[Sidenote: Incorrect view of the conflict between Great Britain and her colonies in North America.] [Sidenote: Great Britain failed for want of leaders.] Until recent years most Englishmen were taught to believe that the victory of the American colonists and the defeat of the mother country was a striking instance of the power of right over might, of liberty over oppression; that the severance of the American colonies was a net gain to them, and a net loss to England; that Englishmen did right to stand in a white sheet when reflecting on these times and events, as being citizens of a country which grievously sinned and was as grievously punished. All this was pure assumption. The war was one in which there were rights and wrongs on both sides, but, whereas America had in George Washington a leader of the noblest and most effective type, England was for the moment in want both of statesmen and of generals, and had her hands tied by foreign complications. We can recognize that Providence shaped the ends, without going beyond the limits of human common sense. Had Pitt been what he was in the years preceding the Peace of Paris, had Wolfe and the eldest of the brothers Howe not been cut off in early manhood, the war might have been averted, or its issue might have been other than it was. One of Wolfe’s best subordinates, Carleton, survived, and Carleton saved Canada; there was no human reason why men of the same stamp, had they been found, should not have kept for England her heritage. The main reason why she lost her North American colonies was not the badness of her cause, but rather want of the right men when the crisis came. [Sidenote: The result of the War of Independence was not wholly a loss to Great Britain nor wholly a gain to the United States.]