[176] _Correspondence of George III with Lord North._
No responsible statesman believed that England could succeed in enforcing her will upon the colonies, let the struggle end as it might. "As for conquering America, without foreign troops, it is entirely impossible; and I think it pretty near a certainty that the rebels will be in possession of all America by the Spring," Anthony Storer wrote to Lord Carlisle, on December 29, 1775. "By the news of Fort St. John's and Chambley, and the investiture of Quebec, their diligence and activity is wonderful, and it must end in the possession of all North America. They have taken a store-ship, and have several ships at sea. _De peu à peu nous arrivons_; if they go on so another year--_fuit Ilium ingens gloria_--we shall make but a paltry figure in the eyes of Europe. Come to town, and be witness to the fall, or the re-establishment of our present Empire."
Fox thought that the best use that could be made of the success at Long Island would be to make conciliatory overtures. "It is become still more necessary than ever to produce some manifesto, petition, or public instrument upon the present situation of affairs; either to exhort his Majesty to make the only proper use of his victory, by seizing this opportunity of making advantageous offers of accommodation or to express openly and fairly to him the well-grounded apprehensions that every man must entertain from the power of the Crown in case his Majesty should be able to subdue the American Continent by the force of his army,"[178] Fox wrote on October 13, 1776, to Lord Rockingham; who, in his turn in 1778 said to Chatham, "I conceive that America will never again consent to this country's having actual power within that continent." "As to conquest, my Lords, it is impossible," Chatham, himself said in Parliament on May 30, 1777, speaking on his motion to stop hostilities.
[178] Albemarle: _Memoirs of Rockingham_.
Chatham, of course, had all along been opposed to the war. Speaking in 1775 of General Gage's inactivity, he said it could not be blamed, for it was inevitable. "But what a miserable condition is ours, where disgrace is prudence, and where it is necessary to be contemptible!" he said. "You must repeal those Acts [the Boston Ports and Massachusetts Bay Bills], and you _will_ repeal them. I pledge myself for it, that you will repeal them. I stake my reputation on it. I will consent to be taken for an idiot if they are not finally repealed. If," he concluded, with a grave warning, "if the ministers persevere in misleading the King, I will not say that they can alienate the affections of his subjects from the Crown; but I will affirm that they will make the crown not worth his wearing. I will not say that the King is betrayed; but I will pronounce that the kingdom is undone."[179] No wonder the King heaped upon the statesman, who endeavoured so eloquently to thwart his plans, every objectionable epithet; referred to him as "that perfidious man," and "a trumpet of sedition;" and said of his motion in 1777 to put an end to the war: "Lord Chatham's motion can have no other use but to convey some fresh fuel to the rebels. Like most of the other productions of that extraordinary brain, it contains nothing but specious words and malevolence."[180]