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The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria cover

The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria

Chapter 198: DEMONSTRATION OF PUBLIC SPIRIT IN ENGLAND.
By Edward Farr
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The volume traces British political, parliamentary, and military developments from the accession of George III through the early nineteenth century, chronicling changes of ministry and cabinet, debates over colonial taxation and the American conflict, parliamentary controversies involving figures such as Wilkes and Warren Hastings, questions of Catholic relief and slave-trade abolition, and responses to the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, including major naval and continental campaigns, the union with Ireland, and domestic legislation on finance, civil liberties, and parliamentary reform.

DEMONSTRATION OF PUBLIC SPIRIT IN ENGLAND.

During the recess, the government party and the opposition were equally zealous in securing the public opinion, and, consequently, the success of its future schemes. The intelligence of Burgoyne’s defeat seems to have had a momentary effect on the minds of the people, which favoured the views of opposition, but while a few politicians declaimed on the necessity of ending a ruinous war by recognising the independence of the United States, and others advised a cessation of arms and conciliation, the vast majority of the nation soon burned with ardour to blot out the recollection of Burgoyne’s disgrace, by deeds of arms, and by reducing the colonies to their original subjection to the mother country. Not only did public meetings of corporate bodies, towns, and counties, display their attachment to the cause of the crown by addresses, but some cities and towns as Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, and Edinburgh, raised each a regiment of 1000 men at their own expense. Private subscriptions were opened, large sums were given, and 15,000 soldiers were raised in England, Scotland, and Wales, without any cost or charge to government. Many of the maritime towns, also, armed ships to cruise in the Channel, where American privateers and Frenchmen with American colours were now becoming numerous. On the other hand, the opposition party represented that the American prisoners of war were treated with great cruelty in British prisons, and subscriptions were set on foot for their relief. Complaints had been made in the house of lords concerning the sufferings of the American prisoners, and the subject was investigated; but though it was found that their allowance in some instances had been slender, and that in others their keepers had treated them with severity, it could not be shown that this arose from any want of care on the part of government. Everything, however, was tried which could be tried by the opposition, in order to fix an indelible stigma of infamy on the members of Lord North’s administration.