It may well be asked, what was the natural and almost necessary consequence of such treatment? Keep a child in leading-strings, and it will be long ere it walks. Teach him to walk early, and he will soon decline your aid. Let a father send forth his son to take care of himself, and perchance the next he hears of him, he will learn that his fortune is made, and no longer will he wish for parental assistance; and fortunate will it be if the son, under a sense of former parental indifference and unkindness, does not, at length, feel a correspondent alienation from the parent. But whether these illustrations are apposite or not, certain it is, that the colonists at length learned the important fact, that they could take care of themselves. To this they had been driven. The next natural feeling to this superiority over the difficulties and trials which they encountered in their early settlement of the country, was a willingness, and even _wish_, to be independent of the parent by whom they had been so unkindly neglected. Great Britain might, therefore, thank herself for the spirit of independence which at length appeared among the colonies; her line of policy engendered and matured it. 4. Measures of oppression. "Within little more than a generation from the commencement of the plantations," says Mr. Walsh, "the royal government began those formal inquiries into their population and manufactures, which were so often renewed, until the period of our revolution." The object or occasion of these inquiries was twofold--a jealousy, lest the colonies should grow too fast; and, secondly, a desire to monopolize, for the benefit of Great Britain, all their trade, and the proceeds of their manufacturing industry. The various acts of monopoly which passed parliament during a series of years, it is not necessary to particularize. They uniformly bore heavily on the commercial and manufacturing enterprise of the colonies, and were designed "to keep them in a firmer dependence upon England"--"to render them more beneficial and advantageous"--"to employ and increase the English shipping"--"to make a vent for English manufactures." After the peace of 1763, a still more grinding policy was proposed--that of _taxing_ the colonies, with the avowed purpose of drawing a revenue into the royal exchequer, and on the plausible, yet unwarrantable ground, that Great Britain had contracted a debt in their defence. Hitherto, when money was wanted in the colonies, the parliament of England had been content to ask for it by a formal requisition upon the _colonial legislatures_, and they had supplied it with a willing hand. But now, it was thought that a shorter method of obtaining it might be resorted to with better effect.