during the war

454

Force that each state furnished for the regular army.

455

Expense of the Revolutionary War

455

Emissions of Continental Money.

456

State Expenditures and Balances

457

Address to General Greene .

458

LECTURE I.

THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION.

THE

THE subject to which I have the honor to invite your attention is one of those events which are sometimes overshadowed for a while by the magnitude of their own results; but which, when time enough has passed to give them a proper distance, and show the extent and variety of their ramifications, take their place among the decisive epochs of civilization. When the thirteen Colonies of Great Britain dissolved their connection with the mother country, and determined that they would henceforth have a government of their own,

a government of the people and for the people, -the name of republic had almost become a byword and a reproach. The United Provinces were fast yielding to the selfish pretensions of the House of Orange, and the monarchical influences by which they were surrounded. Venice an oligarchy from her cradle-was dying, as oligarchies die, enervated and corrupt beyond the power of regen

eration. Genoa and Lucca were but names on the map, asking only to be forgotten while they lived the passive and aimless lives of beings who have survived all the associations that make life a blessing. While San Marino, still preserving in her little territory of seventeen miles square the spirit which had carried her unchanged through twelve centuries of comparative independence, seemed a living confirmation of the favorite doctrine of monarchical publicists, that republics, to be durable, must be small, industrious, and unpretending.

While the incapacity of the people for self-government seemed thus to have been set in the strongest light by the failure of every people that had undertaken to unite it with material development, the power of man to govern man, both with an absolute and a limited authority, seemed to have been set in a light equally clear and equally strong. The Seven Years' War had shown what a small state can do against fearful odds, when its resources are developed and applied by a man of genius. Russia was still pursuing, under Catharine, the career of internal improvement and external expansion which she had begun under Peter. The throne of the Hapsburgs had never appeared more firmly rooted, nor their crown more dazzling; and the hand which the young Emperor, emulous of philosophic renown, held out to his people, was the hand of imperial condescension. Never, too, had England been so powerful abroad, or so pros

perous at home; and never before had so much happiness been diffused over so wide a space, under any form of government, as was diffused over her vast possessions under her aristocratical monarchy.

Spain, it is true, had fallen into a deep sleep. But the brief career of Alberoni, within the memory of men still living, had shown startled Europe how much vitality was slumbering, undreamed of, in the lethargic mass; and how much a single will may do when it is an intelligent and a strong one. And if France excited any doubts in the minds of thoughtful partisans of monarchy, was there not enough in her profane philosophy, in her infidelity under the garb of formal devotion, and her insane trifling with all that was venerable and sacred in human as well as in divine things, under the specious pretext of philanthropy, to explain the degradation of a power which had more than once given laws to the continent?

But beneath this smooth exterior there was an internal fermentation, a feverish restlessness, a longing, vague in the beginning, but growing every day more definite, and even breaking out at times in energetic protests and warnings of deep significance. To those who had read history aright, it was evident that that natural harmony which makes form the spontaneous expression of substance, enabling you to interpret the inner life by the outward manifestation, and which reconciles anomalies and contradictions by voluntary concessions and ready

adaptation, was lost forever. The vassal gave grudgingly, as an extortion, the labor which his father had given cheerfully as his lord's unquestioned due. The peasant hated the noble who trampled down his grain with his dogs and horses, and forbade him to fence out the hares and rabbits who ate with impunity the vegetables which he had planted and tended for the food of his children. The merchant dreaded monopolies; the manufacturer dreaded new edicts; industry in every form feared interference and repression under the name of protection and guidance. The man of letters sighed for freedom of thought; the lawyer, for an harmonious code; the rich man, for an opportunity to employ his wealth to advantage, and make himself felt in the world; the soldier, for promotion by service; society, through all its classes, for the correction of abuses, which in some form or other were felt by all. Two worlds, two irreconcilable systems, stood face to face, the Middle Ages, with ideas drawn from the convent and the feudal castle, and the eighteenth century, with ideas drawn from the compass and the printing-press; and every day the gulf between them grew wider and deeper.

But in the thirteen Colonies of British America there was no such contradiction between the government and the people. There were no Middle Ages to efface; no feudal abuses to correct; nc institutions which had outlived their usefulness, to tear up by the roots. They had been accustomed