Name some country, other than England, which could have given birth to the
United States. Prove your proposition.
The Duc de Choiseul, the French minister who signed the treaty whereby France yielded to England her claims to American soil, remarked after doing it, "That is the beginning of the end of English power in America." What did he mean? Upon what did he base his opinion? Why did France help the Americans in the Revolutionary War?
What is meant, in speaking of the colonies, by royal province? Charter government? Proprietary government?
What experience in law making did the colonists have? Where and when did the first representative assembly in America convene? Find in the Declaration of Independence an expression complaining of non-representation in parliament.
To the patriotic and far sighted men who had striven to form a union of the colonies, did the religious differences which frustrated their plans seem fortunate or unfortunate? Can you see how it came about that we have no state church, that we enjoy religious freedom? Doesn't it seem that there must have been a Planner wiser than any man who was working out His own designs?
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION.
WHAT PRECEDED THEM.
The Revolutionary Period.—The nation was born July 4, 1776. From that time until the adoption of the articles of confederation in 1781 the people of the United States carried on their governmental affairs by means of a congress "clothed with undefined powers for the general good."
This congress had, speaking "in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies," issued the declaration of independence; it had entered into an alliance with France; and it had prosecuted the war almost to a successful issue, before it had received any definite warrant for its acts. Its acts were justified by necessity, and had their authority in the "common consent" of a majority of the people. During nearly all of the revolutionary war, the people of the colonies were largely "held together by their fears."