CAUSES OF THE AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE AND THE QUEBEC ACT
It was said of the Spartans that warring was their salvation and
ruling was their ruin. The saying holds true of various peoples
and races in history. A militant race has often proved to be
deficient in the qualities which ensure stable, just, and permanent
government; and in such cases, when peace supervenes on war, an
era of decline and fall begins for those whom fighting has made
great. But even when a conquering race has capacity for government,
there come times in its career when Aristotle’s dictum in part
holds good. It applied, to some extent, to the English in North
America. As long as they were faced by the French on the western
continent, common danger and common effort held the mother country
and the colonies together. Security against a foreign foe brought
difficulties which ended in civil war, and the Peace of 1763 was
the beginning of dissolution.
In the present chapter, which covers the history of Canada from
the Peace of Paris to the outbreak of the War of Independence, it
is proposed, from the point of view of colonization, to examine
the ultimate rather than the immediate causes which led to England
losing her old North American colonies, while she retained her new
possession of Canada.
[Sidenote: Prophecies that the British conquest of Canada would be
followed by the loss of the North American colonies. Peter Kalm.]
It had been abundantly prophesied that the outcome of British
conquest of Canada would be colonial independence in British
North America. In the years 1748-50 the Swedish naturalist, Peter
Kalm, travelled through the British North American colonies and
Canada, and left on record his impressions of the feeling towards
the mother country which existed at the time in the British
provinces. Noting the great increase in these colonies of riches
and population, and the growing coolness towards Great Britain,
produced at once by commercial restrictions and by the presence
among the English colonists of German, Dutch, and French settlers,
he arrived at the conclusion that the proximity of a rival and
hostile power in Canada was the main factor in keeping the British
colonies under the British Crown. ‘The English Government,’ he
wrote, ‘has therefore sufficient reason to consider the French in
North America as the best means of keeping the colonies in their
due submission.’[16]
Others wrote or spoke to the same effect. Montcalm was credited
with having prophesied the future before he shared the fall of
Canada,[17] and another prophet was the French minister Choiseul,
when negotiating the Peace of Paris. To keen, though not always
unprejudiced, observers the signs of the times betokened coming
conflicts between Great Britain and her colonies; and to us now
looking back on history, wise after the event, it is evident that
the end of foreign war in North America meant the beginning of
troubles within what was then the circle of the British Empire.
[Sidenote: Incorrect view of the conflict between Great Britain and
her colonies in North America.]
[Sidenote: Great Britain failed for want of leaders.]
Until recent years most Englishmen were taught to believe that the
victory of the American colonists and the defeat of the mother
country was a striking instance of the power of right over might,
of liberty over oppression; that the severance of the American
colonies was a net gain to them, and a net loss to England; that
Englishmen did right to stand in a white sheet when reflecting
on these times and events, as being citizens of a country which
grievously sinned and was as grievously punished. All this was pure
assumption. The war was one in which there were rights and wrongs
on both sides, but, whereas America had in George Washington a
leader of the noblest and most effective type, England was for the
moment in want both of statesmen and of generals, and had her hands
tied by foreign complications. We can recognize that Providence
shaped the ends, without going beyond the limits of human common
sense. Had Pitt been what he was in the years preceding the Peace
of Paris, had Wolfe and the eldest of the brothers Howe not been
cut off in early manhood, the war might have been averted, or
its issue might have been other than it was. One of Wolfe’s best
subordinates, Carleton, survived, and Carleton saved Canada; there
was no human reason why men of the same stamp, had they been found,
should not have kept for England her heritage. The main reason why
she lost her North American colonies was not the badness of her
cause, but rather want of the right men when the crisis came.
[Sidenote: The result of the War of Independence was not wholly a
loss to Great Britain nor wholly a gain to the United States.]
Equally fallacious with the view that England failed because
wrong-doing never prospers, is, or was, the view that the
independence of the United States was wholly a loss to England and
wholly a gain to the colonists. What would have happened if the
revolting provinces had not made good their revolt must be matter
of speculation, but it is difficult to believe that, if the United
States had remained under the British flag, Australia would ever
have become a British colony. There is a limit to every political
system and every empire, and, with the whole of North America east
of the Mississippi for her own, it is not likely that England would
have taken in hand the exploiting of a new continent. At any rate
it is significant that, within four years of the date of the treaty
which recognized the independence of the United States, the first
English colonists were sent to Australia. The success or failure
of a nation or a race in the field of colonization must not be
measured by the number of square miles of the earth’s surface which
the home government owns or claims at any given time. To judge
aright, we must revert to the older and truer view of colonizing
as a planting process, replenishing the earth and subduing it. If
the result of the severance of the United States from their mother
country was to sow the English seed in other lands, then it may
be argued that the defeat of England by her own children was not
wholly a loss to the mother country.
Nor was it wholly a gain to the United States. Such at least
must be the view of Englishmen who believe in the worth of their
country, in its traditions, in the character of the nation, in its
political, social, moral, and religious tendencies. The necessary
result of the separation was to alienate the American colonists
from what was English; to breed generations in the belief that what
England did must be wrong, that the enemies of England must be
right; to strengthen in English-speaking communities the elements
which were opposed to the land and to the race from which they had
sprung. With English errors and weaknesses there passed away, in
course of years and in some measure, English sources of strength;
the sober thinking, the slow broadening out, the perpetually
leavening sense of responsibility. Had the American provinces
remained under the British flag it is difficult to see why they
should not have been in the essence as free and independent as
they now are; it is at least conceivable that their commercial and
industrial prosperity would have been as great; assuredly, for good
or for evil, they would have been more English.
[Sidenote: Shortcomings of the English in foreign and colonial
policy.]
The faults and shortcomings of the English, which throughout
English history have shown themselves mainly in foreign and
colonial matters, seem all to have combined and culminated in the
interval of twenty years between the Peace of 1763, which gave
Canada to Great Britain, and the Peace of 1783, which took from
her the United States; and in addition there were special causes
at work in England, which at this more than at any other time
militated against national success.
[Sidenote: The party System.]
The shortcomings in question are, in part, the result of
counterbalancing merits, fair-mindedness, and freedom of thought,
speech, and action. Love of liberty among the English has begotten
an almost superstitious reverence for Parliamentary institutions.
Parliamentary institutions have practically meant the House of
Commons; and the House of Commons has for many generations past
implied the party system. In regard to foreign and colonial policy
the party system has worked the very serious evil that Great
Britain has in the past rarely spoken or acted as one nation. The
party in power at times of national crisis is constantly obliged to
reckon on opposition rather than support, from the large section of
Englishmen whose leaders are not in office; and ministers have to
frame not so much the most effective measures, as those which can
under the circumstances be carried with least friction and delay.
The result has been weakness and compromise in action; among the
friends of England, suspicion and want of confidence; among her
foes, waiting on the event which prolongs the strife. The English
have so often gone forward and then back, they have so often said
one thing and done another, that their own officers, their friends
and allies, their native subjects, and their open enemies, cannot
be sure what will be the next move. If the Opposition in Parliament
and outside, by speech and writing, attacks the Government, the
natural inference to be drawn is that a turn of the electoral tide
will reverse the policy.
Apart too from this more or less necessary result of party
government, the element of cross-grained men and women, who, when
their own country is at issue with another, invariably think that
their country must be wrong and its opponent must be right, has
always been rather stronger, or, at any rate, rather more tolerated
in the United Kingdom than among continental nations. This is due
not merely to the habit of free criticism, but also to a kind of
conceit familiar enough in private as in public life. Englishmen,
living apart from the continent of Europe, are, as a whole, more
wrapped up in themselves than are other nations; and in this
self-satisfied whole there is a proportion of superior persons who
sit in judgement on the rest, and who, having in reality a double
dose of the national Pharisaism, think it their duty to belittle
their countrymen.
Fault-finders of this kind, or political opponents of the
Government for the time being, are apt, as a rule, to make light of
any minority in the hostile or rival country, who may be friendly
to England: they tend to misrepresent them as being untrue to their
own land and people, as wanting to domineer over the majority, as
seeking their own interests: and, if they have suffered losses
for England’s sake, the tale of the losses is minimized. But
it is not only the opponents of the Government who take this
line; too often in past history it has been to a large extent
the line of the Government itself. The perpetual seeking after
compromise, and trying to see two sides after the choice of action
has been made, has lost many friends to our country and nation,
and made none: while the retracing of steps, unmindful of claims
which have arisen, of property which has been acquired, and of
responsibilities which have been incurred has, as the record of the
past abundantly shows, brought bitterness of spirit to the friends
of England, and bred distrust of the English and their works.
[Sidenote: Want of preparation for war.]
The element of uncertainty in British policy and action towards
foreign nations or towards British colonies has been in part due
to ignorance: and to ignorance and want of preparation have been
due most of the disasters in war which have befallen Great Britain.
Here again something must be attributed to the fact of the island
home. The rulers of continental peoples have been driven by the
necessities of their case to learn the conditions of their rivals,
by secret service and intelligence agents to ascertain all that
is to be known, and at the same time to keep their own arms up to
date, and their own powder dry. They have prepared for war. England
has prepared for peace. Her policy has paid in the long run, but
it would not have been a possible policy for other nations; and at
certain times in English history it has wrought terrible mischief.
England does not always muddle through, as the English fondly hope
she does; notably, she did not muddle through when the United
States proclaimed their independence.
In these years, 1763-83, there was the party system in England with
all its mischievous bitterness; there was a weak Executive at home,
and a still weaker Executive in the colonies; there was ignorance
of the real conditions in America, unwise handling of the colonial
Loyalists, threatening talk coupled with vacillation in action,
laws made which gave offence, and, when they had given offence, not
quite repealed. All the normal English weaknesses flourished and
abounded at this period, and were supplemented by certain sources
of danger which were the outcome of the particular time.
[Sidenote: Special evils at work in England in the years 1763-83.]
[Sidenote: A time of reaction.]
[Sidenote: Partisan attitude of the Crown.]
It was a special time, a time of reaction. England had lately gone
through a great struggle, made a great effort, incurred great
expense, and won great success. She was for the moment vegetating,
not inclined or ready for a second crisis. Second-rate politicians
were handling matters, and the influence of the new King was all
in favour of their being and remaining second-rate; for George the
Third intended, by meddling in party politics, and by Parliamentary
intrigues, to rule Parliament. Thus the Crown became a partisan
in home politics, and in colonial politics was placed in declared
opposition to the colonies, instead of remaining the great bond
between the colonies and the mother country.
[Sidenote: Sympathy in England with the colonists and their cause.]
The result was, that throughout the years of the American quarrel,
and in a growing degree, the colonies found powerful support in
this country, because they were, after all, not foreigners but
Englishmen--Englishmen who compared favourably with Englishmen
at home and whom patriotic Englishmen at home could admire and
uphold; because they were apparently the weaker side, attracting
the sympathy which in England the weaker side always attracts;
and because, through the attitude of the King, their cause was
associated with the cause of political liberty at home. Add to this
that the one great English statesman of world-wide reputation,
Chatham, had warmly espoused the colonial side, and it may well
be seen that, unless some able general, as Wellington in later
days, by military success, saved his country from the results of
political blunders, the position was hopeless.
[Sidenote: Ultimate causes of the severance of the North American
colonies.]
But for the special purpose of determining what place the episode
of the severance of the British North American colonies holds in
the history of colonization we must look still further afield. The
constitutional question as to whether the colonies were subject to
the Parliament of the mother country or to the Crown alone may,
from this particular point of view, be omitted, for the story
of the troubled years abundantly shows that theories would have
slept, if certain practical difficulties had not called them into
waking existence, and if lawyers had not been so much to the front,
holding briefs on either side. Nor is it necessary to dwell upon
the specific and immediate causes of the strife, except so far as
they were ultimate causes also. Among such immediate causes, some
of which have been already noted, were the personal character of
the English king for the time being, the corruption and jobbery
of public life in England, the weakness of the Executive in the
colonies, the enforcing of commercial restrictions already placed
by the mother country on the colonies, the kind of new taxes which
the Home Government imposed, the method of imposing them, and the
object with which they were devised; the outrageous laws of 1774
for penalizing Massachusetts, the Quebec Act, and the employment of
German mercenaries against the colonists, which gave justification
to the colonists for calling in aid from France. All these and
other causes might have been powerless to affect the issue, if
England had possessed statesmen and generals, and if the growing
plant of disunion had not been deeply rooted in the past.
[Sidenote: Comparison of Spanish and British colonization in
America.]
[Sidenote: Spain held her American possessions for a longer time
than Great Britain held the North American colonies.]
When France lost Canada and Louisiana, two European nations, other
than the Portuguese in Brazil, practically shared the mainland of
America. They were Spain and Great Britain. Spain won her American
empire not far short of a hundred years before Great Britain had
any strong footing on the American continent; she kept it for
some thirty or forty years after the United States had achieved
their independence. The Spanish-American empire was therefore much
longer-lived than the first colonial dominion of Great Britain
in North America, and the natural inference is, either that the
Spaniards treated their colonies or dependencies better than the
English treated theirs, or that the English colonies were in a
better position than the Spanish dependencies to assert their
independence, or that both causes operated simultaneously.
It is difficult to compare Spain and Great Britain as regards their
respective colonial policies in America, for their possessions
differed in kind. Spain owned dependencies rather than colonies,
Great Britain owned colonies rather than dependencies. Spanish
America was the result of conquest: English America, not including
Canada, was the result of settlement. But, so far as a comparison
can be instituted, it will probably not be seriously contended that
the British colonies suffered more grievously at the hands of the
mother country than did the colonial possessions of Spain. The main
charge brought against England was that she neglected her colonies
and left them to themselves. Whether the charge was true or not--as
to which there is more to be said--neglect is not oppression; and
within limits the kindest and wisest policy towards colonies, which
are colonies in the true sense, is to leave them alone. ‘The wise
neglect of Walpole and Newcastle,’ writes Mr. Lecky, ‘was eminently
conducive to colonial interests.’[18]
[Sidenote: Absence of system in British colonial policy in North
America.]
The real, ultimate reasons why England held her North American
colonies, which now form the United States of America, for a
shorter time than Spain retained her Central and South American
possessions were two: first, that the English colonies were
in a better position than the Spanish dependencies to assert
their independence; secondly, that--largely because she owned
dependencies rather than colonies--Spain was more systematic
than England in her dealings with her colonial possessions.
These two reasons are in truth one and the same, looked at from
different sides. The English colonies were able to assert their
independence, because they had on the whole always been more or
less independent. They had always been more or less independent,
because the mother country had never adopted any definite system
of colonial administration. The Spanish system was not good--quite
the contrary; but it was a system, and those who lived under it
were accustomed to restrictions and to rules imposed by the home
government. Similarly in Canada, under French rule, there was a
system, kindlier and better than that of Spain, but one which had
the gravest defects, which stunted growth and precluded freedom:
yet there it was, clear and definite; the colonists of New France
had grown up under it; they knew where they were in relation to
the mother country; it had never occurred to them to try and
make headway against the King of France and his regulations.
Widely different was the case of the English colonies in North
America. All these settlements started under some form of grant
or charter, derived ultimately from the Crown: the Crown from
time to time interfered and made a show of its supremacy; but
there was no system of any sort or kind, and communities grew up,
which in practice had never been governed from home but governed
themselves. Most of all, the New England colonies embodied to
the full the spirit of colonial independence. Their founders,
men of the strongest English type, went out to live in their own
way, to be free from restrictions which trammelled them at home,
to found small English-speaking commonwealths which should be
self-governing and self-supporting, ordered from within, not from
without.
[Sidenote: When the English colonies were planted in North America
there was the most complete absence of system at home.]
The English have never been systematic or continuous in their
policy throughout their history; but the period of English history
when North America was colonized was the one of all others when
system and continuity were most conspicuously absent. It was a
time of violent political changes at home, of strife between
king and people. A line of kings was brought in from Scotland,
they were overturned, they were restored, and they were finally
driven out again. This was the condition of the Crown to which the
newly-planted colonies owed allegiance, and which was supposed to
exercise supreme authority over the colonies. Under the Crown were
Proprietors and Companies, whose charters, being derived from a
perpetually disputed source, were a series of dissolving views;
and under the Proprietors and Companies were a number of strong
English citizens who, caring little for the theoretical basis of
their position, cared very much for practical independence, and
ordered their ways accordingly, becoming steadily and stubbornly
more independent through perpetual friction and perpetual absence
of systematic control. Thus it was that the North American colonies
drank in, as their mother’s milk, the traditions and the habits of
independence. They carried with them English citizenship, but the
privileges of such citizenship rather than the responsibilities;
and, in so far as the mother country was inclined to ignore the
privileges, the colonies were glad to disclaim the responsibilities.
[Sidenote: Absence of collective responsibility in the British
North American colonies.]
They were separate and distinct, not only from the mother country,
but also from each other, and they could not in consequence from
first to last be held collectively responsible. In the wars with
Canada, New England and New York, though alike exposed to French
invasion, and from time to time co-operating to repel the invaders
or to organize counter-raids, yet acted throughout as entirely
separate entities, in no way inclined to bear each other’s burdens
as common citizens of a common country. The southern colonies,
until the French, shortly before the beginning of the Seven
Years’ War, came down into the valley of the Ohio, took no part
whatever in the fight between Great Britain and France for North
America. The New Englanders, most patriotic of the colonists,
beyond all others went their own ways in war and peace; uninvited
and unauthorized from home they formed a confederation among
themselves: early in their history they tried to make a treaty
with Canada on the basis that, whatever might be the relations
between France and England in Europe, there should be peace between
French and English in North America: they took Port Royal: they
attacked Quebec: they captured Louisbourg: and the anonymous French
eye-witness of the first siege and capture of Louisbourg commented
as follows on the difference between the colonial land forces and
the men of the small Imperial squadron which Warren brought to
the colonists’ aid: ‘In fact one could never have told that these
troops belonged to the same nation and obeyed the same prince. Only
the English are capable of such oddities, which nevertheless form
a part of that precious liberty of which they show themselves so
jealous.’[19]
[Sidenote: The colonies had never been taxed for revenue purposes.]
Most of all it should be remembered that, though subject to the
Navigation laws imposed by the mother country and to that extent
restricted in their commercial dealings, no English colony in
North America, before the days of the Stamp Act, had ever been
taxed by Crown or Parliament for revenue purposes. In the year
1758 Montcalm was supposed to have written on this subject in the
following terms: ‘As to the English colonies, one essential point
should be known, it is that they are never taxed. They keep that
to themselves, an enormous fault this in the policy of the mother
country. She should have taxed them from the foundation. I have
certain advice that all the colonies would take fire at being
taxed now.’[20] This judgement was probably sound. It might have
been well if from the first, when charters were issued and colonial
communities were formed, some small tax had been levied for
Imperial purposes upon the British colonies, if some contribution
of only nominal amount had been exacted as a condition of retaining
British citizenship. There would then have been a precedent, such
as Englishmen always try to find, and there would have been in
existence a reminder that all members of a family should contribute
to the household expenses.[21]
[Sidenote: The political separation of the North American colonies
was the natural result of their geographical separation.]
We are accustomed to think and to read of the separation of the
American colonies from the mother country as wholly an abnormal
incident, the result of bad handiwork, not the outcome of natural
forces. This view is incorrect. History ultimately depends on
geography. When two members of the same race, nation, or family
pass their lives at a long distance from each other, in different
lands, in different climates, under different conditions, the
natural and inevitable result is that they diverge from each other.
The centrifugal tendency may be counteracted by tact and clever
statesmanship, and still more by sense of common danger; but it
is a natural tendency. Men cannot live at a distance from each
other without becoming to some extent estranged. The Greeks, with
their instinctive love of logic and of symmetry, and with their
fundamental conception of a city as the political unit, looked on
colonization as separation, and called a colony a departure from
home. The colonists carried with them reverence for the mother
state, but not dependence upon it; and, if there was any political
bond, it was embodied in the words that those who went out went
out on terms of equality with, not of subordination to, those who
remained behind. The English, in fact, though not in principle,
planted colonies on the model of the Greek settlements; their
theories and their practice collided; and, being a practical race,
their theories eventually went by the board.
[Sidenote: Conflicting tendencies. Distance and sentiment.]
[Sidenote: στάσις and colonization.]
When an over-sea colony is founded, the new settlement is in
effect most distant from the old country; that is to say, means
of communication between the one point and the other are least
frequent and least developed. The tendency to separation--as far
as geography is concerned--is therefore strongest at the outset.
On the other hand, in the foundation of a colony, unless the
foundation is due to political disruption at home, the sentiment
towards the mother country is warmer and closer than in after
years, for the founders remember where they were born and where
they grew to manhood. As generations go on, the tie of sentiment
becomes necessarily weaker, but, with better communication,
distance becomes less; there is therefore a competition between the
opposing tendencies. Many of the Greek colonies were the result of
στάσις or division in the mother cities. The unsuccessful party
went out and made a separate home. In a very modified form the
same cause was at work in the founding of the Puritan colonies
of North America. Notably, the emigrants on the _Mayflower_ were
already exiles from England, political refugees, who had found a
temporary home in the Netherlands. These founders of the Plymouth
settlement were by no means the chief colonizers of North America,
or even of New England, but their story--the story of the ‘Pilgrim
fathers’--became a nucleus of Puritan tradition; and from it after
generations deduced that New England was the home of English
citizens whom England had cast out. Thus one group, at any rate,
of North American colonies traced their origin to separation. Then
came the element of distance. ‘The European colonies in America,’
wrote Adam Smith, with some exaggeration, ‘are more remote than
the most distant provinces of the greatest empires which had ever
been known before.’[22] The Atlantic Ocean lay between them and the
motherland, and cycles went by before that distance was perceptibly
modified. In our own time, steam and telegraphy have been
perpetually counteracting the effects of distance. It was not so in
the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. Navigation was improved,
but was still the humble handmaid of wind and tide; and on the very
eve of the American War of Independence the remoteness of the North
American colonies, and the prevailing ignorance in England about
the North American colonies were, though no doubt much exaggerated,
a commonplace among the speakers and writers of the time.
We start then with colonies planted from a land which had no
thought of systematic control over colonies or dependencies, whose
government was at the time of colonization in a chaotic state,
whose colonists went out in part, at any rate, intent on practical
separation, and who all settled themselves or were settled in a
remote region at a time when distance did not grow less.
[Sidenote: General view of the duty of a mother country towards its
colonies.]
The next point to notice is that it has always been held that, as
between a mother country and its colonies, if they are colonies
in the true sense and not merely tributary states, it is rather
for the mother country to give and her colonies to take, than vice
versa. This is a view which has been held at all times and among
all races, but especially among members of the English race. Other
nations and races have, it is true, felt as strongly as, or more
strongly than, the English the duty of protecting their outlying
possessions: they have in some cases lavished more money directly
upon them at the expense of the taxpayers at home; but, on the
other hand, they have almost invariably regarded their colonies as
dependencies pure and simple, constrained to take the course of the
dominant partner in preference to their own. The English alone in
history have bred communities protected by, but in practice not
subject to, the mother country. They have given, without exacting
toll in return.
[Sidenote: Adam Smith on the subject.]
No writer has laid greater stress on this view of the relations
between the mother country and the colonies than Adam Smith, who
published the _Wealth of Nations_ just as the American colonies
were breaking away from Great Britain. ‘The English colonists,’ he
wrote, ‘have never yet contributed anything towards the defence of
the mother country, or towards the support of its civil government.
They themselves, on the contrary, have hitherto been defended
almost entirely at the expense of the mother country;’ and again,
‘Under the present system of management, Great Britain derives
nothing but loss from the dominion which she has assumed over her
colonies.’ ‘Great Britain is, perhaps, since the world began, the
only state which, as it has extended its empire, has only increased
its expense without once augmenting its resources.’[23] His opinion
would have been modified could he have foreseen the help given to
the mother country in our own day by the self-governing colonies
of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand in a war far removed from
their shores; but even in our own day the old view, against which
he contended, largely holds the field, that more is due from the
mother country to the colonies than from the colonies to the mother
country, that what the mother country spends on the Empire is
payment of a debt, while what the colonies spend on the Empire is a
free gift.
[Sidenote: The mother country, being usually greater than the
colony, is expected to give rather than to receive.]
[Sidenote: Contentions of the colonists.]
This view of the relations between a mother country and its
colonies takes its ultimate source largely from the fact that the
mother country is nearly always[24] greater and stronger than any
one colony or group of colonies; and in the English mind the
instinct of fair play invariably makes in favour of the party to
a contract which is or appears to be the weaker party. It is in
the light of the fact that the American colonies were numerically
the weaker party in their contention with the mother country, and
with the misleading deduction that any demand made upon them was
therefore unjust, that the story of the War of Independence has
over and over again been wrongly told. In one of the more recent
books on the subject, Sir George Trevelyan’s _American Revolution_,
it is stated that all the colonies asked of the King was to be let
alone.[25] That is all that any man or any community asks, when
called upon to pay a bill; and the question at issue between the
mother country and the colonies in the eighteenth century was the
eternal question, which vexes every community and every federation
of communities, who ought to pay. The bill was one for defence
purposes; but, when it was presented, the colonists’ answer was
in effect, first, that it was the duty of the mother country to
defend the colonies; secondly, that that duty had been neglected;
and thirdly, that, assuming that it had been performed, it was
for the colonies and not for the mother country to determine what
proportion of the expense, if any, should be defrayed by the
colonies.
[Sidenote: (1) It was the duty of the mother country to bear the
expense of defending the colonies.]
[Sidenote: This view still prevails.]
The first of these three contentions may not have been fully
avowed, but deep down in the minds of men there lay the conviction
that the mother country ought to pay for defending the colonies,
and there it has remained, more or less, ever since. It is true
that the grant of self-government in its fullest sense to the
present great provinces of the British Empire has been coupled with
the withdrawal of the regular forces from all but a few points of
selected Imperial vantage, and to that extent the colonies have
taken up, and well taken up, the duty of self-defence; but the
burden of the fleet, the great defensive force of the Empire as a
whole, is still borne in the main, and was till recently entirely
borne, by the mother country. When colonies or foreign possessions
are in a condition of complete political dependence upon the mother
country, it may fairly be argued that the latter, in insisting upon
dependence, should, as the price of supremacy, undertake to some
extent the duty of defence. And yet a survey of the British Empire
at the present day shows that no self-governing province of the
Empire is so highly organized or so fully charged for the purposes
of defence as is the great dependency of India.
[Sidenote: Independence implies self-defence.]
The first and most elementary duty of an independent community, the
one condition without which it cannot be independent, is providing
for its own defence. The American colonies claimed in reality
political independence, at any rate as far as internal matters were
concerned; but they did not admit, except to a limited extent, that
it was their duty to provide against foreign invasion. That duty,
in their eyes, devolved upon the mother country because it was the
mother country; because it was held that the mother country derived
more advantage from the colonies than--apart from defence--the
colonies derived from her; and because the mother country dictated
the foreign policy of the Empire; in common parlance, it called the
tune and therefore, it was argued, should pay the piper.
[Sidenote: The Navigation Acts an inadequate return for the charge
imposed on the mother country for defending the colonies.]
The Navigation laws, the commercial restrictions imposed by Great
Britain on her colonies, were assumed to represent the price which
the colonies paid in return for the protection which the mother
country gave or professed to give to the colonies; and these
same laws and restrictions, viewed in the light of later times,
have been held to be the burden of oppression which was greater
than the colonies could bear. Adam Smith, the writer who most
forcibly exposed the unsoundness of the old mercantile system, also
demonstrated most conclusively that that system was universal in
the eighteenth century; that it was less oppressively applied by
England than by other countries which owned colonies; that under
it, if the colonies were restricted in trade, they were also in
receipt of bounties; and lastly, that the undoubted disadvantages
which were the result of the system were shared by the mother
country with the colonies, though they weighed more heavily upon
the colonies than on the mother country, and were to the colonies
‘impertinent badges of slavery’. The conclusion to be drawn is
that, assuming Great Britain to have adequately discharged the duty
of protecting the colonies, she was not adequately paid for doing
so by the results of the mercantile system.
[Sidenote: (2) Did Great Britain neglect the defence of the North
American colonies?]
But it was further contended that the duty of protecting her
colonies was one which Great Britain neglected. While the colonies
were poor and insignificant, the mother country, it was alleged,
neglected them. When they became richer and more valuable she tried
to oppress them. If the charge of neglect in the general sense was
true, we may refer to Mr. Lecky’s words already quoted, as showing
that it may well be argued that the colonies profited by it.[26]
Mr. Lecky writes of conditions in the eighteenth century, but
Adam Smith used similar terms with reference to the earlier days
of the colonies. Contrasting the Spanish colonies in America with
those owned by other European nations on that continent, he wrote:
‘The Spanish colonies’ (in consequence of their mineral wealth)
‘from the moment of their first establishment attracted very much
the attention of their mother country; while those of the other
European nations were for a long time in a great measure neglected.
The former did not perhaps thrive the better in consequence of
this attention, nor the latter the worse in consequence of their
neglect.’[27] It may be answered, however, that the neglect here
referred to was neglect of the colonies in their internal concerns,
leaving them, as Adam Smith puts it, to pursue their interest in
their own way. This was an undeniably beneficial form of neglect,
wholly different from the neglect which leaves distant dependencies
exposed to foreign invasion and native raids. Was then the British
Government guilty of the latter form of neglect in the case of the
American colonies?
[Sidenote: The attitude of the mother country in the earlier history
of the colonies.]
There were many instances in the history of these colonies, while
they were still under the British flag, of the Imperial Government
promising assistance which was never sent, or only sent after
months of delay: there were instances of gross incapacity on the
part of leaders of expeditions sent out from home, notably in the
case of Walker and Hill, who commanded the disgracefully abortive
enterprise against Quebec in 1711. The state of Acadia, when
nominally in British keeping after the Treaty of Utrecht, was a
glaring illustration of English supineness and procrastination.
There was, at any rate, one notable instance of the mother country
depriving the colonies of a great result of their own brilliant
enterprise, viz. when Louisbourg, taken by the New Englanders in
1745, was restored by Great Britain to France under the terms of
the Treaty of Aix la Chapelle in 1748. Undoubtedly Great Britain
on many occasions disappointed and disheartened the colonies, and
especially the most patriotic of the colonies, the New England
states. On the other hand, it is beyond question that the colonies
were never seriously attacked by sea. They were threatened,
sometimes badly threatened, as by d’Anville’s fleet in 1746;
they were liable to the raids of daring partisan leaders, such
as d’Iberville; but either good fortune or the British fleet,
supplemented no doubt by a wholesome respect for the energy and
activity of the New England sailors themselves, kept the coasts and
seaports of the American colonies in comparative security through
all the years of war. It must be noted too that, while the colonies
suffered because Great Britain had interests elsewhere than in
America; while, for instance, a fleet designed for the benefit
of the colonies in 1709 was sent off to Portugal, and the New
Englanders’ prize of Louisbourg was forfeited in order to secure
Madras for the British Empire, the colonies at the same time shared
in the results of victories won in other parts of the world than
America. The Peace of Utrecht, with what it gave to the English in
America, was entirely the outcome of Marlborough’s victories on the
continent of Europe. Nothing that was done in America contributed
to it. The failures of England were under the colonies’ eyes; her
successes, the fruits of which they shared, were often achieved at
the other side of the world.
[Sidenote: The conquest of Canada was mainly due to the mother
country.]
But, taking the main events which contributed to the security
and greatness of the American colonies, how far should they be
credited to Great Britain and how far to the colonies themselves?
In earlier days, nothing was more important to the future of the
English in America than securing a continuous seaboard and linking
the southern to the northern colonies. This object was obtained
by taking New York from the Dutch, the result of action initiated
in Europe, not in America. The final reduction of Port Royal was
effected with the assistance of troops and ships from England.
The Peace of Utrecht, which deprived the French of Acadia and
their settlements in Newfoundland, was, as already stated, wholly
the result of Marlborough’s fighting in Europe. Though the New
Englanders took Louisbourg, and England gave it back to France,
the colonists’ success was largely aided by Warren’s squadron of
Imperial ships. But, most of all, the final conquest of Canada was
due far more to the action of the mother country than to that of
the colonies.
The great, almost the only, foreign danger to the English colonies
in North America was from the French in Canada and Louisiana, but
it is not generally realized how enormously the English on the
North American continent outnumbered the French. At the time of the
conquest of Canada, the white population of the English colonies
in North America was to that of the French colonies as thirteen
to one. It is true that the English did not form one community,
whereas the French were united; but it is also true, on the other
hand, that the several English communities were more concentrated
than the French, and that they held the base of the triangle, which
base was the sea. A single one of the larger English colonies had a
white population equal to or surpassing the whole French population
in North America. Under these circumstances it might fairly be
asked why the English colonists required any help at all from the
mother country to conquer Canada. The war was one in which they
were vitally concerned. Its object was to give present security to
their frontiers, to rid them once for all from the raids of French
and Indians, which had for generations desolated their villages,
farms, and homesteads, and to leave the West as a heritage to
their children’s children, instead of allowing the valleys of the
Mississippi and the Ohio to remain a French preserve. No doubt it
was to the interest of Great Britain, as an Imperial Power, that
France should be attacked and, if possible, overthrown in the New
World as in the Old. The conquest of Canada was part of Pitt’s
general scheme of policy, and English regiments were not sent to
America for the sake of the American colonists alone.[28] But the
allegation made in after years, that the campaigns in America
were of great concern to the mother country and of little concern
to the American colonies, was on the face of it untrue. To the
English colonists in North America the French in Canada were the
one great present danger, and the conquest of Canada was the one
thing needful. Yet we find that, in 1758, the troops, nearly 12,000
in number, which achieved the second capture of Louisbourg were
nearly all regulars; that in the force which Abercromby led against
Ticonderoga about one-half of the total fighting men were soldiers
of the line, and that even Forbes’ little army, which took Fort
Duquesne, contained 1,600 regulars out of a total of 6,000 men.
In the following year, Wolfe’s army, which took Quebec, was almost
entirely composed of Imperial troops. Nor was this all. Although,
in 1758, the colonies, or rather the New England colonies, readily
answered to Pitt’s call for a levy of 20,000 men, a considerable
part of the expense which was thus incurred was recouped from the
Imperial exchequer.[29] The conclusion of the whole matter is that
to the mother country, rather than to the colonies themselves, was
it due that the great danger which had menaced the latter for a
century and a half was finally removed. England gave the best of
her fighting men, and loaded her people at home with a debt of many
millions, in order that her great competitor might be weakened,
and that her children on the other side of the Atlantic might be
for all time secure on land from foreign foes, while her fleets
kept them safe from attack by sea; and, inasmuch as the French in
America were numerically insignificant as compared with the English
colonists, the only real justification for the colonists requiring
aid from the mother country to overcome the difficulty was, that
the English colonies were by geography and interest divided from
each other and consequently indifferent to each other’s burdens and
perils; while Canada, united in aim and organization, received also
assistance, though niggardly assistance, from France.
[Sidenote: Aid given by the mother country against the Indians.]
The French were the main enemies to the English in North America.
The native Indians were the only other human beings against whom
the colonists had to defend themselves, and here clearly it
was their concern alone. The New Englanders took the burden on
themselves manfully, so far as related to their own borders, but
they were not prepared to fight the battles of the Pennsylvanians
and Virginians; and the Pennsylvanians and Virginians were slow to
help themselves. The result was, as told in the last chapter, that
the brunt of the war with Pontiac and his confederates fell largely
on the mother country, her officers, and her troops, and this fact
alone was sufficient justification for Grenville’s contention, that
a small Imperial force ought to be maintained in, and be in part
paid by, the American colonies.
[Sidenote: (3) Argument that because the mother country dictated
the policy she ought to bear the expense.]
[Sidenote: Question of colonial representation in the Imperial
Parliament.]
But then comes the last and the strongest argument of the colonies.
The mother country dictated the policy; distant and without direct
representation, though their agents were active in England, the
colonies could only follow where the mother country led: the mother
country, therefore, should pay the cost of defending the outlying
provinces; or, if the latter contributed at all to the cost, it was
for them and not for the mother country to determine the amount and
the method of the contribution. The real answer to this argument
was, as Adam Smith saw,[30] that the colonies should be represented
in the Imperial Parliament. He allowed that such a proposal was beset
by difficulties, but he did not consider, as Burke considered, that
the difficulties were insurmountable. Yet the problem, infinitely
easier in the days of steam and telegraphy, has not yet been solved,
and the preliminary task of combining a group of self-governing
colonies into a single confederation had, in the eighteenth century,
only been talked of and never been seriously attempted in North
America.
[Sidenote: Moderation of the English demand on the colonies.]
In theory, English citizens, who had never been taxed directly
for Imperial purposes, might fairly claim not to be taxed, unless
and until they were taken into full partnership and given a voice
in determining the policy of the Empire. But the actual facts of
the case made the demand of the mother country on the American
colonies in itself eminently reasonable. It was true that England
had dictated the policy; but it was also true that the policy had
been directly in the interests of the colonies, and such as they
warmly approved. They were asked for money, but only for their own
protection, and to preclude the possibility of a further burden
falling on the mother country, already overweighted with debt
incurred on behalf of these particular provinces of the Empire.
The demand was a small one; the money to be raised would clearly
defray but a fraction of the cost of defending the North American
colonies. To the amount no reasonable exception could be taken; and
as to the method of raising it the colonies were, as a matter of
fact, consulted, for Grenville, the author of the Stamp Act, gave a
year’s notice, before the Act was finally passed,[31] in order that
the colonies might, in the meantime, if they could, agree upon some
more palatable method of providing the sum required.
[Sidenote: England suffered for her merits as well as for her
defects.]
[Sidenote: The analogy of family life in the case of a mother
country and its colonies.]
The merits of England, no less than her defects, tended to alienate
the North American colonies. It is possible that, if she had
made a larger and more sweeping demand, she would have been more
successful. Her requisition was so moderate, that it seemed to
be petty, and might well have aroused suspicion that there was
more behind; that what was actually proposed was an insidious
preliminary to some far-reaching scheme for oppressing the colonies
and bringing them into subjection. It has been held, too, that, if
the Stamp Act had been passed without delay, there would have been
less opposition to it than when it had been brooded over for many
months. In other words, the fairness of dealing, which gave full
warning and full time for consideration of a carefully measured
demand, was turned to account against the mother country. But after
all what was in men’s minds, when the American colonies began their
contest for independence was, speaking broadly, the feeling, right
or wrong, that a mother country ought to pay and colonies ought
not. Men argued then, and they still argue, from the analogy of
a family. The head of the family should provide, as long as the
children remain part of the household.
The analogy of family life suggests a further view of the relations
between a mother country and its colonies, which accounts for the
possibilities of friction. A colonial empire consists of an old
community linked to young ones. The conditions, the standards, the
points of view, in politics, in morals, in social and industrial
matters, are not identical in old and young communities. Young
peoples, like young men, do not count the cost, and do not feel
responsibility to the same extent as their elders. They are more
restive, more ready to move forward, more prompt in action. Their
horizon is limited, and therefore they see immediate objects
clearly, and they do not appreciate compromise. The problems which
face them are simple as compared with the complicated questions
which face older communities, and they are impatient of the caution
and hesitation which come with inherited experience in a much wider
field of action. The future is theirs rather than the past, they
have not yet accumulated much capital and draw bills on the coming
time. Most of all, being on promotion, they are sensitive as to
their standing, keenly alive to their interests, and resent any
semblance of being slighted. It is impossible to generalize as to
the comparative standards of morality in old and young communities,
either in public or in private life, but, as a matter of fact,
political life, in the middle of the eighteenth century, was much
purer in the North American colonies than in England: whereas at
the present day, in this respect, England compares favourably with
the United States. The North American colonies were a group of
young communities, whose citizens were, at any rate in New England
and Pennsylvania, of a strong, sober, and very tenacious type:
the late war had taught them to fight: its issue had given them a
feeling of strength and security: there had been no extraordinary
strain upon their resources: they had reached a stage in their
history when they were most dangerous to offend and not unlikely to
take offence unless very carefully handled, and careful handling
on the part of the mother country, as all the world knows, was
conspicuous by its absence.
[Sidenote: The Native question.]
One more point may be noted as having an important bearing upon
the general question of the relations between a mother country and
its colonies, one which in particular contributed to ill-feeling
between England and the North American states. Colonization rarely
takes place in an empty land. The colonists on arrival find native
inhabitants, strong or weak, few or many, as the case may be. In
North America there were strong fighting races of Indians, and the
native question played an all-important part in the early history
of European settlement in this part of the world. It is almost
inevitable that white men on the spot, who are in daily contact
with natives, should, unless they hold a brief as missionaries or
philanthropists, take a different view of native rights and claims
from that which is held at a distance. It is true that in our own
time, to take one instance only, the Maori question in New Zealand
has been well handled by the colonial authorities, when thrown on
their own resources, with the result that there are no more loyal
members of the British Empire at the present day than the coloured
citizens of New Zealand; but in the earlier days of colonization
the general rule has been that native races fare better under
Imperial than under colonial control, for the twofold reason that
the distant authority is less influenced by colour prejudice, and
that white men who go out from Europe to settle among native races
are, in the ordinary course, of a rougher type than those who stay
at home, and that they tend to become hardened by living among
lower grades of humanity. The Quaker followers of Penn, in the
state which bears his name, were conspicuous for just and kindly
treatment of the Indians, but in the back-lands of Pennsylvania the
traders and pioneers of settlement were to the full as grasping
as their neighbours. The North American Puritan, like the South
African Dutchman, looked on the coloured man much as the Jewish
race regarded the native tribes of Canaan. The colonists came in
and took the land of the heathen in possession. Indian atrocities,
stimulated by French influence and French missionary training, were
not calculated to soften the views of the English settlers. They
saw their homes burned: their wives and children butchered: to them
arguments as to the red men’s rights were idle words.
The only authority which could and would hold the balance even
between the races was the Imperial Government; and in the hands
of that Government, represented for the purpose in the middle of
the eighteenth century by a man of rare ability and unrivalled
experience, Sir William Johnson, the superintendence of native
affairs was placed. But this duty, and the attempt to carry it out
justly and faithfully, involved friction with the more turbulent
and the less scrupulous of the colonists. Colonization is a tide
which is always coming in; and, unless restrictions are imposed
upon the colonists by some superior authority, the native owners
are gradually expropriated. ‘Your people,’ said the representatives
of the Six Nations to Sir William Johnson in 1755, ‘when they buy a
small piece of land of us, by stealing they make it large;’[32] and
Johnson amply corroborated this view. In October, 1762, he wrote:
‘The Indians are greatly disgusted at the great thirst which we all
seem to show for their lands.’[33]
[Sidenote: Sir William Johnson.]
A word must be said of Sir William Johnson, for he was one of the
men who, in the long course of British colonial history, have
rendered memorable service to their country by special aptitude
for dealing with native races. In this quality the French in
North America, as a rule, far excelled the English, and at the
particular place and time, Johnson’s character and influence were
an invaluable asset on the British side. An Irishman by birth, and
nephew of Sir Peter Warren, he had come out to America in 1738
to manage his uncle’s estates on the confines of the Six Nation
Indians, and some eleven years later he was made Superintendent of
Indian Affairs for the Northern division. He lived on the Mohawk
river, as much Indian as white man, his second wife being Molly
Brant, sister of the subsequently celebrated Mohawk leader, and
among the Iroquois his influence was unrivalled. In the wars with
France he did notable work, especially at the battle of Lake George
in 1755, and at the taking of Fort Niagara in 1759; and, when he
died in July, 1774, on the eve of the War of Independence, his
death left a gap which could not be filled, for no one among his
contemporaries could so persuade and so control the fiercest native
fighters in North America.
[Sidenote: The Fort Stanwix line.]
As has been seen, the Royal Proclamation of 1763 carefully
safeguarded the Indians’ lands, and in 1765 a line was drawn from
the Ohio valley to Wood Creek in the Oneida country, dividing
the country which should in future be open to white settlers
from that which the Six Nations were to hold for their own.
This boundary was, through Johnson’s influence, confirmed by an
agreement signed at Fort Stanwix on the 5th of November, 1768, in
the presence of Johnson himself as well as of Benjamin Franklin’s
son, who was at the time Governor of New Jersey. The signatories
were representatives of the colonies of New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
and Virginia on the one hand, and deputies of the Six Nations on
the other; and the Indians were described as ‘true and absolute
proprietors of the lands in question’. The line diverged from the
Alleghany branch of the Ohio some miles above Pittsburg; it was
carried in a north-easterly direction to the Susquehanna; from
the Susquehanna it was taken east to the Delaware; and from the
Delaware it was carried north along the course of the Unadilla
river, ending near Fort Stanwix, now the town of Rome, in Oneida
county of the state of New York. Under the terms of the agreement
all the land east of the line was, for a sum of £10,460 7_s._ 3_d._
sold to the King, except such part as was within the province of
Pennsylvania.[34] It was a definite recognition of the Indians
as being owners of land, and a definite pronouncement that what
they sold should be sold to the Crown. Neither tenet was likely to
commend itself to the border colonists. They would find it hard
to believe that a savage’s tenure of land was as valid as that
of a white man, nor would they welcome the Imperial Government
as landlord of the hinterland. The red man thought otherwise.
The power from over the seas, which the colonists soon learnt to
denounce as the enemy of liberty, was to them the protector of life
and land: and, when the struggle was over, many of the Six Nation
Indians were to be found in Canada, not in their old homes under
the flag of the United States.
[Sidenote: Attitude of the Canadians.]
Nor were the Indians the only inhabitants of North America who
did not see eye to eye with the colonists in their contest with
the mother country. In October, 1774, the General Congress of the
recalcitrant colonies issued a long manifesto to their ‘friends
and fellow subjects’ in Canada, inviting them to ‘unite with us
in one social compact formed on the generous principles of equal
liberty’. The manifesto appealed to the writings of ‘the immortal
Montesquieu’, the ‘countryman’ of the French Canadians, and warned
the latter not to become the instruments of the cruelty and
despotism of English ministers, but to stand firm for their natural
liberties, alleged to be threatened by the Quebec Act which had
just been passed. But the high-sounding appeal missed its mark.
It is true that at the beginning of the war, when Canada was left
almost undefended, and when, in consequence, Montgomery and the
Congress troops overran the country up to the walls of Quebec, a
considerable number of the French Canadians, together with the
British malcontents in Canada, openly or secretly made common
cause with the invaders; but even then the large majority of the
French Canadians remained neutral, and, if some joined the ranks
of the invaders, others, including especially the higher ranks
of the population, supported her cause. Here was a people lately
conquered, under the rule of an alien race. A golden opportunity
was given them, it seemed, to recover their freedom. Why did the
French colonists not throw in their lot wholehearted with the
English settlers in North America? Why did they prefer to remain
under the British Crown?
[Sidenote: The Canadians were not oppressed under English rule.]
The first reason was that they were not oppressed. On the contrary
they had already enjoyed more liberty under the British Government
than under the old French régime. There were complaints, no doubt,
as will be seen, but the Canadians were free to make them; there
was no stifling of discontent, no stamping out of inconvenient
pleas for liberty. With British rule came in the printing press.
The _Quebec Gazette_ was first issued in June, 1764, and in it the
ordinances were published in French as well as in English. Even
under military administration a formerly submissive people learnt
their privileges and their rights, and General Murray, whose recall
was due to allegations that he had unduly favoured the French
population at the expense of the Protestant Loyalists, wrote of
the Canadians as a ‘frugal, industrious, moral race of men who,
from the just and mild treatment they met with from His Majesty’s
military officers, who ruled the country four years, until the
establishment of civil government, had greatly got the better of
the natural antipathy they had to their conquerors’.[35] Canada was
not anxious to overturn a system under which Canadians were being
trained to be free. If England oppressed, she oppressed Englishmen
rather than Frenchmen or natives, and one element in the alleged
oppression of her own people consisted in safeguarding the rights
of other races.
[Sidenote: They preferred the English in and from England to the
English colonists in America.]
The second and the main reason why Canada did not combine with the
United States was that, though Canadians did not love the English
from England, they loved less their English neighbours in America.
Charles the Second told his brother that the English would not kill
himself to make James king. Similarly the Canadians, on reflection,
were not prepared to turn out the British Government in order to
substitute the domination of the English colonies. Generalities as
to natural rights and equal liberties, borrowed from the writings
of European philosophers, could not cover up the plain facts of
the case. Canada, united to the English colonies, would have been
submerged, and French Roman Catholics would have been permanently
subject to English Protestants, far less tolerant than Englishmen
at home. The colonists who had issued the high-sounding manifesto
had done so with strong resentment at the extension of the limits
of the province of Quebec, at the widening of the field in which
the Canadian system and the religion of Canada should hold its
own. They were speaking with two voices at one and the same time;
calling on the Canadians not to submit to British tyranny, and
denouncing as tyranny a measure which favoured Canada. Many years
back the Canadians and their friends had differentiated between
the English from England, who came out to fight, and the English
colonists in America. The eye-witness of the siege and capture of
Louisbourg in 1745 favourably, and probably unfairly, contrasted
Warren and his British sailors with Pepperell and the New England
levies. To the men from a distance, better disciplined, less
prejudiced, less imbued with provincial animosity, there was no
such aversion as to the enemy who was ever under their eyes. At all
times and in all parts of the world there has been the same tale to
tell; if one race must be subordinated to another, it prefers that
its rulers should not be those who for generations have been their
immediate neighbours and their persistent rivals.
It was written in the book of fate that New France should sooner or
later become incorporated in the British Empire; it was written too
that, when that time came, the British provinces in North America
would assert and win complete independence. It is impossible to
estimate aright the loss except in the light of the gain which
preceded it. Only consummate statesmanship or military genius
could have averted the severance of the North American colonies,
for the very qualities which had brought success alike to them and
to the motherland, dogged persistence, sense of strength, all the
instincts and the principles which have made the English great,
were ranged on either side in the civil war between England and her
children: and that war was the direct, almost the inevitable result
of their recent joint effort and their united victory. Friction
began: years went on: bitterness was intensified: the noisier and
less scrupulous partisans silenced the voice of reason: in the
mother country the Sovereign and his advisers made a good cause
bad: the revolting colonies were ennobled by Washington. Success
justified the action of the colonists. England was condemned
because she failed. Yet the story, if read aright, teaches only
this: that the defeat of England by her own children was due to the
simple fact that partly by her action, partly by her inaction, the
children in wayward and blundering fashion had grown to greatness.
[Sidenote: Canada under military rule.]