BOOK XI. PROGRESS OF THE STATES OF NORTH AMERICA, TILL THEIR ASSUMPTION OF NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE. CHAPTER I. Relative Position of Britain and her Colonies.-Policy of the British Court Severe Enforcement of the existing commercial Restrictions - Aggravation of the commercial Restrictions. — Project of the Stamp Act. - Remonstrances of the Americans. - Idea of American Representatives in the House of Commons. - The Stamp Act debated in England- and passed. -Act for quartering British Troops in America. - Proceedings in Massachusetts and Virginia. - Ferment in America.-Tumults in New England. The Stamp Officers resign. - Convention at New York. - Political Clubs in America.- Tumult at New York. - Non-importation Agreements. The Stamp Act disobeyed — Deliberations in England — Act declaratory of parliamentary Power over America— the Stamp Act repealed. THE notion which we have remarked1 as having been suggested to the people of New England, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, by the failure of various demonstrative essays of the British government to conquer Canada,—that it was not the will of Providence that North America should be subject to the sole dominion of one European state,—was substantially prophetic. The solitary superiority which Britain at length acquired over America was destined to be shortlived; and the concentration was nearly coeval with the dissolution of European ascendency and monarchical power in this quarter of the world. It would be absurd to suppose that Great Britain, even by the mildest and most liberal system of policy, could have re 1 Ante, Book VIII., Chap. I. tained the American provinces in perpetual submission to her authority. Their great and rapid advancement in population, and the vast distance by which they were disjoined from the parent state, coöperated with other causes to awaken and nourish ideas of independence in the minds of their inhabitants, and portended an inevitable, though, in point of time, an indefinite, limit to the connection between the two countries. A separate and independent political existence was the natural and reasonable consummation to which the progress of society in America was tending; and Great Britain, eventually, had but to choose between a graceful compliance or a fruitless struggle with this irrepressible development. By wisdom and prudence, she might, indeed, have retarded the catastrophe, and even rendered its actual occurrence instrumental to the confirmation of friendship and good-will between the two countries; but her conduct and policy were perversely calculated to provoke and hasten its arrival, and to blend its immortal remembrance with impressions of resentment, enmity, and strife. It has been justly remarked by an accomplished and intelligent American historian' of the Revolutionary War between Britain and his country, that great and flourishing colonies, the offspring of a free people, daily increasing in numbers, and already grown to the magnitude of a nation, planted at a vast distance from their parent country, and governed by constitutions as liberal as her own, were novelties in the history of the world. To combine durably and satisfactorily colonies so circumstanced in one uniform system of government with the parent country required in the statesmen who might entertain such a design the most profound and varied knowledge of mankind, and the most extensive comprehension and righteous estimate of actual and probable things. A scheme so arduous was beyond the aim, and far beyond the grasp, of ordinary statesmen, whose guides were precedents, and who regarded artificial usage and formality as principles of human nature. An original genius, unfettered by hereditary or official prejudice, and exalted by just conceptions of human worth and rights, and 'Ramsay. I have been obliged to alter his language in order to develope his thought. CHAP. I.] BRITISH PRETENSIONS. — COLONIAL JEALOUSY. 169 of the mutual duties and obligations of mankind, might have struck out some plan that would have prolonged at least the political union of the two countries, by securing as much liberty to the colonies and as great a degree of supremacy to the parent state as their common good required. But no statesman equal to such views, actuated by such sentiments, or endowed with such knowledge and capacity, now presided, or perhaps ever did preside, over the helm of political affairs in Great Britain. We have beheld various disputes and controversies arise from time to time between Britain and her colonies, and a reciprocal and progressive jealousy mingle with the other sentiments that resulted from their connection. Of the controversies that had already occurred between royal or national prerogative and provincial liberty, some, without being adjusted to the satisfaction of either party, had terminated by leaving each in possession, if not in the exercise, of pretensions inconsistent with the avowed claims of the other; and though, in certain instances, the colonists were obliged reluctantly to yield to the superior power which backed the pretensions of the parent state, the rapid increase of their strength and numbers manifestly rendered a submission thus obtained unstable and precarious. It was to royal charters, and not to the national generosity of the parent state, that the Americans owed those liberal domestic institutions which protected the interests and cherished the spirit of liberty among them. The whole strain of parliamentary legislation proclaimed that America was regarded by the British government, and by the merchants and manufacturers who influenced its colonial policy, less as an integral part than a dependent and tributary adjunct of the British empire; and, with the growth of the American States, there had grown an indignant conviction in the minds of many of their inhabitants, that their enjoyment of the hardearned fruits of the dangers, toils, and sufferings by which they had added so many provinces to the British crown was unjustly and tyrannically circumscribed, for the advantage of the distant community whence oppression had compelled them or their fathers to emigrate, and as the tribute for a protection which they always reproached as scanty and inefficient, and |