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there must arise "a grand marine empire." The importance of Pownall's position lies in the fact that he clearly adopts and expounds the commercial doctrines of his day. The wisdom of a trading nation is to gain as many customers as possible. Those, however, gained in foreign trade, we possess under restrictions and difficulties, and we may lose them in the rivalship of commerce, while those, that a trading nation can create within itself, it deals with under its own regulations and makes its own, and cannot lose. The valuable consideration which Colonies give to the Mother country, in return for the grants, charters, privileges and protection which they receive, is the exclusive right to the external profits of their labour and to their custom. In dealing with the principle of the Navigation Acts, I suggested the ideal at which they might have aimed, and the Mercantile system found its genuine accomplishment. Pownall was, however, a voice crying in the wilderness, and the course of English policy went on unheeding.

But if this, which was the main sore, could not be healed, it does not follow that minor measures, themselves useful, could not have been taken. The first necessary step was to form a just estimate of the situation. There was almost constant conflict between the Governors and the Assemblies, and the reasonable British course should have been to send out a strong Commission to report upon the spot. We have seen how, at an earlier date, this course had been adopted, and had only failed through the unfortunate choice of Commissioners, and yet, when the need was far more urgent, no such proposal was ever, so far as I am aware, made, except by the irresponsible Quaker, Dr Fothergill.1 It is true that at a later date, Onslow 2 suggested that Grenville and himself should go out as Commissioners, but the proposal was made in joke, to lead to the point that the event would conduce to the future quiet of both countries; and English statesmen appear to have felt no doubts in deciding upon a case, which they had never diagnosed. 1 Hist. MSS. Com., Dartmouth Corr.

2 Franklin's Works, Vol. VII., Letter of Dec. 19, 1767.

There were other measures, relating to the executive, which should have been possible. It has been seen how much ill-feeling arose about the position of the judges. Upon the one hand, the Assemblies refused to pay them a proper permanent salary, and kept them at their beck and call dangling for their money. Upon the other hand the Crown maintained that the status of the Colonial judges did not justify their appointments being made for life, and that they must still continue in the position of English judges before the Revolution, " during the pleasure" of the Crown. Surely there was here room for compromise. If the distinct proposal had been made, that the judges should be placed in the position of English judges, if the Assemblies would secure to them a proper permanent salary, in all probability the matter might have been arranged. Take the yet more burning question of the Governor's salary. We have hitherto looked at it mainly through the doleful spectacles of the Governor's complaints, but assuredly there was another side to the shield. Unhappily, in the one colony where the salary of the Governor was a permanent charge on the colonial quit rents, the bad practice obtained of the Governor living at his ease in England, while the work was performed by deputy. How complete was the absence of a proper public opinion in this matter is shown by the following case. Nothing aroused greater indignation in the mind of Pitt than the dismissal in 1768 of Amherst from the Government of Virginia, but what were the facts? He was informed that, it being necessary in the present state of affairs in America for Governors to reside in their province, he must choose between returning to Virginia or retiring. He treated the suggestion that he, who had been Commander-in-Chief in America, should return there as the Governor of a single province as an insult. He indignantly refused a pension, but it never occurred to him, or to his patriotic friends, that to be paid for work one does not perform involves all the faults of a pension, while it cannot be defended upon the separate grounds upon which pensions may be most expedient. In any case, the example of a man of high merit and unim

peached honour, like Amherst, serves to explain the jealousy of the Colonial Assemblies. But here again, what was to prevent some kind of compromise? If the English had enforced, if necessary by Act of Parliament, the necessity of Governors residing in their provinces, and if their commissions had been for a term of five or six years, not to be renewed except on the express petition of the Colonial Assembly, in all probability the question of a salary might have been settled. Then again, undoubtedly, the Governors were right when they urged that, in the interests of the Crown, their position in the filling up of offices and posts should be strengthened. Surely there were enough jobs open for a Minister in England without the Colonies being further flooded with the scum of English corruption. Years before the Board of Trade had very wisely recommended1 that Colonial appointments should, as far as possible, be given as rewards to well-deserving colonials, but nothing effectual had been done in this direction, and the people were never encouraged to look up to the Royal Governor as the fountain of honour. While the English Government showed such little respect and trust in their officers, how could it expect them to obtain the respect and trust of the people? In the state of things which had come about, it was of the utmost importance to secure the services of the most capable men possible for the post of Governor. And yet no sense of this seems to have dawned on English politicians.

There was one other matter of extreme difficulty, in which something might have been attempted. No one who was not blinded by prejudice could doubt of the splendid fighting material shown by America during the late war with France. Whoever has observed the extreme attraction exercised over the minds of a militia by regular troops must admit that, if wise precautions had been taken, and all risk avoided of appearing to act against the constitutional rights of the Colonies, it might have been possible to attach to the service of the Crown a Colonial army, which might have rendered 11715. N. Y. Doc., Vol. V.

the immediate course of history very different. Any project to use an American army against American liberties would undoubtedly have failed, but had moderation ruled in politics, the presence of a loyal American army might have been a force, making for British interests, the importance of which could not be exaggerated. So far was the British Government from attempting this that by a most unwise regulation 1 1753. all commissions in the royal Army above the rank of Captain took precedence of all commissions in the Colonial 1757. service. And when this rule was modified by the policy of

Pitt, Colonial officers, however senior, were still counted inferior to all regular officers of the same rank. It was rules such as these that would have lost to England the services of Washington, but for the wisdom of Braddock and Forbes in offering him staff appointments. Moreover, the effect of such rules was greatly aggravated by the supercilious attitude generally assumed by the British officers. Most lamentable, from this point of view, was the death, at the ill1758. fated attack on Ticonderoga, of the gifted and beloved Lord Howe, the Marcellus of British interests in America. When one contrasts his untimely end with the manner in which his brother was carefully preserved to be the Empire's executioner, one recognises that the stars in their courses were fighting against Great Britain.

1 MSS. in R. O.

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CHAPTER VII

G. Gren

ville.

THE moral of the American despatches being two-fold, the Policy o weakness of the Executive and the need of a fixed American revenue, Grenville completely disregarded the first, which was by far the more pressing of the two, and embarked with a light heart on the course, which was to end with the coming into being of a new great world State.

Before, however, entering upon this melancholy chapter of English history, we may note some other suggested solutions of the American difficulty. William Knox, who had been in America and had acted as agent for Georgia, and who, afterwards became Under Secretary of State, was convinced that the evil arose largely from the want of balance in the American Constitution, afforded in England by the House of Lords. He desired therefore-and Governor Bernard seems to have shared the wish-the creation of an American aristocracy; but in fact, aristocracies, like the college lawns admired by the American tourist, cannot be brought into sudden life. An aristocracy in name only is the weakest of social bulwarks, and any such attempt in America would have been almost certainly foredoomed to failure. A more dangerous suggestion must be noted. It was thought that the wings of the more unruly Colonies might be clipped by the setting up of a uniform government over the different Provinces. Any attempt to thrust, from outside, a hard and fast Constitution on all the Colonies, any scheme, which did not allow for their differences in history and character, would have aroused at least as much opposition, and been fraught with as serious consequences, as was the attempt directly to tax them. A more serious proposal deserves detailed notice. A variety of writers, from a variety of reasons, ranging from the strict Grenvillite Knox, to the liberal Pownall, and including the

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