circles it was made to appear that substantially
all England was for coercion. But this claim was unfounded. As the
king predicted, the loyal addresses provoked opposition addresses.
Edinburgh and Glasgow, despite the efforts of their members, refused
to address. Lynn was said to have addressed, but its members denied
the assertion, and claimed that the war was unpopular in that town.
The paper from Great Yarmouth was very thinly signed, while Bristol,
Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Dudley, and
other places sent in counter-petitions against the war. The justices
of Middlesex unanimously voted that it was expedient to reduce the
colonies to a proper sense of their duty; but at a meeting of the
freeholders of the same county, held at Mile-end, to instruct their
members in Parliament, little unanimity prevailed, "much clamor
arose," a protest was entered against the proposed resolutions, and
only one of the sheriffs consented to sign them all. London, as the
country well knew, sympathized largely with America, but in a manner
which nullified her influence elsewhere. Her populace was noisy and
threatening; Wilkes, her Lord Mayor, was hated at court; her solid men
kept to business. "Are the London merchants," wrote the king to Lord
North,[2] "so thoroughly absorbed in their private interests not to
feel what they owe to the constitution which has enriched them, that
they do not either show their willingness to support, either by an
address, or, what I should like better, a subscription, to furnish
many comforts to the army in America?" An address from this quarter,
signed by "respectable names," he thought might have a good effect,
and one was presented on October 11th, with 941 signatures; but it was
entirely neutralized by the presentation, three days before, of
another address more numerously signed by "gentlemen, merchants, and
traders of London," in which the measures of government were
condemned. When the point was made in the Commons that the war was a
popular measure in England, Lutrell promptly replied that he had made
many a journey through the interior of the country during the summer
season, and had conversed with "a multitude of persons widely
different in station and description," only to find that the masses
were in sympathy with the colonists. The division of sentiment was
probably correctly represented by Lord Camden early in the year, in
his observation that the landed interest wa