A pepper-corn, in acknowledgement of the right, is of more value than millions without it.–George Grenville. A perpetual jealousy respecting liberty, is absolutely requisite in all free states.–John Dickinson. Good Americans everywhere celebrated the repeal of the Stamp Act with much festivity and joyful noises in the streets, and with “genteel entertainments” in taverns, where…
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The Eve of the Revolution, Chapter III: The Rights of a Nation
British subjects, by removing to America, cultivating a wilderness, extending the domain, and increasing the wealth, commerce, and power of the mother country, at the hazard of their lives and fortunes, ought not, and in fact do not thereby lose their native rights.–Benjamin Franklin. It was the misfortune of Grenville that this “interweaving,” as Pownall…
The Eve of the Revolution, Chapter II: The Burden of Empire
Nothing of note in Parliament, except one slight day on the American taxes.–Horace Walpole. There were plenty of men in England, any time before 1763, who found that an excellent arrangement which permitted them to hold office in the colonies while continuing to reside in London. They were thereby enabled to make debts, and sometimes…
The Eve of the Revolution, Chapter I: A Patriot of 1763
His Majesty’s reign…I predict will be happy and truly glorious.–Benjamin Franklin. The 29th of January, 1757, was a notable day in the life of Ben Franklin of Philadelphia, well known in the metropolis of America as printer and politician, and famous abroad as a scientist and Friend of the Human Race. It was on that…
The Eve of the Revolution: Preface
In this brief sketch I have chiefly endeavored to convey to the reader, not a record of what men did, but a sense of how they thought and felt about what they did. To give the quality and texture of the state of mind and feeling of an individual or class, to create for the…