1910.] GENESIS OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 15 



proscribe the Loyalists, to imprison them, to confiscate their 

 property, to drive them out of the country. 



In matters of war, the shortcomings of the revolutionary 

 army became, in part, the cause of its strength. Loosely con- 

 nected as it was, it was nearly impossible to inflict a decisive 

 defeat on it, and the English tactics proved as dangerous for 

 the English then as they did a hundred years after in the Boer 

 war. For England there were only two ways of winning: either 

 the country had to be wholly occupied by the Government army, 

 or it had to be starved to subjection. For the former task the 

 English military power did not prove sufficient; the latter course 

 was prevented by the American alliance with the European sea 

 powers. One cannot help thinking that, if Great Britain with 

 her superior forces had pushed the war with energy, the Colo- 

 nies vvould have succumbed. But energy was the very quality 

 wanting. 



The first British Gommander-in-Chief was Sir William Howe, 

 the very man who, in 1774, had been elected member of Parlia- 

 ment for Nottingham on a platform favourable to America. 

 It was not to be expected that he would exert himself to the 

 utmost in subduing the colonies, nor did he do so. When, in 

 1777, an English force under General Burgoyne was advancing 

 from Canada south ward through the state* of New York, Sir 

 Williaxm, far from uniting his forces with the Burgoyne expe- 

 dition, moved with his army in quite another direction, and the 

 immediate consequence was the capitulation at Saratoga. It was 

 this victory that won for the Americans the French alliance. 



The next British Commander-in-Chief, Sir Henry Clinton, 

 with a similar disregard of his duty, quietly remained in New York, 

 while, in 1781, an English army under Lord Cornwallis pressed 

 forward from South Carolina into Virginia and was forced to 

 surrender at Yorktown. And this victory ended the war. 



Beyond that, the war brought only defeats to the rebels. 

 Now, can it be said, that both of these decisive victories on 

 their part were mere accident? Or perhaps owing to the in- 

 capacity of individuals? I do not think so. The British generals, 



