tinction of rascality, was established at Boston by the two Franklins -James and Benjamin. In 1740 New York had but one periodical, Virginia one, and South Carolina one; and at the close of the French and Indian War, there were no more than ten newspapers published in the colonies. The chief obstacles to such publications were the absence of great cities and the difficulty of communication between distant sections of the country. Boston and Philadelphia had each no more than eighteen thousand inhabitants; New York but twelve thousand. In all Virginia there was not one important town; while as far south as Georgia there was scarcely a considerable village. To reach this widely scattered population with periodical publications was quite impossible. Books were few, and of little value. Some dry volumes of history, theology, and politics were the only stock and store. On the latter subject the publications were sometimes full of pith and spirit. But notwithstanding this barrenness of books and general poverty of the resources of knowledge, it was no unusual thing to find at the foot of the Virginia mountains, in the quiet precincts of Philadelphia, by the banks of the Hudson, or in the valleys of New England, a man of great and solid learning. Such a man was Thomas Jefferson; such were Franklin, and Livingston, and the Adamses-men of profound scholarship, bold in thought, ready with the pen, skillful in argument; studious, witty, and eloquent.

Nothing impeded the progress of the colonies more than the want of thoroughfares and easy communication between the different sections. No general system of post-offices or post-roads had as yet been established; and the people were left in comparative or total ignorance of passing events. No common sentiments could be expressed-no common enthusiasm be kindled in the country-by the slow-going mails and packets. The sea-coast towns and cities found a readier intercourse by means of small sloops plying the Atlantic; but the inland districts were wholly cut off from such advantages. Roads were slowly built from point to point, and lines of travel by coach and wagon were gradually established. To the very beginning of the Revolution the people lived apart, isolated and dependent upon their own resources for life and enjoyment. When in 1766 an express wagon made the trip from New York to Philadelphia in two days, it was considered a marvel of rapidity. Six years later the first stage-coach began to run regularly between Boston and Providence.*

* It is remarkable to note how tardily the attention of a people will be turned to the building of roads. Thus, for instance, in so old a country as Scotland there were no great thoroughfares constructed until after the Scotch Rebellion of 1745.

Before the Revolution the Americans were for the most part an agricultural people. Within the tide-water line of Virginia the lands were divided into estates, and the planters devoted themselves almost exclusively to the cultivation of tobacco. Farther inland the products were more various: wheat, maize, potatoes; upland cotton, hemp, and flax. In the Carolinas and Georgia the rice crop was most important; after that, indigo, cotton, and some silk; tar, turpentine, and what the hunter and fisherman gathered from the woods and streams. New York, Philadelphia and Boston were then as now the great centers of trade; but commerce was carried on in a slow and awkward manner, wholly unlike the rushing activity of more recent times. Ship-building was one of the most important colonial interests. In the year 1738 no less than forty-one sailing vessels, with an average burden of a hundred and fifty tons, were built and launched at the ship-yards of Boston. New England was the seat of whatever manufacturing interest prevailed in the country. But all enterprise in this direction was checked and impeded by the British Board of Trade, whose stupid and arbitrary restrictions acted as a damper on every kind of colonial thrift. No sooner would some enterprising company of New England men begin the building of a factory than this officious Board would interfere in such a way as to make success impossible. So jealous was the English ministry of American progress! If, previous to the Revolution, any colonial manufacture was successfully established, it was done against the will of Great Britain, and in spite of her mean and churlish opposition.

Such were the American colonies-such the people whose budding nationality was now to be exposed to the blasts of war. These people, whose ancestors had been driven into exile by the exactions of European governments and the bigotry of ecclesiastical power, had become the rightful proprietors of the New World. They had fairly won it from savage man and savage nature. They had subdued it and built States within it. They owned it by all the claims of actual possession; by toil and trial; by the ordeal of suffering; by peril, privation, and hardship; by the baptism of sorrow and the shedding of blood. No wonder that patriotism was the child of such travail and discipline! No wonder that the men who from mountain and sky and river, from orchard and valley and forest, from the memo ries of the past, the aspirations of the present and the hopes of the future, had drank in the spirit of Liberty until their souls were pervaded with her sublime essence, were now ready when the iron heel of oppression was set upon their cherished rights, to draw the vindictive sword even against the venerable monarchy of England!

PART IV.

REVOLUTION AND CONFEDERATION.

A. D. 1775-1789.

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CHAPTER XXXVII.

CAUSES. Tu 246

HE war of American Independence was an event of vast moment, affecting the destinies of all nations. The question decided by the conflict was this: Whether the English colonies in America, becoming sovereign, should govern themselves or be ruled as dependencies of a European monarchy. The decision was rendered in favor of separation and independence. The result has been the grandest and most promising example of republican government in the history of the world. The struggle was long and distressing, though not characterized by great violence; the combatants were of the same race and spoke a common language. It is of the first importance to understand the causes of the war.

The most general cause of the American Revolution was THE RIGHT OF ARBITRARY GOVERNMENT, claimed by Great Britain and denied by the colonies. So long as this claim was asserted by England only as a theory, the conflict was postponed; when the English government began to enforce the principle in practice, the colonies resisted. The question began to be openly discussed about the time of the treaty of Aix-laChapelle, in 1748; and from that period until the beginning of hostilities, in 1775, each year witnessed a renewal of the agitation. But there were also many subordinate causes tending to bring on a conflict.

First of these was the influence of France, which was constantly exerted so as to incite a spirit of resistance in the colonies. The French king would never have agreed to the treaty of 1763-by which Canada was ceded to Great Britain-had it not been with the hope of securing American independence. It was the theory of France that by giving up Canada on the north the English colonies would become so strong as to renounce their allegiance to the crown. England feared such a result. More than once it was proposed in Parliament to re-cede Canada to France

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in order to check the growth of the American States. "There, now!" said a French statesman when the treaty of 1763 was signed; "we have arranged matters for an American rebellion in which England will lose her empire in the West."

Another cause leading to the Revolution was found in the natural disposition and inherited character of the colonists. They were, for the most part, republicans in politics and dissenters in religion. The people of England were monarchists and High Churchmen. The colonists had never seen a king. The Atlantic lay between them and the British ministry. Their dealings with the royal officers had been such as to engender a dislike for monarchical institutions. The people of America had not forgotten-could not well forget the circumstances under which their ancestors had come to the New World. For six generations the colonists had managed their own affairs; and their methods of government were necessarily republican. The experiences of the French and Indian War had shown that Americans were fully able to defend themselves and their _country.

The growth of public opinion in the colonies tended to independence. The more advanced thinkers came to believe that a complete separation from England was not only possible, but desirable. As early as 1755, John Adams, then a young school-teacher in Connecticut, wrote in his diary: "In another century all Europe will not be able to subdue us. The only way to keep us from setting up for ourselves is to disunite us." Such opinions were at first expressed only in private, then by hints in pamphlets and newspapers, and at last publicly and everywhere. The mass of the people, however, were slow to accept an idea which seemed so radical and dangerous. Not until the war had actually begun did the majority declare for independence.

Another cause of the conflict with the mother country was found in the personal character of the king. George III., who ascended the English throne in 1760, was one of the worst monarchs of modern times. His notions of government were altogether despotic. He was a stubborn, stupid, thick-headed man in whose mind the notion of, human rights was entirely wanting. It was impossible for him to conceive of a magnanimous project or to appreciate the value of civil liberty. His reign of sixty years was as odious as it was long. In the management of the British empire he employed only those who were the narrow-minded partisans of his own policy. His ministers were, for the most part, men as incompetent and illiberal as himself. With such a king and such a ministry it was not likely that the descendants of the Pilgrims would get on smoothly.

The more immediate cause of the Revolution was the passage by Parliament of a number of acts destructive of colonial liberty. These acts were resisted by the colonies, and the attempt was made by Great Britain to enforce them with the bayonet. The subject of this unjust legislation, which extended over a period of twelve years just preceding the war, was the question of taxation. It is a well-grounded principle of English common law that the people, by their representatives in the House of Commons, have the right of voting whatever taxes and customs are necessary for the support of the kingdom. The American colonists claimed the full rights of Englishmen. With good reason it was urged that the general assemblies of colonies held the same relation to the American people as did the House of Commons to the people of England. The English ministers replied that Parliament, and not the colonial assemblies, was the proper body to vote taxes in any and all parts of the British empire. But we are not represented in Parliament, was the answer of the Americans; the House of Commons may therefore justly assess taxes in England, but not in America. Many of the towns, boroughs and shires in these British isles have no representatives in Parliament, and yet the Parliament taxes them, replied the ministers, now driven to sophistry. If any of your towns, boroughs and shires are not represented in the House of Commons, they ought to be, was the American rejoinder; and there the argument ended. Such were the essential points of the controversy. It is now proper to notice the several parliamentary acts which the colonies complained of and resisted.

The first of these was THE IMPORTATION ACT, passed in 1733. This statute was itself a kind of supplement to the old Navigation Act of 1651. By the terms of the newer law exorbitant duties were laid on all the sugar, molasses and rum imported into the colonies. At first the payment of these unreasonable customs was evaded by the merchants, and then the statute was openly set at naught. In 1750 it was further enacted that iron-works should not be erected in America. The manufacture of steel was specially forbidden; and the felling of pines, outside of enclosures, was interdicted. All of these laws were disregarded and denounced by the people of the colonies as being unjust and tyrannical. In 1761 a strenuous effort was made by the ministry to enforce the Importation Act. The colonial courts were authorized to issue to the king's officers a kind of search-warrants, called Writs of Assistance. Armed with this authority, petty constables might enter any and every place, searching for and seizing goods which were suspected of having evaded the duty. At Salem and Boston the greatest excitement prevailed. The application for the writs was resisted before the courts. James Otis, an