This passage would suffice, were there not many similar which might be quoted, to prove that Washington was from the start a loyal American. A legend which circulated during his lifetime, and must have been fabricated by his enemies, for I find no evidence to support it either in his letters or in other trustworthy testimony, insinuated that he was British at heart and threw his lot in with the Colonists only when war could not be averted. In 1770 the merchants of Philadelphia drew up an agreement in which they pledged themselves to practise non-importation of British goods sent to America. Washington's wise neighbor and friend, George Mason, drafted a plan of association of similar purport to be laid before the Virginia Burgesses. But Lord Botetourt, the new Royal Governor, deemed some of these resolutions dangerous to the prerogative of the King, and dissolved the Assembly. The Burgesses, however, met at Anthony Hay's house and adopted Mason's Association. Washington, who was one of the signers of the Association, wrote to his agents in London: "I am fully determined to adhere religiously to it."
Five years had now elapsed since the British Tories attempted to fix on the Colonies the Stamp Act, and although they had withdrawn that hateful law, the relations between the Mother Country and the Colonists had not improved. Far from it. The English issued a series of irritating provisions which convinced the Colonists that the Government had no real desire to be friendly, and that, on the contrary, it intended to make no distinction between them and the other conquered provinces of the Crown. Then and always, the English forgot that the Colonists were men of their own stock, equally stubborn in their devotion to principles, and probably more accessible to scruples of conscience. So they were not likely to be frightened into subjection. The governing class in England was in a state of mind which has darkened its judgment more than once; the state of mind which, when it encounters an obstacle to its plans, regards that obstacle as an enemy, and remarks in language brutally frank, though not wholly elegant: "We will lick him first and then decide who is right." In 1770 King George III, who fretted at all seasons at the slowness with which he was able to break down the ascendency of the Whigs, manipulated the Government so as to make Lord North Prime Minister. Lord North was a servant, one might say a lackey, after the King's own heart. He abandoned lifelong traditions, principles, fleeting whims, prejudices even, in order to keep up with the King's wish of the moment. After Lord North became Prime Minister, the likelihood of a peaceful settlement between the crown and the Colonies lessened. He ran ahead of the King in his desire to serve the King's wishes, and George III, by this time, was wrought up by the persistent tenacity of the Whigs--he wished them dead, but they would not die--and he was angered by the insolence of the Colonists who showed that they would not shrink from forcibly resisting the King's command. On both sides of the Atlantic a vehement and most enlightening debate over constitutional and legal fundamentals still went on. Although the King had packed Parliament, not all the oratory poured out at Westminster favored the King. On the contrary, the three chief masters of British eloquence at that time, and in all time--Edmund Burke, William Pitt, and Charles James Fox--spoke on the side of the Colonists. Reading the magnificent arguments of Burke to-day, we ask ourselves how any group in Parliament could have withstood them. But there comes a moment in every vital discussion when arguments and logic fail to convince. Passions deeper than logic controlled motives and actions. The Colonists contended that in proclaiming "no taxation without representation," they were appealing to a principle of Anglo-Saxon liberty inherent in their race. When King George, or any one else, denied this principle, he denied an essential without which Anglo-Saxon polity could not survive, but neither King George nor Lord North accepted the premises. If they had condescended to reply at all, they might have sung the hymn of their successors a hundred years later: