your life, to keep this inheritance and to hand it on to those who will speak the English tongue when you are dead.

Only a few bits of the story can be given here. You will read something about Scotland's struggle for the right to be governed by her own people, not by the tyrannical kings who then ruled England and who looked upon Scotland as a mere province fit only to supply money for their selfish desires. Next you will read several selections which show that the tyranny against which Wallace and Bruce fought, like the tyranny against which Warren and Washington and Patrick Henry fought, did not spring from the English spirit, but from kings who tried to keep even Englishmen in slavery. It is all one story-at one time the action takes place in Scotland, at another in England, at still another time in America; but the story is the story of our inheritance of freedom.

"We must be free or die"-these words express the spirit of all who speak the English tongue. The stories of Wallace and Bruce tell it. The story of the last fight of the Revenge tells it a story written by the man who first began to plant English colonies in America, and who helped defend England against the tyranny which King Philip of Spain tried to establish. The stories of the Gray Champion, and of Warren at Bunker Hill, and of Patrick Henry of Virginia, and of Washington and Marion, are also a part of the great story of our inheritance of freedom.

You should keep this always in mind: the heroes who made good the Declaration of Independence and set up a new and freer government in America were men whose ideals of freedom came to them from England. They did not fight against the English people. Their spirit was also the fundamental English spirit. Many of the greatest Englishmen of that period used every effort to win fair treatment for the colonies, sympathized with their struggle for independence and rejoiced when at last George III and his ministers were told that America would no longer submit to oppression.

One of the greatest of these Englishmen was Edmund Burke, who lived in the time of George III and took the part of the colonies in their struggle against the King's tyranny. He worked for

the repeal of the taxation laws that so offended the Americans. He made many speeches in Parliament and elsewhere pleading with Englishmen not to drive their fellow Englishmen into civil. war. And when at last war came, Burke still sought to bring about reconciliation. He wrote the King a letter in which he said that the British government was not representing the British spirit of freedom in its dealings with the colonies. He wrote a letter to the colonies in which he begged them not to believe that they were at war with England. "Do not think," he said, "that the whole or even the majority of Englishmen in the island are enemies to their own blood on the American continent." And a little later he said, "But still a large, and we trust the largest and soundest part of this kingdom perseveres in the most perfect unity of sentiments, principles, and affections with you. It spreads out a large and liberal platform of common liberty upon which we may all unite forever." The whole matter he sums up by saying that the spirit of England loves not conquest or vast empire for the sake of wealth, but "this is the peculiar glory of England: those who have and who hold to that foundation of common liberty, whether on this or on your side of the ocean, we consider as the true, and the only true, Englishmen."

All Americans need to remember these words written by a great friend of the colonies during the Revolutionary War, a man who also explained more clearly and more eloquently than any other Englishman in any time the principles on which our inheritance of freedom rests. His interest in the American cause was not merely the interest of a sympathetic friend; over and over again he pointed out that the colonies, and not the King's ministry, represented the true English spirit. To him the mode of selfgovernment set up in Massachusetts and Virginia represented the very ideal for which patriotic Englishmen had struggled for centuries. The British parliament, in Burke's time, was not made up of representatives from all the population; only a small part of the population could vote, and many districts had no representation at all. Complete control of the government by the people was what Burke and thousands of other Englishmen had been trying to win. In America such a form of popular

government had developed freely, because the British King paid little attention to the colonies until they became wealthy enough to be a source of riches. It was this fact that made the American revolution not merely a war for the establishment of a new nation, but quite as much a war for the development of free government in England itself. Burke realized this fact, and expressed it by saying, "We view the establishment of the English colonies on principles of liberty as that which is to render this kingdom venerable to future ages."

The prophecy has been fulfilled. Britain still has a king, but he is king in name only; the real power rests in the people. The struggle in which the American colonists bore a part has resulted not only in a free America, but also in a free England and in freedom for the great dominions-Canada, Australia, and New Zealand-which have much the same form of government. The inheritance of freedom belongs to all English-speaking peoples, and the spread of these ideals means freedom for the world.

These ideals center around the brotherhood of man. In our Revolutionary period Robert Burns sang of the coming of a time when these ideals should be acknowledged:

"It's coming yet, for a' that,
That man to man, the world o'er,

Shall brothers be, for a' that."

Long before the time of Burns, John Milton, a great poet, who worked throughout his life for freedom, and who held the same ideals as those held by the founders of Plymouth Colony, wrote of the same thing: "Who knows not that there is a mutual bond of brotherhood between man and man over all the world?"

The recent war has brought England and America together once more, as defenders of the right of all people to selfgovernment. For English ideals, planted on American soil, victorious over the tyranny of George III and his ministry, have not only found their most complete development in our America, but have given the vision of liberty to all men. Thus we are able to understand what President Wilson meant when he said, "And the heart of America shall interpret the heart of the world."

THE STORY OF SIR WILLIAM WALLACE
(1296-1305)

William Wallace was none of the high nobles of Scotland, but the son of a private gentleman, called Wallace of Ellerslie, in Renfrewshire, near Paisley. He was very tall and handsome, and one of the strongest and bravest men that ever lived. He 5 had a very fine countenance, with a quantity of fair hair, and was particularly dexterous in the use of all weapons which were then employed in battle. Wallace, like all Scotsmen of high spirit, had looked with great indignation upon the usurpation of the crown by Edward, and upon the insolences which the English 10 soldiers committed on his countrymen. It is said, that when he was very young, he went a-fishing for sport in the river of Irvine, near Ayr. He had caught a good many trout, which were carried by a boy, who attended him with a fishing-basket, as is usual with anglers. Two or three English soldiers, who belonged to the 15 garrison of Ayr, came up to Wallace, and insisted, with their usual insolence, on taking the fish from the boy. Wallace was contented to allow them a part of the trout, but he refused to nart with the whole basketful. The soldiers insisted, and from words came to blows. Wallace had no better weapon than the

butt-end of his fishing rod; but he struck the foremost of the Englishmen so hard under the ear with it that he killed him on the spot; and getting possession of the slain man's sword, he fought with so much fury that he put the others to flight, and brought 5 home his fish safe and sound. The English governor of Ayr sought for him, to punish him with death for this action; but Wallace lay concealed among the hills and great woods till the matter was forgotten.

But the action which occasioned his finally rising in arms is 10 believed to have happened in the town of Lanark. Wallace was at this time married to a lady of that place, and residing there with his wife. It chanced, as he walked in the market-place, dressed in a green garment, with a rich dagger by his side, that an Englishman came up and insulted him on account of his 15 finery, saying a Scotsman had no business to wear so gay a dress, or carry so handsome a weapon. It soon came to a quarrel, and Wallace, having killed the Englishman, fled to his own house which was speedily assaulted by all the English soldiers. While they were endeavoring to force their way in at the front of the 20 house, Wallace escaped by a back door, and got in safety to a rugged and rocky glen, near Lanark, called the Cartland Crags, all covered with bushes and trees, and full of high precipices, where he knew he should be safe from the pursuit of the English soldiers. In the meantime the governor of Lanark, whose name 25 was Hazelrigg, burned Wallace's house and put his wife and servants to death; and by committing this cruelty, increased to the highest pitch, as you may well believe, the hatred which the champion had always borne against the English usurper. Hazelrigg also proclaimed Wallace an outlaw, and offered a reward to 30 any one who should bring him to an English garrison, alive or dead.

On the other hand, Wallace soon collected a body of men, outlawed like himself, or willing to become so, rather than any longer endure the oppression of the English. One of his earliest 35 expeditions was directed against Hazelrigg, whom he killed, and thus avenged the death of his wife. He fought skirmishes with the soldiers who were sent against him, and often defeated them;