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ists, and began to devise plans by which to grasp for themselves a share of the wealth that was thus rolling in.... Indeed, _the English people_ acted from the first as if the colonies existed only for the purpose of helping them to make money." George III. and his Ministers are not so much as mentioned, and the impression conveyed to the ingenuous student is that the whole English nation was consciously and deliberately banded together for purposes of sheer brigandage. The same history is delightfully chauvinistic in its account of the Colonial Wars. The British officers are all bunglers and poltroons; if disasters are averted or victories won, it is entirely by the courage and conduct of the colonists: "When Johnson reached the head of Lake George he met the French, and a fierce battle was fought. Success seemed at first to be altogether with the French; but after a while Johnson was slightly wounded, when General Lyman, a brave colonial officer, took command, and beat the French terribly.... Abercrombie's defeat was the last of the English disasters. The colonists now had arms enough, and were allowed to fight in their own way, and a series of brilliant victories followed.... By the energy, courage, and patriotism of her colonies, England had now acquired a splendid empire in the New World. And while she reaped all the glory of the war and its fruits, it was the hardy colonists who had throughout, borne the brunt of the conflict." The child who learns his history from Mr. Barnes may not hate England, but will certainly despise her. Text-books of this type, however, are already obsolescent. A committee of the New England History Teachers' Association published in the _Educational Review_ for December 1898 a careful survey of no fewer than nineteen school histories of the United States, and summed up the results as follows: "In discussing the causes of the Revolution, text-book writers have sounded pretty much the whole scale of motives. England has been pictured, on the one hand, as an arbitrary oppressor, and, on the other, as the helpless victim of political environment. Under the influence of deeper study and a keener sense of justice, however, the element of bitterness, which so often entered into the discussion of this subject, has largely disappeared; and while the treatment of the R
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