xxvm ONE MORE PEACE EFFORT 353 



This letter reveals Fothergill's thought at a dark hour 

 of the war, when Britain seemed likely to be crushed by 

 the alliance of America with European Powers, and in 

 the gloom even his judicial mind had lost some sense of 

 proportion. Perhaps it was written, as was his wont, 

 late at night, when he was weary after a long day of 

 labour. He had come to kndw, what history has been 

 slow to reveal in its fulness, that at the very root of the 

 trouble lay the dogged and inveterate purpose of one 

 man, and sorrowfully Fothergill turned from his long 

 personal attachment to his monarch, and drew his portrait 

 in words of severity and reprobation. Perhaps they 

 were hardly just to a narrow intellect and a misguided 

 conscience. 



The news of the British disaster at Saratoga reached 

 England in December, and the advocates of conciliation 

 and agreement began to look for a fresh opening. A 

 memorandum of Barclay's headed " Plan, 1777 " (Ap- 

 pendix A, No. XV.) may belong to this period. It 

 included most of the articles in the original " Hints for 

 Conversation," but substituted those from " A Plan," 

 1775, on the following topics : taxation in time of peace 

 and war, the Navigation Acts, residence of a naval 

 officer and the acts restraining manufactures. To these 

 other articles were added : an Act of Oblivion ; taxes to 

 be allowed to redeem the paper-money issued by Congress ; 

 perhaps also the repeal of the Declaratory Act ; and the 

 colonies to be governed by a Congress, subject to the 

 veto of a Viceroy. A letter from Fothergill to Barclay 

 (see No. XVI.) most likely refers to a conversation 

 following these proposals. He writes : 



2ist inst. 



When I reflect, my dear friend, on the disregard, call it 

 by no harsher a name, with which our opinions have been 

 uniformly treated, though the events have shown them to be 

 not imprudent ones, it affords me but a melancholy proof that 

 everything we can suggest will either be totally neglected or 

 adopted but by halves. For these considerations I am against 

 offering any opinion at all, on a strong presumption that 



2 A 



