d with the means of
defence; and it is equally certain that this was the true line of policy
for promoting that dismemberment of the British empire which France had
an interest in accomplishing. It was the interest of Congress to apply
to the Court of France, and it was the interest of France to listen to
their application."[412]

The application for alliance with France to war with England was far
from being the voice of America. The fact that it was under discussion
in Congress three months before it could be carried, shows how strong
must have been the opposition to it in Congress itself, and how vigorous
and persevering must have been the efforts to manipulate a majority of
its members into acquiescing in an application for arms, money, and men
to a Government which was and had always been the enemy of civil and
Protestant liberty--which had hired savage Indians to butcher and scalp
their forefathers, mothers, and children, without regard to age or sex,
and which had sought to destroy their very settlements, and drive them
into the sea, while the British Government had preserved them from
destruction and secured to them the American continent. It is easy to
conceive how every British heart in America must have revolted at the
idea of seeking to become brother warriors with the French against the
mother country. Nor was the proceeding known in America until America
was committed to it, for the Congress made itself a secret conclave; its
sittings were held in secret; no divisions were allowed to be recorded;
its debates were suppressed; its members were sworn to secrecy; the
minorities had no means of making known their views to the public; it
was decided by the majority that every resolution published should be
reported as having been adopted _unanimously_, though actually carried
by the slenderest majority. The proceedings of that elected Congress,
which converted itself into a secret conclave, were never fully known
until the present century, and many of them not until the present age,
by the biographies of the men and the private correspondence of the
times of the American Revolution. The United Empire Loyalists of those
times were not permitted to speak for themselves, and their principles,
character and acts were only known from the pens of their adversaries.
Had the heart of America been allowed to speak and act, there would have
been no alliance of America, France, and Spain against England; the
American colon