The Forces in Conflict 157
forming Parliament, won adherents for their program of cutting down the nefari-
ous influence of the crown. Radicalism, that is, the desire to change the composi-
tion of the Commons, grew by leaps and bounds, especially in Yorkshire and the
neighborhood of London. A reforming committee at Westminster, a year before
Yorktown, drew up a report that went beyond any of the new American state con-
stitutions in its democratic theory of representation. The report, drafted by John
Jebb, demanded universal manhood suffrage, the use of the ballot rather than oral
voting, the annual election of Parliament, representation of voters in proportion to
numbers in equal electoral districts, payment of wages to elected representatives,
and removal of all property qualifications for election to the Commons.^34 Here
were all six points of the People’s Charter to be famous in England over fifty years
later.
The Whig group in Parliament, which at first hoped to make common cause
with the American insurgents against George III, came to believe, after Saratoga
and the Franco- American alliance, that it might after all be best for Britain if the
Americans were left outside the empire. They feared that reconciliation would now
bring credit upon the North ministry, or that the American Congress, if within the
empire, must now be accepted as the equal of Parliament under the King. For the
Whigs, it was better to recognize American independence, which would at least
allow them to go on blaming the King’s friends for ruining the empire. As for the
radicals—not that they had any political influence—many of them believed that
the British people had no quarrel with America anyway, and that the unrepresen-
tativeness of Parliament had been a cause of the American revolt. Contrariwise,
the American successes, and the perverse tendency of some people in England to
applaud them, had the effect also of fortifying British conservatism. More firmness
in 1765, it was argued, would have prevented the whole trouble. Concession to
malcontents was a losing game; the British constitution must be upheld.
A divided Britain fought a divided America. And here a large question arises.
Could the revolutionary leadership in America, divided as America was, have ac-
complished its purpose of independence with the resources of America alone? Was
the outcome of the American War of Independence only an event in American
history taking place on American soil? What would have happened if the British
government had had behind it a united England and a reliable Ireland? Or if La-
fayette, Kosciusko, Pulaski, de KaIb, and von Steuben had not brought their mili-
tary and technical experience to the United States? Or if France had not furnished
the muskets that won the battle of Saratoga, and supplied the army of Rocham-
beau, and fleet of de Grasse, which with Washington formed the winning combi-
nation at Yorktown?
Some writers of American history seem to feel that Britain in any case could
never have suppressed the American rebellion. This may well be true. The Ameri-
cans, without foreign aid, might for a long time have carried on a guerrilla resis-
tance. They might have made the exercise of British authority impossible. The
British, while long remaining in some of the seaports, might eventually have with-
drawn from a country that they could not govern. To admit this much is not to
34 Printed in S. Maccoby, The English Radical Tradition, 1763–1914 (London, 1952), 37–39.