pendence, they acted upon the petitions of the colonies that wished to institute governments of their own. On the second in committee, on the third in the house, it was "recommended to the provincial convention of New Hampshire to call a full and free representation of the people, and, if they think it necessary, establish a government." On the fourth, the same advice was extended to South Carolina. Here was the daybreak of revolution.

The legislature of Pennsylvania continued to require its members to subscribe the old qualification appointed by law, which included the promise of allegiance to George III.; so that Franklin, who was elected for Philadelphia through the Irish and the Presbyterians, could never take his seat. Dickinson had been returned for the county by the concurring vote of patriots who confided in his integrity, of loyalists who looked upon him as their last hope, of Quakers who trusted his regard for peace, of the proprietary party whose cause he always vindicated. The assembly, on the fourth, elected nine delegates to the continental congress. Then, on the ninth, Dickinson, with the king's late proclamation before him, reported and carried this instruction to the Pennsylvania delegates: "Though the oppressive measures of the British parliament and administration have compelled us to resist their violence by force of arms, yet we strictly enjoin you, that you, in behalf of this colony, dissent from and utterly reject any propositions, should such be made, that may cause or lead to a separation from our mother country, or a change of the form of this government." Nevertheless, the assembly approved the military association of all who had no scruples about bearing arms, adopted rules for volunteer battalions, and appropriated eighty thousand pounds in provincial paper money to defray the expenses of a military preparation. The assembly sat with closed doors, and would not allow the names of the voters on the division to be recorded in their journal.

Delaware was swayed by the example of its more powerful neighbor; the party of the proprietary in Maryland took courage; in a few weeks the assembly of New Jersey restrained its delegates in congress by an equally stringent declaration.

The majority in the continental congress were ready for in

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dependence; but acquiesced in waiting for unanimity in its adoption. They became more resolute, more thorough, and more active; they recalled their absent members; they welcomed trophies of victory from Canada. Without as yet opening the commerce of the continent by a general act, they empowered a committee to export provisions or produce to the foreign West Indies at the risk of the continent, in order to purchase the materials of war. In November they adopted "rules for the government of the American navy," directed the enlistment of two battalions of marines, authorized the seizure of all ships employed as carriers for the British fleet or army, and sanctioned tribunals instituted in the separate colonies to confiscate their cargoes. The captures made under the authority of Washington they confirmed. To meet the further expenses of the war, they voted bills of credit for three millions more.

"It is an immense misfortune to the whole empire," wrote Jefferson to a refugee on the twenty-ninth of November, "to have a king of such a disposition at such a time. We are told, and everything proves it true, that he is the bitterest enemy we have; his minister is able, and that satisfies me that ignorance or wickedness somewhere controls him. Our petitions told him that from our king there was but one appeal. The admonition was despised, and that appeal forced on us. After colonies have drawn the sword, there is but one step more they can take. That step is now pressed upon us by the measures adopted, as if they were afraid we would take it. There is not in the British empire a man who more cordially loves a union with Great Britain than I do; but, by the God that made me, I will cease to exist before I yield to a connection on such terms as the British parliament propose; and in this I speak the sentiments of America."

"I know what my duty to my country makes me undertake, and threats cannot prevent me from doing that to the utmost extent," said George III. The parties of Rockingham and Chatham were defied as the accomplices of rebels; it was the fixed plan of the king and ministers to lay America waste if she could not be reduced.* Britain and Ireland could

* De Guines, 11 and 25 August 1775. MS.

spare few troops to execute these designs; but the British king scrupled as little as his ministers to engage foreign hirelings wherever they chanced to be in the market; and had in contemplation a scheme of stupendous grandeur for obtaining a subsidiary army by negotiations at Moscow with the sovereign who claimed to hold the sceptre of Constantine.

From the moment when the Empress Catharine II., as a young bride, set her foot on Russian soil, it became her fixed purpose to seize on absolute power and govern alone. Though she mixed trifling pastimes with application to business, and for her recreation sought the company of the young and the gay, she far excelled those around her in industry and knowledge. Frederic said of her, that she had an infinity of talent and no religion; yet, after going over to the Greek church, she played the devotee. There was in her nature a mixture of fancy and calculation. Distinguished for vivacity of thought and for the most laborious attention to affairs, capable of prompt energy and of patient waiting, very proud of the greatness and power of her empire, her intercourse with all her subjects was marked by mildness and grace; and she made almost incredible exertions as a monarch to be useful even to the meanest, to benefit the future as well as the present age. She had known sorrow, and could feel for and relieve distress. She translated Marmontel's Belisarius into Russian as a lesson of toleration, relieved the poverty of Diderot by a lasting provision, and invited Alembert to superintend the education of her son, who was to be her successor. One day she proposed to the imperial academy the question of the emancipation of serfs; and she suffered the printing of a dissertation having for its motto, "In favorem libertatis omnia jura clamant," "All right clamors for freedom." Tragedy, comedy, music, wearied her; she had no taste but to build, or to regulate her court; no ambition but to rule and to make a great name. In the crowd of courtiers, who were all eager for advancement, she compared herself to a hare worried by many hounds; and among an unscrupulous nobility, in a land which was not that of her birth, she was haunted by a feeling of insecurity and an unrest of soul. But those around

her were not offended at the completeness with which she

belonged to a century representing the supremacy of the

senses.

Her first minister was Panin, and he was acknowledged to be the fittest man for the post, without whom no council was held, no decision taken in foreign or domestic affairs. He was more persistent than bold, and was guided by experience rather than comprehensive views. He had the faults of pride, inflexibility, and dilatoriness; but he was unapproachable by corruption. At home, his political principles led him to desire some limitation of the power of the sovereign by a council of nobles; toward foreign states he was free from rancor. It had been the policy of France to save Poland by stirring up Sweden and Turkey against Russia; yet Panin did not misjudge the relations of Russia to France. With England he wanted no treaty except with stipulations for aid in the contingency of a war of Russia with the Ottoman Porte, and, as that condition could not be obtained, he always declined her alliance.

One day Panin happened to inquire of the British minister the news from America. Gunning seized the moment to answer that the measures in progress would shortly end the rebellion; then, as if hurried by excess of zeal to utter an unauthorized speculation of his own, he asked leave to acquaint his king that, "in case the circumstances of affairs should render any foreign forces necessary, he might reckon upon a body of her imperial majesty's infantry." It was the interest and policy of Russia to preserve the favor of the British king and his ministry. The answer of the empress, which Panin, on the morning of the eighth of August, reported to the British minister, carefully avoided mention of the request for subsidiary troops, but expressed gratitude for favors received from England during her last war, and she charged Panin to repeat her very words, that " she found in herself an innate affection for the British nation which she should always cherish." The envoy interpreted a woman's discreet reticence and lavish sentimentality as a promise of twenty thousand infantry.

Gunning's despatch from Moscow was received in London on the first day of September, with elation. That very day Suffolk prepared the answer to the minister. To Catharine, George himself with his own hand wrote: "I accept the suc

cor that your majesty offers me of a part of your troops, whom the acts of rebellion of my subjects in some of my colonies in America unhappily require; I shall provide my minister with the necessary full powers; nothing shall ever efface from my memory the offer your imperial majesty has made to me on this occasion." Gunning was ordered to ask for twenty thousand disciplined men, completely equipped and prepared on the opening of the Baltic in spring to embark by way of England for Canada, where they were to serve under the British general. The journey from London to Moscow required about twenty-three days; yet they all were confident of receiving the definitive promise by the twenty-third of October, in season to announce it at the opening of parliament; and Lord Dartmouth hurried off messages to Howe and to Carleton, that the empress of Russia had given the most ample assurances of letting them have any number of infantry that might be wanted.

On the eighth, Suffolk despatched a second courier to Gunning, with a project of a treaty for two years, within which the king and his ministers were confident of crushing the insurrection. The levy money might be seven pounds sterling a man, payable one half in advance, the other on embarkation. A subsidy was not to be refused. "I will not conceal from you," wrote Suffolk to Gunning, "that, this accession of force being very earnestly desired, expense is not so much an object as in ordinary cases." Gigantic bribery was authorized.

On the tenth, Gunning poured out to the empress assurances of the most inviolable attachment of England. "Has any progress been made," she asked, with the utmost coolness, "toward settling your dispute in America?" and, without waiting for an answer, she added: "For God's sake, put an end to it as soon as possible, and do not confine yourselves to one method of accomplishing this desirable end; there are other means of doing it than force of arms, and they ought all to be tried. You know my situation has lately been full as embarrassing, and, believe me, I did not rest my certainty of success upon one mode of acting. There are moments when we must not be too rigorous. The interest I take in everything that concerns you makes me speak thus freely upon this subject."