The War of American Independence was ‘by far the most dangerous in which the British nation was ever involved’.[163] It was seen at the time that its issues would colour all future history and modify for ever political and commercial systems, but no prophet seemed to contemplate a colonial future for Great Britain, and Benjamin Franklin said ‘he would furnish Mr. Gibbon with materials for writing the history of the Decline of the British Empire’.[164] Yet the present broad-based Imperial system of Great Britain was for two reasons the direct outcome of that war. While the United States were still colonial possessions of Great Britain, they overshadowed all others; and, had they remained British possessions, their preponderance would in all probability have steadily increased. It is quite possible that the centre of the Empire might have been shifted to the other side of the Atlantic; it is almost certain that the colonial expansion of Great Britain would have been mainly confined to North America. Nothing has been more marked and nothing sounder in our recent colonial history than the comparative uniformity of development in the British Empire. In those parts of the world which have been settled and not merely conquered by Europeans, and which are still British possessions, in British North America, Australasia, and South Africa, there has been on the whole parity of progress. No one of the three groups of colonies has in wealth and population wholly out-distanced the others. This fact has unquestionably made for strength and permanence in the British Empire, and it is equally beyond question that the spread of colonization within the Empire would have been wanting, had Great Britain retained her old North American colonies. Unequalled in history was the loss of such colonies, and yet by that loss, it may fairly be said, Great Britain has achieved a more stable and a more world-wide colonial dominion.