olonies themselves to endure the strain. As for the
long-established restrictions on colonial trade, which in fact though
not in form contributed as largely as the proposals of direct taxation
to cause the revolt, they were far less severe, even if they had been
strictly enforced, than the restrictions imposed upon the trade of
other European settlements.

It is equally misleading to attribute the blame of the revolt wholly to
George III. and the ministers by whom he was served during the critical
years. No doubt it is possible to imagine a more tactful man than
George Grenville, a more far-seeing and courageous statesman than Lord
North, a less obstinate prince than George III. himself. But it may be
doubted whether any change of men would have done more than postpone
the inevitable. The great Whig apologists who have dictated the
accepted view of British history in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries have laboured to create the impression that if only Burke,
Chatham, and Charles Fox had had the handling of the issue, the tragedy
of disruption would have been avoided. But there is no evidence that
any of these men, except perhaps Burke, appreciated the magnitude and
difficulty of the questions that had been inevitably raised in 1764,
and must have been raised whoever had been in power; or that they would
have been able to suggest a workable new scheme of colonial government
which would have met the difficulty. If they had put forward such a
scheme, it would have been wrecked on the resistance of British
opinion, which was still dominated by the theories and traditions of
the old colonial system; and even if it had overcome this obstacle, it
would very likely have been ruined by the captious and litigious spirit
to which events had given birth among the colonists, especially in New
England.

The root of the matter was that the old colonial system, which had
suited well enough the needs of the colonies as they were when it was
devised by the statesmen of Charles II.'s reign, was no longer suitable
to their condition now that they had become great and prosperous
communities of freemen. They enjoyed self-government on a scale more
generous than any other communities in the world outside of Britain;
indeed, in one sense they enjoyed it on a more generous scale than
Britain herself, since political rights were much more widely exercised
in the colonies, owing to the natural conditions of a new and
prosperous land, tha