Excerpt from Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin, Vol. 2 England had lost her colonies, though no one yet suspected it. Madness now seized both parties; only there was method in the madness of the colonists. It is not ours to relate the public events which accompanied and followed the scenes just described such as the destruction of the tea in Boston harbor; the passage of Lord North's avenging measure, called the Boston Port Bill; the adop tion of the cause of Boston as their own by the other colonies; six regiments of British troops posted in Boston; the calm protests of Washington, Lee, and Jefferson; the Wild eloquence of Patrick Henry; the passage of the bill transferring political offenders to England for trial, with their train of Witnesses and advocates; the torrents of petitions against these measures; the haughty rejection of these petitions; the tumults in America; the exasperating inso lence of the king's speeches to Parliament; and, above all, the meet ing of the Continental Congress at Philadelphia. All these things have been eloquently told by Mr. Bancroft, and are familiar to decently informed persons in every land. America became the uni versal topic, France appearing to be more interested in it than England, though there Were in Parliament fifty field-night de bates upon America during the next three or four years. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.