colonies to react
on the parent state. That was a consequence which followed the
Conquest of Canada and the accession of George III. The two events,
occurring in quick succession, raised the American question. A
traveller who visited America some years earlier reports that there
was much discontent, and that separation was expected before very
long. That discontent was inoperative whilst a great military power
held Canada. Two considerations reconciled the colonists to the
disadvantages attending the connection with England. The English
fleet guarded the sea against pirates; the English army guarded the
land against the French. The former was desirable; the latter was
essential to their existence. When the danger on the French side
disappeared, it might become very uncertain whether the patrol of the
Atlantic was worth the price that America had to pay for it.
Therefore Montcalm foretold that the English, if they conquered the
French colonies, would lose their own. Many Frenchmen saw this, with
satisfaction; and the probability was so manifest that Englishmen saw
it too. It was their interest to strengthen their position with new
securities, in the place of that one supreme security which they had
lost by their victory at Quebec. That victory, with the vast
acquisition of territory that followed, would be no increase of
imperial power if it loosened the hold on Atlantic colonies.
Therefore, the policy of the hour was to enforce the existing claims
and to obtain unequivocal recognition of English sovereignty. The
most profitable method of doing it was in the shape of heavier
taxation; but taxes were a small matter in comparison with the
establishment of undisputed authority and unquestioning submission.
The tax might be nominal, if the principle was safe. Ways and means
would not be wanting in an empire which extended from Hudson's Bay to
the Gulf of Mexico. For the moment the need was not money but
allegiance. The problem was new, for the age of expansion had come
suddenly, in East and West, by the action of Pitt; and Pitt was no
longer in office, to find the solution.

Among the Whigs, who were a failing and discredited party, there were
men who already knew the policy by which since then the empire has
been reared--Adam Smith, Dean Tucker, Edmund Burke. But the great mass
went with the times, and held that the object of politics is power,
and that the more dominion is extended, the more it must be ret