Albert Bushnell Hart

Washington's defeat in 1754 was followed by active military preparations on both sides.

On March 10, 1764, preliminary resolutions passed the House of Commons looking towards the Stamp Act.

Everywhere among the English-speaking race criminal justice was rude, and punishments were barbarous; but the tendency was to do away with special privileges and legal exemptions.

From William of Orange to William Pitt the younger there was but one man without whom English history must have taken a different turn, and that was William Pitt the elder.

Each colony became accustomed to planting new settlements and to claiming new boundaries.

In some of the middle colonies the towns and counties were both active and had a relation with each other which was the forerunner of the present system of local government in the Western States.

Besides paid white laborers, there was everywhere a class of white servants bound without wages for a term of years, and a more miserable class of Negro slaves.

The Stuart sovereigns of England steadily attempted to strengthen their power, and the resistance to that effort caused an immense growth of Parliamentary influence.

One of the strongest and most persistent elements in national development has been that inheritance of political traditions and usages which the new settlers brought with them.

In government as well as in trade a new era came to the colonies in 1763.

In appearance the labor system of all the colonies was the same.

In comparison with other men of their time, the Americans were distinguished by the possession of new political and social ideas, which were destined to be the foundation of the American commonwealth.