The tracts of 1775-76 are too numerous to enumerate. Grahame characterizes the chief writers (United States, iv. 320). The monthly lists of the Gent. Mag. and Monthly Rev. will show most of their titles for England. Cf. Adolphus's England, ii. 331; Morgann's Life of Richard Price; Fitzmaurice's Shelburne, iii. 95. Haven's list for America ends with 1775; but the Brinley, Sparks, and other catalogues give many of them, and they can be found in Sabin by their authors' names. Many of these tracts embody plans of reconciliation.
[317] Sabin, xv. nos. 65,444, etc.; P. O. Hutchinson, ii. 38. John Wilkes, who had been Lord Mayor of London since 1774, brought the influence of its government against the ministry, and Price was offered the freedom of the city. Wilkes's speech of Feb. 6, 1775, is in Niles (ed. 1776, p. 425). In April, 1775, Wilkes and the aldermen had appealed to the king against the ministry (Bancroft, orig. ed., vii. 282), and there is a broadside copy of an appeal, July 5, 1775, by the city to the king, in the Mass. Hist. Soc. library. In Aug., 1775, when the king issued his proclamation for the suppression of the rebellion, Wilkes paid it studied affront.
[318] Varying views of the current of British feeling will be found in Frothingham's Rise of the Repub., p. 412, etc.; in Bancroft, orig. ed., vii. 219, 241, 257, etc., and in the final revision, iv. ch. 22 and 23. Lecky (iii. 573) thinks the majority of the people were with the king, and Hutchinson reported like views (Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., xvi. 255). Galloway was still communicating to the ministry secret intelligence through Gov. Franklin, of New Jersey (N. J. Archives, x. 570), and was causing it to be known that the people in the colonies who were for war were the violent ones, while the Quakers and the Dutch, the Baptists, Mennonists, and Dumplers, were for moderation (Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., xiv. 340).
A letter of John Wesley, June 14, 1775, to the Earl of Dartmouth, protesting against the war, is among the Dartmouth Papers, noted in the Hist. MSS. Com. Rept., ii., and is printed in Macmillan's Mag., Dec., 1870. Dartmouth, July 5th, wrote to Governor Franklin, of N. Jersey, that the king was determined to crush the revolt (N. J. Archives, x. 513, 645), and the king issued his proclamation "for suppressing rebellion and sedition" Aug. 23, 1775. It was sent over in broadside (Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., xii. 186), and is printed in Force's Amer. Archives. In September Arthur Lee was writing of the violent temper of the ministry (Calendar of A. Lee Papers, p. 7, no. 62). The Diary of Governor Hutchinson helps us much, and throws light on the talk of compromise (ii. 25, 27), the temporary forgetfulness of the American question in the trial of the Duchess of Kingston (ii. 34), and Pownall's talk (ii. 127). The military resources of the colonies were not overlooked, and A letter to Lord Geo. Germain (London, 1776) warned that minister of what this meant, while the decision to pardon criminals in order to enlist them in the service of suppressing the rebellion did not a little to widen the breach (Lecky, iii. 585).
Abstracts of various papers in the Public Record Office for 1775 are given in the Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., xiv. 340, etc.
[319] Cf. the indexes under the names of the leading debaters.
[320] The subject gets some enlivenment in the Toryism of Walpole's George the Third, edited by Le Marchant, and his Last Journals, edited by Dr. Doran.
Edmund Burke's conspicuousness makes his character and the record of it of first importance, and we need for successive estimates of his influence to consult the lives of him by Bisset, Prior, P. Burke, and Macknight. For his bearing as a speaker, see Wraxall's Hist. Memoirs (ii. 35). For an estimate of his arguments, see Smyth's Lectures (Bohn's ed., ii. 403, 408). His speeches on American Taxation (April 19, 1774) and conciliation (March 22, 1775) are in the various collected editions of his Works,—among the best of such being the Boston edition (1865, etc., Little, Brown & Co.) and the edition published by Nimmo (1885),—all of them following in the main Rivington's first octavo edition in 16 vols., London, 1801-27. Henry Morley has edited, with an introduction, Burke's Two speeches on Conciliation with America (London, 1886). His speech of March 22, 1775, is in Niles's Principles, etc. (1876 ed., p. 429). Lecky (iii. 426) sketches his policy. For conversations of Burke and North, see Mag. of Amer. Hist., Nov., 1881, p. 358.
The lives and speeches of Chatham are quite as necessary. Franklin was introduced into the Lords in Jan., 1775, by Chatham himself, when Chatham brought forward his motion for conciliation with America, and Franklin considered as much the best the notes which Josiah Quincy, Jr., made (Jan. 20, 1775) of the speeches of Chatham and Camden (Life of J. Quincy, Jr., 226, 264, 272, 318, 335, 403, 418; Sparks's Franklin, v. 43). Among the Cathcart MSS. is a contemporary copy of Chatham's plan which the Lords rejected (Hist. MSS. Com. Rept., ii. p. 28). The later speech of Dec. 20, 1775, for removing the troops from Boston, is also in Niles (1876 ed., p. 455). Cf. Gordon, i. 298; Force, 4th ser., i. 1,494; Smyth's Lectures, ii.; Parton's Franklin, ii. Mahon says that the whole spirit evaporates from the reports of Chatham's speeches in Almon. In March, 1775, Camden made a speech which Hutchinson (P. O. Hutchinson's Governor Hutchinson, 408, 410) describes and imagines Camden to have made in order that Franklin might take the speech to America. Hutchinson also in the same month describes Franklin in the Commons gallery, "staring with his spectacles", and listening to the speeches against America. Two speeches of Mansfield against America were criticised in The Plea of the Colonies on the Charges brought against them by Lord M——d and others (London, 1775, 1776; Philad., 1777,—Sabin, xv. 63,401-2).