Life of Count Rumford. 119 



country to fight, as he had already counselled, against 

 her cause of independence. He might have felt the 

 impulse, whether of conviction, self-respect, or the plea 

 of consistency, to show the sincerity of the course he 

 had been pursuing in the quiet of his official bureau 

 by exposing his life for the same object, and thus prov- 

 ing that he was a loyal and grateful subject of his King. 

 There is this, however, to be said on the side of the pos- 

 sible magnanimity of his conduct, that he formed the 

 purpose of coming here in command as an officer of 

 the British army at the very darkest and most hopeless 

 stage of the war as regarded the prospects of the royal 

 cause. The King and the administration had been 

 thwarted. The majority in Parliament was shifting 

 against them. England found herself involved by sea 

 and land with our French allies. The surrender of 

 Burgoyne, to be soon followed by the capitulation of 

 Cornwallis, had discomfited even the most arrogant 

 and contemptuous enemies of the Colonies. Exhaustive 

 levies and reckless appropriations had dispirited the 

 people, and held up to them the prospective burdens 

 of overwhelming debt and excessive taxes. The subju- 

 gation of America had to be recognized as delusive, 

 as, in fact, an impossibility. Whether disappointment, 

 stung into vengeance, might yet inflict a few more 

 heavy blows against the opening life of a new nation, 

 or whether discord might be introduced among its con- 

 stituent parts, or, finally, whether more or less of the 

 territory of North America should still be held by the 

 crown, were as yet -contingent. Thompson's political 

 prospects were for the time, at least identified with 

 those of his head and patron, Lord G. Germaine. The 

 latter felt that the last hope of subjugating the Colonies 



