d small {18} strength, and
even where it was by law established it remained little more than an
official body, the "Governor's church." This tended to widen the gap
between the political views of the individualistic dissenting and
Puritan sects in the colonies and the people at home.

The American of 1763 was thus a different kind of man from the
Englishman. As a result of the divergent development on the two sides
of the Atlantic from a common ancestry, their political habits had
become mutually incomprehensible. To the Englishman, the rule of the
nobility was normal--the ideal political system. He was content, if a
commoner, with the place assigned to him. To the colonist, on the
other hand, government in which the majority of adult male inhabitants
possessed the chief power was the only valid form,--all others were
vicious. Patriotism meant two contradictory things. The Englishman's
patriotism was sturdy but unenthusiastic, and showed itself almost as
much in a contempt for foreigners as in complacency over English
institutions. The colonist, on the contrary, had a double allegiance:
one conventional and traditional, to the British crown; the other a
new, intensely local and narrow attachment to his province. England
was still the "old home," looked to as the source of political
authority, of manners and literature. It was for many of {19} the
residents their recent abode and, for all except a few of Dutch,
German, or French extraction, their ancestral country. But already
this "loyalty" on the part of the colonists was dwindling into
something more sentimental than real. The genuine local patriotism of
the colonists was shown by their persistent struggle against the
representatives of English authority in the governors' chairs. There
had developed in America a new sort of man, an "American," who wished
to be as independent of government as possible, and who, while
professing and no doubt feeling a general loyalty to England, was in
fact a patriot of his own colony.

The colonists entered very slightly into the thoughts of the English
noblemen and gentry. They were regarded in a highly practical way,
without a trace of any sentiment, as members of the middle and lower
classes, not without a large criminal admixture, who had been helped
and allowed to build up some unruly and not very admirable communities.
Nor did the English middle classes look upon the colonists with much
interest, or regard them as