burden of defense could lead the Americans to object to so reasonable and moderate a tax as the Stamp Tax.

The American colonists regarded the Empire in a somewhat different light. They knew very well, what the Englishman was likely to forget, that in the seventeenth century the Colonies had been established without much aid from England, in some cases by people who had been driven out of England in order to escape religious or political oppression; and they were aware that if the English government had neglected the Colonies in the seventeenth century and had allowed them to do very much as they liked, it was because they were not regarded as of great importance. The Americans felt also that the new interest in the Colonies which the English government was now exhibiting was due to the fact that the trade of the Colonies was becoming supremely important to the commercial and landowning aristocracy of England. As for the conquest of Canada, they felt that they had done even more than their share, a fact which the British government itself recognized by repaying to them a part of the money which they had raised during the war. In a word, the Americans felt that whatever importance the American Colonies had as parts of the Empire, whatever economic or military or polit

ical value they possessed, was due to the labor and the sacrifices of the colonists themselves, who therefore deserved quite as much credit for building up the wonderful British Empire as the people of England.

The fundamental notion of Americans was admirably expressed by Benjamin Franklin in 1755:

British subjects, by removing to America, cultivating a wilderness, extending the domain, and increasing the wealth, commerce, and power of the mother country, at the hazard of their lives and fortunes, ought not, and in fact do not thereby lose their native rights.

By their native rights, Americans meant the traditional right of Englishmen to govern and tax themselves in assemblies of their own choosing. Englishmen had such an assembly in Parliament, but the Colonies were not, and in the nature of the case could not well be represented in Parliament; but they had now, and had always had, their own assemblies by which they had hitherto governed and taxed themselves. These assemblies they wished at all hazards to keep. It was through these assemblies that they had raised the money to support the Empire in the last war against France, and they were quite willing in the future to raise their fair share of taxes for the support of the Empire; but they wished

to raise these taxes through their own assemblies in their own way. If the Parliament could levy and collect a Stamp Tax, it could levy and collect any and all taxes, and it could regulate the powers of the colonial assemblies or abolish them altogether. The right of Parliament to tax the Colonies in fact involved the right to abolish colonial selfgovernment; and fundamentally, therefore, the Colonies were contending for the right of self-government.

In defense of this right the colonists resisted the Stamp Tax. All classes refused to use the stamped papers; in many cases the stamps were destroyed by mobs; and the merchants bound themselves not to import commodities from England until the act should be repealed. Partly on account of opposition in the Colonies, partly on account of the pressure from the English merchants, who complained that their business was being ruined, the Stamp Act was repealed in 1766. But the next year, after a change of Ministry, certain duties known as the Townshend duties were laid on the importation of tea, glass, painters' colors, and paper. The colonists had claimed that the Stamp Tax was unconstitutional because it was an "internal" tax; but now they abandoned the distinction between internal and external taxes and objected

to the levying of any taxes whatever, including import duties intended to raise a revenue. After three years of controversy and strife, of rioting and of restrictive non-importation agreements, the British government again yielded and repealed all of the duties save the threepenny duty on tea, which was maintained, not for the revenue which it would bring in, but as an assertion of the right of Parliament to levy taxes on the Colonies.

Although the Colonies insisted that the duty on tea was unconstitutional, the controversy largely subsided during the years from 1770 to 1773. In the latter year, however, the old dispute was revived by a resolution of Parliament giving to the East India Company a practical monopoly of the importation of tea into the Colonies. Taking advantage of this opportunity to gain control of a very profitable colonial business, the company sent over four cargoes of tea billed to the four ports of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston. The Boston shipment arrived first, in the fall of 1773, but when it was attempted to land the tea, a crowd of men disguised as Indians boarded the ship and threw the tea into the harbor. In New York and Philadelphia the tea was sent back to England, and at Charleston it was stored in the basement of the custom-house. In reply to these

acts, particularly to the destruction of the tea at Boston, the British government decided to make a final test of the authority of Parliament. By overwhelming majorities the Parliament passed what were known as the Coercive acts, one of which suspended the Massachusetts government and placed the colony practically under military rule, while another closed the port of Boston until the town should make compensation to the East India Company for the loss of its property. As the king said, "The die is now cast; the colonists must either submit or win complete independence." This was true, and, now that the issue was so clearly one of legislative independence and not merely one of taxation, the colonists gradually changed their argument once more, and from this time on were inclined to deny not merely the right of Parliament to tax the Colonies, but the right of Parliament to legislate for them at all.

It was on this theory that the war was waged. According to this theory, as the colonists finally elaborated it, the Empire was a federation of states rather than a unitary state; and just as England and Ireland and Hanover each had its own government, so the American Colonies must have their own governments, all of these separate countries and governments being united under the king