It is well that the people of the United States propose to celebrate its one hundred and fiftieth anniversary this year; for, more than any other event in their colonial history, it gave them confidence in the power of untrained men of spirit to overcome the hireling soldiers of the European governments. But the action of the British government at the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, in restoring this fortress to the French, gave the colonists an equally necessary lesson. What did England get in exchange? The already mentioned Assiento, that famous compact which gave to England the right to ship slaves to the Spanish colonies, was confirmed for the four years it still had to run; and the fortress of Madras, which had been taken by the French in 1746, was restored to England in 1748 by the treaty. Even the most selfish and heartless of British politicians may doubt whether the true interests of his country were served by abandoning the American fortress for that of India; but the American statesman will not fail to see in the conduct of England towards her American colonists in this transaction a justification not alone for the Declaration of Independence, but also for that Monroe doctrine which, in its fullest application, will prevent the interference of any European power in the affairs of any part of America, not excluding Newfoundland. The Treaty of Paris, in 1763, which made Great Britain practically master of North America, produced no change in the position of the 13,000 settlers then in Newfoundland. For them the London government cared nothing. The provisions of the treaty, by which France gave up Canada to England, only served to emphasize more strongly the injustice done by England to her Catholic population, both in Ireland and in Newfoundland. In 1719 the Irish Privy Council, all tools of England; actually proposed to the London government that every unregistered priest or friar remaining in Ireland after the 1st of May, 1720, should be castrated; and, although the English ministers did not accept this suggestion, they adopted one that such priests should have a large P branded with a red-hot iron on their cheeks. It can be hardly wondered at that the more honest Irishmen sought refuge from such infamies either in foreign service or in the colonies; and many of them came to Newfoundland, only to find that the Church of England spirit of persecution was rampant there also.