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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