The peace which had now lasted for nearly ten years was thus abruptly terminated by the outbreak into open rebellion of the North American colonies, which led on to their Declaration of Independence. I was never anything of a politician, and I must confess that at that period of my existence I troubled myself very little about the rights of the case, though even then I had a lurking idea that the colonists were not quite the ragamuffins some people would have had us suppose. They had no fancy, it appeared, to pay taxes without having a voice as to the employment of their money or interest in the objects on which it was expended. The British Government and the upper classes generally at home had always treated the inhabitants of the colonies as if they considered them an inferior race, and almost beyond the pale of civilisation. This conduct had naturally caused much discontent and ill feeling, and made the colonists more ready to resent and oppose any attempt to curtail their rights and privileges. What was called the Stamp Act met with the first organised opposition. The Government offices were in many places pulled down, while the Governor of New York and other promoters of the Act were burnt in effigy. Many influential colonists then bound themselves to make use of no articles on which duties had been levied; while the people of Boston, proceeding a step farther, rather than pay the duty imposed by the British Government, threw into the sea the cargoes of several ships sent there by the East India Company laden with tea. This proceeding of the inhabitants of Boston induced the British Government to send General Gage, with an army, to take up his quarters there, with the intention of coercing them. The belief that arbitrary Government was about to be established throughout the colonies made the people in every direction rise in arms. A rebel force, consisting of several thousand men, began to collect in the neighbourhood of the above-mentioned city. Petition after petition and remonstrance after remonstrance had been sent over to England in vain. The great Lord Chatham and the famous Mr Edmund Burke had pleaded the cause of the patriots with all the mighty eloquence they possessed; but without altering the resolution of the King or the Government. The celebrated Dr Franklin, already well known in England and America as a philosopher as well as a statesman, had come over to England to plead the cause of his countrymen, but had returned hopeless of effecting his object. What treatment, after this, could the colonists expect, if they yielded to the dictates of the mother-country?