administrations, which, with few and short intervals, conducted the affairs of the nation down to the close of the reign of George IV.
THE AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE.
Meanwhile the remonstrances of the American colonists had induced the ministry to give up all the new taxes, with the exception of that on tea, which it was determined to keep up, as an assertion of the right of Parliament to tax the colonies. In America, this remaining tax continued to excite as much discontent as the whole had formerly done, for it was the principle of a right to impose taxes which they found fault with, and not the amount of the tax itself. Their discontent with the mother country was found to affect trade considerably, and the British merchants were anxious to bring the dispute to a close. The government was then induced to grant such a drawback from the British duty on tea, as enabled the East India Company to offer the article in America at a lower rate than formerly, so that the American duty, which was only three pence per pound, did not affect the price. It was never doubted that this expedient would satisfy the colonists, and large shipments of tea were accordingly sent out from the British ports. The principle of the right to tax still lurked, however under the concession, and the result only showed how little the sentiments of the Americans were understood at home.
The approach of the tea cargoes excited them in a manner totally unlooked-for in Britain. At New York and Philadelphia, the cargoes were forbidden to land; in Charleston, where they were permitted to land, they were put into stores, and were prohibited from being sold. In Boston harbor, a ship-load was seized and tossed into the sea. This last act was resented by the passing of a bill in Parliament for interdicting all commercial intercourse with the port of Boston, and another for taking away the legislative assembly of the state of Massachusetts. The former measure was easily obviated by local arrangements; and in reference to the latter, a Congress of representatives from the various States met at Philadelphia, in September 1774, when it was asserted that the exclusive power of legislation, in all cases of taxation and internal policy, resided in the provincial legislatures. The same assembly denounced other grievances, which have not here been particularly adverted to, especially an act of the British legislature for trying Americans, for treasonable practices, in England. The Congress also framed a covenant of non-intercourse, by which the whole utility of the colonies to the mother country, as objects of trading speculation, was at once laid prostrate. The colonists still avowed a desire to be reconciled, on the condition of a repeal of the obnoxious statutes. But the government had now resolved to attempt the reduction of the colonists by force of arms. Henceforth, every proposal from America was treated with a haughty silence on the part of the British monarch and his advisers.
The war opened in the summer of 1775, by skirmishes between the British troops and armed provincials, for the possession of certain magazines. At the beginning there seemed no hope of the contest being protracted beyond one campaign. The population of the colonies was at this time under three millions, and they were greatly inferior in discipline and appointments to the British troops. They possessed, however, an indomitable zeal in the cause they had agreed to defend, and fought with the advantage
