On the last Fourth of July, the Rev. Dr. Newman, pastor of President Grant, who has finished a tour of the world, having been appointed to examine and report upon all the American Consulships of the globe, delivered a remarkable discourse on the progress of the nation, and also of the enlightened ideas and liberal institutions in Europe. In an allusion to the American Revolution, Dr. Newman says:
"Our forefathers were not slaves; they were English subjects—English freemen, and we misrepresent them and the struggle through which they fought, if we look upon them as bound with manacles. They had an appreciation of what belonged to an English subject. And because the mother country refused representation where she imposed taxation, therefore those forefathers arose in their English manhood, protested against the abuse of governmental power, and asserted that where there is taxation, there should be representation; and had Patrick Henry been admitted into the British Parliament to represent her American colonies, the United States of America to-day would have been the grandest portion of the empire of Great Britain."
In the same discourse the orator said:
"Behold England of to-day, in her rule at home, as well as in her policy towards her colonies, pressing upon her colonial possessions practical independence. She demands that they shall be so far free as to legislate for themselves, and pay their own expenses. England is now gathering together her representatives from Africa, and proposes under her benign sway to form a republican government for long-despised and down-trodden Africa. Whatever may be said of the Old East India Company under British protection, let me say, from personal observation, that from the eternal snows of the Himalayas to the spicy groves of Ceylon, India of to-day has a wise and paternal government given her by Christian England."
FOOTNOTES:
[221] Thompson's History of the War of 1812, Chap. xxx.
[222] As in the storming of the fort at York, the explosion which took place was and is a matter of dispute, and as to whether the explosion was accidental, or caused by the British; so it is a matter of unsettled dispute as to whether the explosion of Fort Erie was caused by the Americans, or was accidental. General Pike was killed in the explosion which took place in the fort at York, and Colonels Drummond and Scott were killed at the explosion of Fort Erie: many of the British and Canadians were killed in the explosion in the fort at York, but none of the Americans were killed at the explosion in Fort Erie.
[223] The greater part of the foregoing accounts of the campaign of 1814 are extracted and condensed from Thompson's and Christie's Histories of the War of 1812, compared with other histories of the same events.