"
"But did not America acquiesce in the dethronement of the Stuarts?" asked
Eve, in whom the love of the right was stronger even than the love
of country.
"Beyond a doubt, though America neither foresaw nor acquiesced in all the
results. The English themselves, probably, did not' foresee the
consequences of their own revolution; for we now find England almost in
arms against the consequences of the very subversion of the kingly power
of which I have spoken. In England it placed a portion of the higher
classes in possession of authority, at the expense of all the rest of the
nation; whereas, as respects America, it set a remote people to rule over
her, instead of a prince, who had the same connexion with his colonies as
with all the rest of his subjects. The late English reform is a peaceable
revolution; and America would very gladly have done the same thing, could
she have extricated herself from the consequences, by mere acts of
congress. The whole difference is, that America, pressed upon by peculiar
circumstances, preceded England in the revolt about sixty years, and that
this revolt was against an usurper, and not against the legitimate
monarch, or against the sovereign himself."
"I confess all this is novel to me," exclaimed Sir George.
"I have told you, Sir George Templemore, that, if you stay long enough in
America, many novel ideas will suggest themselves.
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