NOTE.--This pamphlet is a disguised attack on the Prussia of 1866 for seizing and holding Hesse-Cassel, along with Hanover and Brunswick, as part of its own kingdom, driving the Elector of Cassel and the King of Hanover into exile. The author is clearly a champion of the lost cause, and seeks to justify it by rewriting the history of Hesse and Prussia of a hundred years before. He aims at elevating the claims of the Hessian electoral family in the eyes of their former subjects and of the rest of the world, and in depreciating the part taken by Prussia both at the time of the American War of Independence and in enlarging its own borders and increasing its power at the expense of the small sovereign states of Germany, whose princes opposed the aggression of Prussia and its claim to control the whole of Germany. It was the beginning of that series of advances which culminated in the establishment of the German Empire as the outcome of the war with France in 1870. Having crushed out all opposition within and near its borders, having driven the Elector of Hesse away and forced the King of Hanover into a hopeless resistance, Prussia granted its permission to Baden and Bavaria and Hesse-Darmstadt and Wurtemberg and Saxony and Weimar and a few petty local princes to live on just as long as its own supremacy was recognized and extended. The Franco-German War consolidated the power of Prussia, and its king became the German emperor. Naturally the exiled sovereigns had friends, and they sought to make their claims known. A former Hanoverian Prime Minister wrote novels in which the kind King of Hanover and his allies figured in most heroic guise. The friend of the exiled Elector of Cassel defended his prince by showing the real nature of the alliance between Hesse-Cassel and England a hundred years ago, and thus throwing on Prussia the burden of the responsibility of driving away a prince whose ancestors had done great service to his people. For American students of history this pamphlet has a certain value and interest as throwing a new light on part of our own history, and as showing that there is justification for the Hessians in their alliance with Great Britain and in their service in this country in the resistance made by the mother country to the claim of the colonies to independence. The successful outcome of the American Revolution made it difficult to secure a patient hearing of the other side. Even at this late day, therefore, the foregoing abstract of the "Defence of the Hessians" may not be without value and interest. The authorship of the pamphlet is not as yet made public, but it is evidently the work of a man loyal to the Elector of Hesse-Cassel and earnest in defending his ancestors.--J. G. R.