terprise, ever carried this most perilous mode of hard industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people-a people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood. When I contemplate these things; when I know that the colonies in general owe little or nothing to any care of ours, but that, through a wise and salutary neglect, a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection; when I see how profitable these effects have been to us, I feel all the pride of power melt and die away within me. My rigor relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.

"From six capital sources: descent, form of government, religion in the northern provinces, manners in the southern, education, the remoteness of situation from the first mover of government from all these causes a fierce spirit of liberty has grown up. It looks to me narrow and pedantic to apply the ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this great public contest. I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.

"My idea, therefore, without considering whether we yield as matter of right, or grant as matter of favor, is to admit the people of our colonies into an interest in the constitution. A revenue from America! You never can receive it, no, not a shilling. For all service, whether of revenue, trade, or empire, my hold of the colonies is in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. Let them always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your government, they will cling and grapple to you, and no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance; deny them this participation of freedom, and you break the unity of the empire. It is the spirit of the English constitution, which, infused through the mighty mass, vivifies every part of the empire, even down to the minutest member. Is it not the same virtue which does everything for us here in England?

"All this, I know well enough, will sound wild and chimerical to the profane herd of those vulgar and mechanical politicians who think that nothing exists but what is gross and material; and who, therefore, far from being qualified to be

directors of the great movement of empire, are not fit to turn a wheel in the machine. But these ruling and master principles are in truth everything, and all in all. Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together. If we are conscious of our situation, and glow with zeal to fill our places as becomes our station and ourselves, we ought to elevate our minds to the greatness of that trust to which the order of Providence has called By adverting to the dignity of this high calling, our ancestors have turned a savage wilderness into a glorious empire, and have made the most extensive and the only honorable conquests by promoting the wealth, the number, the happiness of the human race."

us.

For three hours Burke was heard with attention; but, after a reply by Jenkinson, his deep wisdom was scoffed away by vote of more than three to one. Ministers anticipated even

less opposition in the colonies.

At the North, the state of Vermont was preparing to rise from anarchy into self-existence, peace, and order. The court of common pleas was to be opened by the royal judges in what was called the New York county of Cumberland, at Westminster, in the New Hampshire Grants, on the eastern side of the Green Mountains. To prevent this assertion of the jurisdiction of New York and of the authority of the king, a body of young men from the neighboring farms on the thirteenth of March took possession of the court-house. The royal sheriff, who, against the wish of the judges, had raised sixty men armed with guns and bludgeons, demanded possession of the building; and, after reading the riot act and refusing to concede terms, late in the night ordered his party to fire. In this way he made his entry by force, having mortally wounded William French of Brattleborough, and Daniel Houghton of Dummerston. The act closed the supremacy of the king and of New York to the east of Lake Champlain. Armed men poured in from towns in the Grants and from the borders of New Hampshire and Massachusetts. They instituted a jury of inquest, and the royalists implicated in the attack were sent to jail in Massachusetts for trial. They were soon released; but the story of the first martyrs in the contest with the king

was told from village to village as a tale of tyranny and murder. Just before this shedding of blood, Ethan Allen, foreseeing war with Great Britain, sent assurances to Oliver Wolcott of Connecticut, that "the regiment of Green Mountain Boys would assist their American brethren." On the twenty-ninth, John Brown of Pittsfield, who had passed through the district on his way to Montreal, wrote to Samuel Adams and Joseph Warren at Boston, that, "should hostilities be committed by the king's troops, the people on New Hampshire Grants would seize the fort at Ticonderoga; and that they were the proper persons for the job."

The assembly of Delaware, which met on the day of the shedding of blood in Vermont, approved the proceedings of the congress at Philadelphia; but, in re-electing their deputies, they avowed their most ardent wish for an accommodation with Great Britain, for which end they were willing to yield claims of right that were either doubtful or "not essentially necessary to their well-being." The session was specially important, from the instruction given to their deputies in congress to urge decently but firmly the right of their province to a voice in congress equal with any other province on this continent. A bill was passed prohibiting the importation of slaves; but the proprietary governor, obeying the decision of the king in council, interposed his veto. In the neighboring county of Westchester, in Pennsylvania, a movement was made "for the manumission of slaves, especially of all infants born of black mothers within the colony."

Early in March the governor of North Carolina, having returned by land from New York to his government, reported to the British secretary of state: "In Virginia the ferment has in no sort abated, as I think the advertisement of Mr. Washington and others, that your lordship will find inclosed, plainly discovers." The inclosure consisted of the Fairfax resolves, to which Washington had set his name. In his own government, Martin sought to neutralize the convention by holding simultaneously a meeting of the legislature; but, on the fifth of April, the convention of North Carolina, in which Richard Caswell was the most conspicuous member, unanimously adhered to the general congress, re-elected their dele

gates, and "invested them with such power as might make any act done by them, or any of them, or consent given in behalf of the province, obligatory in honor upon every inhabitant thereof." Yet propositions to array an armed force were overruled.

The members of the convention of Virginia, in which even the part of Augusta county west of the Alleghany Mountains was represented, cherished the system of limited monarchy under which they had been born and educated. Though quick to resent aggression, they abhorred the experiment of changing their form of government by revolution without some absolute necessity. Virginia was, moreover, unprepared for war. Its late expedition against the Shawnee Indians had left a debt of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds; its currency was of paper, and it had no efficient system of revenue. Its soil, especially in the low country, was cultivated by negro slaves, so that the laborers in the field could not furnish recruits for an army. Except a little powder in a magazine near Williamsburg, it was destitute of warlike stores. Of all the colonies, the magnificent bay of the Chesapeake, and the deep water of the James, the York, the Potomac, and other rivers, exposed it most to invasions from the sea.

On the twentieth of March its second convention assembled at Richmond, in the old church of St. John, on the hill which overlooks the town. The proceedings of the continental congress and the conduct of the delegates of the colony were approved with unanimity. On the twenty-third the mediating interposition of the assembly of Jamaica was recognised as a proof of "their patriotic endeavors to fix the just claims of the colonists upon permanent constitutional principles;" and assurances were renewed "that it was the most ardent wish of their colony, and of the whole continent of North America, to see a speedy return of those halcyon days when they lived a free and happy people."

But, with all their love of peace under the government of the king, the imminence of danger drove them irresistibly to the Fairfax resolves. A motion, couched in the very words to which Washington in person had set his name, was brought forward by Patrick Henry, with its logical consequences, "that

this colony be immediately put into a posture of defence, and that a committee prepare a plan for the embodying, arming, and disciplining such a number of men as may be sufficient for that purpose." The resolution was opposed by Bland, Harrison, and Pendleton, three of the delegates of Virginia in congress, and by Nicholas, who had been among the most resolute in the preceding May. There was no array of party against party, but rather a conflict of feelings and opinions in every one's breast. "Are we ready for war?" asked those who lingered in the hope of reunion. "Where are our stores, our soldiers, our generals, our money? We are defenceless; yet we talk of war against one of the most formidable nations in the world. It will be time enough to resort to measures of despair when every well-founded hope has vanished."

Henry replied in a speech of which no exact report has come down, but all tradition agrees that he dispelled the illusive hope of reconciliation, proving that, if Americans would be free, they must fight! His transfigured features glowed as he spoke, and his words fell like a doom of fate. He was supported by Richard Henry Lee, who made an estimate of the force which Britain could employ against the colonies, and, after comparing it with their means of resistance, proclaimed that the auspices were good, adding that "Thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just!”

The resolutions were adopted. To give them effect, a committee, consisting of Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, Washington, Jefferson, and others, in a few days reported a plan for forming in every county one or more volunteer companies and troops of horse, to be in constant training and readiness. Whatever doubts had been before expressed, the plan was unanimously accepted. Nicholas would even have desired the more energetic measure of organizing an army. The convention voted to encourage the manufacture of woollen, cotton, and linen; of gunpowder; of salt and iron and steel; and recommended to the inhabitants to use colonial manufactures in preference to all others. Before dissolving their body, they elected their former delegates to the general congress in May, adding to the number Thomas Jefferson, "in case of the non-attendance of Peyton Randolph."

VOL. IV.-10