336 THE CONCILIATION PROPOSALS CHAP. 



more by their desire at Fothergill's house ; the sadness 

 of failure was over their spirits. They desired Franklin 

 to convey this message to their friends on the other side : 

 that it was now their fixed opinion that nothing could 

 secure the privileges of America but a firm sober adherence 

 to the terms of the Association made at the Congress ; and 

 that the salvation of English liberty itself depended on 

 the perseverance and virtue of America. Fothergill also 

 wrote to Franklin that he should tell the Friends that 

 " whatever specious pretences are offered, they are all 

 hollow," and that " to get a larger field on which to fatten 

 a host of worthless parasites is all that is regarded." J 



Knowing as we do the course of later history, and that 

 the liberties of Englishmen were to be forged anew in the 

 fire of suffering, first in the loss of these colonies, and then 

 in the long struggle with France, we may find it hard to 

 realise that to men of clear vision in Fothergill's day the 

 outlook was dark and doubtful, and that the cause of 

 freedom itself was bound up with that of the oppressed 

 colonists. If these were subdued by an imperious king, 

 who held his parliament under corrupt control so that 

 the voice of the nation was falsified, its bonds would be 

 new riveted, and English liberty would become indeed 

 a memory : the United States, in the words of Price, was 

 "now the hope, and likely soon to become the refuge, 

 of mankind." 



The negotiation was a gallant attempt at the eleventh 

 hour to stay the oncoming strife, and had a reasonable 

 spirit or any true foresight prevailed in the British 

 cabinet si mens non lava fuisset it might have been 

 successful. The draft of a treaty had been formed, writes 

 G. O. Trevelyan, " which would have had a merit rare in 

 history, that of terminating a sharp and extended contro- 

 versy rationally, equitably, permanently and without 

 derogation to the self-esteem of either of the contracting 



1 See also Letter, J. F. to B. Franklin [Mar. 1775], Ford, op. cit. No. 2217. 

 Fothergill and Barclay also suggested that if some person were sent to England 

 by the Congress with powers, although ministers would not treat with them as 

 such, yet it might have a good effect. Barclay to J. Pemberton, Mar. 31, 

 1775, Penna. Hist. Soc. 





