That spirit was the Imperial Spirit, which Plassey and Quebec had
called to life. The narrow Hanoverian King, who now ruled England,
could not himself have devised the British Empire, but when the Empire
crystallized, George III rightly surmised that, however it had come
about, it meant a large increase in power for him. The Colonies and
Dependencies were to be governed like conquered provinces. Evidently,
the Hindus of Bengal could hardly be treated in the same fashion as
were the Colonists of Massachusetts or Virginia. The Bengalese knew
that there was no bond of language or of race between them and their
conquerors, whereas American Colonists knew that they and the British
sprang from the same race and spoke the same language. One of the
first realizations that came to the British Imperialists was that the
ownership of the conquered people or state warranted the conquerors in
enriching themselves from the conquered. But while this might do very
well in India, and be accepted there as a matter of course, it would
be most ill-judged in the American Colonies, for the Colonists were
not a foreign nor a conquered people. They originally held grants of
land from the British Crown, but they had worked that land themselves
and settled the wilderness by their own efforts, and had a right to
whatever they might earn.

The Tory ideals, which took possession of the British Government when
Lord Bute succeeded to William Pitt in power, were soon applied to
England's relations to the American Colonies. The Seven Years' War
left England heavily in debt. She needed larger revenues, and being
now swayed by Imperialism, she easily found reasons for taxing the
Colonies. In 1765 she passed the Stamp Act which caused so much bad
feeling that in less than a year she decided to repeal it, but new
duties on paper, glass, tea, and other commodities were imposed
instead. In the North, Massachusetts took the lead in opposing what