of the war depended upon Great Britain gaining and retaining the command of the sea, and to make this secure it was essential that the French West Indies should cease to be effective bases of supply for the French fleets. But the colonial merchants, unwilling to forego a lucrative source of profit, organized a regular trade with the enemy, direct or indirect; and in this they were backed by some of the legislatures, and even by some of the governors and judges. Thus the colonies had to a large extent neutralized the work of the British navy, frustrated the policy of the Imperial Government, and prolonged the war. Occasionally, too, the export of goods to the French colonies so depleted the markets that the British troops were short of supplies, while the consequent monstrous rise in prices threw an enormous additional burden on the luckless British taxpayer. It is not to be wondered at that this "iniquitous traffic," as Pitt called it, aroused intense indignation and caused British statesmen, admirals and generals to use very strong language. It is also, in all the circumstances, not surprising that the traffic reached its greatest development after 1760, when the fall of Quebec had relieved the colonists of all danger from the French.

These facts should serve to dispose of the legend that a hitherto loyal people was goaded into rebellion by the iniquitous proposal to "enslave " them. The policy of Grenville doubtless precipitated matters; but the fury of resentment which it aroused was due to what Beer calls "the unconscious desire for selfgovernment, which could be realized only by political independence." And independence was now not only desirable, but safe. So long as the French peril threatened, the American colonies had been glad to be under the protecting ægis of the British Empire. But" their allegiance was purely utilitarian, and its fundamental basis had disappeared with the conquest of Canada." Stamps and taxes on tea were but the pretexts, or rather perhaps the occasions of the rebellion. "The secret spring of the revolt," as Osgood also maintained, lay in the idea of national independence, which had been developing unconsciously in the minds of the colonists from the beginning and found expression now that the need for dependence was removed. King George III himself had put the matter in a nutshell: "Whether the laying of a tax was deserving all the evils that have arisen from it," he wrote, "I should suppose no man could allege that

without being more fit for Bedlam than a seat in the Senate; but step by step the demands of America have arisen; independence is their object."

to go

In the minds of the Americans the desirability of this object had, moreover, been increased by the irritating contacts of the war. The common struggle against the French, which might have been expected to create a blood-brotherhood between the English of the mother country and the English of the colonies, had produced no such effect. The British commanders, for the reasons stated, were enraged by the attitude of the provincial governments; they were also scathing in their criticisms of the American troops, whose want of discipline and incurable tendency home at critical moments had ruined more than one plan of campaign. The Americans, on the other hand, resented the superior airs of the regular officers and their claim to superior rank, and despised them for their pipe-clay methods and the want of imagination which led them, at least at the outset, to attempt to apply in forest warfare the tactics developed on the plains of Flanders. Their resentment was, moreover, presently increased by the effective measures taken to suppress their trade with the enemy; for American trading ships were captured in large numbers, and their owners ruined. This special grievance was accentuated after the peace, owing to the reorganization by the Imperial Government of the Colonial Customs administration and the legalization of the employment of the navy in enforcing the laws of trade. Thus began the angry contest, which culminated in the jettisoning of the chests of tea in Boston harbour.

The contest was, in fact, not between rival interpretations of the law, but between opposing ideals. In its essence the American Revolution was the first manifestation of that tendency to national segregation which, during the last hundred and fifty years, has transformed the map of the world. It manifested itself at the precise moment when the opposite ideal, which for want of a better word we call Imperial, was taking shape in the minds of Englishmen. This is a fact that has to be taken into consideration in judging the attitude of British ministers towards the questions at issue with the American colonies. Their aim was to apply the lessons of the war in reorganizing the Imperial administrative system and establishing an effective system of Imperial defence. They did not succeed in their aim; but it is unfair to place upon

them the whole responsibility for a failure which was primarily due to the aggressive individualism of the colonies and their all but total lack of imperial sentiment. The disruption of the old British Empire, according to Mr. Beer," was not brought about by any action of the Imperial Government"; it was due to "the same forces that delayed for one hundred years the creation of a national State out of the seceding colonies." It might have been avoided, he thinks, had Great Britain, after 1763, been willing to concede to the American colonies as a whole the virtual independence already enjoyed by Rhode Island and Connecticut; but he adds that this was impossible. It was impossible because there were a number of important questions affecting the colonies as a whole, which could not be dealt with effectively by each colony acting separately, and all efforts to induce them to form a union for such common purposes had been vain.

The most instantly pressing of these questions were the Indian problem and, arising out of it, the problem of defence. The system under which the regulation of trade and intercourse with the Indians had been left to the separate colonies had proved wholly inefficient, and worse: it had been an important factor in alienating the Indian "nations" from the English before and during the war; and it was one of the causes of the formidable rising organized by Pontiac after the conclusion of peace in 1763. The lessons of this rising reinforced those of the war; for there was the same failure of the individual colonies to "do their bit," and the same break-down of the requisition system. In these circumstances, the British Government was left no choice, and was compelled to keep a large force on the continent; for it was necessary to maintain permanent garrisons in the forts guarding the frontiers, and these frontiers had been vastly extended by the conquest of Canada. In thus increasing the hitherto meagre garrison in North America to some ten thousand men there was certainly no idea of holding the colonies in subjection; it simply meant that the mother country, as a result of the war, added to her traditional task of defending the colonies by sea the new task of defending them by land. This is now admitted, and so disposes of yet another of the charges brought against King George III in the Declaration of Independence, namely that "he has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislatures." It is a classic example of the suggestio falsi.

The necessity for this new system of defence led, almost inevitably, to the revival of the idea of using the dormant power of Parliament to tax the colonies. To meet the cost of the new establishment a colonial revenue was necessary, unless the entire burden of the defence was to be assumed by the mother country. This-as Mr. Beer justly observes—would have been inequitable and would have aroused intense dissatisfaction in England, then burdened with a huge war debt and suffering severely from those economic ills which, as we are painfully aware, are apt to follow a hard-won victory. But to raise a colonial revenue for any common purpose whatever, without the intervention of Parliament, would have meant applying for a quota from each of the thirteen provincial legislatures, and experience had proved the futility of such application. In these circumstances it is hard to deny that there was something to be said for the policy of Grenville. According to the legend current in America, this policy was directed to "enslaving" the colonies by treating them as a sort of reserve on which the British Parliament might draw at will in financial straits. This has even been upheld by so high an authority as Mr. Elihu Root. In a speech on October 24, 1900, at Canton, Ohio, in which he defended the American administration of the Philippines, he said :

"You are doing what England did when we rebelled against taxation without representation," says Mr. Bryan. Strange perversion! It was taxation for the benefit of England against which we rebelled.

Indeed, it was not-oddly enough-Mr. William Jennings Bryan who was guilty of perversion. In all the many proposals made since about 1711 for the taxation of the colonies by Parliament there had never been a suggestion that the money thus raised should be used for any but colonial purposes, and the same was true of the taxation proposed after 1763. The sole idea underlying Grenville's policy was that the colonies should bear part at least of the cost of their own defence, which would

*In 1750, Cadwallader Colder, afterwards acting governor of New York, put forward a scheme for the joint management of the colonies of Indian affairs, forts, &c. To pay for this he suggested a tax on spirituous liquors. He added that " as this Duty is proposed to be general over all the Colonies, it must be imposed by Act of Parliament, because it would be a most vain imagination to expect that all the Colonies would severally agree to impose it." (Beer, p. 42.)

This

otherwise have fallen wholly on the British taxpayer. policy was in itself neither illegal nor essentially unjust, and it was only adopted because of the practical difficulty of securing a colonial contribution in any other way. It was for the benefit of England only in so far as her own interests were bound up with those of the colonies. Nor was it clear that the principle of no taxation without representation, which was equally admitted on both sides, was violated by such action; for, according to the view accepted in England at that time, the colonies were represented in Parliament equally with the disfranchised masses of the English people. In view of the narrow franchise prevailing in most of the colonies themselves, this view was less unreasonable than might be supposed.

Doubtless the policy of Grenville was short-sighted, since it was embarked upon in ignorance of the true temper prevailing in the colonies. It was fatal, because when it had once been embarked upon there was no possibility of drawing back without surrendering a principle upon which the whole structure of the Empire was supposed to rest. The obnoxious taxes, trifling in themselves, were withdrawn; but the Declaratory Act, which affirmed the hitherto undisputed principle of the supremacy of Parliament, remained as a challenge to the spirit of independence in the colonies, which had now become fully conscious and extremely vocal. It was especially vocal about the tyranny of kings and aristocratic Parliaments. But, as another American writer has well said, it was not against tyranny inflicted that the colonies made their stand, but only against tyranny anticipated.*

That is a truth that should be trumpeted abroad, so that at least one of the walls of misunderstanding which have so long divided the American from the British people may fall down. Unfortunately Mr. Hirst does not think so, and in his enthusiasm for Jefferson he has sought to give fresh currency to the false charges made in the Declaration of Independence. He does not, of course, think them false; which is natural enough, since he is a democrat and is not an historian. Mr. Beer, who was in the front rank of historians, brought to the study of these old but still living controversies a more impartial mind and a riper scholarship, and the conclusion he reached is so sane, and so well

*Moses Coit Taylor, " Literary History of the American Revolution," I., p. 8.