brick and stone,
its avenues of trees, its fruitful orchards and sweet-smelling gardens.
The people of Philadelphia had every right to be proud of their city.

Communication was not easy between one colony and {78} another, between
one town and another. But neither was it easy in England. For the
most part the conditions of life were much the same on one side of the
Atlantic as on the other. The whole population, white and black,
freeman and slave, was about two million souls. They were well-to-do,
peaceable, hard-working--those who had to work, good fighters--those
who had to fight, all very willing to be loyal and all very well worth
keeping loyal. It was worth their sovereign's while, it was worth the
while of his ministers, to know something about these colonists and to
try and understand natures that were not at all difficult to
understand. Had they been treated as the Englishmen they were, all
would have been well. But the King who gloried in the name of Briton
did not extend its significance far enough.

[Sidenote: 1765--Friction with the American colonists]

It is not easy to understand the temper which animated all the King's
actions towards the American colonies. They were regarded, and with
justice, as one of the greatest glories of the English crown; they were
no less a source of wealth than of pride to the English people. Yet
the English prince persisted in pursuing towards them a policy which
can only be most mildly characterized as a policy of exasperation.
When George was still both a young man and a young king, the relations
between the mother country and her children across the Atlantic were,
if not wholly harmonious, at least in such a condition as to render
harmony not merely possible, but probable. The result of a long and
wearing war had been to relieve the colonists directly from one and
indirectly from the other of their two greatest perils. By the terms
on which peace was made the power of France was broken on the North
American continent. The French troops had been withdrawn across the
seas. The Lilies of France floated over no more important possessions
in the new world than a few insignificant fishing stations near
Newfoundland. A dangerous and dreaded enemy to colonial life and
liberty could no longer menace or alarm. As a consequence of the
withdrawal of the French troops the last united attack of the red men
against the white was made and failed. {79} The famous conspirac