the fact that it must rely on itself for protection and the means of existence. These colonists were no braggarts concealing their fears by proclaiming their courage; they believed they were able to hold their own against the French and the Indians,1 and they gave many proofs of their strength and military capability, yet it created a sense of security to know that in reserve were the ships and men of England, and that England must come to their assistance whenever she was called upon. When the lilies of France went down before the red cross of St. George on the Plains of Abraham, the succor of England was no longer needed. With the expulsion of the French the fear of invasion disappeared; made safe from attack by the courage and diplomacy of the English, the country won by the English was now theirs for them to develop in unmenaced security. Did the English do more than they really intended, ― did circumstances quite unforeseen force their hand and Fate play the usual ironic juggle? A disquieting thought this that robs history of its dignity and turns tragedy into farce, and yet not without evidence to sustain it. There is a good deal of contemporary writing to show that there were men who saw the danger to England when the colonies were no longer dependent upon her. Peter 1 John Adams wrote to George Alexander Otis: "Of this number, I distinctly remember, I was myself one; fully believing that we were able to defend ourselves against French and Indians, without any assistance or embarrassments from Great Britain.” — Jay: Life of John Jay, vol. 1, p. 416. Kalm, the eminent Swedish botanist who traveled in America from 1748 to 1750, "a painstaking and accurate observer," wrote: "It is, however, of great advantage to the Crown of England, that the North American colonies are near a country under the government of the French, like Canada. There is reason to believe that the King never was earnest in his attempts to expel the French from their possessions there; though it might have been done with little difficulty. . . . I have been told by Englishmen, and not only by such as were born in America, but even by such as came from Europe, that the English colonies in North America, in the space of thirty or fifty years, would be able to form a state by themselves, entirely independent of Old England. But as the whole which lies along the seashore is unguarded, and on the land side is harassed by the French in times of war, these dangerous neighbors are sufficient to prevent the connection of the colonies with the mother-country from being quite broken off. The English Government has therefore sufficient reason to consider the French in North America as the best means of keeping the colonies in their due submission."2 In the earlier days the colonists were held to the coast by their dependence upon England for supplies, but they had now become self-supporting and enjoyed, as 1 Hart: American History Told by Contemporaries, vol. II, p. 324. 2 Kalm: Travels into North America, vol. 1, pp. 206-7. Cf. Hutchinson: History of Massachusetts, vol. II, p. 100. we have seen in a former chapter, a surplus for export, and the new country was able to "put the full breast of its youthful exuberance to the mouth of its exhausted parent."1 To a sagacious observer of colonial politics two facts were becoming evident. "The one was that the deliberate and malignant selfishness of English commercial legislation was digging a chasm between the mother-country and the colonies which must inevitably, when the latter had become sufficiently strong, lead to separation. The other was that the presence of the French in Canada was an essential condition of the maintenance of the British Empire in America." 2 Fear of invasion no longer threatening them, and no longer drawing sustenance from England, the relations of the colonies with the mothercountry assumed a different aspect. If gratitude is a sense of favors conferred, the colonists ought to have realized that it was to the mother-country they owed their security; it was her genius that made them masters in their new home. They did not. The past was forgotten. The colonists lived in the present and looked forward to the future, the continent theirs and the foe driven out. England had served them well in the past, - it was her duty, and it is always an easy way for the ungrateful to escape an obligation by finding that the service rendered was simply the performance of a duty, 1 Burke: Speech on Conciliation with America, Works, vol. 1, p. 461. but the thoroughness with which she had done her work was one of the main reasons why she was no longer needed. Heretofore they had leaned on England; now they knew and the knowledge was theirs long before England possessed it - that they were able to stand alone.1 It was this knowledge that made them self-reliant, and hardened character, that gave them a feeling of independence, and made them regard England as useful but not vital to their development. 1 Cf. Green: A History of the English People, book 1x, chapter 1, passim. CHAPTER IX COMMERCIAL SELFISHNESS WEAKENS THE BOND THE greater grew the prosperity of the colonies, the more they developed and threatened competition with English trade, the more it was in accord with the economic and political teachings of the time to keep the colonies in subjection, and by the enactment of restrictive legislation destroy the danger of rivalry. Colonial prosperity was to be fostered and the colonials given encouragement so long as they provided the raw materials which English manufacturers needed — for England has never been a self-contained country, and has always had to look to the outside world for its crude supplies, although up to 1765 she had been an exporting country in divers agricultural products; subsequently she became an importing country,' but when they ceased to be content merely to furnish the products of the soil in which England was deficient, and English merchants saw that their trade was in danger, the growing ambition of the colonists must be checked by statute.2 This was not political, it was purely commercial; 1 Rogers: Six Centuries of Work and Wages, p. 485. 2 Cf. Doyle: English Colonies in America, vol. 11, p. 325; Lecky: A History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. 11, chapter v, passim. |