In September, 1744, there met at Philadelphia, then our foremost city, representatives of each of the thirteen colonies, called together on account of the increasing difficulties which had arisen with the mother country. These difficulties arose mainly from the tendency of parliament to govern the colonies as it would, say, any county of England. This right the Americans denied. They were good subjects of the King, but they objected to parliamentary rule. The underlying idea which governed the action of the Americans was thus that of a federalism which only in these latter days has laid hold in any considerable degree of the minds of the English, who now debate the possibility of England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa becoming states of a federation somewhat akin to our own. But at the time of the outbreak of our Revolution there was no widespread idea of separation. It was, however, in the air, and by some openly advocated. Had there been a complete renouncement of the right of parliament to make laws governing the colonies there would, for the time at least, have been a reconciliation. It was upon this principle we divided. Thus the war began. There was at this time on our coast a British naval force of four ships of from seventy to fifty guns (these at Boston), and twenty from twenty to six guns distributed from New Hampshire to Florida. The whole was a very moderate force considering the long-standing discontent and the difficulties of the existing situation. The British navy, in which, as in the administration of every other department of the British public service of the period, inefficiency and dishonesty reigned to an almost unbelievable degree, had been allowed to run down sadly after the Seven Years’ War which ended in 1763. The total number of ships was but 270 and the number of seamen but 18,000. Before the war closed the ships were to number 468, of which 174 were ships-of-the-line (carrying from sixty to one hundred guns), and the seamen were to number 110,000. The situation of the United States was much akin to that of the Southern Confederacy. Its resources were too meagre to carry on a war without the importation of much that was necessary to keep an army in efficiency. Thus the true plan of England was a strict blockade and the reduction to inanition of our forces, such as we ourselves carried on against the South in our Civil War. This action was advocated strongly by Viscount Barrington, the Secretary for War, who urged that the navy only should be employed, and that the ships should take possession of all our ports and establish a complete blockade. Fortunately for the revolutionists, his advice was not heeded.