low the Park, with Wall Street for the seat of fashion, and no crowd to prevent strange faces from becoming immediate objects of attention. Then James Otis first took John Dickinson by the hand; the fiery denunciator of the writs of assistance grasping close and binding himself by such firm links to the polished reasoner of the Farmer's Letters, that forty years later, long, long after that spirit which shone so brightly in the opening scenes of the Revolution had passed, through madness, to the grave, the gentler-souled Pennsylvanian still loved to dwell on these days as a pleasing recollection, and "soothe his mind " on the brink of his own grave by bearing "pure testimony" to the worth of his departed friend. Then Lynch and Gadsden and John Rutledge of South Carolina first sat on the same bench with Thomas McKean and Cesar Rodney of the counties that were to become Delaware, and Philip Livingston of New York, and Dyer of Connecticut, to compare feelings and wishes, as, ten years later, when the horizon, now so dark, was already glowing with the swift approach of day, they were to meet and compare them again. If the Congress of '65 had done nothing more than bring such men together, it would still have rendered inestimable service to the common cause. But it did far more.

They met to petition for relief, and they did petition; but in language so firm, with such a strong

sense of their rights, such a perfect understanding of their position, such a clear perception of their claim to be heard, for England's sake as well as their own, that their petition became a manifesto.

They reminded the King that they had grown up under governments of their own, governments framed in the spirit of the English constitution; that nurtured by this spirit, and freely spending their blood and treasure, they had added vast domains to the British empire; that they held their connection with Great Britain to be their greatest happiness; but that liberty and justice were the best means of preserving that connection, and that the public faith was pledged for the preservation of their rights. Seldom have such momentous truths been compressed within so narrow a compass as the paragraph in which they remonstrate against the Stamp Act and Admiralty Act, contrasting, with a skill the ablest rhetorician might have envied, the advantages which England might draw from her Colonies properly governed, with the loss she would incur by governing them as Parliament had undertaken to govern them; and characterizing the assumption by the House of Commons" of the right to dispose of the property of their fellow-citizens in America without their consent," in a few grave words whose very calmness gives them all the bitterness of satire, and which furnished Chatham with the substance of one of his most striking bursts of eloquence. Sim

ple, earnest, and almost pathetic in the close, they appeal to the King's paternal love and benevolent desires for the happiness of all his people, and invoke his interposition for their relief. That George the Third should have read this petition unmoved shows how partially they had judged the royal heart, and how imperfectly he had read the heart of the people.

The substance of the memorial to the House of Lords is the same as that of the petition to the King; the language equally sober and simple, but the tone somewhat more elevated, as became the subjects of a constitutional monarchy in addressing their fellow-subjects. In the petition to the Commons they enter more fully into the various bearings of the question, and with a passage or two which, with a very little emphasis on prominent words, would sound wonderfully like deliberate irony. Both in the petition and the memorial they ask to be heard by counsel.

This much for King and Parliament. For the people, telling the English people what they must be prepared to grant and the American people what they must be prepared to assert and defend, they sent forth a declaration of rights and grievances in thirteen clauses, claiming the right of taxing themselves, either personally or by representatives of their own choosing, the right of trial by jury, and the right of petition. Each clause forms part of a continuous chain; each leads to the

other as its logical conclusion; there is not a clause too much, not a word too much. Never had state papers spoken a language more decent, more direct, more firm, freer from conventional forms, professional subtleties, and rhetorical embellishment.

And having done this, the Congress dissolved. The members returned to their homes with minds and hearts strengthened by common deliberations and common labor; with a better knowledge than they had ever had before of the wishes and feelings of their fellow-Colonists, for it was the result of personal intercourse; and a firmer resolution to stand by each other in the impending contest, for they had thrown down the gauntlet together, and pledged themselves to abide the issue.

And now comes the Congress of 1774, the first Continental Congress, not merely to tell England wherein America felt herself wronged, but to tell America what it behooved her to do in order to obtain redress for her wrongs. So strong a hold had the idea of Congress and Union taken of the general mind, that the call came almost simultaneously from different Provinces; Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, taking up the subject within a few days of each other, and acting with a unanimity which, if statesmen had been at the head of affairs in England, would have been accepted as proof that forbearance was fast yielding to indignation. Rhode Island went even a step beyond her sisters, assert.

ing the necessity of a firm and inviolable Union of all the Colonies in counsels and measures for the preservation of their rights and liberties, and proposing annual meetings of Congress as a means of enforcing it. Nor was the idea of a Congress confined to Americans at home, living and acting under the immediate influence of the feelings and passions of the hour. Americans abroad saw the necessity of it, and already, as early as the 2d of April, Arthur Lee had urged it in a letter from London to his brother in Virginia.

Thus, under auspicious influences, and at a moment that called for such a measure of prudence, forecast, firmness, and self-control as has rarely been granted to mortals, did these great men come together.

Of their deliberations and individual opinions, we unfortunately know little. They deliberated with closed doors, and, passing over processes, published only results. There was no gallery of watchful reporters there, to catch every burning word that fell from the lips of Henry, or Adams, or Lee; to tell how cunningly Joseph Galloway strove to mould them to his will; how restless John Adams grew under the sober reasonings of John Dickinson; how George Washington sat, thoughtful, grave, calmly biding his time, prepared for remonstrance, for resistance, for everything but the splendor of his own immortality. We know that there were many doubts, many hesitations, many