In February, 1775, Lord North had, indeed, offered resolutions of conciliation. The measure amazed his own followers and was greeted by the Whigs with Homeric laughter. Offers of conciliation could scarcely have arrived in America at a more inopportune time,--the very moment almost when the battle of Lexington came like an alarm-bell in the night to waken men from the dream of peace. And the resolutions themselves had all the appearance of being a clever ruse designed to separate the Middle colonies from New England and Virginia, in order to destroy that very union which Americans believed to be the best hope of obtaining real concession. Such the Whigs in England asserted them to be; and generally so regarded in America, they were everywhere rejected with contempt. In November, after the non-exportation agreement became effective, when an American army was endeavoring to drive the British troops out of Boston, Lord North declared in Parliament that whereas former measures were intended as "civil corrections against civil crimes," the time was now come for prosecuting war against America as against any foreign enemy; and with the opening of the new year it was at last becoming clear, even to the most optimistic, that the English Government was prepared to exact submission at the point of the sword. As the vain hope of conciliation died away, the radicals, under the able lead of John Adams and Richard Henry Lee, pushed on to a formal declaration of independence. This was now, indeed, the only way out for them. The non-intercourse policy, injuring America more than it injured England, had proved a hopeless failure. During the year 1775 imports fell from, L2,000,000 to L213,000; and after the non-exportation agreement became effective, business stagnation produced profound discontent and diminished the resources necessary for carrying on war. So drastic a self-denying ordinance could not be maintained, for "people will feel, and will say, that Congress oppresses them more than Parliament." Unable "to do without trade," they were "between Hawk and Buzzard"; and on April 6, 1776, the ports of America were opened to the world. "But no state will treat or trade with us," said Lee, "so long as we consider ourselves subjects of Great Britain." A declaration of independence was therefore recognized, gladly by some, with profound regret by many more, as the only alternative to submission; for it alone would make possible that military and commercial alliance with France without which America could not successfully withstand the superior power of Great Britain; and at the same time it would enable the _de facto_ colonial Governments, with a show of legality, to suppress the disaffected Loyalists and confiscate their property to the uses of the cause which they had so basely betrayed.