congregational body, and many of the best of the laity, forsook their separatist principles and returned to the historic church of the old home.[154] The wars with the French, in which colonists fought side by side with regulars, in a contest of national significance, tended upon the whole to intensify the sense of imperial unity; although there can be no doubt that the British officers generally, by their contemptuous speeches and by their insolent manner towards the colonials whom they affected to despise, prepared the way for the eventual rupture of sentiment between the colonies and England.[155] It is hardly an exaggeration to say that neither navigation laws nor the Stamp Act nor parliamentary interference had as much to do in alienating the affections of Americans from the mother country, as had the ill-mannered impertinence of the British officers and the royal officials. This insolence, when joined to Grenville’s bungling and exasperating attempt to extend imperial taxation to the colonies, had the result of uniting for a time nearly all Americans in opposition to the measures proposed by the advisers of the king, and enabled them to win a great constitutional victory over the attempt to impose stamp duties upon them. The division into two distinct parties, though as has been pointed out the groups had been gradually forming and drawing apart from one another, did not really come into definite existence until the further impolitic measures of successive ministries had strengthened the hands of those who were traditionally disposed to resist the authority of England.