ore exhaustive knowledge and
more perfect impartiality than by an American writer--Mr. George
Beer--whose work on the Commercial Policy of England has recently been
published by Columbia College, in New York. No one will now altogether
defend Grenville's policy of taxing America by the Imperial
Parliament, but it ought not to be forgotten that it was expressly
provided that every farthing of this taxation was to be expended in
America, and devoted to colonial defence. England had just terminated
a great war, which, by expelling the French from Canada, had been of
inestimable advantage to her colonies, but which had left the
mother-country almost crushed by debt. All that Grenville desired was,
that the American colonies should provide a portion of the cost of
their own defence, as our great colonies are doing at the present
time, and he only resorted to Imperial taxation because he despaired
of achieving this end by any other means. The step which he took was
no doubt a false one. As is so often the case in England, it was made
worse by party changes and by party recriminations, and many later
mistakes aggravated and embittered the original dispute; but I think
an impartial reader of this melancholy chapter of English history will
come to the conclusion that these mistakes were by no means all on one
side.

It is a story which is certainly not without its lesson to our own
time. It is very improbable that any future statesman will follow the
example of George Grenville, and endeavour by Act of Parliament to
impose taxation on a self-governing colony; but it would be a grave
error to suppose that the danger of unwise parliamentary interference
in Indian and colonial affairs has diminished. Great as are the
advantages of telegraphs and newspapers in the government of the
Empire, they are not without their drawbacks. Government by telegraph
is a very dangerous thing, and there is, I fear, an increasing
tendency to override local knowledge, and to apply English standards
and methods of government to wholly un-English conditions.
Ill-considered resolutions of the House of Commons, often passed in
obedience to some popular fad, and without any real intention of
carrying them into effect; language used in Parliament which is often
due to no deeper motive than a desire to win the favour of some class
of voters in an English constituency, may do as much as serious
misgovernment to alienate great masses of British subjects beyon