Much more might be said, but enough for a disagreeable subject. No careful historian to-day will deny that considering the lack of support given to Washington and his army, the Revolution could have been crushed in the first year, long before the French alliance was a possibility, had the English shown one-half the ability of the administration in the recent South African War. Among the causes assignable for this state of incompetence the political situation deserves more attention than it has hitherto been given.
No one has ever explained Howe's inexcusable carelessness in letting Washington escape after Long Island, no one can explain his foolish inactivity during the succeeding winter, except by the fact that Howe was a Whig, his sympathies were with the Americans, the Whigs had said repeatedly that the Americans could hold out against a good army and it seemed now that they were helping fulfill their own prophecy.
It is rarely stated in our American histories that Howe was investigated by a committee of Parliament after his evacuation of Philadelphia, that he was severely condemned for not assisting Burgoyne and for not capturing Washington's starving handful of men at Valley Forge, that Joseph Galloway, the noted American loyalist, who was a member of the first Continental Congress, openly accused him of being in league with a large section of Whigs to let the Revolution go by default and to give America its independence, and that immediately after his return to England he resumed his seat in Parliament and spoke and worked in opposition to the king and in behalf of the Americans.
The case of General Howe is typical and can be duplicated in the other departments of the government. The leading Tory ministers claimed that the rebellion would have failed but for the sympathy in the House of Commons, and this charge was made in the very House itself.
It would be a gross exaggeration to say that our Revolution was merely the result of a party quarrel in England, but the unfortunate party attitude of King George III. certainly was one of the most potent causes of trouble, and the progress of the war reacted most strongly on the party situation in England. When William Pitt, the younger, at the age of twenty-five took into his hands the premiership of England in December 1783, he did it as the representative of the English people, and the revolution which began in this country was completed in the English Parliament. Up to 1776 the history of America and England flowed in the same channel, Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Pitt are ours as much as England's, and it should always be remembered that just when the countries were in the act of separating the system of George III. was shaken off and shattered by the free people of the two great Anglo-Saxon powers, and the Whig statesmen of England could join with their party friends in America in welcoming a new self-governing people to the council of nations.—American Monthly Magazine.
[EARLY MEANS OF TRANSPORTATION BY LAND AND WATER.]
The facilities for conveniently carrying persons or property from one place to another affects in a measure the physical welfare of every human being, and all progressive nations desire to secure the advantages to be derived from the best systems of transportation. This country of ours has tried many experiments and been rapidly benefited in the results obtained. It hardly seems to us possible, in this day of improved and rapid travel, that the entire system of transportation is still in the transition state, and in some parts of the country the very expedients which we have tried, improved upon and cast away, are at present in use. But our topic deals with other days than these, and we must hasten back to the beginning of things here in America.