to judge well concerning governmental measures. A large proportion of the citizens of this State have actually sustained one public office, and multitudes, several, and have of course been personally concerned in transacting public business. Hence they have already known by experience the difficulties incident to public concerns, and are, in a degree superior to what is usually found elsewhere, prepared to form judicious opinions concerning the measures of the Legislature. I have heard laws discussed by plain men with more good sense than any mere scholar could have displayed on the same subjects. By these men they were canvassed as to their operation on the actual interests of themselves, and others. By a scholar they would have been examined as to their accordance with preconceived general principles. The former were certain means of determining on the merits of a law; the latter only probable, and very imperfect.

From these facts it arises in no small measure, that the citizens of Connecticut have ever exhibited a peculiar skill and discretion in both judging and acting, concerning public affairs. Every man who arrives at the higher offices of magistracy serves, almost of course, an apprenticeship in the concerns of the town. Here his character is tried. If he acquires the general approbation, he is elected to the Legislature. There he undergoes a new trial, and, if sufficiently approved, is in the end chosen by the Freemen at large into the Council. In this body, if his conduct is not materially altered, he is regularly placed by the same suffrage until he declines an election, becomes disqualified by age, or dies.

Timothy Dwight, S. T. D., LL.D., Late President of Yale College: Travels in New-England and New-York, Vol. I, pp. 248-252. New Haven, 1821. The part quoted was, in all probability, written some time between 1802 and 1814. See "Preface," pp. 10, 11; and pp. 237, 240.

QUESTIONS

Name the advantages of the system of local government by the town meeting here described. How did the town meeting train the citizens to judge intelligently of the politics and public business of the State? What is the advantage in every man's having held some public office however small? How does it make him able to judge better the administration and laws of his State or National government? Why could not a great city be governed like one of these towns? What is the advantage of having the local concerns of a township or village settled by its inhabitants? How far in your own home do the inhabitants of township or county to-day have the right of settling local business?

PART II

THE REVOLUTION AND THE

CONSTITUTION

X

CAUSES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

The writer of the book from which this extract is taken was an Englishman of learning, one of the greatest historical writers among his countrymen of the nineteenth century. His account of the causes of the hostility between England and her Colonies has generally been considered scrupulously just and fair. Since these words were written a great deal of work has been done by scholars on the causes of the Revolution, especially on those phases of the subject which show the conditions in the Colonies and the elements of social and industrial unrest; but the author's words as here given remain substantially just. Lecky was the author of the History of England in the Eighteenth Century; chapters from that work have been gathered into the volume called Lecky's American Revolution, from which the following extract is taken.

When Grenville succeeded to power on the fall of Bute,1 he took up the design,2 and his thorough knowledge of all the details of office, his impatience of any kind of neglect, abuse, and illegality, as well as his complete want of that political tact which teaches statesmen how far they may safely press their views, foreshadowed a great change in colonial affairs. He resolved to enforce strictly the trade

1 The Earl of Bute was Prime Minister from May, 1762, to April, 1763.

2 Of making the Colonies pay taxes levied by Act of Parliament, with which troops used for colonial defense were to be paid.

laws, to establish permanently in America a portion of the British army, and to raise by parliamentary taxation of America at least a part of the money which was necessary for its support.

These three measures produced the American Revolution, and they are well worthy of a careful and dispassionate examination. The enormous extent of American smuggling had been brought into clear relief during the war, when it had assumed a very considerable military importance, and as early as 1762 there were loud complaints in Parliament of the administration of the Customhouse patronage. Grenville found on examination that the whole revenue derived by England from the customhouses in America amounted to between £1,000 and £2,000 a year; that for the purpose of collecting this revenue the English Exchequer paid annually between £7,000 and £8,000, and that the chief Custom-house officers appointed by the Crown had treated their offices as sinecures, and by leave of the Treasury resided habitually in England. Great portions of the trade laws had been systematically violated. Thus, for example, the Colonists were allowed by law to import no tea except from the mother country, and it was computed that of a million and a half pounds of tea which they annually consumed, not more than a tenth part came from England. This neglect Grenville resolved to terminate. The Commissioners of Customs were ordered at once to their posts. Several new revenue officers were appointed with more rigid rules for the discharge of their duties. The Board of Trade issued a circular to the colonists representing that the revenue had not kept pace with the increasing commerce, and did not yield more than one quarter of the cost of collection, and requiring that illicit commerce should be suppressed, and that proper support should be given to the Custom-house officials. English ships of war were at the same time stationed off the American coast for the purpose of intercepting smugglers.

In 1764, new measures of great severity were taken. The trade with the French West India islands and with the Spanish settlements, for molasses and sugar, had been one of the most lucrative branches of New England commerce. New England found in the French islands a market for her timber, and she obtained in return an abundant supply of the molasses required for her distilleries. The French West India islands were nearer than those of England. They were in extreme need of the timber of which New England furnished an inexhaustible supply, and they were in no less need of a market for their molasses, which had been excluded from France as interfering with French brandies, and of which enormous quantities were bought by the New England Colonies. In 1763, 14,500 hogsheads of molasses were imported into New England from the French and Spanish settlements; it was largely paid for by timber which would otherwise have rotted uselessly on the ground, and the possibility of selling this timber at a profit gave a great impulse to the necessary work of clearing land in New England. No trade could have been more clearly beneficial to both parties, and the New Englanders maintained that it was the foundation of their whole system of commerce. The distilleries of Boston, and of other parts of New England, had acquired a great magnitude. Rum was sent in large quantities to the Newfoundland fisheries and to the Indians, and it is a circumstance of peculiar and melancholy interest that it was the main article which the Americans sent to Africa in exchange for negro slaves. In the trade with the Spanish settlements the colonists obtained the greater part of the gold and silver with which they purchased English commodities, and this fact was the more important because an English Act of Parliament had recently restrained the colonists from issuing paper money.

In the interest of the English sugar colonies, which desired to obtain a monopoly for their molasses and their sugar, and which at the same time were quite incapable of