inst the enemies of England abroad and those worse
enemies of England at home who filled the throne and the places about
the throne. He was buried with great pomp and honor at Westminster,
leaving behind him not merely the memory of an illustrious name, {187}
but a name that the second generation was still to make illustrious.

[Sidenote: 1781--England and her lost colonies]

The folly of the King and the servility of his ministers resulted in
what seemed to be almost an irredeemable catastrophe for England. Even
those Englishmen who most sympathized with the struggle for American
independence could not but feel a regret that men who might have been
among the most glorious citizens of a great and united empire should be
thus recklessly forced into an enmity that had deprived England of its
most splendid possessions. The enemies of England, many and eager,
believed her day was done, that her sun was setting, that neither her
power nor her prestige would ever recover from the succession of
disasters that began at Lexington and that ended in Paris. But the
vitality of the country was too great to be seriously impaired even by
the loss of the American colonies. From a blow that might well have
been little less than fatal the country recovered with a readiness and
a rapidity that was amazing. Men who in their youth heard their elders
speak with despair of the calamity that had befallen their country
lived to old age to learn that the wound was not incurable, and that
England was greater, richer, prouder, and more powerful than she had
ever been before. If she had lost the American colonies she had
learned a lesson in the loss. The blow that might have stunned only
served to rouse her to a greater sense of her danger and a livelier
consciousness of her duty. If she had suffered much from rashness she
was not going to suffer more from inaction, and it seemed as if every
source of strength in the kingdom knit itself together in the common
purpose of showing to the world that England still was England,
although a part of her empire had passed away from her forever. There
was no glory to be got for England out of the American war; it was
wrong from first to last, wrong, unjust, and foolish, but when it ended
it did not find her crippled, nor did it leave her permanently
enfeebled in temper or in strength.

We may gather some idea of what risk wise men felt they were running
from a famous speech of Edmund {188} Burke.