The loyal servants of the
British crown had given to one of these forest-fastnesses the name of William Henry, and to the other that of Fort Edward, calling each after a favorite prince of the reigning family.
The Indians left my men in captivity with the
British at Detroit, and on the tenth day of April brought me towards Old Chelicothe, where we arrived on the twenty-fifth day of the same month.
Prior to the Revolution there is a dearth of records; the earlier documents and archives of the Custom-House having, probably, been carried off to Halifax, when all the king's officials accompanied the
British army in its flight from Boston.
There was the story of Doffue Martling, a large blue-bearded Dutchman, who had nearly taken a
British frigate with an old iron nine-pounder from a mud breastwork, only that his gun burst at the sixth discharge.
Back of those men's time the English are just simply foreigners, nothing more, nothing less; they talk Danish, German, Norman French, and sometimes a mixture of all three; back of THEM, they talk Latin, and ancient
British, Irish, and Gaelic; and then back of these come billions and billions of pure savages that talk a gibberish that Satan himself couldn't understand.
A favorite diversion was to make the house into a fort, gallantly held by a handful of American soldiers against a besieging force of the
British army.
I returned to my book--Bewick's History of
British Birds: the letterpress thereof I cared little for, generally speaking; and yet there were certain introductory pages that, child as I was, I could not pass quite as a blank.
The next stronghold of
British sympathy which we take by storm is Sheffield.
Mere messages in the earthly order of events had lately come to the English Crown and People, from a congress of
British subjects in America: which, strange to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any communications yet received through any of the chickens of the Cock-lane brood.
I had a greedy relish for a few volumes of Voyages and Travels - I forget what, now - that were on those shelves; and for days and days I can remember to have gone about my region of our house, armed with the centre-piece out of an old set of boot-trees - the perfect realization of Captain Somebody, of the Royal
British Navy, in danger of being beset by savages, and resolved to sell his life at a great price.
Reynolds, of Providence, who had bought five-eights of the
British patent for five thousand dollars, and half the right to Russia, Spain, Portugal, and Italy for two thousand, five hundred dollars.
The qualified negative of the President differs widely from this absolute negative of the
British sovereign; and tallies exactly with the revisionary authority of the council of revision of this State, of which the governor is a constituent part.
Does the
British Constitution restrain the parliamentary discretion to one year?
The
British Crown exercises a real and despotic dominion over the larger portion of this vast country, and has a governor-general stationed at Calcutta, governors at Madras, Bombay, and in Bengal, and a lieutenant-governor at Agra.
The officers of the
British army, and the loyal gentry of the province, most of whom were collected within the beleaguered town, had been invited to a masked ball; for it was the policy of Sir William Howe to hide the distress and danger of the period, and the desperate aspect of the siege, under an ostentation of festivity.