Conceived in Liberty (140 page)

In opposition to the Stuart pretensions, the great Dutch “father of international law,” the liberal Hugo Grotius, laid down the principle of freedom of the seas in his
Mare Liberum
in 1609, and integrated the principle into the natural-law structure of international law in his definitive treatise of 1625,
De jure belli ac pacts.
Grotius was able to build upon the sixteenth-century writings of the great liberal Spanish jurists and scholastics Francis Alfonso de Castro, Ferdinand Vasquez Menchaea, and Francisco Suárez, who flourished even in a time when the Spanish interest was in proclaiming its sovereignty of the seas. Grotius’ libertarian view of freedom of the seas could expect to meet stern opposition in many countries, but the greatest opposition was in England, where the Stuarts mobilized scholars in their defense. The leading opponents of Grotius and celebrants of governmental and especially English sovereignty over the seas were the Scot professor William Welwood (1613); the Italian-born Oxford regius professor Albericus Gentilis (1613), who proclaimed absolute English ownership of the Atlantic as far west as America; Sir John Boroughs, royal bureaucrat (1633); and John Selden (1635).

England continued its grandiose claims during the seventeenth century, but with its shipping ever more extensive by the end of the century, it began to consent to be bound by international law on the high seas. England had also been the major opponent of neutral rights in time of war and the Dutch their major advocate. However, in the Treaty of 1674 with Holland, England finally agreed to the vital rule of “free ships, free goods” in protection of neutral shipping, a principle that France and Spain had at least formally ratified two decades before. But now, on the opening of the Seven Years’ War, England arrogantly informed the Dutch and other neutrals that any of their ships trading with France would be treated as
enemy vessels, under a specious, newly coined “rule” outlawing neutral shipping that the enemy had permitted in its ports in time of peace. Chief theoretician of this British reversion to official piracy was the Tory Jacobite Charles Jenkinson.

Britain’s arrogant attacks on neutral shipping and violations of international law during the Seven Years’ War alienated all the neutral countries of Europe, who soon raised a cry to return to “freedom of the seas.” Particularly harassed was the highly efficient Dutch shipping, and fellow sufferers from British policy were Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Russia, Naples, Tuscany, Genoa, and Sardinia.

*
Carl Bridenbaugh,
Cities in Revolt
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, Capricorn Books, 1964), p. 68.

**
Ibid.,
p.
69.

*
Other officials and observers remarked wonderingly of the individualistic spirit of the militiamen: “Almost every man his own master and a general.” With the militia officers democratically elected by their men, “the notion of liberty so generally prevails, that they are impatient under all kind of superiority and authority.”

Although the conflict in America was ended by 1760, the war between Britain and France continued to rage elsewhere: India; the West Indies, where England captured Guadeloupe; and Europe. Through it all, England was driven by the mania of William Pitt for the total crushing of the French enemy. By the end of 1759, Guadeloupe had been conquered and New France all but vanquished. Coupled with England’s commanding position, however, was the burden of high taxes and of a mounting national debt. Increasingly appalled at the long and terribly costly war, Newcastle and the Whigs concluded that it was high time to make peace. Newcastle’s cry was typical: “I wish to God I could see my way through this mountain of expense!”

A pamphlet war now began to rage in Great Britain, sponsored by and reflecting the positions of the contending parties. The imperialist war crowd, led by Pitt, his brother-in-law George Grenville, the Duke of Bedford, and the young Prince of Wales and his high Tory adviser the Earl of Bute, panicked at any hint of peace and demanded the retention of every British conquest, especially of Canada. Some imperialist pamphlets went so far as to urge the conquest of French Louisiana. In the last analysis, however, the imperialists were willing to concede Guadeloupe in order to keep Canada. Even Pitt’s instincts for keeping any and all conquests were tempered by the fact that his main political and financial supporter was Alderman William Beckford. Beckford, leader of the London merchants and financiers, was one of the richest men in the British Empire. An absentee sugar planter of the West Indies, he opposed incorporating the fertile and efficient French sugar plantations into the empire and thus into its extensive markets. Furthermore,
Pitt himself had strong family connections with West Indies planters.

To counter the imperialist propaganda, the Newcastle peace forces enlisted the services of William Burke, secretary of the newly conquered Guadeloupe. Burke rose to the occasion with a trenchant and popular pamphlet published in January 1760. Burke recalled the original war aim as stated in November 1754: the limited conquest of the upper Ohio Valley east of the Wabash. He suggested a return to these limited war aims, the retention of only Guadeloupe and the upper Ohio Valley, and the return of Canada to France. In this way “proper limits” would be established to English conquest, and peace could be concluded quickly and amicably. Several other Whig pamphlets joined Burke in asking for the return of Canada, one of which was also printed in Boston.

The imperialists counterattacked with another flood of pamphlets in February and March, insisting on keeping Canada and hence implicitly on continuing the war indefinitely. The major imperialist reply was the influential pamphlet by Benjamin Franklin and Richard Jackson,
The Interest of Great Britain Considered,
published in the spring of 1760 and reprinted that year in Boston and Philadelphia. Franklin, agent of the Pennsylvania legislature in England, was a friend of Bedford, Halifax, and Pitt, but his closest associates were among the high Tory clique, whose leading luminaries were Lord Bute and the Prince of Wales. All shared the goal of increased centralized royal control over the American colonies, and Franklin also aimed at royal replacement of proprietary government in Pennsylvania.

As the pamphlet war began to brew at the turn of 1760, Franklin had written to his close friend Lord Kames of his gushing enthusiasm for a grandiose British Empire: “As... a Briton I have long been of opinion that the foundations of the future grandeur and stability of the British Empire lie in America.” Kames, the head of the high Tory Scottish faction that was always and ever subservient to the Crown and the royal prerogative, commissioned Franklin to write his major imperialist pamphlet. In this work, Franklin held out to the British the usual imperialist visions of being a huge naval power and of vast markets for British manufactures in a British Canada. Himself heavily engaged in speculation in western land, Franklin trumpeted the virtues of cheap virgin land to the British Empire. Grateful for Franklin’s allegiance, the Tories were soon to make his son William a baronet and a governor of New Jersey, while Oxford University, the intellectual center of the Tories, granted Franklin an honorary degree.

Newcastle and the Whigs had been able, in late 1759, to force the reluctant Pitt into peace negotiations with France. By early 1760, England and France were very close to agreement on a mild peace that would have returned the bulk of Canada and Guadeloupe to French hands, while ceding the upper Ohio Valley and Nova Scotia to England, and demolishing
the French fort at Louisbourg. But Pitt was able to sabotage the negotiations and to break them off by April on the flimsy excuse that the British ally Prussia was not sufficiently protected in the peace terms—a particularly phony ruse because Prussia itself ardently favored the quick peace.

Pitt and the imperialists greatly needed an issue to prevent peace from breaking out. They found it in the series of aggressions and depredations they were conducting against neutral Spain. Spanish shipping was plundered on the high seas along with ships of other European neutrals, and Spaniards were illegally deprived by the British of their legal fishing rights in Newfoundland waters. But Pitt arrogantly refused to respect Spain’s rights in fishing or in shipping. Furthermore, in direct violation of an agreement concluded by Newcastle six years earlier, Pitt refused to limit the aggressions of British loggers in Honduras. Spain had agreed to grant some permission to Englishmen to cut logs in Honduras. The English log cutters promptly began to violate Spanish goodwill by building forts and claiming sovereignty over the whole region for England.

Events took a fateful turn in the fall of 1760. The French surrendered Canada in September, and in the following month King George II died and was succeeded by the Prince of Wales as George III. Since George II had been an ardent supporter of Pitt’s imperialist schemes, Newcastle and his chief follower, the Earl of Hardwicke, as well as their fellow Whigs, saw in both events an opportunity to resume negotiations for peace.

The Whigs reopened the debate on the peace terms in November, in a highly influential pamphlet by the wealthy merchant Israel Mauduit,
Considerations on the Present German War.
Mauduit advocated the old Whig policy of returning Canada, while retaining Guadeloupe and the other sugar islands. He also boldly recommended a return to the old Walpole-Pelham policy of ceasing to meddle or intervene in the affairs of Europe or to whip up conflicts against France. Mauduit showed that such a course would be far kinder to England’s Prussian ally.

The new king promptly added to his cabinet his chief adviser, the Earl of Bute, and Bute brought in other Tories associated with the royal faction. The ultimate aims of Bute and King George on the one hand and Pitt on tht other were quite similar: the absolute destruction of the Whig party and its legacy of liberalism, and the aggrandizement of royal control over Parliament and country. Both factions also agreed on the major imperial war aim of retaining Canada, since both had been nurtured in the visionary imperial dreams of the old Beckfordite opposition to Walpole. Here they were joined, of course, by the other imperialist factions, such as those of Bedford and of George Grenville. All these doctrinal positions could join in a systematic policy of high Toryism: aggrandizement of strong royal power at home and throughout the empire. Hence, these Tory-minded factions
could also readily agree on other programs of the old anti-Walpole opposition: on the ending of “salutary neglect,” on the rigorous enforcement of trade regulations over the colonies, and on a strong central government over America—perhaps to be headed by the pliable Benjamin Franklin.

The imperialists lost little time in mounting a heavy counterattack of pamphlets against Mauduit and the Whigs. The major rebuttal,
Reasons in Support of the War in Germany,
was published in January 1761 by Robert Wood, one of Pitt’s chief aides. But the real author behind the scenes was thought to be Pitt himself. Also joining in the pressure to keep Canada was the alderman Sir William Baker, a leading military contractor and merchant in the American trade, in which he was closely associated with the leading American contractors DeLancey and Watts.

By the spring of 1761, the French declared their willingness to yield far more than called for by the moderate Whig demands. They would cede to Britain Canada, the Ohio Valley, and even Guadeloupe, provided that France could retain her precious fishing rights in Canadian and Newfoundland waters, with Louisbourg to protect them. But the fishing rights were precisely what Pitt was most eager to gain, one of his prime objects in the war being an English monopoly of Canadian fishing and the crushing of efficient French competition. Pitt delighted in pouring cold water on the Whigs, who were overjoyed at the French peace offer. He would, he savagely assured them, fight for another half-dozen years to control Canada
and
its fishing. Alderman Baker now returned to the attack, urging not only the retention of Canada and a monopoly of its fisheries, but also the seizure of French Louisiana.

By the end of June, a new division had emerged in the cabinet: King George, Bute, Pitt, and Pitt’s faithful brother-in-law Earl Temple united on a minimum of peace terms—the Ohio Valley, Canada, Louisbourg, and the fishing monopoly. The Whigs, Newcastle and Hardwicke, were, surprisingly, now joined by Bedford and John Carteret, who realized that France would fight to the death for her fishing rights. In reply to the generous French peace offer, Pitt, bolstered by his wide support, fired an ultimatum: Surrender Canada, Louisbourg, the fisheries and French conquests in Germany in return for keeping Guadeloupe. Furthermore, none of Spain’s grievances against England was to be satisfied, and Pitt disdainfully broke off all negotiations with Spain.

Its ships plundered, its fishing rights banned, and its Honduran territory seized by a contemptuous Britain, Spain grew desperate and sought aid from France. Both Spain and France grew still more anxious at a new, highly touted scheme of Bute and George Grenville (Pitt’s brother-in-law) to conquer French Louisiana, a scheme that led to the transfer of General Amherst’s forces from Canada to Charleston, South Carolina, in the spring of 1761. Bute and Grenville were heavily influenced in behalf of this plan by a
manuscript of Henry McCulloh, a British official in North Carolina. McCulloh, an active speculator in trans-Carolina lands, had for years hawked a French “threat” to America and advocated a strong centralized government over the colonies. Now McCulloh called for a grab of Louisiana and its valued lands and furs.

A debate now ensued on the meaning of what had been included in the surrender of “Canada” at Montreal. Pitt insisted that “Canada” also included all of Louisiana east of the Mississippi. France, however, pointed out that the surrender did not include the Illinois-Wabash area in the southeast. Thus, Pitt too had escalated English demands by claiming all of eastern Louisiana from the French.