privileges of one hundred and fifty years in any way compromised, disturbed, or imperilled. This was the spirit of Franklin, in his "Hints for a Reply to the Protest of the Lords against the Repeal of the Stamp Act:" "I will freely spend nineteen shillings in the pound," said he, "to defend my right of giving or refusing the other shilling; and, after all, if I cannot defend that right, I can retire cheerfully with my little family into the boundless woods of America, which are sure to afford freedom and subsistence to any man who can bait a hook or pull a trigger." This was the spirit of Otis when he complained that Parliament regarded the British colonies in America rather as "a parcel of small, insignificant conquered islands, than as very extensive settlement on the continent," with a future of unlimited development in store. This, too, was the spirit of Hawley, when, with a boldness outstripping that of Otis himself, he said, "The Parliament of Great Britain has no right to legislate for us." The latter sentence is memorable as being the first instance in which the power of the British Parliament was distinctly denied in a colonial legislature. Still, side by side with these strong assertions of independence, there existed curiously enough an almost equally strong feeling of reluctance to sever the long-standing relation between the colonies and the mother country. England was still "home," even in the language of James Otis, as is clear from his correspondence, in which he speaks of certain legal decisions as being "sent _home_ for approbation." Though all were agreed as to the character and tendency of such acts of the imperial legislature as the Stamp Act, the Revenue Act, the Port Bill, and the Billeting Bill, hopes were entertained to the last that some method of solution would be eventually discovered that would avert the disaster of revolution. "In America," said Rev. Andrew Elliot, a popular and much-respected minister in Boston, "the people glory in the name, and only desire to enjoy the liberties of England." And he added, significantly enough, "Oppression makes wise men mad." Even Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to John Randolph, as late as 1775, expressed his decided preference "to be dependent on England under proper limitation, to being dependent on any other nation, or on no nation whatsoever." "We strongly enjoin you," said the Pennsylvania Assembly, November 9, 1775, largely influenced by Farmer Dickenson, in its instructions to its delegates, "that you, in behalf of this colony, dissent from and utterly reject any proposition, should such be made, that may cause or lead to a separation from our mother country, or a change of the form of this government." In almost identical words the Assembly of New Jersey expressed its dread of "separation from England." "For what are we to encounter the horrors of war?" asked a writer in the _New York Gazette_, April 8, 1776, as quoted by Mr. Oscar Straus, in his admirable little