American affairs, however, played a part in the interests of great classes of the nation, and in the growth of the empire. “No taxation,” etc., was a party-cry rather than a real grievance; it was the monopolist trade rules demanded by British merchants that ultimately caused the war. To meet this monopoly the Americans adopted the successful policy of refusing to import British goods.
The “Appeal to France” shows the motives inciting our Continental enemies against us and also the weakness of America even at that date. In the writings of Franklin, Deane, and de Warville, can be seen the enthusiasm and debate which made the American example the real cradle of “Libérté, égalité, fraternité,” a relation not usually stressed in English history books.
The main effect of the century was the growth of a great capitalist class able to control the national affairs, drawing their wealth from the colonies, from new methods of agriculture, or of finance and industry, such as are seen in the references to Defoe’s Tour, Young’s Northern Tour, the Life of Coutts, and indications of the new inventions in industry, and the conditions they produced.
A DEFENCE OF DISSENT
(D. Defoe’s Works, 2nd edition, A New Test of the Church of England’s Loyalty, p. 406 et seq.)
Our first Reformation from Popery was in the days of King Edward VI ... ‘twas under him that the whole Nation and Government embraced the Protestant Reformed Religion ... and here it began to be called the Church of England.
Some enquiring Christians were for making farther steps, and carrying on the Reformation to a higher degree ... but the return of Popery under Queen Mary put a stop to the work in general.... Queen Elizabeth restored it again.... Those who insisted upon the further Reformation were then called Puritans, because they set up for a greater purity of worship; and they separated themselves from the Established Church....
Before this time there was no such thing as Church of England, it was then the Church of Rome[30] that was the established National Church. The Protestants under the title of Lollards, Wickliffians, Hussites, what did they do? Did they, as our modern people say everybody should conform to what the Government commanded? No, the present Church of England party were the Dissenters, the Schismatics and Fanatics, in the days of Henry VIII were persecuted for not coming to Church, many of them put to death and always treated with scorn and contempt.... In the next Ages these come to have the power in their hands and forgetting that they had found it “Righteous in the sight of God to obey God rather than man,” they treat those whose consciences oblige them to dissent from them, with the same contempt which themselves had received from the Roman [church] government.
Thus far they are upon even terms, as to obedience to their Superiors.
The Dissenters have the first occasion after this to show their submission under extraordinary pressures. Queen Elizabeth discountenanced them continually, and as good a queen as she was, put some of them to death. King James I hunted them quite out of the kingdom, made thousands of them fly into Holland and Germany, and at last to New England.... Under the reign of King Charles I, the case altered, the King and Parliament fell out about matters of civil rights and invasion of the liberties and properties of the people; the Puritans or Dissenters, call them what we please, fell in unanimously with the Parliament.