The author has here marked the nice and peculiar feature which distinguishes the American Revolution from all others, and confers on it a degree of philosophical dignity. It was not a ferment arising from momentary impatience of existing and operating hardships; nor the result of extensive distresses pressing upon a large mass of the nation. When the people of the United Colonies rose in resistance to the mother country, they were in possession of a greater portion of all the useful means of happiness, than the mother country itself. It was not therefore a revolution originating in the belly, but the head; it was a revolution brought about by principles, not by distresses. The early emigrants to the new world, brought these principles with them from England;--every year added to their strength, and every accession of strength, brought the crisis nearer to maturity. The annals of each one of the colonies, exhibit every where evidence of the existence of this leaven of freedom, which was perpetually rising and agitating the surface; and, although like the eruption of a volcano, it broke forth at first in one particular spot, it was only from accidental causes. The whole interior was equally in a ferment, and the boiling mass must have forced a vent somewhere, and soon. It had long been evident, that, wherever the pressure should be greatest, there would be the point of resistance. That the American revolution, though unquestionably precipitated, was not produced by a sudden excitement originating in any particular measure of the British government, we think must appear to all those who read with attention the early records of our colonial history. As long ago as the year 1635, representations were made to the government of England, touching the disloyalty of the people of Massachusetts. "The Archbishop of Canterbury," says Hutchinson, "the famous High Churchman Laud, kept a jealous eye over New England. One Burdett of Piscataqua, was his correspondent. A copy of a letter to the Archbishop, wrote by Burdett, was found in his study, and to this effect: 'That he delayed going to England, that he might freely inform himself of the state of the place as to _allegiance_, for it was not new discipline which was aimed at, but _sovereignty_; and that it was accounted perjury and treason in their general court, to speak of appeals to the king.'"[4] But to return to the immediate subject before us. Dr. Von Schmidt-Phiseldek, after stating the result of this declaration in the establishment of our independence, proceeds to notice the second war between the United States and England, in which the former successfully maintained the positions she had assumed, as the grounds of hostility:--