sugar island of Guadeloupe and let the French stay in Canada as a wholesome check on the "republican" tendencies of the colonies. "They will not fail to shake off their dependence," said the French minister Choiseul, "the moment Canada is ceded." Canada was ceded, however, by the Treaty of Paris (1763), and the English flag waved over the North American continent from Hudson's Straits to the Gulf of Mexico. The stage was cleared for the opening act of our national drama. "With the triumph of Wolfe on the Heights of Abraham," says John Richard Green, "began the history of the United States." In the prelude of a Wagnerian opera we hear anticipating strains and fragments of the various themes which are worked out in detail in the course of the tragic drama. Perhaps it is not too fanciful to see in the colonial period of our history a sort of prelude to the drama of our national life. Liberty, Democracy, and Union are the ideals for which successive generations have wrought and fought in our land-the generations of Washington, of Jackson, and of Lincoln. Already these ideals appear as "motifs" in our colonial history. The settlers of the seventeenth century, breaking away from Old World traditions, brought with them the habit of freedom. In the increasing claims of the colonial representative assemblies and in their resistance to political and commercial control by the officers of the crown we see the foreshadowing of American democracy. And, finally, the repeated attempts of the eighteenth century to secure union in the face of the foe on our borders suggest the labors of Hamilton and Madison, of Webster and Lincoln, to make a United States the common home of our liberty and our democracy.

CHAPTER II

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

The decree has gone forth. . . that a more equal liberty than has prevailed in other parts of the world must be established in America.-JOHN ADAMS

BRITISH PROVOCATION

Two facts of supreme importance summarize the colonial period of our history: England established an empire in America, and England lost an empire in America. The first of these facts we have studied in the preceding chapter. We turn now to the second fact, the separation of the American colonies from England-an event which Whitelaw Reid, former ambassador to the court of St. James, spoke of, with pardonable exaggeration, as the "greatest event in modern history."

All crises in history are the adjustment, often with the explosive violence of revolution, of forces that have been long in preparation. The event is understood only in the causes of the event. When a revolution becomes inevitable it means simply that certain political, economic, or religious ideas have developed to a point where, in order to find their expression, they must burst asunder a political, economic, or religious order which refuses to adapt itself to their accommodation. The outbreak of revolution is not the beginning but the culmination of the process. So it was with the American Revolution. For a full century before the colonies threw off their allegiance to England independence was preparing. "The bottom of all the disorders," wrote Governor Hutchinson of Massachusetts, "is the opinion that every colony has a legislature in itself, the acts and doings of which are not to be controlled by Parliament." We have seen the colonies petitioning, protesting, evading, threatening, apologizing, until it seemed as if their connection with the mother country must

be worn down to the slender thread of a sentimental attachment. Before the middle of the eighteenth century they appeared to an enlightened traveler from Sweden as "likely in thirty or fifty years to form a state by themselves." They called themselves "jurisdictions," and in the midst of protestations of loyalty virtually defied the sovereignty of England. Had the officials of Charles II shown half the zeal in enforcing his orders and punishing the recalcitrant "patriots" of Massachusetts that George III showed in supporting the measures of Grenville and Townshend, the issue of American independence might have been settled an even century before the battle of Lexington.

The triumph of Wolfe at Quebec brought a great change in the relations between England and the colonies. For England it meant the sudden acquisition of an enormous empire, with the national debt doubled and the burdens for the defense of dominions "on which the sun never set" multiplied many fold. For America it meant the removal of the French danger on the north and of the Spanish danger on the south. There was no longer place for the fear so naïvely expressed by a farmer of customs under Charles II (1664), that if the colonies did not maintain the honor and reputation of his Majesty who protected their trade and navigation, they "would be subject to be devoured by strangers." Long before the expulsion of the French from America astute political philosophers like Montesquieu, d'Argenson, and Turgot had remarked on the likelihood that the colonies would eventually separate from England as the ripe fruit falls from the tree. But it was the conquest of Canada that removed, with "the turbulent Gallicks," the only check on the prophetic destiny of America. On hearing of the Peace of Paris, Vergennes, the French ambassador at Constantinople, remarked that England would repent of having put an end to French rule in Canada. "The colonies," he said, "stand no longer in need of England's protection. She will call on them to help contribute toward

1 Peter Kalm, "Travels in North America," Vol. I, p. 265.

supporting the burden they have helped to bring on her, and they will answer by striking off all dependence."

The cession of Canada, however, was not the cause of America's rising. That cause was rather a change of behavior on the part of England toward the colonies, which coincided with and was partly occasioned by the cession of Canada. George Grenville became prime minister two months after the Treaty of Paris was signed (April, 1763). He it was who was chiefly responsible for the introduction of a new policy in Parliament; namely, taxing the American colonies for the sake of raising a revenue. Grenville did not invent the idea. Many times during the eighteenth century English officials at home and in America had suggested such a measure, but neither Walpole nor Pitt had been willing to sanction it. That Grenville did so was due partly to a change in the English government with the accession of George III and partly to a change in the condition of the British Empire after the Peace of Paris.

George III was a pedant. He was neither dull-witted nor cruel-hearted, but opinionated and obstinate. He was often called a tyrant by Patrick Henry and other ardent American patriots, but he was rather a theorist than a tyrant. He had "ideas" on kingship-and they were a hundred years behind the times. He was an indefatigable politician, but the results of his policy were always compromised by his serene confidence in his own sagacity. He had no genius for conciliation, resisting concession until it was too late to make it appear as a gracious favor. His education was of the meanest sort, acquired in the early surroundings of waiting-women's flattery and indulgent chaperonage. Vaulting ambition dwelt in his small mind. He would rule his realm as kings of old had ruled. He demanded ministers loyal to the kingly prerogative above all else: Butes and Grenvilles, Graftons and Norths

1A customs officer at Boston proposed an elaborate plan of colonial taxation in 1722, with stamp duties, land tax, excise on liquors, import duties, etc. When Walpole was urged to adopt such a policy he replied that he had half of old England against him and that he didn't care to add the enmity of the new England.