direction of the army, which for some time had been collecting round Boston, and appointed Washington Commander-in-chief. The greater part of the force was only enlisted for one year, and the sum borrowed to support it was not large enough to last beyond that period. Meanwhile not only the Congress, but the individual States had declared the propositions of the English Ministry unsatisfactory and inadmissible. "In my life," said Shelburne, "I never was more pleased with a State paper than with the Assembly of Virginia's discussion of Lord North's proposition. It is masterly. But what I fear is, that the evil is irretrievable."[1]
It was at this juncture that the rejection of the second petition of Congress by the King came to render reconciliation between England and her Colonies far more difficult than it had been previously.[2] It was urged that it was contrary to the dignity of Parliament to negotiate with a body which, like the Congress, had no legal status, but this, said Shelburne, was a subtlety worthy only of Mansfield. It should be recollected, he added, that the idea of an American Congress was no new idea;[3] for it could be shown not only that men like Franklin had favoured it, but that it had met the approval of Lord Halifax, Mr. Grenville, and Mr. James Oswald.[4] It was also useless, he pointed out, to embitter the discussion of the questions before Parliament by accusing the Colonies of planning Independence, in the face of their explicit declaration to the contrary, contained in the Petitions which they had sent over. To do so was the best means to make them desire Independence. To call the Americans rebels was idle and wicked. The Romans had a war of a character similar to that being carried on in America. They did not call their enemies in that war rebels; the war itself they called the Social war, and in the same way he desired to call the war in America a Constitutional war. The principles of Selden and Locke, he went on to say, had since the Revolution been generally considered the
