In the French Archives, among the papers of Choiseul, prime minister of France before our Revolutionary period, there are curious evidences of the intelligent and keenly inquisitive method which that astute statesman employed to acquaint himself thoroughly with the relations of the religious teaching and belief of the people of New England and the spirit of liberty aroused among them. He sent here a messenger to gather information especially upon those as upon many other subjects. He was to collect newspapers, advertisements, and extracts from sermons. It was inferences from such communicative papers, with other interpretations of omens and signs of the times, that helped prepare the government for the alliance of 1778. The French minister sent two emissaries, M. de Fontleroy in 1764 and the Baron De Kalb in 1768. (See Kapp's Life of John Kalb.) The latter's letters are copied in the Sparks MSS. Cf. the Vicomte de Colleville's Les missions secrètes du général-major baron de Kalb, et son rôle dans la guerre de l'indépendance américaine (Paris, 1885). Franklin was in Paris at this time. Cf. E. E. Hale's Franklin in France, p. 2.
[677] American Presbyterianism, its Origin and Early History, etc. By Charles Augustus Briggs, D. D. (New York, 1885, ch. ix.)
[678] All that can be said in justification of George III. is said by Mahon (vi. 100). The fact is, that, with the exception of a few like Dean Tucker and John Cartwright, the king's subjects were, like himself, deceived for a long time into believing that the loss of England's colonies would cause her sun to set. It was the king's obstinacy or "steadfastness", as you choose to call it, which kept him longer of that opinion than almost all of his subjects.—Ed.
[679] Well might Washington, writing to Dr. Franklin in France, October, 1782, and referring to the delay of the negotiations for peace, emphasize "the persevering obstinacy of the king, the wickedness of his ministry, and the haughty pride of the nation" (Sparks's Franklin, ix. 422).
[680] Lord Mahon's History, vol. vi. Appen. lviii.
[681] Ibid., vii. Appen. xxix.
[682] An emphatic sentence from the pen of the able and candid historian Lecky may be quoted here. Referring to "the sullen and rancorous nature of an intensity of hatred" towards Chatham, which led the king, against all advice and urgency, to refuse any aid from that noble statesman, Lecky writes "This episode appears to me the most criminal in the whole reign of George III., and in my own judgment it is as criminal as any of those acts which led Charles I. to the scaffold" (Hist. of Eng. in the XVIIIth Cent., iv. 83).
[683] The Massachusetts refugee, Judge Curwen, thus writes, in London, in 1780: "In this baneful, woful quarrel, such a continued, unbroken series of disappointments, disasters, and mortifying events have taken place, that it seems to me to be morally impossible but the eyes of all thoughtful, prudent, knowing men must open and discern the impolicy and impracticability of accomplishing the great end for which this war was undertaken,—the reduction of the colonies to the obedience of the British Parliament" (Curwen, p. 311).
[684] Wells's Adams, i. p. 164.
[685] There is something very significant as well as comical in the following entry in John Adams's Diary in Congress, in 1775, when he had made his way to a full deliverance: "When these people began to see that independence was approaching, they started back. In some of my public harangues, in which I had freely and explicitly laid open my thoughts, on looking round the assembly, I have seen horror, terror, and detestation strongly marked on the countenances of some of the members, whose names I could readily recollect; but as some of them have been good citizens since, and others went over afterwards to the English, I think it unnecessary to record them here" (Works of John Adams, ii. p. 407). Mr. Sparks has gathered (Washington, Appendix x. vol. ii.) the expressed opinions of such typical patriots as Washington, Franklin, Henry, Madison, Jay, etc., utterly and emphatically disavowing all thoughts or purposes of independence till the crisis made it a matter of necessity, not of choice. It is but candid, however, to note an anticipation of that acute observer Joseph Galloway, whether it was but a surmise or a reasonable inference. In a letter addressed by him, Jan. 13, 1766, to Dr. Franklin, in London, he writes: "A certain sect of people, if I may judge from all their late conduct, seem to look on this as a favorable opportunity of establishing their republican principles, and of throwing off all connection with their mother country. I have reasons to think that they are forming a private union among themselves from one end of the continent to the other" (Sparks's Franklin, vii. 305). The assertion of John Jay is most explicit and emphatic: "During the course of my life, and until the second petition of Congress, in 1775, I never did hear any American of any class, or any description, express a wish for the independence of the colonies" (Life and Writings of John Jay, ii. p. 410). Mr. Jay probably referred to the contemptuous treatment of that second petition, "Dickinson's Letter", not to its transmission.