BOOKS.

Slit GEORGE TREVELYA.N'S "AMERICAN REVOLUTION."* Tr is always unsafe to predict classical rank for a book on its first appearance. We shall not therefore venture to affirm that this history of the American Revolution can never be superseded, but it will assuredly be read for many a long year on both sides of the Atlantic. It is at once good history and good literature. Never were sound historical knowledge and political wisdom conveyed in a manner less ponderous and more fascinating. If any complaints are made of a want of perfect impartiality on the part of the historian, they will not, we imagine, proceed from America. His sympathies throughout are with the revolting colonists, not with the English King and his Ministers. The fine lines of Lord Tennyson's, prefixed to the volume, perfectly express Sir George Trevelyan's sentiment regarding the struggle :— "Strong mother of a Lion-line, Be proud of those strong sons of thine Who wrench'd their rights from thee !"

. It is sometimes said that the Anglo-Saxon, even when he takes the sword, remains the trader ; if he fights, he fights for gain, never, like the Frenchman, for an idea. This remark receives no support from the war which England waged with her American Colonies in the eighteenth century, which was on both sides a war for an idea, or at all events for a principle. It is true that • The American Bevolut■on, Part I., 1766 1776. By tho Right Hon. Sir Oenrge Otto Trevelymi, Bart. London Long inan3 and 0o. [163.]

the dispute began about money; but long before hostilities broke out, the question of gain or loss had become absolutely insignificant. The Stamp-duty had been repealed through the exertions of Chatham; the import duties had also been repealed by Lord North with the consent of the King, with the single exception of an insignificant duty on tea, which the King insisted on retaining, not that it was of any pecuniary value, but because it was by its existence a visible sign of the prerogative to tax the Colonies. Had the Americans sub- mitted to this trifling impost, and not thrown the British tea into Boston Efsrbour, there would in all probability have been no war. The Ministers, careless and reckless as they were, clearly perceived that the day for taxing America had gone by for ever, and that England must content herself for the future with the large gains which she derived from the American trade. Sir George Trevelyan, who is, we think, sometimes a little blind to the faults of the colonists, admits that the Boston outrage excited a not unnatural indignation in the minds of Englishmen, who had witnessed the aboli- tion of the Stamp-duty, and were aware that Parliament had gone a great deal more than half way to meet the wishes of the colonists by removing all but a fraction of the unpopular duties. But if the King was obstinate, the colonists were not less so. They were, as Burke remarked, greatly addicted to the study of law, and of questions concerning the rights of nations. This lawyer-like frame of mind proved an advantage when they had to frame a Constitution for themselves, and it gave a certain dignity to their armed resistance to England, for they felt that they were contending for rights, and not for mere gain. It rendered them, however, less disposed to accept a common- sense compromise which might have averted the rupture.

Sir George Trevelyan gives a fine and luminous sketch of the condition of the colonists before the outbreak of the war. Perhaps the colouring is a little too bright ; for it is mainly derived from the reports of French observers who had fled in disgust from the pestilential refinement of Paris. Such men were delighted, as Tacitus in the case of the Germans, to find anywhere a simple and hardy people who retained the primary virtues of social life. The colonists were, however, a frugal, God-fearing race, with a devotion to intellectual pursuits, under great difficulties, which augured well for their future. They were not greatly unlike their brethren on the other side of the Atlantic. In every commercial town in England, from Aberdeen to Falmouth, as Sir George Trevelyan remarks, there were men of the same stamp. But until the present generation the English people have never exercised a perceptible in- fluence upon the foreign policy of the country ; and, un- fortunately, the American question was treated as if it had belonged to foreign, and not to domestic, policy. The real antagonists of the colonists were not the English people, but the King and his Ministers, who commanded a venal majority in Parliament. The ablest of the latter were men of no principles and no scruples, living in an atmosphere of luxury, and even of vice; and they regarded the colonists as of no more account than the labourers on their own estates. They utterly underestimated, too, the ability of the colonists to resist the naval and military power of England. Just before the out- break of hostilities, daring the debate on the American fisheries, the Earl of Sandwich told the House of Lords that the Colonial soldiers were arrant cowards. They had been placed, he said, at the siege of Louisburg by their own request in the front of the army; but they all ran away when the first shot was fired. The apocryphal anecdote amused the House, but it did not amuse the colonists, who became more determined than before to give the British soldier a proof of their mettle.

The King's Ministers, however, would not have embroiled the country with America, or they would, at all events, have drawn back when matters became dangerous, had it not been for the character of the King. George ILL had, as we all know, domestic virtues, and he is usually spoken of as a good man. It would be difficult, however, to name another good man in history who was responsible for so many wicked actions. Although entirely destitute of true political wisdom and foresight, he was a strong King in this sense, that he was a master of the art of getting his own way in spite of constitutional 7 estraintm. With iegard to bribery, corruption, and intimidation he was entirely conscienceless. He could not bribe as Walpole had done, because of the

improved state of the law, but he carried on an extensive system of corruption by means of places and sinecures; and by purchasing, often at extravagant prices, the nomination to seats from the patrons. Those Ministers who would not bow to his imperious will had to leave his service, and he after- wards experienced the natural Nemesis of his shortsighted policy in the inefficiency of those who consented to hold office under him. "He rooted out," writes Sir George Trevelyan, "frankness, courage, and independence from the councils of the State, but he pulled up along with them other qualities which his policy, when brought to a trial, could not afford to dispense with. His Cabinet became exclusively com- posed of men willing to pursue ends which he dictated, but incapable of discerning, or rightly directing, the means by which alone those ends could be attained." Towards the colonists the feelings of the King were those of an enraged despot. It became a leading purpose of his life to "distress America" into submission. Strange to say, it was some time ere the colonists understood that the King was their implac- able enemy. Long after his Ministers were reviled and hated the King retained a certain amount of popularity as a good man, whose kind heart felt for his American subjects.

Sir George Trevelyan does not, fortunately, belong to the modern school of historians who content themselves with recording facts, and decline to pronounce ethical judgments, as not belonging to their province. He does not preach, but he never conceals his opinion of the ethical quality of men and policies. And although a liberal of the liberals, he has not a fanatical love for revolutions like certain historians, who seem to regard such hailstorms as the sole means of purifying and fertilising society. The American Revolution he looks upon as a great disaster for England, and in the manner it was accomplished, a misfortune for the American colonists. On the latter point he writes :—

" The Revolutionary war, like all civil ware, changed many things and troubled many waters. It must be accounted a mis- fortune that American society and the American character were not allowed to develop themselves in a natural and unbroken growth from the point which they had reached at the close of the first century and a half of their history. At the end of the protracted conflict between the Stuarts, and the .party which stood for English liberty, Englishmen were very different from what they had been when it began. That difference was not in all respects for the better, as is shown by a comparison between the biographies of our public men, and the records of our country houses, at the one period and the other. And in like manner the mutual hatred felt, and the barbarities inflicted and suf- fered, by partisans of either side in Georgia and the Carolinas between 1776 and 1782 left behind them in those regions habits of lawlessness and violence, evil traces of which lasted into our lifetime. As for the Northern States, it was a pity that the wholesome and happy conditions of existence prevailing there before the struggle for Independence were ever disturbed, for no change was likely to improve them. If the king, as a true shepherd, was thinking of his flock and not of himself, it is hard to see what he hoped to do for their benefit. All they asked of him was to be let alone ; and with reason ; for they had as just cause for contentment as the population of any ideal State from Mores Utopia downwards. And, indeed, the American colonists had the best in the comparison, for there existed among them a manliness, a self-reliance, and a spirit of clear-sighted conformity to the inexorable laws of the universe which are not to be found in the romances of optimism."

Sir George Trevelyan's volume contains a number of brilliant character-sketches of the actors and contemporaries of the Revolution. There is a deeply interesting sketch of Franklin, the genius of common-sense, who would have averted the conflict had it been possible for common-sense to triumph over political passion. There are sketches of Burke

and of Chatham. The great Whig magnates are described as the superiors of their rivals in purity of motives and dignity of life, but it is admitted that they were often reluctant to leave their pleasant country seats in order to wage a wordy war with the King's placemen. Like Lord Macaulay, Sir George Trevelyan has a kindness for Dissenters and for Evangelicals. There is a fine sketch of John Newton, the Evangelical clergyman and the friend of Cowper; and

one of the most pleasing portraits in the volume is that of the Evangelical Peer, Lord Dartmouth, the Lord Shaftesbury of his day. He had taken an interest in the religious welfare of America before the troubles began, having, among other benefactions, helped to establish a school on the New Hamp- shire frontier for the conversion and civilisation of the Indians, which afterwards became Dartmouth College. The Bishop of London refused his countenance to the school on the ground that the Liturgy was not used in it, and that Dissenters sat on the Board of Manage- ment. Dartmouth continued to be trusted and loved by the colonists even after the troubles began ; for they regarded him as at one with themselves in matters more important than political differences. This was the man whom George III., with a genuine stroke of cunning, appointed Secretary of the Colonies, not that he might have the benefit of his wise and moderate counsels, but that he might shield his own violent and unjust proceedings behind a venerated name. The appointment was hailed with satisfaction in America; and if Dartmouth had been allowed to have his way, the Colonies might have been saved to England. He was able to smooth over some matters, and on one occasion he almost brought about a reconciliation. In 1775, when hostilities were immi- nent, unofficial negotiations were set on foot for settling the difficulties between Great Britain and the Colonies. Benjamin Franklin, on behalf of America, and two members of the Society of Friends, Mr. Barclay and Dr. Fothergill, an eminent London physician, on behalf of England, drew up the proposed terms of agreement. These were communicated to Dartmouth, who expressed himself favourably and hope.

fully about them in private. When Chatham presented to Parliament a Bill for 'settling the troubles in America, Dartmouth, in pursuance of his pacific intentions, begged their Lordships not to kill the measure by an immediate vote.

The scene that followed is thus described by Sir George Trevelyan :—

" In his sincere desire to do his duty according to the light of his own understanding, Dartmouth had for a moment forgotten the terrors of the Bedfords Sandwich, who suspected that peace was in the crucible, knew only too well that premature publicity may be as discomforting to those who are planning good, as to those who are plotting evil. He chose his moment with a sinister address worthy of the orator who turned the debate in the Second Book of Paradise Lost. Looking full and hard at Franklin, who was leaning over the Bar, Sandwich exclaimed that he had in his eye the person who drew up the proposals which were under dis- cussion—one of the bitterest and most mischievous enemies whom England had ever known. Chatham hastened to interpose the shield of his eloquence for the protection of one who might not speak for himself within those walls ; but Franklin was not the quarry at whom Sandwich aimed. The shaft had gone home to the breast towards which it was really levelled. Dartmouth rose once more, and said that he could not press a cause which evidently was unacceptable to their Lordships, and that he him- self would give his voice for rejecting the Bill forthwith. The Secretary for the Colonies would have given his salary, many times told, to prevent bloodshed ; though in the last resort he could not induce himself to thwart, or even to contradict, a master towards whom he entertained a true attachment, and who esteemed him as he deserved. For George the Third was at his very best when exchanging ideas with Dartmouth for any other purpose than that of harrying him into harrying the Americans. If the first of duties (so the monarch wrote to the Minister in July, 1773), that to God, is not known, I fear no other can be expected ; and as to the fashionable word "honour," that will never alone guide a man further than to preserve appear- ance. I will not add Defoe, for I know I am writing to a true believer ; one who shows by his actions that he is not governed by the greatest of tyrants—Fashion.'" It is honourable to the American people that they pardoned the weakness of the Minister, and remembered the goodwill of

the man towards their country. Two generations afterwards, in the July of 1829, the citizens of New York asked leave to detain Dartmouth's portrait, then on its way from England

to the College which bore his name. The request was granted ; and they placed the picture in their Hall of Justice, next those of Washington and Franklin, on the day of the celebration of independence.