in doing so they were dangerously undermining judicial independence.
They refused in many cases to supply anything like adequate contingents
for the war against the French and their Indian allies, partly because
each legislature was afraid of being more generous than the others,
partly because they could trust to the home government to make good
their deficiencies. Yet at the same time they did nothing to check, but
rather encouraged, the wholesale smuggling by which the trade
regulations were reduced to a nullity, though these regulations were
not only accepted in principle by themselves, but afforded the only
compensation to the mother-country for the cost of colonial defence. It
is as unscientific to blame the colonists and their legislatures for
this kind of action, as it is to blame the British statesmen for their
proposals. It was the almost inevitable result of the conditions among
a free, prosperous, and extremely self-confident people; it was,
indeed, the proof that in this young people the greatest political
ideal of western civilisation, the ideal of self-government, had taken
firm root. The denial of responsibility was producing irresponsibility;
and even if the Stamp Act and the Tea Duties had never been proposed,
this state of things was bound to lead to increasing friction. Nor must
it be forgotten that this friction was accentuated by the contrast
between the democratic conditions of colonial life, and the
aristocratic organisation of English society.

It ought to have been obvious, long before Grenville initiated his new
policy in 1764, that the colonial system was not working well; and the
one circumstance which had prevented serious conflict was the danger
which threatened the colonists in the aggressive attitude of the French
to the north and west. Since the individual colonies refused to raise
adequate forces for their own defence, or to co-operate with one
another in a common scheme, they were dependent for their security upon
the mother-country. But as soon as the danger was removed, as it was in
1763, this reason for restraint vanished; and although the great
majority of the colonists were quite sincerely desirous of retaining
their membership of the British commonwealth, the conditions would
inevitably have produced a state of intensifying friction, unless the
whole colonial system had been drastically reconstructed.

Reconstruction was therefore inevitable in 1764. The Whig policy of
simply ig