Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II INSISTING UPON AUTONOMY WE have said that a radical change in the political temperament of the colonies occurred in the days of Cromwell. At that time they began to align themselves with the two great parties of the mother country. Down to 1763 they remained entirely loyal to the British connection. Puritans in Massachusetts denounced the Stuarts, and Cavaliers in Virginia washed down a bit of bread with wine and with the toast, God send this Crum-well down!“ Later they were Whig and Tory to their hearts’ content. But they were all the time Englishmen, ready to stand for England against all the world. In or about the year 1763, however, another and more ominous change occurred. The colonists then began to regard themselves as Americans. They were still Englishmen, by nativity or ancestry, and by affection. But they began to realize that in some important respects American interests were different and separate from those of England, and they insisted that that fact should be recognized by the English government. For some time American interests had been impaired and ignored, under a series of acts which seemed to be deliberately calculated to put and to keep the colonists in a state of inferiority and degradation. The felling of white pine and pitch pine trees outside of fenced enclosures was prohibited. It was forbidden for a colony to export, even to a neighboring colony, woolen goods or hats of domestic manufacture. A hatter was not permitted to have more than two apprentices at a time. The manufacture of steel, and of various kinds of ironware, was prohibited. The bills of credit which were issued by colonial governments were declared to be not legal tender. With these and similar acts the Americans were driven to seek a vindication of their right to autonomy. There …
