great territory west of the Alleghenies to the hardy pioneers and woodsmen who, from the crests of the mountains, were already gazing into the promised land.

REFERENCES

The Rise of New France: W. L. GRANT, The Voyages of Samuel de Champlain (Original Narratives of Early American History); FRANCIS PARKMAN, The Pioneers of France in the New World; La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West; The Old Régime in Canada; JUSTIN WINSOR, Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. IV, chaps. iii-vii; Cartier to Frontenac; R. G. THWAITES, France in America (American Nation Series), chaps. i-v; WM. B. MUNRO, Crusaders of New France (Chronicles, Vol. IV); STEPHEN LEACOCK, The Dawn of Canadian History; Canada and its Provinces, Vol. I, New France, sects. i-iv; Vol. II; JAMES DOUGLAS, Old France in the New World; J. H. FINLEY, The French in the Heart of America, chaps. i-ix; E. M. AVERY, History of the United States and its People, Vol. II, chap. i; Vol. III, chaps. ix, xxii; Cambridge Modern History, Vol. VIII, chap. iii.

The Fall of New France: PARKMAN, A Half Century of Conflict; Montcalm and Wolfe; THWAITES, chaps. vi-xvii; G. M. WRONG, The Conquest of New France (Chronicles, Vol. X); The Fall of Canada; WM. WOOD, The Passing of New France; Canada and its Provinces, Vol. I, New France, sects. vi, vii; AVERY, Vol. IV; EDW. CHANNING, History of the United States, Vol. II, chaps. xvii-xix; WINSOR, Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. V, chaps. vii, viii; Cambridge Modern History, Vol. VII, chap. iv; A. B.. HART, American History told by Contemporaries, Vol. II, Nos. 117-129; JOHN FISKE, Essays Historical and Literary, Vol. II, chap. iii; J. A. Doyle, English Colonies in America, Vol. V, chap. ix.

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL REPORTS

1. The Albany Plan of Union: Old South Leaflets, No. 9; THWAITES, pp. 168-172; WOODROW WILSON, History of the American People, Vol. II, pp. 342-356.

2. George Washington's Embassy to the French Forts: PARKMAN, Montcalm and Wolfe, Vol. I, pp. 128–161; Winsor, Vol. V, pp. 490–494; THWAITES, pp. 157-165; Old South Leaflets, No. 187; A. B. HURLBURT, Washington's Road (Historic Highways Series), pp. 85-119.

3. The Removal of the Acadians: PARKMAN, A Half Century of Conflict, Vol. I, pp. 183-203; Montcalm and Wolfe, Vol. I, pp. 234-285; WRONG, pp. 164-177; AVERY, Vol. IV, pp. 93-112; HART, Vol. II, No. 126; WINSOR, Vol. V, pp. 415-418, 452-463.

4. The French Explorers on the Great Lakes: THWAITES, pp. 34-48; Canada and its Provinces, Vol. 1, pp. 43-108; WINSOR, Vol. IV, pp. 163–196; PARKMAN, La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West, pp. 1-47.

5. Paternal Government in Canada: PARKMAN, The Old Régime in Canada, pp. 257-281; THWAITES, pp. 124-143; MUNRO, pp. 139-154, 180-227; Cambridge Modern History, Vol. VII, pp. 79-87, 102-109.

PART II. SEPARATION OF THE
COLONIES FROM ENGLAND

CHAPTER IV

BRITISH RULE IN AMERICA

THE AUTHORITY OF PARLIAMENT IN THE COLONIES

97. Conflicting Opinions on the American Revolution. The curtain had hardly fallen on the first act of American history— the establishment and triumph of the English race in the New World—when it rose on a second act, short but intense; namely, the American Revolution, which severed the colonies from England and admitted to the family of nations the new republic of the United States. This great event has too often been represented as the unanimous uprising of a downtrodden people to repel the deliberate, unprovoked attack of a tyrant upon their liberties; but when thousands of people in the colonies could agree with a noted lawyer of Massachusetts that the Revolution was a "causeless, wanton, wicked rebellion," and thousands of people in England could applaud Pitt's denunciation of the war against America as "barbarous, unjust, and diabolical," it is evident that, at the time at least, there were two opinions as to colonial rights and British oppression. We can rightly understand the American Revolution only by a study of British rule in the colonies.

98. The "Immemorial Rights" of Englishmen. The first English emigrants to these shores brought with them, by the terms of their charters, for themselves and their posterity, "the same liberties, franchises, immunities . . . as if they had been abiding and born within this our realm of England or any other of our said dominions." Those liberties, for which their ancestors had been struggling for five hundred years, consisted in the right to protection of life and property, a fair trial and judgment by one's peers, participation in

local self-government, freedom of movement, occupation, and trade, and, above all, the privilege, through the representatives of the people in Parliament, to grant the king the moneys needed for foreign war and the support of the state. In many a contest for those rights with headstrong kings and cruel or worthless ministers of state, the English nobles and commoners had won the victory. The American colonists cherished these "immemorial rights of Englishmen" with what Edmund Burke called a "fierce spirit of liberty." A goodly number of the colonists had come to these shores for the express purpose of enjoying political and religious liberty. They had created democratic governments in the New World, and the three thousand miles of ocean that rolled between them and the mother country necessarily increased their spirit of self-reliance. While acknowledging allegiance to the king of England, their actual relations with the English government were very slight. The attempt on the part of English ministers to make those relations closer revealed how far the colonies were separated from the mother country in spirit and led inevitably to their separation in fact.

99. Causes of Conflict: the Navigation Acts. At the bottom of the misunderstanding between the colonies and the mother country were two developments in English history which took place mainly in the eighteenth century. The first was the growth of the mercantile theory of trade. We have already noted (p. 57) how this theory caused the European nations to regard their colonies as mere sources of profit, and how the English Navigation Acts were passed to control the trade of America. A striking example of the harm done to colonial trade by this restrictive policy is the famous Sugar and Molasses Act of 1733. Barbados, Jamaica, San Domingo, and other islands of the West Indies, belonging to England, France, Holland, and Spain, produced immense quantities of sugar. The entire acreage of these islands was given over to sugar plantations, while all the necessities of life were imported. The American colonies, being near at hand, sent large supplies of fish, corn, wheat, flour, oil, soap, and lumber to the islands, and from this trade realized most of the money needed to pay the English manufacturers for goods imported from the mother country. Although the British West Indies alone did not begin to offer a sufficient market for the varied products of the colonial mainland, yet, in order to drive their French, Dutch,

and Spanish rivals out of business, the English sugar planters of Barbados and Jamaica secured from Parliament an act imposing heavy duties on sugar, molasses, and rum imported from foreign colonies into the British-American colonies. This act, if strictly enforced, would have ruined the trade of New England and, by stripping the colonies of gold and silver, would have also deprived the manufacturers of Old England of their market in the New World. The colonies were naturally aggrieved at such treatment. In spite of the fact that some of their products, like tobacco, were given favored treatment in the English market, they resented being restrained in their trade in order to make another part of the British Empire prosperous. Their sentiment was that expressed by a governor of Massachusetts in Charles II's time, when he was reproved for not enforcing the Navigation Acts: "The king can in reason do no less than let us enjoy our liberties and trade, for we have made this large plantation (colony) of our own charge, without any contribution from the crown.' ." That a prosperous illicit trade flourished, and that English ministers like Walpole winked at the infringement of the Navigation Acts, was small comfort to the colonies. There the ugly laws stood on the statute book, and at any moment a minister might come into power who would think it good policy or his bounden duty to enforce them.

100. The Relation of the Colonies to Parliament. The second disturbing element in the relation of England to the colonies was the question of the supremacy of Parliament. The American colonies had all been settled under charters granted not by Parliament but by the English kings. The colonial assemblies passed laws, levied taxes, voted supplies, and raised troops for their own defense, just like the Parliament of England. They came to regard themselves, therefore, as filling the place of Parliament in America, and looked to the king as authority. But with the overthrow of the Stuarts in 1688 the position of king and Parliament was reversed. The king himself became practically a subject of Parliament, whose authority and sovereignty grew continually stronger as the eighteenth century advanced. The first kings of the Hanoverian dynasty, which succeeded the Stuarts on the English throne, recognized this change. For example, in 1624 the Stuart James I had snubbed Parliament when it attempted to interfere in the affairs of Virginia, telling the