was the almost inevitable result of the conditions among a free, prosperous, and extremely self-confident people; it was, indeed, the proof that in this young people the greatest political ideal of western civilisation, the ideal of self-government, had taken firm root.  The denial of responsibility was producing irresponsibility; and even if the Stamp Act and the Tea Duties had never been proposed, this state of things was bound to lead to increasing friction.  Nor must it be forgotten that this friction was accentuated by the contrast between the democratic conditions of colonial life, and the aristocratic organisation of English society.

It ought to have been obvious, long before Grenville initiated his new policy in 1764, that the colonial system was not working well; and the one circumstance which had prevented serious conflict was the danger which threatened the colonists in the aggressive attitude of the French to the north and west.  Since the individual colonies refused to raise adequate forces for their own defence, or to co-operate with one another in a common scheme, they were dependent for their security upon the mother-country.  But as soon as the danger was removed, as it was in 1763, this reason for restraint vanished; and although the great majority of the colonists were quite sincerely desirous of retaining their membership of the British commonwealth, the conditions would inevitably have produced a state of intensifying friction, unless the whole colonial system had been drastically reconstructed.

Reconstruction was therefore inevitable in 1764.  The Whig policy of simply ignoring the issue and ‘not reading the dispatches’ could no longer be pursued; it was indeed largely responsible for the mischief.  George III. and Grenville deserve the credit of seeing this.  But their scheme of reconstruction not unnaturally amounted to little more than a tightening-up of the old system.  The trade laws were to be more strictly enforced.  The governors and the judges were to be made more independent of the assemblies by being given fixed salaries.  The colonists were to bear a larger share of the cost of defence, which fell so unfairly on the mother-country.  If the necessary funds could be raised by means approved by the colonists themselves, well and good; but if not, then they must be raised by the authority of the imperial parliament.  For the existing system manifestly could not continue indefinitely, and it was better to have the issue clearly raised, even at the risk of conflict, than to go on merely drifting.

When the colonists (without suggesting any alternative proposals) contented themselves with repudiating the right of parliament to tax them, and proceeded to outrageous insults to the king’s authority, and the most open defiance of the trade regulations, indignation grew in Britain.  It seemed, to the average Englishman, that the colonists proposed to leave every public burden, even the cost of judges’