The happy fact of insular safety had long since given to the islanders such security for freedom from kingly oppression that there would have been no excuse for their seventeenth-century revolutions and the murder of their king but that, as they looked across the Channel, the condition of Europe could not fail to suggest to them the danger of its loss. The colonists, who had grown up for a century under their own local institutions of a very democratic character, forms all based on the British Constitution, undisturbed for the most part by the European politicians, looked across the Atlantic Ocean with a jealous fear at the steady movement strengthening the central power of the European rulers at the expense of individual freedom. When the mob of the colonial ports, led by the small lawyers, bring on the revolution, they find sympathy and encouragement from those who had felt the weight of absolute power in Europe; their armies are joined by the French apostles of liberty, and Kosciusko brings from Poland his engineering knowledge to aid rebels against authority.

The danger of military despotism was so far always present in their minds that nine-tenths of the difficulty with the colonies in the eighteenth century arose from the fear, steadily encouraged by the Whig demagogues, that the freedom which they alone had been so happy to attain should by some act be taken from them.

It is but just, when censuring the extreme want of true patriotism of the Whigs who encouraged the American disorder and the rebellious nature of the American colonist, to remember that in both cases their action was dictated by this, no doubt, very absurd fear of losing their free institutions by subjection, as in Europe, to military government.

The association of the colonies for non-importation lays the blame on a "ruinous system of colony administration adopted by the British ministry about the year 1763, evidently calculated for enslaving these colonies, and with them the British Empire," and in an address to the people of Great Britain the delegates of Congress speak of the ministers as "men who found their claims on no principles of reason, and who prosecute them with a design that by having our lives and property in their

semblance of morality. Numbers only without reference to quality of any sort, and a minority of numbers.

power they may with the greater facility enslave you." "It is clear beyond a doubt," they say of the 3d. tax on tea, "that a resolution is formed, and is now carrying into execution to extinguish the freedom of these colonies by subjecting them to a despotic government."

The Duke of Grafton, in his autobiography, while supporting the revolted colonies, agrees that "the small duty upon tea was but the pretence, while the dread of the Declaratory Act was the real sore point." In December, 1775, he writes (p. 277) "The light in which the business appears to us was partly this, that if a cordial reconciliation were not speedily effected with the colonies, to lose America entirely would be a lesser evil than to hold her by a military force as a conquered country; and that the consequences of holding that dominion by an army only must inevitably terminate in the downfall of the Constitution and liberties of Britain. Thus success itself would be dreadful. To prevent these threatening consequences the opposition was most honourably engaged," and they thoroughly succeeded in preventing any such success of the British arms.

Yet the confusion of mind was so great that the colonists speak of the Quebec Act, an Act to prevent the holding of Canada as a conquered country and to give self-government to the Roman Catholic French, as an Act "for establishing an arbitrary government in the province of Quebec, and discouraging the settlement of British subjects in that wide extended country; thus, by the influence of evil principles and ancient prejudices to dispose the inhabitants to act with hostility against the free Protestant colonies, whenever a wicked ministry shall choose so to direct them." (Ramsay, Revolution of South Carolina.)

Over all was the fatal tradition of Whiggism. By treachery and false dealing the Whig nobles had driven out the legal King and put the Dutchman in his place. Under him and Anne and the Hanoverians the founders and supporters of the Parliamentary kingship had enjoyed seventy years of supremacy; and now the young King refused to be only the king of a party or to be the subordinate of a minister. Among the Whig clans the fear that the supremacy so gained should be in like manner lost overshadowed all national and imperial interests.

To quote the ex-minister Grafton once more-in 1782 he urges putting an end to jealousies among the little cliques who opposed any government; " and I added that without some step of this nature I plainly saw that we should break and undo what we had been labouring for years to establish a Whig administration."

It was a pathetic attempt to revive "the dancings of the sheeted dead." Whiggism had long ceased to be the reality of a political party; it was merely a gathering of the clans; as a constructive dogma it had had no existence for fifty years or more; it had become solely "the negation of all principle"; it had ceased to have any power at all except for evil. Between it and the new gospel of "liberty" with which Western Europe had to deal there was nothing whatever in common. Whiggism at its best at the end of the seventeenth century had meant a reform of existing political conditions by means of Parliament; the eighteenth-century theorists of liberty aimed not at reform but at the overthrow of all existing institutions—the State, the Church, the laws, the framework of the society of the day. But the Whigs lived in the past, like the Ulster Orangemen of to-day, and did not see the change.

To arrange any scheme of representation for the colonies was a matter of almost insuperable difficulty. The various colonial legislatures with varying powers were intensely jealous of any interference in matters of taxation, and very slow to lay on taxes themselves even for necessary defence; the condition of Parliamentary representation in Britain made any admission of colonial representatives difficult if not grotesque; they would always be in a tiny minority, subject to all kinds of evil influences. The British Parliament was as jealous of any infringement of its world-wide authority in respect of the colonies as it was of Ireland; and the politicians were hopelessly ignorant of the conditions of the colonies, of their geographical position, and of their commercial and military strength. If King George had been so fortunate as to possess any one great minister with tact and persuasive power, some compromise might have been effected. But the long Whig predominance had expunged from British politics every statesman who understood the art of combining firmness and principle with conciliation.

ii. Direct Taxation.-The chief interest of our constitutional history consists in the successful refusal of very rich men, such as Hampden, urging some technical objection, to provide efficient means for the conduct of public affairs, and the very extensive waste by the ministers and politicians of what is collected. The events of our imperial history consist of the splendid deeds of courage performed by men who give themselves for their fellows in spite of the refusal of the men defended to provide the necessary means for their exploits. These two glories of our blood and state only become substantial things when the means have urgently to be found to pay for the deeds.

War must be paid for by the nations who wage it. That is the lesson to be drawn from the story of the disputes with the American colonies which led to the revolution as from any war. It is an evil as well as a false saying to tell any victorious people that the defeated nation will pay the bill for war. You might just as well expect the boy who was licked in a school fight to do the victor's Greek verses, or provide a beefsteak for his black eye.

When the conflict with France ended in 1763 the expenses did not cease, nor could the means of meeting them be found in France or in any other part of the world but the British dominions. The war had to be paid for, and it was necessary to find new sources of taxation. There were various expenses of the war itself to be settled. £300,000 was due to the Chancery of Hanover for forage for the use of Hanoverians, Prussians and Hessians; great sums were claimed for subsidies, supplies and succour by German princes, which were compromised for part of their value and payment spread over three years. The expenses did not cease with the close of the fighting; a new loan of £3,500,000 had to be incurred between the preliminaries and the signing of the peace. The war had been financed without any regard to expense. As Walpole sarcastically put it (1767), the multiplication table did not admit of being treated in epic and Chatham had but that one style. The whole funded debt contracted by the war and funded before the end of the session of 1765 was £66,512,928.

The aftermath of the war expenses was only a small part of the burdens which the disturbance of war had thrown

upon Europe. In September, 1763, great failures in Berlin, Hamburg and in Holland created general alarm; the bankruptcy of Europe was only averted by the courage of the British merchants. "They turned all they could into money, they sold at a loss, they borrowed in order to lend and then made vast and immediate remittances to the places where the distress and danger were the greatest. The bank gave most effectual assistance without delay" (Whately). Owing to this, to disturbance of trade on the Continent, to an arbitrary reduction of French funds, money was brought over to England for investment,* our credit also being raised by the personal savings of the people, and by the steady discharge of the unfunded debts. These, so far as the Navy was concerned, were difficult to estimate, as the seamen's wages were detained for six or even twelve months, and the Navy bills were not due until six months after issue.

But the strain of the war continued to tell: trade had suffered; labour and materials rose; the weight of the taxes and increase of the national debt told adversely to commercial credit; the amount of the stocks affected their value; money was scarce and the rate of interest high; and there remained a large unfunded debt for arrangement. Heavy duties were imposed and a new three per cent. loan was started and secured on an export for coal (an export for foreign manufactures made profitable by the variety of duties to which Liége and Flanders coals were subject in transport through the different states), on silks and calicoes for sale in the American colonies, and on policies of insurance.

The great reduction of the debt, between six and seven million pounds, was not, could not be, made at the expense of the peace establishment which was kept up higher than it had ever been before. George Grenville, apparently a most efficient Chancellor of the Exchequer, must not only consider the amount of debt from the past but he must provide for the protection and peaceful settled government

"It is the glory of this country," said Lord North in 1774, "that all the world knows what England owes and what England can pay; in France all is private, the resolutions of the cabinet are followed only by edicts, and these are so contradictory, so voluminous and so multifarious, that it is a science to understand them; even the bankers of Paris, who have any business, find it impossible to make themselves masters of the French funds, and employ brokers, whose only business it is." (P.H., XVII., 1331-3.)