tented. Although benefited by the Penal Laws, which had as their object the maintenance of the Protestant ascendancy against the native Catholic landowning families of former days, the English Protestant landlords who actually lived in the country and identified themselves with it became dissatisfied with British repression of Irish commerce and Irish industry. They also resented the British control of the Irish Parliament, which still continued to meet, although it had no power of legislation without the consent of the English Privy Council. This Parliament was, of course, the assembly of the resident English Protestants, and they wanted some real control over their adopted country's politics by being given, for example, the right to initiate money bills in the Irish House of Commons instead of receiving them from the English government.

George III, however, was opposed to this suggestion, because he intended to enlarge the standing army quartered in Ireland and to tax the Irish more heavily to pay for it. He could not well permit the Irish House of Commons to originate money bills, lest they be inadequate for his purposes. Through bribery and concessions, George III succeeded in inducing the Irish Parliament to vote his army increases and to enlarge his revenues, and by 1771 he had acquired a practical control over the Irish Parliament much like that which he had secured in England. There was, however, a strong opposition led by Henry Flood. In 1772 the government proposed to conciliate Irish feeling and further increase its revenues in Ireland by laying a tax on the rents of absentee landlords. The measure was very popular in Ireland, but caused consternation in England, where many of the leading politicians, specially the Rockinghamites, were Irish absentee landlords. The English opposition to the tax was so strong that it was certain that the tax would be rejected in the Privy Council in England should the Irish Parliament adopt it. To avoid the friction which would be created by a Privy Council veto, the measure was dropped, much to Irish chagrin and displeasure.

With the beginning of the war in America there was the widest sympathy in Ireland for the colonial cause. To quiet things the King made overtures to Henry Flood, the leader of the opposition, who accepted office, but a new leader of the reformers arose in Henry Grattan. Some concessions were made to the Irish. In 1778 they were included in the benefits of the Navigation acts. In the same year the penal code was relaxed, and some relief given to the Catholics. When France

declared war upon Great Britain in 1778, Ireland, stripped of her soldiers for the war in America, was faced by invasion from France The Irish used the occasion to organize a volunteer force, ostensibly to defend the country from invasion, but in reality to enforce further concessions from Great Britain.

The Protestant ruling class had no desire to separate from Great Britain, since Great Britain was necessary to them to maintain their own supremacy in Ireland. But they did want economic and legislative independence. When the Irish Parliament met in 1779, Flood and Grattan joined forces to secure freedom of trade and relief for Protestant dissenters (Presbyterians in Ulster) from the Test act. The British government could not resist and granted their demands. With this success the Irish leaders went on to obtain the complete legislative independence of their country from the British Parliament. Eventually in 1782, when the British arms were defeated in America and the government was powerless to act, meetings of Irish volunteers declared that the act of 1719, which declared the supremacy of the British Parliament in Ireland, and other acts similar in import had no validity in Ireland; that for the future Ireland was bound to Great Britain only through the fact that both had the same king. The Irish Parliament was free from restraint by the British Parliament, and Ireland was not subject to any legislation passed by the British Parliament.

THE RESTORATION OF PEACE

In 1782, in the face of the cumulation of disasters in America and in Europe, the surrender at Yorktown, the loss of Minorca, and the capture of several islands of the West Indies by the French, Lord North resigned his ministry. In spite of his control of the Treasury boroughs and of the expenditure of thousands of pounds of secret service money in the elections to secure the return of members of the House of Commons attached to his interests, George III had not succeeded in building up an absolutely dependable majority in the House of Commons. In 1779, shortly after North had brought in a plan of conciliation, the imperialists resigned from the cabinet and made the first breach in the royal control. The successes of the Americans, French, and Spaniards and the demand of the opposition that American independence should be recognized, in order that the war against France might be more vigorously carried on, finally brought about the fall of the North ministry,

and gave a great setback to the realization of George's policy of making himself the "Patriot King." He turned to the Earl of Shelburne, leader of the Chatham Whigs, to induce him to form a ministry. But Shelburne refused, realizing that the support of the Old Connection, whose power was still unbroken in spite of twenty years of effort on George III's part, was essential to the success of any ministry. The King then fell back on his old enemies, the Whig Connection. The Marquis of Rockingham became Prime Minister, although George refused to negotiate with him personally. The Chathamites agreed to give their support in return for which the Earl of Shelburne became home secretary in the ministry.

The new ministry was faced by the problem of restoring peace and reorganizing the remnants of the empire. It dealt with Ireland in short order. In the face of the resolution of the Irish Parliament declaring its complete legislative independence, Rockingham repealed Poynings' Law of 1499 and the Declaratory act of 1719, under which British control of the Irish Parliament had been set up; and, until further arrangements should be made, Ireland was joined to Great Britain only through the personal bond of the king.

Rockingham turned next to the question of peace with America and with France, Holland, and Spain. In the spring of 1782 the British government was willing to grant the Americans almost anything. By May, however, the news reached London that Rodney had defeated De Grasse in a naval engagement in the West Indies, and shortly afterward Gibraltar was relieved. The British government began to wonder whether they had not been too complacent in starting out with the recognition of the Mississippi as the western boundary of the new nation, and even began to suggest that instead of independence, perhaps the United States would be satisfied with federation with Great Britain.

In the British cabinet there were two divergent policies in the matter of procedure. The Earl of Shelburne, the home secretary, was willing to recognize the independence of the United States, but only as one of the terms of the general peace, in the hopes that better terms could thus be secured. Charles James Fox, the foreign secretary, who had espoused the cause of independence of the colonies under conditions which would today be regarded as treasonable or seditious, wanted to recognize American independence at the outset, conduct negotiations with her separately from the allies, and so divide Great Britain's

late enemies into two groups which might be played against each other. Rockingham died in the midst of the discussion; Shelburne became Prime Minister; and Fox, who disliked Shelburne, resigned. The force of Fox's suggestions, however, was realized, and on September 27, 1782, the independence of the United States was recognized. Secret negotiations were carried on during the next two months between Benjamin Franklin and Richard Oswald, and in November the preliminary treaty was signed. Under the terms of the French-American alliance of 1778, the two powers were not to negotiate separately. But Franklin learned that Vergennes, the French Minister, was carrying on a secret negotiation with Great Britain behind his back with the object of limiting the United States to the Allegheny frontier in the hope that the Mississippi Valley might still remain one of the stakes of diplomacy for the future. Franklin was, therefore, nothing loath to play the same game that Vergennes was playing.

The treaty of Paris between Great Britain and the United States obtained for the United States the Mississippi boundary and the right for American vessels to fish off Newfoundland and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence; it accepted the freedom of navigation of the Mississippi for vessels of both countries and the obligation to pay private debts contracted before the war; and it contained a promise that Congress would recommend to the states the restitution of Loyalists' estates confiscated during the war. By the treaty of Versailles between Great Britain and France, the island of Tobago was given to France, and the status quo in the rest of the West Indies was restored. Senegal and Gorée in Africa were restored to France, the French commercial stations in India were acknowledged, but France gained nothing from the great victories of De Suffren over the British fleet in the Indian Ocean during the course of the war. The French fishing rights were defined. The Dutch and English mutually restored all conquests, except that Negapatam was retained by Great Britain. Spain recovered Minorca and East and West Florida (which she had lost in 1763), while the Bahamas were restored to Great Britain together with the concession to cut logwood in the Bay of Honduras.

These treaties were probably the most disastrous which England had ever signed, and it may have been a good political move on George III's part to allow the odium for making them to rest upon the Chathamites and the Old Connection. Before the definitive treaties had been signed, Shelburne had to sub

mit to a vote of censure on the peace and resigned. Charles James Fox, leading some of the Rockingham Whigs, united with Lord North to form a new coalition, which George III felt obliged to accept. This new government of Fox and North accepted the treaties of peace, and then tried to deal with the problem of India, which was a necessary part of the general reorganization of the empire after the war.

BRITISH POWER IN INDIA

After the initial quasi-territorial acquisitions of the British East India Company by Robert Clive in Bengal, it seemed impossible to stop the zeal for further conquest. By 1783 the position of the East India Company as a sovereign power in India had been formally recognized by the Mogul Emperor, and its territorial control had been extended over many provinces. During the period of the American war several native princes, with the help and encouragement of France, had launched a series of attacks which came near to destroying all that the company had won in the last two generations. Their efforts were thwarted by the resource and ability of Warren Hastings, the first governor general of all British India under the Regulating act of 1773; but, in the course of his activity, Hastings had been forced to sanction some rather unfortunate practices. His own Indian allies were rather given to atrocities, and he himself, when hard pressed for money to keep his forces in the field, had not been overgentle in his dealings with certain of the dependent native rulers. The Rajah of Benares, for example, was pledged to pay a contribution of £50,000. When he neglected to make payment, Hastings assessed a fine of £500,000 upon him, which seemed excessive even to some Englishmen of that day and led to a revolt in Benares, which was suppressed with a certain amount of severity. In Oudh the begums, the mother and widow of the dead rajah, claimed his treasure, so that the new rajah set up by Hastings could not pay his tribute. Hastings authorized him to take the treasure by force, which he did with a refinement of Oriental cruelty, which even offended the callous sensibilities in England when the exquisite details were learned.

In consequence of the troubles in India, the affairs of the company received a good deal of attention at home, and men began to point out the anomaly of permitting a trading corporation of sedate London merchants to own an empire with millions