nces against and opposition to these arbitrary and cruel
enactments; to appeal to Holland and Russia (but in vain) for the aid
of foreign soldiers, and to hire of German blood-trading princes
seventeen thousand mercenary soldiers to butcher British subjects in the
colonies, even to liberate slaves for the murder of their masters, and
to employ savage Indians to slaughter men, women, and children.

All this was done by the King and his servants against the colonies
before the close of the year 1775, while they still disclaimed any
design or desire for independence, and asked for nothing more than they
enjoyed in 1763, after they had given the noblest proof of liberality
and courage, to establish and maintain British supremacy in America
during the seven years' war between England and France, and enjoyed much
less of that local self-government, immunity, and privilege which every
inhabitant of the Canadian Dominion enjoys at this day.

During that French war, and for a hundred years before, the colonists
had provided fortresses, artillery, arms, and ammunition for their own
defence; they were practised marksmen, far superior to the regular
soldiery of the British army, with the character and usages of which
they had become familiar. They offered to provide for their own defence
as well as for the support of their civil government, both of which the
British Government requires of the provinces of the Canadian Dominion,
but both of which were denied to the old provinces of America, after the
close of the seven years' war with France. The King and his Ministers
not only opposed the colonies providing for their own defence, but
ordered the seizure of their magazines, cannon, and arms. General Gage
commenced this kind of provocation and attack upon the colonists and
their property; seized the arms of the inhabitants of Boston; spiked
their cannon at night on Fort Hill; seized by night, also, 13 tons of
colonial powder stored at Charleston; sent by night an expedition of
eight hundred troops, twenty miles to Concord, to seize military
provisions, but they were driven back to Lexington with the loss of 65
killed and 180 wounded, and on the part of the colonists 50 killed and
34 wounded. This was the commencement of a bloody revolution, and was
soon followed by the battle of Bunker's Hill, in which, "on the part of
the British," says Holmes, "about 3,000 men were engaged in this action;
and their killed and wounded amounted to 1,