[428] I disagree entirely with this. George, with the bulk of Parliament behind him, was out to insist on the sovereignty of the British Parliament (not of himself) over the colonists. Nor was it the Whig noblemen who opposed him, but Burke (conservatively inclined, and therefore up in arms for the traditional rights of the colonial legislatures) and Chatham (liberally inclined, and therefore up in arms for the principle of “no representation, no taxation”).—E. B.
[429] This again in my view is wrong. The system proposed, I read in an American writer, meant cheaper tea in the colonies. The objection taken by the colonists was legal.—E. B.
[430] I think this gives an erroneous impression that there was no real chance of reconciliation in 1776. There was. And indeed the whole separation was far from inevitable. If the British had (1) recognized the autonomy in each colony of its legislature, and (2) granted to the colonies cabinet government in place of government by governors sent from England, there would have been no schism. By 1839, the time of Lord Durham’s report, the British had learned to make the recognition and the grant; and with greater wisdom they could have made both in 1776. A great statesman in 1776 could have stopped the separation, and made history different. I am inclined to say that nothing is inevitable in history—except that when you don’t have good men, you don’t get good results. And that was the position under George III and Lord North.—E. B.
[431] The Tripoli Treaty, see Channing, vol. iii. chap. xviii.
[432] Wells, The Future in America.
[433] In 1776 Lord Dartmouth wrote that the colonists could not be allowed “to check or discourage a traffic so beneficent to the nation.”
[434] A very readable and remarkably well-illustrated book for the general reader upon the French Revolution is Wheeler’s French Revolution. Carlyle’s French Revolution has some splendid passages, but it is often unjust and evil-spirited. Madelin’s French Revolution is a good recent book.
[435] But see Rocquain’s L’Esprit révolutionnaire avant la Révolution. He traces the growth of a revolutionary spirit in the 18th century, and points to many predictions of a debacle in 18th-century French literature.—E. B.
[436] I disagree utterly and entirely with this view of Rousseau, which is quite unfair to the man who wrote Du Contrat Social. (1) He did not believe in the “state of nature”; he believed in the State, which had lifted man from being a brute that followed its nose into a reasoning being and a man. (2) He did not write to excuse breakers of the covenant. On the contrary, he wrote to preach the sovereignty of the general will, and he believed in the entire control of the individual by that will. Rousseau has been much misrepresented, and the text follows the misrepresentations. See Vaughan, The Political Writings of Rousseau, introduction to Du Contrat Social.—E. B.
[437] Article “France,” Encyclopædia Britannica.