, on the whole, their equals. The
prevailing colonial political habits, as seen from England, suggested
only unwarrantable wrangling indicative of political incompetence and a
spirit of disobedience. Loyalty, to an {20} Englishman, meant
submission to the law. To men trained in such different schools, words
did not mean the same thing. The time had come when the two peoples
were scarcely able to understand each other.

A second cause for antagonism, scarcely less fundamental and destined
to cause equal irritation, is to be found in the conflict between the
economic life of the American communities and the beliefs of the mother
country concerning commercial and naval policy. Great Britain, in
1763, was predominantly a trading country. Its ships carried goods for
all the nations of Europe and brought imports to England from all
lands. Although the manufacturers were not yet in possession of the
new inventions which were to revolutionize the industries of the world,
they were active and prosperous in their domestic production of
hardware and textiles, and they furnished cargoes for the shipowners to
transport to all quarters. To these two great interests of the middle
classes, banking and finance were largely subsidiary. Agriculture, the
mainstay of the nobility and gentry, continued to hold first place in
the interests of the governing classes, but the importance of all
sources of wealth was fully recognized.

In the colonies, on the contrary, manufacture scarcely existed beyond
the domestic {21} production of articles for local use; and the
inhabitants relied on importations for nearly all finished commodities
and for all luxuries. Their products were chiefly things which Great
Britain could not itself raise, such as sugar in the West Indies;
tobacco from the islands and the southern mainland colonies; indigo and
rice from Carolina; furs, skins, masts, pine products; and, from New
England, above all, fish. The natural market for these articles was in
England or in other colonies; and in return British manufactures found
their natural market in the new communities. When the Economic
Revolution transformed industry, and factories, driven by steam, made
England the workshop of the world, the existing tendency for her to
supply America with manufactured products was intensified regardless of
the political separation of the two countries. Not until later
economic changes supervened was this normal relationship a