and laid all the blame upon his Ministers and
Parliament, against whose acts they appealed to the King for the
protection of their rights and liberties. But it gradually transpired,
from year to year, that the King himself was the real prompter of these
oppressive acts and measures, and though long discredited,[370] yet when
the King ostentatiously announced himself as the champion of the
Parliament and its acts, his determination to enforce by the whole power
of the realm, the absolute submission of the colonies; and when all this
intelligence, so often repeated and doubted, was confirmed by the issue
of the Royal proclamation, which it was known and admitted that the King
himself had urged and hastened, the most sanguine advocates and friends
of reconciliation were astounded and began to despair; and the idea of
independence was now boldly advocated by the press.

In 1773, Dr. Franklin said to the Earl of Chatham, "I never heard from
any person the least expression of a wish for separation." In October,
1774, Washington wrote, "I am well satisfied that no such thing as
independence is desired by any thinking man in America; on the contrary,
that it is the ardent wish of the warmest advocates for liberty that
peace and tranquillity, on constitutional grounds, may be restored, and
the horrors of civil discord prevented." Jefferson stated, "Before the
19th of April, 1775 (the day of General Gage's attack on Concord, and
the Lexington affair), I never heard a whisper of a disposition to
separate from Great Britain." And thirty-seven days before that wanton
aggression of General Gage,[371] John Adams, in Boston, published:

"That there are any who pant after independence is the greatest slander
on the Province." Sparks, in a note entitled "American Independence," in
the second volume of the Writings of Washington, remarks: "It is not
easy to determine at what precise date the idea of independence was
first entertained by the principal persons in America." Samuel Adams,
after the events of the 19th of April, 1775, was prepared to advocate
it. Members of the Provincial Congress of New Hampshire were of the same
opinion. President Dwight, of Yale College (Travels in New England and
New York, Vol. I., p. 159), says: "In the month of July, 1775, I urged
in conversation with several gentlemen of great respectability, firm
Whigs, and my intimate friends, the importance and even necessity of a
declaration of independence on the p