Melancholy is the spectacle of a great light which is going out, and of a power once supreme losing its influence over men. Lord Chatham had the good fortune to cast a final gleam before falling forever. After two years of a mysterious retreat, he reappeared in public life in 1769, and the Duke of Grafton's ministry could not withstand his attacks. Lord North, still young, and without high political ambition, of an amiable character, and personally agreeable to the king, had just accepted the heavy burden of power (January, 1770). { 271} Lord Chatham pretended to see in this new combination that persistent influence of Lord Bute which was a favorite theme for the attacks of the pamphleteers, whether it was a question of John Wilkes, or of that mysterious writer, still hidden after more than a hundred years, under the name of Junius. "Who does not know," he cried, "that Mazarin, though absent from France, was always there; and do we not know an analogous case? When I was recently called to public service, I hastened upon the wings of my zeal. I agreed to preserve a peace which I detested--a peace which I should not have made, but which I was resolved to maintain because it had been made. I was credulous, I admit, but I was taken in; I was deceived; the same mysterious influence still existed. My cruel experience has at length painfully convinced me that behind the throne there is hidden something greater than the throne itself."
The situation of affairs in America became each day more serious. On his accession to office. Lord Chatham had consented to extract a revenue from the colonies. A customs law had established taxes upon tea, glass, and paper, creating a permanent administration for collecting external imposts. The distinction which the colonists had previously established was thus turned against them, and they abandoned it forever. The time for legal fictions was past. [Footnote 1]
[Footnote 1: Cornelis de Witt's History of Washington.]
In truth there was already between the government of George III. and the colonies something besides a constitutional and financial question. The Americans were no longer simple subjects of the metropolis, merely struggling against such an abuse of power or such a violation of right. It was one people aroused against the oppression of another people, whatever might be the form or the name of that oppression. Still attached to the mother country by the ties of a secular fidelity, and ardently refraining from all aspirations towards independence, they were still dominated by a supreme sentiment--love for the American country, for its grandeur, its liberty, its force. "You are taught to believe that the people of Massachusetts is a rebel people, uprisen for independence," wrote Washington as late as the 9th of October, 1774. "Permit me to tell you, my good friend, that you are deceived, grossly deceived. I can assure you, as a matter of fact, that independence is neither the desire nor the interest of that colony, nor of any other on the continent, separately or collectively. But at the same time you may be sure that not one of them will ever submit to the loss of those privileges, of those precious rights which are essential to every free state, and without which liberty, property, and life are deprived of all security."