| | 1 | Author: | Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Gray Champion  | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | THERE was once a time when New England groaned under the actual
pressure of heavier wrongs than those threatened ones which brought
on
the Revolution. James II., the bigoted successor of Charles the
Voluptuous, had annulled the charters of all the colonies, and sent
a
harsh and
unprincipled soldier to take away our liberties and endanger our
religion.
The administration of Sir Edmund Andros lacked scarcely a single
characteristic of tyranny: a Governor and Council, holding office
from
the
King, and wholly independent of the country; laws made and taxes
levied without concurrence of the people immediate or by their
representatives; the rights of private citizens violated, and the
titles of
all landed
property declared void; the voice of complaint stifled by
restrictions on
the press; and, finally, disaffection overawed by the first band of
mercenary troops that ever marched on our free soil. For two years
our
ancestors were kept in sullen submission by that filial love which
had invariably secured their allegiance to the mother country,
whether
its head
chanced to be a Parliament, Protector, or Popish Monarch. Till
these evil
times, however, such allegiance had been merely nominal, and the
colonists had ruled themselves, enjoying far more freedom than is
even
yet the
privilege of the native subjects of Great Britain. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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