of imposing taxes. The crown, the clergy, the aristocracy,
were hostile to the Americans; but the real enemy was the House of
Commons. The old European securities for good government were found
insufficient protection against parliamentary oppression. The nation
itself, acting by its representatives, had to be subjected to control.
The political problem raised by the New World was more complicated
than the simple issues dealt with hitherto in the Old. It had become
necessary to turn back the current of the development of politics, to
bind and limit and confine the State, which it was the pride of the
moderns to exalt. It was a new phase of political history. The
American Revolution innovated upon the English Revolution, as the
English Revolution innovated on the politics of Bacon or of Hobbes.
There was no tyranny to be resented. The colonists were in many ways
more completely their own masters than Englishmen at home. They were
not roused by the sense of intolerable wrong. The point at issue was
a very subtle and refined one, and it required a great deal of
mismanagement to make the quarrel irreconcilable.

Successive English governments shifted their ground. They tried the
Stamp Act; then the duty on tea and several other articles; then the
tea duty alone; and at last something even less than the tea duty. In
one thing they were consistent: they never abandoned the right of
raising taxes. When the colonists, instigated by Patrick Henry,
resisted the use of stamps, and Pitt rejoiced that they had resisted,
parliament gave way on that particular measure, declaring that it
retained the disputed right. Townshend carried a series of taxes on
imports, which produced about three hundred pounds, and were dropped
by Lord North. Then an ingenious plan was devised, which would
enforce the right of taxation, but which would not be felt by American
pockets, and would, indeed, put money into them, in the shape of a
bribe. East Indiamen were allowed to carry tea to American ports
without paying toll in England. The Navigation Laws were suspended,
that people in New England might drink cheap tea, without smuggling.
The duty in England was a shilling a pound. The duty in America was
threepence a pound. The shilling was remitted, so that the colonies
had only a duty of threepence to pay instead of a duty of
fifteen-pence. The tea-drinker at Boston got his tea cheaper than the
tea-drinker at Bristol. The revenue mad