The war, therefore, went on.  The assertion of their independence by the Colonies divided, and, so far, weakened, the advocates of their cause in Parliament, one section of whom, led by Lord Chatham, regarded any diminution of our dominion as not only treasonable, but ruinous; on the other hand, it procured them the alliance of France and Spain.  But it cannot be said that either of these incidents produced any practical effect on the result of the war.  Lord Chatham’s refusal to contemplate their independence could not retard its establishment; and the alliance of France and Spain, which brought nothing but disaster to those countries, could not accelerate it by a single moment.  For nearly six years the war continued with alternations of success, the victories gained by the British arms being the more numerous, the triumphs of the Americans being incomparably the more important, involving as they did the surrender of two entire armies, the latter of which, that of Lord Cornwallis, in 1781, did, in fact, terminate the war, and with the war the existence of the ministry which had conducted it.  A singularly rapid succession of new administrations ensued—­so rapid that the negotiations for peace which the first, that of Lord Rockingham, opened, were not formally completed till the third,[56] known as the Coalition Ministry, was on the point of dismissal.  It would be beside our purpose to enter into the details of the treaty which constituted the United States, as they were now called, a nation by our formal recognition of their independence.  Even in that recognition, which was the most important article of the treaty, no constitutional principle was involved, though it affords the only instance in our history which can seem to throw a doubt on our inheritance of that capacity for government which the Roman poet claimed as, in ancient times, the peculiar attribute of his own countrymen.  It presents the only instance of a loss of territory peopled by men who came of our blood, and who still spoke our language.  It was a stern and severe lesson; and yet, fraught with discredit and disaster as it was, it nevertheless bore fruit in a later age which we may be excused for regarding as an example of the generally predominating influence of sober practical sense in our countrymen, when not led away by the temporary excitement of passion, as shown in our capacity to take home to ourselves and profit by the teachings of experience.  The loss of the American Colonies was caused by the submission of the Parliament and nation to men of theory rather than of practice; ideologists, as Napoleon called them; doctrinaires, to use the modern expression; men who, because Parliament had an abstract right of universal legislation, regarded it as a full justification for insisting on its exercise, without giving a thought to the feelings, or prejudices, or habits of those who might be affected by their measures.  Abstractedly considered, Lord Chatham and Lord Camden were undoubtedly