it
was the duty of the British government to discourage and crush American
navigation to the extent of its power in order to check a dangerous
rival, taking especial care to reserve the West Indies for exclusive
British control. At the possibility of losing the {151} profitable
American market through retaliatory measures, Sheffield laughed in
scorn. "We might as reasonably dread the effect of combinations among
the German as among the American States," he sneered, "and deprecate
the resolves of the Diet as those of Congress." There were elements,
of course, to whom these arguments of Sheffield were unwelcome,
particularly the West India planters themselves, and to a degree the
British manufacturers, who would gladly have resumed the trade of the
years before 1776; but, so far as the great majority of Englishmen was
concerned, it seems impossible to doubt that Lord Sheffield was a true
spokesman of their convictions.

In addition to the economic theories of the time, the temper of the
British people was sullen, hostile, and contemptuous toward the former
colonies. The bulk of the nation had come to condemn the policy of the
North Ministry which had led to the loss of the plantations, but they
did not love the Americans any the more for that. The sharp social
distinctions, which prior to 1776 had rendered the nobility, the
gentry, the clergy, and the professions contemptuous toward the
colonists, still reigned unchecked; and the Tories and most of the
ruling classes, regarding the Americans as a set of ungrateful and
spiteful people, whom it was well {152} to have lost as subjects,
ceased to take any interest in their existence. The United States was
dropped, as an unpleasant subject is banished from conversation; and
the relations of the two countries became a matter of national concern
only when the interests of shipowners, merchants, or naval authorities
were sufficiently strong to compel attention from the governing classes.

The Whig leaders should, of course, be excepted from this general
statement, for they and their followers--both their parliamentary
coterie and their middle-class adherents outside--retained a friendly
attitude, and tried to treat the United States with a consideration
which usually had no place in Tory manners. But Whigs as well as
Tories held the prevailing conceptions of naval and economic
necessities, and only scattered individuals, like William Pitt, were
affected by the new doctr