180 THE DEEPER SIGNIFICANCE 
1766 he thrust himself into American affairs. When 
once this desperate political gamester had entered the 
field, it was no longer possible for those affairs to be 
discussed reasonably or dealt with according to the 
merits of the case. In the king’s mind it all reduced 
itself to this: on the Stamp Act question the Ameri- 
cans had won a victory. That was not to be endured. 
Somehow or other a fight must be forced again on 
the question of taxation, and the Americans must be 
compelled to eat their own words and surrender the 
principle in which they had so confidently intrenched 
themselves. This was the spirit in which the king 
took up the matter, and in it the original question as 
to raising a continental revenue for American pur- 
poses was quite lost sight of. There is nothing to 
show that the king cared a straw for the revenue; to 
snub and browbeat the Americans was all in all with 
him. 
There was a certain kind of vulgar shrewdness in 
thus selecting the Americans as chief antagonists, for 
should their resistance tend to become rebellious, it 
would tend to array public opinion in England against 
them as disturbers of the peace, and would thus dis- 
credit the principle which they represented. Thus 
did this mischief-maker on the throne go to work to 
stir up bad feelings between two great branches of the 
English race. 
Thus after 1766 the story of the causes of the 
American Revolution enters upon a new stage. In 
the earlier or Grenville stage a great public question 
was discussed on grounds of statesmanship, and the 
British government, having tried an impracticable 
solution, promptly withdrew it. No war need come 
