measures towards America are fairly adopted and countenanced by a majority of individuals of all ranks, professions, or occupations in this country,' and he complains that the Opposition were compelled to face a torrent not merely of ministerial and Court power, but also of almost general opinion.''

The party in England, however, that favoured the Americans, though it could not shatter the Government, was quite sufficiently strong to encourage the colonists, and many of its members threw themselves into their cause with the most passionate ardour. It is easy to imagine the effect that must have been produced on the excited minds beyond the Atlantic by the language of Chatham in his great speech in January 1775. 'The spirit which resists your taxation in America,' he said, ‘is the same that formerly opposed loans, benevolences, and shipmoney in England. . . . This glorious spirit of Whiggism animates three millions in America who prefer poverty with liberty to gilded chains and sordid affluence, and who will die in defence of their rights as freemen. . . . For myself, I must declare that in all my reading and observation-and history has been my favourite study-I have read Thucydides, and have studied and admired the master states of the world-that for solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion under such a complication of difficult circumstances, no nation or body of men can stand in preference to the General Congress at Philadelphia. . . . All attempts to impose servitude upon such men, to establish despotism over such a mighty continental nation, must be vain, must be fatal. We shall be forced ultimately to retract. Let us retract while we can, not when we must.' In accordance with these sentiments he withdrew his eldest son from the army rather than suffer him to be engaged in the war. Lord Effingham for the same reason threw up his commission, and Amherst is said to have refused the command against the Americans.3 In 1775 the question was openly debated in Parliament whether British officers ought to serve their sovereign against the Americans, and no less a person than General Conway leaned decidedly to the negative, and compared the case to that of French officers who were em

• Burke's Correspondence, ii. 68, 69. 2 Chatham Correspondence, iv, 420. "Walpole's Last Journals, i. 459

CH. XIII.

SCOTCH OPINION.

533

The Duke of

ployed in the massacre of St. Bartholomew.1 Richmond, after the battle of Bunker's Hill, declared in Parliament that he did not think that the Americans were in rebellion, but that they were resisting acts of the most unexampled cruelty and oppression.'2 The Corporation of London in 1775 drew up an address strongly approving of their resistance, and the addresses of several other towns expressed similar views. A great meeting in London, and also the guild of merchants in Dublin, returned thanks to Lord Effingham for his recent conduct, and in 1776 the freedom of the City was conferred on Dr. Price, on account of his defence of the Americans.' An English subscription-though a very small one-was raised for the relief of the Americans who were wounded at Lexington, and for the relatives of those who had been killed,5 and in 1777 Horne was sentenced to a year's imprisonment and to a fine of 2001. for publishing an advertisement of the Constitutional Society, accusing the English troops in that battle, of murder. When Montgomery fell at the head of the American troops in the invasion of Canada, he was eulogised in the British Parliament as if he had been the most devoted servant of the Crown."

With scarcely an exception the whole political representation of Scotland in both Houses of Parlian.ent supported Lord North, and was bitterly hostile to the Americans. Scotland, however, is one of the very few instances in history, of a nation whose political representation was so grossly defective as not merely to distort but absolutely to conceal its opinions. It was habitually looked upon as the most servile and corrupt portion of the British Empire; and the eminent liberalism and the very superior political qualities of its people seem to have been scarcely suspected to the very eve of the Reform

Bill of 1832. That something of that liberalism for which Scotland is now so distinguished, existed at the outbreak of the American War, may, I think, be inferred from the very significant fact that the Government were unable to obtain addresses in their favour either from Edinburgh or Glasgow.' The country, however, was judged mainly by its representatives, and it was regarded as far more hostile to the American cause than either England or Ireland. A very able observer, when complaining of the apathy and lassitude with which the American policy of the Government was generally regarded, adds, "We must except from all these observations the people of North Britain, who almost to a man, so far as they could be described or distinguished under any particular denomination, not only applauded, but proffered life and fortune in support of the present measures.'2

93

'In Ireland,' says the same writer, though those in office and the principal nobility and gentry declared against America, by far the majority of the Protestant inhabitants there, who are strenuous and declared Whigs, strongly leaned to the cause of the colonies. There are three million Whigs in America,' said Chatham, in 1775, and all Ireland is Whig, and many in England.' Protestant Ireland was indeed far more earnestly enlisted on the side of the Americans than any other portion of the Empire. Emigrants from Ulster formed a great part of the American army, and the constitutional question of the independence of the Irish Parliament was closely connected with the American question. The movement of opinion, however, was confined to the Protestants. The Catholic gentry, on this as on all other occasions of national danger, presented addresses to the King attesting in strong terms their loyalty,

CH. XII. DIFFICULTIES OF RECRUITING.

THE PRESS-GANGS. 535

but the mass of the Catholic population were politically dead, and can hardly be said to have contributed anything to the public opinion of the country.

One remarkable fact, however, was noticed both in England and Ireland. There was a complete absence of alacrity and enthusiasm in enlisting for the army and navy.' This was one of the chief reasons why Germans were so largely enlisted, and it is the more remarkable because Irish Catholics were now freely admitted into the service. For a long time the system of enrolling soldiers, and still more the system of enrolling sailors, had excited much discontent, and the legality of pressgangs had very lately been brought into question. The impressing for the navy rested rather on immemorial custom than on positive law, and it was pronounced by lawyers to be a part of the common law. The impressing for the army was more rarely resorted to, but a statute of Anne authorised magistrates within their specified limits to impress for the army such able-bodied men as did not follow any lawful calling and had not some other support, and several subsequent Acts continued the system for limited periods. A special clause exempted such as had votes for members of Parliament from liability to impressment. In 1757, a gentleman of property having been pressed and confined in the Savoy, his friends applied for a writ of Habeas Corpus in his favour. The question was not determined, as the gentleman was released by order of the Secretary of War; but the lawyers who were consulted all pronounced that the writ of Habeas Corpus only applied to those who had committed or were accused of committing a criminal offence, and that a man accused of no crime could not claim its protection. A Bill was introduced in the beginning of 1758 to remedy this strange anomaly, but it was thrown out by the instrumentality of Lord Hardwicke, and this extension of the Habeas Corpus was only granted in 1816.5

3

The enormous cruelty and injustice of the impressment for the navy, as it was actually carried on, can hardly be exag

1 See Annual Register, 1776, p. 39. 2 Blackstone, book i. c. 13. 32 & 3 Anne, c. 19. Parl. Hist. xv. 875; Clode's Military Forces of the Crown, ii. 15-19. The last Act for

impressment for the army appears to have expired in 1780.

Parl. Hist. xv. 875-923. 5 56 Geo. III. c. 100.

gerated, and it seemed doubly extraordinary in a country which was so proud of its freedom. Impressment,' as has been truly said, 'is the arbitrary and capricious seizure of individuals from the general body of citizens. It differs from conscription as a particular confiscation differs from a general tax.'1 Voltaire was much struck with this feature of English life, and he drew a vivid picture of a boatman on the Thames boasting to him one day of the glories of English freedom and declaring that he would sooner be a sailor in England than an archbishop in France, the next day with irons on his feet, begging money through the gratings of the prison into which he had been thrown without the imputation of any crime, and where he must remain till the ship was ready which was to carry him to the Baltic. In a system so violent and so arbitrary, all kinds of abuses were practised. As we have already seen, the press-gang was often employed to drag Methodist teachers from a work which the magistrates disliked. It was sometimes employed to avenge private grudges. It was thus that Fielding represents Lord Fellamar endeavouring to get rid of his rival by employing a lieutenant to press him. On one occasion in 1770 a marriage ceremony in St. Olave's, Southwark, was interrupted by a press-gang, who burst into the church, struck the clergyman, and tried to carry away the bridegroom. As merchant ships came in from America, and the sailors looked forward, after their long voyage, to see once more their wives and children, a danger more terrible than that of the sea awaited them, for it was a common thing for ships of war to lie in wait for the returning vessels, in order to board them and to press their sailors before they landed. Often the press-gang went down to some great sea-port and boarded all the merchant-ships lying at anchor, in order to collect sailors for the royal navy. They were sometimes fiercely resisted. On one occasion in 1770, 110 impressed seamen who were being carried down the Thames in a tender, broke open the hatches, overpowered the officers and crew, ran the tender aground

2

May's Const. Hist. of England. Hume, in his Essay On some remarkable Customs,' called attention to the great anomaly of impressment in a free country.

2 Annual Register, 1770, p. 161. See the Life of Bampfylde Moore Carew (1749), pp. 128-130.

Annual Register, 1770, p. 147.