leave the dispatches and the colonies alone. But this is a damning
apology. If the old colonial system, whose severity, on paper, the
Whigs had greatly increased, was no longer workable, it should
have been revised; but no Whig showed any sign of a sense that
change was necessary. Yet the prevalence of smuggling was not the
only proof of the need for change. There was during the period a
long succession of disputes between colonial governors and their
assemblies, which showed that the restrictions upon their
political freedom, as well as those upon their economic freedom,
were beginning to irk the colonists; and that self-government was
following its universal and inevitable course, and demanding its
own fulfilment. But the Whigs made no sort of attempt to consider
the question whether the self-government of the colonies could be
increased without impairing the unity of the empire. The single
device of their statesmanship was--not to read the dispatches.
And, in the meanwhile, no evil results followed, because the
loyalty of the colonists was ensured by the imminence of the
French danger. The mother-country was still responsible for the
provision of defence, though she was largely cheated of the
commercial advantages which were to have been its recompense.

After 1713 there was a comparatively long interval of peace
between Britain and France, but it was occupied by an acute
commercial rivalry, in which, on the whole, the French seemed to
be getting the upper hand. Their sugar islands in the West Indies
were more productive than the British; their traders were rapidly
increasing their hold over the central plain of North America, to
the alarm of the British colonists; their intrigues kept alive a
perpetual unrest in the recently conquered province of Acadia; and
away in India, under the spirited direction of Franois Dupleix,