cter by immemorial usage, and had acquired a sort of
prescriptive right by that consent on the part of the British government
which was to be inferred from its apparent acquiescence in the
violation. For a hundred years preceding the Revolution the commerce of
the colonies may be said to have been in the main practically free, as
Great Britain was able to furnish the manufactures which the colony
needed. But now the mother country undertook to enforce the obsolete
navigation act and her revenue laws with a new vigor, which was not
confined to the American colonies, but embraced the whole British
empire. As applied to the colonies the measure was equally impolitic and
unjust: impolitic, because by breaking up the colonial trade with the
West Indies, England crippled her own customer; unjust, because this
trade had grown up by the tacit consent of the government, and a
dissolution of it would be ruinous to the commercial colonies. Besides
these new restraints upon commerce, parliament had long endeavored to
restrict colonial industry; and although these restrictions fell most
heavily on the Northern colonies, their injurious effects were felt by
all of them. As far back as the time of Bacon's rebellion, a patriotic
woman of the colony congratulated her friends that now "Virginia can
build ships, and, like New England, trade to any part of the world." And
the parenthesis of religious liberty and free trade enjoyed by Virginia
under Cromwell was never forgotten. But, inasmuch as these restrictions
fell more heavily on the North than on the South, so the co-operation of
the South was the more meritorious as being more disinterested. And the
oppressions of Great Britain must have been intolerable, when,
notwithstanding all the differences of opinion and of institutions, the
thirteen colonies became united in a compact phalanx of
resistance.[531:A]

The recent war had inspired the provincial troops with more confidence
in themselves, and had rendered the British regulars less formidable in
their eyes. Everything unknown is magnificent.

The success of the allied arms had put an end to the dependency of the
colonies upon the mother country for protection against the French. In
several of the provinces Germans, Dutch, Swedes, and Frenchmen were
found commingled with the Anglican population. Great Britain, by long
wars ably conducted during Pitt's administration, had acquired glory and
an extension of empire; but, in the mean ti