George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 8

[168] vestal fire of freedom, was at this time outside of the

Chap. LI.} 1775. Nov.

government, though steadily gaining political strength. ‘Chatham, while he had life in him, was its nerve.’ Had Grenville been living, it would have included Grenville; it retained Rockingham, Grenville's successor; it had now recovered Grafton, Chatham's successor; and Lord North, who succeeded Grafton, sided with Germain and Sandwich only by spasms, and though he loved his place, was more against his own ministry than for it. The king's policy was not in harmony with the England of the Revolution, nor with that of the eighteenth century, nor with that of the nineteenth. The England of to-day, which receives and brightens and passes along the torch of liberty, has an honest lineage, and springs from the England of the last century; but it had no representative in the ministry of Lord North, or the majority of the fourteenth parliament. America would right herself within a year; Britain and Ireland must wait more than a half century.

Still less did the ministry possess the hearts of the people of Ireland; though it controlled a majority of her legislature, and sought to allay discontent by concessions in favor of her commerce and manufactures. The consent of the Irish house of commons was requested to sending four thousand of the troops on the Irish establishment to America, and receiving in their stead four thousand German Protestants. ‘If we give our consent,’ objected Ponsonby, in the debate on the twenty fifth of November, ‘we shall take part against America, contrary to justice, to prudence, and to humanity.’ ‘The war is unjust,’ said Fitzgibbons, ‘and Ireland has no reason to be a party therein.’ Sir