The story of this inheritance is filled with deeds of heroes. These heroes lived and died, not to win glory for themselves, but to win freedom for their fellows. Sometimes they were English barons, daring to defy a wicked king, and forcing him to sign a Great Charter that gave them a share in the government. Sometimes they were the peasants seeking the right to live more comfortably. Sometimes they were statesmen who secured for Parliament the right to levy taxes and to be consulted about the way England was to be ruled, and the right to drive a selfish tyrant from the throne. And sometimes they were the farmers and village men forming in battle line at Lexington and Concord. It is a long story that you will read, in many places, not all of it at one time; but little by little you will come to see what meaning lies in the simple words “our inheritance of freedom,” and then you will be ready to give your time, and if need be, your life, to keep this inheritance and to hand it on to those who will speak the English tongue when you are dead. Only a few bits of the story can be given here. You will read something about Scotland’s struggle for the right to be governed by her own people, not by the tyrannical kings who then ruled England and who looked upon Scotland as a mere province fit only to supply money for their selfish desires. Next you will read several selections which show that the tyranny against which Wallace and Bruce fought, like the tyranny against which Warren and Washington and Patrick Henry fought, did not spring from the English spirit, but from kings who tried to keep even Englishmen in slavery. It is all one story—at one time the action takes place in Scotland, at another in England, at still another time in America; but the story is the story of our inheritance of freedom. “We must be free or die”—these words express the spirit of all who speak the English tongue. The stories of Wallace and Bruce tell it. The story of the last fight of the _Revenge_ tells it—a story written by the man who first began to plant English colonies in America, and who helped defend England against the tyranny which King Philip of Spain tried to establish. The stories of the Gray Champion, and of Warren at Bunker Hill, and of Patrick Henry of Virginia, and of Washington and Marion, are also a part of the great story of our inheritance of freedom. You should keep this always in mind: the heroes who made good the Declaration of Independence and set up a new and freer government in America were men whose ideals of freedom came to them from England. They did not fight against the English _people_. Their spirit was also the fundamental English spirit. Many of the greatest Englishmen of that period used every effort to win fair treatment for the colonies, sympathized with their struggle for independence and rejoiced when at last George III and his ministers were told that America would no longer submit to oppression.