The colonial school of America was rough, but solid and genuine; and trained a people such as the world never saw before, as the seed of a new nation and a new era of mankind.

THE QUALITY OF COLONIAL MEN.

In re-studying the lessons of that school nothing is clearer than that the men of the colonies were superior to the men of the British parliament with whom they contended. They were better students of English law and history, and especially better in the principles of the English constitution. They were better philosophers; more acute and comprehensive in their views of government; more loyal to reason and the lessons of human nature, and greatly more faithful in the application of christian principles to human affairs. The debates in parliament compared with the speeches in the public meetings in the colonies, indicate clearly that the leaders in thought in the colonies were the profounder and better men. And the people's appreciation and acceptance of that thought, compared with the prevailing style of thought among the English people, showed that the masses of the colonial people had gained upon the people of the mother country by their hard colonial school. They had a clearer hold upon principles and a greater loyalty to them; knew and appreciated human rights better, and were truer to them; carried with a heartier faith the teachings of the christian religion to their practical results, and believed more in individual responsibility and power. The result was, that both leaders and people became more assured in the righteousness of their convictions, and more positive in maintaining them. They became a people of thinkers who acted on their thoughts. Freedom, human rights, personal responsibility, the authority of rulers, the duties of people, were themes they studied and discussed. And this study had developed a power among the leaders able to cope with any in the English parliament, and among the people a stalwartness of conviction and will superior to what prevailed among the English people.

causes.

OUR COUNTRY THE OUTGROWTH OF MANY CAUSES.

The establishment of our nationality was due to many The church as the outgrowth of Romanism-absolute power-imperialism-had done its worst. With a cruel tyranny it had played lord of men and nations, of thought and conscience, of education and taxation, till it had produced more or less protestantism in all countries. And protestantism in conflict with Romanism had produced more or less liberalism. And protestantism and liberalism had both trained a great body of free thinkers in all the more advanced countries. In France liberal thought was very powerful. With much good it did much evil. It prepared the way to give much help to the English colonies. In England protestantism and liberalism had weakened the power of kingcraft and strengthened the power of the people. In the English colonies of America protestantism was of the freest and most personal kind, having no interest in kingcraft and great sympathy with popular faith and rights. Everywhere a great struggle was coming on between consolidated power and the power of the people-between kingcraft and popular rights. The struggle on the part of King George. and his parliament was to sustain kingcraft against the growing doctrine of popular rights. The logic, philosophy and morality were all on the side of the colonies, and these were not slow to produce character and power to sustain them. The world was ready for a great change. Roman imperialism had run its course to its own ruin. Kingcraft must sink with it. The final struggle for these ancient powers came with the American colonies because they were most advanced in intelligence and moral character and most animated by the true spirit and power of the christian religion.

THE CAUSE OF THE REVOLUTION.

The particular question at issue was the right of the English parliament to tax the colonies. The king and parliament claimed the absolute right, and to maintain it passed various kinds of tax laws and sought in arbitrary ways to enforce them; and in con

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 to 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 all 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