Evening Post. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1926. THE OTHER SIDE

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 123, 20 November 1926, Page 8

Evening Post. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1926. THE OTHER SIDE

By ranging Australia entirely on the side of the American colonies in their quarrel with the Mother Country a hundred and fifty years ago, Mr. Bruce naturally gave much satisfaction to his American hosts\ in London, but he would have spoken less confidently if he had known more about the subject.

"The Australians," said Mr. Bruce, "regard themselves as inheritors of 'all your forefathers fought for in the War of Independence. Probably, if Australia had been a nation in those days, we should have been enthusiastically on the side of the American colonies. We feel that there was something wrong in those days in the British Government's and the Crown's attitude of mind in not recognising the ideals and aspirations of a young people."

It is true that the lesson taught by the American War of Independence has never been forgotten, and that Australia, along with the other Dominions, has inherited the blessings of the local autonomy for which the American colonists fought. Recognising in the, light of our present knowledge that the attempt to govern large communities of free men overseas by the direct rule of a Parliament at Westminster was foredoomed to failure, we must also admit that "there was something wrong in those days in the British Government's and the Crown's attitude of mind" when they undertook the impossible experiment. But though the failure to recognise "the ideals and aspirations of a young people" suggests a very unsympathetic and tyrannical procedure, the fajlure- to humour its prejudices and its limitations does not sound quite so bad. The blindness of George 111. and his advisers is obvious enough. The fact that in the American colonists they had to deal with men perhaps equally blind —men who, at the outset of the struggle and for long afterwards, were about equally unfitted to obey and to. govern —is commonly overlooked. The idea that in this deplorable conflict all the merits were on one side and all the demerits on the other is one of the most preposterous delusions of history.

That America should have fostered the belief in the immaculate virtue of Aer "founding fathers" and their followers is not surprising. But how is it that the idea is impartially current on both sides of the Atlantic and, as Mr. Bruce's speech shows, at both ends of the Pacific? The answer is that it was an article of the Whig creed that King George and Lord North were 100 per cent, in the wrong, and it has become a part of the democratic tradition in an age when we are'all democrats.

Fox, says Morley in his "Life of Burke," might well talk of an early, Loyalist victory, in the. war as the terrible news from Long Island. The struggle which began unsuccessfully at Brentford in Middlesex was continued at Boston in Massachusetts. The scene had changed, but the conflicting principles were the same. The War 6f Independence was virtually a second English civil war. Tho ruin of the American cause would have been also the ruin of the constitutional cause in England; and a patriotic Englishman may revere the memory of Patrick Henry and George Washington not less justly than the patriotic American.

"Few," as Burke says, "are the partisans of departed tyranny," and the statesmanship of George 111. which shattered the British Empire needs no other monument at this time of day. But while the patriotic Englishman may revere the memory of Washington, there is no reason why the patriotic American should not recognise the merits of those on the other side, and this is what he is doing in steadily increasing numbers. It is not, a British but an American scholar yho has written as follows :—■

The great event has too often been represented as the unanimous.. uprising of a downtrodden people U repel the deliberate unprovoked attack of a tyrant upon their liberties, but when thousands of people in the colonies could agree with a noted lawyer of Massachussetts that the Revolution was "a causeless, wanton, wicked rebellion," and thousands of people in England could applaud Pitt's denunciation of tho war against America as '' barbarous, unjust, and diabolical," it is evident that, at the time at least, there wore two opinions (in both countries) as to colonial rights and British oppression.

Our quotation* is taken from Dr. Muzz.ey's " American History," which was actually written as a school text-book and, though barred by recent legislation in at least two States, is still, we believe, in use in some others. What the Bishop of

London describes as "one of the causes of mischief-making between Britain and the United States"—the teaching of the hatred of Britain in American schools—would vanish if all the text-books used in these schools were equally impartial. Though that happy consummation is still a long way off, the truth is gradually gaining ground, and mainly through the researches of American historians. Here is a striking description of the "loyalty" of the American colonists more than ten years before it is commonly supposed to have.been shattered by the "tyranny" which drove them to take up arms in 1775.

The colonists, writes E, L. Beer in his "British Colonial Policy, 1754----1765," asserted their loyalty to the Mother Country. Such assertions are, however, no proof of the existence of this sentiment. As in many other historical movements, t?ie real motive was obscured because its revolutionary character would have injured the cause. The expression by the colonies of a desire for independence would inevitably have put on them the burden of proof, would have united all parties in Great Britain against them, and would have alienated many supporters in America. Hence the colonies to a great extent ignored the underlying cause of their actions, and in all sincerity expressed a loyalty which in reality they did not feel. For if in loyalty there is implied any idea of sacrifice, then this sentiment was to a marked degree absent in the colonies. Their allegiance was purely utilitarian, and its fundamental basis had disappeared with the conquest of Canada.

The period covered oy Mr. Beer's volume includes the Seven Years' War (1756-1763), which was the attitude of the King's North American subjects to that life-and-death struggle? The fact that over one hundred of their vessels were in a Spanish port in San Domingo at one time^n order to ply a contraband trade with the King's enemies is a sufficient answer to this question.

To a large extent, says Beer, the colonies neutralised the advantages arising from British naval' activity, both supplying the French colonies with the sorely-needed provisions, and also furnishing a market for their produce. If Britain saved her American colonists from France she did it in spite of themselves.

The complicity in this treasonable traffic of some who afterwards won distinction in the War of Independence also indicates what it is still almost blasphemy to breathe in the United States —that even the heroes of the Revolution had their seamy side. Before the war one of the most level-headed of them, Benjamin Franklin, writing from London, drew a contrast between "the extreme corruption prevalent among all orders of men in this rotten old State and the glorious public virtue so predominant in our rising country." And" England's partisans in America were denounced by Washington as "abominable pests of society." For 150 years popular opinion in the United States has" faithfully followed these lines, and what chance would such unflattering talk as this from one of the leaders in the fight have of getting a hearing to-day?

Such a dearth of public spirit and want of virtue, such stock-jobbing and fertility in all the low arts to obtain advantages of one kind or another, I never saw before, and pray God I may never be witness to again. . . . Such a dirty mercenary spirit pervades the whole that I should not be surprised at any disaster that may happen.

Yet this is how Washington himself describes his own people when he was engaged in the siege of Boston! Reverting to the Seven Years' War, one may say that Britain did something more than win Canada from France and thus cut away from the loyalty of her American colonists its utilitarian foundation. She also acquired the command of the seas of all the world, and thus it was that five years after the conclusion of the war Cook was able to set put on his voyage of discovery in the Endeavour. Mr. Bruce may be less enthusiastic in his support of the American colonists if he remembers that Australia might have been a French possession to-day if their loyalty had been the test.