when they were thrown into alarm by an application of the custom house officials to the Superior Court for writs of assistance, authorizing search after merchandise imported in defiance of the acts of trade. The hearing came on before Chief Justice Hutchinson, who was also the lieutenant governor. All that legal skill, as well as official influence, could do to obtain the writs, was done; but the counsel whom the Boston merchants had retained stood out to the last Oxenbridge Thacher, "soft and cool;" James Otis, "a flame of fire." "Every man," says one who was present, "of an immense crowded audience appeared to me to go away as I did, ready to take up arms against writs of assistance." Of course, the writs were granted, but they were little used, (1761.) The same spirit that had resisted them broke out against the schemes of taxation with which the acts of trade were now connected. “Government,” argued James Otis, "must not raise taxes on the property of the people without the consent of them or their deputies." It was not the plea of the politician alone. "I do not say," exclaimed the Boston clergyman Jonathan Mayhew, “our invaluable rights have been struck at; but if they have, they are not wrested from us," (1762.)

English

It was amidst these controversies that the French dominion. were conquered, and the English dominion rose to its height in America. In the north, it extended over the three provinces of St. John's, or Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Quebec, the new name for Canada. In the centre, it embraced the thirteen colonies, in which had lain the germ of its present growth. In the south, it comprehended the two provinces of East and West Florida, together with a large portion of the West Indies. So vast an empire overtopped all other dominions in the western world.

Effects

on the colonies.

And now, to mark the effects of the victories upon the victors. First, upon the colonists. They had passed through agonizing times, when losses of friends and of resources weighed upon almost every household, when alternations of grief and of revenge racked almost every breast. As a community, likewise, each colony had met its trials and its reverses. Notwithstand ing the reimbursements received from England, the colonies were in debt to the amount of more than ten million dollars, one quarter of which stood against Massachusetts alone, at the expiration of the last war with France. Debts, however, were nothing compared to the diminution of the means of paying them, or of gathering new resources. The sacrifices of warfare are not to be measured by any single schedule; roll after roll must be inscribed with losses, and even then the losses of the future, if they can be calculated, remain to be appended. On the other hand, the colonists were not without their compensations. They had rid themselves of an enemy whose neighborhood had been a constant source of peril, both from French and from Indian warfare, for a century and a half, (1613–1763.) They had proved their strength in repeated efforts and repeated successes. Better still, they had proved their union amongst themselves, especially in the final conflict which brought every colony of the thirteen shoulder to shoulder. Best of all, they had proved their patriotism, their love of their own land, hitherto overpowered by the affections that bound them to the other side of the sea, but now rising in solemn strength from out the battles and the agonies by which they had defended their country, and made it the first object of their devotion.

Upon the mother

country.

Next, to trace the effects of victory upon the mother country. Here we find the marks of sorrow and of calamity, but they are lost in the blaze

of glory which seemed to have been kindled. "England," the king is said to have exclaimed, "never signed such a peace before." The king was George III., then in the third year of his reign. The aristocracy, still in power, thought with the king. They were dazzled by their success. It made them believe that their sway was irresistible, that their colonies were to be ruled, burdened, and crushed as they pleased. Only a few, of keener vision and of truer principle, saw that the conquest of the French colonies, if resulting in the issues to which it seemed to be leading, would entail the loss of the English colonies.

Tempo

unity.

But for the moment, the English of England rary and the English of America were one. The exultation of triumph over a common foe, the assurance of prosperity under a common king, just risen in his youth to the throne, blended with the ties of a common law, a common literature, and a common ancestry. New hopes for both were appearing in the west. The Indian humbled, every race from Europe conquered, the English were the undisputed possessors of the far-stretching, the rich-promising land.