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and to manufacture what they pleased became of greater importance to the colonists, until finally the restrictions in these respects grew insupportable. In regard to the question of taxation, the people of Massachusetts at an early date strongly disputed the right of taxation without representation. As time went on, this sentiment spread to the other colonies, and had become vigorously implanted in the minds of all Americans by the era immediately preceding the Revolution. That principle which had been long fought for and eventually gained in the home country, that the people, through their representatives, alone had the power to lay taxes, was naturally claimed in America as an essential requisite of a representative government; and it was mainly to the effort of the English authorities to deprive the colonists of this right that the American Revolution was due."

The stirring events that were enacted during the half century that preceded 1776 have been fully described in their proper place in this work, and need not be dwelt upon here. The Revolution was, indeed, no spasmodic protest against a specific oppression, but rather the logical outcome of all that had gone before. It might have been averted; but in that case the preventative must have been applied long years before even the keenest-eyed of English statesmen could have seen and understood the danger of the future.

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GEORGE WASHINGTON.

CHAPTER I.

GENEALOGY.

N writing the life of George Washington, the first President, as he was by military leadership almost the creator, of the greatest Republic in history, the author meets the necessity of tracing back to the remotest possible limit, the history of the family to which he belonged. The word necessity is used advisedly, for it may well be held, that a man of Washington's most distinguished and illustrious character and accomplishments is not properly to be judged by the immediate circumstances of his birth, the environment of his youth, or the influences that tended to mold and define his character during the flexible age intervening between boyhood and full maturity. If there be any reliability in the doctrine of heredity, the antecedents of a great man should be as relevant to his life as is a statement of the elements mingled in the test tube of the chemist to the reaction that results.

In the case of Washington are to be found particular reasons for crediting the belief that the character and intellect of the father, like his sins, are indeed visited upon the children, unto the third, fourth, and remaining generations; and did we lack another explanation of his ability, force, and integrity. his unwavering bravery and patriotic devotion, that trite and much abused phrase, noblesse oblige, would suggest one quite sufficient.

Paradoxical as it may appear, Washington owed his name, though not his blood, to an accident. Probably the family from which he sprang antedated in position and wealth the Norman conquest. That it held place and power in the century immediately succeeding that important event is beyond cavil.

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