these were both after-thoughts. Independence Day was
still more than a year away and then eight years from accomplishment.
The Revolution cannot be said to have become established until the
adoption of the Federal Constitution. No, on this June day, these were
not the conscious objects sought. They were contending for the liberties
of the country, they were not yet bent on establishing a new nation nor
on recognizing that relationship between men which the modern world
calls democracy. They were maintaining well their traditions, these sons
of Londonderry, lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray, and these
sons of the Puritans, whom Macaulay tells us humbly abased themselves in
the dust before the Lord, but hesitated not to set their foot upon the
neck of their king.

It is the moral quality of the day that abides. It was the purpose of
those plain garbed men behind the parapet that told whether they were
savages bent on plunder, living under the law of the jungle, or sons of
the morning bearing the light of civilization. The glorious revolution
of 1688 was fading from memory. The English Government of that day
rested upon privilege and corruption at the base, surmounted by a king
bent on despotism, but fortunately too weak to accomplish any design
either of good or ill. An empire still outwardly sound was rotting at
the core. The privilege which had found Great Britain so complacent
sought to establish itself over the Colonies. The purpose of the
patriots was resistance to tyranny. Pitt and Burke and Lord Camden in
England recognized this, and, loving liberty, approved the course of the
Colonies. The Tories here, loving privilege, approved the course of the
Royal Government. Bunker Hill meant that the Colonies would save
themselves and saving themselves save the mother country for liberty.
The war was not inevitable. Perhaps wars are never inevitable. But the
conflict between freedom and privilege was inevitable. That it broke out
in America rather than in England was accidental. Liberty, the rights of
man against tyranny, the rights of kings, was in the air. One side must
give way. There might have been a peaceful settlement by timely
concessions such as the Reform Bill of England some fifty years later,
or the Japanese reforms of our own times, but wanting that a collision
was inevitable. Lacking a Bunker Hill there had been another Dunbar.

The eighteenth century was the era of the development of political
righ