country.
At home the merchants of London and Bristol pleaded loudly for
reconciliation; and in January 1775 Chatham again came forward to avert
a strife he had once before succeeded in preventing. With characteristic
largeness of feeling he set aside all half-measures or proposals of
compromise. "It is not cancelling a piece of parchment," he insisted,
"that can win back America: you must respect her fears and her
resentments." The bill which he introduced in concert with Franklin
provided for the repeal of the late Acts and for the security of the
colonial charters, abandoned the claim of taxation, and ordered the
recall of the troops. A colonial assembly was directed to meet and
provide means by which America might contribute towards the payment of
the public debt.

[Sidenote: Washington.]

Chatham's measure was contemptuously rejected by the Lords, as was a
similar measure of Burke's by the House of Commons, and a petition of
the City of London in favour of the Colonies by the king himself. With
the rejection of these efforts for conciliation began the great struggle
which ended eight years later in the severance of the American Colonies
from the British Crown. The Congress of delegates from the Colonial
Legislatures at once voted measures for general defence, ordered the
levy of an army, and set George Washington at its head. No nobler figure
ever stood in the forefront of a nation's life. Washington was grave and
courteous in address; his manners were simple and unpretending; his
silence and the serene calmness of his temper spoke of a perfect
self-mastery. But there was little in his outer bearing to reveal the
grandeur of soul which lifts his figure with all the simple majesty of
an ancient statue out of the smaller passions, the meaner impulses, of
the world around him. What recommended him for command was singly his
weight among his fellow-landowners of Virginia, and the experience of
war which he had gained by service in border contests with the French
and the Indians, as well as in Braddock's luckless expedition against
Fort Duquesne. It was only as the weary fight went on that the colonists
discovered, however slowly and imperfectly, the greatness of their
leader, his clear judgement, his heroic endurance, his silence under
difficulties, his calmness in the hour of danger or defeat, the patience
with which he waited, the quickness and hardness with which he struck,
the lofty and serene sense of duty that n