George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 5, 13th edition.

Freedom, thy brow

chap. XIII.} 1765. April.

     Glorious in beauty though it be, is scarred
with tokens of old wars; thy massive limbs
     Are strong with struggling. Power at thee has launched
His bolts, and with his lightnings smitten thee;
     They could not quench the life thou hast from heaven.

Here in the Western World, the ancient warrior, ‘twin-born with man,’ counselled by the ripened wisdom of thousands of years, shall renovate his being, and guide every people of every tongue through the assured self-direction of the individual mind to the harmonious exercise of the collective reason of the State.

‘The Colonies,’ said the press of New-York, just before the Stamp Act became a law, ‘may from present weakness submit to the impositions of ministerial power, but they will certainly hate that power as tyrannical; and, as soon as they are able, will throw it off.’ Colonial opposition confidently appealed from acts of authority to the sanctity of law; from the bar, weekly papers came forth, which loyalists denounced as ‘most licentious.’ ‘Associations of lawyers,’ said Colden, in the impotence of despair, ‘are the most dangerous of any next to the military,’ and he ‘lamented’ that, as yet, ‘the faction’ could not be ‘crushed.’¹

Still New-York continued tranquil. New England, where the chief writer against the impending Stamp Act had admitted the jurisdiction of the British parliament, was slow to anger. The child of Old England, she was 10th to impute to the parent country a fixed design to subvert her rights. The patriot Hopkins