I’m not so sure about that. The army wasnt everywhere. The problem with the colonies was not that they didnt make a lot of money, or even that it cost very much to garrison and run them. The real problem was that their very existence tended to tangle Britain in wars.
Not disagreeing with that, but the point is, the colonies weren’t really the source of Britain’s wealth, we just sought of acquired them as a consequence of being one of the earliest industrial nations emerging from an era were countries lived in an expansionist dog-eat-dog world....