nny and misery had so long blinded them.

Of course these ideas still hung nebulous in the air in the year 1775,
and Europe at first scarce noted that Britain was having trouble with
her distant colonies. Yet to America belongs the honor of having first
maintained against force the new or rather the old and now re-arisen
principles. England, it is true, had repudiated her Stuart kings still
earlier; but she had replaced their rule by that of a narrow
aristocracy, and now George III, the German king of the third generation
whom she had placed as a figure-head upon her throne, was beginning,
apparently with much success, to reassert the royal power. George III
was quite as much a tyrant to England as he was to America, and Britons
have long since recognized that America was fighting their battle for
independence as well as her own.

The English Parliament was not in those days a truly representative
body. The appointment of a large proportion of its members rested with a
few great lords; other members were elected by boards of aldermen and
similar small bodies. The large majority of Englishmen had no votes at
all, though the plea was advanced that they were "virtually
represented," that is, they were able to argue with and influence their
more fortunate brethren, and all would probably be actuated by similar
sentiments. This plea of "virtual representation" was now extended to
America, where its absurdity as applied to a people three thousand miles
away and engaged in constant protest against the course of the English
Government, became at once manifest, and the cry against "Taxation
without representation" became the motto of the Revolution.

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Parliament, finding the Americans most unexpectedly resolute against
submitting to taxation, would have drawn back from the dispute; but King
George insisted on its continuance. He could not realize the difference
between free-born Americans long trained in habits of self-government,
and the unfortunate peasantry of Continental Europe, bowed by centuries
of suffering and submission. He thought it only necessary to bully the
feeble colonists, as Louis XIV had bullied the Huguenots by dragonnades.
Soldiers were sent to America to live on the inhabitants; and in Boston,
General Gage to complete the terror sent out a force to seize the
patriot leaders and destroy their supplies.

Then came "the shot heard round the world." Instead of cringing humbly,
the