Indeed, one is tempted to say that the colonists existed in the consciousness of Englishmen somewhat as blacks in America have existed, until very recently, in white consciousness; that is, as people who were there but who were basically unimportant and irrelevant to the serious (and profitable) concerns of life, and of whose particular world the dominant whites had little idea or concern.
It does follow that what the colonists saw as a perfectly natural concern for the rights and liberties was seen by the British as the noisy contention of a group of spoiled children who, instead of being grateful for being included in the comfortable, capacious household of an indulgent mother, refused to do the simplest chores and were unwilling to share common tasks or to contribute their bit for the upkeep of the premises. To some Englishmen the Americans were “skum or off scourings of all the nations,” a “hotch potch medley of foreign enthusiastic madman,” “a mongrel breed of Irish, Scotch and Germans leavened with convicts and outcasts.”
Page Smith in “A New Age Now Begins” (published in 1976) , p. 186
I had made the comparison in my mind several paragraphs back. History repeats itself.