“I return to England. I give them back their accursed gold, and show them that though Englishmen may think like Warren Hastings, that the souls of men are expressed in pounds sterling according to their stations, yet in one place in this world manhood stands above guineas, and AMERICAN MANHOOD HAS NOT ITS PRICE!”
CHAPTER XL
We now come to the home affairs of Barclugh. He returned to England after his interview in New York.
Arnold was not successful in his enterprises after his failure to surrender West Point. He ravaged towns in Connecticut and in Virginia, as a British Brigadier, with fiendish delight, and history tells us that he led anything but a happy existence in England; and at last, died in seclusion.
“Unwept, unhonored and unsung.”
Poor Andre! He was the victim of the ambition of youth. His superiors depended on his ability to do extraordinary things; however, his nature was too guileless to cope with the daring of a man like Arnold. He ought never to have gone into the American lines. To have met Arnold secretly again at their rendezvous would have been an easy matter. His superior, Clinton, gave him explicit instructions not to enter the American outposts; but Arnold’s headlong rashness led him into danger and he paid the penalty with his life.
Lord Carlisle, the British Commissioner, returned to England and history tells us that he became Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland and sank into oblivion. He and George Selwyn were the prime movers in the plot, the purpose of which was to get funds from government with which to square the losses of Fox at the gaming-table.
Barclugh, however, though the main actor in the plot to hold America within the sphere of kingly and aristocratical government, was, by his actual experience among the Americans of all classes, convinced that their position was invincible on the principles of free and representative government. He could see that even though the British were to get the seaports along the Atlantic and hold them, the sturdy pioneers would retire into the mountains and fight until exterminated. Then the French Coalition gave England an enemy in the front and rear. He could see the end. He thought best to conclude the war, and, at least, save the Canadas to the mother country.