George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 8

‘ [163] accommodation.’ ‘I vote for the address,’ said Rig-

Chap. LI.} 1775. Oct.

by, ‘because it sanctifies coercive measures. America must be conquered, and the present rebellion must be crushed, ere the dispute will be ended.’ The commons unhesitatingly confirmed their vote of the previous night.

Among the lords, Shelburne insisted that the petition of the congress furnished the fairest foundation for an honorable and advantageous accommodation; and he bore his testimony to the sincerity of Franklin as one whom ‘he had long and intimately known, and had ever found constant and earnest in the wish for conciliation upon the terms of ancient connection.’ His words, which were really a prophecy of peace and a designation of its mediators, were that night unheeded; and he was overborne by a majority of two to one. Some of the minority entered their protest, in which they said: ‘We conceive the calling in foreign forces to decide domestic quarrels, to be a measure both disgraceful and dangerous.’

That same day the university of Oxford, the favored printer of the translated Bible for all whose mother tongue was the English, the natural guardian of the principles and the example of Wickliffe and Latimer and Ridley and Cranmer, the tutor of the youth of England, addressed the king against the Americans as ‘a people who had forfeited their lives and fortunes to the justice of the state.’

On the last day of October, Lord Stormont, the British ambassador in France, who had just returned to his post, was received at court. The king of France, whose sympathies were all on the side of monarchical power, said to him: ‘Happily the opposition party is ’