mselves. When these powers were diminished, their whole
political ideal was ruined, and they preferred independence to what
they considered servitude. Such ideas were beyond the comprehension of
most Englishmen, to whom the whole thing was plain disloyalty, however
cloaked in specious words and glittering generalities.

It has been said that the rupture was due to a spirit of independence
in America which, in spite of all disclaimers, was determined to be
entirely free from the mother country. Such was the assertion of the
Tories and officials of the time, and the same idea is not infrequently
repeated at the present day. But the truth is that the colonists would
have been contented to remain indefinitely in union with England,
subjects of the British {73} crown, sharers of the British commercial
empire, provided they could have been sure of complete local
self-government. The independence they demanded was far less than that
now enjoyed by the great colonial unions of Canada, Australia, and
South Africa. It may be assumed, of course, that unless Parliament
exercised complete authority over internal as well as external
matters--to employ the then customary distinction--there was no real
imperial bond. Such was the position unanimously taken by the North
Ministry and the Tories in 1776. But in view of the subsequent history
of the English colonies it seems hardly deniable that some relationship
similar to the existing colonial one might have been perpetuated had
the Whig policy advocated by Burke been adopted, and the right of
Parliament "to bind the colonies in all cases whatsoever" been allowed
to drop, in practice. The obstinate localism of the colonies was such
that not until a generation after the Revolution did a genuine American
national sentiment appear. The colonies were driven to act together in
1774-1776, but not to fuse, by a danger not to national but to local
independence. This fact indicates how sharply defined was the field
which the Americans insisted on having free from parliamentary
invasion. Had it been possible for England {74} to recognize this
fact, there would have been no revolution.

It is, of course, obvious that the traditional American view of the
Revolution as caused by tyranny and oppression is symbolical, if not
fictitious. The British government, in all its measures, from 1763 to
1774, was moderate, hesitating, and at worst irritating. Its action
threatened to destroy the p