Greetings Aha! My mail box just filled up again!! Definitely the sound of whirring whetstones :))) Donald said, <<I wonder how much of the British debt was attributable to "defending" America and how much to the rampant corruption in successive British governments.>> I don't recall that there was "rampant corruption" in British government in the 18th century - could you be more specific, please? The way Britain was governed was in accordance with the values and practices of the day. People (well, the few to whom it applied) owned their votes just as we own cars, houses and such. Therefore, it was normal for them to sell their votes to the highest bidder - everyone did it. Men were appointed to Cabinet office because of their political affiliation - nothing new there, either. The King had - and used - the absolute right under the Constitution to appoint the Prime Minister; arguably, he didn't always choose the most appropriate person so he replaced the PM at fairly regular intervals in an attempt to find someone with whom he could work. The British didn't like the French very much in the 18th century (and some would say that nothing much has changed since then :)) ) so they defended themselves against French encroachment during the Seven Years' War in America, Europe and India. The French attempt to take over British possessions wasn't to be tolerated, and that caused the debt to increase phenomenally. Most of the National Debt had been accrued over the course of the 18th century in an attempt to curtail French expansion into British-owned lands or incursions into "British interests". Looked at objectively, isn't that what any nation would do? Anne - perhaps a gormless question - but how do Americans define "self-governing"? From the viewpoint of the British government, all of them had self-government in that they had their own assemblies and passed their own laws for the day-to-day administration. The Governors were Crown appointees, but (I think I'm right here) many of them were born in the colonies. I'm thinking here of (for example) Thomas Hutchinson in Massachusetts and Wentworth in New Hampshire. They were caught between a rock and a hard place, of course - and suffered from both sides in the conflict. As Jim says, the colonial assemblies passed their own laws, which could be over-ridden by Westminster. Please don't forget that the British government had enough domestic problems to deal with at this time and probably didn't worry too much about what colonial assemblies were up to, except where their activities impinged directly on "British" interests. The same could be said about the parliament in Dublin - that passed its own laws but they had to be approved of by Westminster first. I'm going to have to get up into my loft, drag out my notes on the Causes of the American Revolution and do some serious studying again, I think... It's 20 years since I sat the exam on this period!! Marjie.