d the mother country. When Mr. Grenville proposed
his stamp-duties, I said to my wife that the bill would create a mighty
discontent at home, for we were ever anxious to get as much as we could
from England, and pay back as little; but assuredly I never anticipated
the prodigious anger which the scheme created. It was with us as with
families or individuals. A pretext is given for a quarrel: the real
cause lies in long bickerings and previous animosities. Many foolish
exactions and petty tyrannies, the habitual insolence of Englishmen
towards all foreigners, all colonists, all folk who dare to think their
rivers as good as our Abana and Pharpar, the natural spirit of men
outraged by our imperious domineering spirit, set Britain and her
colonies to quarrel; and the astonishing blunders of the system adopted
in England brought the quarrel to an issue, which I, for one, am not
going to deplore. Had I been in Virginia instead of London, 'tis
very possible I should have taken the provincial side, if out of mere
opposition to that resolute mistress of Castlewood, who might have
driven me into revolt, as England did the colonies. Was the Stamp Act
the cause of the revolution?--a tax no greater than that cheerfully
paid in England. Ten years earlier, when the French were within our
territory, and we were imploring succour from home, would the colonies
have rebelled at the payment of this tax? Do not most people consider
the tax-gatherer the natural enemy? Against the British in America there
were arrayed thousands and thousands of the high-spirited and brave, but
there were thousands more who found their profit in the quarrel, or had
their private reasons for engaging in it. I protest I don't know now
whether mine were selfish or patriotic, or which side was in the right,
or whether both were not. I am sure we in England had nothing to do but
to fight the battle out; and, having lost the game, I do vow and believe
that, after the first natural soreness, the loser felt no rancour.

What made brother Hal write home from Virginia, which he seemed
exceedingly loth to quit, such flaming patriotic letters? My kind, best
brother was always led by somebody; by me when we were together (he had
such an idea of my wit and wisdom, that if I said the day was fine, he
would ponder over the observation as though it was one of the sayings of
the Seven Sages), by some other wiseacre when I was away. Who inspired
these flaming letters, this boist