Though a few statesmen like Walpole had had the sagacity to divine it, and all leaders in party counsels had instinctively feared it, very few public men in England understood the temper or the unchangeable resolution of the colonies in such matters. Pitt understood it, but now that the war was over he was no longer suffered to be master in affairs. Burke understood it, but few heeded what he said. Such men knew by instant sympathy that this seemingly unreasonable temper of the colonists in great affairs was nothing else than the common English spirit of liberty. The colonists were simply refusing, as all Englishmen would have refused, to be directly ruled in their own affairs, or directly taxed for any purpose whatever, by a government which they themselves had no part in conducting; and, whether reasonable or unreasonable, so long as they remained Englishmen it was useless to try to argue them out of that refusal. “An Englishman,” cried Burke, “is the unfittest person on earth to argue another Englishman into slavery”; and he knew that to an Englishman it would seem nothing less than slavery to be stripped of self-government in matters of the purse. Now that the French were driven out, it was more useless than ever to argue the point. The chief and most obvious reason for feeling dependent upon the mother country was gone. Awe of the British was gone, too. The provincial levies raised in the colonies had fought alongside the King’s troops in all the movements of the war, and had found themselves not a whit less undaunted under fire, not a whit less able to stand and fight, not a whit less needed in victory. Braddock had died loathing the redcoats and wishing to see none but the blue cloth of the Virginian volunteers. When the war began, a regular from over sea had seemed to the colonists an unapproachable master of arms; but the provincials knew when the war was over that the redcoats were no better than they were. They had nothing to remember with mortification except the insulting contempt some of the British officers had shown for them, and the inferior rank and consideration their own officers had been compelled to accept. [Illustration: GEORGE GRENVILLE]