This Sceptred Isle

by Christopher Lee

  The North West Company was formed in 1779 as an experiment in trading. There were other companies, many of which had uncertain ethics and origins. Many of these characteristics would have been recognized at Glencoe. The value of the North West Company was to draw the disparate together in order to create harmony by letting different factions benefit from the fur monopoly thus created.

  These were true frontiersmen who conformed to every modern image of bear-killing, snow-trekking individuals whose log cabins would be decorated with leather-bound books as well as gun racks. Alexander Mackenzie was far more than an intrepid explorer. He was a man of great reading as well as courage. Like many leaders, courage took strain on his character. His bouts of depression in a land often bereft of comfort told on this brilliant explorer. It was not enough to be in a successful enterprise such as the North West Company. Mackenzie was not alone in realizing that to inspire the support of the Crown in London, the Company had to expand and identify new opportunities. And so he explored mountains and big rivers (the Mackenzie is named after him) while he continuously pressed westwards. As he and his men headed for the Rockies so the Company established trading posts in his wake. This was the truly rapid expansion of a commercial empire, while his motive was partly the centuries-old ambition to find a shortcut to Cathay. Here was an obsession. He was successful. He was the first to cross Canada from the Atlantic to the Pacific. George III knighted him. It should all have been a great success for the Scottish migrants. Instead, they fought among themselves over the spoils and possibilities that Mackenzie had opened.

  Others would come and make their fortunes and reputations, yet the wildernesses of Canada meant that even the famous would perish. Thomas Douglas, Earl of Selkirk (1771–1820), for example, had persistent hopes that Scots would farm Canada. This was at a time when the Canadian Scots did not want migrants ruining the fur trade. Douglas failed and was ruined both physically and financially. He brought 800 Highlanders to Prince Edward Island and into Manitoba’s Red River Valley (later to be famous). Such was the opposition of the fur traders that the North West Company soldiers were sent to evict Douglas and his community. Others were far more successful during more or less the same period. James McGill (1744–1813) arrived in the 1770s and he was part of the so-called Scotch Party whose members established fortunes. He also established a reputation for philanthropy and when he died he left much of his money to education in Montreal, where McGill University is named after him.

  The establishment of Canada, like any other colonial system, was to rely on far more than the brilliance and determination of its trading. With the independence of America, the diverse ambitions of the Canadians and constitutional legitimacy had to be resolved. The loss of America encouraged political minds in London to look at individual holdings abroad rather than to imagine there could be a sweeping policy that would do for India, Africa, the West Indies and British North America, that is, Canada. Militarily, the British had done badly against the Patriots. The British still did not understand that it was not possible to fight a war using the strategy that might have well suited a conflict in Continental Europe. They could not successfully use tactics, logistics and the uncertainty of holding territory against an enemy with whom there was no geographical or political trade off to be negotiated. The British had never fought a war at such a distance. (The wars in India were not controlled from London or Paris.) They did not understand the environment of this theatre. Equally, the British government still had little political grasp of what it was trying to do other than not lose America. They at least understood that they should not make the same political and then military mistakes in Canada.

  The 1791 Constitution split Quebec into Upper and Lower Canada. It took until 1840, the year after Lord Durham’s report on ‘The Affairs of British North America’, for there to be a union of Upper and Lower Canada and the year after that, 1841, for a fully fledged Canadian Parliament. Durham’s 1839 study of British North America was perhaps a template from which future colonial reform came, even with the understanding that that reform anticipated independence. So although we might think of the British Empire as a long-lasting and sometimes even as an oppressive commercial as well as strategic enterprise, Durham’s thinking suggests that colonial development, even in the first half of the nineteenth century, understood that for it to succeed then the colonies had to have a superior form of self-government.

  This thought may be further examined in the philosophy of one of Durham’s colleagues, Edward Gibbon Wakefield (1796–1862). At the time Durham was sorting out what he saw as the future of Canada, Wakefield was one of the founders of New Zealand as a colonial settlement based on some form of structured emigration of the surplus population of the British Isles. The early colonists in sixteenth-century North America had claimed migration was essential because Britain could not feed its population. Two-and-a-half centuries later the same reasons were being given to encourage emigration from Britain to Canada and New Zealand. For the moment, it was enough for the British to reflect on the consequences of losing the thirteen states. It is not unreasonable to describe the American War of Independence as having a devastating effect on Britain’s constitutional and imperial history.

  The conflict between hanging on to the settlements as a source of pride perhaps, taxation and territorial authority became the responsibility of Charles Rockingham in March 1782, when he became Prime Minister after Lord North’s forced resignation. It will be remembered that he had become leader of the Whigs twenty years earlier. It was Rockingham who had repealed the maligned Stamp Act. With the Whigs in opposition, Rockingham had promoted the idea of letting the American colonists have their way. The conundrum was how to balance the territorial loss in North America, which had provided a base for British forces both land and naval, and the continuous uncertainty about the other colonies in the West Indies.

  Rockingham died, in office, before peace with America was signed, although that’s what he wanted. William Lansdowne, Earl of Shelburne (1737–1805) saw out the end of the war. Shelburne had, even in the late 1760s, opposed the pressures that were put on the American settlers. He believed in conciliation and that the alternative would be the loss of the colonial loyalties. And so in July 1782 when Rockingham died, Shelburne was his natural successor and it was he who oversaw the successful Treaty at Versailles. Yet this was the end of Shelburne’s political career. He was a victim of the not inconsiderable axis of Lord North and Charles James Fox (1749–1806). Fox and North refused to serve with Shelburne. George III could stand neither Fox nor North and he thought their coalition unprincipled. The King’s feelings were hardly hurt when the Fox–North administration collapsed within months. What survived was the emergence of the Earl of Chatham’s son, William Pitt the Younger (1759–1806), at twenty-four the nation’s youngest Prime Minister. The coincidence of a new administration and the loss of America was the end of the first British Empire.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  1782–93

  The Treaty of Paris, in 1783, officially ended the American War of Independence. Within six years the United States of America, as the new country was already being called, would have its first President, George Washington. America may have been free of Britain but this did not mean transatlantic trade stopped. The politics of the war had nothing to do with the bare bones of commerce. By 1786 the US dollar had been adopted as currency and in the Coinage Act of 1792 the dollar was defined as a basic unit of financial accounting and its worth in relationship to silver officially declared. The first US silver dollar appeared in 1794. The Spanish silver dollar had been in use in the thirteen colonies since early sixteenth-century settlers and this was a simple extension of the centuries old European daler – there was even a Sword Dollar struck by James VI of Scotland (later James I of England) and so the authority of the dollar as an international unit of trading (in some cases even in the twenty-first century the only unit to be used for certain commodities, such as oil) was established within a decade of t
he Paris Treaty. Bankers and traders in the British Isles were happy to trade with anyone with the money to buy what was offered or, better still, the willingness to pile up credit. That was the reality of commerce. The reality of British politics was not so easily settled. The wind of change had first blown on 4 July 1776, with the Declaration of Independence.

  When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

  We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. [Author’s italics]

  That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, – That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. – Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

  He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

  He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

  He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

  He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

  He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

  He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

  He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

  He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

  He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

  He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

  He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

  He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

  He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

  For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

  For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

  For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

  For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

  For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

  For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

  For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

  For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

  For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

  He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

  He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

  He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy of the Head of a civilized nation.

  He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

  He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

  In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

  Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

  We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. – And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives,
our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

  Britain had lost her first major colony and the colonists had accused George III of plundering more than their seas. He had plundered their rights. George III talked of giving up his crown and of retreating to his homelands in Germany. The mood in Great Britain was one of anger and, when North left the House of Commons in March 1782, he was a vanquished figure. There were no excuses in his famous response to the news of defeat at Yorktown, ‘Oh, God, it is all over.’ North’s going was more than the departure of a prime minister. When he went he did so because of something unique in Parliamentary history. Up to that point, monarchs had accepted, reluctantly, the mood of the nation. Monarchs had sometimes accepted the decisions of their prime ministers. But now the House of Commons had the voting power to force the resignation of a prime minister and all but a few of his colleagues. And for that reason North’s going can be seen as a milestone in Parliamentary history.

  There were only two men capable of succeeding him, of rallying support for a new ministry. One was Charles Watson-Wentworth, the second Marquess of Rockingham, who’d already been prime minister for a short spell in the 1760s. The other was William Petty-FitzMaurice, the second Earl of Shelburne. Both had advocated an end to the war and had even opposed it in the first place, and both were Whigs. However, Shelburne couldn’t maintain a majority without the help of the Rockingham Whigs, and they were unlikely to give him any support, so George III called for Rockingham. But by July Rockingham was dead and Shelburne became leader. The difference between the two was in the style and composition of their Cabinets. By and large, Rockingham, with Edmund Burke, had seen Cabinet government as a group of like-minded individuals who would present a unified front to the King. Shelburne didn’t think like that. He was – or posed as – an intellectual and he was politically inept. Most importantly, Shelburne thought little of party government. He gathered together politicians of differing views and supported the King’s right to choose his ministers – a concept conveniently dear to the King’s heart.