nd Beckford; steadily defended the Americans throughout the
whole of the Revolutionary crisis, and the weight of the best
intelligence in the country was certainly on their side. Could they have
acted as a united body, could Burke and Fox have joined forces in
harmony with Chatham and Shelburne, they might have thwarted the king
and prevented the rupture with America. But George III. profited by the
hopeless division between these two Whig parties; and as the quarrel
with America grew fiercer, he succeeded in arraying the national pride
to some extent upon his side and against the Whigs. This made him feel
stronger and stimulated his zeal against the Americans. He felt that if
he could first crush Whig principles in America, he could then turn and
crush them in England. In this he was correct, except that he
miscalculated the strength of the Americans. It was the defeat of his
schemes in America that ensured their defeat in England. It is quite
wrong and misleading, therefore, to remember the Revolutionary War as a
struggle between the British people and the American people. It was a
struggle between two hostile principles, each of which was represented
in both countries. In winning the good fight, our forefathers won a
victory for England as well as for America. What was crushed was George
III. and the kind of despotism which he wished to fasten upon America in
order that he might fasten it upon England. If the memory of George III.
deserves to be execrated, it is especially because he succeeded in
giving to his own selfish struggle for power the appearance of a
struggle between the people of England and the people of America; and in
so doing, he sowed seeds of enmity and distrust between two glorious
nations that, for their own sakes and for the welfare of mankind, ought
never for one moment to be allowed to forget their brotherhood. Time,
however, is rapidly repairing the damage which George III.'s policy
wrought, and it need in nowise disturb our narrative. In this brief
sketch we must omit hundreds of interesting details; but, if we would
look at things from the right point of view, we must bear in mind that
every act of George III., from 1768 onward, which brought on and carried
on the Revolutionary War, was done in spite of the earnest protest of
many of the best people in England; and that the king's wrong-headed
policy prevailed only because he was able, through corrupt methods, to
command a parliament which did