estine trade with the foreigner. The revenue which was expected
from this measure was to be supplemented by an internal Stamp Tax, a tax
on all legal documents issued within the Colonies, the plan of which
seems to have originated with Bute's secretary, Jenkinson, afterwards
the first Lord Liverpool. That resistance was expected was seen in a
significant step which was taken by the ministry at the end of the war.
Though the defeat of the French had left the Colonies without an enemy
save the Indians, a force of ten thousand men was still kept quartered
on their inhabitants, and a scheme was broached for an extension of the
province of Canada over the district round the Lakes, which would have
turned the western lands into a military settlement, governed at the
will of the Crown, and have furnished a base of warlike operations, if
such were needed, against the settled Colonies on the Atlantic.

Had Bute's power lasted it is probable that these measures would have
brought about the struggle between England and America long before it
actually began. Fortunately for the two countries the minister found
himself from the first the object of a sudden and universal hatred. The
great majority which had rejected Pitt's motion against the Peace had
filled the court with exultation. "Now indeed," cried the Princess
Dowager, "my son is king." But the victory was hardly won when king and
minister found themselves battling with a storm of popular ill-will such
as never since the overthrow of the Stuarts assailed the throne. Violent
and reckless as it was, the storm only marked a fresh advance in the
reawakening of public opinion. The bulk of the higher classes who had
till now stood apart from government were coming gradually in to the
side of the Crown. But the mass of the people was only puzzled and
galled by the turn of events. It felt itself called again to political
activity, but it saw nothing to change its hatred and distrust of
Parliament and the Crown. On the contrary it saw them in greater union
than of old. The House of Commons was more corrupt than ever, and it was
the slave of the king. The king still called himself a Whig, yet he was
reviving a system of absolutism which Whiggism, to do it justice, had
long made impossible. His minister was a mere favourite and in
Englishmen's eyes a foreigner. The masses saw all this, but they saw no
way of mending it. They knew little of their own strength, and they had
no means of infl