The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn | Page 8

addresses. Edinburgh and Glasgow, despite the efforts of their members, refused to address. Lynn was said to have addressed, but its members denied the assertion, and claimed that the war was unpopular in that town. The paper from Great Yarmouth was very thinly signed, while Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Dudley, and other places sent in counter-petitions against the war. The justices of Middlesex unanimously voted that it was expedient to reduce the colonies to a proper sense of their duty; but at a meeting of the freeholders of the same county, held at Mile-end, to instruct their members in Parliament, little unanimity prevailed, "much clamor arose," a protest was entered against the proposed resolutions, and only one of the sheriffs consented to sign them all. London, as the country well knew, sympathized largely with America, but in a manner which nullified her influence elsewhere. Her populace was noisy and threatening; Wilkes, her Lord Mayor, was hated at court; her solid men kept to business. "Are the London merchants," wrote the king to Lord North,[2] "so thoroughly absorbed in their private interests not to feel what they owe to the constitution which has enriched them, that they do not either show their willingness to support, either by an address, or, what I should like better, a subscription, to furnish many comforts to the army in America?" An address from this quarter, signed by "respectable names," he thought might have a good effect, and one was presented on October 11th, with 941 signatures; but it was entirely neutralized by the presentation, three days before, of another address more numerously signed by "gentlemen, merchants, and traders of London," in which the measures of government were condemned. When the point was made in the Commons that the war was a popular measure in England, Lutrell promptly replied that he had made many a journey through the interior of the country during the summer season, and had conversed with "a multitude of persons widely different in station and description," only to find that the masses were in sympathy with the colonists. The division of sentiment was probably correctly represented by Lord Camden early in the year, in his observation that the landed interest was almost wholly anti-American, while the merchants, tradesmen, and the common people were generally opposed to a war.[3]
[Footnote 2: "Correspondence with Lord North." Donne.]
[Footnote 3: Upon this point Dr. Price said: "Let it be granted, though probably far from true, that the majority of the kingdom favor the present measures. No good argument could be drawn from thence against receding."]
Having voted to push the war in earnest, Parliament proceeded to supply the sinews. On November 3d, Lord Barrington brought in the army estimates for 1776. Fifty-five thousand men, he reported, was the force necessary and intended to be raised for the purposes of the nation, the ordinary expense of maintaining which would be something over ￡1,300,000. Of these troops, twenty thousand would be retained to garrison Great Britain, ten thousand for the West Indies, Gibraltar, Minorca and the coast of Africa, while the actual force destined for America was to be increased to thirty-four battalions, each of 811 men, including two regiments of light horse, amounting, in the aggregate, to upwards of twenty-five thousand men. Barrington, at the same time, frankly acknowledged to the House that these figures showed well only on paper, as none of the regiments for America were complete, and, what was a still more unwelcome admission, that great difficulty was experienced in enlisting new recruits. Nothing, he said, had been left untried to secure them. The bounty had been raised and the standard lowered, and yet men were not forthcoming. Anticipating this dearth, he had warned the king of it as early as July, when the latter first determined to increase the army. "I wish, sir, most cordially," wrote this faithful secretary, "that the force intended for North America may be raised in time to be sent thither next spring; but I not only fear, but am confident, the proposed augmentation cannot possibly be raised, and ought not to be depended on."
Barrington was compelled to give an explanation of this state of things, for the point had been made in and out of Parliament that few recruits could be had in England, because the particular service was odious to the people in general. For the government to admit this would have been clearly fatal; and Barrington argued, per contra, that the scarcity of soldiers was to be traced to other and concurrent causes. The great influx of real and nominal wealth of recent years, the consequent luxury of the times, the very flourishing state of commerce and the manufactures, and the increased employment thus furnished to the lower classes, all contributed to keep men out of