sh soldiers marching against the French, and he had himself served
under a British general. He had an ardent desire to go to England, to
see London, to see the King and his Court, and Parliament, and the
Courts of Justice, and the great merchants who made the city famous; but
as yet he had been unable to go.

He had seen but little of the other colonies. He had made a journey to
Boston, and that had given him some acquaintance with men; but wherever
he went, he found people looking eagerly toward England and asking what
the Ministry there would do about fighting the French on the Western
borders. Though he and others might never have seen England, it was the
center of the world to them. He thought of the other colonies not so
much as all parts of one great country on this side of the Atlantic, as
each separately a part of the British Empire.

After all, however, and most of all, he was a Virginian. In Virginia he
owned land. There was his home, and there his occupation. He was a
farmer, a planter of tobacco and wheat, and it was his business to sell
his products. As for the French, they were enemies of Great Britain, but
they were also very near enemies of Virginia. They were getting
possession of land in Virginia itself--land which Washington owned in
part; and when he was busily engaged in driving them out, he did not
have to stop and think of France, he needed only to think of Fort
Duquesne, a few days' march to the westward.

When, therefore he found the British Government making laws which made
him pay roundly for sending his tobacco to market, and taxing him as if
there were no Virginia Legislature to say what taxes the people could
and should pay, he began to be restless and dissatisfied. England was a
great way off; Virginia was close at hand. He was loyal to the King and
had fought under the King's officers, but if the King cared nothing for
his loyalty, and only wanted his pence, his loyalty was likely to cool.
His chief resentment, however, was against Parliament. Parliament was
making laws and laying taxes. But what was Parliament? It was a body of
law-makers in England, just as the House of Burgesses was in Virginia.
To be sure, it could pass laws about navigation which concerned all
parts of the British Empire; but, somehow, it made these laws very
profitable to England and very disadvantageous to Virginia. Parliament,
however, had no right to pass such a law as the Stamp Act. That was
making a special l