imposition by the Anglo-Saxons of one hemisphere on their brethren in the other was unconditionally monstrous. No man knew or felt the barbarous exactions, and the unmitigated monopolies of this system in favor of his fellow-subjects in England, better than did the author of Novanglus. If his horse flung a shoe, the stinging, insulting declaration of Pitt, that an American could not of right make so much as the nails required to reset it, rang in his ears. If he entered the court of admiralty to defend the illicit traders who were prosecuted by the crown officers for penalties which would have made beggars of the richest, he was reminded that his countrymen were forbidden by statute to make a voyage to Asia or Africa, to South America, to the foreign islands in the Carribbean Sea, to nearly all Continental Europe, and even to Ireland, on pain of confiscation of ship and cargo. If he bought a hat, the legislation against colonial hatters occurred to him. If, in journeying to the courts of Massachusetts and Maine, he passed waterfalls running to waste, he mused upon the acts of Parliament which secured the colonial market in monopoly to the manufacturers of Manchester. If he entered a public office, he met the pampered functionaries who, “English born," or members of the "old families," held their places by life-tenures, and by descent from father to son, and thus excluded the great colonial mind. If he walked the streets, the chariots of the high officers of the customs, sent over to revive obsolete, and to enforce new, laws of trade, rolled in grandeur by him. If he had to traffic with his neighbor, he was compelled to remember that, while the mother country drained all America of coin,* the Board of Trade the New England Colonies from beginning to end — had suggested, and Parliament had enacted, not amendments in the manner of emitting and redeeming a paper currency, as bound to do, but its suppression. Nor, if he read the speeches of British Whigs,† did his keen eye see more in behalf of his

a curse to

* Franklin, in his celebrated examination at the bar of the House of Commons, said, that in his opinion there "was not gold and silver enough in the Colonies to pay the stamp duty for one year."

The opinion that the British Whigs were "the friends of America," in any sense which bore upon the amelioration of the condition of our fathers as colonists, ought no longer to prevail. The sentiments of Pitt and Burke, cited in the text,

country than an opposition to particular measures, and to the party in power; for there stood out in characters of fire the bald, unqualified statement, that the sole purpose of colonies was to be "serviceable" to the parent state. In a word, with him, and everywhere around him, were the humiliating evidences of colonial disabilities produced by England's monopolists, who, like the daughters of the horse-leech, had been crying, "Give, give," for more than a hundred years.

The freedom to earn money in all branches of industry is as valuable as the choice of the agents to disburse it, whether in "taxes" for the support of government, or to promote individual comfort. The absence, then, of topics of this sort, in Novanglus, without explanation, may well excite surprise. Among British colonists of the present day are some careful readers of the Revolutionary controversy, and we have been told that, if Mr. Adams is to be considered as an exponent of Whig views, their aims were limited and low; that even the children of the Tories became restless at last, under the system of things to which he professed attachment and allegiance; that, by continual agitation, concessions have been obtained from England which abolish such social, political, commercial, and manufacturing disabilities as were imposed upon the thirteen Colonies; that now colonists may make what they will, buy where they please, and sell where they can; and that, surpassing the loftiest Whig in his loftiest mood, pretensions are made to be employed in foreign embassies, to become cabinet ministers, and to be elevated to the highest rank in the church, the army, and the navy.*

show that they and the ministerial party were agreed on that point. In connection with the eloquent speeches made in our behalf, it is significant to remark, upon conduct, that, after the peace, when Mr. Adams was in England, Lord Mansfield and other Tories treated him with vastly more consideration than either the Duke of Richmond, Lord Camden, Burke, or Fox; and that Camden, supposed by our countrymen even now to have been extremely kind to us, had the grace to say, on the subject of concluding a commercial treaty, that, since England, by our freedom, had lost the monopoly of our trade, there was little concern about it. Such a conclusion was not fitting in a statesman under any circumstances, and, in view of the present statistics of commercial dealing between the two countries, is well worth a record here.

The views of the Liberals in colonial politics are maintained with much boldness and ability in the letters of Hon. Joseph Howe, of Nova Scotia, to Lord John

To all this we have replied, that, to those who have carefully surveyed the whole ground, the solution is easy; thus, that on questions of industry, both on the sea and on the soil, the South had no wrongs in common with the North; that, while the Whigs of the latter section were striving to effect union and concerted opposition, the single issue of "taxation," as connected with the preservation of prescriptive and chartered rights, was the only one which, of necessity, they needed to discuss, because upon this issue they staked the continuance of their colonial relations; that, if the leaders in the commercial and manufacturing colonies really did have an eye to independence at the outset, and thus held the statement of some things in reserve, so also did those of the planting colonies, whose single grievance consisted in the "wrong done to the pride and ambition rather than to the purse," inasmuch as the "native intellect," which was equal to their own government, was denied "its proper position";* that a portion of the disabilities which could not be removed by remonstrance, which belonged to the colonial system and were inseparable from it, whatever the private communings of the far-sighted,-were wisely kept out of sight, while there was hope of reconciliation; that, when petitions and addresses failed, — as a few saw they would, from the beginning, — and the patience of the meekest was exhausted, the manifesto which proclaimed separation embodied, in stirring array, the long list of wrongs and denials which had palsied the arm of New England, and had rankled in the universal American heart for generations.

So again, we have said, and rather curtly, we own, - that these accusations of limited and low aims fall strangely enough from Loyalist lips, from descendants of men who fled their native country, when the Whigs, without redress for the past or guaranties for the future, resolved to tear up the very frameRussell, in 1839, on the subject of "Responsible Government"; and again, in a second series of letters from the same to the same, in 1846, "On the Government of British America."

*These avowals are made in the Southern Quarterly Review, Vol. XIV. p. 49. Mr. Keitt, a member of Congress from South Carolina, in the speech resigning his seat, July 16, 1856, adopts similar sentiments, in his course of remark as to the merits of the South, and of his own State especially, in the Revolution.

work of the system defended in Novanglus; and we have replied further, that, as certainly as John Adams and his compeers achieved their own freedom, just so surely were they the direct and sole authors of the boasted and invaluable concessions which England has recently made to British America. The children of the Tories, forsooth, critics and accusers of their deliverers!

We pass to other themes, and to Mr. Adams's writings on the subject of remodelling American institutions, when Whig aims became treasonable. " It generally argues some degree "It of natural impotence of mind," says Burke, "or some want of knowledge of the world, to hazard plans of government, except from a seat of authority." In a revolution there is ordinarily a transition state full of horrors; for in pulling down, there is not always at hand an architect with courage to assume the "seat of authority," and with skill to replace the old with new and with better. It was not so with us. We passed substantially from one system to another, without con

ion or anarchy, and in effecting this Mr. Adams was an clicient instrument. Though England held all her colonies with the unrelenting grasp of monopoly, that all might be "serviceable" to her, their internal concerns were regulated by administrative forms widely different. Thus, Pennsylvania and Maryland were hardly less than monarchies; New York and Virginia, feudal aristocracies; Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, very much like republics; and New Hampshire, a royal government, subject in the main to ministerial instructions and orders in council. The most important changes were to be made, therefore, especially south of New England. In advising the extension to that section of the essential principles of the Northern charters, Mr. Adams proposed as much as the circumstances of the time made necessary. His first essay was at the instance of Richard Henry Lee, in November, 1775, and is the germ of our present form of State institutions, as well as of his elaborate Defence, to be mentioned as we proceed. Another brief paper soon followed, entitled "Thoughts on Government," &c., which, printed in Philadelphia, was circulated by his desire without his name. Early in 1776, his aid was solicited by the Whigs

of North Carolina, who, in the event of severing their relations with the mother country, asked for wise counsel. It turned out, however, that, though other Colonies were the first to move and to inquire, South Carolina, in adopting a constitution, preceded her sisters. But the work once commenced, the Whigs erected independent "governments as fast as children build cob-houses."

His next service in this behalf was to his native State. A proposition to throw off the charter defended in Novanglus was made as soon as 1776; but no definite action then followed. Nor was it until two years later that a constitution was presented to the people for their consideration; nor until 1779 that one was framed which met their approbation. In the successful draft, Mr. Adams had so large a share, that he has been called, in popular phrase, its "father." It was adopted in 1780; but its operation was impeded for several years. In 1786, those who opposed it in convention, those who continued to dislike it, and the discontented of all descriptions, rallied under Shays, and appeared in open insu rection. Yet it contained Mr. Adams's mature "Thoughts on Government," and most of the wise men of his time were satisfied with it. In 1820, it was revised by as safe guides as ever assembled in council in Massachusetts. Even if, in the progress of civilization, some changes in the organic law had become imperative, its original framers and its revisers stand seriously rebuked for incompetence or unfaithfulness, on the admission that all the innovations which have been accomplished within a few years were necessary or proper.

The State governments having been established, their form attracted the attention of M. Turgot, who, in a letter to Dr. Richard Price, thus objected:

"I am not satisfied, I own, with any constitutions which have as yet been framed by the different American States. . . . . . I see in the greatest number an unreasonable imitation of the usages of England. Instead of bringing all the authorities into one, that of the nation, they have established different bodies, a house of representatives, a council, a governor, because England has a house of commons, a house of lords, and a king."

*Letter to Mrs. Adams, July 7, 1776.