Ours arose at the close of the Revolution, and the leading parties to them were the Whigs, through whose instrumentality, under favor of Providence, our Independence had been established. They and the Tories constituted our entire population, and the latter had at first, for obvious reasons, but little to do in the formation of parties, save to throw themselves in a body into the ranks of one of them. It became at once evident that great differences of opinion existed among the Whigs in respect to the character of the government that should be substituted for that which had been overthrown, and also in respect to the spirit and principles which should control the administration of that which might be established. These spread through the country with great rapidity, and were respectively maintained with a zeal and determination which proved that they were not produced by the feelings or impulses of the moment. To ascertain the origin of those differences, and to trace their effects, we can adopt no safer course than to look to the antecedents of the actors in the stirring political scenes that followed the close of the war, to the characters and opinions of their ancestors, from whom they had naturally imbibed their first ideas of government either directly or traditionally, and to the incidents of the memorable struggle from which the country had just emerged. The great principle first formally avowed by Rousseau, "that the right to exercise sovereignty belongs inalienably to the people," sprung up spontaneously in the hearts of the colonists, and silently influenced all their acts from the beginning. The condition of the country in which they settled,--a wilderness occupied besides themselves only by savage tribes,--to which many of them were driven by the fiercest persecutions ever known to the civilized world, and the stern self-reliance and independent spirit which most of them had acquired in contests with iron fortune that preceded their exile, combined to induce the cultivation and to secure the permanent growth of such a sentiment. Not being, however, for several generations, in a suitable condition, and from counteracting inducements not even disposed to dispute the pretensions of the Crown to their allegiance, they were content to look principally to its patents and other concessions for the measure of their rights. But their views were greatly changed, and their advance on the road to freedom materially accelerated, by the English Revolution of 1688. The final overthrow of James II., from whose tyrannical acts, as well in the character of Duke of York as in that of King, they had severely suffered, was not the greatest advantage the colonists derived from that Revolution. The principles upon which that most important of European movements was founded, and the doctrines it consecrated, paved the way to a result which, though not upon their tongues, or perhaps to any great extent the subject of their meditations as immediately