam Smith. There was a serious tendency to increase popular education, to relieve poverty, to multiply hospitals, to promote wealth by the operations of the engineer, to emancipate the serf, to abolish torture, to encourage academies, observatories, and the like. Prisons had never been so bad—attempts were made to reform them. The slave trade had never been so prosperous; people began to doubt whether it was moral. Laws were codified, and though the codes were surprisingly bad, the laws were improved by them. The movement was almost universal, from Spain to Denmark and Russia. Piedmont dealt successfully with the feudal and social question, which baffled the National Assembly in France. The rich plain of the Milanese was administered by a proconsul of Maria Theresa, in a manner which made it the example of Europe. A strenuous disciple of the economists governed Baden. Wuerzburg and Bamberg, under the last Prince Bishop, were considered the happiest region in the empire. Turgot, Bernstorff, Firmian, were admired and imitated as Lewis XIV had been in a former phase of absolute monarchy. Society was enjoyable, apart from politics, and was studied like a fine art in the homes of luxury—Paris, Brussels, Rome, and Venice. Things went very well in those days with any man who was not a Whig, and had no views as to what makes governments legitimate and averts revolution.
In that age of the enlightenment of despotism the most enlightened despot was Frederic II. Of all rulers and reformers he was the most laborious and incessant. "A king," said he, "is the first servant of the State." He did more work and had fewer pleasures than any of them. The dominant influence was philosophy, not religion, emancipation of the State from the Church. That corresponded well with Frederic's temper. He was tolerant, and on the whole consistently tolerant. In those days the Jesuits were suppressed, first by the secular power in Bourbon countries, then by the Papacy. The Jesuits peculiarly represented the old order that was changing, and the authority of the ecclesiastical law that was being restrained. When they ceased to exist in Catholic countries, they sought a refuge in England, and at Petersburg; but their best and most determined protector was Frederic the Great. The only one of all the princes of that generation who saw farther, and understood that the time of absolute monarchy, enlightened or unenlightened, was very near its end, was Leopold of Tuscany, ancestor of the Austrian dynasty. That was a thing which Frederic never perceived. The great change that came over Europe in his time did not make for political freedom. We shall see how that greater change was to come from beyond the Atlantic.
XIX
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
THE RATIONAL and humanitarian enlightenment of the eighteenth century did much for the welfare of mankind, but little to promote the securities of freedom. Power was better employed than formerly, but it did not abdicate.
In England, politically, the most advanced country, the impetus which the Revolution gave to progress was exhausted, and people began to say, now that the Jacobite peril was over, that no issue remained between parties which made it worth while for men to cut each others' throats. The development of the Whig philosophy was checked by the practical tendency to compromise. Compromise distinguished the Whig from the Roundhead, the man who succeeded from the man who failed, the man who was the teacher of politics to the civilised world from the man who left his head on Temple Bar.
The Seven Years' War renewed the interrupted march by involving America in the concerns of Europe, and causing the colonies to react on the parent state. That was a consequence which followed the Conquest of Canada and the accession of George III. The two events, occurring in quick succession, raised the American question. A traveller who visited America some years earlier reports that there was much discontent, and that separation was expected before very long. That discontent was inoperative whilst a great military power held Canada. Two considerations reconciled the colonists to the disadvantages attending the connection with England. The English fleet guarded the sea against pirates; the English army guarded the land against the French. The former was desirable; the latter was essential to their existence. When the danger on the French side disappeared, it might become very uncertain whether the patrol of the Atlantic was worth the price that America had to pay for it. Therefore Montcalm foretold that the English, if they conquered the French colonies, would lose their own. Many Frenchmen saw this, with satisfaction; and the probability was so manifest that Englishmen saw it too. It was their interest to strengthen their position with new securities, in the place of that one supreme security which they had lost by their victory at Quebec. That victory, with the vast acquisition of territory that followed, would be no increase of imperial power if it loosened the hold on Atlantic colonies. Therefore, the policy of the hour was to enforce the existing claims and to obtain unequivocal recognition of English sovereignty. The most profitable method of doing it was in the shape of heavier taxation; but taxes were a small matter in comparison with the establishment of undisputed authority and unquestioning submission. The tax might be nominal, if the principle was safe. Ways and means would not be wanting in an empire which extended from Hudson's Bay to the Gulf of Mexico. For the moment the need was not money but allegiance. The problem was new, for the age of expansion had come suddenly, in East and West, by the action of Pitt; and Pitt was no longer in office, to find the solution.
Among the Whigs, who were a failing and discredited party, there were men who already knew the policy by which since then the empire has been reared—Adam Smith, Dean Tucker, Edmund Burke. But the great mass went with the times, and held that the object of politics is power, and that the more dominion is extended, the more it must be retained by force. The reason why free trade is better than dominion was a secret obscurely buried in the breast of economists.
Whilst the expulsion of the French from their Transatlantic empire governed the situation, the immediate difficulty was brought on by the new reign. The right of searching houses and ships for contraband was conveyed by certain warrants called Writs of Assistance, which required no specified designation, no oath or evidence, and enabled the surprise visit to be paid by day or night. They were introduced under Charles II, and had to be renewed within six months of the demise of the crown. The last renewal had been at the death of George II; and it was now intended that they should be efficacious, and should protect the revenue from smugglers. Between 1727 and 1761 many things had changed, and the colonies had grown to be richer, more confident, more self-respecting. They claimed to extend to the Mississippi, and had no French or Spaniards on their borders. Practically, there was no neighbour but England, and they had a patrimony such as no Englishman had dreamt of. The letter of the law, the practice of the last generation, were no argument with the heirs of unbounded wealth and power, and did not convince them that they ought to lose by the aid which they had given against France. The American jurists argued that this was good by English law, but could not justly be applied to America, where the same constitutional safeguards did not exist—where the cases would be tried by judges without a jury, by judges who could be dismissed at pleasure, by judges who were paid by fees which increased with the amount of the property confiscated, and were interested in deciding against the American importer, and in favour of the revenue. That was a technical and pedestrian argument which every lawyer could understand, without passing the limits of accustomed thought.
Then James Otis spoke, and lifted the question to a different level, in one of the memorable speeches in political history. Assuming, but not admitting, that the Boston custom-house officers were acting legally, and within the statute, then, he said, the statute was wrong. Their action might be authorised by parliament; but if so, parliament had exceeded its authority, like Charles with his shipmoney, and James with the dispensing power. There are principles which override precedents. The laws of England may be a very good thing, but there is such a thing as a higher law.