The Overthrow of the European colonial system.
Chapter 1:
America claims legislative independence of England. Pelham's administration.1748.
in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hun-chap I.} 1748. |
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dred and forty-eight, Montesquieu, wisest in his age of the reflecting statesmen of France, apprized the cultivated world, that a free, prosperous and great people was forming in the forests of America, which England had sent forth her sons to inhabit.1 The hereditary dynasties of Europe, all unconscious of the rapid growth of the rising power, which was soon to involve them in its new and prevailing influence, were negotiating treaties among themselves to bring their last war of personal ambition definitively to an end.
1 De l'esprit des Lois. LIV. XIX. chap. XXVII. Elle [une nation libre] donneroit aux peuples de ses colonies la forme de son gouvernement propre: et ce gouvernement portant avec lui la prosperite, on verroit se former de grands peoples dans les forces memes qu'elle enverroit habiter.
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1859.
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