only natural,
the tendency was for the colonies to look on the advantages as no more
than their due, and on the restrictions as selfish and unjustifiable.

Though attempting thus to regulate the economic development of the
colonies, the mother country paid little attention to their political
growth. There was indeed in each colony a governor, sent out from
England, and a Council, which was supposed to help him in legislation
and in government; but more and more power passed, with but little
resistance from Great Britain, into the hands of an Assembly elected by
the people of the colony. As one Loyalist wrote of them, the Assembly
soon discovered 'that themselves were the substance, and the Governor
and Board of Council were shadows in their political frame.'

At the American Revolution the revolutionary leaders were, in the main,
men of the people, trained in political arts and eloquence in these
local assemblies; their complaints against the mother country were, in
part at least, against her restrictive colonial system. Hence, after
the winning of American independence, when the mother country
endeavoured to draw lessons from her defeat, it {33} appeared to her
statesmen that the colonies had been lost through too much political
democracy in them and too much economic control by her. Thus after the
Revolution we find a series of favours given to colonial trade. The
timber trade and the shipbuilding of Nova Scotia were aided by bounties
and preferential duties. Her commerce was still largely with Great
Britain, where she purchased manufactured articles, though even here
certain concessions were made; but so important were the favours
considered that not even Howe thought the control a grievance, and when
in 1846-49 Great Britain inaugurated free trade and put the colonies
upon their own feet, Nova Scotians, while not despairing as openly as
did the people of Montreal, yet thought it a very great blow indeed.

While conferring these favours, Great Britain exercised a growing
control over Nova Scotian political affairs. The Assembly, granted in
1758, was indeed retained, but a restraining hand was kept on it by the
Colonial Office in London, through the governor and the Council. An
attempt was made to combine representative and irresponsible
government. The House of Assembly might talk, and raise money, but it
did not control the expenditure, the {34} patronage, or the
administration, and it could neither make