1910.] GENESIS OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 11 



up a demand for* supreme power, met with resistance on the 

 part of the Government at home, — how the Government, in 

 order to enforce their vvill, made the judges dependent on royal 

 pleasure, erected new offices, and kept a standing army in the 

 colonies, — how such measures still more exasperated the colo- 

 nists and stiffened their resistance, — how, then, the Parliament, 

 shrewdly mentioned as "others", stepped in with "acts of pre- 

 tended legislation", aiming at suhduing the pretensions to home- 

 rule by means of military, judicial, commercial, and legislative 

 compulsion, — and how, at last, the conflict of constitutional 

 powers irresistibiy grew into war. Political theory developed in 

 the train of facts, and revolutionary action, by making use of 

 old English political philosophy, was able to give herself an 

 appearance of legal procedure 1 . 



It is not possible to throw the responsibility for the conduct 

 of England towards America upon any particular political party. 

 All the decisive resolutions of the Parliament were passed un- 

 animously, or nearly so, and the whole ruling class, whether 

 Whigs or Tories, is to be held responsible. 



That is not to say, however, that the conflict was down- 

 right one between England and America. On both sides there 

 were parties which afford an additional proof that the conflict, 

 at bottom, was one between two systems. 



Bristol and Nottingham, in 1774, elected members of Parlia- 

 ment on a platform of concessions to the Colonies. The citizens 

 of London, in 1775, applied direct to the King for putting an 

 end to the war measures against America. Adam Smith, the 

 great advocate of a new economic system, in the spring of 1776, 

 denounced the entire colonial policy of England as "illiberal and 

 oppressive" 2 . And Chatham rose to real greatness when he 

 made himself the leader of a small body of Whigs who, in the 

 Parliament, stood firmly for the Americans. It was English 

 trade interests that made a vain attempt to direct the colonial 

 policy of Great Britain. 



1 Cp. Appendix. 



2 Wealth of Nations, Book IV, Chap. VII. 



