Excerpt from Discourse Delivered in the Second Presbyterian Church To this succeeded the period of Colonial Gov ernment, extending from the accession of William, Prince of Orange, to the British throne, in 1689, to the Declaration of American Independence, in 1776. During these eighty-seven years, our infant colonies remained under a foreign domination more or less favorable to their growth and prosperity. It was a period of immense activity, both in the Old and the New World. Men struggled for free dom of conscience, for religious liberty, for political rights, and for commercial privileges. The strug gles of the Old World were transferred to the New, and upon the banks of the St. Lawrence and the Ohio Christian men and savages fought for the claims of England and of France, and for the bal ance of European political power. The colonists were forced to defend, not only their religious and political rights, but their territory and their lives, against the encroachments of French Catholics and Indian savages. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.