pose of securing the commercial advantages of the whole Empire to the Mother Country and the commercial benefits of its respective members. The Colonies not only paid the expenses of their own governments, but contributed, as called on, to the royal treasury. Meantime, the Home government carefully abstained from levying in the Colonies internal taxes. Whenever the King desired their financial assistance, he called on the several Colonial Legislatures to vote supplies, just as he called on the English or the Irish Parliament, and just as he had called on the Scottish Parliament before the Union; and these supplies the Colonial Legislatures voted with such liberality that, more than once, Parliament refunded to them portions of their contributions. It was said in England—and this was a part of the English theory-that the power to levy external taxes involved the power to levy internal taxes. This the Colonies denied. The English race is not given to fighting over theories; and so long as the Home government did not attempt to levy internal taxes, the two parties managed to get on together, although their relations were often strained. The first attempt to levy such taxes, in connection with the new attempt to enforce the Navigation Acts, fired the train that a century had been laying.

117. The Close of the French and Indian War.-The long struggle between England and France in North America came to an end in 1763. England was burdened with debt, and compelled to look in every quarter for increased financial resources. George III. was intent on carrying out his notions of prerogative. Tory influence was in full ascendency. The Thirteen Colonies had now reached an aggregate population of about 2,000,000; together, they had at one time kept 20,000 armed men in the field in the late war; they had gained a severe discipline in that struggle, and they had learned their own strength and resources; the Conquest of Canada removed their fears of attack from that quarter, such as had constantly haunted them since 1688, and they were fully prepared to resist all aggressions on their cherished rights.1

118. British Theory Put Into Execution.- The Home govern. ment thought the time a favorable one to abandon the compromise theory, and to give effect to the British theory. In 1760 it sent orders to the American custom houses to enforce the Navigation Acts. The customs officers, armed with writs of assistance, were to search stores and houses for goods that had not paid duty, or the importation of which was prohibited. British vessels of war on the coast were to lend them aid. The government also began to levy internal taxes.

1 Kalm, a Swedish traveler who visited America in 1754, detected the feeling of the Colonists in their conversation, and wrote that nothing but fear of the French on the northern border could keep them in subjection to England,

After 1762 this was the royal programme, sometimes changed in details but never abandoned: The Colonies to contribute regularly to the royal treasury; the Colonial Legislatures not to be asked to vote supplies, but Parliament to vote them directly; the salaries of the Colonial governors and judges to be paid by England, thus teaching them to look to her rather than to the people whom they governed for their compensation; and a British army to be maintained in America at Colonial expense.

119. No Taxation Without Representation.-To every one of these items but the first the Colonies were inflexibly opposed. Especially was every form of internal taxation by the Home government vigorously resisted, as the history of the stamp tax, the window tax, and the tea tax shows. This resistance was not made because the taxes were unnecessary, or because the amounts levied were excessive, but because Parliament had no right to impose them. Besides paying the costs of their own governments, including the salaries of all officers, the Colonies were still willing to contribute, when called upon, to the royal treasury; but their Legislatures alone had the right to vote the supplies, because in them alone were they represented. The principle involved was expressed in the battle cry: "No Taxation without Representation."

120 Mr. Burke on the Causes of American Discontent.-This great statesman saw clearly the movements of events in America. In explaining these movements to the House of Commons, in 1775, he traced the progress of events. He declared that from six sourcesdescent, form of government, religion in the North and manners in the South, education, and the remoteness of the Colonies-a fierce spirit of liberty had grown up. It had grown with the growth of the people and increased with the increase of their wealth; a spirit that, unhappily, meeting with an exercise of power in England which was not reconcilable to the Colonists' ideas of liberty, had kindled a flame that was ready to consume the Mother Country. He connected the resistance of the Americans to British taxation with the old

English struggles for freedom. He said those struggles, from the earliest times, were chiefly upon the question of taxing. It had been held, from the very nature of the House of Commons, as the immediate representative of the people, that the power to tax resided in that body. It was a fundamental principle that, in all monarchies, the people must directly or indirectly grant their own money, or no shadow of liberty could exist. Said the orator: "The Colonies draw from you, as with their life-blood, these ideas and principles. Their love of liberty, as with you, fixed and attached on this specific point of taxing. Liberty might be safe, or might be endangered, in twenty other particulars, without their being much pleased or

alarmed. Here they felt its pulse; and as they found that beat, they thought themselves sick or sound."

121. English and American Liberty.-The connection of the two countries was closer than has yet appeared. While nearly all Englishmen held that Parliament was supreme over the Colonies, and so had the power of taxation, many, as the more liberal and progressive Whigs, doubted or denied the wisdom of its exercise. These men conducted a steady but ineffectual resistance to the American policy of the King and ministry. They sometimes called Washington's army our army,” and spoke of the American cause as "the cause of liberty." The names of the two English political parties also became the names of the two divisions into which the American people were divided, Whigs and Tories. While the war was going on, the King was also seeking to carry out his ideas of prerogative in England. The men who opposed his American policy also opposed his Home policy. For a time, these men were in a feeble minority, and the King had his way; but the day of their triumph and of the King's defeat came with the success of the American arms. Not only was America free, but the failure of arbitrary government in America involved its failure in England. At the close of the war, forces began to act that, after still further delays, reformed the House of Commons and enlarged its powers, and limited still more the power of the King and the House of Lords. Thus English liberty, long arrested in its course, once more moved onward. Says Mr. Fiske: "The system which George III. had sought to fasten upon America, in order that he might fasten it upon England, was shaken off by the good people of both countries at almost the same moment of time."

CHAPTER IV.

THE FORMATION OF THE UNION.

REFERENCES.

I. HISTORIES OF THE UNITED STATES.—Bancroft, Vol. IV., (The American Revolution in Five Epochs, Epoch 3); Hildreth, Vol. III.; Winsor, Vol. VI., Chap. III.; Pitkin, Chaps. VIII.-X.; Johnston, The U. S., III., IV.; Hart., Chaps. III., IV.

II. SPECIAL WORKS, ARTICLES, ETC. Goodloe, Johnston, Story, and Wilson, Last References; Curtis, Book I., Chaps. II.-VI.; Frothingham, Chaps. IX., XI.; Bryce, Part I., Chaps. I., II.; Small, Beginnings of American Nationality, (J. H. U. Studies, Eighth Series, I., II.).

122. Relations of the Colonies.-At first the Colonies were wholly separate and distinct settlements, or groups of settlements, on the edge of a vast continent, often widely separated. But some bonds of union existed from the beginning. The Colonists were mainly of English blood; they had the same national history, the same political and civil institutions, the same general customs, the same language and literature. They had a common citizenship, since the inhabitants of any one Colony enjoyed all the rights and privileges of the inhabitants of any other. They had common enemies and friends, common dangers, objects, and hopes. There was more or less emigration from one Colony to another, which time and social and business connections multiplied. The name they bore marked them off from all the world as one society or people. The Declaration of Independence spoke of their constitution. So, while their only governmental bond was their common dependence upon England, they still formed a moral and social unity that continued to strengthen until events created a political unity.

123. The United States.-The Declaration of Independence must be considered under two aspects.

I. It changed the Colonies into States by severing the bonds that bound them to England. On the one side of July 4, 1776, they are British Colonies; on the other, free and independent American States.

2. It created the political unity, or the State, since known as the United States of America. While severing their connections with the other parts of the British Empire, this act materially strengthened those connections that constituted the Colonies one people. American independence was a concerted movement. The States used the Continental Congress to effect this purpose, not their local assemblies or congresses. There was one Declaration of Independence, not thirteen declarations. They did not act singly, but together. They did not become the nations of Massachusetts, Virginia, etc., but the United States of America. In this capacity they adopted the army at Boston, appointed Washington Commander-in-chief, waged war, renounced their allegiance to England, and took their separate station among the nations of the earth.

Thus, the States as free commonwealths and the Union originated in the same act. Independence did not destroy dual government. Each State continued a society in itself, and also a part of a larger society. The American Union had come in the room of the King and Parliament. But the States were necessarily reorganized and adjusted to the new order of things.

124. The Colonies Reorganized as States. Independence destroyed the old legal foundation of the States, and made it necessary to provide a new one. A people so tenacious of political habits as the Americans of that day, and so committed to government by law, could not rest until they had adjusted their State governments to the new state of affairs. In fact, they did not wait for the formal declaration of independence before acting. As early as May, 1775, Colonies began to apply to Congress for advice