Wealth of Nations. He took a leading part in advocating the measure which secured the freedom of the press by transferring the decision as to whether a publication was or was not libellous from the judge to the jury.

On the great question of religious toleration, also, Burke showed himself more liberal than most of his contemporaries, though less so than some. For the Roman Catholic Church-that mighty mother of the churches with her historical associations, her high and haughty claims, her imposing rites and ceremonies, her majestic unity -he had a warm and kindly feeling; for that spurious Protestantism which finds in hatred of the Pope an easy and convenient substitute for the love of God, he had nothing but contempt. He strenuously supported the repeal of the odious and oppressive statutes which put Roman Catholics at the mercy of the meanest informer; and even the outburst of religious fanaticism which culminated in the Gordon riots did not make him flinch in his policy. On the other hand, he opposed the petition of the Established clergy to be released from subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles, holding, with show of reason, that it was absurd for the state to lend the weight of its authority to an undefined system of church dogma. In his attitude towards

the Dissenters he was not quite consistent, for although he at first supported their claim to be exempted from subscribing the Articles, when the Unitarians came forward to claim toleration

he opposed their cause. He justified his opposition by alleging that the Unitarians were a political as well as a religious sect, that they were in sympathy with the French Revolution, and consequently enemies of the Constitution; and he drew a distinction between old and longestablished sects whose principles and conduct were known, and new bodies which might, for all one knew, be hotbeds of anarchy and revolution.

It is time now to turn to Burke's speeches and writings on the American question. The war which was brought to a close by the Peace of Paris (1763) is one of the most glorious in our annals. But military glory is commonly bought for a price, and Pitt's triumphs had left England burdened with an enormous addition to her National Debt. The American Colonies had been perhaps the chief gainers by the war; for the expulsion of the French from Canada and the Spanish from Florida had removed the gravest danger which menaced the future of the English colonists. By the conquest of Canada the greatest obstacle to the expansion of the English-speaking race in

America had been swept away. In these circumstances, it was not at all unnatural that English statesmen should have thought it only right that America should contribute something more than she had hitherto done towards the defence of the Empire to which they looked for protection, and which had just put forth such mighty efforts on their behalf. It is important that this should be emphatically stated, for historians have shown themselves too much disposed to adopt without adequate inquiry the sentiments and the language of 4th of July orators, and they have for the most part made little effort to enter into the feelings of the statesmen who were responsible for the measures which brought on the rupture.

Till the accession of Grenville to office in 1765 the colonists had been left pretty much to themselves; by a wise and salutary neglect, a generous nature, as Burke finely said, had been suffered to take her own way to perfection. It has been said, with almost as much truth as wit, that Grenville lost the Colonies because he read the American despatches, which none of his predecessors ever did. The Commercial Code, indeed, seems to modern ideas sufficiently severe and restrictive. The trade of America was made wholly subservient to that of the mother-country by a highly complex code of regulations and

F

restrictions. But the Wealth of Nations had not yet appeared; the Navigation Laws were still the object of an unthinking idolatry; and the commercial policy of England towards her Colonies, however ungenerous and unwise it now seems, was, as Adam Smith himself showed, incomparably more liberal than that pursued by any other European nation. The colonists as yet hardly felt the restrictions imposed on their trade as sensible grievances. The laws which amounted to a practical prohibition of all manufactures in America were little resented, for America had not yet reached the manufacturing stage. Her most valuable and characteristic products found a ready market in Britain, and the home-country bound itself to buy certain articles from the Colonies alone. The most oppressive duties were evaded by an immense and organised system of smuggling, carried on with the greatest boldness and openness, and almost with the tacit connivance of the home authorities. An extreme case is mentioned by Mr. Lecky. During the French War, a war in which the very existence of the Colonies was at stake, it was found that the Americans were supplying the French with stores and provisions, and to England's indignant remonstrance it was coolly and cynically rejoined that it was good policy to make as much as

possible out of the enemy! To a man of Grenville's temperament-at once that of an autocrat and of a precisian-all this could not but be profoundly abhorrent. To one who prided himself on his skill in finance, and who took so gloomy a view of the internal resources of England,1 it was a supreme object to reduce the National Debt. He would have echoed the description of England given by a poet of our own day, as

'Bearing on shoulders immense,
Atlantean, the load,

Well-nigh not to be borne,

Of the too vast orb of her fate.'

Under the influence of these ideas he set to work with a characteristic energy and a characteristic want of tact. He took vigorous measures to enforce the Navigation Laws and to repress smuggling. Had he been content to stop there, his proceedings would undoubtedly have caused some outcry and irritation in the Colonies, but no one would have thought of denying the perfect legality and competence of his measures. It had been recognised over and over again that England possessed the right of legislating for the regulation of the commerce of the whole empire.

1 See The Present State of the Nation and Burke's Observations thereon.