She had the supreme advantage of a single control. There was no
trouble at Quebec about getting a reluctant legislature to vote
money for war purposes. No semblance of an elected legislature
existed and the money for war came not from the Canadians, but
from the capacious, if now usually depleted, coffers of the
French court at Versailles. In the English colonies the
legislatures
preferred, of all political struggles, one about money with the
Governor, the representative of the King. At least one of the
English colonies, Pennsylvania, believing that evil is best
conquered by non-resistance, was resolutely against war for any
reason, good or bad. Other colonies often raised the more sordid
objection that they were too poor to help in war. The colonial
legislatures, indeed, with their eternal demand for the
privileges and rights which the British House of Commons had won
in the long centuries of its history, constitute the most
striking of all the contrasts with Canada. In them were always
the sparks of an independent temper. The English diarist, Evelyn,
wrote, in 1671, that New England was in "a peevish and touchy
humour." Colonists who go out to found a new state will always
demand rights like those which they have enjoyed at home. It was
unthinkable that men of Boston, who, themselves, or whose party
in England, had fought against a despotic king, had sent him to
the block and driven his son from the throne, would be content
with anything short of controlling the taxes which they paid,
making the laws which they obeyed, and carrying on their affairs
in their own way. When obliged to accept a governor from England,
they were resolved as far as possible to remain his paymaster. In
a majority of the colonies they insisted that the salary of the
Governor should be voted each year by their representatives, in