t at the close of the war, it was because statesmen
and economists were coming to estimate the value of colonies in terms
of what they could buy, and not merely, as of old, in terms of what they
could sell. From this point of view, the superiority of the continental
over the insular colonies was not to be doubted. Americans might well
find great satisfaction in this disposition of the mother country to
regard her continental colonies so highly and to think their trade of so
much moment to her; all of which, nevertheless, doubtless inclined them
sometimes to speculate on the delicate question whether, in case they
were so important to the mother country, they were not perhaps more
important to her than she was to them.

The consciousness of rapidly increasing material power, which was
greatly strengthened by the last French war, did nothing to dull the
sense of rights, but it was, on the contrary, a marked stimulus to
the mind in formulating a plausible, if theoretical, justification of
desired aims. Doubtless no American would say that being able to pay
taxes was a good reason for not paying them, or that obligations
might rightly be ignored as soon as one was in a position to do so
successfully; but that he should not "lose his native rights" any
American could more readily understand when he recalled that his
ancestors had without assistance from the mother country transformed a
wilderness into populous and thriving communities whose trade was now
becoming indispensable to Britain. Therefore, in the summer of 1764,
before the doctrine of colonial rights had been very clearly stated
or much refined, every American knew that the Sugar Act and also the
proposed Stamp Act were grievously burdensome, and that in some way or
other and for reasons which he might not be able to give with precision,
they involved an infringement of essential English liberties. Most men
in the colonies, at this early date, would doubtless have agreed with
the views expressed in a letter written to a friend in England by Thomas
Hutchinson of Boston, who was later so well hated by his compatriots for
not having changed his views with the progress of events.

"The colonists [said Hutchinson] claim a power of making laws, and
a privilege of exemption from taxes, unless voted by their own
representatives.... Nor are the privileges of the people less affected
by duties laid for the sake of the money arising from them than by an
internal tax. Not one