ystem embodied in
the Navigation and Trade Acts in such high esteem, as a kind of
"English Palladium." No one could have wished less than Grenville to lay
sacrilegious hands on this Palladium, have less intended to throw sand
into the nicely adjusted bearings of the Empire's smoothly working
commercial system. If he managed nevertheless to do something of this
sort, it was doubtless by virtue of being such a "good man of business,"
by virtue of viewing the art of government too narrowly as a question of
revenue only. For the moment, preoccupied as they were with the quest of
revenue, the new measures seemed to Mr. Grenville and to the squires
and planters who voted them well adapted to raising a moderate sum,
part only of some 350,000 pounds, for the just and laudable purpose of
"defraying the necessary expences of defending, protecting, and securing
the British colonies and plantations in America."

The problem of colonial defense, so closely connected with the question
of revenue, was none of Grenville's making but was a legacy of the war
and of that Peace of Paris which had added an immense territory to the
Empire. When the diplomats of England and France at last discovered, in
some mysterious manner, that it had "pleased the Most High to diffuse
the spirit of union and concord among the Princes," the world was
informed that, as the price of "a Christian, universal; and perpetual
peace," France would cede to England what had remained to her of Nova
Scotia, Canada, and all the possessions of France on the left bank of
the Mississippi except the City of New Orleans and the island on which
it stands; that she would cede also the islands of Grenada and the
Grenadines, the islands of St. Vincent, Dominica, and Tobago, and the
River Senegal with all of its forts and factories; and that she would
for the future be content, so far as her activities in India were
concerned, with the five factories which she possessed there at the
beginning of the year 1749.

The average Briton, as well as honorable and right honorable members of
the House, had known that England possessed colonies and had understood
that colonies, as a matter of course, existed to supply him with sugar
and rice, indigo and tobacco, and in return to buy at a good price
whatever he might himself wish to sell. Beyond all this he had given
slight attention to the matter of colonies until the great Pitt had
somewhat stirred his slow imagination with talk of empir