When the war was over and Canada no longer the menace it had been, men without imagination, turning again to the schemes which had been laid aside in 1756, began to devise measures for a closer supervision of the "plantations," and for raising "a revenue in Your Majesty's dominions in America for defraying the expenses of defending, protecting, and securing the same." They were not aware that since the recall of the Massachusetts charter the colonies had become something more than plantations, or that there was arising on the continent of America a people whose interests were national rather than imperial, and whose ideals of well-being transcended the dead level of material ambitions.
For the settlement of the Southern and Middle colonies in this period, see Channing _History of the United States_, II, chaps. II, IV; Andrews, _Colonial Self-Government_, chaps. VI-VII, IX, XI. The best discussion of the reasons for a revival of interest in the colonies during the Restoration, and of the establishment and practical application of a system of colonial administration and control, is Beer's _The Old Colonial System_, Part I, 2 vols. See particularly, I, chaps, I-IV. For this subject, see also, Channing, II, chaps. I, VIII; Andrews, _Colonial Self-Government_, chaps. I-II; Andrews, _British Committees, Commissions, and Councils of Trade and Plantations_ (Johns Hopkins Studies, 1908); and Andrews, _The Colonial Period_, chap. V. For the relations between England and her colonies in the first half of the eighteenth century, see Dickerson, _American Colonial Government_ (Cleveland, 1912); Andrews, _The Colonial Period_, chaps. VI, VII; Greene, _Provincial America_, chaps. II-IV, XI; and Beer, _British Colonial Policy_, chap. I. The importance of the West Indies in determining the policy of Walpole is brought out by Temperley, _American Historical Association Reports_, 1911, vol. I, p. 231. For the rise of New France and the conflict of France and England in America, see Fiske, _New France and New England_, chaps, I-II, IV, VIII-X; Thwaites, _France in America_, chaps. I, IV, VI, VIII; Channing, II, chaps. V, XVIII-XIX. The most fascinating as well as the fullest treatment of this subject is contained in the works of Francis Parkman. His _Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV; Half Century of Conflict_, 2 vols., and _Montcalm and Wolfe_, 2 vols., make a fairly continuous history of the subject from 1672 to 1763.