[Pamphlets. American history]

36
all, the transcendent character of Washington, furnished
the needed assurance of the solidity of the cause; and
the world is soon astonished by the spectacle of the oldest monarchy of Europe in alliance with the family of
infant states. The fleets and armies of France, led by
the flower of her young men,-and foremost by our own
Lafayette,-are enlisted in the mighty struggle. The
North of Europe takes her haughty stand on the armed
neutrality; and even Spain, mistress herself of a colonial
empire in America, twice as large as that of Great Britain, is driven by the irresistible force of circumstances to
take a part in the contest, and to teach a lesson of revolution to her own dependencies, destined in one more
generation to be put in practice, from California to Cape
Horn.
III. The assertion of Independence, practically by
engaging in open war with the parent country, and
avowedly by the great declaration of 1776, left the colonies without a government, either as individuals or as
a confederacy. The third great step in the revolution
was accordingly the establishment of a republican government in each of the colonies; and never, I suppose,
in the history of the world, was an event of so much importance brought about, with such an entire absence of
all the usual appliances of policy or force. There is
abundant proof, that the most advanced leaders of the
patriotic cause, had, as late as the spring of 1775, scarcely turned their thoughts to the subject of instituting a
new government. They were the unselfish agents of a
spontaneous change; not the skilful achievers of a suc