As England had to have another king, they asked a distant relative of the royal family over from one of the German states to rule England. Yes, from Germany to rule England. His name was George, and the English called him George I. George couldn’t even speak English. He was German and loved his own country much better than England, but he had agreed to come and rule over England, and he did so. You can imagine what sort of a king he was. His son, George II ruled after him, although he, too, was more German than English. But when the grandson, George III, came to the throne he was a born and bred Englishman. It was in this grandson’s reign, in the reign of George III, that our own country, the United States, was born. When a wheel turns over we call it a _revolution_, which is a big name for a little thing. When a _country_ turns over we also call it a revolution, which is a big name for a big thing. Our country had started with the two little settlements, or colonies, as they were called, of Jamestown and Plymouth. But it had grown and grown until there were now a number of settlements along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. Most of the people who had settled here were English, and the king of England ruled over them. The king asked all these people to send him money, which was called taxes. Now, the money collected from taxes was not, of course, for the king to put in his pocketbook to use as he liked. It was supposed to be spent on the people who were taxed, to be used for roads, schools, police, and such things that are for the good of all. So these people along the coast who were paying money or taxes to the king far off across the water thought they ought to have a vote to say how this money should be spent and on what it should be spent. But they did not have a vote, and so they thought they ought not to have to pay taxes to the king away off in England. One of the leading citizens of America at this time was a man named Benjamin Franklin. He was the son of a candlemaker, but from a poor boy who had once walked the streets of Philadelphia with a loaf of bread under each arm he had risen to a very honored position in the country. He had learned to be a printer and had started one of the first and best newspapers in the United States. He was a great thinker and had invented a stove and a lamp and had succeeded in getting electricity from the lightning in the clouds by flying a kite with a wire during a storm. He was one of the Wise Men of the West. Franklin was sent over to England to try to get the king to change his mind about taxing the colonies or to bring about some sort of agreement with him. But King George was hardheaded, and Franklin was unable to stop the king from doing what he had made up his mind to do.