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498 the English colonics were somewhat more favored than those of other nations, yet the British system, like that of the other European powers, was based upon the principle of exclusion. Foreign ships were forbidden to trade with the colonies, and many of the most important commodities could be exported only to the mother country. British merchants likewise enjoyed the exclusive privilege of supplying the colonies with such goods as they needed from Europe. This system was rendered yet more insupportable to the American colonists by reason of the substantial liberty which they had

been accustomed to exercise in matters of local government. Under what Burke described as a policy of "wise and salutary neglect," they had to a great extent been permitted to follow in such matters their own bent. But this habit of independence, practised by men in whom vigor and enterprise had been developed by life in a new world, far from reconciling them to their lot, served but to accentuate the incompatibility of commercial slavery with political freedom. The time was sure to come when colonies could no longer be treated merely as markets and as prizes of war. The American revolt was the signal of its appearance.

But there was yet another cause. The American revolt was not inspired solely by opposition to the system of commercial monopoly. The system of colonial monopoly may in a sense be said to have been but the emanation of the system of monopoly in government. In 1770 Europe for the most part groaned under the sway of arbitrary governments. To this rule Great Britain formed a striking exception; but even in Great Britain the struggle had barely begun which was to transform that nation into the imperial democracy of the present day. Great mutations were, however, impending in the world's political and moral order. The principles of a new philosophy were at work. With the usual human tendency to ascribe prosperity and adversity alike to the acts of government, the conviction had come to prevail that all the ills from which society suffered were ultimately to be traced to the principle of the divine right of kings, on which existing governments so generally rested. Therefore, in place of the principle of the divine right of kings, there was proclaimed the principle of the natural rights of man; and in America this principle found a congenial and unpreoccupied soil and an opportunity to grow. The theories of philosophers became in America the practice of statesmen. The rights of man became the rights of individual men. Hence our forefathers in their Declaration of Independence at the outset declared "these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and that "to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

When the United States declared their independence, they acknowledged one of the necessary conditions of national life by at once endeavoring to enter into diplomatic relations with other powers. Indeed, even before that event measures were taken to insure the proper conduct of foreign correspondence. On November 29, 1775, the Continental Congress appointed a committee of five, which was known as the "committee of secret correspondence," for the purpose of communicating with the friends of the colonies