166 THE DEEPER SIGNIFICANCE 
zation, with a very inadequate grasp of the situation in 
its definite and concrete details. It is worth our while, 
then, to approach once more the well-worn theme, and 
see if it is not possible to make a statement which 
shall be at once historically true and fair to all parties 
concerned. 
First, we must note the fundamental fact out of which 
the American Revolution took its rise. A revolution 
need not necessarily have arisen from such a fact, but 
it did. The fundamental fact was the need for a 
continental revenue, whereas no such thing existed as 
a continental government with taxing power. This 
need was vividly brought out by seventy years of war 
with France. At the time of the treaty of Paris, in 
1763, the need for a permanent continental government 
with taxing power had long been forcibly shown, though 
people were everywhere obstinately unwilling to admit 
the fact. For seventy-four years the colonies had been 
in a condition varying from armed truce to open war- 
fare with France. Thestruggle began in 1689, when the 
Dutch stadtholder became king of Great Britain, when 
Andros was overthrown at Boston, and Leisler seized 
the government of New York, and Frontenac was sent 
over to Canada with vast designs. Occasionally this 
struggle came to a pause, but it was never really ended 
till, in 1763, France lost every rood of land she had ever 
possessed in North America. At first it was only the 
New England colonies and New York that were di- 
rectly concerned, and in Leisler’s Congress of 1690 no 
colony south of Maryland was represented. But by the 
time when Robert Dinwiddie ruled in Virginia all the’ 
colonies came to be involved, and the war in its latest 
stage assumed continental dimensions. Regular troops 
