The same sentiments which proved his sympathies with our country reappeared with fresh fires at the outbreak of the French Revolution, arousing, in opposition, the immortal eloquence of Burke. A discourse “On the Love of our Country,” preached at the Old Jewry, 4th November, 1789, in commemoration of the English Revolution, with friendly glances at what was then passing across the Channel, prompted the “Reflections on the Revolution in France.” The personal denunciation which is the beginning of that remarkable performance is the perpetual witness to the position of the preacher, whose prophetic soul did not hesitate to accept the French Revolution side by side with ours in glory and in promise.
GOVERNOR POWNALL, 1777, 1780, 1783.
Among the best friends of our country abroad during the trials of the Revolution was Thomas Pownall, called by one biographer “a learned antiquary and politician,” and by another “an English statesman and author.” Latterly he has so far dropped out of sight that there are few who recognize in him either of these characters. He was born 1722, and died at Bath 1805. During this long period he held several offices. As early as 1745 he became secretary to the Commissioners for Trade and Plantations. In 1753 he crossed the ocean. In 1755, as Commissioner for Massachusetts Bay, he had a share in the negotiations with New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, in union with New England, which resulted in the confederated expedition against Crown Point. He was afterwards Governor of Massachusetts Bay, New Jersey, and South Carolina, successively. Returning to England, he was appointed, in 1762, Comptroller-General of the army in Germany, with the military rank of colonel. He sat in two successive Parliaments until 1780, when he passed into private life. Hildreth gives a glimpse of his personal character, when, admitting his frank manners and liberal politics, he describes his habits as “rather freer than suited the New England standard.”[518]
Pownall stands forth conspicuous for championship of our national independence, and especially for foresight with regard to our national future. In both these respects his writings are unique. Other Englishmen were in favor of independence, and saw our future also; but I doubt if any one can be named who was his equal in strenuous action, or in minuteness of foresight. While the war was still proceeding, as early as 1780, he openly announced, not only that independence was inevitable, but that the new nation, “founded in Nature and built up in truth,” would continually expand; that its population would increase and multiply; that a civilizing activity beyond what Europe could ever know would animate it; and that its commercial and naval power would be found in every quarter of the globe.[519] All this he set forth at length with argument and illustration, and he called his prophetic words “the stating of the simple fact, so little understood in the Old World.” Treated at first as “unintelligible speculation” and as “unfashionable,” the truth he announced was “neglected where it was not rejected, but in general rejected as inadmissible,” and the author, according to his own language, “was called by the wise men of the British Cabinet a Wild Man, unfit to be employed.”[520] But these writings are a better title now than any office. In manner they are diffuse and pedantic; but they hardly deserve the cold judgment of John Adams, who in his old age said of them that “a reader who has patience to search for good sense in an uncouth and disgusting style will find in those writings proofs of a thinking mind.”[521]
He seems to have written a good deal. But the works which will be remembered the longest are not even mentioned by several of his biographers. Rose, in his Biographical Dictionary, records works by him, entitled “Antiquities of the Provincia Romana of Gaul”; “Roman Antiquities dug up at Bath”; “Observations on the Currents in the Atlantic Ocean”; “Intellectual Physics”; and contributions to the “Archæologia”: nothing more. To this list Gorton, in his Biographical Dictionary, adds briefly, “besides many political tracts,” but without particular reference to the works on America. This is another instance where the stone rejected by the builders becomes the head of the corner.
At an early date Pownall comprehended the position of our country, geographically. He saw the wonderful means of internal communication supplied by its inland waters, and also the opportunities of external commerce afforded by the Atlantic Ocean. On the former he dwells, in a Memorial drawn up in 1756 for the Duke of Cumberland.[522] Nobody in our own day, after the experience of more than a century, has portrayed more vividly the two vast aqueous masses,—one composed of the Great Lakes and their dependencies, and the other of the Mississippi and its tributaries. The Great Lakes are described as “a wilderness of waters, spreading over the country by an infinite number and variety of branchings, bays, straits, &c.”[523] The Mississippi, with its eastern branch, called the Ohio, is described as having, “as far as we know, but two falls,—one at a place called by the French St. Antoine, high up on the west or main branch”; and all its waters “run to the ocean with a still, easy, and gentle current.”[524] The picture is completed by exhibiting the two masses in combination:—
“The waters of each respective mass—not only the lesser streams, but the main general body of each going through this continent in every course and direction—have, by their approach to each other, by their interlacing with each other, by their communication to every quarter and in every direction, an alliance and unity, and form one mass, a one whole.”[525]
And he remarks, that it is thus seen
“how the watery element claims and holds dominion over this extent of land: that the great lakes which lie upon its bosom on one hand, and the great river Mississippi and the multitude of waters which run into it, form there a communication,—an alliance or dominion of the watery element, that commands throughout the whole; that these great lakes appear to be the throne, the centre of a dominion, whose influence, by an infinite number of rivers, creeks, and streams, extends itself through all and every part of the continent, supported by the communication of, and alliance with, the waters of Mississippi.”[526]
If these means of internal commerce were vast, those afforded by the Atlantic Ocean were not less extensive. The latter were developed in the treatise on “The Administration of the Colonies,” the fourth edition of which, published in 1768, is now before me. This was after the differences between the Colonies and the mother country had begun, but before the idea of independence had shown itself. Pownall insisted that the Colonies ought to be considered as parts of the realm, entitled to representation in Parliament. This was a constitutional unity. But he portrayed a commercial unity also, which he represented in attractive forms. The British Isles, and the British possessions in the Atlantic and in America, were, according to him, “a grand marine dominion,” and ought, therefore, by policy, to be united into one empire, with one centre. On this he dwells at length, and the picture is presented repeatedly.[527] It was incident to the crisis in the world produced by the predominance of the commercial spirit already beginning to rule the powers of Europe. It was the duty of England to place herself at the head of this great movement:—