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 to the severance of the American colonists from their kindred. Vainly did Chatham urge: "You must go through the work; you must declare you have no right to tax then they may trust you then they will have some confidence in you." By a bitter irony of fate, within a few miles of a place called "Concord," the first fratricidal blood was shed in America in 1775; and on the 4th July, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was agreed to in a congress of representatives. Forced on by events, Washington and his friends, who at the commencement of the struggle desired only to restore the ancient state of things, were committed to that absolute severance of the colonies which England's enemies and the seditious among her subjects had desired from the first. French aid, French intrigues, Spanish and Dutch coalitions, an armed neutrality in Russia, without doubt hastened the end, but no earnest lover of England or America could have hoped for any good result after blood had been shed in such a cause. In 1783 the people of England paid the price for having yielded to ill-advice, and the disaffected colonies were recognized as sovereign states. With 1783 also came a change in the internal government of England. The younger Pitt, who had sympathized with his father's patriotic protests against ill-dealing with America, was called to the helm.

Little had been added to the knowledge obtained by Cook in 1770, as to Australia. Captain Furneaux, commanding the Adventure, being separated from Cook's ship, the Resolution (on Cook's second voyage), visited and explored the east coast of Van Diemen's Land, in 1778, but failed to discover that there was a strait between that island and the mainland. Cook himself (on his third voyage) visited Van Diemen's Land in 1777. He remained several days in Adventure Bay, and described the land, the vegetation, and the natives whom he saw, and whom he did not ill-treat.

These visits may have caused the statesmen in England to look with eyes of ownership on the lately-found lands. The attention of the French, however, had been invited also, and it is probable that the English government were partly actuated by a desire to forestall the French, who as early as 1772 sent two ships to explore in the South Seas.