"display in their conduct, and even in their errors, more thought than enthusiasm; they have shown in succession that they know how to argue, to negotiate, and to fight."

Many people in England were from that moment convinced that the Americans could not be reduced, and that England must concede their independence. The British force, if drawn together, could hold but a few insulated points; if distributed, would be continually harassed and destroyed in detail.

An inhabitant of London, after reading morning prayers in his family as usual, closed the book with a face of grief, and to his children, of whom Samuel Rogers the poet was one, told the sad tale "of the murder of their American brethren."

The recorder of London put on a full suit of mourning, and, being asked if he had lost a relative, answered: "Yes, many brothers at Lexington and Concord."

Granville Sharp, who held a lucrative place in the ordnance department, declined to take part in sending stores to America, and after some delay threw up his office.

Carleton at Quebec was attended as an aide-de-camp by Chatham's eldest son. But it was impossible for the offspring of the elder Pitt to draw his sword against the Americans; and his resignation was offered as soon as it could be done without a wound to his character as a soldier. Meantime, Carleton had sent him home as a bearer of despatches.

Admiral Keppel, one of the most popular officers in the British navy, was ready to serve against the ancient enemies of England, but asked not to be employed in America. Of the same mind was John Cartwright, afterward so widely known as a pure and consistent political reformer.

Ten days before the news arrived, Lord Effingham, finding that his regiment was intended for America, renounced the profession which he loved, as the only means of escaping the obligation of fighting against the cause of freedom. For this resignation the Common Hall of London thanked him publicly as "a true Englishman;" and the guild of merchants in Dublin addressed him in the strongest words of approbation.

The society for constitutional information, after a special meeting on the seventh of June, raised a hundred pounds, "to

be applied," said they, "to the relief of the widows, orphans, and aged parents of our beloved American fellow-subjects, who, faithful to the character of Englishmen, preferring death to slavery, were, for that reason only, inhumanly murdered by the king's troops at Lexington and Concord." Other sums were added; and an account of what had been done was laid before the world by Horne Tooke in the "Public Advertiser." For this publication, three printers were fined one hundred pounds each; and Horne was pursued unrelentingly by Thurlow, till in a later year he was convicted before Lord Mansfield of a libel, fined two hundred pounds, and imprisoned for twelve months. Thurlow even asked the judge to punish him with the pillory.

John Wesley thought that silence on his part would be a sin against God, his country, and his own soul; and, waiting but one day, he wrote severally to Dartmouth and to Lord North: "I am a high churchman, the son of a high churchman, bred up from my childhood in the highest notions of passive obedience and non-resistance; and yet, in spite of all my long-rooted prejudices, I cannot avoid thinking these, an oppressed people, asked for nothing more than their legal rights, and that in the most modest and inoffensive manner that the nature of the thing would allow. But waiving this, I ask: Is it common sense to use force toward the Americans? Whatever has been affirmed, these men will not be frightened, and they will not be conquered easily. Some of our valiant officers say: 'Two thousand men will clear America of these rebels.' No: nor twenty thousand, be they rebels or not, nor perhaps treble that number. They are strong; they are valiant; they are one and all enthusiasts; enthusiasts for liberty; calm, deliberate enthusiasts. In a short time they will understand discipline as well as their assailants.

"But you are informed, they are divided among themselves.' So was poor Rehoboam informed concerning the ten tribes; so was Philip informed concerning the people of the Netherlands. No: they are terribly united; they think they are contending for their wives, children, and liberty. Their supplies are at hand; ours are three thousand miles off. Are we able to conquer the Americans, suppose they are left to

themselves? We are not sure of this; nor are we sure that all our neighbors will stand stock-still.”

On the twenty-fourth the citizens of London desired the king to consider the situation of the English people," who had nothing to expect from America but gazettes of blood, and mutual lists of their slaughtered fellow-subjects;" and again they prayed for the dissolution of parliament, and a dismission forever of the present ministers. As he refused to receive this address on the throne, it was never presented; but it was entered in the books of the city and published under its authority. The request was timely; there was no chance for peace except the ministers should retire, and leave Chatham to be installed as conciliator; but the stubborn king, whatever might happen, was resolved not to change his government. There existed no settled plan, no reasonable project; the conduct of the administration hardly looked beyond the day; and every question of foreign policy was, for the moment, made subordinate to that of the reduction of the rebels. The enforcement of the treaty of Paris respecting Dunkirk was treated as a small matter. The complaints of France for the wrongs her fishermen had suffered, and the curtailment of her boundary in the fisheries of Newfoundland, were uttered with vehemence, received with suavity, and recognised as valid.

On the evening of the fourteenth the cabinet ministers assembled in very bad humor. Some of Lord North's colleagues threw all the blame on his too great lenity; one and another said: "There is no receding." The most active person at the meeting was Sandwich, who had been specially summoned; a man of talents, greedy alike of glory and of money, unfit to lead, madly bent on coercion.

At the North, the king "relied upon the attachment of his faithful allies, the Six Nations of Indians." The order to engage them was sent in his name directly to the Indian agent, Guy Johnson, whose functions were made independent of the too scrupulous Carleton. "Lose no time," it was said; "induce them to take up the hatchet against his majesty's rebellious subjects in America. It is a service of very great importance; fail not to exert every effort that may tend to accomplish it; use the utmost diligence and activity." It was the opinion at court

that "the next word from Boston would be of some lively action, for General Gage would wish to make sure of his revenge."

The sympathy for America reached the king's own brother, the weak but amiable duke of Gloucester. In July he crossed the channel, with the view to inspect the citadels along the eastern frontier of France. When he left Dover, nothing had been heard from America later than the retreat of the British from Concord, and the surprise at Ticonderoga. Metz, the strongest place on the cast of France, was a particular object of his journey; and, as his tour was made with the sanction of Louis XVI., he was received there by the Count de Broglie as the guest of the king. Among the visitors on the occasion came a young man not yet eighteen, whom De Broglie loved with parental tenderness, Gilbert Motier de la Fayette. Ilis father had fallen in his twenty-fifth year, in the battle of Minden, leaving his only child less than two years old. The boyish dreams of the orphan had been of glory and of liberty; at the college in Paris, at the academy of Versailles, no studies charmed him like tales of republics; though rich by inheritances and married at sixteen, he was haunted by a passion for roving the world as an adventurer to strike a blow for fame and freedom. A guest at the banquet in honor of the duke of Gloucester, he listened with avidity to an authentic version of the uprising of the New England husbandmen. Reality had now brought before him something more wonderful than his brightest visions; the youthful nation, insurgent against oppression and fighting for the right to govern itself, took possession of his imagination, and before he left the table the men of Lexington and Concord had won for America a volunteer in Lafayette.

In Paris, wits, philosophers, and coffee-house politicians were all to a man warn Americans, considering them as a brave people, struggling for natural rights, and endeavoring to rescue those rights from wanton violence; and that, having no representatives in parliament, they could owe no obedience to British laws. This argument they turned in all its different shapes, and fashioned into general theories.

From the busy correspondence with the French embassy at London, Vergennes saw clearly the delusion of the British ministry in persuading themselves that the Americans would

soon tire; or that their superiority on the ocean was sufficient to reduce colonies, which could so well provide within themselves for their wants. Franklin, who took with him a thorough knowledge of the resources of Great Britain and was known to be more zealous than ever, enjoyed at Versailles the reputation of being endowed with the qualities that fitted him to create a free nation, and become the most celebrated among men. Yet Vergennes wrote with forecast: "The spirit of revolt, wherever it breaks out, is always a troublesome example. Moral maladies, as well as those of the physical system, can become contagious. We must be on our guard, that the independence which produces so terrible an explosion in North America may not communicate itself to points that interest us. We long ago made up our own mind to the results which are now observed; we saw with regret that the crisis was drawing near; we have a presentiment that it may be followed by more extensive consequences. We do not disguise from ourselves the aberrations which enthusiasm can encourage, and which fanaticism can effectuate."

Louis XVI. was persuaded to send an emissary to America to watch the progress of the revolution. This could best be done from England; and the embassy at London, as early as the tenth of July, began its preliminary inquiries. "England," such was the substance of its numerous reports to Vergennes, "is in a position from which she never can extricate herself. Either all rules are false or the Americans will never again consent to become her subjects."

On the tenth of May 1775, a few hours after the surrender of Ticonderoga, the second continental congress met at Philadelphia. Among the delegates appeared Franklin and Samuel Adams; John Adams and Washington and Richard Henry Lee; soon joined by Patrick Henry, and by George Clinton, Jay, and the younger Robert R. Livingston of New York.

They formed no confederacy; they were not an executive government; they were not even a legislative body; but only committees from twelve colonies, deputed to consult on measures of conciliation, with no means of resistance to oppression beyond a voluntary agreement to suspend importations from