just as there is in the growth of the individual mind, when ideas and feelings are so mixed up, that men can hardly think clearly or act firmly without something to arrange their ideas and define their feelings for them. There was a general persuasion among the Colonists that their rights had been invaded, and that there was a design of invading them still further. There was a deeprooted conviction that resistance was lawful; a feeling, second only to their religious feelings, that it was a duty. The doctrine that an English Parliament had no right to tax them was not a new doctrine. New York had announced it by a solemn act of legislation as early as 1691; Massachusetts, in an enumeration of her rights and privileges, in 1692. Both of these acts, it is true, were formally disallowed by the English government; but they remained none the less a part of American history.

Nor was the doctrine that England had a right to tax America new in England. For in 1696 it was deliberately advocated in an elaborate pamphlet, and no less deliberately refuted in two pamphlets, upon the ground which Americans always put it upon, that taxation went with representation. There had been various other indications, too, at various times, of the continued existence of both doctrines; of what some Englishmen wanted, and of what every American who had ever thought upon the subject was determined not

1

to submit to. Walpole's advisers were not alone in their longing for American places and pensions, when they advised him to tax America. But Walpole was almost alone in his wisdom when he answered that America was already paying her full tax in the manner most agreeable to the constitution of England and her own.

Patrick Henry's Resolutions, and the Declaration of Rights of the Congress of 1765, brought these ideas and convictions, which had been floating to and fro in the popular mind, to a definite shape; gave them a form which every one could take in at a glance; expressed them with a distinctness which left no room for misinterpretation, and a solemn earnestness which left no doubt of the depth and intensity of the convictions from which they sprang. Henceforward American statesmen had a chart to guide them in the stormy sea upon which they were entering; a chart whereon many of the shoals, many of the rocks they were to meet, were not set down, but which contained, nevertheless, in bold and accurate lines, the course they were to steer, and the haven in which they might hope for rest.

Resistance first took the form of retaliation. England attempted to reach the American purse by taxation. America returned the blow by agreements of non-importation. England sent out shiploads of tea subject to the new duty. America refused to receive it. England knew that America

needed her woollens. America stopped eating lamb, and ate very little mutton, that she might raise more wool and make woollens of her own. Had England's bitterest enemy dictated her policy at this critical juncture, he could not have prescribed a course better adapted to train the Colonists to resistance, and familiarize them betimes with the sacrifices which successful resistance required.

Events followed rapidly. It soon became evident that force must be employed; and Boston being the chief sinner, a British garrison was sent to overawe Boston. But all that ministers gained by their garrison was to bring on a collision between the citizens and the soldiers, which embittered the public mind, and prepared it for further resistance. The act of indirect taxation - Charles Townshend's act was modified on commercial principles; the duties on glass, paper, and painters' colors were repealed; a small duty on tea alone being left, like the declaratory clause in the repeal of the Stamp Act, to establish the right. Ministers could not see that what they were treating as a question of money, America treated as a question of principle. The tea ships came. Some were sent back with their cargoes. Some were allowed to unload, and the tea stored in cellars and other places, where it presently became worthless from damp. Boston went a step further, and threw it into the bay. Never had King George

been so insulted before; and, glowing all over with royal indignation, came the Boston Port Bill, and the bill for altering the charter of Massachusetts.

ence;

But already the minds and hearts of the Colonists had been brought into close communication by the establishment of Committees of Correspond"the foulest, subtlest, and most venomous serpents that ever issued from the egg of sedition," says a royalist; "the great invention for organizing the Revolution," says an historian of the United States; first organized in Massachusetts in 1764, but not felt in all their strength till their reorganization there in 1772, as a Provincial measure,* and in Virginia in 1773, as a Colonial measure. The chain was now complete in all its links. Every pulse-beat of Massachusetts throbbed through the Colonies; every fiery word of the great orator of Virginia was felt from New Hampshire to Georgia; and every bold resolve, every wise counsel, every budding aspiration, was transmitted from Colony to Colony for examination and approval. The foundations of the Union were laid. The Revolution entered upon its last phase; and it was henceforth but a question of a year more or a year less, how soon a new Congress

*These last [Committees of Correspondence] were engines which operated with more energy and consistency than any others which were put in motion in the commencement of our opposition: they may be called the corner-stone of our revolution or new empire.". - Mr. Dana to Mr. Gerry, Austin's Life oʻ Gerry, Vol I. pp. 299, 390.

hould gather up the rich inheritance of the Congress of 1765, and declare the independence of the Colonies.

We, with the whole of this past before us, with all its scattered elements wrought into an harmoni ous series, can see this necessity plainly enough But it was by no means so easy to see it then. Many Americans, who loved their own country devotedly, still clung with lingering affection to the country of their forefathers; watching with saddened eyes each cherished tie as it snapped asunder, and hoping in hope's despite that some one among them might yet prove strong enough to hold parent and child together. Of those who thus hoped to the last was Washington himself. It may well be doubted whether reconciliation was any longer possible. But the great Congress of 1774 did not doubt it, and gave their hopes utterance in a new memorial and new addresses, which led to no other result than to show how completely they had overrated the heart of the King and the intelligence of his ministers. Meanwhile, the country was arming. Old soldiers, the veterans of the old French war, furbished up their arms. Young men met to learn the drill and go through their evolutions together. On the 19th of April, 1775, the collision between British soldiers and American citizens, which had already occurred in the streets of New York and Boston, was renewed in the fields of Lexington. Too much blood was shed on that holy