PEACE BETWEEN ENGLAND AND FRANCE.

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News had come successively of the taking of Quebec by the brave General Wolfe, who gave his life for it; of the death of Montcalm, the French general; of the surrender of Montreal, and, finally, of all Canada, by the French. Then followed a lull. "Since we do not know how to make war," said Choiseul, the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, we must make peace;" and peace between England and France was proclaimed.

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The Americans began to hope that the land might have rest. It was the most peaceful time in Washington's whole life. He improved his estate, he turned his attention to the draining of the Great Dismal Swamp, he sat in the House of Burgesses, he was judge of the county court, and he hunted foxes with Jacky Custis or Lord Fairfax. It was one of those intervals of quiet which men sometimes seem to be given just before they are needed for the great work of their lives.

The sterner part of Washington's education had come in his youth he had learnt "to endure hardness as a good soldier "—and now, in a bright, peaceful home, he was being matured and prepared for that which was before him. There was a time of the same sort in the life of our own Cromwell, when, in the fens of Huntingdon, he spent eleven years of quiet preparation; going up to London for the sessions of Parliament, and spending the intervals in cultivating his land, draining his meadows, and looking out over England with the calm, watchful eye of a patriot, who was ready, when the right moment came, to do the work which his country needed.

CHAPTER VII.

THE Colonisation of the States of America had, for the most part, been undertaken by men of grave and earnest spirit. It was chiefly religious feeling, and an inborn love of freedom in religion, that drove the Pilgrim Fathers to the shores of New England; and it was a great nation that was born in America, a nation born of zeal and courage, born to work for its daily bread, and to regard freedom as the most sacred gift of God.

As generations pass away and new generations succeed them, the sons do not inherit all the intense feelings of the fathers. Their birthright is the freedom which their ancestors obtained with a great price. They may receive a hereditary gift of energy and patience, but the old "patience," which was the work of "tribulation," the old energy which was born of necessity, dies with the fathers, and will not return to the generations which succeed them until they also have gone through the fire.

Amongst the first colonists, although they had separated themselves from England, there was a strong and loyal attachment to the mother country existing. Perhaps the three thousand miles of ocean which rolled between them and their old homes may have washed away the feeling of injury and resentment, and left nothing but the love of freedom remaining. This feeling of loyalty was hereditary; the traditions of the old country were cherished by the new -the relation between them was that of parent and child.

INJUSTICE OF ENGLAND TO AMERICA.

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But as there comes in young life a period when parental authority, if arbitrary, is almost unbearable, so there came a time in the youth of the American nation when it could no longer submit to the unjust yoke of England; when it became eager and restless to take its government into its own hands.

In the reign of George III., when the voice of England's wise men was disregarded, the provocation which America received came to be past endurance. Hitherto, the different States had levied taxes amongst themselves, and several munificent grants had been made to the mother country. The trade laws which England had laid down had been strictly adhered to; no exports were received from other countries; what England exported alone was taken into American ports, and the duties upon such articles punctually paid. The commerce was in a most flourishing condition, but this did not satisfy the king and his ministers. The obnoxious Stamp Act, providing that all agreements in America should be drawn up on stamped paper, to be bought from the English Government, was the first act of aggression which roused the spirit of America. The opposition to it rose high, for taxation was the most hateful form which oppression could take to the liberty-loving American. Grave and reasonable men remonstrated, unreasoning men rioted; but England shut her eyes and closed her ears to both warnings.

It seemed only just that a nation which was unrepresented in the British Parliament should be free from British taxation; and England entirely declined to allow American members to enter the House. It was in vain that the English urged that the Canadian War had plunged them in expenses which were incurred for the defence of American subjects. The United States had already supplied what

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money they could in their own defence, and the extra expense incurred by England was no fault of theirs. But Dr. Franklin observed about the Stamp Act long afterwards: "Had Mr. Grenville, instead of his Stamp Act, applied to the king in council for requisitional letters, I am sure he would have obtained more money from the colonies by their voluntary grants than he himself expected from the stamps. But he chose compulsion rather than persuasion."

The very preparations for enforcing the Act called forth popular tumults in various places. "In Boston the stamp distributor was hanged in effigy; his windows were broken, a house intended for a stamp office was pulled down, and the effigy burnt in a bonfire made of the fragments. The lieutenant-governor, chief justice, and sheriff, in trying to allay the tumult, were pelted. The stamp officer thought himself happy to be hanged merely in effigy, and next day renounced the perilous office."

The 1st of November, the day when the Act was to go into operation, was ushered in with portentous solemnities. There was great tolling of bells and burning of effigies in the New England colonies. At Boston the ships displayed their colours but half-mast high; many shops were shut, funeral knells resounded from the steeples, and there was a grand auto-da-fe, in which the promoters of the Act were paraded, and suffered martyrdom in effigy.

Among those men who remonstrated most strongly against the Act was Patrick Henry, a young lawyer, who had just taken his seat in the House of Burgesses. He startled his hearers in a speech against the taxation of America, by winding up with a turn of phrase for which they were not prepared. "Cæsar," he cried, in a voice of thunder and

DR. FRANKLIN BEFORE THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 67

with an eye of fire-"Cæsar had his Brutus, Charles the First had his Cromwell, and George the Third"Treason!"

here exclaimed the Speaker. "Treason, treason!" re-echoed from every part of the house. Henry did not for an instant falter, but fixing his eye firmly on the Speaker, he concluded his sentence thus-" may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it."

Dr. Franklin was examined before the House of Commons in England on the subject of the Stamp Act.

'What," he was asked, "was the temper of America towards Great Britain before 1763 ?"

"The best in the world," he answered; "they submitted willingly to the government of the Crown, and paid in all their courts obedience to the Acts of Parliament. Numerous as the people are in the several old provinces, they cost you nothing in forts, citadels, garrisons, or armies, to keep them in subjection. They were governed by this country at the expense only of a little pen, ink, and paper. They were led by a thread. They had not only a respect, but an affection for Great Britain, for its laws, its customs, and manners; and even a fondness for its fashions, that greatly increased the commerce. Natives of Great Britain were always treated with particular regard; as to be an Old England man was of itself a character of some respect, and gave a kind of rank among us."

"And what is their temper now?"

"Oh, very much altered!"

"If the Act is not repealed, what do you think will be the consequences ?"

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A total loss of the respect and affection the people of America bear to this country, and of all the commerce that depends on that respect and affection."