. The British Government and the upper classes generally at
home had always treated the inhabitants of the colonies as if they
considered them an inferior race, and almost beyond the pale of
civilisation. This conduct had naturally caused much discontent and ill
feeling, and made the colonists more ready to resent and oppose any
attempt to curtail their rights and privileges. What was called the
Stamp Act met with the first organised opposition. The Government
offices were in many places pulled down, while the Governor of New York
and other promoters of the Act were burnt in effigy. Many influential
colonists then bound themselves to make use of no articles on which
duties had been levied; while the people of Boston, proceeding a step
farther, rather than pay the duty imposed by the British Government,
threw into the sea the cargoes of several ships sent there by the East
India Company laden with tea. This proceeding of the inhabitants of
Boston induced the British Government to send General Gage, with an
army, to take up his quarters there, with the intention of coercing
them.

The belief that arbitrary Government was about to be established
throughout the colonies made the people in every direction rise in arms.
A rebel force, consisting of several thousand men, began to collect in
the neighbourhood of the above-mentioned city. Petition after petition
and remonstrance after remonstrance had been sent over to England in
vain. The great Lord Chatham and the famous Mr Edmund Burke had
pleaded the cause of the patriots with all the mighty eloquence they
possessed; but without altering the resolution of the King or the
Government. The celebrated Dr Franklin, already well known in England
and America as a philosopher as well as a statesman, had come over to
England to plead the cause of his countrymen, but had returned hopeless
of effecting his object. What treatment, after this, could the
colonists expect, if they yielded to the dictates of the mother-country?

The crisis at length arrived. There was at Concord, near Boston, a
large magazine of military stores. General Gage sent a force to destroy
it. The patriots collected in considerable numbers to oppose the
British troops, and drove them back, with a heavy loss, into the city.
This engagement, though little more than a skirmish, was called the
Battle of Lexington. If its results were to be taken into
consideration, few battles have been of more importanc