sh hands), the vast basin of
Hudson's Bay, and the island of Newfoundland, to which the fishermen of
both nations had resorted, though the English had always claimed it.
But these were only preliminaries, and the main conflict was fought out
during the half-century following the Peace of Utrecht, 1713-63.

During this half-century Britain was under the rule of the Whig
oligarchy, which had no clearly conceived ideas on imperial policy.
Under the influence of the mercantile class the Whigs increased the
severity of the restrictions on colonial trade, and prohibited the rise
of industries likely to compete with those of the mother-country. But
under the influence of laziness and timidity, and of the desire quieta
non movere, they made no attempt seriously to enforce either the new or
the old restrictions, and in these circumstances smuggling trade
between the New England colonies and the French West Indies, in
defiance of the Navigation Act and its companions, grew to such
dimensions that any serious interference with it would be felt as a
real grievance. The Whigs and their friends later took credit for their
neglect. George Grenville, they said, lost the colonies because he read
the American dispatches; he would have done much better to leave the
dispatches and the colonies alone. But this is a damning apology. If
the old colonial system, whose severity, on paper, the Whigs had
greatly increased, was no longer workable, it should have been revised;
but no Whig showed any sign of a sense that change was necessary. Yet
the prevalence of smuggling was not the only proof of the need for
change. There was during the period a long succession of disputes
between colonial governors and their assemblies, which showed that the
restrictions upon their political freedom, as well as those upon their
economic freedom, were beginning to irk the colonists; and that
self-government was following its universal and inevitable course, and
demanding its own fulfilment. But the Whigs made no sort of attempt to
consider the question whether the self-government of the colonies could
be increased without impairing the unity of the empire. The single
device of their statesmanship was--not to read the dispatches. And, in
the meanwhile, no evil results followed, because the loyalty of the
colonists was ensured by the imminence of the French danger. The
mother-country was still responsible for the provision of defence,
though she was largely cheate