THE NAVIGATION ACTS—ILLICIT TOOTHPICKS—A CARGO OF TEA UNLOADED—PORK AND BEANS AS A BEVERAGE—RUMORS OF WARS.

Having seen civilization comfortably settled in its new home, let us see how it conducted itself.

In the year 1660 certain bills were lobbied through the English Parliament which were highly obnoxious to the American colonies then established in Virginia. These were called the Navigation Acts, and prohibited the colonists from sending their pigs to any other market than England, nor allowed them to purchase any article 91of commerce, not even a toothpick, from any other country, and even that commodity must be ordered from the King himself and delivered in English vessels. If any ingenious colonist was caught whittling a pine splinter or a lucifer match to a point he was looked upon as an outlaw and taken home to England in irons to answer the charge of manufacturing illegal toothpicks. The Navigation Acts were swallowed by the colonists with wry faces for a century or so, and they were beginning to get used to it. But when one fine day the Mother Country invented a new dish, called the “Stamp Act,” and began to ladle it out the docile colonists entered their gentle protest.

The Stamp Act provided that the pigs and toothpicks must all bear the government 92stamp—the stamps, of course, to be paid for by the colonists.

The latter held town meetings, and the district schoolmaster made inflammatory speeches denouncing the British Parliament; the provincial editor hurled defiance in the face of ............