A society of Americans, pledged to work for liberty in the American colonies, which was founded in New York in 1765. It derived its name from a phrase used by Isaac Barré, in a speech in the House of Commons during the debate on the Stamp Bill in 1765. The last achievement of the Society was the convening of the Continental Congress in 1774. Sonthal Revolt. A rising of the Sonthal hillmen in India in 1855, due to dislike of the procedure of the courts of justice in enforcing the claims of Bengali moneylenders. They raided the European stations, and were not subdued without considerable difficulty. Sound Dues. A tax payable to Denmark by all foreign ships entering or quitting the Baltic. It was abolished in 1857. South Sea Bubble. A scheme professedly for trading to the Pacific, originally launched in 1711. In 1720 Sir John Blount, one of the directors, negotiated an arrangement with the Government, by which the Company took over the National Debt, amounting to some sixteen millions, the Government paying a lower rate of interest than they had been paying to the annuitants. The Company then persuaded the holders of Government Annuities to exchange them for shares in the Company. The plan was fairly successful, but led to a wild inflation in the value of the shares, and in the subsequent collapse thousands were ruined. Southampton, Treaty of. A treaty of alliance between England and Holland, signed in 1625, pledging the contracting parties to support each other against Spain, so long as she occupied any part of the Palatinate. England, however, reserved to herself the right to claim compensation from Holland for the massacre of Amboyna. Spanish Fury. The name given to the sack of Antwerp by the Spaniards under Sancho d’Avila, in 1576. It is estimated that over 7,000 of the inhabitants perished. Spanish Main. Properly the mainland between the mouth of the Orinoco and the Isthmus of Panama, but often improperly employed to denote the Caribbean Sea. Spanish Marriages. The question of the marriage of Isabella, the young Queen of Spain, nearly led to a rupture between England and Spain in 1846. Louis Philippe proposed as her husband the Duke of Cadiz, believing that such marriage would prove unfruitful. At the same time the Queen’s sister, the Infanta, was to be married to the Duc de Montpensier, with the object of eventually placing the Crown of Spain on the head of a French Prince. Palmerston proposed that the second marriage should be postponed until the Queen had issue, to which the King feigned assent, but meanwhile he and his minister, Guizot, worked on the Queen Regent to consent to the marriages taking place at once, and they were duly solemnized, causing great indignation in England. Spanish Succession, War of the.