LECTURE XXXV.

AMERICAN WAR.

HITHERTO I have alluded chiefly to the origin of this unhappy civil war; the causes of which, as they operated on each side of the Atlantic, you will even now be able, in a general manner, to estimate. Of these general causes, too many of those that operated with us, those that I have enumerated, for instance, may, I think, be held up to the censure and avoidance of posterity. The more they are analyzed, the less can they be respected; and it was very fit and even desirable, that the haughty and selfish sentiments, the unworthy opinions, by which the people of Great Britain and their rulers were led astray, should not only be resisted, but successfully resisted.

And yet it is not so easy to come to a decision on the American part of the case. The colonies were from the first connected with the British empire. They had grown up under its influence, to unexampled strength and prosperity; a principle was no doubt on a sudden brought forward by the British minister, which might have been carried to an extent, and if unresisted, would probably have been carried to an extent materially injurious to their liberties; but it had not been carried to any such extent when acts of fury and outrage were committed in the province of Massachusetts; and we assent to, rather than enter into the reasonings of the Americans. We are surprised and struck with the fervor of their resistance rather than sympathize with it; certainly we do not feel the glow of indignation against the mother country which, on other occasions, of Switzerland and the Low Countries for instance, we have felt against the superior state. That the British nation was wrong, and deserved to be severely punished, must be allowed; but to lose half its empire,

and to have America and Europe rejoicing in its humiliation and misfortunes, as in the fall of tyranny and oppression, is more than a speculator on human affairs (in this country at least) can be well reconciled to. The punishment seems disproportioned to the fault; the fault, however, must not be denied. It was one totally unworthy of the English people, the very essence of whose constitution, its safeguard, its characteristic boast, its principle from the earliest times, the very object of all its virtuous struggles, and for which its patriots had died on the scaf fold, and in the field, was this very principle of representative taxation. I must now, therefore, recall to your minds my observation, that the causes which led to the American war, were not all of them, in their feeling and principle, discreditable to our country. For instance; a particular notion of political right had a great effect in misleading our ministers and people, and hurrying them into measures of violence and coercion. It was of the following nature; all general principles of legislation and national law seem to lead to the conclusion, that the sovereignty must remain with the parent state, and that the power of taxation was involved in the idea of sovereignty. Even Burke seems to have been of this opinion, and the Rockingham part of the Whigs. But this was a point much contested at the time. The reverse was loudly insisted upon by Lord Chatham and his division of the Whigs; that the general powers of sovereignty were one thing, and the particular power of taxation another, that this species of sovereignty, taxation, could not be exercised without representa

tion.

And thus much must at least be conceded to Lord Chatham, that, in practice, this distinction had always existed in the European governments, derived from the barbarian conquerors of the Roman empire. This power of taxation was always supposed to be the proper prerogative of the people, or of the great assemblies that were quite distinct from the wearer of the crown. The granting or refusing of supplies was always considered as a matter of grace and favor to the sovereign, — not of duty; and as something with which they were enabled to come (if I may so speak) into the market with their rulers, and truck and barter for privileges and immunities. But however this original point of the right of taxation being included

in sovereignty be determined; whether it be admitted, or not, in the abstract and elementary theory of government, which is the first question; and whether it be admitted, or not, in any ideas we can form of our feudal governments of Europe, which is the second question; still the same point assumed a very different appearance, and became another and a third question, when this sovereign right of taxation was to be practically applied to colonies, situated as were those of America, and by a mother country, enjoying the kind of free constitution which Great Britain at the time enjoyed. The question of taxation, under these circumstances, became materially and fundamentally altered; and for the rulers and people of Great Britain to set up a right, one, if it existed at all, certainly of a very general and abstract kind; and even to carry it into practical effect, without the slightest accommodation to the feelings of freemen, and the descendants of freemen, without offering the slightest political contrivance, the slightest form of representation, by which the property of the Americans could be rendered as secure as is the property of the inhabitants of Great Britain; without the slightest attempt to avail themselves of the colonial governments existing in America at the time; for the rulers and people of Great Britain to be so totally deaf and insensible to all the reasonings and feelings which had dignified the conduct of their ancestors from the earliest period, and which at that moment continued to dignify their own, show a want of genuine sympathy with the first principles of the English constitution, and the first principles of all relative justice; was to show such carelessness of the happiness and prosperity of others, and such haughty contempt and disregard of the most obvious suggestions of policy and expediency, that it is not at all to be lamented, that the ministers and people of this country should fail in their scheme of unconditionally taxing America; should be disgraced and defeated in any such unworthy enterprise. And it is ardently to be hoped, that all nations, and all rulers of nations, and all bodies of men, and all individuals, should eternally fail and be discomfited; and, according to the measure of their offences, be stigmatized and made to suffer, whenever they show this kind of selfish or unenlightened hostility to such great principles as I have alluded

was to

to,

the principles of civil freedom, of relative justice, and of mild government.

After having thus considered the original grounds of the war, when I came in the last lecture to advert to the conduct of the war, I pointed out to you the most curious and difficult question which the whole contest affords whether the American leaders did not hurry into positive rebellion, before they had sufficient grounds to suppose they could resist what was then the greatest empire on earth.

The fact seems to have been, that resistance ripened gradually and insensibly into rebellion. The leaders had incurred the penalties of treason, before they could well have asked themselves to what lengths they were prepared to go. They always debated with closed doors, so that what were their exact views, and the progress of their opinions, cannot now be known. But the strange, incoherent manner, in which both they and the people of America seemed to have supposed that the dispute would be terminated each year, in the course of that year, or the next, is very striking, and shows how little. they were aware of the magnitude of the enterprise in which they had engaged. This is true in general; but particular individuals were more wise. Instances certainly did occur, and some are on record, of men who were aware how perilous was the course, which, at the opening of the dispute, the patriots were pursuing. "We are not to hope," said Mr. Quincy, to the meeting assembled at Boston in 1774, "that we shall end this controversy without the sharpest, sharpest conflicts. We are not to flatter ourselves, that popular resolves, popular harangues, popular acclamations, and popular vapor will vanquish our foes: let us consider, before we advance to those measures, which must bring on the most trying and terrible struggle this country ever saw."

But on the whole, the general enthusiasm that was excited by this single principle, the fundamental principle of the American controversy, that the parliament of Great Britain had no right to tax them, is quite unexampled in history; and that men should act on the foresight and expectation of events, just as if the events were present, and should endure as much to avoid the approach of oppressive taxgatherers, as if they were already in their houses, is a perfect phenomenon in the records

of the world, and a very curious specimen of that reasoning, sagacious, spirited, determined attachment to the principles of civil liberty, which so honorably distinguished the ancestors of these Americans, the very singular men who flourished in the times of Charles the First, and who, whatever may be their faults, did certainly rescue from imminent danger the civil liberties of these islands.

I have hitherto, through all these lectures on the subject of the American dispute, been obliged to direct your attention to the ill effects of harsh government, to the unfortunate nature of high and arbitrary notions, when the interests of mankind are concerned; their civil liberties at home; their sense of relative justice to other states abroad: but the lessons I am called upon to offer you, through this and the ensuing lecture, are of a different kind; and it will be now my business continually to remind you that though government ought not to be harsh, still that government must exist; and that whatever may be the temptations to which all executive power is exposed, still that somewhere or other executive power must be found, or there will be no chance for the maintenance of justice and right among mankind.

For as we proceed to consider still further the conduct of the American leaders, the principal, and I had almost said the only remaining observation I have to make, is this; that through the whole course of the accounts, as given by the American writers, the reflection that is continually presenting itself is the objectionable nature of the purely republican form of government; the total inadequacy of all forms strictly democratical for the management of mankind, where any management is required; their management, I mean, according to the proper principles of equity and wisdom. I do not think that any sober-minded speculator on government could have ever had much doubt on the subject, yet I conceive that any such doubt will be entirely at an end with those who peruse the volumes of Marshall, or even of Dr. Ramsay; for we are continually led to remark, through every stage of the contest, the want of a proper executive government on the part of the Americans, and the evils that hence ensued; and though the case before us is the case of a country at war, where the difficulties must necessarily be not of an ordinary nature, and the executive 57

VOL. II.