The March of Folly (35 page)

Some were ready, however, for the alternative, as Jefferson phrased it in his instructions to the delegates of Virginia, of “union on a generous plan.” His conditions were that there must be no limitation of the colonies’ external trade and no taxation or regulation of their properties “by any power on earth except our own.” Joseph Galloway of Pennsylvania, leader of the conservatives at the Congress, officially presented a similar plan of “Proposed Union between Great Britain and her Colonies” but it found few delegates to support it. They were men who had no wish to combine with a Britain they thought of as corrupt, decadent and hostile to liberty. “When I consider,” wrote Franklin to Galloway, “the extreme corruption prevalent among all orders of men in this old rotten state” with its “numberless and needless places, enormous
salaries, pensions, perquisites, bribes, groundless quarrels, foolish expeditions, false accounts or no accounts, contracts and jobs [that] devour all revenue …” he would fear more mischief than benefit from closer union.

As the crisis in relations worsened, the idea of union found advocates among progressive thinkers in England. In 1776, Adam Smith was to propose it in
The Wealth of Nations
as the means “to the prosperity, to the splendour, and to the duration of the empire.” In the same year, Dr. Richard Price, intellectual leader of the Non-conformists, proposed Anglo-American union on a basis of equality in his
Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty and War with America
. Wrapped in Enlightenment, he based his case on the civil liberties that “reason and equity and the rights of humanity give.”

Here was the alternative to force on the one hand and rebellion on the other, although to say it was feasible at that time would be an overstatement. Majority opinion in Britain did not for a moment tolerate the idea of equality with the Americans, and federation could not have been reached in any case, for no one in power in England would have yielded the right to regulate trade. These were not, however, everyone’s conditions, and had there been desire and will on both sides to achieve it, some form of federation might have been slowly worked out. At that time it was too soon. Fixed ideas and biases were against it and the technology of overseas communication was a hundred years away.

England saw treason in the unpleasing unity of the Continental Congress. By now, resort to force had become an accepted idea. Increasingly alarming letters had been coming from General Gage, who reported that “the Flame of Sedition” was spreading rapidly, that it was not confined to a “faction” of agitators but shared by the generality of freeholders and farmers in Massachusetts and its neighbors, that they were assembling arms and ammunition and even artillery, and finally that all New England must be considered in open rebellion. In November the King acknowledged that “blows must decide” whether the colonies were to be subject or independent, and that he was “not sorry that the line of conduct seems now chalked out.”

The Cabinet reached a decision to send three warships with reinforcements, but with everyone busy canvassing for the election of that fall, action was postponed until the new Parliament should convene. Meanwhile within the Ministry, if not in the inner Cabinet, Viscount Barrington, the long-serving Secretary at War, entered a dissent. Although formerly in favor of a hard line toward America, he was one of the few in any group who allowed facts and developments to penetrate
and influence their thinking. By 1774 he had come to believe that to coerce the colonies to the point of armed resistance would be disastrous. He had not turned pro-American or changed his political loyalties in any way; he had simply come to the professional conclusion, as he explained to Dartmouth in two letters of November and December 1774, that a land war in America would be useless, costly and impossible to win. Useless because it was plain that Britain could never successfully impose internal taxation; costly and impossible to win because conquered areas must be held by large armies and fortresses, “the expense of which would be ruinous and endless,” besides producing “the horrors and bloodshed of civil war.” Britain’s only war aim was proving supremacy without being able to use it; “I repeat, our contest is merely a point of honor” and “will cost us more than we can ever gain by success.”

Barrington proposed that rather than reinforcing the Army in Massachusetts, the troops should be withdrawn from Boston, leaving that city in its present “distracted state” until it should be better disposed to cooperate. Without small successes and the “violence of persecution” to animate the colonies, their rebelliousness would fade and they would eventually be ready to treat.

The earmark of so many follies—disproportion between effort and possible gain—and the “terrible encumbrance” of honor were here clearly expressed by Barrington, but since his office was not policy-making, merely administrative, his views had no effect. Required to implement a policy he did not believe in, he asked to resign, but the King and North held on to him, not wishing to reveal the doubters in their ranks.

In the City, popular opinion was strongly with the colonies to the extent that the freemen of London chose two Americans, Stephen Sayre of Long Island and William Lee of Virginia, as sheriffs. Candidates for the London seats were required to sign a pledge to support a bill giving America the right to elect its own Parliament and tax itself. With equal if opposite conviction a more notable Londoner, Dr. Samuel Johnson, expressed his view that the Americans were “a race of convicts and ought to be grateful for anything we allow them short of hanging.” His thumping pamphlet
Taxation No Tyranny
delighted the country squires, the universities, the Anglican clergy and all the firmly anti-American community. Privately, however, he acknowledged to Boswell that “administration is feeble and timid” and, as the year went on, that “the character of our own government at present is imbecility.”

The last chance for Britain to guard her own interest, to grasp an
alternative that was feasible, was offered when Parliament convened in January 1775 by the outstanding statesman of his time, Lord Chatham, now ill and failing. On 20 January he moved for the immediate withdrawal of British forces from Boston as evidence that England could afford to “make the first advances for concord.” He said the troops were provocative without being effective. They might march from town to town enforcing a temporary submission, “but how shall you be able to secure the obedience of the country you leave behind you …?” Resistance to “your arbitrary system of taxation might have been foreseen.” What forces now would be required to put it down? “What, my Lords, a few regiments in America and 17,000 or 18,000 men at home! The idea is ridiculous.” To subdue a region extending over 1800 miles, populous in numbers, valorous and infused with the spirit of liberty would be impossible. To “establish despotism over such a mighty nation must be vain, must be fatal. We shall be forced ultimately to retreat: let us retreat when we can, not when we must.”

It was the masterful eloquence of the old Pitt, but arrogant in his mastery, he had ignored political necessities, failed to assemble supporters to vote for his motion, failed even to tell anyone except Shelburne that he was going to speak or make a motion. All he told Shelburne was that he was going to knock on the door of “this sleeping and confounded ministry.” His realism was hard, his foresight precisely on target, but the House did not want realities; it wanted to whip the Americans. Presented with Chatham’s unexpected motion, “the opposition stared and shrugged; the courtiers stared and laughed,” wrote Walpole, and the motion won only 18 votes against 68 nays.

Although his magic dominance was gone, Chatham had not lost the sense that “I know I can save this country and that I alone can.” After privately consulting with Benjamin Franklin and other Americans, he introduced on 1 February a bill for settlement of the American crisis which provided for repeal of the Coercive Acts, freedom from taxation for revenue without consent, recognition of the Continental Congress, which would then be responsible for assessing the colonies for self-taxation to raise revenue for the Crown in return for its expenses, and an independent judiciary with juries and no removal of accused for trial in England. The regulation of external trade and the right to deploy an army when necessary were to be retained by the Crown. Lord Gower, leader of the Bedfords since the Duke’s death, “rose in great heat” to condemn the bill as a betrayal of the rights of Parliament. “Every tie of interest, every motive of dignity, and every principle of good government,” he said, required the assertion of “legislative supremacy entire and undiminished.”

Thirty-two peers voted in favor of Chatham’s plan of settlement, although it was of course rejected by the majority. He could not save an empire for the unwilling. Embittered by sneers in the debate, he vented his frustration in a summary indictment as savage and unsparing as any government is ever likely to hear: “The whole of your political conduct has been one continued series of weakness, temerity, despotism, ignorance, futility, negligence, and notorious servility, incapacity and corruption.”

The next day the Government presented a bill declaring New England to be in rebellion and asking for augmented forces to reduce it to obedience. The nays in the Commons rose to 106, although the bill was quickly passed, together with a Restraining Act to bring economic pressure by excluding the New England colonies from the Newfoundland fisheries and prohibiting them from trade with any but British ports. The Cabinet nominated three general officers to serve in America: Major Generals William Howe, John Burgoyne, and Henry Clinton. That their future held recall and a surrender was then unimaginable.

At the same time, three regiments were sent to reinforce General Gage, and the King asked Sir Jeffery Amherst, former Commander-in-Chief during the Seven Years’ War, to take command again of the forces in America on the ambivalent theory that as someone known and trusted in the colonies he might bring the “deluded people to due obedience without putting a dagger to their throats.” Whether from doubts of the outcome or distaste of the policy, Amherst, though offered a peerage, declined to serve against the Americans, “to whom he had been so much obliged.” He was not the last to make that refusal.

Suddenly North too seemed to vacillate. Pushed by Dartmouth, who was still trying for a peaceful settlement, he presented his own Conciliatory Proposition, which offered to exempt from taxation any individual colony that raised its own revenue for administration and defense in amounts that the King and Parliament approved. “Uncertainty, surprise, and distraction were seated on every countenance” until it became apparent that the plan was designed to divide the colonies against each other and that, since it offered no repeal of the Coercive Acts, it would not be accepted anyway.

Burke prolonged the last chance in a major effort and another enormous outpouring—for he never spoke in less than a torrent. His main point was “the absolute necessity of keeping up a concord of this empire by a unity of spirit.” This could only be managed, he said, by possessing the sovereignty but not exercising it. Whether they liked it or not, the American spirit of liberty existed; their forebears emigrated because of
it, and it remained stronger in the English colonists than probably in any other people on earth. “It cannot be removed, it cannot be suppressed, therefore the only way that remains is to comply with it, or if you please, to submit to it as a necessary evil.” Here he reached the great prescription: “Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.” Let the Coercive Acts be repealed, let the Americans tax themselves “by grant and not by imposition.” Allow them freedom and opportunity to grow rich and they will supply all the more resources against France and Spain.

Large minds are needed for magnanimity. George III and his ministers and their majority in Parliament, heedless of reason and their ultimate interest, proceeded on their course toward suppression. It was plain that even if they should win, which experienced soldiers like Amherst and Howe thought doubtful, they would lose through the enmity created. This was not a hidden perception. “It is that kind of war in which even victory will ruin us,” wrote Walpole at this hour to his friend Horace Mann. Why were King and Cabinet blind to that outcome? Because they could think no further ahead than affirming supremacy and assumed without thinking about it that military victory over the “rabble” was a matter of course. They never doubted that Americans must succumb to British arms. This was the governing factor. A Colonel Grant, who said he had served in America and knew the Americans well, assured the House of Commons that “they would not fight. They would never dare to face an English army and did not possess any of the qualifications necessary to make a good soldier.” The House of Lords heard the same kind of thing. Lord Sandwich, replying to an opposition member who warned that the colonies would draw on unlimited numbers, said fatuously, “What does that signify? They are raw undisciplined cowardly men,” and the more the better because “if they did not run away, they would starve themselves into compliance with our measures.” He and his colleagues were glad to have the interminable quarrel with the colonies finally settled by force, which to those who feel themselves stronger always seems the easiest solution.

Further, they continued to believe, as Lord Gower put it, that the rebellious language of the Americans “was the language of the rabble and a few factional leaders,” and that the delegates to the Continental Congress, “far from expressing the true sense of the respectable part of their constituents,” had been chosen “by a kind of force in which people of consequence were afraid to interpose.” While there may have been a certain validity to his idea about the people of consequence, it was not as determining or as general as he supposed.

Lazy preparation was a product of these assumptions. Although the coming of hostilities was a predictable consequence of the Coercive Acts of the year before, no measures for military readiness had been undertaken in the interim. The swaggering Sandwich, long an advocate of forceful action, had done nothing as First Lord of the Admiralty to prepare the Navy, essential for transportation and blockade; in fact, he had reduced its strength by 4000 men, or a fifth of the total, as late as December 1774. “We took a step as decisive as the passage of the Rubicon,” General Burgoyne was to say some months later, “and now find ourselves plunged at once in a most serious war without a single requisition, gunpowder excepted, for carrying it on.”