glory of England; and while we make it our boast, that we are descended from that nation, we rejoice at the same time that they have taught us to be free and independent like themselves. What we have become, the English Colonies of India will in time also become, and by the natural operation of those principles which they are learning from Englishmen themselves.

CHAPTER II.

FURTHER PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS.

THE natural seat of freedom, says an elegant historian, is among high mountains and pathless deserts, such as abound in the wilds of America. It is certainly true, however, that the first emigrants to this country, brought with them that spirit of liberty, which has since been so highly cherished by their descendants. They left England at a period when those principles, which finally ended in the overthrow and execution of Charles the First, were every where prevalent. They brought with them an unconquerable aversion to the arbitrary assumptions of royal prerogative, under the increasing weight of which they had groaned, during the reign of the first James, and to avoid which, was the primary cause of their emigration, -and they continued to meet, with determined resistance, every effort which his successours made to extend the chain. Thus it may be said, that the English Colonies in America, were originally settled upon the principles of independence, and that we owe more to the peculiar circumstances, under which that took place, than to the peculiar situation of our country.— The Revolution in England which placed Oliver Cromwell at the head of the government, while it in some measure drew closer the bonds which connected the Colonies with the Mother Country, served at the same time to confirm the former in their high notions of privilege, and to render them still more jealous of every encroachment. The sons of the first settlers, inheriting the spirit of their fathers, and still more independent

in their feelings, from their personal ignorance of the splendours or oppressions of royalty,—and knowing the Mother-Country only as a place from which their fathers had fled-successively and gradually lost the little allegiance which springs from natural affection, until at length they began to regard every legislative act of their distant rulers, with respect to themselves, as an usurpation of authority, which of right belonged only to their own representatives.

Every thing, indeed, tended to engender and to nurture a spirit of liberty and independence, in the Colonies of the new world. In the first place, that most powerful of all the engines of despotism-the union of religious with civil government-was unknown to them. Each man worshipped God, according to the dictates of his own reason and conscience; and by far the greater part of them belonged to that sect of Christians, whose very tenets taught them to acknowledge no authority, but that which had been established by their own consent and sanction. They were literally Dissenters, from all set forms and modes of worship; and, acting with independence in this most important of all human concerns, it is not wonderful that they felt independent, in every other affair of life.In the second place, the first emigrants had, for a long period, little or no commercial intercourse with the Mother Country. They found, that by industry they were enabled to provide every thing essential to life, among themselves; and that tie of friendship, which exists between countries mutually dependent upon each other for the commodities of trade, was here wanting. Again, as it was only from the middle class of society, or rather from that class, in which rank and honours were not hereditary,-that the first

emigration took place, superiority of industry, talents or virtue, constituted the only distinction among them. There were no titled orders of men to claim priority of place, from hereditary right. Each man was at once the proprietor and the cultivator of his own little domain-he felt at once the pride of the freeholder, and the humility of the tenant-the one taught him to look upon himself as equal to the highest; and the other, to regard himself as not superiour to the lowest of his fellow-citizens. Thus was a feeling of equality engendered among themselves; and knowing none superiour to themselves, they were easily brought to feel the same equality, with regard to those who pretended to be their natural rulers and superiours. Each succeeding generation felt all these sentiments with accumulated force, so that it may be very truly said, that the independence of the Colonies was formally established, before a blow was struck; and that nothing was gained by the War of the Revolution, but the recognition of that independence by the other nations of the earth.

We have said that England used every means in her power, by the appointment of arbitrary and despotick Governours and agents, to break down this spirit of independence in the Colonists, and reduce them to a state of uncomplaining submission and suffering.— But the English Ministry were wise enough to foresee the danger of these attempts, so long as France commanded so powerful a Colonial force on the same Continent. They were afraid of pushing their provocations too far, until it should be no longer in the power of the Americans to seek the protection or to call in the aid of their Canadian neighbours. Under this view, they were not long in making a pretext for quarrelling with their ancient enemy, the French, and en

gaging the respective Colonies themselves in the contest. The enterprising and military spirit of the English Colonies, which had been evinced so early as 1745 by the capture of Louisburgh-an enterprise which had been projected and completed by the Governour and legislature of Massachusetts, without the sanction of the Mother Country, or the cooperation of her sister colonies-while it gave to the Ministers high ideas of the value of their Colonies, served, at the same time, to inflame their desire of reducing them to resistless obedience, and of extending the limits of their American possessions. That the Americans might be more heartily engaged in this war of conquest, an association was formed in London, embracing a number of the Colonists, particularly of the planters of Virginia, under the title of the Ohio Company. To this Company a grant was made, in the year 1750, of six hundred thousand acres of land, on the rivers Ohio and Mississippi. Whether the British or the French King had the best right to this land, or whether either had a right at all, were questions of no importance in the view of Ministers. All agreed, that the poor natives-those who were born upon the soil, whose inheritance was derived from the common Creator of it and them-had enjoyed the unmolested possession long enough. To say nothing then of the rights of either of the contending powers, it is certain that, at this time, France was in the actual possession of all the country north and south of this grant; and this interposition of an enemy in her road of communication from one extremity of her American territory to the other, was naturally looked upon as a hostile encroachment. The French Governour at first contented himself with remonstrating against this intrusion, as it was