It is, however, almost demonstrably certain that the vindication of the supremacy of popular interests over all other considerations would have been bootless toil, and that the great constitutional struggle from 1760 to 1783 would have ended otherwise than it did, but for the failure of the war against the insurgent colonies, and the final establishment of American Independence.  It was this portentous transaction which finally routed the arbitrary and despotic pretensions of the House of Commons over the people, and which put an end to the hopes entertained by the sovereign of making his personal will supreme in the Chambers.  Fox might well talk of an early Loyalist victory in the war, as the terrible news from Long Island.  The struggle which began unsuccessfully at Brentford in Middlesex, was continued at Boston in Massachusetts.  The scene had changed, but the conflicting principles were the same.  The war of Independence was virtually a second English civil war.  The ruin of the American cause would have been also the ruin of the constitutional cause in England; and a patriotic Englishman may revere the memory of Patrick Henry and George Washington not less justly than the patriotic American.  Burke’s attitude in this great contest is that part of his history about the majestic and noble wisdom of which there can be least dispute.

CHAPTER IV

THE ROCKINGHAM PARTY—­PARIS—­ELECTION AT BRISTOL—­THE AMERICAN WAR

The war with the American colonies was preceded by an interval of stupor.  The violent ferment which had been stirred in the nation by the affairs of Wilkes and the Middlesex election, was followed, as Burke said, by as remarkable a deadness and vapidity.  In 1770 the distracted ministry of the Duke of Grafton came to an end, and was succeeded by that of Lord North.  The king had at last triumphed.  He had secured an administration of which the fundamental principle was that the sovereign was to be the virtual head of it, and the real director of its counsels.  Lord North’s government lasted for twelve years, and its career is for ever associated with one of the most momentous chapters in the history of the English nation and of free institutions.

Through this long and eventful period, Burke’s was as the voice of one crying in the wilderness.  He had become important enough for the ministry to think it worth while to take pains to discredit him.  They busily encouraged the report that he was Junius, or a close ally of Junius.  This was one of the minor vexations of Burke’s middle life.  Even his friends continued to torment him for incessant disclaimers.  Burke’s lofty pride made him slow to deal positively with what he scorned as a malicious and unworthy imputation.  To such a friend as Johnson he did not, as we have seen, disdain to volunteer a denial, but Charles Townshend was forced to write more than one importunate letter before he