tinental army. The reply to the Royal Proclamation against sedition and the Prohibitory Bill were the first acts of real sovereignty exercised by the Congress, viz. the appointment of a Committee on Foreign Affairs and the issue of letters of marque. Events now marched rapidly. Step by step the party of moderation had to yield to the party of action, as it gradually became clear that, notwithstanding the efforts of Shelburne, Grafton, and the other members of the Opposition, the English Government gave no choice between war and absolute submission, while the early successes of the American arms encouraged the belief that the result of war might not be unfavourable to the younger country. On the 4th of July 1776 the Declaration of Independence announced that a new State had taken its place amongst the Powers of the World. "The Colonies," said Lord Camden, "are gone for ever."[1]
One of the first steps which the party of action in the Colonies had taken was to seek the aid of foreign powers, especially of France, to which Silas Deane was sent on a mission. It is extraordinary to read the speeches of the English Ministers of the time in which, regardless of the information existing in the offices over which they presided, they insisted that no danger was to be apprehended from abroad. It was in vain that Shelburne, aware that since the very recent death of Louis XV. the ideas of Choiseul in the person of Vergennes were once more inspiring the councils of the French Government, warned the country of the perilous position in which it stood. "I foresee the possibility," he said, "if not the strong probability, of our being compelled to engage in a foreign war. I remember a few years since that we were lulled into a security which must inevitably have proved fatal, but for the strange revolution which took place in the French Cabinet, the dismission of that bold enterprising Minister Choiseul,[2] who had planned the destruction of this country, in revenge for the disgraces France had suffered, and the repeated injuries, he imagined, she had
