friend, John Adams, sitting one day in his school house in
Connecticut, wrote this in his diary: "In another century all
Europe will not be able to subdue us. The only way to keep us
from setting up for ourselves is to disunite us."

We thus note natural conditions as tending to produce a rebellion
of the American colonies; also the inherited disposition of the
colonists under the discipline of their times; also the growth of
public opinion among the leading spirits--to which we must add
the character of the reigning king and of the ministers to whom
he entrusted his government as the general conditions antecedent
to the revolutionary movement of our fathers.

But there were more immediate and forceful causes which operated
to the same end. Among these should be mentioned as a prevailing
influence the right of arbitrary government claimed by Great
Britain and at length resisted by the colonists. The right of
arbitrarily controlling the American states was shown in a number
of specific acts which we must here discuss.

The first of these was the old Navigation Act of 1651. The
measure adopted by the government of Cromwell had never been
strenuously enforced. It was the peculiarity of all the early
legislation of Great Britain relative to the colonies that it was
either misdirected or permitted to lapse by disuse.

The colonies thus literally grew, with little home direction.
After the navigation act had been nominally in force for
eighty-two years it was revived and supplemented by another
measure known as the Importation Act.