AMERICA TO-DAY
"The eyes of the soldiers glared upon the people like hungry bloodhounds. The captain waved his sword. The red-coats pointed their guns at the crowd. In a moment the flash of their muskets lighted up the street, and eleven New England men fell bleeding upon the snow. . . . Blood was streaming upon the snow; and though that purple stain melted away in the next day's sun, it was never forgotten nor forgiven by the people. . . . A battle took place between a large force of Tories and Indians and a hastily organised force of patriotic Americans. The Americans were defeated with horrible slaughter, and many of those who were made prisoners were put to death by fiendish torture. . . . More than six thousand American sailors had been seized by British warships and pressed into the hated service of a hated nation."
These passages are certainly not judicial or even judicious in tone; but I fancy that the book or books from which Mr. Steevens culled them must be quite antiquated. In books at present on the educational market I find nothing so lurid. What I do find in some is a failure to distinguish between the king's share and the British people's share in the policy which brought about and carried on the Revolutionary War. For instance, in Barnes's Primary History of the United States (undated, but brought down to the end of the Spanish War) we read:
"The English people after a time became jealous of the prosperity of the colonists, and began to devise plans by which to grasp for themselves a share of the wealth that was thus rolling in. . . . Indeed, the English people acted from the first as if the colonies existed only for the purpose of helping them to make money."
George III. and his Ministers are not so much as mentioned, and the impression conveyed to the
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