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eries of the Great Banks, planting new Colonies in the Carolinas, and preparing herself for the great, and, as she fondly thought, the final struggle, in the valley of the Ohio, and on the banks of the St. Lawrence. American clauses gradually crept into European treaties. Diplomatists, with the map of Europe before them, began to cast longing eyes on the vast territories beyond the Atlantic. At last came the treaty of Paris, in 1763, — the proudest treaty which England had ever signed, wherein a needy partisan, grasping at the succession of a great statesman, set his name to the act which stripped France of the Canadas, and shut her out forever from the valley of the Ohio.

And now, thought the King and his counsellors, we have our Colonies to ourselves, and can henceforth make war or peace in Europe as we choose, without taking them into account. But not so thought the French Minister at Versailles, and the French Ambassador at London; and while George Grenville, the man who, according to Dr. Johnson, could have counted the Manilla ransom if he could have enforced the payment of it, was eagerly counting in advance the profits of his Stamp Act, French emissaries were passing through the thirteen Colonies in their length and breadth, and Durand, Francès, and Du Châtelet were sending to the Duke of Choiseul long and minute reports of the character, resources, and spirit of the Colonists. When the ministry of Louis XVI. were called upon to

decide between England and America, the archives of the Foreign Office at Paris afforded materials for the formation of a sound opinion, hardly less abundant, and far more reliable, than those of the Foreign Office at London. Cool observers now, if not absolutely impartial, French statesmen saw clearly in 1766 what statesmen on the other side of the Channel were too much blinded by pride and false conceptions of their interest to see in 1776. " They are too rich to persevere in obedience," wrote Durand, just nine years and eleven months before the Declaration of Independence. "They are too rich not to share our taxes," reasoned Grenville, and half England marvelled at his wisdom.

And this brings us to that second class of causes which I have already alluded to as gathering into themselves the results of whole periods. Lord Bacon tells us that "a great question will not fail of being agitated some time or other." What question so great for our thirteen Colonies as free labor in its broadest sense, and with its train of mighty consequences? For free labor implies freedom of will, the right to think as well as the right to act. And all Europe was agitated by thoughts which, translated into action, led to an entirely new principle of government, the greatest good of the greatest number. The doctrine of inherited rights was gradually calling in its detachments, and forming the line of battle for the decisive struggle with the doct ine of natural rights.

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CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION.

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All through its ranks gleamed the burnished arms of its devoted allies, waved the proud banners which had waved over it in triumph for more than half a thousand years. And in front, as far as eye could reach, stretched the firm phalanx of the enemy; calm, deliberate, resolute, fearless, confident of victory. For it was no longer a war of king against king, a war to decide whether an Austrian or a Frenchman should sit on the throne of Spain, whether a few millions more or less of Italians, or of Flemings, should be thrown, as make-weights, into the scale, when their owners were tired of fighting, and satiated with military glory; but the great war of the ages, which was to crush forever the hopes of civilization, or open wide the gates of progress as they had never been opened before. And therefore it was meet that the signal of battle should come from men who saw distinctly for what they were contending, and were prepared to stake their all upon the issue. As a chapter of English and American history, the American Revolution is but the attempt of one people to prescribe bounds to the industry of another, and appropriate its profits. As a chapter and one, too, of the brightest and best in the history of humanity, it is the protest of inalienable rights against hereditary prerogative; the demonstration of a people's power to think justly, decide wisely, and act firmly for themselves.

LECTURE II.

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THE PHASES OF THE REVOLUTION.

IN my first Lecture I endeavored to show the his

torical position of the American Revolution, and point out the causes which produced it. We saw, that, as a purely English and American question, it was the necessary consequence of the colonial system, a struggle for monopoly on one side, and free labor on the other. We saw that, as a chapter in the history of European civilization, it was a struggle between hereditary prerogative and inalienable rights. Both of these views will be confirmed by the historical sketch which I propose to give you this evening of the phases through which it passed in the progress of its development.

The first permanent English Colony in America was planted in 1607, and by 1643 the foundations of New England had been so securely laid, that Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven formed a league for mutual protection against the French and Indians, under the significant title of the United Colonies of New England.

History has nowhere recorded greater perseverance, or a more marvellous growth. On what, as we look at the map, seems a narrow strip of land betwixt the wilderness and the ocean, with a wily enemy ever at their doors, they had built seaports and inland towns, and extended with wonderful celerity their conquests over man and over nature. There were jealousies and dissensions among them. There were frequent misunderstandings with England about undefined rights. The Church, too, from which they had fled that they might worship God in their own way, had already cast longing eyes upon their new abode, as a field ripe for her chosen reapers. But their strong municipal organization controlled jealousies and dissensions, even where it failed to suppress them. However vague English ideas of their rights might be, there were certain points whereon their own were perfectly defined. And when the Church from longing prepared to pass to open invasion, they prepared for open resistance. They had hardly emerged from infancy when they began to wear the aspect and speak the language of vigorous manhood. Fo, they had been planted at happy moments, - when James was starting questions which compelled men to think, and Charles doing things which compelled men to act. Those among them which had charters watched them jealously and interpreted them liberally. Those that had not yet obtained them spared no exertions to ob

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