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 ingenuous student is that the whole English
nation was consciously and deliberately banded together for purposes of
sheer brigandage. The same history is delightfully chauvinistic in its
account of the Colonial Wars. The British officers are all bunglers and
poltroons; if disasters are averted or victories won, it is entirely by
the courage and conduct of the colonists:

"When Johnson reached the head of Lake George he met the French,
and a fierce battle was fought. Success seemed at first to be