In a message dated 9/23/2001 6:57:02 PM Eastern Daylight Time, mbloy@dial.pipex.com writes: > The American colonies existed for the greater good > of the Mother Country - that was why we had colonies in the first place. I don't think the first emigrants leaving England to settle in America (and certainly not the later emigrants leaving other countries to settle in America) had any notion that they were on the way to a place that existed for the greater good of England. The colonies came into existence because people wanted to leave their homelands and come to America. If it later crept into the English consciousness that the colonies existed to serve them, that didn't make it so. Anne