GENERAL SUMMARY. 147 ticed that the fur of a cat's back, when stroked vigorously the wrong way on a winter's night, will send out a multitude of electric sparks. Franklin asked himself, Are these sparks the same as the flashes of lightning seen in a thunder-shower? He resolved to find out. To do this he sent up a kite during a shower, and fastened a door-key near the end of the string. Touching his knuckle to the key he got an electric spark from it. This, and other experiments, convinced him that his conjecture was right; electricity and lightning, said he, are one and the same thing. That discovery, simple as it now seems, made Franklin famous. When he went to England on business for the colonies he needed no introduction, — everybody had heard of the American who had found the key to the clouds and to electrical science as well. Even George III., though he heartily hated Franklin for his independent spirit, actually put up a bungling kind of Franklin lightning-rodone with a ball instead of a point- on his palace in London. To-day we light our cities, propel our street-cars, ring our firealarms, and send our messages across continents and under oceans by this mysterious power. We owe the practical beginning of much of this to Franklin. He said, "There are no bounds to the force man may raise and use in the electrical way." In view of what is now being done in this "electrical way," the words of the Philadelphia printer, philosopher, and statesman-written more than a hundred years ago—read like a prophecy. 153. General Summary. — The thirteen colonies were settled, mainly by the English, between 1607 and 1733,- Virginia was the first colony founded (1607), Massachusetts the second (1620), Georgia (1733) the last. During the closing seventy years of this period (1689–1763) the colonists were engaged nearly half of the time in a series of wars with the French settlers in Canada, who had explored the West and claimed it for themselves. In these wars many Indian tribes (but not the Iroquois1) fought on the side of the French. The colonists, with the aid of England, 1 Iroquois : the Indians of New York. See Paragraph 42. gained the victory, and thus obtained possession of the country from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. Up to that time (1763) the people had been growing in prosperity, in intelligence, and in the determination to maintain all those rights to which as English colonists they were justly entitled. AMERICAN COMMERCE. 149 IV. "Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES.”—Motion made in the Continental Congress at Philadelphia, June 7, 1776, by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, seconded by John Adams of Massachusetts. THE REVOLUTION; THE CONSTITUTION. 1. THE COLONISTS RESIST TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION, 1764-1775. 2. THE COLONISTS MAKE WAR AGAINST ENGLAND IN DEFENCE OF THEIR RIGHTS AS ENGLISH SUBJECTS, 1775-JULY 4, 1776. 3. THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE, JULY 4, 1776-1783. 4. THE FORMATION AND ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION, 17871788. 154. American Commerce; the New King; George III.; how he interfered with Trade. -Up to the close of the war by which England had compelled the French to give up their hold on America the people of this country had prospered. During the war, and for a long time before it, the laws which forbade the colonists to trade with any country except Great Britain had not been enforced. The result was that the New Englanders had made a great deal of money by trading with the French and the Spanish West Indies — sending them lumber and fish, and bringing back molasses and sugar from the French islanders, and bags of silver dollars from the Spaniards. Now, all this profitable commerce was to stop. A new king – George III. had come to the throne in England. He was |