Whirlwind by John Ferling

Author:John Ferling [Ferling, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781620401736
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2015-03-09T04:00:00+00:00

suspend all American legislation enacted since 1763;

never keep a standing army in the colonies in peacetime;

never change a colonial charter without the consent of the colonial assembly;

give Americans preference when filling colonial offices;

eliminate Crown officers to which the colonists objected;

staff the American customs service solely with Americans;

consider colonial representation in Parliament; and

help the colonists with the reduction of their war debts.

Virtually all that would remain of the pre-1763 imperial system were the hazy prerogatives of the monarch and Parliament’s authority to regulate imperial commerce.

However, before the cabinet completed its work, Germain and his unbending allies scuttled whatever slim chance of success the commissioners might have had. They inserted into the commissioners’ instructions what was tantamount to a death clause. The commissioners were not to negotiate until the colonists renounced their “pretensions to independence” and asked for the king’s forgiveness. North offered little resistance. Perhaps he knew that the cabinet could not be prevented from sanctioning such a course. Or, sensing the hopelessness of the undertaking, North may have been willing to permit responsibility for the foreseeable failure to fall on Germain. The cabinet went through the motions of naming the members of what became known as the Carlisle Commission, but North—and Germain—must have known that it would be dead on arrival in America. The war would continue and it now would be a conflict with the United States and with France.20

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