ary purposes.

With the Colonies so loyal and so willing to assist Great Britain in
time of trouble and danger, how was it that in a decade the Empire was
shattered and the major portion of the Colonies were busy building up
a nation of their own? At this distance of time it is still hard to
view the question dispassionately.

Who was responsible for this great criminal folly?

Was it some individual?

Was it the old Colonial policy?

Or, was it petty parish politics?

The trend of political thought in the Colonies has generally been the
antithesis of political thought in Great Britain. Colonial thought has
always been an enigma to the British. Of recent years it has been both
disturbing and confusing. The Colonial, who, with his own eyes, within
the span of a few years in his own country, views the transition of a
bit of landscape from barbarism to civilization, the hunter giving way
to the shepherd, the herder to the farmer, cities and towns springing
up over night with factories and banking established in a few months,
seldom arrives at the same political conclusion as the theorist who
tries to conjure up the genesis of political economy from books and
musty documents. His is the school of hard experience, which teaches
lessons that fine-spun theories cannot upset. It is so with his
Colonial theories of economics and government. The dead weight of
tradition does not hang around his neck where State affairs are
concerned and precedent only counts when it is right and just.

Governor Pownall, of New Jersey, immediately previous to the time of
the Revolutionary war, wrote a book, entitled: "The Administration of
the British Colonies." In this work he pointed out the necessity of
closer political union between the Colonies and the mother country; in
fact, he outlined an Imperial constitution. He pointed out that there
had always existed two lines of thought among English-speaking people.
One favored unity, centralization, Imperialism, the other disunion, or
individualism, claiming that in the absolute independence of each
small unit of the Empire rested liberty and freedom. This struggle is
still on.

[Illustration: CAPT. R. CLIFFORD DARLING, ADJUTANT]

Had Pitt followed up his idea of uniting the Colonies into a Dominion,
or into an even greater union such as he was pressed then to do, the
American Revolution would in all probability have been averted.

But Pitt's energies were turned to the war then bei