starting manufactures at home. The American woollen industry was interfered with, and the export of woollen manufactures from one colony to another forbidden;1 all iron manufactures 2 were suppressed in 1750; even colonial hatters were not allowed to send hats from one colony into another,3 In fact, so far was this principle carried, that Lord Chatham did not hesitate to declare in Parliament that "the British colonists of North America had no right to manufacture even a nail for a horse-shoe." 4 With aggravating restrictions of this character, it was almost certain that sooner or later ill-feeling would arise among the colonists; and, as a matter of fact, long before the War of Independence, this ill-feeling was gaining ground; so that the special circumstances which led to the war were only the secondary causes of a movement which was, from the nature of the case, inevitable.

§ 213. Attempts to raise a Revenue from America.

Had it not been for the ill-feeling thus caused, circumstances had become, after the defeat of France in the Seven Years' War, very favourable for the building up in America of a colonial empire as rich as that of India, but whose population, unlike that of the East, should consist almost entirely of English settlers. This pleasant vision, however, was never to be realised. The time of separation was approaching. It probably would have come in any case, owing to the mistaken policy of the home Government in regard to colonial trade, but the immediate cause was the attempt made to raise a revenue from the colonies without first gaining their assent thereto, and without allowing them representation at home. The revenue was needed in order to pay for the expenses of the Seven Years' War, in which conflict it cannot be denied that the colonists had received substantial help from their mother country, and had gained substantial benefits. Therefore it did not seem unfair that they should be asked to contribute towards lightening a 1 Bancroft, History of the United States, ii. 284, iii. 478, 566.

2 Ib., ii. 521, iii. 42.

3 Cf. the 5 George II., c. 22; Toynbee, Industrial Revolution, p. 81, Edwards, West Indies, Vol. II. p. 566,

burden which had to some extent been incurred on their behalf. Nor, indeed, was the request in itself altogether unreasonable, but the colonists resented the manner in which it was made, and refused to assent to the principle of taxation without representation. The history of the struggle that followed is too well-known to need further repetition.1 It began with the Stamp Act of 1765, which laid a tax upon the stamps required for legal purposes.2 This succeeded in irritating the colonists to such an extent that they refused to have any commercial intercourse with the mother country, and so powerful was their opposition that it produced a considerable decline in the colonial trade with England, and English manufacturers themselves requested that the Act might be repealed. This was done in 1776, but the next year the "six duties" were imposed on the ground that it was "expedient that a revenue should be raised in His Majesty's dominions in America." But the opposition of the colonists was so great that it was found impossible to collect the duties, and they were therefore all repealed except that on tea, though a preamble to the Act regarding the tea duty still asserted the right of the home Government to tax its colonies.5

§ 214. Outbreak of War.

4

Then came the refusal of the citizens of Boston to pay even this tax, and their well-known feat of throwing a cargo of tea from the ship that brought it into their harbour (1773). Lord North, the chief minister of George III. at that time, tried to punish the Bostonians by declaring their port closed, and by annulling the charter of Massachussets, their colony. Thus matters went from bad to worse, until, in 1775, all trade with the colonies was forbidden, and the

1 Cf. Lecky, History of the Eighteenth Century, Vol. III. ch. xii., IV. ch. xiv. and xv., and, of course, Bancroft's History of the United States. 2 Cf. Craik, British Commerce, iii. 28, and Lecky, u. 8.

3 Craik, iii. 30, 31.

So called because they were imposed upon six articles, including glass, tea, paper, red and white lead, painters' colours, and pasteboard. They were estimated to produce about £40,000, for the purpose of paying colonial judges and governors. Craik, iii. 32; Lecky, History, iii. 353.

Lecky, History, iii. 365.

6 Ib., iii. 387.

7 Ib., iii. 397.

rupture with the mother country was completed by the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 1776. England tried to enforce obedience by military power, but the royal troops were stoutly resisted, and though the fortunes of war frequently varied, and the colonists were often defeated, the result was that they achieved their independence.1 It should be noted that Spain and France took the opportunity of paying off their ancient grudge against England by helping her colonists against her, chiefly by means of their navies. And it should also be noticed that, in spite of every difficulty, England only just failed to retain her hold upon the colonies, and that if the French had not interfered it is very possible that the colonists would never have succeeded in becoming independent, at any rate not till many years later than they actually did. As it was, however, we lost the opportunity of founding a really great colonial empire, and alienated the sympathies of a large number of our fellow-countrymen. Nevertheless, as has been pointed out, there were great compensations for our loss. As the new nation prospered, our trade with it increased; and as American agriculture developed, the demand for our manufactures in the United States market became greater also; while in the East we were at this time obtaining several new markets hitherto monopolised by Holland. Certainly, from a commercial point of view, the war did our trade. very little harm, for soon after it ended we notice a considerable increase in the imports and exports to and from the colonies. But yet no amount of argument about compensation in trade and elsewhere can do away with the fact

1

1 Apart from Bancroft's great History of the United States, few books are more instructive upon the state of feeling in England and America respectively than Thackeray's novel, The Virginians.

2 Cf. Lecky, History, iv. p. 38. The patriotism of the colonies in thus accepting foreign help after all that England had done for them is an instructive comment upon the supposed bond of sentimental loyalty about which some people talk even now. But the nonsense of sentiment in regard to our colonies is equalled by the bad taste of colonials, who vapour about cutting themselves loose from the old country; cf. also Rogers, Econ. Interpretation, p. 332.

3 Caldecott, English Colonisation and Empire, p. 57.

that England in many ways has suffered a permanent loss from the revolt of the American colonies, and that even for the United States their emancipation has not been an unmixed advantage.

§ 215. The Great Continental War.

But although the War of Independence cost us a great deal, it did not seriously affect the development of our home industries. The Industrial Revolution went steadily on, and for just thirty years (1763-93) the country, though not entirely at peace, was yet sufficiently undisturbed to make rapid progress in the new manufacturing methods. But in 1789 the French Revolution broke out, and for over twenty years Europe was plunged into a disastrous and exhausting conflict. At the first outbreak of the Revolution, England looked on quietly. Many men were openly glad that the down-trodden masses of the French nation had overthrown the tyranny of an upper class, whose only idea of their duty in life had been to extort the last farthing from those below them, in order to spend it in irresponsible debauchery. Statesmen like Fox gloried in it; the younger Pitt was anxious not to interfere.3 But Pitt was forced to act both by capitalists and merchants, who now were equal with the landowners as the two ruling powers of England, and by the landed aristocracy as well. He himself, no doubt, saw that the conquests which the new French Republic was already beginning to make might help France to secure again her old position as the most formidable rival of English commerce.* If now this rival could be finally struck down, England was sure of the control of the world's markets. Such, at least, if not his own motives,

1 Lecky, History of the Eighteenth Century, v. p. 445.

2 Ib., p. 453, and cf. pp. 454 to 475.

3 Ib., pp. 558, 560, and vi. 60.

2

A hint of English feeling at first that France would suffer a temporary eclipse by the Revolution is given in Lecky, v. 443. But soon the power of the Revolution was to be feared. On the other hand, Napoleon saw equally clearly that France's most serious and persistent rival was England, who was the prime mover of all coalitions against France; cf. Correspondance de Napoléon I., Vol. III. 518-520, and Häusser, Französische Revolution, pp. 563-565.

were the considerations that must have been urged upon him by the mercantile party in England. But apart from these commercial interests, the whole body of English constitutional sentiment was arrayed against the excesses of the French Revolutionaries. The aristocracy, the Church, the middle classes, and, in fact, everybody except a few ardent Republicans, were horrified at the brutalities of the Paris mob. Those brutalities were, indeed, worthy of all execration, and yet an excuse may be found for them in the centuries of legalised oppression, rapine, and insult under which the French proletariate had groaned. In England, however, as elsewhere, the excuses which history can make were, if not unknown, at least neither comprehended nor admitted; though it is somewhat to the credit of the nation that even then the declaration of war came from France and not from England. The immediate cause of a war that was certain to have come sooner or later, was the French invasion of Holland, and after this England was plunged headlong into the great European struggle of Monarchy against Republicanism. Pitt had in this the support of all classes at home. The merchants and manufacturers were only too glad to see their old rival ruined; the landowners and nobility were, of course, indignant at seeing the "lower classes," even of a foreign nation, rise against their lords, even though their lords perhaps deserved their punishment. But there can be no doubt that the majority of the English people also believed that England was fighting for the great principles of Monarchy and Religion, exemplified, unfortunately, by a foolish king and a corrupted priesthood. The policy of the English Government was certainly approved by the majority of the nation. But the minority, who sympathised with the Revolution, included a certain number of the working classes and others, among whom, especially after the country had felt the first severity of the burdens imposed by the war, a spirit of discontent 2 manifested itself.

1 Lecky, History, vi. 131, 132.

These

2 Cf. Lecky, History of the Eighteenth Century, v. 448, and Green, History of the English People, iv. 314.