hat there should be love and peace between us and this
our mother; and bear us witness also, that, although we now lift our
rebellious hand against her, there is no hatred in our hearts, even
now, but rather sorrow unspeakable, that she should at last have
driven us to this saddest, this direfulest of alternatives." Then,
moved with one spirit (that of the love of freedom), and bent on one
purpose (that of the defence of their sacred rights), they rose in
their young strength, and, commending their just cause to the God of
hosts, made that last appeal,--which, to a brave and virtuous people,
has ever been the last,--the appeal to arms. And so they did, while
the nations looked on in wonder and applause.

XXIV.

THE CAUSE OF THE QUARREL.

But, my children, I must tell you, in other and perhaps plainer words,
what these measures were that led to such momentous results, why
resorted to, how carried out, and by whom.

From what you have just been told, you can have no difficulty in
guessing that Great Britain was desperately in debt, and in the very
mood to resort to desperate measures of delivering herself therefrom.
Her being in this particular mood at that particular time (for it is
only now and then that she has shown herself so unamiable) was owing
chiefly to the fact, that she was just then under the rule, or rather
misrule, of that narrow-minded, short-sighted, hard-fisted,
wrong-headed man, who commonly goes in history by the name of King
George the Third. Had he been the superintendent of a town workhouse,
he might perhaps have acquitted himself respectably enough; or, if I
may be so bold, he might have served a life-term as Governor of London
Tower, and gone to his grave without any great discredit or reproach:
but, in all human reason and justice, he certainly had no more
business on the throne of England than your Uncle Juvinell himself.
His ministers, who were of his own choosing, were vultures, of the
same harsh, unsightly plumage, and, at his beck or nod, stood ready to
do whatever knave's work he might have on hand,--even to the grinding
of his people's bones to make his bread, should his royal appetite
turn that way.

With such men at the helm of State, it is no wonder, then, that unwise
and oppressive measures should be resorted to for raising money, or,
as it is more properly called in such cases, a revenue, for paying the
debts and keeping up the expenses of the government. The first pounce