Samuel Johnson, in England, should write that the proposed
taxation was no tyranny, that it had not been imposed earlier
because "we do not put a calf into the plough; we wait till he is
an ox," and that the Americans were "a race of convicts, and
ought to be thankful for anything which we allow them short of
hanging." Tyranny and treason are both ugly things. Washington
believed that he was fighting the one, Johnson that he was
fighting the other, and neither side would admit the charge
against itself.

Such are the passions aroused by civil strife. We need not now,
when they are, or ought to be, dead, spend any time in deploring
them. It suffices to explain them and the events to which they
led. There was one and really only one final issue. Were the
American colonies free to govern themselves as they liked or
might their government in the last analysis be regulated by Great
Britain? The truth is that the colonies had reached a condition
in which they regarded themselves as British states with their
own parliaments, exercising complete jurisdiction in their own
affairs. They intended to use their own judgment and they were as
restless under attempted control from England as England would
have been under control from America. We can indeed always
understand the point of view of Washington if we reverse the
position and imagine what an Englishman would have thought of a
claim by America to tax him.

An ancient and proud society is reluctant to change. After a long
and successful war England was prosperous. To her now came
riches from India and the ends of the earth. In society there was
such lavish expenditure that Horace Walpole declared an income of