victories over the French, and therefore all the more sensitive. Many Whigs who had disapproved of the Stamp Act and the Tea duties now said that government must be supported, that the British Empire must at any cost be preserved, and that, whoever was right in the pe ginning, American insolence now deserved chastisement.

Orators like Chatham and Burke tried to rouse the conscience of the nation, comparing fairly enough the tea duty with shipmoney, and the American patriots with Hampden and Pym. But they found unusual apathy, not only in Parliament, but among the people. Many of the Nonconformists indeed, led by Priestley and Price, espoused the cause of liberty with fervour. On the other hand the Bishops and clergy of the Established Church were almost unanimous for the war; and some of the Methodists, inspired by Wesley, proclaimed doctrines not far removed from passive obedience to Royal authority.

The war itself, once preparations began, supplied the usual incentive to an active minority of interested patriots, whose noisy protestations of loyalty to King and country contrasted with a more than ordinary reluctance on the part of the common people to serve with the forces. Towards the end even of Chatham's glorious war against the traditional enemy across the channel several serious riots had attended the calling out of the militia. But an overseas campaign against their own kith and kin was unpopular from the first. "The recruiting service," wrote a contemporary chronicler, in all probability Edmund Burke,1 "which may be considered as a kind of political barometer with respect to the sentiments of the lowest orders," went on "very heavily both in England and Ire

'There is little doubt that he was responsible for the American paragraphs in the Annual Register of 1776, pp. 38, 39.

land, though no encouragement was wanting, nor means to procure extraordinary levies for service

left untried
by land and sea.

During one month of 1776 eight hundred men were carried off in London alone by press gangs, and large numbers of prisoners in English and Irish gaols were pardoned on engaging to fight against the American rebels. When these odious and desperate devices proved insufficient to provide a British army of the size required, the government sought foreign aid. First they tried to induce the Dutch to allow a Scotch brigade in their service to be employed in America. But the States General, remembering at what price Holland had purchased republican freedom, rejected the proposal. Then they negotiated at the Court of St. Petersburg for 20,000 Russians, but without success. All over the continent jealousy of British power, or an awakening zeal for liberty, favoured the American cause. "Even Voltaire and Rousseau," wrote someone, "who never agreed in anything else, are said to hold the same opinion on that subject." That the Americans were fighting in freedom's cause was nowhere asserted with more vehemence than in England by Chatham, Fox, and the Duke of Richmond. They and their followers openly professed the opinion that Englishmen would be enslaved if the Americans were defeated.

Baffled in Russia and Holland, George the Third and Lord North found what they wanted in Germany. Hanoverian troops were sent to replace the English garrisons in Gibraltar and Minorca, and large bodies of mercenaries were bought from the petty princes of Hesse and Brunswick to be shipped to America. By this means there was collected in the spring of 1776 an army which, skilfully led, would almost certainly have vanquished Washington's raw

levies. The supply of this expedition with naval and military stores of all descriptions at so prodigious a distance from the base gave employment and emolument to multitudes of manufacturers, labourers, and traders. It engaged a vast quantity of idle shipping in the transport service and "caused such a bustle of business and circulation of cash" as stifled the complaints of towns like Liverpool, which had been suffering from the loss of the slave trade.1 The contractors were already reaping a golden harvest, and the prospect of increasing profits was quite sufficient to excite in this class of unwarlike citizens an eager appetite and rage for a long fight to a finish.

Even before the great expedition was despatched, a vast expenditure, yielding much profit to country gentlemen and favoured contractors, with many pickings doubtless for the king's friends in parliament, had been incurred for the supply of the army beleaguered in Boston. Prodigious supplies of hay, oats, and beans were bought to furnish a single regiment of light cavalry then quartered in Boston. Lest alcoholic courage should fail, ten thousand butts of strong beer were ordered from two right loyal brewers. To a modern War Office the extravagance and waste of 1776 would seem a bagatelle. But in those days the expenditure was colossal, and however little the British soldier gained, "the contracts were very lucrative, the connections of those who had interest to obtain them extensive, and the number of persons who found employment or benefit by the different services immense." No wonder then that "such a concurrence of circumstances found a numerous and zealous party in support of govern

1 As 'the Guinea ships' hitherto employed in the negro slave trade arrived in Liverpool they were laid up. In August, 1775, 3000 unemployed seamen rioted in Liverpool. They were soon afterwards absorbed in the King's Service.

!

ment; and that they should earnestly wish for the continuance of a war by which they profited so much." 1

In the colonies there was no such stimulus to patriotism. The revenues from taxes were altogether inadequate for war. The Colonial Governments had little credit and the Colonists little ready money. Many of the rich people were loyalists. The merchants, largely Scotch, were for peace and submission. Corruption there was, but it did not enrich. It only helped to demoralise soldiers already homesick and dismayed by the bad news from Canada. Discontent and disease were thinning Washington's forces when the British armada was ready to sail in the spring of 1776. But the people and their representatives in Congress seem to have been for the most part confident of success. Their feelings had been exasperated during the winter by the burning of Norfolk, the chief port of Virginia, and of Falmouth on the coast of Maine. The bombardment and burning of Norfolk on New Year's Day, 1776, was a senseless outrage which made the royal cause hopeless in Virginia. Five or six thousand people, who had mostly been opposed to a rupture with the mother country for business reasons, were rendered homeless, and property to the value of £300,000 was destroyed.

These acts and methods of barbarism prepared the soil for the seed of independence, which was sown broadcast by Tom Paine's Common Sense, one of the most powerful and influential pamphlets ever published in the English language. It appeared on January 10, 1776. Its author, who was at once recognised as a master controversialist on the Republican side, had left England two years before to seek a livelihood in Philadelphia. Common Sense ran like wildfire through the Colonies. It shattered the King's 1 See the Annual Register for 1776.