The American Revolution 6 89 - San Jose State University · 2018-08-15 · of English greatness, a vision that fed on hatred of . ... commerce almost everywhere, ... and culturc,

THE GLORIOUS CAUSE

The American Revolution

1763-1789

Revised and Expanded Edition

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

1 The Obstructed Giant

When George III acceded to the throne in 1760 his English subjects were singing with spirit once more Rule Britannia burst from their mouths-words twenty years old (they originally formed a patriotic poem)-and they went like this

When Britain first at heavens command Arose from out the azure main This was the charter of the land And guardian angels sung this strain

Rule Britannia rule the waves Britons never will be slaves

The call to rule seemed natural in 1760 a few years earlier it had mocked the realities of British power and influence in Asia and America For in these years of war with France British arms took a terrible beating-and so did British pride

The war had begun with a skirmish in the wilderness between French troops and American colonials led by young George Washington whose description of the affair revealed that his interest in war lay in the opporshytunities it offered for honorable and gallant action Honor and gallantry did not die in the next few years though large numbers of English Amershyican and French soldiers and Indians did The deaths of the English and Americans were especially galling for they came in a series of battles marred by ineptitude stupidity and some said cowardice General Edshyward Braddock not stupid but surely inept and ignorant of his ignorance

7

8 9

THE GLORIOUS CAUSE

lost his army and his life a few miles from what is now Pittsburgh Colonel James Mercer brave but incompetent gave way at Oswego on Lake Onshytario to General Montcalm who pushed across Lake Champlain to Lake George and seized Fort William Henry At sea things had gone no better as Admiral Byng surrendered Minorca in the Mediterranean to French

he was L_

forces whereupon the Admiralty ~L__ 1 1 bull

nent ____ UlllcUII S~4ltlL aily sentarmies against French and Austrian forces

British and Hanoverian army did no better and after defeats in the sumshymer of1757 virtually surrendered Hanover to the French In Asia Britains prospects appeared dark as the French marched Calcutta fell and the entire subcontinent seemed ripe to be plucked by the French

Up to this point in the war British leaders had squandered their reshysources they had no clear idea of how or where to proceed against the French They had failed to bring their pOwer to bear to focus it and thereby make it bring victories In 1757 these leaders gave up office and the old king George II called William Pitt to head the new ministry

Pitt was one of the marvels of the century a leader who dazzled sober politicians and the crowd alike He drew his peculiar appeal from some inner quality of temperament as well as mind a quality which allowed inshydeed drove him to disregard both conventional wisdom and opposition and to push through to what he wanted He was an original in an age suspicious of the original He got away with being what he was scorning the commonplace and the expected and explaining himself in a magnifishycent oratorical flow that inspired as much as it informed

Pitts powers of concentration shone from his fierce eyes as did his beshylief in himself in the crisis of war he said I know that I can save this country and that no one else can He was obsessed even more of English greatness a vision that fed on hatred of

for Spain Pitt had despised the fumbling efforts of his predecessors to cope with the French on the Continent and he was impatient incompetence ofEnglish generals in America Hence he went to different men - Saunders and Boscawen in the Royal Navy Jeffrey Amherst and James Wolfe in the army in America -and to fresh strategies in the war Properly subsidized Frederick the Great would take care of the French on the Continent The navys task was to prevent resupply of French forces in Canada and it was in Canada and the West where Pitt ordered that the main effort should be made Pitt was fascinated by the New World and captivated by the idea that imperial power should be forced to grow through trade in a vast arena under British sway And so he made the

THE OBSTRUCTED GIANT

fateful decision to play his strongest hand in America while the French were occupied in Europe and held off on the sea

The strategy worked brilliantly In July 1758 a combined military and naval force under Admiral Boscawen and Generals Amherst and Wolfe took the French fortress of Louisbourg Soon after Fort Frontenac as the site of what is now Kingston Ontario fell to Colonel John Bradstreet and

New England volunteers George Washington felt the exquisite pleashyserving with General John Forbes as that commander retracing

steps took Fort Duquesne after the French destroyed and it The British soon renamed Duquesne Pittsburgh to celebrate

Pitts daring leadership Pitt got an unexpected series of victories in India from Clive who set about demolishing French power there with a match Pitts own And on the Continent Frederick danced and slasmu way through the encircling armies of France Russia and Austria

The greatest triumphs came the following year-the wonderful 1759 Admiral Sir Edward Hawkes naval squadrons smashed a French fleet at Quiberon Bay southeast of Brest and thereby prevented provisionshying of Canada with food and troops In the West Indies the rich sugar isshyland of Guadeloupe surrendered to a joint expedition of the British army and navy Two thousand regulars and one thousand Iroquois did their bit at Fort Niagara which Sir William Johnson who replaced Brig General John Prideaux killed in battle captured in July But the victory that left all of Europe gasping with admiration -and England swollen with pride-was won by Wolfe on the Plains ofAbraham Wolfe died there So did the romantic Montcalm and with him French power on the Amerishycan continent

Victories were won the next year but the war continued as George III took the crown The new king wanted peace wanted it so much that he was willing to let Pitt leave office Pitt far from wanting peace urged that

war be widened to include Spain Pitt made the king uncomfortable too unpredictable and there seemed to be a daring And so he had to go from office he reshy

signed in October 1761 and by the end of the following year terms of peace had been arranged

I Accounts of Pitt are to be found in virtually all the standard studics of late eighteenthshycentury England For his life see Basil Williams The Life of William Chatham (2 vols london 1913) The Seven Years War in America is richly treated in Gipson British Empire vols VI-VIII There is a good short history in Howard H Peckshyham The Colonial Wars 168lt)-1762 (Chicago 1964) A list of abbreviated titles used in footnotes will be found on page 689

10 11 THE GLORIOUS CAUSE

II Most of Georges subjects probably hated to see Pitt depart he had given them glory and power and excitement The rest of Europe felt differently Europeans may have been awed by Pitt but they did not admire him Inshydeed they felt something rather different from admiration for England and Englishmen The energy and the power of England had to be reshyspected of course but Europeans could detect little else that was attracshytive in those bluff beef-cating beer-drinking Englishmen who seemed bent on tearing the civilized world apart

For all the power of the English to cultivated Europe they appeared to be only a cut above the barbarians Granted they had won victories war their merchants pushed their ships all over the world they dominated commerce almost everywhere but despite all these successes Europeans could not bring themselves to extravagant praise or unqualified admirashytion The English were after all a people without a culture No European collected the pictures of English artists or sent his sons to England for edshyucation and the Grand Tour did not include stopovers at English 5alons2

France not England was the great nation European aristocrats adshymired French culture collected French art and books and chose French furniture for thc well-appointed room The fashionable wore French clothes and spoke French - not English unless they happened to be Enshyglish French philosophes set the intellectual standard for all in Europe who admired daring and imagination Europe found much else in France worthy of emulation French science as revealed in the Encyshyclopedie and the Academy dazzled scholars everywhere merchants and statesmen cnvicd France her modern roads and canals and especially the growing wealth and population of thc nation Presiding over this strength and culturc this magnificence was a great monarchy unhobbled by the limits placed on the Hanoverians in England j

In the eyes of European aristocrats English monarchy was indeed a pale imitation of the real thing A century carlier the English had taken off one kings head and driven another to flight In Europes eyes they were an unstable lot obsessed with parliamentary government with bills of rights and liberty that cut monarchs down to the size of mayors They were an unpredictable people apparently abandoned to limited governshyment and wild adventures overseas-at the expense of European empires

2 J H Plumb Men and Centuries (Boston 1963) I have learned much from this volume and from Plumbs The Origins of Political Stability (Boston 1967)

3middot Plumb Men and Centuries 4-7


As extravagant as these fantasies about the English were they conshytained an important truth English energies were formidable and bent on finding expression in war trade and domination In the capacity to grow to concentrate power and energy to bring force to bear in the service of an expansionist policy no nation in 1760 could match England-not Germany and Italy which did not exist as modern states but only as hopelessly divided fragments squabbling powers and principalities unshyable to pull themselves together not Prussia which had a great leader but lacked resources in iron steel and coal not Austria which also needed industry and commerce not Spain once a mighty power now flatulent her wealth spent her energies dissipated her state in decay not Portugal now little more than an English satellite not the Netherlands disabled in a paralyzing federal system of government not Sweden obvishyously weak not Poland weak corrupt and about to endure partition by rapacious neighbors

And France for all her cultivation her taste her philosophy art and style was in 1760 also weaker than England Progressive and advanced in many respects France had not been able to throw off the remnants of vested interests in church and state A privileged nobility and a selfshyindulgent church controlled an antiquated government The French paid for these ancient luxuries in the war with England when all Europe came to see that French glories could not be translated into military and politishycal power sufficient to deal with the upstart English surely the wild men of Europe but-just as surely-the victorious throughout the world

There was something askew in the condescension of Europe English culture was not barbarous It lacked the imagination and daring that gave French culture its brilliant vitality And yet the apparent cultivation of the French aristocracy was not responsible for the art and literature of France French aristocrats patronized the arts of course but so did the English neishyther shaped them nor provided standards of taste and appreciation French taste was more discriminating than English one has only to look at the great country houses of English aristocrats to see that size extravagance and prodigality charmcd the Walpoles and the Pelhams-representatives of the breed-as little else did Here French sensibilities were surer-more civilized as eighteenth-century commentators might say

What English culture lacked was the almost uniform brilliance of the French The houses of the English aristocracy were usually vast and cold but Georgian architecture also had beauty and often showed dignity and restraint French painting established the European standards the Enshyglish was confined largely to portraiture In France creativity seemed to


thrive in England Reynolds with his crowd of assistants carefully deshypicted stolid English faces with stolid artistic conventions Gainsborough who worked alone and who defied prevailing style in favor of his own difshyference earned the displeasure of the critics and the public Hogarths savage perceptions went unappreciated Still in painting in architecture and above all in prose and poetry the English if not always breathing beauty avoided the backwardness that Europe saw4

If English high culture was not guilty of the barbarism that fashionable Europe attributed to it society from the meaner sort to the upper classes was There was still a ferocity to English life that seemed hard to reconcile with the mania for progress and development Criminals were hanged publicly an execution often became an occasion for a celebration Six months after George III was crowned an immense London crowd witshynessed the hanging of Lord Ferrers at Tybom for the murder of his stewshyard Lord Ferrers chose to go to the gallows dressed as he had been for his wedding all London appreciated the decision for it was well known that His Lordship had started on the road to the noose on the day he married The leading role in such spectacles was not usually played by aristocrats but the occasions were appreciated nonetheless And they were widely apshyproved as Dr Johnson observed the people of England had the right to see the penalties of their laws enacted on criminals Criminals thrived in London and on the roads of the countryside Among the populace they excited fear and admiration Celebrated in popular ballads and transfixed in Hogarths sketches-along with every other order in English societyshyand skillfully rendered in Fieldings Jonathan Wild they evaded the hangshyman more often than not

doubt the average citizen rarely encountered a highwayman but avoiding the filth disease and shabby housing was more difficult English life had its elegance and beauty- in Georgian houses and in the countryshyside still bursting with flowers greenery and woods untouched by highshyways and developers Yet there were slums in villages as well as in London-and ugliness in both John Byng a thoughtful traveler deshyscribed the dark huts of Alderminster as mud without and wretchedness within5 Disease in this unsanitary age was widespread and not

4- Readers interested in English painting and prose should probably pursue their interests first by looking at the pictures of English artists and by reading the great writers of the century

5 Quoted in Dorothy Marshall English People in the Eighteenth Century (London 1956) 165


among the common sort but among the rich and well-born who were as ignorant and filthy as any Understandably perhaps the rich sought relief in dissipation and prodigal display the poor in gin and rioting The midshydle classes flocked after Wesley and revivalism and perhaps did not suffer badly at all

This is a grim picture-a society torn by crime and suffering from inadequate housing disease filth and riot Social conditions however were improving when George III was crowned and had been improving for at least ten years The underlying reasons were the appearance of inshydustry and the increase in national wealth English business had made its way all over the world-to Asia and India to the West Indies to the farshythest reaches of the Mediterranean The mechanisms of commerce had also improved fiscal practices had gradually been rationalized and bankshying helped in mustering resources The importance of good transportashytion was recognized and better roads bridges and canals were constructed In these circumstances industry took hold the profits from trade could provide a start and the new commercial practices helped free resources for development Inevitably perhaps the lives of ordinary people were afshyfected to some small degree but for the most part only a few benefited from the appearance of industrialism6

III And the few continued to run things especially the aristocratic few the great landowners Land remained the key to society to political power and to prestige

Understandably this society of landowners and their servantsshyaccustomed to the slow rhythm of the seasons annual tasks one year looking like every other year familiar and for the most part comfortable relations within the ranks of men-did not value imagination and change highly Tied to the land they trusted their situations and though not alshyways found easy were apparently content in or at worst resigned to them They accepted the improvements in transport and communications bridges and roads made life easier They did not at first resist commercial development especially as it seemed to offer new sources of revenueshyand perhaps relief from taxes on land Progress in transportation and commerce and in manufacturing was appreciated by those whose lives were affected and perhaps ignored by the mass of men in the countryside who because remote were unaffected But other sorts of changes and

6 Plmnh Men and Centuries 9-14


reforms were resisted with an obstinacy that reveals how profoundly tradishytional conventional and conservative English society was in the eighshyteenth century

Public measures at the middle of the century afford a variety of examshyples of the bias against change In 1751 Parliament had received a bill for naturalizing foreign Protestants it reached a committee before protests from the City of London and elsewhere persuaded Henry Pelham first lord of the Treasury to abandon it Two years later a similar effort was made on behalf of Jews This Jew Bill earned an incredible notoriety despite its limited objectives Its central provisions provided that Jews might be naturalized by private acts from which the words on the true faith of a Christian had been omitted from the oaths of supremacy and alleshygiance which were still required A similar statute had been accepted in the American colonies without opposition The English bill slipped through an apathetic Parliament only to be repealed the next year after an immense public outcry A careful Pelham tried to explain that only wealthy Jews would be able to afford a private bill and that the capital inshyvestments by this minority would add to public revenue These restrained

reasonable arguments made no headway against ingrained prejudice and religious conservatism7

Religious conservatism was surely involved in resistance to another reshyform at about the same time-the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in England in 1752 Before this change the new year began on March 25 in England and the Julian calendar used in England lagged eleven days beshyhind the Gregorian long since adopted in continental Europe The disshyparity was awkward for anyone who had anything to do with peoples outside of England with merchants and diplomats suffering the greatest inconvenience The Earl of Macclesfield president of the Royal Society threw the prestige of science behind the bill which would bring English practice into conformity with the eighteenth centurys and an uneasy Parshyliament went along The new act remained in force but not without Pelshyham and other leaders of Parliament hearing ugly cries about profanation of the saints days which of course were altered by the new calendar Give us back our eleven days - the days between September 2 and 14

7 I have drawn on several works for my picture of English society Among them C E Mingay English Landed Society in the Eighteenth Century (London 1963) J Steven Watson The Reign of George Ill 1760-1815 (Oxford 1960) T S Ashton An Economic History of England The Eighteenth Century (New York 1955) For the Jew Bill see Thomas W Perry Public Opinion Propaganda and Politics in Eighteenth-Century England A Study of the Jew Bill of 1753 (Cambridge Mass 1962)


had been eliminated -expressed the popular mood and popular enlightshyenment perfectly 8

Attempts to reduce the consumption of gin ran into another kind of resistance In 1736 Walpole had forced prohibitive duties on distillers and retailers of gin Cheap gin had corrupted business destroyed families

seriously weakened lower class life The Gin Act well intentioned but poorly designed and impossible to enforce hardly slowed the rate of consumption and the consequent demoralization of the poor When Walshypole left office five years later gin flowed as easily as ever Hogarths Gin Lane (1751) provided a bleak picture of its effects on ordinary people in London Parliament acted again soon after with more success though with no more popular support9

Beneath these curious episodes involving naturalization calendars and gin was a powerful conservatism that suggests that they were in no way aberrations but rather characteristic of the deepest instincts of the culshyture The excesses of the seventeenth century-antinomianism fanatishycism and a bloody civil war-had not left a legacy of moral weariness or social fatigue but they had created a suspicion of inspiration extravashygance and innovation-especially though not exclusively in day-to-day behavior religion and politics There were ofcourse cranks and fanatics in England throughout the eighteenth century and there were political radicals but all these sorts were outsiders butting their heads against a so-

order resistant to all but the familiar the known and the conventional For the English air was no longer full of ghosts and sprites furies and

fairies witches and goblins It did not nourish the prophets and sectarians who had sought to make the world over in the full tide of the Spirit a censhytury earlier The process of clearing the atmosphere had begun while it was still full of fancies and while men still dreamed extravagant dreams of the New Jerusalem incarnate in England The dreams had given some men the strength to cut off the head of Charles I and to establish a holy commonwealth Inspired others drew up marvelous plans for the neworshyder But in this heady atmosphere still others shrank and drew backshynone with more skepticism toward romances and delusions than Thomas Hobbes

Perhaps with more hope than realism it was Hobbes who in 1651 conshysigned superstition to the past and who assumed that rationality distinshyguished the mind of his day In the past now happily departed according

8 Dorothy Marshall Eighteenth-Century England (New York 1~2) 222-23shy

9middot

16 17

THE GLORIOUS CAUSE

to Hobbes men explained invisible ageneies by calling up a god or a Divel Their own mental quirks and events in nature which seemed inshyexplicable were explained and men had invoked also their own wit by the name of Muses their own ignorance by the name of Fortune their own lusts by the name of Cupid their own rage by the name of Furies 10

But such explanations had long since lost their power to persuade Reashyson and light apparently govemed the eighteenth century along with the down-to-earth the solid the dependable the commonsensical realities

IV The general understanding in the eighteenth century about the nature of govemment and what it should do reflected faithfully the bias of this conshyservative culture There was nothing remotely resembling the present-day idea that government ought to promote the general welfare and the public interest Of course eighteenth-century government was not hostile to these purposes but something rather different-much more limitedshywas expected of it Government existed to maintain the kings peace as the common law and ancient tradition had it This notion implied more than keeping order more than eatching lawbreakers and punishing them it involved taking action or remaining inactive if that were necessary to see that things went on pretty much as they always had Maintaining the kings peace constituted the core of domestic policy foreign policy ordishynarily entailed the analogous provision for national security In practice the one abiding problem in foreign affairs before the Ameriean Revolushytion was the question of Hanover which Britain had taken on when the first of the Georges was crowned

All government was the kings From the lowest official in the parish to the greatest minister service undertaken was in the name of the monarch it was personal not institutional service though of course it was in fact institutionalized in an elaborate and clumsy structure of government At the top the king himself took an active part He was the leader of the exshyecutive those ministers who exercised the powers of the Crown Within limits the king chose the ministers who served him - the limits being essenshytially the willingness of the leaders of Parliament to combine with others to do the governments work and their ability to command the support of the membership of the two houses No combination-nor individualshycould be forced on the king and great leaders commonly did not refuse the monarchs request that they put together a ministry to do his bidding

10 Thomas Hobbes Leviathan ed Michael Oakeshott (Oxford 73-74middot


provided of course that they eould work with others acceptable to the

kingThe great source ofleadership and ultimately of power in government

was the House of Commons a body of some 558 members Eighty of these were sent from the counties the universities sent four and the reshymaining sat for the cities and boroughs Why men wished to act in Comshymons reveals much about English politics Few apparently came with great ideas about policy or even with the purpose of serving some organshyized social or economic interest Rather they came for power and status or to serve some local purpose or because their families expected them to

With most members animated by purposes so limited and with the nation agreed that no fundamental issues existed it is not surprising that politics usually came down to the question Charles Dickens puts in the mouth of Lord Boodle in Bleak House What are you going to do with Noodle Bewildered by the shifting alignments of the day and sorely put to find a place for every deserving man Lord Boodle saw the awful choices facing the Crown in forming a new ministry should the present government be overthrown choices which would lie between Lord GoodIe and Sir Thomas Doodle-supposing it to be impossible for the Duke of Foodle to act with GoodIe which may be assumed to be the case in consequence of the breach arising out of that affair with Hoodle Then giving the Home Department and the Leadership of the House of Comshymons to Joodle the Exchequer to Koodle the Colonies to Loodle and the Foreign Office to MoodIe what are you to do with Noodle You cant offer him the Presidency of the Council that is reserved for Poodle You cant put him in the Woods and Forests that is hardly good enough for Quoodle What follows That the country is shipwrecked lost and gone to pieces because you eant provide for Noodle11

The Lord Boodles of the political order rightfully attributed great imshyportance to the distribution of offices the system after all depended upon providing for ones friends and followers Boodle of course overestimated the size of the catastrophe that would overtake the nation should Noodle go unprovided for-the country would not go to ruin but the ministry might and given the myopia endemic to this sort of politics the temptashytion to regard the ministry as the nation is understandable

In fact if parliamentary government only imperfectly represented the nation it did manage to contain if not always to express the interests of landed society No matter how severe the shuffling of ministers and

11 Bleak House chap 12


governments this capacity remained intact William Pitt one of the rare men of ideas who played the game entered the government in 1757 and left it in 1761 Newcastle held various offices over a forty-year period His departure a year after Pitts did not shake the system The same men or the same sorts of men popped up played their parts passed off and pershyhaps reappeared but the government continued to do about the same kinds of things as did the Parliament What Parliament did so far as what we would call public policy was not very much It was not the ruler nor a source of energy and activity impressing its will upon the nation The nation was best served when left alone and liberty would flourish if unatshytended to by meddlers in Parliament The landed interests took care of themselves and thereby served the nation and the king

V Every British monarch in the eighteenth century accepted this system and worked willingly within it None admired it more than George III who in a characteristic statement declared his enthusiasm for the beauty exshycellence and perfection of the British Constitution as by Law estabshylished12 He wrote these words in 1778 when he had been the monarch for eighteen years thoroughly experienced in playing his Dart as the execshyutive in a mixed form of government

George III had come to the throne like his grandfather George II he was tsntlSh-DOrn ana UlOUgh he haa a better-than-average formal education Yet his incapacity on becoming king did not lie in his education but in his temperament and his lack of understanding of men-or as the eighteenth century put it of human nature Although he learned much of men during his long reign he was never able to understand the subtleties in their behavior 13

Born in 1738 at Norfolk House St Jamess Square the first son and secshyond child of Frederick Prince of Wales George III had a difficult and lonely childhood His mother Augusta of Saxe-Gotha was not as comshymonly thought a stupid woman only a rather frightened one who kept her son cut off from other children on the grounds that they were illshyeducated and vicious Georges only real companion in his early years was his brother Edward

12 Fortescue cd bull Correspondence of George the Third IV 220-2l

Il Thoughtflll assessments of George III may be found in John Brooke King George III (New York 1972) Sir Lewis Namier Personalities and Powers Selected Essays (New York 1965) Richard Pares King George III and the Politicians (Oxford 1953) and Romshyney Sedgwick cd Letters from George III to Lord Bute 176-1766 (London 1939)


Lady Louisa Stuart a perceptive observer remarked that the prince was silent modest and easily abashed His parents behavior toward him undoubtedly prompted silence and modesty for they did not conceal their preference for his brother George observed the petting of Edward and learned to stay within himself He was usually ignored at least in Edwards company and when he spoke seems occasional1y to have been rebuked with the gentle rejoinder Do hold your tongue George dont

talk like a fool14 If there was a fool in the household it was Frederick George IIIs

father who at the age of thirty-nine still found amusement in breaking other peoples windows at night Frederick however had much to recomshymend him he was a good husband (though a not very sensitive father) a patron of the arts and interested to some degree at least in science and politics His interest in politics came naturally to one who expected in the normal course of things to become king Frederick did not uation well quarreling with his father George II and going into opposishytion A following collected around him at Leicester House composed of some of those excluded from power who looked forward to enjoying it when the king died and the prince took the throne They received a nasty surprise in 1751 when Frederick died not his father the king

Prince George was thirteen years old in 1751 and became immediately the center of great interest His education control of the shaping of his

and opinions was recognized as a subject of importance The king might have taken the boy from his mother but he did not The prince was now even more isolated his mother feared the kings intentions and took pains to shelter her son from all but the most carefully scrutinized influshyences In 1755 the key influence was John Stuart the Earl of Bute a Scot the adviser-not as some whispered the lover-of Georges mother

Princess Augusta introduced Bute to her son and for the next five years he served as the princes tutor and friend The friendship seems to have developed easily-in part we may suppose because George craved affecshytion and kindness and Bute responded with both Yet warm as their relashytionship was it was not between equals Bute held the upper hand he was twenty-five years older strongly opinionated obviously intelligent and he was in charge of the princes education Although Bute possessed the learning required he was not a good teacher To be sure he launched the prince on an impressive series of studies and saw to it that George continued those already under way And George at this time had sampled

14 Quoted in Brooke King George III 41

21

20 THE GLORIOUS CAUSE

books and subjects far beyond those ordinarily taken up by an English gentleman

When Bute became the princes tutor the prince was seventeen years of age He had at least an elementary knowledge of French German and Latin less Greek some mathematics and physical science He had read fairly widely though superficially in history and he had in the manner of those of birth and breeding studied military fortification His previous tutors had not neglected to introduce their pupil to the social attainments necessary to a monarch - riding fencing dancing music And of course the prince had received careful religious instruction according to the creed of the Church of England

Bute saw to it that his charge continued these studies and personally sushypervised a more thorough study of English and European history In the process the prince absorbed much knowledge of the British constitution and of statecraft and yet did not understand either In Butes unpracticed hands the princes insecure rather rigid personality grew more rigid and no more confident though he became proud and intolerant of others whose views did not agree with his or his tutors Bute himselfknew much but did not understand men or human conduct His pride reinforced the princes his propensity to judge others by abstract principles-he lacked the experience which wiser men rely upon-strengthened a similar tenshydency in the prince Master and pupil then and later commonly mistook inflexibility for personal strength and character Understandably Georges studies did not produce the qualities needed by a monarch good judgshyment and a capacity to take fully into account the principles and interests of others without giving over ones own

George III was twenty-two when he ascended the throne in 1760 For the next few years he clung to his prejudices and to Bute with a tenacity that reflected his and Butes miscomprehension of the political world He would reform their world he thought and make virtue his real consort Factional politics which were of course based on interest not ideology revolted him-and he would somehow change them If this dream soon disappeared in disappointment the kings rigidity did not and though he learned to play the game-at times with remarkable skill-his early misshytakes and his attachment to Bllte bred a suspicion in Parliament that inshytroduced a dozen years of instability to his government

VI Instability in Parliament occurred at a most inopportune time-the beginshyning of the American crisis Quite clearly English political arrangements


worked better in periods of calm than in crisis They reflected the views of the satisfied of the haves more than the have-nots and by their inertia protected the liberties of the subject defined negatively But how else was liberty to be defined Fortunately a static order stood in the way of change which no one of consequence-that is no one with land who had connections-wanted anyway Had these men who ran things been able to declare explicitly the assumption on which they lived they would have said that the world was essentially perfect fixed and unchanging

And their world changed very little in the eighteenth century at least before the American Revolution Their assumptions were widely shared in the villages and parishes of England as well as in London There was a good deal of energy in English local government but it arose in isolation and it remained uncoordinated from above For the most part the Crown and Parliament ignored government in the municipal boroughs and corshyporations in parishes in the Quarter Sessions of the counties and in the Statutory Authorities for Special Purposes Parliament at least recogshynized their existence and over the course of the century passed hundreds of statutes concerning local affairs But the manner in which this was done reflected the regnant ideas about the proper role of government in

the life of the nation Parliament had begun early in the seventeenth century to pass Local

Acts which applied not to the whole kingdom as a Public General Act did but to a designated locality These Local Acts created the Statutory Authorities for Special Purposes-the Commissioners of Sewers the Inshycorporated Guardians of the Poor the Turnpike Trusts and the Improveshyment Commissioners (charged with lighting watching paving cleaning and improving streets) At the time of the American Revolution there were over a thousand such bodies eventually their number would reach eighteen hundred with responsibilities extending over a larger area and more people than all the Municipal Corporations taken together These statutory authorities differed from all other types of local government agencies parishes counties and boroughs for each of them was created by a special act of Parliament to fulfill one function prescribed by the esshytablishing statute in a designated place Commissioners of Sewers built and maintained in hundreds oflocalities trenches and drains to carry off storm water they also constructed drains and other works to reclaim marshes and to keep out the sea The verdant Midlands of England were in a sense the creation of these bodies which drained off the water and kept it out turning marshland into lovely and productive fields and

pastures


Most of the hundreds of statutory authorities operated independently of other local agencies the Guardians of the Poor who handled relief of the indigent vagrants idlers and others commonly despised by eighteenth-century society were a notable exception They were usually connected by the laws with parish and sometimes county and borough governments But they had no ties neither responsibilities nor claims to any agency of the ministerial governments their accounts were not aushydited they published no accounts or reports their actions passed uninshyspected by anybody and yet they possessed the power to arrest detain and punish the poor in their charge

This freedom to act irresponsibly came from the form of their creation and from Parliaments indifference The special authorities got their bearshyings not as the result of a considered policy of Parliament or the governshyment but from the initiative of interested local groups The Local Acts which set them up did not enter the full debates of either house but usushyally were discussed only in small meetings by the members of the counshyties and boroughs to be affected by their passage

Thus these special authorities like the Municipal Corporations and the Quarter Sessions operated unchecked by the Privy Councilor the Asshysize Judges and virtually ignored by their parent the Parliament In this way the localities were governed-the poor supervised the streets imshyproved the marshes drained the roads built and maintained and a varishyety of other essential services provided or unprovided-all without a governing policy or without a central direction The result was in the fine phrase of the Webbs an anarchy of local autonomyJ5

VII There may have been a kind of anarchy in the practices of the special authorities but virtually alongside them indeed within the traditional orshyder a new fiscal and military state had taken hold of a crucial part of pubshylic life That part consisted of war and all that went into making it The alteration of the state began after the Glorious Revolution and continued throughout the eighteenth century After 1688 the means by which it transshyacted business changed in profound ways A large bureaucracy took form the money the state took in grew military and naval forces assumed enorshymous powers and an unprecedented national debt was incurred The

15 Sidney Webb and Beatrice Webb English Local Government from the Revolution to the Municipal Corporations Act IV Statutory Authorities for Special Purposes (Lonshydon 1922) 353shy

THE OBSTRUCTED GIANT 23

element common in all the changes of course was money Had the peoshyple of England heard Benjamin Franklin declaim that the only certainties in life were death and taxes they surely would have agreed Death might be

16 put off but not taxes for wars were expensive and demanded payment

The tax on land had long provided most of the revenue the state needed without borrowing But by the end of the War of the Spanish Sucshycession in 1713 the land tax was no longer enough Not surprisingly as the requirements of the state increased Parliament dominated by landownshyers looked elsewhere for revenues even as rates on land increased Excises answered the demand for money or a part of it throughout most of the eighteenth century including the years of the American war Excises on a vast array of items-soap and salt beer and spirits cider paper and silk among other things consumed by ordinary and mighty folk alike-replaced land as the largest source of revenue from taxes Snch a resort today would be considered regressive but such levies are relatively easy to collect and the list of consumables taxed can always be increased Increased to be sure but not always without protest as the riots over cider before mid-

century demonstrated 17

Customs that is duties on trade also increased as commerce grew in the century British merchants sent their ships all over the world long beshyfore the American Revolution What they brought back could be taxed and was-though if the duties were raised too high smuggling followed Money from such taxes ebbed and flowed with the fortunes of naval war Most of the time the Royal Navy proved itself an able defender of British

ships but on occasion it failed IS

All these efforts to finance the wars of the century proved insufficient Probably no one in Parliament expected them to yield all the money needed The government relied more and more upon borrowing and as it did so private sources of several sorts such as banks and stock funds

16 The book that began much of the study of the English fiscal-military state is PCM Dicksons The Financial Revolution in England A Study in the Development of Pubshylic Credit 1688--176 (New York 1967) Dickson puts greater emphasis on borrowing and the national debt than on taxes in explaining British military power John Brewers The Sinews of Power War Money and the English State 1688--1763 (Cambridge Mass 1990 ) suggests that Dicksons emphasis is misplaced while acknowledging the originality of his book Both of these books are extraordinarily helpful to the historian studying the English fiscal-military state in the eighteenth century I have learned most from Brewers splendid book and llsed it extensively in this section

17 Brewer Sinews of Power 95-114 18 Ibid 92-95 and passim

24 25

THE GLORIOUS CAUSE

appeared to take up the financial slack The Bank of England was founded in 1694 as a private company and two years later began issuing stock on which it paid a dividend The bank proved to be an essential source of loans to the government almost from the moment of its founding The debt owed to it and other lenders grew in the course ofthe century in 1763 when Britain made peace with France it amounted to pound13000000019

All this money the taxes and loans went toward the support of the fiscal-military state Inevitably with the demands of war- Britain after the Glorious Revolution fought wars with France and her allies in three lengthy periods 1688-1697 17deg2-1713 and 1739-1763-an administrative structure evolved What must have seemed at times to be an inordinate number of dcpartments were created or enlarged their names had a familiar ringshyCustoms Excise Salt Treasury Navy Board Exchequer But thcir size the numbers of clerks scribes copyists and bookkeepers were at first surshyprisingly large Customs for example had 1313 men in 1690 not quitc twenty years latcr therc were 1839 and in 1770 on the evc of the Amerishycan Revolution 2244middot The Excise department went from 1211 to 4066 in these years Revenue officers -those who collccted taxes-tripled in thc years between 1690 and 1782 The wars of the eightcenth century drove this growth as nothing else could have20

All the organization the growing complexity of administration the inshycrease in revenues the expansive control of the Bank of England and the growth of the debt underlay a comparable transformation of the British army and navy For in the hundred years following 1688 both organizashy

21tions trebled in size Their growth was not steady not surprisingly it occurred most rapidly in wartime in peacetime shrinkage took place esshypecially in the army But war in the century assumed what was almost a reshyliable form and the increases in arms and ships seemed to be irrcsistiblc

The cbb and flow in the numbers of soldiers in service Over the course of the century exceeded a comparable flux in sailors Britain had for severa] generations relied upon foreign mercenaries when it entered the struggles on the European continent a practicc not abandoned in the eighteenth century Hiring mercenaries entailed paying them for service only because thcy did not have to be maintained in times of peace the army could

19middot On the Bank of England see Dickson 48-49 51-57 H V Bowen The Bank of Enshygland During the Long Eighteenth Century 1694-1820 in R Roberts and D Kynasshyton eds The Bank of England (Oxford 1995) 1-18

20 The growth in administration is sketched out in Brewer Sinews of Power especiallychap 3shy

21 Brewer 29


conservc resources The navy in peacetime accomplished something simshyilar by paying off crews and laying up ships Still the capital investment made by the navy in ship construction involved a very considerable cost The armys expenses included nothing quite comparable

There was little disagreement in the eighteenth century about the use of these forces The navys purpose seemed obvious to most ministries-to protect the home islands from invasions usually and properly feared from France It followed from this mission that the fleet or most of it should be kept in home waters Home waters did not always mean the ports of the English Channel and almost never did they refer to such ports after 1730 About that time Admiral Edward Vernon and soon afterward Admiral George Anson insisted that the Western Approaches (the area from Cape Clear on the Irish Coast to Finisterre) provided a much more suitshyable environment for the purpose of guarding the home country Their reasoning recognized how disruptive sometimes paralyzing the prevailshying winds from the southwest could be for ships in the channel These winds and in the winter the storms they brought blew up the channel scattering and sometimes sinking ships and making defense impossible22

This traditional function of the navy did not prevent the Admiralty from sending detachments of the fleet to other parts of the world The British Empire was large and was made much larger with the great trishyumph in the war with France at midcentury (1756-63) But the fleets prishymary use was not then or afterward conceived to be blessed by what modern historians call a Blue Water Policy -the advancement of trade and colonies by naval might The navy in fact did not think of its mission in terms of any grand policy or strategy It is untrue that the navy did not think at all but the truth was that it did not have the institutional apparashytus or the habit of mind for long-term planning While state organizashytions found themselves transformed naval leadership though enlarged did not include planning staffs Admirals might have a secretary and a clerk or two or perhaps a midshipman to keep their affairs in shipshape

22 My thinking on these military and naval matters has been guided by a number of reshymarkably good books and articles NAM Rodger Sea Power and Empire 1688--1793 in P J Marshall ed The Oxford History of the British Empire Vol II The Eighteenth Century (Oxford England 1998) 19ampr83 NAM Rodger The Wooden World An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy (London 1986) Jeremy Black and Philip Woodfinc eds The British Navy and the Use of Naval Power in the Eighteenth Century (Leicester England 1988) especially essays by Daniel A Baugh JerelllY Black Richard Middleton Julian Gwyn Paul M Kennedy The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (London 1976) 97-118

26 27

THE GLORIOUS CAUSE

order but nothing more The Navy Board had more mundane matters to look after the procurement of ships and men foremost The First Lord of the Admiralty represented the navy or more accurately the Admiralty Board in Cabinet but neither he nor any board laid down concepts of strategy for the fleet For the most part no scholarly or professional literashyture existed to guide thinking about the nature of war at sea There were manuals of navigation and others on gunnery and ship construction but not much more The complexity and the changes found so easily in fiscal-military state clearly had their limits in the navyn

So also did they in the army Army life organized itself around the regishyment Leaders of regiments and of the armies they made up were aristoshycrats most with only the flimsiest interest or knowledge of the larger contours of war Officers owned their commissions-they or their fathers had bought them-and except for rare individuals and occasions most confined their interest to the immediate terms of life in the regiment Beshycause the government relied so heavily on local militia and foreign mershycenaries for defense the regular army only rarely emphasized the kind of professionalism that later became so common24

By midpoint in the eighteenth century the fiscal-military state had asshysumed mature form The resort to the debt and the deep structure of tax collection and fiscal management had proved itself and the administrashytive apparatus-from clerks scribes revenue agents among a host of ers right up to sub-ministers-had entrenched itself into what was now a familiar order And Britain had learned how to wage war and how to insert the means of waging war within the old political system of patronage and hierarchy

VIII

The Webbs phrase also describes the situation of the American colonies before the American Revolution All but Georgia had been founded in the seventeenth century and by the eighteenth century though all were under the supervision of Britain they pretty well ran their own affairs The

23middot Besides the works in in 22 see Daniel A Baugh British Strategy During the First World War in the Context of Four Centuries Blue-Water Versus Continental Comshymitment in Daniel M Masterson ed Naval History The Sixth Symposium of the U S Naval Academy (Wilmington Del 1987) 85-110 (see esp 8(Hp)

24middot For a brief but incisive glimpse OIl matters ill this paragraph see DOll Higginbotham The War of American Independence (Bloomington Ind 1971 pb 1977) 123-24 Sylvia R Frey The British Soldier in America A Social History of Military in the Revoshylutionary Period (Austin 19i1J) offers much on both officers and men


general outlines of their formal relationship to the Crown were known but their objective sihlation-their virhlal autonomy-was not The disparshyity between reality and what was imagined in England is not surprising the distance between England and America was great and communicashytion imperfect and no very enlightened colonial administration which might have explained each to the other existed

The colonies had been founded under the authorization of the Crown and governmental authority in them had always been exercised in the kings name though rather ambiguously in the three proprietary colonies Maryland Pennsylvania Delaware and tenuously in Rhode Island and Connecticut the two corporate colonies What had lasted long apparshyently seemed best left unchanged The administrative structure on which the Crown relied to govern the colonies was old and never really adeshyquate to govern the vast holdings in the New World In England the Privy Council and the Secretary of State for the Southern Department did the actual work of administration before 1768 The Privy Councils primary responsibilities lay elsewhere or its interests did and the chief concern of the Secretary of State for the Southern Department was relations with Europe For advice the Secretary relied on the Board of Trade an advishysory body primarily concerned with trade 25

If this structure made for confusion because responsibility for the conshyduct of colonial affairs was not clearly placed the differences among the colonial governments themselves added to it as did the problem of comshymunication among governments separated by the Atlantic Ocean The one relatively steady hand in this structure was provided by the Board of Trade which funneled information received from the colonies to the Secretary and relayed his instructions to governors and other officials America For a time early in the eighteenth century the Board lost ence as certain English officials succeeded in curbing its authority But in 1748 the Earl of Halifax became its president and increased its influence and his own In 1757 Halifax was made a member of the Privy Council his appointment alleviated the confusion in colonial administration for he remained president of the Board of Trade

When Halifax resigned in 1761 the Board lost influence and the colonies lost an intelligent administrator Administrative order never again really attained the level reached at midcenhlry The most important effort to esshytablish such order made between Halifaxs retirement and the Revolution

25 Oliver Morton Dickerson American Colonial Government (Cleveland Ohio 1912) Andrews Colonial Period IV


was the creation in 1768 of the office of the Secretary for Colonial Affairs a department charged with supervision of the colonies Unfortunately this office aroused the jealousy of other ministers and fell into the hands of inept secretaries

At another time in British history administrative inefficiency even stushypidity and an absence of understanding would not have mattered much But late in the century it did Administrative agencies did not make policy on crucial matters but they contributed to it by supplying information and advice And they had a responsibility to keep the colonials and the ministry in touch with one another A well-conceived structure staffed by enlightened and well-informed personnel could prevent mistakes policyshymakers might make and could assist in the drafting of successful policy

The makers of colonial policy included Parliament though important aspects of its relations with and authority over the colonies were unclear in the eighteenth century Parliament had of course defined the economic relations of England to the colonies in a series of statutes most passed in

seventeenth century Acts of navigation and trade had confined coloshynial trade to ships owned and sailed by British and colonial subjects and they had regulated colonial trade in other ways largely to the benefit of British merchants In the eighteenth century before the revolutionary crishysis began Parliament had also attempted unsuccessfully to stop the imshyportation of foreign-produced molasses into the colonies and it had placed limits on the production of woolens hats and iron Yet despite these statutes the extent of Parliaments authority to legislate for the colonies had not been closely examined by anyone When it was it became a center of controversy

The common presumption in England wholly unexamined was that was clear in the colonial relation The colonies were colonies after

and as such they were dependencies plants set out by superiors the children of the mother country and our subjects The language used to describe the colonies and their subordination expressed certain realities The colonial economy had long been made to respond to Enshyglish requirements the subordination in economic life was real though not absolute Moreover there was a theoretical basis for the subordinashytion several generations of writers had analyzed mercantilism a theory which described state power in terms of the economic relations of the imshyperial center to its colonial wings Mercantilism had evolved over the years from bullionism which had defined power largely in terms of gold to a sophisticated set of propositions about exchange balance of trade manufacturing and raw materials Whatever the emphasis the versions


current in England in the middle of the eighteenth century prescribed a distinctly secondary position for colonies on any scale of importance

26

Although political thought offered much less on the colonies the poshylitical realities seemed as clear as the economic The mother country sent out governors who acted in the kings name Parliament legislated for the colonies the Privy Council reviewed the statutes passed by their assemshyblies and the Crown retained a veto In America the law was English and so were most political institutions

The sense of superiority and the snobbery that underlay all the theory were far more important than any of the formal statements of mercantile or political thought For this sense permeated or seemed to all ranks of Englishmen conscious of American existence And it may be that the colonials in America in the peculiar way of colonials accepted both the truth of the explicit propositions and the unconscious assumption that they somehow were unequal to the English across the sea Certain it is that the most sophisticated among them yearned to be cosmopolites followed Londons fashions and aped the English style If this imitation did nothshying else it confirmed the prevailing feeling in Britain that the lines of colonial subordination were right and should remain unchanged

26 Andrews Colonial Period IV esp chap 10

1 The Obstructed Giant

When George III acceded to the throne in 1760 his English subjects were singing with spirit once more Rule Britannia burst from their mouths-words twenty years old (they originally formed a patriotic poem)-and they went like this

When Britain first at heavens command Arose from out the azure main This was the charter of the land And guardian angels sung this strain

Rule Britannia rule the waves Britons never will be slaves

The call to rule seemed natural in 1760 a few years earlier it had mocked the realities of British power and influence in Asia and America For in these years of war with France British arms took a terrible beating-and so did British pride

The war had begun with a skirmish in the wilderness between French troops and American colonials led by young George Washington whose description of the affair revealed that his interest in war lay in the opporshytunities it offered for honorable and gallant action Honor and gallantry did not die in the next few years though large numbers of English Amershyican and French soldiers and Indians did The deaths of the English and Americans were especially galling for they came in a series of battles marred by ineptitude stupidity and some said cowardice General Edshyward Braddock not stupid but surely inept and ignorant of his ignorance

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