University of Pennsylvania, and received the most flattering testimonies of honor and esteem from the University of Edinburgh and the corporations of the principal towns in Scotland, visiting Britain in 1773, was introduced to Lord North, to whom he predicted, with characteristic frankness, sagacity, and patriotism, the issue of the dispute with America, if the British persisted in their scheme of taxation.1 During the whole period of her controversy with Britain, -America derived a continual increase of strength from domestic growth and from the flow of European emigration. Her territories presented varieties of human condition and diversified attractions adapted to almost every imaginable peculiarity of human taste, - from scenes of peace and repose, to circumstances of romantic adventure and interesting danger, — from the rudeness, the silence, and solitude of the forest, to the refinements of cultivated life, and the busy hum of men in flourishing, populous, and improved societies, from the lawless liberty of the back settlements, to the dominion of the most austerely moral legislation that ever prevailed among mankind. No complete memorial has been transmitted of the particulars of the emigrations that took place from Europe to America at this period; but (from the few illustrative facts that are actually preserved) they seem to have been amazingly copiIn the years 1771 and 1772, the number of emigrants to America from the North of Ireland alone amounted to 17,350, almost all of whom emigrated at their own charge; a great majority consisting of persons employed in the linen manufacture, or farmers, and possessed of some property, which they converted into money and carried with them. Within the first fortnight of August, 1773, there arrived at Philadelphia three thousand five hundred emigrants from Ireland; and from the same document which has recorded this circumstance it appears that vessels were arriving every month, freighted with emigrants from Holland, Germany, and especially from Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland. About seven hundred Irish settlers ous. 1 American Quarterly Review. The population of Connecticut, according to a census published by its provincial assembly, amounted this year to 191,392 white persons, and 6,464 blacks, - Annual Register for 1774,- an increase of about 50,000 souls, since the year 1763 (Appendix III., ante), in a province which received but few emigrants, and supplied a considerable emigration to other quarters of America. repaired to the Carolinas in the autumn of 1773; and, in the course of the same season, no fewer than ten vessels sailed from Britain with Scottish Highlanders emigrating to the American States. As most of the emigrants, and particularly those from Ireland and Scotland, were persons discontented with their condition or treatment in Europe, their accession to the colonial population, it might reasonably be supposed, had no tendency to diminish or counteract the hostile sentiments towards Britain which were daily gathering force in America. And yet these persons, especially the Scotch, were in general extremely averse to an entire and abrupt rejection of British authority. Their patriotic attachment, enhanced as usual by distance from its object, always resisted and sometimes prevailed over their more rational and prudent convictions; and more than once, in the final struggle, were the interests of British prerogative espoused and supported by men who had been originally driven by hardship and ill usage from Britain to America. Among other emigrants doubtless cherishing little reverence for their native country, whom Britain continued to discharge upon her colonies, were numbers of convicted felons, who were conveyed in general to the States in which tobacco was cultivated, and labored during the allotted period of their exile with the negro slaves. Of these persons, the most abandoned characters generally found their way back to England; but many contracted improved habits, and remained in America. All enlightened and patriotic Americans resented as an indignity, and all the wealthy slave-owners detested as a political mischief, this practice of the parent state, of which the last instance seems to have occurred in the course of the present year. In England, many persons were so unjust and unreasonable as to make the conduct of their government in this respect a matter of insult and reproach to the Americans, as if the production of crime were not a circumstance more truly disgraceful to a people than their casual and involuntary association with criminals. 2 "September 23, 1775. The ship Jupiter, from Dunstaffnage Bay, with two hundred emigrants on board, chiefly from Argyleshire, set sail for North Carolina; the men declaring that the oppressions of their landlords were such as they could no longer submit to." Annual Register for 1775. Many passages of similar import occur in the British journals at this epoch. 2 Holmes. Annual Register for 1772, for 1773, and for 1774. Franklin's Works. A convention was held this year in Georgia, by Sir James Wright, the governor of the colony, with a numerous deputation of the chiefs of the Creek and Cherokee tribes, who willingly ceded to the British king several millions of acres of valuable land, in the most fertile and salubrious part of the country, for the payment of debts which they owed to European merchants who had traded with them. A transaction of very different character occurred at the same time in Virginia, where a war broke out with the Ohio Indians, in consequence of a series of reciprocal injuries, wherein the European colonists, if not the aggressors (which, however, there is reason to suppose they were), at least merited the reproach of exceeding their savage antagonists in the infliction of summary, indiscriminate, and disproportioned revenge. The Virginian government despatched a strong body of militia, under the command. of Colonel Lewis, to oppose the enemy; and after a bloody engagement in the woods, in which the colonial troops repulsed the Indians, but with great difficulty, and the loss of several hundred men on their own side, the quarrel was adjusted and peace again restored.1 1 Jefferson. Burk. Holmes. Jefferson's account (by no means creditable to his own countrymen) of this Indian war in Virginia is rendered particularly interesting by the grand and solemn, yet touching and tender, harangue which he has preserved of Logan, an Indian chief, to Lord Dunmore, the governor of Virginia. Logan seems to have been the original whence Campbell derived the fine conception of Outalissi. CHAPTER IV. Boston Port Bill-and other British Measures their Effects in America.— Proposition of a General Congress. — Suffolk Resolutions. -- Meeting of the first American Congress—its Proceedings. — Transactions in New England. Proceedings of the British Ministry and Parliament. — Defensive Preparations in America. · Affair of Lexington. — The Americans surprise Ticonderoga and Crown Point. - Battle of Bunker's Hill. - Second American Congress — prepares for War - elects a Commander-in-chief. — George Washington. - Transactions in Virginia.—Progress of Hostilities. — American Invasion of Canada. THE dispute between the mother country and her colonies had now attracted so much interest and attention in Europe, and the national spirit and pride of the English people were so much provoked by the undisguised defiance of an inferior and dependent state, that, even if it had been the wish, it was no longer in the power, of the king's ministers to overlook an open contravention of the sovereign authority, or to refrain from vindicating this prerogative with a rigor and energy proportioned to the affront it had received. In this position of the ministry and temper of the nation, the intelligence which was received of the recent events in America, and especially of the destruction of the tea at Boston, was communicated to both houses of parliament by a message from the king [March 7, 1774], in which the American colonists were reproached with attempting at once to injure the commerce and subvert the constitution of Great Britain. Although it was manifest, from the documents which accompanied the royal message, that the opposition by which the sale of the tea in America had been defeated was common to all the colonies, yet the ministers and a great majority of the parliament, exasperated at the peculiar violence displayed at Boston, determined to select this town as the sole or at least the primary object of legislative vengeance. It was reckoned that a partial blow might be dealt to America with much greater severity than could be prudently exerted in more extensive punishment; and it was, doubtless, expected that the Americans in general, without being irritated by personal suffering, would be struck with terror by the rigor inflicted on a town so long renowned as the bulwark of their liberties. Without even the decent formality of requiring the inhabitants of Boston to exculpate themselves, but definitively assuming their guilt, in conformity with the despatches of a governor who was notoriously at enmity with them, the ministers introduced into parliament a bill for suspending the trade and closing the harbour of Boston during the pleasure of the king. [March 14, 1774.] They declared that the duration of this severity would depend on the conduct of those on whom it was inflicted; for it would assuredly be relaxed, as soon as the people of Boston should make compensation for the tea that was destroyed, and otherwise satisfy the king of their sincere purpose to render due submission to his government. The bill, on its first introduction to the House of Commons, encountered little opposition; only a few members vaguely remarking that America was altogether in a very distempered condition, and that a malady so general and formidable demanded remedial applications, not partial and violent, but delicate, temperate, and of diffusive efficacy; and though a more special and forcible opposition, exerted in long debates, attended the progress of the measure, yet was it carried in both houses of parliament without a single division in either. It was deemed inexpedient by obstinate resistance to weaken a blow which the government, supported by a majority, was determined to inflict. Several Americans resident at London presented ineffectual petitions to both houses against the bill. Bollan, the agent for the council of Massachusetts, tendered a petition desiring to be heard at the bar of the House of Commons in behalf of the council, as Shortly after the bill was passed, there appeared in the English newspapers the following epigram : "TO THE MINISTRY. "You've sent a rod to Massachuset, |