“The duty of a colony is affection for the mother-country:  here I may affirm, that, in whatever form and temper this affection can lie in the human breast, in that form, by the deepest and most permanent impression, it ever did lie in the breast of the American people.  They have no other idea of this country [England] than as their home; they have no other word by which to express it, and, till of late, it has constantly been expressed by the name of home.  That powerful affection, the love of our native country, which operates in every heart, operates in this people towards England, which they consider as their native country; nor is this a mere passive impression, a mere opinion in speculation,—­it has been wrought up in them to a vigilant and active zeal for the service of this country.”

And Franklin’s testimony confirms that of the English Governor.

“The true loyalists,” he says, “were the people of America against whom the royalists of England acted.  No people were ever known more truly loyal, and universally so, to their sovereigns....  They were affectionate to the people of England, zealous and forward to assist in her wars, by voluntary contributions of men and money, even beyond their proportion.”

Such was the people whose love and obedience the greedy and grasping policy of the British Government threw away, never to be regained.  The Revolution came at last, and the people reckoned up the long arrears of oppression.  “In the short space of two years,” says a contemporary writer, “nearly three millions of people passed over from the love and duty of loyal subjects to the hatred and resentment of enemies.”

We have seen that our cautious parent had taken good care not to let her American children learn the use of her tools any farther or faster than she thought good for them—­and herself.  They no sooner got their hands free than they set them at work on various new contrivances.  One of the first was the nail-cutting machinery which has been in use ever since.  All our old houses—­the old gambrel-roofed Cambridge mansions, for instance—­are built with wrought nails, no doubt every one of them imported from England.  Many persons do not know the fact that the screw-auger is another native American invention, having been first manufactured for sale at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1776, or a little earlier.  Eli Whitney contrived the cotton-gin in 1792, and some years later the machinery for the manufacture of fire-arms, involving the principle of absolute uniformity in the pattern of each part, so that any injured or missing portion of a gun may be instantly supplied without special fitting.