Superior ap American statesmen of this preliminary controversy the American leaders show a much better appreciation of the preciation by principles of Anglo-Saxon liberty, and a Anglo-Saxon management much more statesmanlike, freedom. than even the best men across the water. It was to be expected. "Political power was incomparably more diffused; the representative system incomparably less corrupt than at home."1 As far as New England is concerned, there is no denying the oft-quoted assertion of Stoughton, that God sifted a whole nation to procure the seed out of which the people was to be developed. The colonists were picked men and women, and the circumstances under which they were placed at their arrival on these shores forced upon them a revival of institutions which in England had long been overlaid. The popular moot had reappeared in all its old vigor, and wrought in the society its natural beneficent effect. Together with intelligence and self-reliance in every direction, it had especially trained in the people the political sense. In utter blindness the Englishman of our revolutionary period looked down upon the colonist as wanting in reason and courage. Really the colonist was a superior being, both as compared with the ordinary British citizen and with the noble. Originally of the best English strain, a century and a half of training, under the institution best adapted of all human institutions to quicken manhood, had had its effect. What influence had surrounded lord and commoner across the water to develop in them a capacity to cope with the child of the Puritan, schooled thoroughly in the town-meeting! 1 Lecky: XVIIIth Century, III, p. 296. The discontent was most marked in Massachusetts. Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire, closely connected, took their tone from her. In New York was a party prepared to go all lengths with the most strenuous, step for step; there was a party, too, better placed as regards wealth and position, the rich merchants, the Episcopalians generally, the holders of the great feudal estates, the Dutch farmers, and recent German settlers, who were either actively loyal to the Crown or quite apathetic. In Pennsylvania, there were strong opposers of the English policy, whose leading representative, now that Franklin was absent in England, was John Dickinson, very famous through the "Farmer's Letters," well-reasoned papers in which was. given a popular explanation of the unconstitutionality of government acts: the powerful sect of Quakers, however, as the trouble deepened, set themselves against resistance to the powers that were; and the Germans felt little interest. Passing to the South, Virginia was all alive. The aristocracy of great tobacco-planters, who held the power, full of vigor and trained to struggle in the long-continued disputes with different royal governors, stood most stubbornly against British encroachment. The colony was far enough from democracy; the large class of poor landless whites had scarcely more interest in politics than the slaves; but the House of Burgesses understood well the championship of American privileges, and was prepared to second, even once or twice to anticipate, Massachusetts in measures of opposition. Influenced in the early days by Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, and Dabney Carr, it was sometimes in advance of the Northern province, and a little later, when Washington, Jefferson, and Madison came forward, it stood certainly foremost. In South Carolina, too, was a party headed by Christopher Gadsden, prepared to take the advanced ground. In the preliminary years, however, Massachusetts was very plainly before all others, according to the view both of America and England.1 If sometimes another province was in advance in taking a bold step, it was perhaps due to the management of the skilful Massachusetts statesmen, who, for reasons of policy, held in check their own assembly, that local pride elsewhere might be conciliated, and America, generally, be brought to present an unbroken front. Leadership of setts. Discontent with England became rife in New 1 On this point, which local pride might dispute, a few authorities may be cited. Englishmen at the time felt as follows: "In all the late American disturbances, and in every thought against the authority of the British Parliament, the people of Massachusetts Bay have taken the lead. Every new move towards independence has been theirs; and in every fresh mode of resistance against the law they have first set the example, and then issued out admonitory letters to the other colonies to follow it." - Mauduit's Short View of the New England Colonies, p. 5. See, also, Anburey's Travels, I, p. 310. Hutchinson: History of Massachusetts Bay, III, p. 257. Rivington: Independence the Object of Congress in America, London, 1776, p. 15. Lord Camden called Massachusetts "the ring-leading colony." Coming to writers of our own time, Lecky declares, History of the Eighteenth Century, III, p. 386: "The central and southern colonies long hesitated to follow New England. Massachusetts had thrown herself with fierce energy into the conflict, and soon drew the other provinces in her wake." Says J. R. Seeley: Expansion of England, pp. 154, 155: "The spirit driving the colonies to separation from England, a principle attracting and conglobing them into a new union among themselves, - how early did this spirit show itself in the New England colonies! It was not present in all the colonies. It was not present in Virginia; but when the colonial discontents burst into a flame, then was the moment when Virginia went over to New England, and the spirit of the Pilgrim Fathers found the power to turn the offended colonists into a new nation." England and Virginia before it appeared elsewhere in America. The oppressive trade regulations bore upon manufactures and commerce; and since most of the manufactures were in New England, and the principal articles of export were New England timber and Virginia tobacco, those colonies first became exasperated. The Stamp Act, however, bore upon all, and from 1764 the backward colonies began to show the same wrathful temper. To preserve strict truth, the historian must not omit to state that a certain discreditable reason had its part in bringing about American resistance, as well as the just indignation at the selfish and arbitrary policy which ground the country down. A debt of eight or nine million pounds was owed to British merchants, and this debt, so some thought, in case of successful revolt, it might be possible to repudiate.1 1 Madison's View, XL, and Boucher, quoted by Chamberlain, "John Adams, the Statesman of the Revolution," p. 37. CHAPTER XIV. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION A STRUGGLE OF Character of 1776-1783. THE condition of things in the middle of the eighteenth century has been sufficiently set forth. George III had been educated carefully under the influence of his mother, a woman, who, like the members of German royal families at that time universally, exaggerated to the highest degree the prerogatives of the King. Her constant exhortation, "George, be a King," is said to have influenced her son much. Jacobitism had been utterly quenched in 1745. No other prince since Charles II had been hailed with such acclamation as George III, when he took his seat. Whereas the prestige of the Kings had been declining, prerogative and the jus divinum now began to be fashionable again. The Tories were in power, and the great Jacobite families, giving up at last the cause of the Stuarts, rallied round the Hanoverian prince, retaining all their old anti-popular ideas. George was fairly sensible, thoroughly brave, well-meaning, and sincerely anxious to bring about good for England, not postponing the interests of his kingdom, as his two predecessors had done, to those of his German electorate. He was, |