watching the growth of a movement which neither he nor anybody else as yet understood. It was the increasingly severe operation of the policy of the party in power in England, the aim of which was the practical enslavement of the colonies. The best and wisest statesmen of England loudly but vainly protested against that policy, and it is not easy, at this day, to comprehend the state of mind of the arrogant men who insisted upon carrying it out to the bitter end. By a long succession of acts of Parliament, Great Britain had bound American trade as with so many iron fetters. An American was not permitted to manufacture specified goods for himself -he must buy them in England and bring them home in an English ship, after paying duties on them to England. Whatever his land produced that was suitable for exportation he must ship only to ports in the possession of the British Crown. America was to be, forever, a mere feeder to Great Britain, and its inhabitants were to have no voice in the matter whatever.

There could be but one last result of such insanity, but the colonists were intensely loyal, especially those of Virginia, and they bore the galling yoke with a sort of helpless patience for a long while. During their earlier history they had been, in fact, entirely helpless; but the times were changing now. The colonies were growing rapidly. They were full of men familiar with public affairs, and who had served in camps and battle-fields. The increasing commerce of their seaports clamored for free markets and free ships. A generation had arisen which

had vaguely learned to consider itself “American” rather than "English," and one of its most active young men, from childhood, had been George Washington, now a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses. In all the other colonies, as well as in his own, there were other men more or less like him, chafing and getting restless, day by day, as the tone of foreign despotism became more insolent and menacing. From all observations of this kind, however, it is necessary to omit the recently conquered French provinces north of the St. Lawrence River. There were no Americans there to do any thinking. Their population consisted of Frenchmen, Indians, a few immigrants who had come in since the conquest, and over these the domination of British authority, civil or military, was absolute and unquestioned.

CHAPTER IX.

Pressing the Colonies Together.-Old Colony News.— New England Matters.-Taxation without Representation.-Friends of America in England.Patrick Henry's Resolutions.-The Stamp Act.The Tax on Tea.-A Death in the Mount Vernon Family.

THERE were no telegraphic cables between America and England, nor were there newspapers, as we now have them; but all decrees of the British ministry and all acts of Parliament relating to colonial affairs were speedily printed and circulated and known in the colonies. There was a great deal of commercial correspondence, which of necessity had in it much concerning " duties" imposed; and public men on this side of the water were pretty sure to exchange frequent letters with public men on that side who were in sympathy with them.

Communication between the several colonies was slow and imperfect, but nothing of importance could happen in one of them which did not. rapidly become public news in all the others. Then, as afterward, there was much local feeling and much sectional jealousy. Just the sort of pressure England was now using was needed to bring the scattered little commonwealths nearer together in feeling. The general character of the French and Indian wars

had done much, for the entire frontier had been scourged. Now the whole stretch of the seacoast, at every port, was to be made to understand that it belonged to one people, having interests in common. The pockets of all men everywhere were to be searched, and even their houses were to be entered, that in due season they might all become full of wrath for the same causes, at the same hour, and as one family.

News of every sort came steadily to Mount Vernon. It is not necessary to relate all, but it is well to look at a few of the matters that were brought to Washington from time to time. He was forced to study them as they arrived, and in all that study he was preparing himself for the great storm soon to come. In the year 1760, in Boston, the customs officers applied to the courts for writs that would authorize them to break open ships, stores and dwellings, in search of smuggled goods. James Otis argued against granting the writs with such power and force that his hearers were ready to take up arms at once. Among them was John Adams, and he declared, afterward, "Then and there American independence was born." He was hardly correct about that, for it had quite a number of supposable birthplaces, and was a vigorous sort of child long before any name was given to it.

The next blow was at the independence of the judiciary. The British ministry instructed the colonial governors to issue commissions to judges to serve not "during good behavior," but "during the king's pleasure." That meant, "as long as they

shall decide all questions in a manner to suit the British Tory Administration." New York took the lead in opposing this piece of tyranny. Shortly after the close of the French and Indian War, all vessels of the British navy cruising in American waters or anchored in American harbors were ordered to take up the business of catching smugglers. The Americans were driving a profitable trade with other nations than England, and it must be broken up. It was an act of war upon the budding commerce of America, and all men could see that there was a great wrong in it.

All the colonies took fire at this act, and retaliated by refusing to buy British manufactures. People dressed in homespun and denied themselves many luxuries, and the smugglers were more popular than

ever.

In 1764 the British Parliament debated the question whether or not they had a legal right to tax America. It was formally decided that they were in need of money, and that therefore they had a right to get as much as possible out of the colonies. Such laws as already existed for that purpose were thenceforth to be enforced more vigorously. Others were to be invented, passed, and put into operation, and the great American pocket was to be assailed in every way that could be thought of, but without giving America any voice in the matter.

Now again the people of New England were first to be heard in opposition. They claimed their right as freemen to be taxed by nobody but themselves, or through their representatives chosen by them