an address recommending conciliatory measures; the ministry, if victorious, would only establish a right to the harvest when they had burnt the grain." Yet the troops were voted by one hundred and twenty-one against seventy-six, although the resolution to replace them by foreign Protestants was negatived.

The majority in both parliaments did not quiet Lord North. Sir George Saville describes him "as one day for conciliation; but, as soon as the first word is out, he is checked and controlled, and, instead of conciliation, out comes confusion." On the first of December he pressed to a second reading the American bill, which consolidated the several penal acts and enlarged them into a prohibition of the trade of all the thirteen colonies. American vessels and goods were made the property of their captors; the prisoners might be compelled to serve the king even against their own countrymen. No one American grievance was removed.

The atrocity of the measure was exposed in the house of commons, but without effect; on the third reading, in the house of lords, Mansfield said: "The people of America are as much bound to obey the acts of the British parliament as the inhabitants of London and Middlesex. I have not a doubt in my mind that ever since the peace of Paris the northern colonies have been meditating a state of independence on this country. But, allowing that all their professions are genuine, are we to stand idle because we are told this is an unjust war? The justice of the cause must give way to our present situation; and the consequences which must ensue should we recede, would, nay must, be infinitely worse than agreeing to a final separation." After these words, the bill was adopted without a division.

Outside of parliament, the opinion of the most intelligent among the philosophers of Britain was divided. The lukewarm Presbyterian, William Robertson, would have the British "leaders at once exert the power of the British empire in its full force," and station a "few regiments in each capital." Like Mansfield, he was certain that the Americans had been aiming all along at independence; and, like the Bedford party, he held it fortunate that matters had so soon been brought to a crisis. As a lover of mankind, he was ready to bewail

the check to prosperous and growing states; but, said he, “we are past the hour of lenitives and half exertions."

On the other hand, John Millar, the professor of law in the university of Glasgow, taught the youth of Scotland who frequented his lectures "that the republican form of government is by far the best, either for a very small or a very extensive country."

"I cannot but agree with him," said David Hume, who yet maintained that it would be "most criminal" to disjoint the established government in Great Britain, where he believed a republic would so certainly be the immediate forerunner of despotism that none but fools would think to augment liberty by shaking off monarchy. But he had no faith in the universal application of the monarchical principle. "The ancient republics," said he, rising above the influence of his philosophy, "were somewhat ferocious and torn by bloody factions; but they were still much preferable to the ancient monarchies or aristocracies, which seem to have been quite intolerable. Modern manners have corrected this abuse; and all the republics in Europe, without exception, are so well governed that one is at a loss to which we should give the preference. I am an American in my principles, and wish we would let them alone to govern or misgovern themselves, as they think proper."

But one greater than Robertson and wiser than Hume gave the best expression to the mind of Scotland. Adam Smith, the peer and the teacher of statesmen, enrolled among the benefactors of our race, one who had closely studied the economy of France as well as of Britain, and who in his style combined the grace and the clearness of a man of the world with profound wisdom and the sincere search for truth, applied to the crisis those principles of freedom and right which made Scotland, under every disadvantage of an oppressive form of feudalism and a deceitful system of representation, an efficient instrument in promoting the liberties of mankind. He would have the American colonies either fairly represented in parliament or independent. The prohibitory laws of England toward the colonies he pronounced "a manifest violation of the most sacred rights," "impertinent badges of slavery imposed upon

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them without any sufficient reason by the groundless jealousy of the merchants and manufacturers of the mother country." "Great Britain," said he, "derives nothing but loss from the dominion she assumes over her colonies." "It is not very

probable that they will ever voluntarily submit to us; the blood which must be shed in forcing them to do so is every drop of it the blood of those who are or of those whom we wish to have for our fellow-citizens." "They are very weak who flatter themselves that, in the state to which things are come, our colonies will be easily conquered by force alone." And he pointed out the vast immediate and continuing advantages which Great Britain would derive if she "should voluntarily give up all authority over her colonies, and leave them to elect their own magistrates, to enact their own laws, and to make peace and war as they might think proper."

Josiah Tucker, an English royalist writer on political economy, had studied perseveringly the laws of nature, which are the laws of God, in their application to commerce; and, at the risk of being rated a visionary enthusiast, he sought to convince the landed gentry that Great Britain would lose nothing if she should renounce her colonies and cultivate commerce with them as an independent nation. This he enforced with such strength of argument and perspicuity of statement that he made a proselyte of Soame Jenyns who wrote verses in his praise, and was approved by Lord Mansfield.

Through the clouds of conflict and passion rose the cheering idea that the impending change, which had been deprecated as the ruin of the empire, would bring no disaster to Britain. American statesmen had struggled to avoid a separation; the measures of the British government, as one by one they were successively borne across the Atlantic-disregard of the petition of congress by the king, his speech to parliament, his avowed negotiations for mercenaries, the closure of the ports of all the thirteen colonies and the confiscation of all their property on the ocean-forced upon them the conviction that they must protect and govern themselves.

CHAPTER XIX.

ANNEXATION OF CANADA.

AUGUST-DECEMBER 1775.

THE Continental congress had, on the first of June 1775, disclaimed the purpose of invading Canada; and a French version of their resolution was distributed among its inhabitants. But on the ninth of that month the governor of the province proclaimed the American borderers to be rebellious traitors, established martial law, summoned the French peasantry to serve under the old colonial nobility, and instigated alike the converted Indian tribes and the savages of the Northwest to take up the hatchet against New York and New England. These movements made the occupation of Canada by America an act of self-defence; it received the unflinching approval of Dickinson and occupied in a special manner the attention of New York.

The French nobility and the Catholic clergy acquiesced in the new form of government; but a large part of the British residents detested their subjection to arbitrary power; and the Canadian peasantry denied the authority of their seigniors as magistrates, resisted their claim of a right to command their military services, and were willing to welcome an invasion.

At the instance of Carleton, the Catholic bishop sent a mandate to the several parishes, to be read by the clergy after divine service; but the peasantry persisted in refusing to turn

out.

Schuyler, on taking command of the northern army, despatched Major John Brown to learn the state of Canada. On the twenty-seventh of July the regiment of Green Moun

tain Boys elected its officers; and Seth Warner, a man of courage and good judgment, was chosen its lieutenant-colonel. Preparations were made for crossing the boundary; but Schuyler had only twelve hundred men, and, judging them insufficient for the enterprise, he waited for the orders which, on the sixth of August, he solicited from congress. Before the middle of the month Brown returned from a perilous march of observation, and reported that now was the time to acquire Canada, where there were only about four hundred regulars, beside the garrison of three hundred at St. John's; that the inhabitants were friends; that the militia refused to serve under the French officers lately appointed. At the same time, a new arrival at Ticonderoga changed the spirit of the camp.

We have seen Richard Montgomery, who had served in the army from the age of fifteen, gain distinction in the seven years' war. Failing after the peace in his pursuit of the promotion to which his good service gave him a right to aspire, he sold his commission and emigrated to New York. Here, in 1773, he renewed his acquaintance with the family of Robert R. Livingston, and married his eldest daughter. Never intending to draw his sword again, studious in his habits, he wished for a country life at Rhinebeck; and his wife, whose affections he entirely possessed, willingly conformed to his tastes. The father of his wife used to say that, "if American liberty should not be maintained, he would carry his family to Switzerland, as the only free country in the world." Her grandfather, the aged Robert Livingston, was the stanchest patriot of them all. In 1773, in his eighty-fourth year, he foretold the conflict with England; at the news of the retreat of the British from Concord, he confidently announced American independence. After the battle of Bunker Hill, as he lay calmly on his death-bed, his last words were: "What news from Boston?"

The county of Dutchess, in April 1775, selected Montgomery as a delegate to the first provincial convention in New York, where he distinguished himself by modesty, decision, and sound judgment. Accepting his appointment as brigadier-general, he reluctantly bade adieu to his "quiet scheme of life," "perhaps," he said, "forever; but the will of an op