nection with them passed repressive laws against nearly all kinds of manufactures. They taxed all goods imported into the colonies, and forbade all manufactures. The colonies claimed that as British subjects they could not be taxed against their will, or by a parliament in which they had no representation. They said taxation without representation is against English law and the constitution of the realm, and also against right and natural law. And here they stood and for years argued this question in all the forms in which it was presented, quoting all the best English lawyers and statesmen, and claiming that the freedom of the British subject was invaded by the doctrines and practices of parliament. Every colony produced men equal to the occasion. In South Carolina Lynch, Gadsden and Rutledge with great clearness and power defended the colonial position. In Virginia Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee, and others, with logic and transcendent eloquence fired the hearts of the people with a knowledge of their rights and freedom as British subjects. In Pennsylvania John Dickinson, the farmer writer, wrote in vigorous articles the true doctrines of English freedom, which were published in all the colonial papers and read and studied by all the people; read in book form in England and translated into French, and won for the colonies great sympathy in France. Benjamin Franklin, philosopher, writer, practical statesman, friend of humanity, lent the energies of his great mind to maintain the colonial doctrine of English rights against parliamentary usurpation. William Livingston and many like him in New York; Roger Sherman in Connecticut; James Otis, Samuel Adams, John Hancock and Mayhew Thatcher, in Massachusetts, kept constantly before the people their charter as well as their natural rights. The world had never seen an instance of a whole people studying so profoundly their political and natural rights, and so peacefully and religiously maintaining them. The lawyers and people of England were in a large majority with their parliament, in favor of taxing the colonies and prohibiting their manufactures. The argument of the colonies, as stated by their public men, their press, ministers and legislative enactments, was about this, as

stated by Mr. Bancroft in his history of the United States: "The law of nature is the law of God, irreversible itself and superceding all human law. It perfectly reconciles the true interest and happiness of every individual with the true interest and happiness of the universal whole. The laws and constitution of the English government are the best in the world; because they approach nearest fo the laws God has established in our nature. Those who have attempted this barbarous violation of the most sacred rights of their country deserve the name of rebels and traitors, not only against the laws of their country and their king, but against the laws of Heaven itself."

But their arguments failed to stay the resolute wrong-headedness of the king and parliament, and law after law was enacted to tax and oppress them. These laws they resisted in every way open to an intelligent and resolute people. They thoroughly studied and discussed all questions relating to them; ministers preached about them; the press was full of them. They made common cause and formed a colonial congress. From South Carolina to New Hampshire they became of one mind. They closed their ports against English goods and wore homespun clothes, and did without the common comforts to which they had been accustomed. They made it uncomfortable for soldiers quartered upon them, and for oppressive colonial governors. While they kept the peace, they resisted and made ineffectual the unjust laws of parliament. Merchants suspended their lucrative calling to see the goods sent for their customers returned to England in the same vessels in which they came. The rich vied with the poor in their loyalty to their conviction that it was wrong to pay unjust taxes. They made every new law which embodied the unjust principle of taxation without representation inoperative, and all the while increased the determination in the king and parliament to enforce their laws with military power. At last the final test came on their determination to tax tea, just to maintain their right. So, while other tax laws were in the main given up, a tax was laid on tea, and ships loaded for Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Charleston. Three tea ships were sent into Boston harbor. The people, in

mass meeting, urged their immediate return to England. The governor refused to give the shipmasters passes to go out of the harbor by the ports. A meeting of the people had been in session a long time, and it was an hour after dark when word came that the governor had refused the pass. Then Samuel Adams rose and said: "This meeting can do nothing more to save the country." Instantly a shout and a warwhoop was heard at the door. Forty or fifty men, disguised as Indians, rushed by toward Griffin's wharf, where the tea ships were fast. Hancock, Adams and the people followed in haste. Guards were posted to keep off spies. The men in disguise boarded the ships, and in three hours ali the tea, three hundred and forty chests, was emptied into the sea. John Adams afterward, in a letter to Warren, said: "All things were conducted with great order, decency and perfect submission to government." The people on the wharf and in the streets were so still that every blow in breaking open the chests was distinctly heard.

New York heard of it before its tea ships arrived and was anxious to do likewise, but the ships returned to England at once. At Philadelphia five thousand people met and allowed the tea ship to come no nearer than Chester, four miles below the city, from which point it returned to London immediately with its tea and a new freight of wisdom on board to carry back to parliament and the king. At Charleston the tea was unloaded into a cellar where it rotted; no South Carolina tea drinker having any appetite for falsely-taxed tea. So ended the teataxing, but not the quarrel which it provoked.

Parliament closed the port of Boston, called the legislature to Salem, forbade all public carrying business in Boston, designated its principal citizens for trial in England on treasonable charges, quartered soldiers on the public common, ordered war ships and munitions of war into the harbor, made Boston the headquarters of the commanding general of all the forces in America, and him the governor of Massachusetts, who prorogued the legislature at his will and hindered legislation as much as possible. And yet Boston, with its harbor lined with war ships, its common covered with soldiers, its business para

lyzed, its people threatened with severest punishment, stood firmly on its asserted doctrines that parliament was wrong and the colonists right in all their differences.

Old Faneuil Hall, the cradle of liberty, was kept warm with public meetings and discussions of the acts of parliament and measures of defense against its tyrannies. The first thing was to appeal to all the colonies to be united and of one mind about these oppressions, and the way to resist them. To secure this a congress was needed at once. After brief discussions the colonies agreed to the necessity and appointed delegates: Virginia and South Carolina being most heartily in sympathy with Massachusetts. The discussions in calling this congress, and in it, developed two parties very distinctly, the lovers of monarchy and the lovers of republicanism-the fearful and the brave. Dickinson and Franklin, of Pennsylvania, counseled moderation, yet were in sympathy with the people. Both parties were represented in the congress, but the overwhelming majority were with suffering Boston and against parliament. The tyrannical change made by the king in the charter of Massachusetts had aroused the people, and they said all government was at an end because the change was unconstitutional; and they forbade the king's judges from holding court in all the counties. The governor had seized by force the provincial stock of powder and established a fort on Boston Neck, which had so exasperated the people that his government was at an end everywhere out of Boston, and the people were being rapidly aroused to a general revolt. Men of military experience were being fired; farmers and mechanics were getting ready for desperate service. Congress was hearing almost daily of what was transpiring in and around Boston.

In this state of fearful ferment the men of that congress saw clearly that the king and his parliament meant subjugation of the colonies; yet with great moderation and profound sagacity they cemented more and more the bonds of union, fanned the flame of liberty, roused the courage of the weak and laid surely the foundation of a new nation.

THE BATTLES OF LEXINGTON AND CONCORD.

On the nineteenth of April, 1775, the ever-memorable first skirmish between the British soldiers and the American minute men took place at Lexington and Concord, in which the Americans lost forty-nine killed, five missing and had thirty-four wounded, and the British two hundred and seventy-three in killed, wounded and missing. The British went to destroy stores and frighten the people; they returned a rout of frightened soldiers, leaving their dead and wounded along the way. "They were driven before the Americans like sheep," and when they met. a large body of troops sent out to rescue them, "they lay on the ground for rest, their tongues hanging out of their mouths like dogs after a chase."

BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL.

Two months later, on the seventeenth of June, 1775, the battle of Bunker Hill was fought, which was a battle, indeed, in which the British reported a loss of one thousand and fifty. Seventy commissioned officers were wounded and thirteen killed. The loss of the Americans was one hundred and forty-five killed and missing and three hundred and four wounded. The powder of the Americans gave out and they were obliged to leave their entrenchments on the third charge of the British. It was a dear bought victory, teaching them the wholesome lesson that the Americans would fight.

THE TAKING OF FORT TICONDEROGA.

At day-break, on the morning of the tenth of May, 1775, eighty-three Vermont men, called "Green Mountain Boys,' under the lead of Ethan Allen, surprised and took Fort Ticonderoga, on Lake Champlain. On the same day, Crown Point, a few miles away, surrendered upon summons to a detachment of Vermont minute men.

On the tenth of May, a few hours after the capture of Ticonderoga, the second continental congress met at Philadelphia.