The Industrial Revolution

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1027928145

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-159926

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Cunningham, William http://d-nb.info/gnd/128907487

Title:: The Industrial Revolution

Place of publication:: Cambridge

Publisher:: The University Press

Year of publication:: 1922

Scope:: xxii S., S. 404-886

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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THE REVOLT OF THE COLONIES 585 such a cause, and they were careful to guard themselves AD, against being called on to bear a direct share in the cost. ’ Comparatively slight economic grievances sufficed to rouse the colonists to throw off their allegiance, not only be- cause the ties with English authority were being weakened, 22 but because they were learning to cherish positive political the J ot ambitions of their own. The plantations had grown up into gems vigorous communities with an active life, and they desired enough to stand alone. The northern colonies had been forced in self defence to rely to some extent on local industries, and they could see their way to a position of economic inde- pendence. It was because of the healthy activity, which they had developed under British tutelage, that they cherished aspirations after a freedom from control which should give them the opportunity of realising their own ideals. The Pilgrim Fathers had gone to the New World in the hope of carrying out their own views of what religious life ought to be'; by joining in the Declaration of Independence, their descendants in New England seized an opportunity of claiming the right to work out their own ideals of political life, apart from the conflicts and entanglements of the Old World. This was the positive aim in the minds of the leading men of the time, and any economic grievance sinks into in- significance by its side. In so far as economic causes affected them at all, it was chiefly because the extent and resources of their country rendered the colonists self-reliant. The men of Massachusetts had a consciousness of their own economic independence as a community, which gave them confidence in asserting a claim to follow their own political destiny for themselves. The New Englanders had little sense of obligation? to the Mother Country. In the early days the pioneers had cleared the ground, and fought against the Indians; bit by bit their descendants had pushed farther into the continent; they had taken an active part in the struggle with France, and had proved their capacity in * Religious ideas did not enter very largely into the struggle, though the fear that they would lose their uncontrolled position by the introduction of an episco- pate was a motive which influenced the ministers to take the side of independence, in a way that the educated classes generally were loth to do. 3 On the other hand the people of England were very much impressed by tLe sacrifices they had made for the plantations. to work out their own political destiny

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