# The Conservative (Lovecraft)/July 1917/The Genesis of the Revolutionary War

The Genesis of the Revolutionary War.
By Henry Clapham McGavack.
Editor's Note: When Arthur James Balfour, Foreign Secretary and former Prime Minister of the British Empire, placed a wreath in tribute upon the sepulchre of George Washington, he paved the way toward an Anglo-Saxon unity of aims, ideals, and sympathies which will forever redound to the credit of this age. By his act, Great Britain expresses her fundamental faith in the institutions and principles of her American kindred, and removes the subtle barriers which have darkened both branches of the English race since the revolt of the Colonies one hundred and forty-one years ago. It is fitting that an American, speaking from sound knowledge and without prejudice, should meet the Mother Country half way in this mutual recognition of ideals, and seek to remove some of the mistaken Anglophobic notions which false history and biased text-books have implanted in the American mind. We should behold our valiant ally and ancestral nation as she is, not as we have learned to view her through the green spectacles of transmitted feuds and hereditary hatreds. The author of the following article, a Virginian by birth and blood, has made a life-long study of diplomacy and Anglo-American history, and is unusually well qualified to deal with the problem of international relations. His frank historical statements, while perhaps startling to the lay reader, should be of immense value in doing away with the senseless idea that England is at heart an oppressor. Side by side, the Old England and the New must stand as of yore against alien tyranny. As joint inheritors of the blood which crushed the pride of Philip II and the Invincible Armade we, the Anglo-Saxons of the world, again face armed despotism fearless and united.
H.P.L.
The erroneous impression of the Revolutionary War prevailing in America today is due to two causes; ignorance of Colonial history, and an absolute lack of knowledge regarding the political and commercial policy of 18th century England.
The Revolution was not, as is fondly imagined in these parts, the spontaneous outburst of a collected and united people against the misgovernment and tyranny of a diabolic power across the Atlantic; it was not fought with glorious patriotism, self-denial and valour by any great number of the colonists; it was not brought to a successful conclusion by any army or group of armies on American soil. It was, on the other hand, the outgrowth of sordidness and greed and pigheadedness and general incompetence all around; the major share of which attributes must be apportioned to the colonies.
​The problem of colonial defence is the genesis of the Revolution. England chartered divers and sundry colonies from Massachusetts Bay to Virginia--and they were divers and sundry. Some were free commonwealths like Massachusetts, others fiefs of Lords Proprietors like Maryland, others Crown Colonies like Virginia. They had little in common except their allegiance to the King of Great Britain and Ireland. They were openly jealous of one another. They were always squabbling over boundaries and endeavouring to knife each other commercially. In case of war England was in duty bound to protect them; her navy was the bulwark behind which they traded and bartered, quarrelled and bickered among themselves. In return they carried on all foreign trade with her or through her alone. This was the price of protection, and they paid it gladly, unquestioningly; for the economics of the eighteenth century were neither advanced nor scientific. For local defence they maintained, or pretended to maintain, militia; supported by taxes levied by authority of their own legislative assemblies.
The French and Indian War was fought, in America, for their security. Yet, such was their love of money and gain that they smuggled provisions to the French troops in Canada and to the French ships in the West Indies, giving aid thus to the forces of the enemy when the English naval power had effectually barred to those forces help from France herself; so keeping alive a struggle which their own advantage demanded should be decided favourably at once. So far did greed take them, that the British army under Amherst lacked food because of their illegal and treasonable exportations to the enemy. Again, when called upon for their quota of men and supplies for the campaign, every colony held back: one fearing lest it do a little more a little sooner than the rest. The result was no men, no money, no transport, no defence save by the British Redcoat. Indians might burn and slay down to the very gates of Philadelphia itself, but the sacred principle that Pennsylvania could raise no more troops than New York might not be infringed upon.
In 1754 the British Government had called together the Albany Conference for the purpose of encouraging the Colonies to unite in matters of local defence. The conference came to naught because our revered ancestors could agree upon no plan of working together. So, in desperation, realising the terrible conditions along the frontiers due to Indian raids, the London Cabinet resolved to send British regulars to America for the purpose of checking inroads which the colonists seemed incapable of making any headway against.
The cost of this expedition, the English Government thought, could be very equitably and justly borne by the Americans themselves; for, in the first place, the people of the British Isles were undergoing exceedingly heavy taxation on account of previous wars, and in the second place, it did not appear that a prosperous community, such as America, would find an onerous burden in its own protection.
But the colonists thought very differently indeed - or rather, some of them did: upstarts and men on the make like Hancock and Adams, for instance. The result was the cry "No taxation without representation", and ultimately, the War of Independence.
​Now the English were logically and legally right. In the first place, the colonies had demonstrated both their unwillingness and their inability to protect themselves. In the second place, England had made all preparations to render this protection herself. It certainly was only just that the Americans pay the material cost. So much for logic.
The legal aspect of the case is even stronger. The colonies, under the demagogic influence of men like Adams, declared that taxation was not repulsive to them; what they demanded was that they be represented at the source of taxation. They forgot in the first instance, that they had been given an opportunity to form a union for defence at the Albany Conference and had neglected to avail themselves of it; and, in the second instance, they failed to recognise that the British Parliament, as inheritor of all the ancient prerogatives of the Crown, was through each and every charter granted, no matter in what form, to each and every colony the sovereign source of that colony's legal existence whose paramountcy had never been question nor denied. The fundamental basis of sovereignty is the power of taxation; hence to deny the right of the Parliament to levy taxes was to deny its sovereignty. Yet the colonies acknowledged the sovereign supremacy of the British Parliament, putting themselves therebb in an impossible position.
Moreover, the Parliament did not propose to levy internal taxes; customs duties formed the question at issue. Now, by all the precedents and all the charters and all the contemporary colonial policies, a mother country's control over the commerce of her satellites throughout the world was absolute and inviolable--and up till now the Americans had recognised the fact. Consequently, in attempting to levy duties at ports of ingress and egress on the Atlantic seaboard of the American Colonies, Great Britain was clearly within her rights; was only acting as any other colonial power of the time might have acted and did act; and was, moreover, levying these duties not for her own aggrandisement, but for the purpose of defending her colonies from their enemies.
Nevertheless the break came. It came because the colonies had possessed all of the benefits of separate existence without any of the responsibilities. The Empire had always protected them; they had never been called upon to defend the Empire except in a small, local way. When they wore finally asked to share in imperial defence they balked. The commercial system of the age, entailing as it did colonial dependence upon the mother country, had made them myopic and selfish. Immersed in the petty details of provincial existence, they became blind to the vast expanse of the imperial life.
This commercial system, coupled with the pigheadedness of the eighteenth century political attitude and the stubborn colonial sordidness of spirit, sundered the Anglo-Saxon race.