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Even where the colonial will was in direct conflict with the governor's instructions the Americans frequently had their way. In such contests the weapon of the provincials was the control of the purse. Without acts for raising and appropriating money the governor's administration was paralyzed. For his salary also he was dependent upon the legislature in almost every colony. He was the servant of two masters, the Crown and the assembly, and not seldom compromised his instructions to save his income.

Especially during the French and Indian wars, when prompt action was needed in raising troops and funds, the necessity of dealing with so many provinces separately led bold minds to urge the short-cut of parliamentary action. The centralized power of the French government seemed much superior to the English system at times of crisis, and was regarded by many Englishmen as the model on which the British administration should be reconstructed. Sober judgment indicated that at least some plan should be devised by which the colonies would be brought into permanent coöperation, with a general legislative and executive body to deal with such a vital common interest as a war with the French. Several plans of union were suggested, some of them by Americans and some by British leaders.

The most notable of the proposals of union was the Albany Plan, which distinctly foreshadowed the Constitution of the United States. It was the work of a congress of delegates from seven colonies which met at Albany in 1754, at the instance of the British ministry, in the hope of bringing the colonies into joint action in the impending French and Indian War. The plan was drafted by Franklin. It provided for a council composed of delegates selected by the assembly of each colony, and a president-general appointed by the Crown. This body was to have power to carry on wars in which the colonies were involved, and to raise troops and collect taxes for this purpose. In addition it was to control all relations with the Indians, including trade and purchases of lands, to superintend the laying out of new colonies, and to govern them until the Crown erected them into distinct provinces.

These proposals were the fruit of actual experience and show a consciousness that the Americans could act to better advantage

in union than separately. It was only advanced thinkers on either side of the Atlantic, however, who were able to appraise the plan at its true worth, and it was not put into operation. The British government thought that it savored too much of American autonomy, while the colonies, jealous of one another, needed another generation filled with sharp lessons to teach them the importance of union.

THE CONFLICT OF BRITISH AND AMERICAN OPINION

Several generations of life in the New World, under conditions so different from those in England, had given the Americans views which were widely separated from those held by the British mercantilists. They regarded the provinces, not as establishments existing merely for the promotion of English commerce, but as commonwealths or states, comparable with England herself, inhabited by Englishmen associating together in all the manifold ways characteristic of political communities, and united with England only by having the same king. The train of events which had shifted authority from King to Parliament and made the merchants and landlords the masters of imperial policy meant comparatively little to them. They felt quite capable of managing their own affairs, and, indeed, were accustomed to doing so. Down to 1763 they were content with their lot under the colonial system as actually administered, although on many occasions they had shown irritation and a disposition to act according to their own judgment when the system pinched. Long enjoyment of immunity from parliamentary interference in matters of internal police had bred in them the belief that home rule was their right. The superiority of their charters to the enactments of their assemblies accustomed them to the concept of a superior law, and earlier English and European publicists supported the idea that even the unwritten British constitution fixed limits to the powers of Parliament.

Scholars are still disputing over the legality of the authority which Parliament sought to exercise in America after 1763, but apart from the question of law it was folly for Britain to attempt to rule Americans contrary to their wishes. At bottom this was the effective cause of the Revolution.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR CHAPTER V

The period 1700-1750 has been called the "neglected half-century." It was studied less carefully than the seventeenth century by the older historians, and many of the fruits of recent researches are still in the monographic stage. There is now available, however, the posthumous work of Professor H. L. Osgood, The American Colonies in the Eighteenth Century, which covers these years exhaustively. Greene, Provincial America, and Channing, United States, give excellent general accounts.

England and the Colonies. The relations of the European nations which form the background of the British colonial system are treated in Abbott, Expansion of Europe, II. Beer, Old Colonial System, 1660–1754, continues the study presented in Origins. A standard but older treatise is Seeley, Expansion of England. Osgood, American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, III, is also excellent on the early phases of the imperial system. Andrews, Colonial Self-Government, and Channing, United States, II, are brief but good.

Rise of Parliament Government. The changes in the British government after the Revolution of 1688 may be studied in Maitland, Constitutional History of England. Especially good on the ministerial system is Blauvelt, The Development of Cabinet Government in England.

British Mercantilism. Beer, Old Colonial System, 1660-1754; British Colonial Policy, 1754-1765; and Commercial Policy of England towards the Colonies, provide the most satisfactory survey of the subject. Egerton, Short History of British Colonial Policy, is also useful.

The Crown and the Colonies. Dickerson, American Colonial Government, is a good study of British administration of the colonies through the Board of Trade. Greene, The Provincial Governor, approaches the administrative system from another angle. Kellogg, The Colonial Charter is essentially a study of the efforts to reduce the colonies to the royal type.

The Conflict of British and American Opinion. Tyler, Literary History of the American Revolution, I, contains many quotations which illustrate opinions of Americans on questions of relations with England. Merriam, History of American Political Theories, contains a fairly good summary of American views. McIlwain, The American Revolution, is a recent brilliant defense of the legal soundness of the American denial of the authority of Parliament. Van Tyne, Causes of the War of Independence, is a dispassionate product of present-day scholarship. It stresses the divergent development of the two parts of the English world as the fundamental reason for the separation. A discussion by a prominent English authority has just appeared - Egerton, The Causes and Character of the American Revolution.

CHAPTER VI

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY

THE FRENCH IN NORTH AMERICA

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"Heirs apparent of the Romans!" In exultant mood Horace Walpole thus described the English race as successive victories in the Seven Years' War foretold a triumphant end. The terms of the Peace of Paris in 1763 marked, indeed, a signal triumph for England over her rivals in the race for world-wide empire. For three quarters of a century, on sea and land, in every clime on the battlefields of Europe, in the tropical jungles of India, in the dark forests of North America - the banner of St. George had contended against the Fleur-de-lis until France, defeated, exhausted, humiliated, accepted the victor's terms. With their defeat the French Bourbons made their exit from the North American mainland and the curtain fell upon the dramatic and colorful history of New France; the turbid waters of the Mississippi marked the eastward limits of the dominions of decadent Spain, and half a continent spread its invitation before the restless feet of the sturdy race whose multiplying paths ran westward from the margin of the Atlantic.

The French, like the English, failed to gain a permanent foothold in America during the sixteenth century. Shortly before the formation of the London and Plymouth Companies, however, a commercial concern began a settlement at Port Royal, near the present Annapolis, Nova Scotia (1605); and from this germ came the colony of rough fisher folk and trappers called "Acadia."

With the founding of Quebec on the St. Lawrence by Samuel de Champlain in 1608, a far more important chapter began in history of French effort. This settlement commanded a natural highway leading to the Great Lakes and the heart of the continent. The transition from the St. Lawrence to the Father of Waters is easy; at many points the low watershed between the

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