George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 5, 13th edition.

[289] it was insisted, ‘is to add dulness to impiety.’ For

chap. XIV.} 1765. June.

‘tyranny,’ they cried, ‘is no government; the gospel promises liberty, glorious liberty.’ ‘The gospel,’ so preached Mayhew, of Boston, always, ‘the gospel permits resistance.’¹

And then patriots would become maddened with remembering, that ‘some high or low American had had a hand in procuring every grievance.’ ‘England,’ it was said, ‘is deceived and deluded by placemen and office-seekers.’ ‘Yes,’ exclaimed the multitude; ‘it all comes of the horse-leeches.’ When ‘the friends to government’ sought to hush opposition by terror of the power of parliament and its jealousy of its own supremacy, ‘you are cowards,’ was the answer; ‘you are fools; you are parasites; or, rather, you are parricides.’²

‘Power is a sad thing,’ said the Presbyterians of Philadelphia; ‘our mother should remember we are children and not slaves.’³ ‘When all Israel saw that the king hearkened not unto them,’ such was the response of the Calvinists of the North, ‘the people answered the king, saying: ‘What portion have we in David? what inheritance in the son of Jesse? To your tents, O Israel! Now see to thine own house, David!’’⁴ ‘Who cares,’ said the more hardy, ‘whether George or Louis is the sovereign, if both are alike?’⁵ ‘The beast of burden,’ continued others, ‘asks not whose pack it carries.’⁶ ‘I would bear allegiance to King George,’ said one who called himself a lover of truth, ‘but not be a slave to his British subjects.’⁷