uisition of a few millions at a future day.

Burke addressed himself directly to the point on all these questions. He
laid aside the much-abused question of right; he did not even attempt to
show that right and justice should not be separated, and that men who
had no share in the government of a country, could not be expected in
common justice to assist in the support of that country. He had to
address those who could only understand reasons which appealed to their
self-interest, and he lowered himself to his audience. The question he
said was, "not whether you have a right to render your people miserable,
but whether it is not your interest to make them happy. It is not what a
lawyer tells me I _may_ do, but what humanity, reason, and justice, tell
me I _ought_ to do."

The common idea about the separation of the States from England, is
simply that they resisted a stamp duty and a tax on tea; the fact is, as
I have before hinted, that this was simply the last drop in the cup.
Previous to this period, the American colonies were simply considered as
objects of English aggrandizement. They were treated as states who only
existed for the purpose of benefiting England. The case was in fact
parallel to the case of Ireland, and the results would probably have
been similar, had Ireland been a little nearer to America, or a little
further from England. For many years the trade of America had been kept
under the most vexatious restrictions. The iron found there must be sent
to England to be manufactured; the ships fitted out there must be at
least partly built in England; no saw-mills could be erected, no colony
could trade directly with another colony, nor with any nation except
England. This selfish, miserable policy met with a well-deserved fate.
Even Pitt exclaimed indignantly, in the House of Commons: "We are told
that America is obstinate--that America is almost in open rebellion. I
rejoice that she has resisted. Three millions of people, so dead to all
sentiments of liberty as voluntarily to become slaves, would have been
fit instruments to enslave their fellow-subjects."

In 1765 an agitation was commenced in Philadelphia, by Mr. Charles
Thompson, an Irishman, who, after ten years devoted to the cause of his
adopted country, was appointed the Secretary of Congress. It has been
well remarked, that the Irish, and especially the Irish Catholics, were,
of the three nationalities, the most devoted to forwarding the
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