d by a generous
handclapping. In the confusion, Stephen observed Anderson together with
Colonel Clifton leave their places on the platform and take seats on the
side of the room.

"It is quite true that we have no quarrel with the English people. We
have no quarrel with their king or the framers of their laws. It is
equally true that the governments of Great Britain and the United
Colonies have become involved in a military struggle, a struggle to the
death; nevertheless we would be the last to imply that there exists any
essential antagonism of interests or purposes between the two peoples.
We are not engaged in a contest between Englishmen and Americans, but
between two antagonistic principles of government, each of which has its
advocates and its opponents among us who sit here, among those who live
with us in our own country, among those who reside in far-off England.
The contest is a political contest, the ancient contest between the Whig
and the Tory principles of government, the contest of Chatham and North,
and Richmond, Rockingham and Burke transferred to this side of the
Atlantic. The political liberty to which we have dedicated ourselves is
no product of our imaginations; our forefathers of the seventeenth
century brought it to our shores and now we naturally refuse to
surrender it. It is the principle for which we are contending,--the
principles that these United Colonies are and of a right ought to be
free and independent states; and in all matters else we are loyal foster
children of His Majesty the King, as loyal and as interested a people in
the welfare of the mother country as the most devoted subject of the
crown residing in the city of London.

"War was inevitable. This has been known for some time; but there has
been no lack of cordiality between the people of the United Kingdom and
the people of the United Colonies. We are opposed to certain principles
of statecraft, to the principle of taxation without representation, to
the same degree as are the Whigs of our mother country. We cherish the
warmest sentiments of love and admiration for the English people and we
are ready to become their brothers in arms at any future date for the
defense of those very ideals which we are now trying to establish,--the
blessings of democracy; but we abominate autocracy and will have none of
it. In this regard we may be said to have disinfected our anger, but
never to have diluted it."

The Tory element moved about