George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10

[100] Bute and of North: so that for him and the United

Chap. III.} 1774.

States there were in England the same friends and the same enemies.

In November, 1774, he expressed the opinion that

1774.

the British colonies would rather be buried under the ruins of their settlements than submit to the yoke of the mother country. Maltzan, his minister in London, yielded to surrounding influences, and in February, 1775, wishing to pave the way for an alliance

1775.

between the two powers, wrote: ‘The smallest attention would flatter the ministry beyond all expression.’ ‘What motive have I,’ answered Frederic, ‘to flatter Lord North? I see none: the love I bear my people imposes on me no necessity to seek the alliance of England.’¹ He was astonished at the apathy and gloomy silence of the British nation on undertaking a war alike absurd and fraught with hazard.² ‘The treatment of the colonies,’ he wrote in September, ‘appears to me to be the first step towards despotism. If in this the king should succeed, he will by and by attempt to impose his own will upon the mother country.’³ In October, 1775, the British minister at Berlin reported of the Prussian king: ‘His ill state of health threatens him with a speedy dissolution.’⁴ It was while face to face with death that Frederic wrote of the August proclamation of George the Third: ‘It seems to me very hard to proclaim as rebels free subjects who only defend their privileges against the ’