assumptions that: the colonies were dependents of England, since their interests were subordinate to those of England, the welfare of the latter was to be the concern of an agency charged with governing them. The colonists were to serve their mother country as a source of wealth. The English government had acted upon this premise throughout the colonial period, which consisted of confusion in the beginning, domestic troubles in the middle, and salutary neglect in the end. The colonists realized that three thousand miles of ocean lay in between England and the American colonies, thus leading naturally into an attitude of provincialism that was well suited for the conditions of their life in America, but was corrosive to the empire of England. This fact of geography and the remoteness of the colonies, squared the difference between imperial purpose and colonial aspiration. For example, the English were lax in the enforcing of the Navigation Acts and the colonials disobeyed them (Olsen, K). This was one instance of the extent to which three thousand miles of ocean could water down a policy of strict control. Soon the colonists were being overtaxed without adequate representation. The people were angered and now began to feel the forces of revolt that had silently growled for many years. The Revenue Act of 1764 made the constitutional issue of whether or not the King had the right to tax the thirteen colonies an issue, and this eventually "became an entering wedge in the great dispute that was finally to wrest the American colonies Economic Reasons for American Independence pg 4from England" (Olsen, K ). It was the phrase 'taxation without representation' that was to draw many to the cause of the American patriots against the mother country. The reaction against taxation was often violent and the most powerful and articulate groups in the population rose against the taxation . Resolutions denouncing taxation...
