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[14] ‘There have been half a dozen battles in miniature with the
Indians in America. It looked so odd to see a list of killed and
wounded just treading on the heels of the Peace.’ Letter of
October 17 and 18, 1763, to Sir Horace Mann.
[15] Bouquet to Hamilton, Governor of Pennsylvania, Fort Pitt,
August 11, 1763: Canadian Archives, as above, p. 66.
 CHAPTER II
CAUSES OF THE AMERICAN WAR OF
INDEPENDENCE AND THE QUEBEC ACT

It was said of the Spartans that warring was their salvation and
ruling was their ruin. The saying holds true of various peoples and
races in history. A militant race has often proved to be deficient in the
qualities which ensure stable, just, and permanent government; and
in such cases, when peace supervenes on war, an era of decline
and fall begins for those whom fighting has made great. But even
when a conquering race has capacity for government, there come
times in its career when Aristotle’s dictum in part holds good. It
applied, to some extent, to the English in North America. As long as
they were faced by the French on the western continent, common
danger and common effort held the mother country and the colonies
together. Security against a foreign foe brought difficulties which
ended in civil war, and the Peace of 1763 was the beginning of
dissolution.
In the present chapter, which covers the history of Canada from
the Peace of Paris to the outbreak of the War of Independence, it is
proposed, from the point of view of colonization, to examine the
ultimate rather than the immediate causes which led to England
losing her old North American colonies, while she retained her new
possession of Canada.
It had been abundantly prophesied that the outcome Prophecies that the
British conquest of
of British conquest of Canada would be colonial Canada would be
independence in British North America. In the years followed by the loss
1748-50 the Swedish naturalist, Peter Kalm, travelled of the North
American colonies.
through the British North American colonies and Peter Kalm.
Canada, and left on record his impressions of the feeling towards the
mother country which existed at the time in the British provinces.
Noting the great increase in these colonies of riches and population,
and the growing coolness towards Great Britain, produced at once
by commercial restrictions and by the presence among the English
colonists of German, Dutch, and French settlers, he arrived at the
conclusion that the proximity of a rival and hostile power in Canada
was the main factor in keeping the British colonies under the British
Crown. ‘The English Government,’ he wrote, ‘has therefore sufficient
reason to consider the French in North America as the best means
of keeping the colonies in their due submission.’[16]
Others wrote or spoke to the same effect. Montcalm was credited
with having prophesied the future before he shared the fall of
Canada,[17] and another prophet was the French minister Choiseul,
when negotiating the Peace of Paris. To keen, though not always
unprejudiced, observers the signs of the times betokened coming
conflicts between Great Britain and her colonies; and to us now
looking back on history, wise after the event, it is evident that the end
of foreign war in North America meant the beginning of troubles
within what was then the circle of the British Empire.
Until recent years most Englishmen were taught to Incorrect view of
believe that the victory of the American colonists and the conflict
between Great
the defeat of the mother country was a striking Britain and her
instance of the power of right over might, of liberty colonies
America.
in North

over oppression; that the severance of the American

colonies was a net gain to them, and a net loss to England; that
Englishmen did right to stand in a white sheet when reflecting on
these times and events, as being citizens of a country which
grievously sinned and was as grievously punished. All this was pure
assumption. The war was one in which there were rights and wrongs
on both sides, but, whereas America had in George Washington a
leader of the noblest and most effective type, England was for the
moment in want both of statesmen and of generals, and had her
hands tied by foreign complications. We can recognize that
Providence shaped the ends, without going beyond the limits of
human common sense. Had Pitt been what he was in Great Britain failed
the years preceding the Peace of Paris, had Wolfe for want of leaders.
and the eldest of the brothers Howe not been cut off in early
manhood, the war might have been averted, or its issue might have
been other than it was. One of Wolfe’s best subordinates, Carleton,
survived, and Carleton saved Canada; there was no human reason
why men of the same stamp, had they been found, should not have
kept for England her heritage. The main reason why she lost her
North American colonies was not the badness of her cause, but
rather want of the right men when the crisis came.
Equally fallacious with the view that England failed The result of the
because wrong-doing never prospers, is, or was, the War of
Independence was
view that the independence of the United States was not wholly a loss to
Great Britain nor
wholly a loss to England and wholly a gain to the wholly a gain to the
colonists. What would have happened if the revolting United States.
provinces had not made good their revolt must be matter of
speculation, but it is difficult to believe that, if the United States had
remained under the British flag, Australia would ever have become a
British colony. There is a limit to every political system and every
empire, and, with the whole of North America east of the Mississippi
for her own, it is not likely that England would have taken in hand the
exploiting of a new continent. At any rate it is significant that, within
four years of the date of the treaty which recognized the
independence of the United States, the first English colonists were
sent to Australia. The success or failure of a nation or a race in the
field of colonization must not be measured by the number of square
miles of the earth’s surface which the home government owns or
claims at any given time. To judge aright, we must revert to the older
and truer view of colonizing as a planting process, replenishing the
earth and subduing it. If the result of the severance of the United
States from their mother country was to sow the English seed in
other lands, then it may be argued that the defeat of England by her
own children was not wholly a loss to the mother country.
Nor was it wholly a gain to the United States. Such at least must
be the view of Englishmen who believe in the worth of their country,
in its traditions, in the character of the nation, in its political, social,
moral, and religious tendencies. The necessary result of the
separation was to alienate the American colonists from what was
English; to breed generations in the belief that what England did
must be wrong, that the enemies of England must be right; to
strengthen in English-speaking communities the elements which
were opposed to the land and to the race from which they had
sprung. With English errors and weaknesses there passed away, in
course of years and in some measure, English sources of strength;
the sober thinking, the slow broadening out, the perpetually
leavening sense of responsibility. Had the American provinces
remained under the British flag it is difficult to see why they should
not have been in the essence as free and independent as they now
are; it is at least conceivable that their commercial and industrial
prosperity would have been as great; assuredly, for good or for evil,
they would have been more English.
The faults and shortcomings of the English, which Shortcomings of
throughout English history have shown themselves the English in
foreign and colonial
mainly in foreign and colonial matters, seem all to policy.
have combined and culminated in the interval of twenty years
between the Peace of 1763, which gave Canada to Great Britain,
and the Peace of 1783, which took from her the United States; and
in addition there were special causes at work in England, which at
this more than at any other time militated against national success.
The shortcomings in question are, in part, the result The party System.
of counterbalancing merits, fair-mindedness, and
freedom of thought, speech, and action. Love of liberty among the
English has begotten an almost superstitious reverence for
Parliamentary institutions. Parliamentary institutions have practically
meant the House of Commons; and the House of Commons has for
many generations past implied the party system. In regard to foreign
and colonial policy the party system has worked the very serious evil
that Great Britain has in the past rarely spoken or acted as one
nation. The party in power at times of national crisis is constantly
obliged to reckon on opposition rather than support, from the large
section of Englishmen whose leaders are not in office; and ministers
have to frame not so much the most effective measures, as those
which can under the circumstances be carried with least friction and
delay. The result has been weakness and compromise in action;
among the friends of England, suspicion and want of confidence;
among her foes, waiting on the event which prolongs the strife. The
English have so often gone forward and then back, they have so
often said one thing and done another, that their own officers, their
friends and allies, their native subjects, and their open enemies,
cannot be sure what will be the next move. If the Opposition in
Parliament and outside, by speech and writing, attacks the
Government, the natural inference to be drawn is that a turn of the
electoral tide will reverse the policy.
Apart too from this more or less necessary result of party
government, the element of cross-grained men and women, who,
when their own country is at issue with another, invariably think that
their country must be wrong and its opponent must be right, has
always been rather stronger, or, at any rate, rather more tolerated in
the United Kingdom than among continental nations. This is due not
merely to the habit of free criticism, but also to a kind of conceit
familiar enough in private as in public life. Englishmen, living apart
from the continent of Europe, are, as a whole, more wrapped up in
themselves than are other nations; and in this self-satisfied whole
there is a proportion of superior persons who sit in judgement on the
rest, and who, having in reality a double dose of the national
Pharisaism, think it their duty to belittle their countrymen.
Fault-finders of this kind, or political opponents of the Government
for the time being, are apt, as a rule, to make light of any minority in
the hostile or rival country, who may be friendly to England: they tend
to misrepresent them as being untrue to their own land and people,
as wanting to domineer over the majority, as seeking their own
interests: and, if they have suffered losses for England’s sake, the
tale of the losses is minimized. But it is not only the opponents of the
Government who take this line; too often in past history it has been
to a large extent the line of the Government itself. The perpetual
seeking after compromise, and trying to see two sides after the
choice of action has been made, has lost many friends to our country
and nation, and made none: while the retracing of steps, unmindful
of claims which have arisen, of property which has been acquired,
and of responsibilities which have been incurred has, as the record
of the past abundantly shows, brought bitterness of spirit to the
friends of England, and bred distrust of the English and their works.
The element of uncertainty in British policy and Want of preparation
action towards foreign nations or towards British for war.
colonies has been in part due to ignorance: and to ignorance and
want of preparation have been due most of the disasters in war
which have befallen Great Britain. Here again something must be
attributed to the fact of the island home. The rulers of continental
peoples have been driven by the necessities of their case to learn
the conditions of their rivals, by secret service and intelligence
agents to ascertain all that is to be known, and at the same time to
keep their own arms up to date, and their own powder dry. They
have prepared for war. England has prepared for peace. Her policy
has paid in the long run, but it would not have been a possible policy
for other nations; and at certain times in English history it has
wrought terrible mischief. England does not always muddle through,
as the English fondly hope she does; notably, she did not muddle
through when the United States proclaimed their independence.
In these years, 1763-83, there was the party system in England
with all its mischievous bitterness; there was a weak Executive at
home, and a still weaker Executive in the colonies; there was
ignorance of the real conditions in America, unwise handling of the
colonial Loyalists, threatening talk coupled with vacillation in action,
laws made which gave offence, and, when they had given offence,
not quite repealed. All the normal English weaknesses flourished
and abounded at this period, and were supplemented by certain
sources of danger which were the outcome of the particular time.
It was a special time, a time of reaction. England Special evils at
had lately gone through a great struggle, made a great work in England in
the years 1763-83.
effort, incurred great expense, and won great success.
She was for the moment vegetating, not inclined or ready for a
second crisis. Second-rate politicians were handling A time of reaction.
matters, and the influence of the new King was all in
favour of their being and remaining second-rate; for George the
Third intended, by meddling in party politics, and by Partisan attitude of
Parliamentary intrigues, to rule Parliament. Thus the the Crown.
Crown became a partisan in home politics, and in colonial politics
was placed in declared opposition to the colonies, instead of
remaining the great bond between the colonies and the mother
country.
The result was, that throughout the years of the Sympathy in
American quarrel, and in a growing degree, the England with the
colonists and their
colonies found powerful support in this country, cause.
because they were, after all, not foreigners but Englishmen—
Englishmen who compared favourably with Englishmen at home and
whom patriotic Englishmen at home could admire and uphold;
because they were apparently the weaker side, attracting the
sympathy which in England the weaker side always attracts; and
because, through the attitude of the King, their cause was
associated with the cause of political liberty at home. Add to this that
the one great English statesman of world-wide reputation, Chatham,
had warmly espoused the colonial side, and it may well be seen that,
unless some able general, as Wellington in later days, by military
success, saved his country from the results of political blunders, the
position was hopeless.
But for the special purpose of determining what Ultimate causes of
place the episode of the severance of the British North the severance of
the North American
American colonies holds in the history of colonization colonies.
we must look still further afield. The constitutional question as to
whether the colonies were subject to the Parliament of the mother
country or to the Crown alone may, from this particular point of view,
be omitted, for the story of the troubled years abundantly shows that
theories would have slept, if certain practical difficulties had not
called them into waking existence, and if lawyers had not been so
much to the front, holding briefs on either side. Nor is it necessary to
dwell upon the specific and immediate causes of the strife, except so
far as they were ultimate causes also. Among such immediate
causes, some of which have been already noted, were the personal
character of the English king for the time being, the corruption and
jobbery of public life in England, the weakness of the Executive in
the colonies, the enforcing of commercial restrictions already placed
by the mother country on the colonies, the kind of new taxes which
the Home Government imposed, the method of imposing them, and
the object with which they were devised; the outrageous laws of
1774 for penalizing Massachusetts, the Quebec Act, and the
employment of German mercenaries against the colonists, which
gave justification to the colonists for calling in aid from France. All
these and other causes might have been powerless to affect the
issue, if England had possessed statesmen and generals, and if the
growing plant of disunion had not been deeply rooted in the past.
When France lost Canada and Louisiana, two Comparison of
European nations, other than the Portuguese in Brazil, Spanish and British
colonization in
practically shared the mainland of America. They were America.
Spain and Great Britain. Spain won her American empire not far
short of a hundred years before Great Britain had any strong footing
on the American continent; she kept it for some thirty Spain held her
or forty years after the United States had achieved American
possessions for a
their independence. The Spanish-American empire longer time than
was therefore much longer-lived than the first colonial Great Britain held
the North American
dominion of Great Britain in North America, and the colonies.
natural inference is, either that the Spaniards treated their colonies
or dependencies better than the English treated theirs, or that the
English colonies were in a better position than the Spanish
dependencies to assert their independence, or that both causes
operated simultaneously.
It is difficult to compare Spain and Great Britain as regards their
respective colonial policies in America, for their possessions differed
in kind. Spain owned dependencies rather than colonies, Great
Britain owned colonies rather than dependencies. Spanish America
was the result of conquest: English America, not including Canada,
was the result of settlement. But, so far as a comparison can be
instituted, it will probably not be seriously contended that the British
colonies suffered more grievously at the hands of the mother country
than did the colonial possessions of Spain. The main charge brought
against England was that she neglected her colonies and left them to
themselves. Whether the charge was true or not—as to which there
is more to be said—neglect is not oppression; and within limits the
kindest and wisest policy towards colonies, which are colonies in the
true sense, is to leave them alone. ‘The wise neglect of Walpole and
Newcastle,’ writes Mr. Lecky, ‘was eminently conducive to colonial
interests.’[18]
The real, ultimate reasons why England held her North American
colonies, which now form the United States of America, for a shorter
time than Spain retained her Central and South American
possessions were two: first, that the English colonies Absence of system
were in a better position than the Spanish inpolicy British colonial
in North
dependencies to assert their independence; secondly, America.
that—largely because she owned dependencies rather
than colonies—Spain was more systematic than England in her
dealings with her colonial possessions. These two reasons are in
truth one and the same, looked at from different sides. The English
colonies were able to assert their independence, because they had
on the whole always been more or less independent. They had
always been more or less independent, because the mother country
had never adopted any definite system of colonial administration.
The Spanish system was not good—quite the contrary; but it was a
system, and those who lived under it were accustomed to restrictions
and to rules imposed by the home government. Similarly in Canada,
under French rule, there was a system, kindlier and better than that
of Spain, but one which had the gravest defects, which stunted
growth and precluded freedom: yet there it was, clear and definite;
the colonists of New France had grown up under it; they knew where
they were in relation to the mother country; it had never occurred to
them to try and make headway against the King of France and his
regulations. Widely different was the case of the English colonies in
North America. All these settlements started under some form of
grant or charter, derived ultimately from the Crown: the Crown from
time to time interfered and made a show of its supremacy; but there
was no system of any sort or kind, and communities grew up, which
in practice had never been governed from home but governed
themselves. Most of all, the New England colonies embodied to the
full the spirit of colonial independence. Their founders, men of the
strongest English type, went out to live in their own way, to be free
from restrictions which trammelled them at home, to found small
English-speaking commonwealths which should be self-governing
and self-supporting, ordered from within, not from without.
The English have never been systematic or When the English
continuous in their policy throughout their history; but colonies were
planted in North
the period of English history when North America was America there was
colonized was the one of all others when system and the most complete
absence of system
continuity were most conspicuously absent. It was a at home.
time of violent political changes at home, of strife between king and
people. A line of kings was brought in from Scotland, they were
overturned, they were restored, and they were finally driven out
again. This was the condition of the Crown to which the newly-
planted colonies owed allegiance, and which was supposed to
exercise supreme authority over the colonies. Under the Crown were
Proprietors and Companies, whose charters, being derived from a
perpetually disputed source, were a series of dissolving views; and
under the Proprietors and Companies were a number of strong
English citizens who, caring little for the theoretical basis of their
position, cared very much for practical independence, and ordered
their ways accordingly, becoming steadily and stubbornly more
independent through perpetual friction and perpetual absence of
systematic control. Thus it was that the North American colonies
drank in, as their mother’s milk, the traditions and the habits of
independence. They carried with them English citizenship, but the
privileges of such citizenship rather than the responsibilities; and, in
so far as the mother country was inclined to ignore the privileges, the
colonies were glad to disclaim the responsibilities.
They were separate and distinct, not only from the Absence of
mother country, but also from each other, and they collective
responsibility in the
could not in consequence from first to last be held British North
collectively responsible. In the wars with Canada, New American colonies.
England and New York, though alike exposed to French invasion,
and from time to time co-operating to repel the invaders or to
organize counter-raids, yet acted throughout as entirely separate
entities, in no way inclined to bear each other’s burdens as common
citizens of a common country. The southern colonies, until the
French, shortly before the beginning of the Seven Years’ War, came
down into the valley of the Ohio, took no part whatever in the fight
between Great Britain and France for North America. The New
Englanders, most patriotic of the colonists, beyond all others went
their own ways in war and peace; uninvited and unauthorized from
home they formed a confederation among themselves: early in their
history they tried to make a treaty with Canada on the basis that,
whatever might be the relations between France and England in
Europe, there should be peace between French and English in North
America: they took Port Royal: they attacked Quebec: they captured
Louisbourg: and the anonymous French eye-witness of the first
siege and capture of Louisbourg commented as follows on the
difference between the colonial land forces and the men of the small
Imperial squadron which Warren brought to the colonists’ aid: ‘In fact
one could never have told that these troops belonged to the same
nation and obeyed the same prince. Only the English are capable of
such oddities, which nevertheless form a part of that precious liberty
of which they show themselves so jealous.’[19]
Most of all it should be remembered that, though The colonies had
subject to the Navigation laws imposed by the mother never been taxed
for revenue
country and to that extent restricted in their purposes.
commercial dealings, no English colony in North America, before the
days of the Stamp Act, had ever been taxed by Crown or Parliament
for revenue purposes. In the year 1758 Montcalm was supposed to
have written on this subject in the following terms: ‘As to the English
colonies, one essential point should be known, it is that they are
never taxed. They keep that to themselves, an enormous fault this in
the policy of the mother country. She should have taxed them from
the foundation. I have certain advice that all the colonies would take
fire at being taxed now.’[20] This judgement was probably sound. It
might have been well if from the first, when charters were issued and
colonial communities were formed, some small tax had been levied
for Imperial purposes upon the British colonies, if some contribution
of only nominal amount had been exacted as a condition of retaining
British citizenship. There would then have been a precedent, such as
Englishmen always try to find, and there would have been in
existence a reminder that all members of a family should contribute
to the household expenses.[21]
We are accustomed to think and to read of the The political
separation of the American colonies from the mother separation of the
North American
country as wholly an abnormal incident, the result of colonies was the
bad handiwork, not the outcome of natural forces. This natural result of
their geographical
view is incorrect. History ultimately depends on separation.
geography. When two members of the same race, nation, or family
pass their lives at a long distance from each other, in different lands,
in different climates, under different conditions, the natural and
inevitable result is that they diverge from each other. The centrifugal
tendency may be counteracted by tact and clever statesmanship,
and still more by sense of common danger; but it is a natural
tendency. Men cannot live at a distance from each other without
becoming to some extent estranged. The Greeks, with their
instinctive love of logic and of symmetry, and with their fundamental
conception of a city as the political unit, looked on colonization as
separation, and called a colony a departure from home. The
colonists carried with them reverence for the mother state, but not
dependence upon it; and, if there was any political bond, it was
embodied in the words that those who went out went out on terms of
equality with, not of subordination to, those who remained behind.
The English, in fact, though not in principle, planted colonies on the
model of the Greek settlements; their theories and their practice
collided; and, being a practical race, their theories eventually went by
the board.
When an over-sea colony is founded, the new Conflicting
settlement is in effect most distant from the old tendencies.
Distance and
country; that is to say, means of communication sentiment.
between the one point and the other are least frequent and least
developed. The tendency to separation—as far as geography is
concerned—is therefore strongest at the outset. On the other hand,
in the foundation of a colony, unless the foundation is due to political
disruption at home, the sentiment towards the mother country is
warmer and closer than in after years, for the founders remember
where they were born and where they grew to manhood. As
generations go on, the tie of sentiment becomes necessarily weaker,
but, with better communication, distance becomes less; there is
therefore a competition between the opposing tendencies. Many of
the Greek colonies were the result of στάσις or στάσις and
division in the mother cities. The unsuccessful party colonization.
went out and made a separate home. In a very modified form the
same cause was at work in the founding of the Puritan colonies of
North America. Notably, the emigrants on the Mayflower were
already exiles from England, political refugees, who had found a
temporary home in the Netherlands. These founders of the Plymouth
settlement were by no means the chief colonizers of North America,
or even of New England, but their story—the story of the ‘Pilgrim
fathers’—became a nucleus of Puritan tradition; and from it after
generations deduced that New England was the home of English
citizens whom England had cast out. Thus one group, at any rate, of
North American colonies traced their origin to separation. Then came
the element of distance. ‘The European colonies in America,’ wrote
Adam Smith, with some exaggeration, ‘are more remote than the
most distant provinces of the greatest empires which had ever been
known before.’[22] The Atlantic Ocean lay between them and the
motherland, and cycles went by before that distance was perceptibly
modified. In our own time, steam and telegraphy have been
perpetually counteracting the effects of distance. It was not so in the
seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. Navigation was improved, but
was still the humble handmaid of wind and tide; and on the very eve
of the American War of Independence the remoteness of the North
American colonies, and the prevailing ignorance in England about
the North American colonies were, though no doubt much
exaggerated, a commonplace among the speakers and writers of the
time.
We start then with colonies planted from a land which had no
thought of systematic control over colonies or dependencies, whose
government was at the time of colonization in a chaotic state, whose
colonists went out in part, at any rate, intent on practical separation,
and who all settled themselves or were settled in a remote region at
a time when distance did not grow less.
The next point to notice is that it has always been held that, as
between a mother country and its colonies, if they are colonies in the
true sense and not merely tributary states, it is rather for the mother
country to give and her colonies to take, than vice versa. This is a
view which has been held at all times and among all races, but
especially among members of the English race. Other nations and
races have, it is true, felt as strongly as, or more General view of the
strongly than, the English the duty of protecting their duty of a mother
country towards its
outlying possessions: they have in some cases colonies.
lavished more money directly upon them at the
expense of the taxpayers at home; but, on the other hand, they have
almost invariably regarded their colonies as dependencies pure and
simple, constrained to take the course of the dominant partner in
preference to their own. The English alone in history have bred
communities protected by, but in practice not subject to, the mother
country. They have given, without exacting toll in return.
No writer has laid greater stress on this view of the Adam Smith on the
relations between the mother country and the colonies subject.
than Adam Smith, who published the Wealth of Nations just as the
American colonies were breaking away from Great Britain. ‘The
English colonists,’ he wrote, ‘have never yet contributed anything
towards the defence of the mother country, or towards the support of
its civil government. They themselves, on the contrary, have hitherto
been defended almost entirely at the expense of the mother country;’
and again, ‘Under the present system of management, Great Britain
derives nothing but loss from the dominion which she has assumed
over her colonies.’ ‘Great Britain is, perhaps, since the world began,
the only state which, as it has extended its empire, has only
increased its expense without once augmenting its resources.’[23]
His opinion would have been modified could he have foreseen the
help given to the mother country in our own day by the self-
governing colonies of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand in a war
far removed from their shores; but even in our own day the old view,
against which he contended, largely holds the field, that more is due
from the mother country to the colonies than from the colonies to the
mother country, that what the mother country spends on the Empire
is payment of a debt, while what the colonies spend on the Empire is
a free gift.
This view of the relations between a mother country The mother
and its colonies takes its ultimate source largely from country, being
usually greater than
the fact that the mother country is nearly always[24] the colony, is
expected to give
greater and stronger than any one colony or group of rather than to
colonies; and in the English mind the instinct of fair receive.
play invariably makes in favour of the party to a contract which is or
appears to be the weaker party. It is in the light of the fact that the
American colonies were numerically the weaker party in their
contention with the mother country, and with the misleading
deduction that any demand made upon them was therefore unjust,
that the story of the War of Independence has over and over again
been wrongly told. In one of the more recent books on the subject,
Sir George Trevelyan’s American Revolution, it is stated that all the
colonies asked of the King was to be let alone.[25] That is all that any
man or any community asks, when called upon to pay a bill; and the
question at issue between the mother country and the colonies in the
eighteenth century was the eternal question, which vexes every
community and every federation of communities, who ought to pay.
The bill was one for defence purposes; but, when it was presented,
the colonists’ answer was in effect, first, that it was the duty of the
mother country to defend the colonies; secondly, that Contentions of the
that duty had been neglected; and thirdly, that, colonists.
assuming that it had been performed, it was for the colonies and not
for the mother country to determine what proportion of the expense,
if any, should be defrayed by the colonies.
The first of these three contentions may not have (1) It was the duty
been fully avowed, but deep down in the minds of men of the mother
country to bear the
there lay the conviction that the mother country ought expense of
to pay for defending the colonies, and there it has defending
colonies.
the

remained, more or less, ever since. It is true that the

grant of self-government in its fullest sense to the present great
provinces of the British Empire has been coupled with the withdrawal
of the regular forces from all but a few points of selected Imperial
vantage, and to that extent the colonies have taken up, and well
taken up, the duty of self-defence; but the burden of This view still
the fleet, the great defensive force of the Empire as a prevails.
whole, is still borne in the main, and was till recently entirely borne,
by the mother country. When colonies or foreign possessions are in
a condition of complete political dependence upon the mother
country, it may fairly be argued that the latter, in insisting upon
dependence, should, as the price of supremacy, undertake to some
extent the duty of defence. And yet a survey of the British Empire at
the present day shows that no self-governing province of the Empire
is so highly organized or so fully charged for the purposes of defence
as is the great dependency of India.
The first and most elementary duty of an Independence
independent community, the one condition without implies self-
defence.
which it cannot be independent, is providing for its
own defence. The American colonies claimed in reality political
independence, at any rate as far as internal matters were concerned;
but they did not admit, except to a limited extent, that it was their
duty to provide against foreign invasion. That duty, in their eyes,
devolved upon the mother country because it was the mother
country; because it was held that the mother country derived more
advantage from the colonies than—apart from defence—the colonies
derived from her; and because the mother country dictated the
foreign policy of the Empire; in common parlance, it called the tune
and therefore, it was argued, should pay the piper.
The Navigation laws, the commercial restrictions The Navigation
imposed by Great Britain on her colonies, were Acts an inadequate
return for the
assumed to represent the price which the colonies charge imposed on
paid in return for the protection which the mother the mother country
for defending the
country gave or professed to give to the colonies; and colonies.
these same laws and restrictions, viewed in the light of later times,
have been held to be the burden of oppression which was greater
than the colonies could bear. Adam Smith, the writer who most
forcibly exposed the unsoundness of the old mercantile system, also
demonstrated most conclusively that that system was universal in
the eighteenth century; that it was less oppressively applied by
England than by other countries which owned colonies; that under it,
if the colonies were restricted in trade, they were also in receipt of
bounties; and lastly, that the undoubted disadvantages which were
the result of the system were shared by the mother country with the
colonies, though they weighed more heavily upon the colonies than
on the mother country, and were to the colonies ‘impertinent badges
of slavery’. The conclusion to be drawn is that, assuming Great
Britain to have adequately discharged the duty of protecting the
colonies, she was not adequately paid for doing so by the results of
the mercantile system.
But it was further contended that the duty of (2) Did Great
protecting her colonies was one which Great Britain Britain neglect the
defence of the
neglected. While the colonies were poor and North American
insignificant, the mother country, it was alleged, colonies?
neglected them. When they became richer and more valuable she
tried to oppress them. If the charge of neglect in the general sense
was true, we may refer to Mr. Lecky’s words already quoted, as
showing that it may well be argued that the colonies profited by it.[26]
Mr. Lecky writes of conditions in the eighteenth century, but Adam
Smith used similar terms with reference to the earlier days of the
colonies. Contrasting the Spanish colonies in America with those
owned by other European nations on that continent, he wrote: ‘The
Spanish colonies’ (in consequence of their mineral wealth) ‘from the
moment of their first establishment attracted very much the attention
of their mother country; while those of the other European nations
were for a long time in a great measure neglected. The former did
not perhaps thrive the better in consequence of this attention, nor the
latter the worse in consequence of their neglect.’[27] It may be
answered, however, that the neglect here referred to was neglect of
the colonies in their internal concerns, leaving them, as Adam Smith
puts it, to pursue their interest in their own way. This was an
undeniably beneficial form of neglect, wholly different from the
neglect which leaves distant dependencies exposed to foreign
invasion and native raids. Was then the British Government guilty of
the latter form of neglect in the case of the American colonies?
 There were many instances in the history of these The attitude of the
colonies, while they were still under the British flag, of mother country in
the earlier history of
the Imperial Government promising assistance which the colonies.
was never sent, or only sent after months of delay:
there were instances of gross incapacity on the part of leaders of
expeditions sent out from home, notably in the case of Walker and
Hill, who commanded the disgracefully abortive enterprise against
Quebec in 1711. The state of Acadia, when nominally in British
keeping after the Treaty of Utrecht, was a glaring illustration of
English supineness and procrastination. There was, at any rate, one
notable instance of the mother country depriving the colonies of a
great result of their own brilliant enterprise, viz. when Louisbourg,
taken by the New Englanders in 1745, was restored by Great Britain
to France under the terms of the Treaty of Aix la Chapelle in 1748.
Undoubtedly Great Britain on many occasions disappointed and
disheartened the colonies, and especially the most patriotic of the
colonies, the New England states. On the other hand, it is beyond
question that the colonies were never seriously attacked by sea.
They were threatened, sometimes badly threatened, as by d’Anville’s
fleet in 1746; they were liable to the raids of daring partisan leaders,
such as d’Iberville; but either good fortune or the British fleet,
supplemented no doubt by a wholesome respect for the energy and
activity of the New England sailors themselves, kept the coasts and
seaports of the American colonies in comparative security through all
the years of war. It must be noted too that, while the colonies
suffered because Great Britain had interests elsewhere than in
America; while, for instance, a fleet designed for the benefit of the
colonies in 1709 was sent off to Portugal, and the New Englanders’
prize of Louisbourg was forfeited in order to secure Madras for the
British Empire, the colonies at the same time shared in the results of
victories won in other parts of the world than America. The Peace of
Utrecht, with what it gave to the English in America, was entirely the
outcome of Marlborough’s victories on the continent of Europe.
Nothing that was done in America contributed to it. The failures of
England were under the colonies’ eyes; her successes, the fruits of
which they shared, were often achieved at the other side of the
world.
 But, taking the main events which contributed to the security and
greatness of the American colonies, how far should they be credited
to Great Britain and how far to the colonies themselves? In earlier
days, nothing was more important to the future of the English in
America than securing a continuous seaboard and linking the
southern to the northern colonies. This object was obtained by taking
New York from the Dutch, the result of action initiated in Europe, not
in America. The final reduction of Port Royal was effected with the
assistance of troops and ships from England. The Peace of Utrecht,
which deprived the French of Acadia and their settlements in
Newfoundland, was, as already stated, wholly the result of
Marlborough’s fighting in Europe. Though the New The conquest of
Englanders took Louisbourg, and England gave it Canada was mainly
due to the mother
back to France, the colonists’ success was largely country.
aided by Warren’s squadron of Imperial ships. But,
most of all, the final conquest of Canada was due far more to the
action of the mother country than to that of the colonies.
The great, almost the only, foreign danger to the English colonies
in North America was from the French in Canada and Louisiana, but
it is not generally realized how enormously the English on the North
American continent outnumbered the French. At the time of the
conquest of Canada, the white population of the English colonies in
North America was to that of the French colonies as thirteen to one.
It is true that the English did not form one community, whereas the
French were united; but it is also true, on the other hand, that the
several English communities were more concentrated than the
French, and that they held the base of the triangle, which base was
the sea. A single one of the larger English colonies had a white
population equal to or surpassing the whole French population in
North America. Under these circumstances it might fairly be asked
why the English colonists required any help at all from the mother
country to conquer Canada. The war was one in which they were
vitally concerned. Its object was to give present security to their
frontiers, to rid them once for all from the raids of French and
Indians, which had for generations desolated their villages, farms,
and homesteads, and to leave the West as a heritage to their
children’s children, instead of allowing the valleys of the Mississippi