carried an enactment authorising persons accused of political offences committed in Boston to be sent home to England to be tried.

These monstrous statutes provoked the most decided resistance; all the other American colonies joined with Massachusetts, and a solemn league and covenant was entered into for suspending all commercial intercourse with Great Britain until the obnoxious Acts were repealed. On the 5th of September, 1774, a congress of fifty-one representatives, from twelve old colonies, assembled in Philadelphia. The instructions given

to them disclaimed every idea of independence, recognised the constitutional authority of the mother country, and acknowledged the prerogatives of the crown; but unanimously declared that they would never give up the rights and liberties derived to. them from their ancestors as British subjects, and pronounced. the late Acts relative to the colony of Massachusetts Bay to be unconstitutional, oppressive, and dangerous. The first public act of the congress was a resolution declarative of their favorable disposition towards the colony above-mentioned; and, by subsequent resolutions, they formally approved the opposition it. had given to the obnoxious Acts, and declared that, if an attempt were made to carry them into execution by force, thecolony should be supported by all America.

The following extract is from the "Address of the TwelveUnited Provinces to the Inhabitants of Great Britain ", when force was actually used: "We can retire beyond the reach of your navy, and, without any sensible diminution of the necessaries of life, enjoy a luxury, which from that period you will want the luxury of being free".

The Duke of Gloucester, who had married without the King's consent, and with whom George III was therefore on bad terms, having expressed his intention of applying to Parliament for some allowance, the King wrote: "all the answer to be given by my ministers is that it is natural the King should not apply to Parliament for provisions for the children of a younger branch of his family, when he has not yet done it for his own numerous offspring". The Duke of Gloucester, going abroad, was asked by Lord Rochford whither

he was going, when he replied, "To Rome, my lord, the only place where I and the Pretender can live."

On the 16th of November, 1775, Edmund Burke proposed the renunciation on the part of Great Britain of the exercise of taxation in America, the repeal of the obnoxious duty on tea, and a general pardon for past political offenders. This was directly opposed by the King-who had lists brought to him showing how the members spoke and voted-and was negatived in the House of Commons by 210 votes against 105. On the 20th of November, after consultation with George III, Lord North introduced a Bill by which all trade and commerce with the thirteen United Colonies were interdicted. It authorised the seizure, whether in harbor or on the high seas, of all vessels laden with American property, and by a cruel stretch of refined tyranny, it rendered all persons taken on board American vessels liable to be entered as sailors on board British ships of war, and to serve (if required) against their own countrymen. About the same time, as we learn by a "secret despatch from Lord Dartmouth to General Howe, the King had been unmanly enough to apply to the Czarina of Russia for the loan of 20,000 Russian soldiers to enable him to crush his English subjects in the American colonies. As yet the Americans had made no claim for independence. They were only petitioners for justice.

In order to crush out the spirit of liberty in the American colonies, the Government of George III, in February, 1776, hired 17,000 men from the Landgrave and Hereditary Prince of Hesse Cassel, and from the Duke of Brunswick. Besides these, there were levies of troops out of George III's Hanoverian dominions; and that nothing might be wanting to our glory, the King's agents stirred up the Cherokee and Creek Indians to scalp, ravish, and plunder the disaffected colonists. Jesse says: "The newly-arrived troops comprised several thousand kidnapped German soldiers, whom the cupidity of the Duke of Brunswick, of the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel, and other German Princes, had induced to let out for hire to the British. Government. Frederick of Prussia not only denounced the traffic as a most scandalous one, but whenever, it is said, the unfortunate hirelings had occasion to march through any

part of his dominions, used to levy a toll upon them, as if they had been so many head of bullocks. . . . They had been sold, he said, as cattle, and therefore he was entitled to exact the toll."

The consequence of all this was, on the 4th July, 1776, the famous declaration of the American Congress. "The History of the reigning sovereign," they said, "was a history of repeated injuries and usurpations. So evidently was it his intention to establish an absolute despotism, that it had become their duty, as well as their right, to secure themselves against further aggressions. . . . . In every stage of these oppressions," proceeds the Declaration, "we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms. Our petitions have been answered only by repeated injuries. A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people." And the United Colonies solemnly declared themselves to be free and independent States.

In 1777, during this American war, Earl Chatham, in one of his grand speeches, after denouncing "the traffic and barter driven with every little pitiful German Prince that sells his subjects to the shambles of a foreign country", adds: "The mercenary aid on which you rely irritates to an incurable resentment the minds of your enemies, whom you overrun with the sordid sons of rapine and of plunder, devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty! If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms, never! never! never!" In reply to Lord Suffolk, who had said, in reference to employing the Indians, that "we were justified in using all the means which God and nature had put into our hands", "I am astonished," exclaimed Lord Chatham, as he rose, "shocked to hear such principles confessed, to hear them avowed in this House, or in this country; principles equally unconstitutional, inhuman, and un-Christian. That God and nature put into our hands! I know not what idea the lord may entertain of God and nature, but I know that such abominable principles are equally abhorrent to religion and humanity. What! attribute the sacred sanction of God and nature to the massacres of the Indian scalping-knife, to the cannibal savage,

torturing, murdering, roasting and eating-literally, my lords, eating-the mangled victims of his barbarous battles!"

And yet even after this we find George III writing to Lord North, on the 22nd of June, 1779: "I do not yet despair that, with Clinton's activity, and the Indians in their rear, the provinces will soon now submit.

Actually so late as the 27th of November, 1781, after the surrender of Cornwallis, we find George III saying that, retaining a firm confidence in the wisdom and protection of Divine Providence," he should be able "by the valor of his fleets and armies to conquer America". Fox, in the House of Commons, denounced this speech of the King's as one "breathing vengeance, blood, and misery, and rancor"; and "as containing the sentiments of some arbitrary, despotic, hard-hearted, and unfeeling monarch, who, having involved his subjects in a ruinous and unnatural war to glut his feelings of revenge, was determined to persevere in it in spite of calamity". "Divest the speech," said he, "of its official forms, and what was its purport? Our losses in America have been most calamitous; the blood of my subjects has flowed in copious streams; the treasuries of Great Britain have been wantonly lavished; the load of taxes imposed on an overburthened country is become intolerable; my rage for conquest is unquenched; my revenge unsated; nor can anything, except the total subjugation of my American subjects, allay my animosity."" The naval and military expenditure for the years during which this disastrous war continued amounted to £139,521,035.

In addition to this must be noted £1,340,000 voted as compensation to American loyalists in 1788, and £4,000 a year pension to this day paid to the descendants of William Penn, amounting, with compound interest, to an enormous additional sum, without reckoning future liability. Also a continent parted from us in blood and shame, in consequence of a vain attempt to gratify the desire of the House of Brunswick to make New England contribute to German greed as freely and as servilely as had Old England.

Encouraged by the willingness with which his former debts had been discharged, George III, in 1777, sent a second message

to his faithful Commons, but this time for the larger sum of £618,340, which was not only paid, but an additional allowance of £100,000 a year was voted to his Majesty, and £40,000 was given to the Landgrave of Hesse.

The then barbarity of our laws is shown by the fact that, in 1777, Sarah Parker was burnt for counterfeiting silver coin; in June, 1786, Phoebe Harris was burnt for the same offence, and this in a reign when persons in high position accused of murder, forgery, perjury, and robbery, escaped almost scot free.

In April, 1778, £60,000 a year was settled on the six younger princes, and £30,000 a year on the five princesses. These pensions, however, were professedly paid out of the King's Civil List, not avowedly in addition to it, as they are to-day. The Duke of Buckingham stated that in 1778, and again in 1782, the King threatened to abdicate. This threat, which unfortunately was never carried out, arose from the King's obstinate persistence in the worse than insane policy against the American colonies.

In December, 1779, in consequence of England needing Irish soldiers to make war on America, Ireland was graciously per mitted to export Irish woollen manufactures. The indulgences, however, to Ireland-even while the ministers of George III were trying to enlist Irishmen to kill the English, Scotch, and Irish in America-were made most grudgingly. Pious Protestant George III would not consent that any Irish Catholic should own one foot of freehold land; and Edmund Burke, in a letter to an Irish peer, says that it was pride, arrogance, and a spirit of domination, which kept up "these unjust legal disabilities".

On the 8th February, 1780, Sir G. Savile presented the famous Yorkshire petition, signed by 8,000 freeholders, praying the House of Commons to inquire into the management and expenditure of public money, to reduce all exorbitant emoluments, and to abolish all sinecure places and unmerited pensions. Three days later, Edmund Burke proposed a reduction of the national taxation (which was then only a sixth part of its amount to-day), and a diminution of the power of the Crown. Burke was defeated, but shortly after, on the motion of Mr.