At this time, the discontents which had long been manifest in the American colonies broke out into open revolt. The chief source of irritation against the mother country was the impolitic measure of retaining a trifling duty on tea, as an assertion of the right of the British parliament to tax the colonies.

The year

1774

bore a gloomy and arbitrary character, with wars abroad and uneasiness at home. The county of Nottingham omitted to raise their militia in the former year, and in this they were fined two thousand pounds.

Louis the Fifteenth of France died this year of the small-pox, caught from a country girl, introduced to him by Madame du Barré to gratify his sensual desires. He was in the sixty-fourth year of his age, and in the fifty-ninth of his reign. The gross debaucheries into which he had sank, with the despotic measures he had adopted towards the Chamber of Deputies in his latter years, had entirely deprived him of his appellation of the

[[59]]"Well-beloved." Few French sovereigns have left a less-respected memory.

1775

was also a year of disquiet. The City of London addressed the throne, and petitioned against the existing grievances, expressing their strong abhorrence of the measures adopted towards the Americans, justifying their resistance, and beseeching his majesty to dismiss his ministers. The invisible power of the queen, however, prevented their receiving redress, and the ministers were retained, contrary to all petition and remonstrance. Upon these occasions, the king was obliged to submit to any form of expression, dictated by the minister, that minister being under the entire controul of the queen; and though the nation seemed to wear a florid countenance, it was sick at heart. Lord North was a very considerable favourite with her majesty; while his opponents, Messrs. Fox and Burke, were proportionately disliked. The Duke of Grafton now felt tired of his situation, and told the queen that he could no longer continue in office; in consequence of which, the Earl of Dartmouth received the privy seal.

The Americans, in the mean time, were vigorously preparing for what they conceived to be inevitable—a war. Various attempts, notwithstanding, were made by the enlightened and liberal-minded part of the community to prevent ministers from

[[60]]continuing hostilities against them. That noble and persevering patriot, Lord Chatham, raised his warning voice against it. "I wish," said he, "not to lose a day in this urgent, pressing crisis; an hour now lost in allaying ferments in America, may produce YEARS OF CALAMITY! Never will I desert, in any stage of its progress, the conduct of this momentous business. Unless fettered to my bed by the extremity of sickness, I will give it unremitted attention; I will knock at the gates of this sleeping and confounded ministry, and will, if it be possible, rouse them to a sense of their danger. The recall of your army, I urge as necessarily preparatory to the restoration of your peace. By this it will appear that you are disposed to treat amicably and equitably, and to consider, revise, and repeal, if it should be found necessary, as I affirm it will, those violent acts and declarations which have disseminated confusion throughout the empire. Resistance to these acts was necessary, and therefore just; and your vain declaration of the omnipotence of Parliament, and your imperious doctrines of the necessity of submission, will be found equally impotent to convince or enslave America, who feels that tyranny is equally intolerable, whether it be exercised by an individual part of the legislature, or by the collective bodies which compose it!"