Note 692 — Chapter III

Dr. Josiah Tucker, Dean of Gloucester, sought to be an oracle alike on its commercial and political bearings. He had well informed himself about the history and condition of the colonies. He thought it a mistake that Britain had broken the power of the French, and, by withdrawing the threat of their presence over the English colonists, had left them to set up for independence. The idea that their disaffection began with the Stamp Act he repudiated, as disproved by their restiveness and truculency from their first settlements, and from the occasion there had always been for the interposition of sharp measures of government for restraining them. His opinion of their general character was highly unfavorable, but he was thoroughly satisfied with the impossibility of subduing them, and even of the inexpediency of retaining a forced relation to them. His advice was that Britain should at once give over its attempts at subjugation, and even acquiesce in leaving them to take care and govern themselves, at least till they should repent of their folly. He anticipated, as the solution of wisdom, the complete abandonment of any interference with the recusant Americans, maintaining that the methods of profitable commerce, which would secure English interests and supremacy, would be more effective than a fretting interference with them. His views—which, looked at in the retrospect, appear thoroughly sagacious—were, to most of his contemporaries, either visionary or exasperating. Tucker set forth the positive facts, that while war was most ruinous to the interests of commerce, those interests ought to serve to the security of peace. The war of England against the Spanish right of search had won no benefit, but had added sixty millions sterling to the debt of the realm. The late French war had cost ninety millions more, and by relieving the colonists of all dread of the French had encouraged them to set up for independence.