The King of France taxed his colonies, the King of Spain filled his purse, unhampered, from the pockets of Mexico and Peru and Cuba and Porto Rico--from whatever pocket into which he could put his hand, and the Dutch were doing the same without the slightest question of their right to do it.

Our quarrel with the mother country and our breaking away from her in spite of the extremely light rein she was driving us with, rested in reality upon very slender justification.

If ever our authors read of the meeting between Franklin, Rutledge, and Adams with General Howe, after the Battle of Long Island, I think they may have felt that we had almost no grievance at all.

The plain truth of it was, we had been allowed for so long to be so nearly free that we determined to be free entirely, no matter what England conceded.

Therefore these authors of our school textbooks felt that they needed to bolster our cause up for the benefit of the young.