While George promoted these strong measures, he willingly fell in with North's desire to "hold out the olive-branch"; and on the 20th North moved a resolution to the effect that if any colony provided what parliament considered its fair proportion towards the common defence and the expenses of its civil administration, no duty or tax should be imposed upon it, except for the regulation of trade. His proposal excited the indignation of the high prerogative party, who thought themselves betrayed; his followers rose in revolt; "the treasury bench seemed to totter". The storm was stilled at last, and then Barré, Burke, and Dunning fell upon the bill, describing it as a mean attempt to divide the Americans, and a plan for coercing each province separately. The motion was, however, carried. As the opposition scorned North's plan, which Burke called "a project of ransom by auction," it behoved them to bring forward a plan of their own which would be acceptable to the Americans. Accordingly, on March 22, Burke propounded a series of conciliatory resolutions which he enforced in one of his most famous speeches. He urged the house to return to its old policy, to respect the Americans' love of freedom, to look to the colonial assemblies to supply the expenses of their government and defence, to abandon the futile attempt to impose taxation, and to extend to Americans the privileges of Englishmen. His proposal was defeated. Nevertheless, by accepting North's resolution parliament showed a desire for pacification. The resolution proposed a compromise; while it maintained the authority of parliament, it offered the Americans self-taxation. It was made with a sincere desire to end the quarrel. At one time it might have led to pacification, but it came too late.
Gage found the fortification of Boston Neck no easy matter; the people would not sell him materials, and somehow his barges sank, his waggons were bogged, and their loads caught fire. The work was finished at last, and with his small force he could do little else. In Rhode Island the people seized the cannon mounted for the defence of the harbour, and in New Hampshire they surprised a small fort, and carried off ordnance and stores. Manufactories of arms and powder-mills were set up in different places. In February, 1775, the Massachusetts provincial congress met, and urged the militia, and specially the "minute-men"—militiamen ready to serve on the shortest notice—to perfect their discipline. Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas were astir with warlike preparations; in Massachusetts men were practising the use of arms on every village green, a number of Stockbridge Indians were enlisted as minute-men, and efforts were made to induce the Six Nations to "whet the hatchet" against the English.[98] Express-riders kept the country people well supplied with intelligence, in order that they might anticipate any projected movement of the British troops. On the 26th Gage sent a detachment to Salem to bring in some guns, but the people removed them in time. Some opposition was offered to the troops, but they were kept well in hand and no blood was shed.
SKIRMISH AT LEXINGTON.
He determined to be beforehand at Concord, where the provincials had gathered a quantity of military stores, and on April 18 sent some companies of grenadiers and light infantry under Colonel Smith and Major Pitcairn to destroy them. They went by night up the Charles river in boats, landed, and began their march. The alarm had been given and the country was aroused. When they arrived at Lexington at 5 in the morning of the 19th they found a body of militia on the green. "Disperse, you rebels!" shouted Pitcairn, and the troops advanced with a cheer. As the militia dispersed some shots were fired. From which side the first shot came is not clear. A soldier was hit and Pitcairn's horse was wounded. The troops fired a volley, a few militiamen were killed and others wounded, and the soldiers marched on. While the grenadiers were destroying the stores at Concord a sharp engagement took place with the militia, and several on both sides were killed and wounded. The troops, having accomplished their purpose as far as was possible, for part of the stores had already been removed, set out to return to Boston. As they marched back, tired and impeded by their wounded, militiamen and volunteers fired upon them from every hedge, and wall, and house, and the shots told heavily on their close ranks. Forced on by the ceaseless fire, like a driven flock of sheep, thick together and helpless, they staggered back to Lexington, where they arrived completely exhausted. There they were met by a large detachment under Lord Percy, which had been sent to their relief. After a rest the whole body marched back, harassed all the way by an incessant fire from cover, which they were for the most part unable to return. The British loss was sixty-five killed, about 157 wounded, and a few missing; the American casualties are stated as ninety-three in all. Not, unhappily, for the last time did our soldiers find that farmers and the like, who know their country, are accustomed to shoot, and understand the importance of taking cover, may be more than a match for brave and disciplined soldiers with no knowledge of war save the drill of a parade ground. It was evident that there was fighting stuff in the Americans, that they had some good marksmen, and that, undisciplined as they were, like the Boers of our own day, they knew how to use such advantages as they possessed.
Thus was the first blood shed in this long quarrel. The revolution was begun. Sooner or later it must have come, though the date of its coming and the violent means by which it was accomplished were decided by individual action. The spirit which underlay it can be traced with growing distinctness since 1690; it was a spirit of independence, puritan in religion and republican in politics, impatient of control, self-assertive, and disposed to opposition. It was irritated by restraints on industry and commerce, and found opportunities for expression in a system which gave the colonies representative assemblies while it withheld rights of self-government. Great Britain has since then adopted a more enlightened colonial policy; yet the statesmen of past times are not to be condemned because they were men of their own days and lacked the experience of a future age. And it is to be remembered that England's colonial policy was then, as it is now, the most liberal in the world. American discontent existed before the reign of George III.; it was kept in check by the fear of French invasion. It was when that fear was removed that England began to enforce the restraints on commerce. This change in policy fell most heavily on the New England provinces, where whig tendencies were strongest, and specially on Massachusetts. A small and violent party in the province fanned the flame of discontent, and the attempts at taxation, which added to the grievances of the colonists, afforded a respectable cry to the fomenters of resistance. Their work was aided by the apprehension aroused in the minds of their fellow-countrymen, by the increase in the part played by the prerogative, and by the predominance of the tories in England. While men in other provinces, as Patrick Henry in Virginia, worked in sympathy with Samuel Adams and his associates, the revolution was at its outset engineered at Boston, and was immediately determined by the quarrel between Great Britain and Massachusetts. In the events which led to the revolution the British government appears to have shown a short-sighted insistence on legal rights and a contemptuous disregard of the sentiments and opinions of the colonists; the revolutionists generally a turbulent, insolent, and unreasonable temper.
FOOTNOTES:
[89] Franklin, Works, v., 189-90, 205-7, 305-14, ed. Bigelow.
[90] Chatham Corr., iv. 339.
[91] Parl. Hist., xvii., 1197.
[92] Jones, History of New York, i., 34-35, 449, sq.; Flick, Loyalism in New York, pp. 24-25.