not in search of gain, but to escape from
laws under which other Englishmen were content to live, were so
sensitive even to appearances that the Blue Laws of Connecticut forbade
men to walk to church within ten feet of their wives. And the proposed
tax, of only L12,000 a year, might have been easily borne. But the
reasons why Edward I. and his Council were not allowed to tax England
were reasons why George III. and his Parliament should not tax America.
The dispute involved a principle, namely, the right of controlling
government. Furthermore, it involved the conclusion that the Parliament
brought together by a derisive election had no just right over the
unrepresented nation, and it called on the people of England to take
back its power. Our best statesmen saw that whatever might be the law,
the rights of the nation were at stake. Chatham, in speeches better
remembered than any that have been delivered in Parliament, exhorted
America to be firm. Lord Camden, the late Chancellor, said: "Taxation
and representation are inseparably united. God hath joined them. No
British Parliament can separate them."

From the elements of that crisis Burke built up the noblest political
philosophy in the world. "I do not know the method," said he, "of
drawing up an indictment against a whole people. The natural rights of
mankind are indeed sacred things, and if any public measure is proved
mischievously to affect them, the objection ought to be fatal to that
measure, even if no charter at all could be set up against it. Only a
sovereign reason, paramount to all forms of legislation and
administration, should dictate." In this way, just a hundred years ago,
the opportune reticence, the politic hesitancy of European
statesmanship, was at last broken down; and the principle gained ground,
that a nation can never abandon its fate to an authority it cannot
control. The Americans placed it at the foundation of their new
government. They did more; for having subjected all civil authorities to
the popular will, they surrounded the popular will with restrictions
that the British legislature would not endure.

During the revolution in France the example of England, which had been
held up so long, could not for a moment compete with the influence of a
country whose institutions were so wisely framed to protect freedom even
against the perils of democracy. When Louis Philippe became king, he
assured the old Republican, Lafayette, that what he had