1910.] GENESIS OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 9 



representatives of the nation, the Parliament, had not consented 

 to it. It was asserted as English constitutional law that the 

 constituents east their vote for the whole nation, not only for 

 the non-voters in England, but just as much for all citizens and 

 subjects of the British empire, consequently for the colonies as 

 well. The Parliament was an imperial institution, not merely a 

 local one of Great Britain; it passed laws and granted taxes by 

 legal authority for the whole empire. 



If the Americans were not disposed to bow to this autho- 

 rity, they could only take their stand upon the revolutionary 

 idea of the inalienable sovereignty of the people \ an idea which, 

 actually, leads direct to the modern political principle of universal 

 suffrage. In reality, you will find such a statesman as Benjamin 

 Franklin giving his adhesion to what he described as a good 

 Whig principle, namely that nobody is free who is not a voter 2 . 



Politically also, then, the general tendency of American deve- 

 lopment was diverging from English standards; it goes without 

 saying that this tendency was due not only to the economic 

 contrast to England, but to the very construction of American 

 society. 



The British Government, in 1766, had been compelled to 

 repeal the stamp duty as impracticable, and they strove to recon- 

 cile the American opposition. The cause of their failure was, in 

 the opinion of Lecky 3 , that from this date the English govern- 

 ment of America was little more than a series of deplorable 

 blunders. I cannot accept this vievv. I see no virtual difference 

 in English colonial policy before and after 1766. The British 

 Government continiied the course they had followed for cen- 

 turies, managing the affairs of the colonies with a vie w to the 

 real or imaginary advantage of the mother country. But this 

 course was the very one calculated to stir the Americans to 

 rebellion. America was obliged to break the old colonial policy 



1 Bancroft (ed. of 1861), VI. 44. 



2 Writings (ed. by Smyth), X. 130—131. Cp. American utterances from 

 1766, Bakcroft, V. 441-443. 



3 History of England, III. 349. 



