The Wars Between England and America

nent east of the Mississippi River was now under the British flag, and four West India sugar islands were added to those already in English hands. In India, th

self there lay already the seeds of a discord which was soon {10} to develop into an irrepressible contest, leading to civil war; then, for a generation, to drive the separated parts into renewed antagonism, and finally to cause a se

ch, and the professions. In parliament, the House of Commons-once the body which reflected the conscious strength of the gentry and citizens,-had now fallen under the control of the peers, owing to the decayed condition of scores of ancient parliamentary boroughs. Nearly one-third of the seats were actually {11} or substantially owned by noblemen, and of the remainder a majority were venal, the close corporations of Mayor and Aldermen selling freely their right to return two members at each parliamentary election. In addition, the influence and prestige of the great landowners were so powerful that even in the counties

leaders of parliamentary groups. The King was {12} obliged to select his ministers from among the members of noble families in the Lords or Commons, who agreed among themselves after elaborate bargains and negotiations upon the formation of cabinets and the distribution of honours. In this way sundry great Whig family "connections," as they were call

most powerful Minister in the Cabinet to be the Duke of Newcastle, whose sole qualification, apart from his birth, was his pre-eminent ability to handle patronage and purchase votes. That such a system did not ruin England was due to the tenacity and personal courage of this aristocracy and to {13} its use of parliamentary methods, whereby the orderly conduct of legislation and taxat

inct from the voice of the borough-owners, but he had few followers. Only in London and a few counties did sundry advocates of parliamentary reform strive in the years after 1763 to emphasize these views by organizing the freemen to petition and to "instruct" their representatives in the Commons. Such desires evoked nothing but contempt and antipathy in the great majority

small farmers, shopkeepers, and fishermen, who formed the bulk of the population; while all of these joined in regarding the outlying frontiersmen as elements of society deserving of small consideration. Men of property, education, and "position" exercised a distinct leadership in public and private life. Yet all this remained purely social; in law no such thing as an aristocracy could be found, and in government the colonies had g

pose taxes and vote laws; and, although its acts were liable to veto by the governor, or by the Crown through the Privy Council, it possessed the actual control of political power

in all other colonies by the Crown. The councillors, who commonly exercised judicial functions in addition to their duties as the governor's advisers and as the upper house of the legislature, were appointed in all colonies except the three in N

a century of incessant petty conflict, of incessant wrangling and bargaining, of incessant encroachments on the nominal legal powers of the governor, had made itself master of the administration. The colonists resisted all attempts to direct their military or civil policy, laid only such taxes as they chose, raised only such troops as they saw fit, passed only such laws as seemed to them desirable, and tied the governor's hands by every sort of device. They usurped the {17} appointment of the colonial treasurer, they appointed committees to oversee the expenditure of sums voted, they sy

gregational, Presbyterian, or Reformed, with a considerable scattering of Baptists and other sects-had an effect on the attitude of the people toward England. In the home country, the controlling social classes accepted the established church as part of the constitution; but in the colonie

contradictory things. The Englishman's patriotism was sturdy but unenthusiastic, and showed itself almost as much in a contempt for foreigners as in complacency over English institutions. The colonist, on the contrary, had a double allegiance: one conventional and traditional, to the British crown; the other a new, intensely local and narrow attachment to his province. England was still the "old home," looked to as the source of political authority, of manners and literature. It was for many of {19} the residents their recent abode and, for all except a few of Dut

o build up some unruly and not very admirable communities. Nor did the English middle classes look upon the colonists with much interest, or regard them as, on the whole, their equals. The prevailing colonial political habits, as seen from England, suggested only unwarrantable wrangling

ied goods for all the nations of Europe and brought imports to England from all lands. Although the manufacturers were not yet in possession of the new inventions which were to revolutionize the industries of the world, they were active and prosperous in their domestic production of hardware and textiles, and they furnished cargoes f

obacco from the islands and the southern mainland colonies; indigo and rice from Carolina; furs, skins, masts, pine products; and, from New England, above all, fish. The natural market for these articles was in England or in other colonies; and in return British manufactures found their natural market in the new communities. When the Econo

ucers. Navigation Acts shut out foreign-built, -owned, or -manned ships from the carrying trade between any region but their home country and England, reserving all other commerce for British vessels. Into this last restriction there entered another purely political consideration, namely, the perpetuation of a supply of mariners for the British navy, whose importance was fully recognized. So far as the colonies were concerned, they were brou

duties was devised, and customs officers were appointed, resident in the colonies, while governors were obliged to take oath to enforce the Acts. As time revealed defects or unnecessary stringencies, the restrictions were frequently modified. The Carolinas, for instance, were allowed to ship rice not only to England, but to any place in Europe south of Cape Finisterre. Bounties were established to aid the production of tar and

m. The articles would have gone to England in any case. The restriction of importation to goods from England was no {24} great grievance, since British products would, in any case, have supplied the American market. Even the effort, by an Act of 1672, to check intercolonial trade in enumerated commodities w

the French, as well as the British West Indies, barrel staves, clapboards, fish and food products. In {25} return, they took sugar and molasses, developing in New England a flourishing rum manufacture, which in turn was used in the African slave trade. By these means the people of the New England and Middle colonies built up an active commerce, using their profits to balance their indebtedness to England. This "triangular trade" disturbed the British West India planters, who, being largely non-residents and very influential in London, induced Parliament, in 1733, to pass an Act imposing prohibitory duties on all sugar and molasses of foreign growth. This law, if enforced, would ha

of by governors, Boards of Trade, and other officials; but so long as the colonies continued to supply the sugar, furs, lumber and masts called for by the Acts, bought largely from English shippers and manufacturers, and stimulated the growth of British shipping, the Whig and Tory noblemen were content. The rapidly growing republicanism of

nch and Spanish West Indies, furnishing their enemies with supplies, and buying their sugar and molasses as usual. When, in Boston, writs of assistance were employed by the customs officials, in order that by a general power of search they might discover such smuggled property, the merchants protested in the courts, and James Otis, a fiery young lawyer, boldly declared the writs an infringement of the rights of the colonists, unconstitutional, and beyond the power of Parliament to authorize. To Ministers engaged in a tremendous war for the overthrow of France, the behaviour of the colonies revealed a