"The fifth and sixth volumes of Lord Mahon's History of England from the peace of Utrecht, have for a leading subject the early years of the American Revolutionary War. Writing from the English point of view, the proceedings of Parliament and the English side of the story naturally form the foreground of the picture, while the affairs of the colonies themselves--certainly the most interesting as well as the most important, not for Americans only, but for all historical students--fall into a distant perspective. The American part of Lord Mahon's book is very slight in its execution, made up mostly of anecdotes and extracts of letters, good as illustrations, but hardly as substance; indicating often but a superficial knowledge on the part of the writer, and conveying to the reader no distinct or connected idea of the American side of the story. With a great show of candour, 'My Lord' also evinces throughout a somewhat anxious desire to depreciate the 'rebels.' Thus Franklin is pursued with pitiful but persevering rancour, charged with falsehood and duplicity, because he, like most of the other Americans of that day, arrived at the point of separation and independence only by gradual steps; because his opinions and views of 1769 and 1775 did not correspond altogether with those of 1795; and because he appears to have spoken--as what was more natural?--with somewhat more of freedom and with greater dislike of the British connexion among his intimate associates than when addressing himself to the British ministry or to British statesmen.