The Yankee Champion — page 22: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

- 4 - < She : - a‘ THE YANKEE CHAMPION, eons |; CHAPTER II. PLAN FOR A CAPTURE—THE BOY PATRIOT. The spring and summer of 1775 had passed away, and a cool autumn had well nigh opened into the frosts of winter. The people of New England had now fairly awakened to a full sense of their situa- tion, and they had almost made up their minds to bid open defiance to the royal authority without longer hesitation, and declare themselves a free and independent people. Some men, to be sure, with prophetic vision, had foretold the event as in- evitable, but few dared to give the thought a home in their bosoms. When, finally, the colonies as a body politic took up arms against the mother coun- try, it was because they had been most cruelly forced to the step; but when once that step was taken, England found that she had awakened“a_ young lion that could never again be tamed into submission to despotism. The assembly had taken up the subject of au- thorizinge private individuals to fit out vessels on their own account against the English, and an act on the subject was passed, making provision for the © equipment of privateers, simply placing them under certain wholesome restrictions, and making ar- rangements for the fair distribution of prizes. Many enterprising seamen, who had been thrown out of employment by that most infamous of all British acts, the Boston Port Bill, and by the various blockades, had long been engaged in the privateer- | ing business. - f (ele) m Gomicbooks