land for support and protection. They required aid and assistance,
and as long as they did require it, they were not likely to make any
remonstrance at being taxed to pay a portion of the expense which was
incurred. Had the French possessed an army under Montcalm ready to
advance at the time that the Stamp Act, or the duty upon tea, salt,
etc., was imposed, I question very much if the colonists would have made
any remonstrance. But no longer requiring an army for their own
particular defense, these same duties induced them to rise in rebellion
against what they considered injustice, and eventually to assert their
independence. Here, again, we find that affairs turned out quite
contrary to the expectations of England.

"Observe again. The American colonists gained their independence, which
in all probability they would not have done had they not been assisted
by the numerous army and fleet of France, who, irritated at the loss of
the Canadas, wished to humiliate England by the loss of her own American
possessions. But little did the French king and his noblesse imagine,
that in upholding the principles of the Americans, and allowing the
French armies and navies (I may say the people of France _en masse_) to
be imbued with the same principles of equality, that they were sowing
the seeds of a revolution in their own country which was to bring the
king, as well as the major part of the nobility, to the scaffold.

"There, again, the events did not turn out according to expectation, and
you will observe in every attempt made by either party, the result was,
that the blow fell upon their own heads, and not upon that of the party
which it was intended to crush."

"I remember," said Alfred, after Mr. Campbell had finished speaking,
"having somewhere read a story of an Eastern king who purchased a
proverb of a dervise, which he ordered to be engraven on all the gold
and silver utensils in the palace. The proverb was, 'Never undertake any
thing until you have well considered the end.' It so happened, that
there was a conspiracy against the king, and it was arranged that his
surgeon should bleed him with a poisoned lancet. The surgeon agreed--the
king's arm was bound up, and one of the silver basins was held to
receive the blood. The surgeon read the inscription, and was so struck
with the force of it, that he threw down the lancet, confessed the plot,
and thus was the life of the king preserved."

"A very apt story, Alfred," sa