cy
which Chatham showed when he was tolerant to America alone, but
intolerant of America when allied with France. That very wooden sign
stood, in short, for the same thing as the juncture with Frederick the
Great; it stood for that Anglo-German alliance which, at a very much
later time in history, was to turn into the world-old Teutonic Race.

Roughly and frankly speaking, we may say that America forced the
quarrel. She wished to be separate, which was to her but another phrase
for wishing to be free. She was not thinking of her wrongs as a colony,
but already of her rights as a republic. The negative effect of so small
a difference could never have changed the world, without the positive
effect of a great ideal, one may say of a great new religion. The real
case for the colonists is that they felt they could be something, which
they also felt, and justly, that England would not help them to be.
England would probably have allowed the colonists all sorts of
concessions and constitutional privileges; but England could not allow
the colonists equality: I do not mean equality with her, but even with
each other. Chatham might have compromised with Washington, because
Washington was a gentleman; but Chatham could hardly have conceived a
country not governed by gentlemen. Burke was apparently ready to grant
everything to America; but he would not have been ready to grant what
America eventually gained. If he had seen American democracy, he would
have been as much appalled by it as he was by French democracy, and
would always have been by any democracy. In a word, the Whigs were
liberal and even generous aristocrats, but they were aristocrats; that
is why their concessions were as vain as their conquests. We talk, with
a humiliation too rare with us, about our dubious part in the secession
of America. Whether it increase or decrease the humiliation I do not
know; but I strongly suspect that we had very little to do with it. I
believe we counted for uncommonly little in the case. We did not really
drive away the American colonists, nor were they driven. They were led
on by a light that went before.

That light came from France, like the armies of Lafayette that came to
the help of Washington. France was already in travail with the
tremendous spiritual revolution which was soon to reshape the world. Her
doctrine, disruptive and creative, was widely misunderstood at the time,
and is much misunderstood still, despite the splendid