Source Problems in English History
less eagerly in the New World to coerce the colonies into submission to royal regulation and taxation. The narrow mind of the sovereign, intent upon exercising those prerogatives of the crown which the first two Georges had lost, was by instinct impatient of colonial aspiration and intolerant of colonial insolence. It was George III. who forced the opposition in Parliament to speak for the Americans. The Whigs would have been utterly undiscerning had they not felt their community of interest with the colonists. Not even the outbreak and progress of the war stopped their voices. But in their sympathy for the Americans they were by no means united. The followers of Chatham, among whom, after their leader's death, Shelburne was most prominently concerned in American policies, never grew weary of asserting that America had been goaded into the war. She could, they said, be won back by proper concessions. Another faction, of which Rockingham was the leader and Charles Fox the daring spokesman, declared that America deserved and would ultimately win independence. Meantime, in 1778, France, eager to avenge the Seven Years' War and willing to see England lose her best possession, had allied herself with the United States, each nation promising not to make peace without the consent of the other, and not before the acknowledgment of American independence. Spain soon followed France into the war, though not as an ally of the United States, and Holland was drawn in through English resentment of her policy of supplying naval and military stores to the enemies of England.
The news of Comwallis's surrender at Yorktown put an end to George III.'s plans for subduing the revolted colonies, and with the failure of those plans all his efforts to turn back the clock in England were without effect.
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