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Misfortunes like the Boston Massacre, disorders like the burning of the "Gaspee," naturally increased the anti-colonial exasperation of the English King and of ministers like North and Hillsborough. North thought whatever the King wished him to think. Hillsborough still believed that the Americans were only to be listened to when they came with halters around their necks.
But we have been obliged to limit ourselves to the consideration of such facts as are most readily accessible, so as to enable the general reader to test at once the approximative fidelity of the vindication we present, and the falsehood, scarcely glozed over with a coating of plausibility, of the vague generalities strung together as a case against the colonies by Mr Cobden and the anti-colonial faction.
It seems to me that, quite apart from the Parliamentary difficulty to which I have referred, which I think would tend to organise and create anti-Colonial sentiment, you would, by the imposition of duties upon the necessaries of life and of industry, breed steadily year by year, and accumulate at the end of a decade a deep feeling of sullen hatred of the Colonies, and of Colonial affairs among those poorer people in this country to whom Mr.
But his perversity was of like temper with the perversity of the King, and Lord Hillsborough was admirably qualified to interpret the King's dislike of his American subjects and to make himself the mouthpiece of the anti-Colonial feeling which had been steadily growing up in the House of Commons since the days when the repeal of the Stamp Act had known its season of brief popularity.
Thus far everyone will approve of the sentiments of one party or the other according to his sympathy, but in what follows no unprejudiced person who will take the trouble to study the matter thoroughly can acquit the anti-colonial missionaries of something more faulty than mere error of judgment.
But the introduction of those seven or eight taxes into the Budget of every year will force a casting-up of balances every year from a severe financial point of view. It has been said, and will be generally admitted, that there is no such thing in this country as an anti-Colonial party. It does not exist.
In our navy, away from our own coast, sail must of necessity be the rule, and steam the reserve or special power; and without abandonment of our anti-colonial policy with the depots of our rivals upon every sea, yet not a ton of coal upon which we can rely we should not dare to send abroad a single ship which, whenever she gets up her anchor, must needs also get up her steam.
If that fund of goodwill to which I have referred had been lacking, if ever a Conference had been called together when there was an actual anti-colonial party in existence, when there was really a deep hatred in the minds of a large portion of the people of this country against the Colonies and against taxation which was imposed at the request or desire of the Colonies, then I think it is quite possible that a Conference such as this would not pass off in the smooth and friendly manner in which this has passed off.
We have now disposed of the preposterous exaggerations of the anti-colonial school, so far as that school can be said to be represented by Mr Alderman Cobden, under the head of colonial cost to the metropolitan state.
But I cannot conceive any process better calculated to manufacture an anti-Colonial party, than this process of subjecting to the scrutiny of the House of Commons year by year, through the agency of taxation, the profit and loss account, in its narrow, financial aspect, of the relations of Great Britain and her Dominions and dependencies.
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