a refugee: "It is an immense
misfortune to the whole empire to have a king of such a disposition at
such a time. We are told, and everything proves it true, that he is the
bitterest enemy we have; his Minister is able, and that satisfies me
that ignorance or wickedness somewhere controls him. Our petitions told
him, that from our King there was but one appeal. After colonies have
drawn the sword, there is but one step more they can take. That step is
now pressed upon us by the measures adopted, as if they were afraid we
would not take it. There is not in the British Empire a man who more
cordially loves union with Great Britain than I do; but by the God that
made me, I will cease to exist before I yield to a connection on such
terms as the British Parliament propose; and in this I speak the
sentiments of America."--_Ib._, p. 143.]

CHAPTER XXIV.

1775 AND BEGINNING OF 1776--PREPARATION IN ENGLAND TO REDUCE THE
COLONISTS TO ABSOLUTE SUBMISSION--SELF-ASSERTED AUTHORITY OF PARLIAMENT.

The eventful year of 1775--the year preceding that of the American
Declaration of Independence--opened with increased and formidable
preparations on the part of England to reduce the American colonies to
absolute submission. The ground of this assumption of absolute power
over the colonies had no sanction in the British Constitution, much less
in the history of the colonies; it was a simple declaration or
declaratory Bill by the Parliament itself, in 1764, of its right to bind
the colonies in all cases whatsoever, and no more a part of the British
Constitution than any declaration of Parliament in the previous century
of its authority over the monarchy and the constitution and existence of
the House of Lords. Assuming and declaring an authority over the
American colonies which Parliament had never before, and which it has
never since exercised, and which no statesman or political writer of
repute at this day regards as constitutional, Parliament proceeded to
tax the colonies without their consent, to suspend the legislative
powers of the New York Legislature, to close the port of Boston, to
annul and change all that was free in the Charter Government of
Massachusetts, to forbid the New England colonies the fisheries of
Newfoundland, and afterwards to prohibit to all the colonies commerce
with each other and with foreign countries; to denounce, as in the Royal
Speech to Parliament of the previous October, as "rebellion,"
remonstra