Lord

arrived this fall, the matter would have been settled." North acted as if the threat of the application of force was all powerful in itself, and as if the fact of sending three majorgenerals to Boston with some additional force would have conveyed such terror to the heart of the American continent, as to paralyse every thought of resistance, and their arrival would have terminated the contest. The actual result was that when they landed this additional force, it simply increased the number of the troops shut up in Boston.

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There is one view which I will venture to say has not received the consideration which it claims, that is, the provincial leaders had ceased to have respect, love or any fear for Great Britain. It was no longer the England when Pitt was at the head of affairs; when able soldiers were placed in the command of armies, and when operations in the field were conducted with skill, vigour, and determination. All this had passed away. From the accession of George III., for thirteen years, there had been changes of ministries, and, during the series of political struggles, there had been unceasing attempts to establish the personal government of the monarch. Then had been seen the persecution of the subject, the violation of the rights of parliament, the absence of wisdom in the national legislation, and in place of it a weak, faltering, uncertain policy, attributable to the utter incompetence of the executive. This want of vigour of administration had not only courted opposition, but had given birth to a feeling of contempt, the invariable heritage of weakness. The pride which had been felt in the national relationship had passed away. Provincial politicians became more inclined to listen to the promises made to them, that by a change of national condition they would gain distinction and honour; when the whole commercial world would possess the right of trading unfettered throughout the world, and additional avenues to the possession of wealth would be thrown open to the entire population.

Hutchinson relates an extraordinary conversation between. Galloway, a Pennsylvania loyalist, and Franklin and his son. After the arrival of Franklin in England in 1774, Galloway,

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on seeing him, expressed a hope that he had come over to promote a reconciliation. Franklin said little, but appeared struck with the remark. For some weeks he remained in retirement. His absence from political life attracted the attention of Samuel Adams, and awoke his suspicions of Franklin's acceptance of the end he had in view. He accordingly commenced an attack upon Franklin, mentioning him as one who designed to betray the cause of congress. The younger Franklin, the governor of New Jersey, a loyalist, subsequently told Galloway, that his father had avoided all conversation on the subject with him, and that having some suspicions of his father's intentions, he had told him if he designed to set the colonies in a flame he hoped he would run away by the light of it. I take the remaining account from Hutchinson's narrative. * "Soon after Galloway and the two Franklins met together, and the glass having gone about freely, the doctor, at a late hour, opened himself and declared in favour of measures for attaining to independence; exclaimed against the corruption and dissipation of the Kingdom, and signified his opinion that from the strength of Opposition, the want of union in the ministry, the great resources in the colonies, they would finally prevail. He urged Galloway to come into the congress again, and from that time, united in the closest connection with Adams, broke off from Galloway."

If this sentiment was felt by Franklin, who looked upon everything as it was affected by his cold, sceptical intellect, how many were there of those, whose warmer and more genial natures were depressed by the loss of their past illusions. There are public men who affect to think that the whole colonial connection is one entirely of interest. Undoubtedly if this interest be seriously affected and injured by the relationship, those suffering from misgovernment will begin to ponder, if necessity exist for change. There is, however, in modern life so much publicity given to every event, that no great injury is ever allowed to remain unredressed; and public morality has long enforced the dogma, that justice furnishes Hutchinson's Diary, II., p. 237.

the truest policy in the relations between the imperial centre and the outer provinces. Especially, be it said, where the inhabitants are all of the same race or cognate races, and no extreme distinction of religion and customs calls for special adjustment.

It has been asserted that any sentiment as to our own relationship with the mother country is a mythical feeling, which disappears before the consideration of a few cents more being obtained for a bushel of wheat, and the profitable extension of our markets; as if this were the whole question, important, as it undoubtedly is. The relations of any outer, province to the empire from which the forefathers of its founders have sprung, are sufficiently complex, and cannot be disposed of by a well-turned formula. But we greatly err when we fail to recognize that there is a vein of sentiment in every national connection, independent of the advantages derived from it; and so long as the relationship is based on a genuine conviction that it brings with it both honour and profit, it remains indestructible.

In Canada we feel that we possess a reflex of the greatness and glory of Great Britain; that we, with her, are in the van of civilization, that we participate in the possession of a literature, unsurpassed in pathos, dignity, excellence, and power by that of any other land. The history, the chronicles, the traditions of nearly two thousand years, are ours. Our mother country has been the friend of the weak, and, when circumstances have enforced the unfortunate duty, the fearless uncompromising enemy of the strong. It would be difficult to enumerate all that we owe to her victories in the arts of peace, or the every-day comforts traceable to the sciences she has patiently perfected. There is not an hour in our lives, that we may not feel the ease and enjoyment which her inventions have brought to the advancement of our material well-being, making the struggle to live less burdensome.

It is from her that have sprung the representative institutions which have given liberty to the world; to her we owe the efforts of the last half-century to elevate mankind, by

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inculcating self-respect, industry, honesty, and thrift. It was Great Britain that first lessened the severe punishments. apportioned to the minor crimes. From her have arisen those political studies which have swept away class legislation, and opened the prizes of public life to merit; which have removed the commercial restrictions that so long paralysed industry, and which enforced the principle that it was the first duty of a nation to obtain cheap food for its toilers. It is Great Britain that has striven to remove by universal education the danger to the state arising from an ignorant, dissatisfied, impoverished, reckless population, without a sense of obligation to the commonwealth, and having little for which it has to be thankful; for the disappearance of crass ignorance is accompanied by the diminution of the crime it engenders.

So long as our love and veneration are maintained by a sense of the national greatness in which we participate, and by pride of race, our connection with the British dominions. may be regarded as assured. There are those who tell us otherwise; but their words, valueless from their emptiness, find no permanent place among us.

One of the main causes why the revolution took so firm a hold on the lower population in the cities and towns was that the utterance of the agitators remained uncontradicted. The latter were unchallenged in their assertions. Any attachment to the mother country, which still existed in sections of the population, was gradually sapped by being continuously assailed, until, in many instances, it ceased to have any active influence. There had always been in many respects in the colonies an impatience of control. When people were told how much better off they would be without paying taxes, and in managing their own affairs, they looked kindly on the prophecies which promised so much prosperity, untrammelled by any pecuniary obligations.

North, in his public life, shewed that he gave little thought to the colonial loyalists; certainly he cared little for them. Hutchinson received great attention in the highest circles in England. He was offered a baronetcy, which his circum

stances led him to decline, and invitation followed invitation from the first people in the realm. The impression cannot be resisted that he owed this distinction to the wish and intervention of the king, while at the same time his own great abilities, with his literary and political acuteness, would have obtained attention in any educated society. Lord North was civil to such of the loyalists as he accidentally met. Although well educated, with wide reading and as extended a knowledge of men as of books, he knew little of the colonies and their political condition. He had some passing theories on the subject of the difficulty, but his legislation shews that he never understood the true causes of discontent. With his other fallacies, he had formed the opinion that there was a large population ready to take arms on the first opportunity in defence of the royal cause. Lord George Germaine entertained this view to the last, and his order to Burgoyne to act in accordance with this opinion, was one of the causes of that unfortunate general's delay at the south of lake Champlain, and of the disaster at Bennington, a delay which permitted the assembly of the force in his front, by which he was overpowered.

There could be no plainer teaching of the intentions of the colonies than their own proceedings, which ought to have been read as the writing on the wall, calling forth the unrelaxed efforts of the British ministry to subdue the threatened hostility. The resolutions voted by congress should have taught all who considered them, that a crisis had been reached, which, if left uncared for, would present greater difficulties. "The Declaration of Colonial rights," if it had any meaning, was the affirmation of independence; subdued only by the responsibility of taking measures for its establishment. It set forth the natural right to life, property and liberty; that, as colonists, they were bound by no laws but those voted by their representatives; that the power of making laws existed in the legislatures only; that the authority of parliament merely comprehended the regulation of trade, and in no way conferred the right of imposing internal, or external