e.

[Sidenote: England and America.]

And at this moment there were grave reasons why this resolve should take
an active form. Strong as the attachment of the Americans to Britain
seemed at the close of the war, keen lookers-on like the French
minister, the Duc de Choiseul, saw in the very completeness of Pitt's
triumph a danger to their future union. The presence of the French in
Canada, their designs in the west, had thrown America for protection on
the mother country. But with the conquest of Canada all need of
protection was removed. The attitude of England towards its distant
dependency became one of simple possession; and the differences of
temper, the commercial and administrative disputes, which had long
existed as elements of severance, but had been thrown into the
background till now by the higher need for union, started into a new
prominence. Day by day indeed the American colonies found it harder to
submit to the meddling of the mother country with their self-government
and their trade. A consciousness of their destinies was stealing in upon
thoughtful men, and spread from them to the masses around them. At this
very moment the quick growth of population in America moved John Adams,
then a village schoolmaster of Massachusetts, to lofty forebodings of
the future of the great people over whom he was to be called to rule.
"Our people in another century," he wrote, "will be more numerous than
England itself. All Europe will not be able to subdue us. The only way
to keep us from setting up for ourselves is to disunite us." The sense
that such an independence was drawing nearer spread even to Europe.
"Fools," said a descendant of William Penn, "are always telling their
fears that the colonies will set up for themselves." Philosophers
however were pretty much of the same mind on this subject with the
fools. "Colonies are like fruits," wrote the foreseeing Turgot, "which
cling to the tree only till they ripen. As soon as America can take
care of itself it will do what Carthage did." But from the thought of
separation almost every American turned as yet with horror. The
Colonists still looked to England as their home. They prided themselves
on their loyalty; and they regarded the difficulties which hindered
complete sympathy between the settlements and the mother country as
obstacles which time and good sense could remove. England on the other
hand looked on America as her noblest possession. It was the wealth, the