inet. For
nearly ten years his unwise advice and defective statesmanship, in the
cabinet and in the parlor, led George the Third into many and grave
errors, which finally resulted in the loss of the fairest portion of his
American possessions. Had Pitt been allowed to guide the public policy
and direct the honest but stubborn mind of the king at the beginning of
his long reign of half a century, these United States might have
remained a part of the British Empire fifty years longer. But that great
man, whose genius as a statesman, eloquence and wisdom as a legislator,
and whose thorough knowledge of human nature and the past history of the
world, made him peerless, and whose administration of government during
almost the entire progress of _The Seven Years' War_, had carried
England to a height of prosperity and influence which she had never
before approached, was superseded by a fop; his eminent worth was
overlooked; his services were apparently forgotten, and he was allowed
to retire from office and leave the young sovereign and his government
in the hands of weak, crafty, and selfish men. The people venerated
Pitt; they despised the very name of Stuart. They deprecated the
influence of the king's mother as being unfavorable to popular freedom.
A placard which appeared upon the Royal Exchange, bearing, in large
letters, the significant expression of "No petticoat government--no
Scotch minister--no Lord George Sackville," prefigured those popular
tumults which soon afterward disturbed the metropolis and extended to
the American colonies. That placard was the harbinger of that great
DECLARATION, the adoption of which by a representative Congress of the
Anglo-American people fifteen years afterward, is the occasion of our
National Anniversary.

From the accession of Charles the Second, just one hundred years before
George the Third ascended the throne, the English colonies in America
struggled manfully for prosperity against the unjust and illiberal
commercial policy of Great Britain. With a strange obtuseness of
perception in regard to the elements of national prosperity, which the
truths of modern political economy now clearly illustrate to the common
mind, the British government sought to fill its coffers from the
products of colonial industry, by imposing upon their commerce such
severe restrictions that its expansion was almost prohibited. The wisdom
and prudent counsels of men like Robert Walpole were of no avail;