of England must not lead to
over-confidence in France. "No nation," he said, "is to be trusted
farther than it is bound by its interests." France, he thought, must
desire to recover Canada, so recently lost. He did not wish to see a
great military power on the northern frontier of the United States. This
would be to confirm the jeer of the Loyalists that the alliance was a
case of the wooden horse in Troy; the old enemy would come back in
the guise of a friend and would then prove to be master and bring the
colonies under a servitude compared with which the British supremacy
would seem indeed mild.

The intervention of France brought a cruel embarrassment to the Whig
patriot in England. He could rejoice and mourn with American patriots
because he believed that their cause was his own. It was as much the
interest of Norfolk as of Massachusetts that the new despotism of a
king, who ruled through a corrupt Parliament, should be destroyed. It
was, however, another matter when France took a share in the fight.
France fought less for freedom than for revenge, and the Englishman who,
like Coke of Norfolk, could daily toast Washington as the greatest
of men could not link that name with Louis XVI or with his minister
Vergennes. The currents of the past are too swift and intricate to be
measured exactly by the observer who stands on the shore of the present,
but it is arguable that the Whigs might soon have brought about peace
in England had it not been for the intervention of France. No serious
person any longer thought that taxation could be enforced upon America
or that the colonies should be anything but free in regulating their
own affairs. George III himself said that he who declared the taxing of
America to be worth what it cost was "more fit for Bedlam than a seat in
the Senate." The one concession Britain was not yet prepared to make was
Independence. But Burke and many other Whigs were ready now for this,
though Chatham still believed it would be the ruin of the British
Empire.

Chatham, however, was all for conciliation, and it is not hard to
imagine a group of wise men chosen from both sides, men British in blood
and outlook, sitting round a table and reaching an agreement to result
in a real independence for America and a real unity with Great Britain.
A century and a quarter later a bitter war with an alien race in South
Africa was followed by a result even more astounding. The surrender of
Burgoyne had made the