demanded a settlement with the Americans on their own terms of independence. Eliot, afterward Lord Minto, and Gibbon agreed in the speculative opinion that, after the substance of power was lost, the name of independence might be granted to the Americans. On that basis the desire of peace was universal. It was the king who persuaded his minister to forego the opportunity which never could recur, and against his own conviction, without opening to America any hope of pacification, to adjourn the parliament to the twentieth of January 1778. In that month Lord Amherst, as military adviser, gave the opinion that nothing less than an additional army of forty thousand men would be sufficient to carry on offensive war in North America; but the king would not suffer Lord North to flinch, writing that there could not be "a man either bold or mad enough to presume to treat for the mother country on a basis of independence;" sometimes appealing to the minister's "personal affection for him and sense of honor;" and, in the event of a war with France, suggesting that "it might be wise to draw the troops from the revolted provinces, and to make war on the French and Spanish islands." To Lord Chatham might be offered anything but substantial power, for "his name, which was always his greatest merit, would hurt Lord Rockingham's party." And at court the king lavished civilities on young George Grenville and others who were connected with Lord Chatham.

Those who were near Lord North in his old age never heard him murmur at his having become blind; but his wife is the witness that "in the solitude of sleepless nights he would sometimes fall into very low spirits and deeply reproach himself for having, at the earnest desire of the king, remained in administration after he thought that peace ought to have been made with America." *

* A communication from the daughter of Lord North, who repeated the words of her mother.

VOL. V.-15

CHAPTER XVI.

THE ASPECT OF CONTINENTAL EUROPE.

1775-1781.

THE United States needed an ally in France, but the ministers of that kingdom were unwilling to risk a war with Great Britain except with the certainty of the acquiescence of continental Europe; the history of the next years of the United States cannot be understood without a knowledge of the disposition of the several powers of Europe toward them.

France was sure of the forbearance of Austria, for Austria had chosen the Bourbon powers for its allies.

In Italy, which by being broken into fragments was reft of its strength though not of its beauty, the United States vainly hoped to find support from the ruler of Florence, of whose humane code the world had been full of praise. The king of Naples, as one of the Spanish Bourbons, conformed his policy to that of Spain. But the genius of the Italians has always revered the struggles of patriotism; Alfieri saw in America the prophet of Italian unity; and Filangieri was preparing the work, in which, with the applause of the best minds, he claimed for reason its rights in the government of men. Portugal irritated the United States by closing its ports against their ships; but was scarcely heard of again during the war.

The Turkish empire affected the course of American affairs during the war and at its close. The embroilment of the western maritime kingdoms seemed to leave its border provinces at the mercy of their neighbors; and there were statesmen in England who wished peace, that their country might speak with authority on the Bosphorus and the Euxine.

Of Russia, Great Britain with ceaseless importunity sought the alliance; but its empress put aside every overture, and repeatedly advised the concession of independence to the United States. She confidentially assured the Bourbon family that she would not interfere in their quarrel, and would even be pleased to see them throw off the yoke of England. Her heart was all in the Orient. She longed to establish a Christian empire on the Bosphorus, and wondered why Christians of the West should prefer to maintain Mussulmans at Constantinople. Of England, she venerated the people; but she had contempt for its king, and foretold the failure of his ministry. On the other hand, while she did not love the French nation, she esteemed Vergennes as a wise and able statesman.

In Gustavus III. of Sweden, the nephew of Frederic of Prussia, France might expect a friend, for the revolution of 1771 in favor of the royal prerogative had been aided by French subsidies and the counsels of Vergennes, who was at the time the French minister at Stockholm. The oldest colonizers of the Delaware were Swedes, and a natural affection bound their descendants to the mother country. The Swedes, as builders and owners of ships, favored the largest interpretation of the maritime rights of neutrals; and their king, who had dashing courage, though not perseverance, was now and then the boldest champion of the liberty of the seas.

Denmark, the remaining northern kingdom, was itself a colonial power, possessing small West India islands and a foothold in the East. Its king, as duke of Holstein, had a voice in the German diet at Ratisbon. Its people were of a noble race; it is the land which, first of European states, forbade the slave-trade, and which, before the end of the century, abolished the remains of serfdom. But its half-witted king had for his minister of foreign affairs Count Bernstorf, a Hanoverian by birth, who professed to believe that a people can never be justified in renouncing obedience to its lawful government. He would not suffer the Danish government to favor, or even seem to favor, the Americans. Danish subjects were forbid den to send, even to Danish West India islands, munitions of war, lest they should find their way to the United States. The Danish and Norwegian ports were closed against prizes taken

by American privateers. Yet, from its commercial interests, Denmark was forced to observe and to claim the rights of a neutral.

Of the two European republics of the last century, the one had established itself among the head-springs of the Rhine, the other at its mouth. The united cantons of Switzerland, content within themselves, constituted a republic, which rivalled in age the oldest monarchies, and, by its good order and industry, morals and laws, proved the compatibility of extensive confederacies with modern civilization. The United States gratefully venerated their forerunner, but sought from it no assistance.

The deepest and the saddest interest hovers over the republic of the Netherlands, for the war between England and the United States prepared its grave. Of all the branches of the Germanic family, that nation, which for its abode rescued from the choked and shallowed sea the unstable silt and sands brought down by the Rhine, has endured the most and wrought the most in favor of liberty of conscience, commerce, and the state. The republic which it founded was the child of the reformation. For three generations the best interests of mankind were abandoned to its keeping; and, to uphold the highest objects of spiritual life, its merchants, landholders, and traders so abounded in heroes and martyrs that they tired out brute force and tyranny and death itself, and from war educed life and hope for coming ages. Their existence was an unceasing struggle with the ocean which beat against their dikes; with the rivers which cut away their soil; with neighbors that coveted their territory; with England, their ungenerous rival in trade. In proportion to numbers, they were the first in agriculture and in commerce, first in establishing credit by punctuality and probity, first in seeing clearly that great material interests are fostered best by liberty. Their land remained the storehouse of renovating political ideas for Europe, and the asylum of all who were persecuted for their thoughts. In freedom of conscience they were the light of the world. Out of the heart of a taciturn, phlegmatic, serious people, inclined to solitude and reflection, rose the men who constructed the code of international law in the spirit of justice.

In 1674, after England for about a quarter of a century had aimed by acts of legislation and by wars to ruin the navigation of the Netherlands, the two powers consolidated peace by a treaty of commerce, in which the rights of neutrals were guaranteed in language the most precise and clear. Not only was the principle recognised that free ships make free goods, but, both positively and negatively, ship-timber and other naval stores were excluded from the list of contraband.

In 1688 England contracted to the Netherlands the highest debt that one nation can owe to another. Herself not knowing how to recover her liberties, they were restored by men of the United Provinces; and Locke brought back from his exile in that country the theory on government which had been formed by the Calvinists of the continent, and which made his chief political work the text-book of the friends of free institutions for a century.

During the long wars for the security of the new English dynasty, and for the Spanish succession, in all which the republic had little interest of its own, it remained the faithful ally of Great Britain. Gibraltar was taken by ships and troops of the Dutch not less than by those of England; yet its appropriation by the stronger state brought them no corresponding advantage; on the contrary, their exhausted finances and disproportionate public debt crippled their power of self-defence.

For these unexampled and unrequited services the republic might expect to find in England a wall of protection. But during the seven years' war, in disregard of treaty obligations, its ships were seized on the ground that they had broken the arbitrary British rules of contraband and blockade. In the year 1758 the losses of its merchants on these pretences were estimated at more than twelve million guilders. In 1762, four of its ships, convoyed by a frigate, were taken, after an engagement; and, though the frigate was released, George Grenville, then secretary of state, announced by letter to its envoy that the right of stopping Dutch ships with naval stores must be and would be sustained. But this was not the worst: England took advantage of the imperfections in the constitution of the Netherlands to divide their government, and by