But it was a day of happy omen for the English race, in the Old World as well as in the New. For the advent of Lord Rockingham’s ministry meant not merely the independence of the United States; it meant the downfall of the only serious danger with which English liberty has been threatened since the expulsion of the Stuarts. The personal government which George III. had sought to establish, with its wholesale corruption, its shameless violations of public law, and its attacks upon freedom of speech and of the press, became irredeemably discredited, and tottered to its fall; while the great England of William III., of Walpole, of Chatham, of the younger Pitt, of Peel, and of Gladstone was set free to pursue its noble career. Such was the priceless boon which the younger nation, by its sturdy insistence upon the principles of political justice, conferred upon the elder. The decisive battle of freedom in England, as well as in America, and in that vast colonial world for which Chatham prophesied the dominion of the future, had now been fought and won. And foremost in accomplishing this glorious work had been the lofty genius of Washington, and the steadfast valour of the men who suffered with him at Valley Forge, and whom he led to victory at Yorktown.
In the light of the foregoing narrative it distinctly appears that, while the American Revolution involved a military struggle between the governments of Great Britain and the United States, it did not imply any essential antagonism of interests or purposes between the British and American peoples. It was not a contest between Englishmen and Americans, but between two antagonistic principles of government, each of which had its advocates and opponents in both countries. It was a contest between Whig and Tory principles, and it was the temporary prevalence of Toryism in the British government that caused the political severance between the two countries. If the ideas of Walpole, or the ideas of Chatham, had continued to prevail at Westminster until the end of the eighteenth century, it is not likely that any such political severance would have occurred. The self-government of the American colonies would not have been interfered with, and such slight grievances as here and there existed might easily have been remedied by the ordinary methods of peace. The American Revolution, unlike most political revolutions, was essentially conservative in character. It was not caused by actually existing oppression, but by the determination to avoid possible oppression in future. Its object was not the acquisition of new liberties, but the preservation of old ones. The principles asserted in the Stamp Act Congress of 1765 differed in no essential respect from those that had been proclaimed five centuries earlier, in Earl Simon’s Parliament of 1265. Political liberty was not an invention of the western hemisphere; it was brought to these shores from Great Britain by our forefathers of the seventeenth century, and their children of the eighteenth naturally refused to surrender the treasure which from time immemorial they had enjoyed.
The decisive incident which in the retrospect appears to have made the Revolution inevitable, as it actually brought it upon the scene, was the Regulating Act of April, 1774, which annulled the charter of Massachusetts, and left that commonwealth to be ruled by a military governor. This atrocious measure, which was emphatically condemned by the most enlightened public sentiment in England, was the measure of a half-crazy young king, carried through a parliament in which more than a hundred members sat for rotten boroughs. It was the first violent manifestation of despotic tendency at the seat of government since 1688; and in this connection it is interesting to remember that in 1684 Charles II. had undertaken to deal with Massachusetts precisely as was attempted ninety years later by George III. In both cases the charter was annulled, and a military governor appointed; and in both cases the liberties of all the colonies were openly threatened by the tyrannical scheme. But in the earlier case the conduct of James II. at once brought on acute irritation in England, so that the evil was promptly removed. In the later case the evil was realized so much sooner and so much more acutely in the colonies than in England as to result in political separation. Instead of a general revolution, overthrowing or promptly curbing the king, there was a partial revolution, which severed the colonies from their old allegiance; but at the same time the success of this partial revolution soon ended in restraining the king. The personal government of George III. was practically ended by the election of 1784.
BUST OF WASHINGTON, CHRIST CHURCH, BOSTON
Throughout the war the Whigs of the mother country loyally sustained the principles for which the Americans were fighting, and the results of the war amply justified them. On the other hand, the Tories in America were far from agreed in approving the policy of George III. Some of them rivalled Thurlow and Germain in the heartiness with which they supported the king; but others, and in all probability a far greater number, disapproved of the king’s measures, and perceived their dangerous tendency, but could not persuade themselves to take part in breaking up the great empire which represented all that to their minds was best in civilization. History is not called upon to blame these members of the defeated party. The spirit by which they were animated is not easily distinguishable from that which inspired the victorious party in our Civil War. The expansion of English sway in the world was something to which the American colonies had in no small share contributed, and the rejoicings over Wolfe’s victory had scarcely ceased when the spectre of fratricidal strife came looming up in the horizon. An American who heartily disapproved of Grenville’s well-meaning blunder and Townshend’s malicious challenge might still believe that the situation could be rectified without the disruption of the Empire. Such was the attitude of Thomas Hutchinson, who was surely a patriot, as honest and disinterested as his adversary, Samuel Adams. The attitude of Hutchinson can be perfectly understood if we compare it with that of Falkland in the days of the Long Parliament. In the one case as in the other sound reason was on the side of the Moderates; but their fatal weakness was that they had no practical remedy to offer. Between George III. and Samuel Adams any real compromise was as impossible as between Charles I. and Pym.
It was seriously feared by many patriotic Tories, like Hutchinson, that if the political connection between the colonies and the mother country were to be severed, the new American republics would either tear themselves to pieces in petty and ignominious warfare, like the states of ancient Greece, or else would sink into the position of tools for France or Spain. The history of the thirty years after Yorktown showed that these were not imaginary dangers. The drift toward anarchy, from which we began to be rescued in 1787, was unmistakable; and after 1793 the determination of France to make a tool of the United States became for some years a disturbing and demoralizing element in the political situation. But as we look at these events retrospectively, the conclusion to which we are driven is just opposite to that which was entertained by the Tories. Dread of impending anarchy brought into existence our Federal Constitution in 1787, and nothing short of that would have done it. But for the acute distress entailed by the lack of any stronger government than the Continental Congress, the American people would have been no more willing to enter into a strict Federal Union in 1787 than they had been in 1754. Instead of bringing anarchy, the separation from Great Britain, by threatening anarchy, brought more perfect union. In order that American problems should be worked out successfully, independence was necessary.
It is to be regretted that the attainment of that independence must needs have been surrounded with the bitter memories inseparable from warfare. In such a political atmosphere as that of the ancient Greek world it need not have been so. The Greek colony, save in two or three exceptional cases, enjoyed complete autonomy. Corinth did not undertake to legislate for Syracuse; but the Syracusan did not therefore cease to regard Corinthians as his fellow-countrymen. The conceptions of allegiance and territorial sovereignty, which grew to maturity under the feudal system, made such relations between colony and mother state impossible in the eighteenth century. Autonomy could not be taken for granted, but must be won with the sword.