After having consented to read a paper on the subject which has already been announced, I do not think it would be quite proper for me to begin with apologies. That they are needed I confess at once, but then they should have been thought of before. How often have we heard the expression, "Circumstances alter cases," and this is just why I put in my plea. If I had not been preceded by gentlemen whose ability and attainments are far and away beyond mine, I should not have said a word. But when these persons, some of whom finished their education in British Universities, who have trodden the classic shores of Italy and mused over the magnificent monuments of her past greatness, or wandered through old German towns, where Christian liberty was born and cradled; who have ranged the spacious halls of Parisian Institutes, or sauntered in places where many historic scenes have been enacted in grand old England--when these persons, I repeat, must crave your indulgence, how much more earnestly should I plead, whose travels are bounded in the radius of a few hundred miles; and whose collegiate course began, and I may say ended, in the country school-house with which many of you are familiar. What wonderful scholars those early teachers were. "Amazed _we_, gazing rustics, rang'd around; And still _we_ gaz'd, and still our wonder grew That one small head could carry all he knew." It is no wonder that we were often awed by their intellectual profundity, nor that they gave our youthful brains an impetus which sent them bounding through the severe curriculum we had to face. The narrow-minded and unyielding policy of George III., as every one now admits it to have been, brought about the American Revolution, and gave birth to the American Republic. As always happens in every great movement, there were two sides to this question, not only between Great Britain and her colonists, but among the colonists themselves. One side clamoured boldly for their rights, and, if need were, separation. The other side shrank from a contest with the mother land, and preferred a more peaceful solution of their difficulties. A moderate degree of liberality on the part of the British Government would have appeased the demands of the malcontents, and another destiny whether for better or worse, might have been in store for the American people. But those were days when the policy of the nation was stern and uncompromising, when the views of trade were narrow and contracted, when justice was untempered with mercy, and when men were bigoted and pugnacious. Protracted wars consumed the revenues and made many draughts on the national purse, and when the trade of the colonies was laid under contribution, they refused the demand.