The presence of the United States was a perpetual reminder to the discontented and the suffering among the older peoples that successful revolt was possible, and that constitutions might stand fast which did not confer privileges upon any class in the community. It would be absurd to pretend that the American people have not often fallen short of their own ideals. But the ideals were at least established. It was no small thing that a State should have come into being whose founders proclaimed in their Declaration of Independence that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that to secure these rights Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." There are not less than five historical or logical errors in that sonorous passage. But it acted on the old world like the voice of God among the dry bones. Opinion in England seems to have been generally favourable to the war. Opposition was most marked among the commercial classes, whose trade was seriously injured by the loss of the colonial market and the destruction of shipping. Such as it was, it encouraged the organization of public opinion outside Parliament, which had been previously practised in the affair of Wilkes. The attack was properly directed against the Crown. The City of London led the way in December, 1779, by resolving "that the various measures which have brought the landed and {89} mercantile interest of this country into its present reduced and deplorable situation could not have been pursued to their actual extremity, had it not been for the abuse of the present increased, enormous, and undue influence of the Crown." There followed a meeting of the freeholders of Yorkshire. This assembly protested against the multiplication of sinecures and pensions "from whence the Crown had acquired a great and unconstitutional influence, which, if not checked, might soon prove fatal to the liberties of this country," and a committee was appointed to prepare a plan for an association to promote economic reform and restore the freedom of Parliament. Great excitement was caused at this meeting by the indiscreet remarks of a gentleman called Smelt, who had been one of the tutors of the Prince of Wales. He appears to have argued that the King's influence was too little rather than too great, and the indignation produced by his remarks shows how widely independent opinion dissented from the servility of Parliament.[94] Similar meetings were held in nearly thirty different counties and boroughs, and in most of them committees of correspondence were appointed. Deputies from some of these committees met in London in March, under the chairmanship of Wyvil, the Yorkshire clergyman. The deputies published a memorial which described