cal legists and pedants--their dilemmas, and
metaphysical distinctions, and catastrophes. In his opinion the bulk
of mankind was not excessively curious concerning any theories whilst
they were really happy. But perhaps his political optimism depended
most on his belief that institutions, as living things, were
indefinitely adaptable, and that the logic of life and progress
naturally overcame all opposing arguments. In his ideal state there
was room for many mansions, and he did not speak of disaster when
American colonists proposed to build according to designs not ratified
in Westminster.

I have dwelt on the views of Burke because here, as in Indian affairs,
he was the first of British {4} statesmen to recognize what was implied
in the empire, and because his views still stand. But his
contemporaries failed utterly, either to see the danger as he saw it,
or to meet it as he bade them meet it. Save Chatham, they had no
understanding of provincial opinion; in their political methods they
were corrupt individualists, and their general equipment in imperial
politics was contemptibly inadequate.

After the loss of the American colonies, the government in England
contrived for a time to evade the problems and responsibilities of
colonial empire. The colonies which remained to England were limited
in extent and population; and such difficulties as existed were faced,
not so much by the government in London, as beyond the seas by
statesmen with local knowledge, like Dorchester. At the same time, the
consequences of the French Revolution and the great wars drew to
themselves the attention of all active minds. Under these
circumstances imperial policy lost much of its prestige, and imperial
problems either vanished or were evaded. It was a period of "crown
colony" administration.[2] The connexion, as it was called, was
maintained through oligarchic {5} institutions, strictly controlled
from Westminster; local officials were selected from little groups of
semi-aristocrats, more English than the home government itself; and the
only policy which recommended itself to a nation, which still lacked
both information and imagination, was to try no rash constitutional
experiments, and to conciliate colonial opinion by economic favours and
low taxation.

Yet the old contradiction between British ascendancy and colonial
autonomy could not for long be ignored; and as in the early nineteenth
century a new colonial empire aros