ented politicians, good enough to fill up the periods of
a speech, but which no practical man, devoid of the spirit of party,
considered to be within the limits of possibility. There was a period
when the slightest concession would have satisfied the Americans; but
all the world was in heroics; one set of gentlemen met at the Lamb, and
another at the Lion: blood and treasure men, breathing war, vengeance,
and contempt; and in eight years afterwards, an awkward looking
gentleman in plain clothes walked up to the drawing-room of St. James's,
in the midst of the gentlemen of the Lion and Lamb, and was introduced
as the _ambassador from the United States of America_.--_Works of Sidney
Smith, Vol. III., p. 336._

"If you are told of the existence of discontent in any of your colonial
possessions, do not believe it; and if any application be made to you
for the redress of the grievances of any of your colonial possessions,
reject the prayer at once; for if you grant that, you may be asked for
something more. Redress no grievance, lest it should lead to a petition
for the removal of another cause of complaint. Believe only the accounts
which reach you from governors, and others officially connected with
your colonies; and treat any statements in opposition to their accounts
as the invention of demagogues, whom you should hang if you could catch
them, and thus tranquillize the colony."--_Franklin._]

[Footnote 283: "Just before I embarked at Plymouth, I visited my
grandmother, in order to take leave of her for ever. Poor old soul! she
was already dead to the concerns of this life: my departure could make
but little difference in the time of our separation; and it was of no
importance to her which of us should quit the other. My resolution,
however, revived for a day all her woman's feelings: she shed abundance
of tears, and then became extremely curious to know every particular
about the place to which I was going. I rubbed her spectacles whilst she
wiped her eyes, and, having placed before her a common English chart of
the world, pointed out the situation of New Holland. She shook her head.
'What displeases, you, my dear Madam P' said I. 'Why,' she answered, 'it
is terribly out of the way; down in the very right-hand corner of the
world.' The chart being mine, I cut it in two through the meridian of
Iceland, transposed the parts laterally, and turned them upside down.
'Now,' asked I, 'where is England P' 'Ah, boy,' she replied