Still, Wilkes was not allowed to take his seat in Parliament. The House of Commons again expelled him; and when he was again elected they declared that he should never be capable of sitting in that body. However, in the end, Wilkes was victorious. Some years later he was permitted to take his seat; and then, nearly twenty years after the struggle first began, the House of Commons erased from its journals all the votes which it had passed against him. It was not because of his character that Wilkes triumphed, for he was a man of bad character. It was because he opposed the arbitrary acts of George III.'s government, and because he stood for personal liberty and the freedom of the press.
These were not the only complaints that the people had against the government. Meetings were held to protest against the corrupt means by which the King secured support in Parliament. In 1780, a great Whig orator, named Edmund Burke, introduced a bill to abolish a large number of useless offices, and to reduce the amount of money which the King's government might spend without giving an account of it. His object was to make it less easy for the King to corrupt Parliament. The bill was not passed, at this time. But the discussion of it resulted in the passage of a resolution, in the House of Commons, which declared that—
"The influence of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished."
Two years later, another reform bill, based on the same principles as that which Burke had introduced, passed the House of Commons, and became law.
In spite of "the King's friends" George III. had lost a great share of that arbitrary power which he had built up so carefully. In part, this was due to his action against Wilkes; but it was due in a still larger part to the unwise measures by which, meanwhile, he lost the Thirteen American Colonies.
The Seven Years' War had freed the American colonies from their French enemies, and given them a great western country into which their settlements could spread. It had also given them a knowledge of their own strength, and loosened the ties which bound them to the mother country. With the danger of French attack removed, they had no further need of British protection. The French Minister saw this, and, soon after the close of the war, he said:
"England will, one day, call upon her colonies to contribute towards supporting the burdens which they have helped to bring upon her; and they will answer by making themselves independent.
The colonies had mines of iron and coal, forests, navigable rivers, and excellent harbors, and were fitted by nature not only for agriculture, but also for manufactures and commerce. Many people, therefore, engaged in the building of ships and in trade. England's treatment of its colonies was very much better than that which any other country gave to its colonies at this time, and even such laws as did limit their commerce were, for a long time, allowed to remain unenforced. Thus the colonies flourished, and grew strong.
But, after the war with France, the ministers adopted a new policy. They determined to enforce the old trade laws, which were intended mainly for the benefit of the British merchants, and not for the benefit of the colonists. They also proposed to leave some troops permanently in America for the defence of the colonies and called upon Parliament to tax the colonies to support the troops, and to help pay the cost of government there.
Parliament accordingly passed a Stamp Act for the colonies, like that still in force in Great Britain. This provided that every legal paper written in the colonies should be on stamped paper, to be bought from the government; and that every newspaper must be printed on stamped paper. At best, this act would not have raised much revenue; and, as it was, the people in the colonies made a great outcry against it. They refused to use the stamped paper; they held meetings to protest against it; and they sent representative to a "Stamp Act congress," at New York, which declared that "taxation without representation is tyranny."
Many of the leading Whigs in England also opposed the Stamp Act. When the colonists refused to allow the stamped paper to be sold, Pitt said:
"I rejoice that America has resisted."
The next year there was a change in the ministry, and the Stamp Act was repealed. But, at the same time, Parliament declared that it had power to make laws for the colonies "in all cases whatsoever." Pitt and Burke opposed this declaration, not because they believed that Parliament did not have such power, but because they thought that this declaration would only anger the colonists.
Soon after this, Parliament passed another law, which laid tariff duties on several kinds of goods, including tea, when brought into the colonies. The colonists resisted this law also, and formed associations which pledged themselves not to use any goods on which the tax had been paid. Little by little the trouble grew, until some British troops in Boston, who were attacked by a mob, fired upon the crowd and killed several persons. This was the famous "Boston massacre,"—the first blood shed in the quarrel.
In 1773 a special effort was made to collect the tax on the tea, and several shiploads were sent over, at a cheap price, to tempt the colonists to buy. Almost everywhere, they refused to take the tea. At Boston, there occurred the famous "Boston Tea-Party," when a number of men, disguised as Indians, boarded the tea-ships and threw the tea into the harbor. Of this, the American poet, Oliver Wendell Holmes, humorously wrote:
"No! ne'er was mingled such a draught
In palace, hall, or arbor,
As freemen brewed and tyrants quaffed
That night in Boston harbor!
. . . . . . . . . . .
"Fast spread the tempest's darkening pall,
The mighty realms were troubled,
The storm broke loose—but first of all
The Boston tea-pot bubbled!"
To punish Boston, its port was closed—that is, ships were forbidden to land goods there, and its trade was stopped. The Massachusetts charter was taken away, and a military governor was placed over the colony.
These acts not only angered Boston, but aroused the other colonies. In 1774, they came together, at Philadelphia, in the First Continental Congress, to form a united resistance.
War broke out between the mother country and the rebellious colonies next year, when a small body of British troops was sent from Boston to capture some ammunition which the colonists had collected at Concord. At Lexington they were met by American "minute men," and several of the Americans were killed. The troops kept on to Concord, and destroyed the ammunition. But a larger body of minute men quickly gathered, and there, at Concord bridge, as the poet Emerson says:
"The embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard 'round the world."
On the return, the minute men lined the stone walls along the road, from behind which they fired upon the wearied troops. Next day, the whole country rose. Boston was besieged; men flocked in from the neighboring colonies; and soon George Washington was sent by the Continental Congress as commander-in-chief of the American forces. The war of the American Revolution had at last begun.
The people of Great Britain generally supported their government in its policy. Edward Gibbon, a great historian and member of Parliament, wrote before the war broke out:
"I am more and more convinced that we have both the right and the power on our side. We are now arrived at the decisive moment of persevering, or of losing forever both our trade and empire."