previous next
[271] colonial possessions; England to retain her own in
Chap. XL.} 1769. April.
more complete dependence than before. Both desired and both needed peace; but Choiseul regarded the British proffers of confidence as an unmeaning jargon, and fearing a rupture at any moment, when it should assist to change a Ministry or secure a majority, he told the English plainly, ‘that the King of France and his Ministry applied themselves unremittingly to maintain peace, but never lost out of sight, that to preserve peace it was necessary to be in a condition to sustain a war.’1 England and France grew more and more distrustful of one another; and while the latter was yielding to the liberal ideas to which free inquiry had given circulation, England more and more forgot that her greatness sprung from her liberty.

The publication of some of the American letters, which had been laid before Parliament and copied for Beckford,2 unmasked Bernard's duplicity. The town of Boston repelled the allegation, that they were held to their allegiance only by the ‘band of terror and force of arms.’ In their representation to the King, which Barre himself presented, they entreated the removal of the troops, a communication of the charges against them, and an opportunity to defend themselves, for justice and law forbade that they should be condemned unheard.

The Council, too, without delay, calmly and unanimously vindicated the Province and themselves. They proved their own undeviating respect for law; they set in a strong light Bernard's unmanly

1 Choiseul to Du Chatelet, 16 April, 1769.

2 Hutchinson to Mauduit, 16 April, 1769.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
France (France) (2)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Due Choiseul (2)
Francis Bernard (2)
Israel Mauduit (1)
Thomas Hutchinson (1)
Du Chatelet (1)
Beckford (1)
Barre (1)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
April 16th, 1769 AD (2)
1769 AD (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: