[Note 33], [p. 132].—Negotiations had been going on between the colonies and France for more than a year, though this fact, of course, was not known in England. Silas Deane had been appointed Commissioner to France even before the Declaration of Independence. In Nov. of 1776, Lee and Franklin were appointed by Congress to negotiate a treaty of friendship and commerce with the French king. But the French were wary of alliance, though they were willing to wink at the secret arrangements by which supplies were furnished by Beaumarchais. These supplies, furnished in the autumn of 1777, were detained, and did not reach America in time to prevent the terrible sufferings at Valley Forge in the following winter. When news of Burgoyne’s surrender reached France, the French Government no longer hesitated, and a final treaty by which France acknowledged the Independence of the United States was signed on the 6th of February, 1778. For most interesting and authentic details, see Parton’s “Life of Franklin,” vol. ii., ch. vii.
[Note 34], [p. 140].—The walls of the old room in which the House of Lords assembled were covered with tapestries, one of which represented the English fleet led out to conflict with the Spanish Armada by Lord Effingham Howard, an ancestor of Lord Suffolk.
[Note 35], [p. 160].—This argument of Mansfield drawn from the Navigation Acts is fully refuted by Burke in his speech on “American Taxation.” Burke takes the ground that none of these acts were passed for the sake of revenue, but that all of them were designed simply to give direction to trade. He also shows that there is a marked distinction between external and internal taxation. The whole of Burke’s speech may well be read with profit in connection with that of Mansfield.
[Note 36], [p. 164].—This reference is probably to James Otis’ volume published in London in 1765, entitled: “The Rights of the Colonies Asserted and Proved.” It had previously been published in Boston, after having been read in MS. in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. The instructions of May, 1764, contained in the appendix were drawn up by Samuel Adams. It is possible, however, that the orator referred to Otis’ “Vindication of the Conduct of the House of Representatives of the Province of Mass. Bay,” which had appeared in 1762, and which contained in a nutshell the whole American cause. John Adams said of it: “Look over the Declarations of Rights and Wrongs issued by Congress in 1774; look into the Declaration of Independence of 1776; look into the writings of Dr. Price and Dr. Priestley. Look into all the French Constitutions of Government; and, to cap the climax, look into Mr. Thomas Paine’s ‘Common Sense,’ ‘Crisis,’ and ‘Rights of Man,’ and what can you find that is not to be found in this Vindication of the House of Representatives?” During the same year also, Otis published “A Vindication of the British Colonies,” and “Considerations on behalf of the Colonists, in a letter to a Noble Lord.” The London reprint of the “Vindication of the British Colonies” was accompanied with the statement: “This tract is republished, not for any excellence of the work, but for the eminence of the author.” We see here the leader in the American disputes declaring the universal opinion of the Colonies against the authority of the British Parliament.
[Note 37], [p. 185].—This exordium is almost bad enough to justify Hazlitt’s remark: “Most of his speeches have a sort of parliamentary preamble to them; there is an air of affected modesty and ostentatious trifling in them; he seems fond of coquetting with the House of Commons, and is perpetually calling the Speaker out to dance a minuet with him before he begins.”
[Note 38], [p. 185].—This was an Act to restrain the Commerce of the Provinces of New England, and to confine it to Great Britain, Ireland, and the British West Indies.
[Note 39], [p. 187].—Reference is made to the Repeal of the Stamp Act, which took place in Rockingham’s Administration by a vote of 275 to 161.
[Note 40], [p. 189].—This rather striking thought was firmly implanted in Burke’s mind. In his paper on “Present Discontent,” he apologized for “stepping a little out of the ordinary sphere” of private people. In one of his letters he says: “We live in a nation where, at present, there is scarce a single head that does not teem with politics. Every man has contrived a scheme of government for the benefit of his fellow-subjects.”
[Note 41], [p. 191].—It must be confessed this is a little pompous. Burke’s scheme was simply to yield to the colonies what they claimed, and it was not good policy to pronounce such an encomium on it in advance. There were those who said: “On this simple principle of granting every thing required, and stipulating for nothing in return, we can terminate every difference throughout the world.”
[Note 42], [p. 191].—The Congress of Philadelphia in 1774 declared that after the Repeal of the Stamp Act the colonies “fell into their ancient state of unsuspecting confidence in the mother country.” Burke comments on this statement in his letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol in 1777.