of William III. To a later age, they signify the rapid crumbling of the somewhat artificial empire of France beyond the seas. They suggest, too, a participation by American colonists in movements of world significance. While the broad outline of events in America was still determined over-seas, to the colonists themselves belongs no little credit for the shaping of their own destiny. From participation by colonial troops in battles which determined their own fate, it is not a distant cry to a separate diplomacy and full national independence.

Under George I, who succeeded his cousin Queen Anne in 1714, the Hanoverian interests of the royal family tended to draw their English kingdom once more into the vortex of continental affairs. This tendency was not lessened under the new king's son, George II, last of British reigning monarchs to participate personally in battle. France and Spain continued to be the traditional rivals and Great Britain was at war with Spain when in 1740 the death of Charles VI, Hapsburg ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, plunged Europe into a new war of succession and aroused the wolves to prey upon Maria Theresa, heiress to the vast dominions of the late emperor. It was then that Frederick II, who had just succeeded to the throne of Prussia, seized Silesia. His act precipitated a general war in which Austria found in England an ally against Prussia, France and Spain. No Marlborough arose in this conflict to extend the military renown of Britain. In this second war it is significant, however, for developments in North America that France under the Regency and thereafter under the young king, Louis XV, should have been so preoccupied with continental affairs, first a war of the Polish succession, 17331735, then the great war of the Austrian succession, that proper attention could not be given to the upkeep and increase of the navy. For a brief period under Louis XIV French sea power was formidable. Its decline in the closing decades of the reign and the failure to rehabilitate it subsequently boded ill for the maintenance of colonial empire if ever a strong maritime power should threaten its existence. This condition of the marine was the more dan

gerous in view of French expansion both in North America and in India throughout the period of the continental wars. Without a navy adequate for its defense, colonial empire reposed on a precarious foundation. How insecure this really was did not become at once apparent, for the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 restored the status quo ante bellum, each power surrendering its conquests, save that the predatory Frederick maintained his hold on Silesia.

The short interval of peace ensuing was attended by a considerable shifting in alliances, and when in 1756 Maria Theresa once more took the field against Frederick, she had won France, Sweden, and Russia to her cause. But this time England, consistent in her opposition to France, supported Frederick, chiefly by doles and grants, while her own interests were served by Clive and Wolfe in the conquest of an empire. For America the crisis was epochal. In the face of attack on their long frontier, the colonies demonstrated an utter incapacity for united action. The unified command of the Marquis de Montcalm and Levis, his brilliant lieutenant, wrought havoc and disaster from Pittsburgh to Fort William Henry. Only the advent in power at London of William Pitt the Elder, greatest of English administrators and empire builders, saved the country from the incompetents and grafters who clogged the public service, and inspired and sustained the intrepid souls who at Louisburg, on Lake Champlain, on Lake Ontario, and finally at Quebec and Montreal brought into effective play the superior resources of Britain and her colonies. death of Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham (1759) destroyed the last remaining hope of France in the New World. There was justice, notwithstanding, in the observation of Pitt that the real decision of the war was reached on the battle-fields of Europe. Few French troops crossed the sea.8

The

The French and Indian War constituted the greatest event in American history from the settlement down to the Revolution. "On the Heights of Abraham," says Park

8 The student is referred to the works of Francis Parkman for the most vivid account of these epic contests for empire.

man, "began the history of the United States." Once again Americans participated on a large scale in the military operations which insured the British triumph-a fresh reminder of America's importance in the empire as a whole. But as has been frequently noted by historians, the terms of settlement imposed by the victor constituted a determining factor in the later relations of the colonies with the mother country. Confronted with the choice between all of Canada and the small sugar islands of Guadaloupe and Martinique, it may be surprising that Britain hesitated. But the choice was less simple than it appeared. To occupy Canada meant to weaken the sense of dependence of the North American colonies, no longer bound to England by a fear of Frenchmen and their Indian allies. To gain possession of the sugar islands meant to obtain a more lucrative prize than all of Canada combined." The singular desirability of sugar islands has been noted, it will be remembered, in the discussion of those mercantilist principles on which the whole concept of empire was framed. Opposition of England's existing sugar colonies to the competition of new colonies proved to be the decisive factor. In finally determining upon Canada, Great Britain gave ground for the prophecies of French statesmen that, freed from the bogey of France and harassed by the restrictions of Great Britain, the colonists must soon seek independence.

GEORGE III AND HIS POLICIES

In the midst of the war, the English throne passed to a young king whose personality was itself to be a factor in the imperial system which the genius of Pitt had done so much to erect. George III had what the Germans call the "will to power." One of his first acts was the overthrow of the great minister. The prime object of George's personal policy was to uplift the monarchy as an institution from the decay to which it had fallen in the two preceding reigns. But it is unfair in the years which followed the

9 Pitman, Frank Wesley, The Development of the British West Indies 1700-1763 (New Haven, 1917), pages 334-360,

French war to attribute the increasing tension between the colonies and Great Britain solely to the obstinacy or incapacity of the king. The peace of 1763 saddled England with debts as well as colonies. The vast accessions to the empire created an administrative problem which any government must find embarrassing, and no solution of which could satisfy all the interests involved. From 1607 to 1763 the empire was in the making. From 1763 to 1775 it moved rapidly to its fall.

The government overseas produced a painful impression on the colonists by a series of wholly separate regulations which seemed, however, a concerted plan to coerce and thwart them. Westerners were affronted at a proclamation in 1763 excluding from settlement land beyond the Alleghenies, a regulation which could easily have been rendered more palatable had the government explained its temporary character, the official intention contemplating only a suspension of occupation till Indian titles had been extinguished and a pacification achieved.10 Commercial interests were next antagonized by the Molasses Act of 1764, which barred the rum and sugar trade of New England from all but the British West Indies, and correspondingly upset the market for American lumber, staves, wheat, and fish a serious blow to the economic equilibrium of the country." By its increased duty on sugar and its closing of American ports to foreign molasses, by its stern provisions against smugglers, the act endangered the entire economic life of New England, so intimately bound up with slaves, molasses, and rum, and the exports needed to procure them. The most articulate interests of the country, the business men and lawyers, were next irritated by the Stamp Act, of 1765, a measure which the ministry instituted with some reluctance, and not without consulting Benjamin Franklin and other Americans as to whether the funds required could be procured in a less objectionable manner by 10 Alvord, Clarence Walworth, The Mississippi Valley in British Politics (Cleveland, 1916), vol. I, 199-206.

11 For an elaborate examination of American commercial conditions at this period see, The Colonial Merchants and the American Revolution, 1763-1776 (New York, 1918) by Arthur Meier Schlesinger.

direct grant of the several colonial legislatures. American opinion being that such a method was not feasible, the Act was reported, and passed immediately by a Parliament wholly unconscious of the political dynamite it contained. When so keen an observer as Franklin applied for a stamp distributorship on behalf of one of his own kinsmen, British apathy toward the measure is not surprising. But in America the storm of protest broke with a suddenness and fury beyond the comprehension of English legislators. Repeal was their sole recourse, and rejoicing in America was unbounded. Joy over the Stamp Act repeal was somewhat dimmed by the passage, almost at the same time, of the Declaratory Act. This affirmed in legal phrase the theory of Parliament's supremacy, the theory least compatible with colonial independence.

CONFLICTING THEORIES OF EMPIRE

The actual problem of revenue and the more theoretical problem of the relation of the colonies to the empire were, therefore, as far as ever from solution. Two diverging tendencies competed thenceforward till the Revolution. On the one hand, Great Britain under the twin compulsion of mercantilism and imperialism was driven into an ever harsher reiteration of the final authority of Parliament. At the same time actual tax bills were framed with greater regard to their probable effect on American opinion. On both points, Parliament seemed to be on strong ground; certainly on the former, for Parliamentary supremacy was the undoubted result of the Seventeenth Century revolutions, and the Empire knew no higher court of appeal. Certainly as imperialism was understood by most people at the time, if the colonies remained within the empire, they remained subordinate to Parliament, the final repository of authority, the arbiter, the sovereign.

In America, a countercurrent was setting in. Even the furious opposition to the Stamp Act centered on its expediency, not on its legality. But the renewed agitations over the Townsend Act and the tea duties led men to question the