Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919). New York. 1906.
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| hunting-ground whereon savages might gather furs for British traders; who forbade the building up of American manufactures, and strove to keep the seaboard towns as trading-posts for the sole benefit of British merchants. The existence of such statesmen, and the ever-recurring probability of their taking the control of affairs, rendered it impossible for Americans to retain their loyalty to the home government. It is hard at the present time to realize how totally the theories of colonization and of colonial possessions have changed; and it was our own Revolution, and the struggles which followed in its train that changed them. It is owing to the success of the United States that Australia and Canada of to-day are practically independent countries as regards their internal concerns and their external relations with other nations in time of peace. The fiercest reactionary in Britain would not now dream of asking Australians and Canadians to submit to regulations to which even the most truculent American patriot never thought of objecting before the Revolution. |
| For the colonists were so used to the yoke that though they grew restless under it, they only dumbly knew it galled them, and could not tell exactly where. They submitted quietly to some forms of oppression which really amounted to heavy indirect taxation in the interest of British merchants and manufacturers, and then revolted |