George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 5, 13th edition.

[78]

Chapter 5:

Charles Townshend pledges the ministry of Bute to tax America by the British parliament, and Resigns.

---

February—April, 1763.

at the peace of 1763 the fame of England was ex-

chap. V.} 1763. Feb.

alted throughout Europe above that of all other nations. She had triumphed over those whom she called her hereditary enemies, and retained half a continent as the monument of her victories. Her American dominions stretched without dispute from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, from the Gulf of Mexico to Hudson's Bay; and in her older possessions that dominion was rooted as firmly in the affections of the colonists as in their institutions and laws. The ambition of British statesmen might well be inflamed with the desire of connecting the mother country and her transatlantic empire by indissoluble bonds of mutual interest and common liberties. But the Board of Trade had long been angry with provincial assemblies for claiming the right of free deliberation. For several years¹ it had looked forward to peace as the moment when the colonies were to feel the superiority of the parent land.² Now that