Dutchman, Cavalier, Scotch-Irish, and Huguenot
--'building better than they knew'--had established permanent
habitations from Plymouth Rock to Savannah. Brave men from the
early fringe of settlements upon the Atlantic--regardless of
obstacle and danger--had pushed their way westward, and laid the
sure foundations of future commonwealths. From New Hampshire to
Georgia, thirteen English-speaking colonies, with a population
aggregating near two millions, had attained to a large measure
of the dignity of distinctive States. Their allegiance, meanwhile,
to the mother country had been unfaltering, and in her fierce
struggle with France for the mastery of the continent, America had
sealed her loyalty with the best blood of her sons.

"The successors to the first House of Burgesses had learned well
the lessons gleaned from the scant pages of their earliest history.
Attempts to tax the unrepresented colonies soon encountered concerted
hostility. 'No taxation without representation' became the universal
slogan. The words spoken in the British Parliament by Barre--worthy
comrade of the gallant Wolfe on the Heights of Abraham--near a
century and a half after the event we now celebrate, will quicken the
pulse of all coming generations of American patriots. Said he:

"'Your oppressions planted them in America. They fled from your
tyranny to a then uncultivated, unhospitable country where they
exposed themselves to almost all the hardships to which human nature
is liable, among others to the cruelties of a savage foe; they grew
by your neglect of them. As soon as you began to care for them,
that care was exercised in sending persons to rule them, to spy
out their liberties, to misrepresent their actions and to prey upon
them; men whose behavior on many occasions has caused the blood of
those sons of liberty to recoil within them; men promoted to the
highest seats of justice, some who, to my knowledge, were glad, by
going to a foreign country, to escape being brought to the bar of a
court of justice in their own. The colonists have nobly taken
up arms in your defence; have asserted a valor amid their constant
and laborious industry for the defence of a country whose frontier
was drenched in blood. And, believe me--remember, I warn you--the
same spirit of freedom which actuated that people at first will
accompany them still.'

"And how prophetic now seem the words of Burke in the same great
debate:

"'There is America,