Revolutionary Reader: Reminiscences and Indian Legends

by Sophie Lee Foster

The first king of the Hanover line, George I, was seated on his throne through a successful piece of Whig politics, so admirably described by Thackeray in Henry Esmond, and his government was conducted by a Whig minister, Robert Walpole, assisted by a Whig cabinet. The power remained in the hands of a few families, and this condition, which amounted to an aristocratic rule of "Old Whigs," lasted down to the accession of George III, in 1760. The new king, who was destined to be the last king in America, was not like his father and grandfather, a German-speaking prince who knew nothing of England and her people, but one who gloried in the name Briton. Brought up by his mother with the fixed idea he should never forget that he was king, his ambition was to restore the autocratic power of William I. or Henry II. To attain this end he set himself to overthrow the Whig party and so recall to favor the Tories, who had by this time given up their dreams of "Bonnie Prince Charlie" and Stuart restorations.

This misguided monarch, who was a model of Christian character in private life, but who in the words of a great English historian, wrought more lasting evil to his country than any other man in its history, determined first to overthrow William Pitt, the elder, the greatest statesman that the English speaking race has ever produced—that man who sat in his room in London and planned campaigns in the snow covered mountains of Silesia and the impassable swamps of Prussia, on the banks of the Hugli in India and on the Plain of Abraham in Canada, in the spicy islands of the East Indies and the stormy waters of the Atlantic, who brought England from the depths of lowest dejection to a point where the gifted Horace Walpole could say in 1759, "We must inquire each morning what new victory we should celebrate." This great man was overthrown by the king in 1761, and there came into power the extreme Tory wing, known as the "king's friends," whose only rule of political guidance was the royal wish. These men, led by the Earl of Bute, followed the king on one of the wildest, maddest courses that English partisan politics has known.

At this point we must pause and examine the constitution of the British Empire. England, Scotland, and Wales were governed by their own Parliament, but so defective was the method of representation that villages which had formerly flourished but had now fallen into decay or even like Old Sarum, were buried under the waves of the North Sea, still returned their two members to Parliament, while important cities like Manchester, Leeds, and Birmingham, which had grown up in the last hundred years, were entirely unrepresented. The Whigs in England, as least the New Whigs, the progressive element, were contending for the same principle of representation that inspired the Americans. In addition to the home-land, England ruled, as colonies, Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands, sea fortresses, such as Gibraltar and Malta, Asiatic possessions, including in India an empire twenty times as populous as the ruling country, Canada, Jamaica, the Barbadoes, the Thirteen Colonies, etc. Our own thirteen colonies, which were not united among themselves and which were not different in the eyes of an Englishman from any other of the colonies, formed a small part geographically of the empire and had for their peculiar distinction only the larger proportion of English residents.

Furthermore, the modern idea of governing colonies for the welfare of the colonies had not yet been invented. A colony was considered as a farm or any other wealth producing piece of property. Adam Smith's epoch-making work, "The Wealth of Nations," the first serious attempt to discuss Political Economy, was not published till 1776, and in his chapter on colonies he for the first time proposed the doctrine of removing restrictions and allowing to colonies free trade and free government. It is significant of the contentions of this article that Adam Smith's book was at once read and quoted in Parliament by the leaders of the Whigs, especial attention being given to it by the young William Pitt, who was described by an enthusiastic Whig as "not a chip of the old block but the old block itself."

With this preliminary statement we can take up the course of party relations. One of the first distinctively party acts of George's reign was the Stamp Act passed against the active opposition of the Whigs; and the downfall of the Grenville ministry and the accession of the Marquis of Rockingham, the Whig prime minister, marked by the repeal of this act in 1766. In the next year, however, the Rockingham ministry fell, and Townshend, the moving spirit in the succeeding administration, carried through the series of acts that led directly to the Boston Tea Party and its momentous results.

Finally when George III, who openly proclaimed himself a Tory, succeeded in becoming supreme in the government, he called into office, in 1770, Lord George North, who for twelve years was the king's tool in carrying out a policy which he disliked. It was only his "lazy good nature and Tory principles," which led him to defer to the king's judgment and advocate the doctrine, in a far different sense from the present meaning of the words, that "the king can do no wrong." From this day it was natural that the Whigs in opposition should oppose the government measures and should identify the cause of free government in America with that in England and that every New Whig should become an enthusiastic supporter of the American contentions. In fact George and the Tory party realized that if the American theory of taxation conditioned on representation prevailed it would be necessary to yield to the demand of the New Whigs for reform in the representation in England.

This fact explains some intricate points in the politics of the time. It shows for instance why we fought a war with England and then in securing a treaty of peace conspired with our enemy, England, to wrest more favorable terms from our ally, France. We fought a Tory England, but Lord North's ministry fell when the news of Yorktown came, and we made a treaty of peace with a whig England, and the Whigs were our friends. The Whigs in Parliament spoke of the American army as "our army," Charles Fox spoke of Washington's defeat as the "terrible news from Long Island," and Wraxall says that the famous buff and blue colors of the Whig party were adopted from the Continental uniform. Even the "Sons of Liberty" took their name from a phrase struck out by Colonel Barre, the comrade of Wolfe at Quebec, in the heat of a parliamentary debate.

Illustrations of this important point might be multiplied, but it may be better to take up more minutely the career of one man and show how the conflict of Whig and Tory politics affected the actual outcome of the struggle. Lord George Howe was the only British officer who was ever really loved by the Americans, and there is to-day in Westminster Abbey a statue erected to his memory by the people of Massachusetts. After his death at Ticonderoga in 1758 his mother issued an address to the electors of Nottingham asking that they elect her youngest son William to Parliament in his place. William Howe, known in American history as General Howe, considered himself as the successor of his brother and as the especial friend of the Americans. When war was threatened in 1774 he told his constituents that on principle the Americans were right and that if he were appointed to go out against them he would as a loyal Whig refuse. Of course this was a reckless statement, for an officer in the army can not choose whom he will fight. He was put in supreme command in America when General Gage was recalled, but was directed by his government to carry the olive branch in one hand. That he obeyed this command, which was to his own liking, even too literally, is easily established.

There is one almost unwritten chapter in American history which I would like to leave in oblivion, but candor demands its settlement. Our people were not as a whole enthusiastic over the war, in many sections a majority were opposed to it, those who favored it were too often half-hearted in their support. Had the men of America in 1776 enlisted and served in the same proportion in which the men of the Southern States did in 1861, when fighting for their "independence," Washington would have had at all times over 60,000 in his army. As a matter of fact there never were as many as 25,000 in active service at any one time, the average number was about 4,000, and at certain critical times he had not over 1,000. General Knox's official figures of 252,000 are confessedly inaccurate, and by including each separate short enlistment make up the total enlistment for the six years, sometimes counting the same man as often as five times. At the very time when Washington's men were starving and freezing at Valley Forge the country people were hauling provisions past the camp and selling them to the British in Philadelphia.