Dickinson, and Jay were appointed a secret "committee for the sole purpose of corresponding with friends in Great Britain, Ireland, and other parts of the world;" and funds were set aside "for the payment of such agents as they might send on this service." "It is an immense misfortune to the whole empire," wrote Jefferson to a refugee, “to have a king of such a disposition at such a time. We are told, and every thing proves it true, that he is the bitterest enemy we have; his minister is able, and that satisfies me that ignorance or wickedness somewhere controls him. Our petitions told him that from our king there was but one appeal. The admonition was despised, and that appeal forced on us. After colonies have drawn the sword, there is but one step more they can take. That step is now pressed upon us by the measures adopted, as if they were afraid we would not take it. There is not in the British empire a man who more cordially loves a union with Great Britain than I do; but, by the God that made me, I will cease to exist before I yield to a connection on such terms as the British parliament propose; and in this I speak the sentiments of America." Yet Dickinson still soothed himself with the belief that the petition of his drafting had not been rejected, and that a conciliatory disposition would be manifested in the king's speech at the opening of parliament. 1775. Nov. CHAPTER L. HOW GEORGE III. FARED IN HIS BID FOR RUSSIANS. SEPTEMBER, OCTOBER, 1775. 1775. Sept. THE king's proclamation was a contemptuous defiance alike of the party of Rockingham and the party of Chatham, as the instigators, correspondents, and accomplices of the American rebels. Rochford was heard repeatedly to say that, before the winter should pass over, heads would fall on the block. "The king of England," said Wilkes, the lord mayor of London, in conversation at a public dinner, "hates me; I have always despised him the time is come to decide which of us understands the other best and in what direction heads are to fall." Vergennes, who, with wonderful powers of penetration, analyzed the public men and their acts, but neither the institutions nor the people of England, complacently flattered Louis XVI. by contrasting its seeming anarchy with the happiness of the French in "living peacefully under a good and virtuous. king." "I know," said George III., "what my duty to my country makes me undertake, and threats cannot prevent me from doing that to the utmost extent." He scoffed at the thought of an insurrection, though he stationed troops where riotous disorder was apprehended. vailed that seven or eight members of the opposition would be sent to the Tower of London; but this happened only to Stephen Sayre, an American by birth, a man of no political importance. A rumor pre Loyal addresses began to come in, to the joy of Lord North; but the king, whose instincts on the subject of despotic authority were more true than those of any man in his cabinet, wished to avoid the appeal to popular opinion. For a time, the public was united by the representation that the insurrection in the colonies had been long premeditated with the design of achieving independence; and, while that delusion lasted, the violent measures of coercion were acquiesced in "by a majority of individuals of all ranks and professions; " yet without zeal, and unattended by a willingness to serve in America, so that the regiments could not be kept full by enlistments in Britain. The foreign relations of England became, therefore, of paramount impor tance. The secretary of state desired to draw from the French ambassador at London a written denial of Lee's assertion that the Americans had a certainty of receiving support from France and Spain; but the intimation was evaded, for "the king of France would not suffer himself to be made an instrument to bend the resistance of the Americans." "If they should apply to us," said Vergennes, "we shall dismiss them politely, and we shall keep their secret." Beaumarchais, who was then in England as an emissary from Louis XVI., and who from the charms of his conversation, his ability to write verses and to sing well, his generous style of living, and his apparent want of an official character, had opportunities of gaining information from the most various sources, encouraged the notion that England might seek to recover her colonies by entering on a war with France, and thus reviving their ancient sympathies. Having become acquainted with Arthur Lee, and having received accurate accounts of the state of America from persons newly arrived, he left London abruptly for Paris, and through De Sartine presented to the king a secret memorial in favor of taking part with the insurgents. "The Americans," said he, "are full of the enthusiasm of liberty, and resolve to suffer every thing rather than yield; such a people must be invincible; all men of sense are convinced that the English colonies are lost for the mother country, and I share their opinion." 1775. On the twenty-second of September, the day after Sept. the subject was discussed in the council of the king, De Sartine put a new commission into the hands of Beau marchais. Vergennes continued to present America to his mind in every possible aspect. He found it difficult to believe that the mistakes, absurdity, and passion of the British ministers could be so great as they really were; otherwise, he never erred in his judgment. He received hints of negotiations for Russian troops; yet he held it impossible that the king of England should be willing to send foreign mercenaries against his own subjects. Henry IV. would not have accepted the aid of foreign troops to reduce Paris; their employment would render it in any event impossible to restore affectionate relations between the parent state and the colonies. Vergennes had not penetrated the character of the British government of his day, which, in the management of domestic affairs, was tempered by a popular influence, but which, in its foreign policy, consulted only the interests or the pride of the oligarchy, and was less capable of a generous impulse than that of France. The ministry did not scruple to engage troops wherever they chanced to be in the market. 1775. Sept. The hereditary prince of Hesse-Cassel, already the ruler of the little principality of Hanau, had scented the wants of England, and written to George III.: "I never cease to make the most ardent vows and prayers for the best of kings; I venture to offer, without the least condition, my regiment of five hundred men, all ready to sacrifice with me their life and their blood for your majesty's service. Deign. to regard the motive, and not the thing itself. Oh that I could offer twenty thousand men to your majesty! it should be done with the same zeal; my regiment is all ready at the first twinkle that shall be given me ;" and, like the beggar that sends his goods as a present to a rich patron from whose charity he means to extort more than the market price, he demanded nothing, but hurried to England to renew his solicitations. The king wished leave to recruit in Holland, and to obtain of that republic the loan of its so-called Scottish brigade, which consisted no longer of Scots, but chiefly of Walloons and deserters. The house of Orange would have consented; but the dignity, the principles, and the policy of the states-general, forbade. This is the first attempt of either party to interest the Netherlands in the American war; and its neutrality gave grievous offence in England. Sir Joseph Yorke, at the Hague, was further directed to gain information on "the practicability of using the good dispositions of the king's friends upon the continent, and the military force which its princes might be engaged to supply." For England to recruit in Germany was a defiance of the law of the empire; but Yorke reported that recruits might be raised there in any number, and at a tolerably easy rate; and that bodies of troops might be obtained of the princes of Hesse-Cassel, Würtemberg, Saxe-Gotha, Darmstadt, and Baden. 1775. But for the moment England had in contemplation Sept. a larger scheme. Gunning's private and confidential despatch from Moscow was received in London on the first day of September, with elation. That very day Suffolk prepared an answer to the minister. To Catharine, George himself with his own hand wrote: 66 I accept the succor that your majesty offers me of a part of your troops, whom the acts of rebellion of my subjects in some of my colonies in America unhappily require; I shall provide my minister with the necessary full powers; nothing shall ever efface from my memory the offer your imperial majesty has made to me on this occasion." Armed with this letter, Gunning was ordered to ask of the empress twenty thousand disciplined infantry, completely equipped, and prepared, on the opening of the Baltic in spring, to embark by way of England for Canada, where they were to be under the supreme command of the British general. The journey from London to Moscow required about twenty-three days; yet they were all so overweeningly confident that they hoped to get the definitive promise by the twenty-third of October, in season to announce it at the opening of parliament; and early in September Lord Dartmouth and his secretary hurried off messages to Howe and to Carleton, that the empress had given the most ample assurances of letting them have any number of infantry that might be wanted. On the eighth, Suffolk despatched a second courier to |