The men who ruled England in 1600 could not anticipate this distinction so as to make their phraseology, their thoughts and their efforts at {10} government correspond. Nor, as years passed, did they come to understand it. Often they knew little about these settlements, except that all were distant very many days sailing. In general, the tendency was to act as though all were possessions belonging to England and subject to its will. To the statesman in London it might seem at most a theoretical difference; not so to the man on the spot. If he were a colonist he felt his land a part of the Mother Country, or its equal in a larger group of which both were parts. His land did not and could not belong to England in any sense that gave him less liberty than Englanders enjoyed. Here, on the one side, was a stubborn fact; on the other, an inability to recognize that fact. Friction resulted. In 1707 England united with Scotland to form Great Britain. But Great Britain, like England, thought colonies possessions. It so regarded the American colonies. Friction increased. The colonists understood what it was to desire to be "part of" and to find they were considered as "belonging to." In Taunton, Massachusetts, they raised a liberty pole, October 21, 1774. From it flew the flag of Great Britain bearing the words "Liberty and Union." To the pole was affixed the following lines: CRESCIT AMOR PATRIAE LIBERTATIS QUE CUPIDO "Be it known to the present, And to all future generations, That the Sons of Liberty in Taunton Fired with a zeal for the preservation of {11} Their rights as men, and as American Englishmen, And prompted by a just resentment of The wrongs and injuries offered to the English colonies in general, and to This Province in particular, . . ."[11-1] Not enough of the Pan-Angle statesmen of those days had the insight to read rightly that inscription. It was only by severing the Pan-Angles that the American colonies demonstrated that their citizens were the peers of the citizens of Great Britain.