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Frontispiece

The ‘Introduction to a Historical Geography of the British Colonies,’ which was written by my friend Mr. C. P. Lucas in 1887, being out of print, and the author being unable to prepare a new Edition, I have at his request and that of the Delegates of the Clarendon Press undertaken the work. In view of the great development of colonial questions, which has taken place in the interval between 1887 and the present time, and of the fact that several books have been published, giving a general and succinct account of the British colonies, it was thought advisable, not merely to edit and revise the former book, but somewhat to enlarge its scope, while incorporating the old matter, where it covered the same ground.

It has been sought to deal, however inadequately, with some of the ἀπορίαι, which confront the student of colonial history. General histories assume a knowledge of economic facts which is often absent. Some grasp of questions, such as the mercantile system and the labour problem in new countries, seems desirable before entering upon a detailed study of the political history. Again, a history of the British colonies, as they are, should find room in an Introduction for a brief consideration of that other colonial empire, which was English and is now an English-speaking World-Power. Lastly, some explanation of the manner in which the system of colonial government was developed in the course of three centuries may usefully precede a study of the historical facts. For any views which are expressed upon debatable questions I am solely responsible.

A short list of authorities is given at the end of each chapter: such list being, for present purposes, as short as possible. The most elaborate and exhaustive bibliography on colonies and colonization is, so far as I know, contained in a Report on ‘Colonial Administration 1800-1900,’ prepared in 1901 by Mr. O. P. Austen, Chief of Bureau of Statistics, Washington, for the Congress of the United States; but a very full list of books will be found in Mr. Ireland’s Tropical Colonization. In spite of the many volumes which have been written on colonial questions, the standard works of Seeley, Sir C. Dilke, and M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu will not easily be superseded. The Preface to the Introduction in 1887 referred to the invaluable articles in the Encyclopædia Britannica, on economic questions the articles in Mr. R. I. Palgrave’s Dictionary of Political Economy will be found no less valuable.

HUGH EDWARD EGERTON.

August, 1903.

Before entering upon a detailed study of the various British colonies, there are certain preliminary questions which confront us. What is a colony, according to the modern usage of the word? What are the various types of colony, and upon what circumstances, physical or other, does the particular type depend? What are the motives prompting colonization, from the point of view of nations and of individuals? What light does the experience of ancient nations throw on the question of colonization, and how far have modern European nations felt a common impulse? To answer these questions it is necessary to define the various kinds of colony, and to attempt to bring out the political and geographical considerations which are involved in the decision of the question what form the colony will ultimately take; to consider the historical circumstances of which colonial empires were the outcome; to endeavour to realize, in some measure, the economic creed which dictated the management of colonies; and to note the manner in which the problems connected with the labour supply and the land have been approached. Having dealt with these questions, however imperfectly, and having considered briefly the beginnings of that other colonial empire which was lost to Great Britain by the result of the American War of Independence, we may go on to inquire what, in the case of the British Empire, has been the course of evolution from the old to the new type of colonial government? To form an idea of a forest we must see it before we are entangled in the labyrinth of its trees, and so a general survey, though of necessity very incomplete, may well precede the complicated story of Great Britain’s colonial development.

First, then, what is a colony, according to the common usage of the word? The term, by the common consent of modern nations, includes every kind of distant possession, agreeing herein with the Interpretation Act of 1889, under which the term colony includes every British possession except the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, and India. It is true that India is not in common parlance considered a colony, but India is so vast, and its English inhabitants bear such a small proportion to the teeming masses of natives surrounding them, that the term colony might well seem unsuitable. Moreover, apart from the two hundred and thirty odd millions whom the British Government directly rules, it stands in the position of Protector to some sixty millions belonging to native states, so that when Queen Victoria assumed, in 1877, the title of Empress, the fitness of such title was generally recognized.

Again, the fact that India requires to be administered by a separate department serves to emphasize the distinction between it and the colonies which come under the jurisdiction of the Colonial Office, and the less important Protectorates which are dealt with by the Foreign Office. On the other hand, the Dutch East Indies have always been counted as a colony, as has been Ceylon, so that it is impossible to maintain that the distinction in name represents a distinction in kind. It is permissible to regret that the word colony has received so general a use. Had different names been reserved for the different kinds of colony, it would undoubtedly have led to clearness of thought. Meanwhile we must note that a colony may mean anything from a military stronghold or trade factory to States such as the Dominion of Canada and the Australian Commonwealth, which are in fact allied Powers, tied to the mother country by the link of common loyalty and common patriotism.

Colonies are, for economic purposes, divided into (1) Factories, (2) Plantations, primarily settlements of capital (colonies d’exploitation), (3) Colonies proper, primarily settlements of men (colonies de peuplement); but, whatever the definition, it would seem that the idea of political connexion is always connoted. It is true that Sir George Cornewall Lewis, in his Essay on the Government of Dependencies, defined a colony as ‘a body of persons belonging to one country and political community, who, having abandoned that country and community, form a new and separate society, independent or dependent, in some district, which is wholly or nearly uninhabited, or from which they expel the ancient inhabitants.’ But against this definition it may be urged that it neither squares with the facts of modern history nor conduces to clearness of thought. It would deny to every modern nation except Great Britain the possession of colonies. No modern colony was founded by men who intended to abandon their mother country. The New England settler would doubtless have been sorely puzzled had he been forced to explain the exact kind of double allegiance contemplated by him towards the land of his birth and the land of his adoption, but the history of the American colonies is clear to show how strong were the ties of sentiment which bound even the Puritan colonists to the country which, on the eve of the Revolution, they still termed ‘home.’ That Massachusetts, Virginia, and the rest were once British colonies is an important historical fact, charged with many political consequences, but to speak of the United States as a British colony is inaccurate both because the United States consists of states which have been carved out of the Spanish and French dominions, as well as of the original thirteen, and because a definition should surely recognize distinctions which are of vital importance. Moreover under the terms of this definition it would be open to doubt at what stage New Zealand became a colony; whilst the cases of Canada, consisting partly of French Quebec, and of Cape Colony, with its Dutch majority, could never be brought within the folds of the definition. A more general criticism may be advanced. In dealing with the history of the past, it is wellnigh impossible to escape the tyranny of modern ideas. We speak of colonies and colonization, and the great British self-governing colonies rise before our mind’s eye. But nothing can be more certain than that this form of colony was beyond the conception of most of those to whose labours modern Europe owes that it was set upon the colonizing track. Here and there a Coligny may have had an inkling of what the future had in store. Thus, on the eve of his downfall, Ralegh wrote of Virginia, ‘I shall yet live to see it an Inglishe nation’; but it was with no such conscious aim that the modern peoples began the work of entering upon their colonial heritage. It is to render more difficult the interpretation of history to refuse the term colony to anything lower than the complete fulfilment of the colonizing idea. From the historical standpoint, and for present purposes, the factory or plantation is perhaps of more importance than those Greek independent communities which Sir George Cornewall Lewis, it would seem, had in mind.

At the opposite pole from the view which, openly or tacitly, regarded the colonial stage as a halting-place on the road to inevitable separation, lies the view of Seeley, who almost seems to resent the recognition of any distinction between the political status of the different parts of the Empire, inhabited by self-governing British subjects. The Canadian or Australian is as much a citizen of the Greater Britain, to which England has expanded, as is the Yorkshireman or Devonian. At the same time we must recognize that even where there is community of race, distance and separate interests and surroundings do create a chasm which other influences may bridge but can never quite fill in. So that, use what language you may, the distinction between a mother country and its colonies will always be a real one.

Another definition of a colony quoted by Mr. Snow in his Administration of Dependencies may be mentioned. According to M. Girault, the work of colonization consists in the double culture of the soil and its inhabitants. So far from native races standing in the way of the foundation of colonies, their management, according to this view, is part of the raison d’être of colonization.

Colonies having been already divided into (1) Plantations, and (2) Colonies proper, it is unfortunate that the good old Elizabethan word ‘plantation’ should have in this connexion so completely fallen out of fashion. The distinction between a colony which is primarily a settlement of men, of cultivators (from colere, to cultivate), and a plantation, which is primarily a settlement of capital, is fundamental, and helps to explain the whole difficulty with regard to European colonial policy. The plantation system, capitalist production, dependent upon slave labour, was well known to the Romans. In fact the colonies of the Gracchi were an attempt to avert the social dangers resulting from that system. The Latifundia, ‘which destroyed Italy,’ were plantations in the strict usage of the term. In modern times it was the assumption that colonies must needs be plantations, and the determination to treat colonies as plantations, which was the governing idea of the mercantile system described below. An American economist, Mr. Beer^[1], believes Cromwell’s motive, in urging the emigration of the men of New England to the West Indies, to have been the desire to stifle the growth of a colony which might compete with the English traders. The staple products of the plantations such as the West India islands, on the other hand, were not such as England could grow. Still, even in the plantations there was a demand for colonists to superintend the native labour. Although the climate forbids that manual labour should be done by Europeans, the need for foremen and skilled mechanics and the varied demands of civilized life will always create a class of colonists, whose interests need not by any means be the same as those of the capitalists by whom they are employed.

The distinction between plantation and colony explains the difference of opinion between the sugar-planters of Queensland and the general public opinion of Australia on the subject of Kanaka labour. The workmen of Victoria and New South Wales are determined that the whole of Australia shall be a white man’s country, a colony in the strictest usage of the term; the Queensland sugar-planters, on the other hand, maintain that, in the tropical climate of Northern Australia, production can only be profitable if it is carried on by the methods identified with the plantation system. The argument on behalf of slavery, put forward by the South against the North, in the long struggle which culminated in the American Civil War, really was that the economic circumstances of the South necessitated the continuance of the plantation system, and that hence the holding of slaves was a necessity.

Were there a free choice, a nation, with an abundance of capital and a population tending to be stationary, would naturally desire to found plantations, where its capital might find profitable returns, without large drains upon its population. Upon the other hand a nation, with a population rapidly increasing, would naturally desire colonies, where its redundant population might find new openings under the old flag. Such colonies, mainly agricultural, need not entail any great or sudden transference of capital to the new country. In the world of fact, however, no nation has ever thus deliberately entered upon the work of colonization. In modern times, when alone men had come to realize the nature of the problem, the temperate portions of the globe which alone are suitable for European settlement were all occupied. In this respect the new colonizing powers stand at a considerable disadvantage. The modern world knows too much to risk the rash experiments which, in the infancy of colonization, and in the ignorance of scientific laws, were entered upon with a light heart. The bitterness with which some Germans regard the British Empire, finds an excuse in the necessity which has compelled German emigration to assist in the building-up of Anglo-Saxon power.

It was, however, with no such conscious aims that colonial empires came into being. Modern Europe, as we shall see in the following chapters, alighted upon colonies in the search for something else. Men sought to open out new trade routes, and thereby to develop commerce, and they found in the East that trade with uncivilized natives was too precarious to be profitable, unless it could depend upon bases possessed by the European power, which should protect the trader, while in the West, the new world opened out by Columbus proved a sufficient end in itself. Still, speaking generally, we may affirm that the main motive, which has actuated nations at every stage in the work of colonization, has been the desire to increase wealth by finding new markets for the export of home manufactures, for which purpose the growth of raw products in the dependent possessions has been encouraged. Although it is doubtless true that there never can be over-production, taking the world as a whole, still, taking articles individually, undoubtedly there can be a glut in the market, so that throughout modern history men have regarded colonies as useful allies in the fierce commercial rivalry with foreign nations. Although the mercantile system has been in England for many years a thing of the past, still the stress laid upon the necessity for developing trade within the Empire, the welcome given to proposals by our self-governing colonies to treat the goods of the mother country on a preferential basis in framing their tariffs, is conclusive evidence that even under Free Trade the raison d’être of the old colonial system is by no means a thing of the past.

From the first, however, other motives, besides the desire of gain, were at work. The hope of making converts to the Christian religion was always present. The sense of increased national importance, which must result from the possession of colonies, was also felt. Moreover, in the case of the Protestant nations, colonies were important moves in the war-game directed against Spain. How far among the motives prompting English colonization we may count the desire to find an outlet for surplus labour is doubtful. The motive is freely put forward by contemporary writers and preachers, and the distinguished French economist, M. P. Leroy-Beaulieu, in his great work La colonisation chez les peuples modernes, maintains that the early English American colonies did in fact form a natural outlet for such surplus labour. It is, however, very difficult to establish any such conclusion on the evidence which has come down to us. In fact, the need for colonization as a remedy for a congested labour market was not greatly felt until the nineteenth century, and it was emigration, the going forth of people to a foreign country, though of kindred race and common language, rather than colonization, the sending forth of people to a dependent possession, which mainly met the difficulty. Something was doubtless done in the way of systematic colonization, but the stream of assisted emigration to the British colonies was small compared with the steady flow of spontaneous emigration to the United States; while even of those whose destination was Canada, many found their way over the border into the United States. The enormous exodus which took place from Ireland from 1846 onwards was also, in the main, directed to the United States.

Whatever be the motive for colonization, it must at once be apparent that the particular forms of colony will largely depend upon geographical and political considerations. Where there is existing a strong native government, colonies cannot be founded until complete conquest has been effected. It was only because, in spite of appearances, the central governments both of Mexico and Peru were in reality very weak that Spanish America could so soon come into being. The continuous progress of the British dominion in India, in spite of the reluctance of the East India Company, was mainly due to the political atrophy which crept over the native governments. At the time of the first landings, trading factories were all that was possible, and even the genius of Albuquerque could not have set forward the clock of history. Again, climate in great measure of necessity dictates the form of colony. Where white men cannot make their permanent home and marry and bring up children, there cannot be a colony in the strict use of the term. A nation may explore and conquer in any climate, but it can only make its home in some climates. An Englishman’s constitution may be able to stand a voyage to the North Pole on the one hand or an expedition into the heart of the Soudan on the other, but Englishmen could not thrive and breed and bring up healthy children either far within the Arctic circle or in Equatorial Africa or India. Consequently the differences in kind in the various English dependencies vary in great measure with the differences in climate. Compare for instance the different parts of the British Empire, the West African settlements, India, and Australia. West Africa is a part of the world where, on account of climatic causes, it is almost impossible for an Englishman to take up his residence for any length of time without injury to his health. It has been found necessary to grant leave of absence to the civil officers in the service at more frequent intervals than in the case of other tropical or semi-tropical dependencies, and to send them constantly to Madeira or to England for change of air; and no white troops are employed, the military forces consisting of coloured soldiers under British officers. In short, experience has shown that the average Englishman not only cannot make his home in West Africa, but cannot live there at all for any prolonged time, and it has hitherto seemed certain that English colonization in this part of the world can never amount to much more than interrupted visits of Englishmen for purposes political, commercial, or philanthropic. At the same time it should be noted that, should the scientific experiments which are now being made lead to the stamping out of the mosquito, which is held to be the conductor of malaria, the whole situation may be radically altered. As compared with Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast, India has a climate fairly healthy for Europeans. Consequently it can be garrisoned to a great extent by British troops, and Englishmen can live in the country, engage in trade, and practise their profession for years at a time without materially suffering in health. But here again there is a limit. Hardly any Englishman can settle down in India for a lifetime. English children born in the hot climate of the East deteriorate morally and physically, unless they are sent to Europe at a certain age, and if a man goes out from England to India, he does so meaning to come home sooner or later. Consequently, while the English have been able to hold India for generations as a military dependency, and have not been compelled to content themselves with a few isolated positions or an indefinite protectorate, but have established a system of order and administration throughout the length and breadth of the great Peninsula, yet the greater part of India is not, and, so far as can be judged, never will be a home for Englishmen. Obvious as such considerations may well appear to the modern reader, it took unhappily centuries before their meaning was grasped by the European nations. Thus, an English observer notes, in 1612, how he saw fifteen hundred children and youths, from the age of ten upwards, being embarked at Lisbon for the Portuguese East Indies, and the only reflection which occurs to him is that it is a pity that England did not follow the Portuguese example in the case of her colonies.

The case of Australia is widely different. Here, except in the tropical northern districts, the English can find a permanent new home. In consequence, there has been a constant stream of emigration flowing from Great Britain to the Australian colonies; a new England is springing up at the Antipodes, differing in many ways widely from the mother country, but still an adaptation of the old stock to new environment. Unless, then, the climate be suitable, it will be impossible to develop an English self-governing colony. But even where the climate is suitable, great difficulties may stand in the way through the presence in the country of a large native population. Had the Maoris been as numerous as they were brave, the history of New Zealand must have run on very different lines. The presence of masses of natives in South Africa has rendered the character of Dutch and English colonization different from what it has been elsewhere, and has added enormously to the difficulties occasioned by the contact of two European nations on the same ground. The fusion of races has been undoubtedly retarded by the well-meant efforts of Englishmen to protect the natives.

It is the case of these ‘mixed’ colonies, where Europeans and natives have to exist side by side, which presents political problems of the greatest difficulty. The fort, which guarded the trade factory of early colonization, was merely the method of protecting commerce required by the surrounding barbarism. It corresponded to the consul of more civilized days. So far as colonies remained mere plantations, their difficulties were economic not political. The need for a constant and adequate supply of labour dominates the situation. The conquered territory, as such, is dealt with by the Foreign Office, but when there swarms into such country a large body of emigrants from the mother country, the settlement of right relations between the mother country, the colonists, and the subject population becomes a task of extreme difficulty. Algeria is an example of a colony where the climate is suitable for Frenchmen, but where the presence of a vigorous Arab population forbids development to run on the lines of British America or Australia. French statesmen and writers seem hardly to have arrived at a satisfactory solution of the problem. Certainly, according to the best authorities, the difficulty is by no means satisfactorily met by giving to the French colonists representation in the home Parliament. From the political standpoint it is perhaps well for England that the Indian climate has forbidden genuine British colonization. In this connexion it is noteworthy that some of the West Indies, at the present day, possess less self-government than they did in the time of Charles II. Democracy has rendered impossible the rôle of tiny oligarchies, and, where real popular government is impossible, some form of government in which the crown retains the ultimate control remains the only alternative. The subject is one of extreme difficulty, on which it is impossible to generalize. Few at the present day will be found to doubt but that, where the white population is numerous and active, it must be left, for the most part, to work out its own problems in contact with the native races. The presiding providence in Downing Street, in the shape of Lord Glenelg and his native policy, was not so successful in the past, and local knowledge is so obviously necessary, that it appears impossible to decide questions affecting the life of the colonies according to the views and opinions of Englishmen at home.

Remembering then, that, in the world of fact, the mixture of types robs the economic division of its simplicity, we may go on to inquire whether the success of British colonization has been due to special qualities of the race or to extraneous causes. English expansion was, of course, at its outset no isolated phenomenon. It was part and parcel of a general movement, in which England was, in fact, anticipated by Portugal, Spain, Holland, and France. As Englishmen we are naturally proud of the love of adventure, the cool head in time of trial, the governing faculty, which has enabled the Anglo-Saxon to go forth and multiply and replenish the earth. But we dare not affirm that other races are less naturally gifted. The inhabitant of Northern France is probably more akin to the Englishman by race than he is to the Provençal. In truth, present knowledge on the subject of race is, in some respects, of so doubtful and shifting a character, that it would be hazardous to base conclusions on its theories. In this connexion we may note that M. P. Leroy-Beaulieu ascribes the cause of French failure in the past in great measure to the excessive love of adventure of the French colonist, and his too great proneness to assimilate with native races. But there were doubtless many adventurers among the English settlers in Virginia, and high authorities have considered the very tendency called in question by Leroy-Beaulieu as a special source of strength. Frontenac joining in the Indian war-dance has been the text of many discourses on the superiority of the French in their dealings with native races. One great advantage over French, English colonization has only possessed during the last hundred years. The French law of the division of property among the children has had the double effect of restricting population, so as to reduce the surplus, which might find a natural outlet in emigration, and of equalizing social and material conditions, so that there is less motive to embark upon the unknown. The English custom of primogeniture, on the other hand, has been continually throwing upon the world a class of Englishmen, whose one chance of retaining for their children the advantages which they themselves enjoyed, is by an improvement in their material position more easily won elsewhere than in the crowded arena of English professional life. From the foundation of Virginia downward, the younger sons of the English landowning class, along with the children of the clergy and other professional men, have played a part the importance of which it is impossible to exaggerate in the evolution of the British Empire. But although this was always so, one special source of the strength of British colonization was in the beginnings of the Empire hardly apparent. The steady stream of emigration which flowed during the nineteenth century, although it went in great measure to the United States, was large enough to secure the ascendency of the British type in the British colonies. In the genesis of the American colonies, on the other hand, there was no such spontaneous emigration. Writers have indeed written of the seventeenth-century movement as if it had been the direct outcome of social distress at home. But if Dr. Cunningham be right, that through the wise policy of the Elizabethan statesmen, the economic situation in England had altogether changed for the better at the close of the reign from what it had been at the time of Latimer’s sermons, this alleged necessity seems to fall to the ground, while the difficulty of obtaining settlers for Virginia is attested by a variety of incontrovertible evidence. Indeed, but for the new element introduced with the Puritan colonies and Maryland, it is even now doubtful how far, in spite of the national character, English America would have struggled successfully through its period of beginnings. On the other hand, consider what might have been the future of French America, had the French kings and statesmen of the seventeenth century realized, as English kings and statesmen seem in a confused kind of way to have realized, the possibility of treating colonies as a safety-valve for religious discontent. Had the soldiers and coureurs de bois of Canada been stiffened by an admixture of the dour Huguenot stock, how different might have been the future of French Canada!

Another source of strength to British colonization during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was not present during the period of its beginnings. No one can have studied in any way the economic history of the colonies without having again and again called to his attention the great part which has been taken by Scottish energy and industry in the building of Greater Britain. But before the Union of 1707 Scottish capital and enterprise were, for the most part, debarred from entering the colonies, a state of things which led to the ill-omened Darien settlement of William Paterson. To judge by the experience of nearly two hundred years, English colonization without Scottish to support it was as a man fighting with one arm disabled.

Moreover, to create successful colonies, there must be, as it were, two parties to the transaction, the actual colonists and the mother country which sends them forth. To achieve success, as colonies, both sides must do their proper part. But, looking from this point of view, can we say that Great Britain succeeded where France failed? The British colonial empire of to-day is not the empire which was the outcome of seventeenth-century methods. So far as the colonists themselves were concerned, English colonization was a conspicuous success; but, from the point of view of the mother country, it was a failure, and the rock on which it foundered was the same rock which lost America to Spain, and caused the Canadians to acquiesce in separation from France, viz. the policy which sacrificed, as a matter of course, the interests of the colony to those of the mother country, and thus stifled the growth of that larger patriotism, without the development of which the dreary forecast of Turgot must always hold true, and colonies be like fruit which, when ripe, fall off from the parent branch. It is because, after considerable hesitation and heart-burnings, Great Britain finally discovered a more excellent way in the treatment of colonies that a wide gulf is fixed between the old history and the new.

To understand British colonization it is necessary to know something, not merely of the circumstances from which it sprung, but of the colonizing achieved by other nations in the ancient and modern worlds. In spite of the important part played by Greek influence in directing modern thought, in the field of colonization such influence was not felt. Greek colonization was a kind of blood-letting, necessitated by the social and political conditions of Greek civil life. Ostracism was one social remedy, the sending forth of a colony was another. In small town communities, where the existence of slavery gave every citizen ample means of leisure, amongst a quick-witted, excitable race, faction grew to such a pitch that the founding of a new colony might be the best means of averting civil war. Want of elbow-room, moral more than material, accounted mainly for Greek colonization. Started in this way, colonies were not likely to continue political allegiance to the mother city. The Greeks never attained to the conception of representative government. Hence colonies must either have been subject states, as became the Athenian allies, or else remain completely independent. The Greek name for a colony, ἀποικία, tells its own tale of abandonment. Nevertheless the ties which bound a colony to its mother city were strong, though not of a political character. The sending forth of a colony was a solemn religious proceeding. The colonists carried with them the sacred fire taken from the inmost shrine of the city gods, to be renewed from the same source should the need arise. Every year ambassadors were sent from the colony to do service to the ancient gods, and it would seem that the colonial priests were taken from the mother city. Should the colony itself found another colony, a leader was chosen from the old home. Thus, when Corcyra founded Epidamnus, the οἰκιστής or leader of the expedition belonged to the Corinthian Heracleidae. The apologetic character of the speech put by Thucydides into the mouth of the Corcyreans, when asking for the aid of Athens against Corinth, suggests the shock given to the Greek conscience by war between a mother city and its colony. Such political unity as independent Hellas ever attained was due to religion; and possibly leagues, founded on blood relationship, might have played a great part in solving problems, which unhappily proved insoluble. Be this as it may, the Greek ἀποικίαι were hardly colonies in our use of the word; and it is noteworthy that when the Greek historians deal with the Roman coloni, they translate the word by κληροῦχοι, the allottees of land in conquered or subject territory.

The subject of the Roman coloniae is too complicated to be dealt with in detail. It may be noted that Roman colonization was always the work of the state. The Roman colonies were allotments of land in conquered territory made by the government, with a view either to holding subject peoples in check, or to providing land for the poorer citizens of Rome. The earliest colonies, the coloniae civium Romanorum, were garrisons, provided with land at the expense of the conquered inhabitants. At a later date, the pressure of social need, caused by the ruin of the peasant proprietors, gave birth to a form of colonization intended to meet such pressure. For this purpose colonies were founded at a distance, the first over-sea colony, planted by Caius Gracchus, being on the site where Carthage had stood. The latest phase of Roman colonization, like the earliest, took the form of military settlements. Under the empire the provinces were studded with coloniae, composed of retired soldiers, who were paid by grants of land for doing garrison duty; and names such as Cologne and Lincoln still recall such kind of colony.

Important, however, as was the work achieved by Rome in the development of civilization, that work was carried on along other lines than those followed by modern colonization; and no more than to Greece can we look here for precedents. A closer analogy to the modern colony is supplied by the facts of Carthaginian history. A modern French author, M. Bonnassieux, has called attention to the small extent to which commerce was developed in the ancient world. Nevertheless, it remains true that the Phoenicians were the first to anticipate the modern organization of commerce. The Phoenician colonies were merely trade factories, and it was only under the pressure of circumstances that Carthage became an empire. It was the necessity of withstanding the Hellenic invasion of the Mediterranean which altered the political character of Carthage, and caused the Tyrian factory to convert itself into the capital of a great North African empire. That empire consisted partly of conquered provinces and partly of outlying colonies. So far as these colonies consisted of settlers in conquered districts, after the Roman model, they need not detain us. It is the over-sea colonies with which we are here concerned. These colonies were necessitated by the needs of Carthaginian trade. It is the connexion of maritime discovery with colonization which gives the peculiarly modern note to Carthaginian effort. Thus Hanno’s famous voyage round the Libyan coasts had two objects, the founding of new colonies and discovery. Settlements were made, reaching as far south as Cerne (probably near Santa Cruz). Hanno then continued his expedition as far south as the Senegal and the Gambia. The Carthaginians, in their commercial regulations, anticipated the colonial policy of modern Europe. The colonies were kept in strict dependence upon the mother city, and colonial harbours were, so far as possible, closed to foreign ships.

Venetian colonization furnishes a bridge between the ancient and modern worlds. ‘Being unable,’ we are told, ‘to undertake at one and the same time the actual conquest and settlement of so many scattered territories, Venice adopted a method borrowed from the feudal system of her Frankish allies, and granted investiture of the various islands as fiefs to those of her richer families who would undertake to render effective the Venetian title and to hold the territories of the Republic at a nominal tribute.’ The important island of Crete, however, Venice kept in her own hands, and Venetian citizens were induced to settle there by the grant of villages with their districts. ‘Minor offices were open to Cretans, absolute equality was granted to both Roman and orthodox rites. In fact, the republic displayed at once the governing idea of her colonial policy, namely to interfere as little as possible with local institutions; to develop the resources of the country; to encourage trade with the metropolis; and to retain only the very highest civil and military appointments in her own hands as a symbol and guarantee of her supremacy.’ Nevertheless, it is probably by a true instinct that modern thought has laid little stress on the Venetian precedent. Modern colonization sprang so directly from the search after the unknown, the maritime efforts of the age of discovery, that all that went before may seem to count but little compared with the prospect which men such as Columbus and Vasco da Gama opened out.

Before entering, however, upon the age of discovery and its results, it is well to note that, besides over-sea colonization, there have been going on in modern times two methods of colonization of a special and most interesting type. The great continental Powers, the United States and Russia, have peopled their hinterlands by a constant flow of colonists. If, as most political students would admit, that form of colonization be the most successful which most closely identifies the colonists with their mother country, no solution of the problem approaches the success of that afforded by the United States. Under the ordinance of Congress of 1787 new districts were dealt with in the following manner. So long as the population was very small and scattered, Congress reserved to itself the appointment of the governor, judges and military officers, while conferring on the governor and judges legislative power, subject to the veto of Congress. So soon as the population reached five thousand, it was to elect delegates who should form a House of Representatives, constituting, along with the governor and council appointed by Congress, the Territorial Assembly. When the population reached the total of 60,000, the Territory was to be admitted to the Confederation as one of the United States. As new lands were acquired, new Territories were organized on this model, which in time became States; and thus the ideal of the imperial federationist was from the first realized, and an enlargement of the national life has gone on pari passu with an enormous work of colonization. No doubt the conditions were very favourable. The juxtaposition to each of the eastern states of an extensive western back country, with suitable climate and products, rendered emigration natural and easy; whilst the doom which has fallen on the Red Indian caused the lands to be, for the most part, unoccupied. Nevertheless, the development of the original thirteen States into the present Union, extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean and from Mexico to Canada, remains one of the most marvellous achievements in human history.

Nor is it only the New World which has found for itself the secret of the natural extension of national boundaries. Russia, in many ways the most backward of European countries, seems to be accomplishing in a very successful fashion the task of giving unity to her vast empire. Under an autocratic government the colonization of Siberia has been promoted by means impossible elsewhere. Land grants were conferred upon nobles, who transferred their serfs, bag and baggage, so that new villages sprang up almost in a night. The departure of immigrants from their new quarters was forbidden by strict laws. The indigenous population has either submitted to Russian influence, or, for the most part, disappeared. In 1894 it was reckoned that out of a population, from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific, of about 5,100,000, 4,500,000 were Russians. The Caucasus districts have been russified in a still more systematic fashion. In some cases the inhabitants were removed en masse to Little Russia, and their places were taken by Russian immigrants, a method of procedure which recalls the doings of the Eastern empires of antiquity. In addition to Siberia and Trans-Caucasia, Turkestan possesses a Russian population which is rapidly increasing. Although, owing to the presence of Mohammedan tribes, Turkestan presents an obstacle to Russian ambition, even here the work of assimilation is proceeding, and will probably in time be crowned with success. The word ‘assimilation’ suggests one great source of Russian strength. Something is said below in connexion with the mestizos of the mysterious laws which govern the growth of mixed races. It would seem that races at a widely different stage of civilization cannot fuse with good results. It is a great advantage to Russia that Russians much more closely resemble in type the peoples which they encounter in Central Asia than the modern Englishman resembles the Hindu. Whereas the Eurasian cannot be accounted a vigorous stock, the Central Asiatic can put a new termination to his name and become a Russian hero. Nor does nature rebuke the artificial unity thus produced. The enlargement of the national life to include all Asiatic Russia will probably be one of the facts with which the twentieth century will have to count.

All important, however, as in their way are the examples of the United States and of Russia, the circumstances in either case are so special, and so unlike those out of which the British Empire has developed, that, having once noted them, we may return to the more familiar lines on which European colonization has run its course, and deal first with the circumstances in which it took its origin.

Books which may be consulted.

An Essay on the Government of Dependencies, by Sir G. Cornewall Lewis. 1891 edition. Ed. by C. P. Lucas.

Lectures on Colonization and Colonies, by Herman Merivale. Second ed. 1861.

De la colonisation chez les peuples modernes, par Paul Leroy-Beaulieu. 4 éd. 1891.

Colonial Government, by P. S. Reinsch. 1902.

On Algerian Experiences, Politique et organisation coloniales, par A. Billiard. 1899.

On Greek, Roman, and Carthaginian Colonization, Thucydides, Grote’s History of Greece, Mommsen’s History of Rome, and Heeren’s Historical researches into politics and trade of Carthaginians, &c.

On Venetian Colonization, H. F. Brown, Chapter on Venice in volume on The Renaissance in The Cambridge Modern History.

A sketch of Russian colonization is contained in Systèmes coloniaux et peuples colonisateurs, par M. Dubois. 1895.

The ordinance of 1787 is set out in Select Documents illustrative of the History of the United States, 1776-1861. Ed. by W. Macdonald. 1898.

Two main motives prompted the efforts after maritime discovery which culminated in the colonial empires of the Western European nations. Upon the one hand, the desire to win the unknown world to the true faith; upon the other hand, the desire to obtain the riches of the East. The naïve remark of Vasco da Gama, upon his first landing in India, ‘We come in search of Christians and spices,’ expresses with perfect simplicity the attitude of the whole movement. The Crusades had ended in failure. The East had recoiled upon the West, and Christian nations had known the shame of infidel servitude. But Portugal and Spain, as they became enfranchised, were burning to carry the war into the enemy’s camp.

Meanwhile, although the closing of the Levant was not completed until the conquest of Egypt by the Turks in 1519, the trade with the East was gradually becoming more precarious and difficult. The fall of Constantinople in 1453, and the loss of the Italian factories in Greece and Asia Minor, drew a screen between the East and the West, and caused the glory of the Mediterranean trade to be a thing of the past. But contact with Arabic civilization had created a demand for much which only the East could supply. In this state of things it was natural that far-sighted men should look to ocean traffic to restore that which the Mediterranean had lost. Nor was it strange that the nations who were the first to enter upon the new heritage were precisely those who had suffered most from Mohammedan ascendency, and whose geographical position, lying between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, pointed to oceanic enterprise.

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The interesting figure of Prince Henry of Portugal, known as the Navigator, has been generally held as the leading type of the new movement in its double aspect. Himself the Grand Master of the Order of Christ, and devoting its revenues to the service of discovery, he lived an ascetic and laborious life on the promontory of Sagres in Algarve, devoting his life, we are told, to study and to the sending out expeditions along the west coast of Africa. The mariner’s compass had not been long invented, and, although the expeditions began about 1415, it was not until 1434 that Cape Bojador was doubled. How far Prince Henry’s aims reached is doubtful. Mr. Payne maintains that his ambition was limited to the acquisition of a ‘Greater Portugal,’ by the colonization of the Azores and the Madeira group, and by the conquest of the fertile portion of North Africa which lay beyond the Sahara. According to this view, the main purpose of the numerous expeditions sent out by Prince Henry was to capture slaves, and by this means to secure the funds necessary for his imperial purposes. Mr. Payne admits, however, that religion played a large part in Prince Henry’s motives. ‘His project was in substance similar to that carried out by the Teutonic order in conquering and christianizing the heathen Prussians. . . . Dom Henrique’s scheme represents the final effort of the crusading spirit; and the naval campaigns against the Muslim in the Indian Seas, in which it culminated forty years after Dom Henrique’s deathbed, may be described as the last Crusade.’

According to the geographical beliefs of the day, the Senegal or Western Nile took its rise not far from the source of the Eastern Nile, which flowed through Christian Abyssinia. It was hoped that, by converting the natives of Guinea, communications might be established with Christian East Africa, and thus a new trade-route be opened to the Red Sea and the East.

In order that we may understand the point of view of the old discoverers, we must realize, so far as we can, their geographical acquirements. What especially strikes the modern reader is the eagerness with which men like Prince Henry followed up every clue to possible knowledge. Thus Prince Henry during his stay in Africa ‘gathered information from the Moors respecting the populous nations of the Interior and of the coast of Guinea, and as to the passage of large caravans from Tunis to Timbuktoo and to Cantor on the Gambia.’ It should be noted that, by means of these Arab caravans, far more was known of North Africa in the Middle Ages than was known in modern times until a quite recent date. The mosque and royal palace at Timbuktoo were the work of a Granada architect, and there appears to have been constant communication between the two countries. Cape Bojador was correctly marked on maps years before its actual discovery, and on a Venetian map, which preceded by nearly forty years the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope by Vasco da Gama, the southern extremity is correctly given under the name of ‘Cavo di diab.’ Moreover north-east of this cape occur the names of ‘Soffala’ and ‘Xengibar.’ In this connexion it may be noted that a later map, published in 1591, marks, on information gathered by the Portuguese, the equatorial lakes, the Victoria and Albert Nyanza, together with Lake Tanganyika, whose existence was unknown to more recent geographers until their discovery by modern explorers.

Prince Henry did not live to enter into the promised land of naval discovery. He died in 1460; but, whatever his direct aim, it was, in large measure, to his initiative that the subsequent successes were due. It was to him that the Portuguese owed that, unlike the Spaniards, they became a genuinely maritime people. The Venetian explorer, Cadamosto, bears testimony to the fact that the Portuguese caravels were the best sailing ships in the world. Even though Prince Henry did not directly realize the goal to which his labours were tending, still the combination in his character of the enthusiasm of the religious zealot, with the patience which could return again and again to the task, prepared the way for success in the future.

In 1471, for the first time within the knowledge of men, the equinoctial line was crossed from north to south. In 1485 Diego Cam sailed two hundred leagues south of the Congo, and, in the following year, the Cape of Storms, renamed the Cape of Good Hope, was at length rounded, though it was not till eleven years later that this bore fruit in the voyage of Vasco da Gama to India.

When full justice has been done to the material results of Portuguese discovery, Christopher Columbus will still remain the first and foremost figure connected with modern colonization. In order to understand his character, his Journal and Letters must be read. The sight of the Catholic banner raised on the Moorish Alhambra suggests a new crusade to convert the Grand Khan and the peoples of the East. The expulsion of the Jews from the Spanish peninsula and his own enterprise appear to Columbus part and parcel of the same policy. When in difficulties he is consoled by divine visitations and heavenly visions. Yet religion never for a moment interfered with the practical character of his undertakings. The discovery of America was no sudden enterprise. Columbus had served a long apprenticeship in the theory and practice of discovery among the Portuguese. He had used to good purpose the maps and papers of the Portuguese navigator Perestrello, and was in every way equipped for his great task. In one respect Columbus was at an apparent disadvantage compared with the Portuguese navigators. We have seen how accurate was the geographical knowledge supplied by the Arabs respecting Africa. In the same year that the Cape of Good Hope was doubled, independent inquiries in Abyssinia brought back the message that ‘the ships which sailed down the coast of Guinea might be sure of reaching the termination of the continent by persisting in a course to the south; and that when they should arrive in the Eastern Ocean their best direction must be to inquire for Sofala and the Island of the Moon’ (Madagascar). But no such light or leading attended western exploration. Here was the domain of theories based on a priori considerations or on false inferences drawn from Marco Polo. The great influence of Marco Polo upon subsequent thought is attested in a variety of ways. It is significant that amongst the treasures brought home from his European travels by Dom Pedro, Prince Henry’s brother, was a copy of Marco Polo. The letter of Toscanelli to Columbus, as explained by the map which, though lost, is probably reproduced by the accompanying reconstruction, represents the best knowledge of the time. ‘From the city of Lisbon,’ Toscanelli asserts, due west there are twenty-six spaces marked on the map, each of which has two hundred and fifty miles as far as the most noble and very great city of Quinsay (Hang-fau-Chu). . . . That city is in the province of Mangi (China south of the Hwang-ho), or near the province of Katay. . . . But from the island Antilia, known to you, to the most noble island of Cippangu (Japan), there are ten spaces. For that island is most fertile in gold, pearls, and precious stones, and they cover the temples and palaces with solid gold. Thus the spaces of sea to be crossed in the unknown parts are not great.’ Again he writes, ‘Thus when that voyage shall be made, it will be to powerful kingdoms and cities and most noble provinces very rich in all manner of things in great abundance and very necessary to us, such as all sorts of spices in great quantity, and jewels in the greatest abundance. It will also go to the said kings and princes, who are very desirous, more than ourselves, to have intercourse and speech with Christians of these our parts, because a great part of them are Christians, as well as to have speech and intercourse with men of ingenuity here, as well in religion as in all the other sciences, by reason of the great fame of the empires and governments of these parts that has reached them.’ Columbus believed, mainly on the authority of Esdras, that, of seven parts of the world, six are discovered, and only one is covered with water. But erroneous as were the views and fanciful as was Toscanelli’s map, with its imaginary Antilia and St. Brandon, it is doubtful how far, could the truth have been revealed, even Columbus’s courage would have ventured upon a course wherein the long drawn out passage to the East was blocked by an unknown continent. The coast of North America had been almost certainly visited by the Norsemen, but the discovery of this new world had left no mark upon the mind of the old. Without the double bait of the conversion of the Gran Kan, and the winning of the gold and spices of the East, it is improbable that any of the European Powers would have ventured upon the quest.

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RESTORATION of the TOSCANELLI MAP

Columbus sailed from Palos on August 3, 1492, and on October 5 reached Guanahani, one of the Bahamas, probably Watling Island. Cuba and Hispaniola were also discovered in this first voyage, Columbus supposing that at Cuba he had reached the eastern mainland. In a second voyage, 1493, he discovered Porto Rico and Jamaica. In the third voyage, 1498, he discovered Trinidad, and beheld for the first time the mainland of South America, deemed by him a small island. In his last voyage, 1502, Columbus attempted unsuccessfully to plant a colony near the mouth of the Veragua in Central America. This was his last voyage, and in 1506 he died, worn out by ill health and hard treatment.

The discovery of islands by Columbus, not far, as was supposed, from the Indies, raised an international question of great importance. By a series of Papal Bulls the territories to the south along the coast of Africa, and to the eastward ‘as far as the Indies,’ had been granted to Portugal. In this state of things the Bull of May 4, 1493, granted to Spain ‘all the islands and mainlands, discovered and which hereafter may be discovered, towards the west and south . . . whether the lands and islands, found or that shall be found, be situated towards India or towards any other part whatsoever . . . drawing however and fixing a line from the Arctic Pole . . . to the Antarctic Pole . . . which line must be distant from any one of the . . . Azores and Cape de Verde Islands a hundred leagues towards the west and south.’ The line fixed by the Pope was suggested by Columbus’s statement: ‘I remarked that from north to south in traversing these hundred leagues from the said islands, the needle of the compass, which hitherto had turned to the north-east, turned a full quarter of the wind to the north-west, and this took place from the time we reached that line.’ In the words of Humboldt, ‘the Pope actually rendered, without knowing it, an essential service to nautical astronomy and the physical science of terrestrial magnetism.’ The main object of the Bull was, in the words of its latest defender^[1], ‘to turn the enterprises of the two nations in opposite directions, by giving each a free scope East and West of the specified line. . . . The Pope drew a line on the Atlantic, and gave the two nations a fair start, as it were, back to back.’

How far the Bull bound other nations is not absolutely clear. Dr. Dawson states that in the secret archives of the Vatican there is an elaborate argument maintaining that the Pope’s decision did not apply to Canada or New France, on the ground that the grant was limited to islands and mainlands: ‘Per nuncios et capitaneos vestros inventae,’ i.e. discovered by Spanish ships. Under the Treaty of Tordesillas, 1494, the line of demarcation was fixed much further westwards. The new line was three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. This, however, did not prove a satisfactory solution of the difficulty. Disputes arose both in the west and in the east; in the one case as to the boundary between Brazil and Spanish South America; in the other case as to the ownership of the Moluccas. An attempt in 1524 to divide the world between the two Powers proved a failure, and it was not till long after, when the matter was no longer of practical importance, that it was proved that the Spice Islands and the Moluccas did fall within the Spanish dominions.

The discovery of America by Spain caused a renewal of the rival scheme to reach the East by the Cape of Good Hope. Vasco da Gama, starting from Lisbon in 1497, rounded the Cape, passing Natal on Christmas Day, and anchored off Calicut in May, 1498. He reached Lisbon in the autumn of 1499, bringing back, besides merchandise, valuable information concerning India and the Eastern Archipelago. The Portuguese threw themselves with avidity into the new field thus opened out. Their chief rivals were the Arabs, who had long monopolized the trade of the East. The capture of the Arab settlements on the coast of Africa, of Goa (1510), and finally of Malacca (1511), secured victory to the Portuguese, who proceeded to carry the war into the enemy’s camp by attacking Aden, but Albuquerque died before ‘the closing of the gates of the straits’ could be effected, and the Portuguese power after this time soon began to wane. It was not merely in the East that Portugal made good its claims. In the same year (1500) that the Spaniard, Pinzon, discovered Brazil, the Portuguese Cabral, driven westward in the voyage south, also touched at its shore, and the first beginnings were made of a new empire, which proved more lasting than the Portuguese dominion in the East. In 1500 also Corte Real sailed north, and sighted the mountains of Greenland, returning by Newfoundland. In a second expedition in the following year he sailed for seven hundred miles along the American coast, from Delaware or Chesapeake Bay to Nova Scotia or Cape Breton. But although Newfoundland was claimed to be within the Portuguese sphere of influence, such claims were never enforced.

Two other European Powers had not remained insensible to the new movement. English sailors had for many years been engaged in voyages of discovery before the grant to the Cabots of the patent of 1496. Nevertheless, the success which crowned the expedition of John Cabot, although it did not lead to immediate results, marked the beginnings of English colonization. In two voyages Cabot showed the way across the Atlantic in high latitudes, and discovered the coast of North America.

Unfortunately very little is known of either the man or the expeditions that prepared the way for English colonization. That John Cabot was a Genoese by birth and became by adoption a Venetian citizen, that he came to England about 1490 and received letters patent from Henry VII, granting him, together with his sons, the right to discover and occupy unknown lands, appear to be facts now generally recognized. The only contemporary authorities, however, are not in agreement in their accounts of the voyage, and it is impossible to decide with confidence whether the landfall, or terra prima vista, of the 1497 expedition, was in Newfoundland or in Cape Breton Island. The opinion that it was in Labrador finds few modern advocates. Further, whether Sebastian Cabot accompanied the expedition is a matter of uncertainty. Nor was it merely that little was known of John Cabot and his work. It would seem, unless his conversation was singularly misrepresented, that Sebastian Cabot in later years deliberately suppressed his father’s name, so as to obtain for himself the credit of the discoveries. For many years the name of Sebastian usurped in stock histories the place which a closer study of contemporary documents proved to belong to his father, John Cabot. Still less is known of John Cabot’s second voyage in 1498 than of the voyage of the preceding year. It is probable that he sailed down the coast of America from Labrador as far south as Cape Hatteras (in North Carolina). According to one tradition he entered Hudson’s Bay. It was at one time conjectured that John Cabot may have perished in this expedition, but proof of his being in England in 1499 has since been published. In any case, although Cabot planted the English ensign in the newly-discovered country, the time for effective colonization was not yet.

The war between France and Spain, which lasted from 1521 to 1556, led to the appearance of France upon the field of discovery. Francis I coveted the American riches, which gave to the Emperor Charles V the sinews of war. The voyage of the Florentine Verrazano in 1524, along the coast of North America from Florida to Newfoundland, served to found the claim by right of discovery to all this vast extent of coast, which was vaguely included in the limits of New France, as it was afterwards christened by Cartier. The expeditions of Cartier in 1534 and 1535 to the St. Lawrence laid the foundations of more permanent results.

In his first voyage Cartier discovered the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and in the second the St. Lawrence River, up which he sailed for three hundred leagues. In 1540 he returned to America, and gave the name Montreal to the country of Hochelaga. Although an attempt was made to follow up Cartier’s discoveries by the sending out of a colony under De la Roche, Sieur de Roberval, in 1542, the attempt proved abortive, and Roberval, who returned to Canada in 1549, accompanied by his brother and other emigrants, was never heard of again. More than fifty years were to elapse before New France became anything more than a name.

The discovery of the mouth of the St. Lawrence by Cartier was significant from another point of view. Hitherto, although the Norse, Norman, Breton and English seamen had done yeoman service as pioneers in naval adventures, the chief distinctions in discovery had been won by Italian and Portuguese navigators. Columbus was, as every one knows, a Genoese, as Cabot also appears to have been by origin, though he had obtained Venetian citizenship, and Verrazano was a Florentine. It was due to the efforts of Prince Henry the Navigator that the Portuguese could claim Vasco da Gama and Corte Real as of their own stock. Names such as those of the Englishmen Rut and Hore could not be placed by the side of the names of the Italian and Portuguese explorers. It is curious how much men of Italian race contributed to a movement the effect of which was to wrest from the Italian republics their commercial supremacy. But the northern nations only made use of foreigners while they were developing their own resources in the way of maritime efficiency, and the appearance of Cartier upon the scene was a proof held out to the world that the period of apprenticeship was over, and that henceforth the northern Powers would find their own people sufficient for the work of discovery which they might have in hand.

In 1520 an addition to the world’s knowledge, in its way commensurate with the discovery of the new world by Columbus, was made by the Portuguese Magellan, who, in the service of Spain, sailed through the Straits of Magellan into the Pacific. Magellan himself did not survive to accomplish the circumnavigation of the globe. He was murdered in one of the Philippines, but his companions returned home in 1522, after a voyage which had occupied nearly three years.

Space forbids to follow the successive steps by which, starting with a little island in the Bahamas, Spain acquired a great portion of North and South America. For some years after the discoveries of Columbus, Hispaniola remained the only regular settlement. The successful introduction of the sugar-cane showed that Spaniards were not incapable of forming plantations in the strict usage of the term. The scarcity of labour, however, soon altered the complexion of affairs. The Indians could not perform the hard tasks demanded of them, and under the new pressure perished in numbers. The expeditions which created the Spanish-American empire were largely due to the discontent of adventurers with the state of things prevailing. The first unsuccessful attempt to form a settlement on the mainland was made in 1509. Three years later Ponce de Leon discovered Florida. In 1513 Balboa first looked upon the Pacific Ocean. ‘Advancing,’ we are told, ‘up to the middle in the waves with his buckler and sword, he took possession of that ocean in the name of the King his master, and vowed to defend it with these arms against all his enemies.’ Cuba, conquered in 1511, formed the starting-point for new expeditions. The discovery of the mainland opposite Cuba by Grijalva in 1518, named by him New Spain, led to the conquest of Mexico, and it is noteworthy that at the same time in which Magellan was settling, on its main lines, modern cosmography, Cortes was laying the foundations of the Spanish continental empire. At first the story, familiar to our boyhood, of Cortes’s advance and his destruction of a mighty empire reads like a fairy tale, but if the advancement of Mexico rested for support ‘on a system of perpetual extortion from defenceless tributaries and a system of perpetual war, remorselessly maintained against neighbouring peoples, really to provide animal food for consumption by the privileged class engaged in it,’ the issue need no longer appear miraculous. The conquest of Peru by Pizarro (1532-3) opened out a yet greater source of riches to Spain, although the anarchy which for some years prevailed amongst the Spanish adventurers delayed for a time its full fruition.

Meanwhile, from the point of view of kings and statesmen, with empty exchequers and ambitious schemes, the new movement, with its attendant results, had completely justified itself. If the new world had interposed an almost insurmountable barrier between Europe and the spices of the East, in return it had itself proved an Eldorado, which dazzled the minds of men. It needed long and bitter experience to recognize that the moral of Bassanio’s choice, ‘choose not by the view,’ applies also in the affairs of nations, and that of natural products gold is in the long run by no means the most profitable.

Darbishire & Stanford, Ltd., Oxford
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The wisdom and daring of the Genoese Columbus, backed by the religious zeal of Queen Isabella, and followed by the reckless exploits of Spanish soldiers and adventurers, gave to Spain an empire to which it is hard to find a parallel. Stretching over 79 degrees of latitude, from 41°43 to 37°48, from the island of Chiloe off Chili in the south to San Francisco in the north, it comprised a great variety of climates and of natural products. At first the new empire was divided into two immense governments, New Spain and Peru; but the final division was into nine. Of these, five, viz. the viceroyalties of Peru and New Granada, and the subordinate governments of Guatemala, Porto Rico, and Caraccas, were in the tropics; and four, viz. the viceroyalties of Mexico and Buenos Ayres, and the subordinate government of Chili and Havana (including the Floridas), were in the subtropical or temperate zone. But this classification between tropical and temperate is here, for the most part, misleading, because the mountain-ranges and the high table-lands which abounded in the tropical districts affected the climate, and rendered possible the culture of the products of Europe in districts near to the equator. Taking Spanish America as a whole, and allowing for the unhealthy character of the marshy lowlands near the coast, it was eminently, in the popular jargon of to-day, a white man’s land, a country where Europeans could make a permanent home and bring up healthy children. Nor was the native difficulty of pressing importance. It is true that the Indians were more numerous, both in Spanish South America and in Mexico, than they were in the English colonies, but they were, for the most part, unwarlike and docile people, in physique and courage much inferior to the native whom elsewhere Europeans have successfully encountered.

Why, then, with these conspicuous advantages, was Spanish America a failure, so that, when Spain lost the last remnant of her American empire, it was recognized as the fulfilment of the writing on the wall, of the judgement which had gone forth from the first? In one respect Spain started at a disadvantage as a colonial power. Colonial expansion was part and parcel of the national movement which replaced the local particularism of the Middle Ages, but Spain, at the time of her conquests, had hardly attained to real unity. Down to 1479 Spain consisted of four independent kingdoms. The marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella did not fuse Aragon and Castile into a common country. In Aragon Ferdinand’s authority was not shared by Isabella, while she remained Queen of Castile in her own right. The discovery of America was due to Isabella’s enterprise alone, so that, during her lifetime, Spanish America was the appanage of Castile. The provision which confined communication with America to the single port of Seville at the extreme south of Spain, had its origin in Castilian jealousy. When unity was at last achieved, it was by means of a despotism no less jealous than were the rival interests which it displaced. Unhappily for Spain and her colonies, this note of jealousy and suspicion remained dominant throughout their history. So far was emigration from being encouraged that an elaborate system of ‘permits’ was set on foot to prevent the departure of all but the most desirable. No one, any member of whose family had during the last two generations been punished by the Inquisition, was allowed to emigrate to America, nor any one whose blood had any Moorish or Jewish taint. In all cases permission to land only applied to the particular province mentioned in the pass. In this state of things, it is not surprising that there do not seem to have been more than fifteen thousand Spaniards in the new world by the middle of the sixteenth century. Those who entered America came as conquerors, and it proved the failure of Spain as a colonizing power that the Spaniards remained as conquerors to the last.

In two ways the mother country was able to exercise a sinister influence upon the future of its colonies. In the first place it was able to stereotype the social and economic conditions of the old world in the new, and thus to prevent the natural action of material causes. Vast tracts of land were bestowed upon favoured individuals, who held under a feudal tenure which forbade alienation or division. Wide expanses of country were thus taken out of circulation, and handed on from generation to generation undeveloped and unimproved. In the second place, the religious superstitions of the Spaniards caused the dead hand to fall heavily upon the new possessions, and the payment of tithes, rigidly enforced, was a great hindrance to improvement. In a new country distinctions of fortune are generally levelled, and social equality promoted. In Spanish America, on the other hand, immense fortunes existed side by side with the most abject poverty, and an elaborate hierarchy of rank served to parody the distinctions of feudalism. The essence of feudalism had been the connexion of rank with duties, but the Spanish immigrants, however noble by birth, flocked into the towns and led useless and empty lives, their most serious occupation being the carrying on of lawsuits. Education was studiously discouraged, and trade or industry involved social degradation. A new world seemed to have been called into existence to emphasize the worst evils of the old.

Meanwhile, in yet more active ways, the home government was sowing the seed of the future whirlwind. The policy divide ut imperes fostered the most elaborate divisions between the various classes of the colonial community. These were (1) the chapetones, Spaniards who had come from Europe; (2) the Creoles, Spaniards born in America; (3) the mixed races, known as mestizos or mulattoes, according as they had Indian or negro blood; and (4) the negroes and Indians. The policy of the home government was to keep all power in the hands of the Spanish immigrants. Even the minor posts, which were open to Creoles, were generally filled up by Spaniards, who obtained them by bribery or intrigue. Hence of necessity the Creoles regarded their Spanish supplanters with the most deadly hatred. Years before the Revolution it had become common to say, ‘I am no Spaniard, I am an American.’ At the time of the Revolution there were about three hundred thousand chapetones in Spanish America, and in Mexico their proportion to Creoles was about one to fourteen, so that it is manifest what a hornet’s nest of future trouble was built by those who set up and maintained the Spanish colonial system.

Although the mixed races undoubtedly furnished useful and capable mechanics and workmen, the history of Spanish America does not contradict the view suggested by experience elsewhere that connexion between races in a very different stage of culture does not tend to satisfactory results. The idea of physical fusion between a dominant race and a subject population would seem to be, for the most part, in such cases a vain dream. It is true that nations like the English and the French have owed their own greatness to having been a mixture of various stocks, but it by no means follows that they are capable of assimilating with new stocks which are on a wholly different level of civilization. The Teutonic races, it would seem, are more exclusive than the Latin; and among the Latin the French are more exclusive than the Spanish or Portuguese^[2]. In one respect at least, Spanish practice compared favourably with that of other nations. In Spanish South America negro slavery never prevailed to the extent to which it prevailed in Portuguese Brazil, and in New Spain it was almost unknown. Moreover, the treatment of the native Indians was regulated by elaborate provisions intended for their interest. Adam Smith remarked, in words often quoted, that the condition of native races will in general be better under a despotism than under a free government, because a despotism cares less for the goodwill of those whose interests may be affected by the provisions of the law. After a short period of anarchy, during which the Indians perished like flies under disease and the cruelties of the invaders, the settled policy of the home government was to treat them as perpetual minors, shielding them so far as possible from all contact with Europeans, except their priests, and shutting them off in separate ‘locations,’ which were jealously closed to settlement. Such a policy, contrasted with the Anglo-Saxon methods of crowding out the natives, might well appeal to generous minds. Nevertheless its result was failure. Humboldt quotes a remarkable letter from a Spanish archbishop, written in 1799: ‘What attachment,’ he writes, ‘can the Indian feel for the government, despised as he is, kept down almost without property and wholly without hope of bettering his lot?’ But if, from the point of view of the philanthropist, the policy was a failure, it failed yet more signally from the point of view of colonial development. To it Spain owed that some of her most fertile possessions remained outside the sphere of colonial expansion. For example, the military garrisons stationed in California were forbidden, at the expiration of their service, to remain in the country. The possibilities of California as an outlet for European expansion had been recognized by Spanish observers. In commenting on this Humboldt, writing at the beginning of the nineteenth century, contrasts English methods in New Holland. What fuller measure of meaning would have been in his words, could he have seen the fruits of American California?

The Jesuit settlements in Paraguay should be noted as the best example of theocratic government which modern history can show. The Indians, belonging to the Guarani race, were collected in villages. Each village had its curate and assistant priests, and although these made use of native instruments, they in fact exercised a paternal despotism over the members of their flock. Private property was unknown, the produce being stored in public magazines under the superintendence of the Jesuits, who gave to each according to their wants and exchanged the surplus, after payment of the taxes due to the Spanish authorities and providing for the religious needs of the churches, for articles which could not be obtained on the spot. These Jesuit settlements began about 1610, and in 1732 there were about thirty of them with a population of over 140,000. The method of the Jesuits was to treat the Indians as children, and when their protection was removed by the suppression of the order in 1767 the Indians relapsed into barbarism. The system, effective as it had been for the time, made no attempt to create in the Indians habits of self-government or to make them in themselves civilized. It merely afforded a prop, and, with the removal of the prop, the whole fabric, reared by the magician’s wand of religion, fell to the ground. There were other Jesuit settlements in Brazil, California, and elsewhere, but it was in Paraguay that the system of theocratic government was tried in the most favourable circumstances and on the largest scale.

But if the political and social conditions of Spanish America remained a bar to healthy progress, there were economic causes also at work. ‘Auri rabida sitis,’ wrote an old Spanish historian, ‘a cultura Hispanos divertit,’ and there can be no question but that the vistas of possible wealth, opened out by the gold and silver mines of Mexico and Peru, did encourage contempt for the more sober, but in the long run as profitable, returns of agriculture. At the same time, Humboldt showed that mining often actually promoted agriculture, and by the end of the eighteenth century there was much cultivation going on in Spanish America, although, unhappily, the social prejudices of the Spaniards and Creoles left it for the most part to the half-castes and to the Indians. The conclusion of Humboldt is that it was mismanagement and incompetence rather than the existence of the mines, which retarded the development of what are now some of the most fertile districts on the face of the earth. How far climatic influences may have combined to promote moral deterioration and to slacken energy is a difficult question, which cannot be answered with confidence. A hundred years hence men will be better able to judge how far the doom of failure, which history has hitherto pronounced on Spanish America, was from the first inevitable.

Unfortunate as were the results of Spanish management, the Spanish rulers must yet be allowed the credit of having, at an early date, taken stock of their colonial heritage as a whole, and of having elaborated a complete scheme of colonial government. The Council of the Indies was established in 1511, with jurisdiction extending to every department, ecclesiastical, civil, military, and commercial. To this body was entrusted the making of all laws relating to the colonies, the appointment to all offices, the nomination for which was reserved to the Crown, and the holding of all inquiries. Subordinate to this was the Casa de la contratacion or Board of Trade, dealing with questions commercial and judicial, which arose out of the transactions between Spain and America. At first the viceroys were given extensive powers, but the jealousy of the home authorities led to such a system of checks and balances, by means of the Courts of Audience, established on the model of the Court of Chancery in Spain, and in other ways, that the viceroy at the last seems to have possessed nothing but the pomp and panoply of power. That power was so diffused that it was difficult to say where it really lay. ‘We have viceroys,’ said an old writer, ‘presidents, governors, oydors, corregidors, alcaldes; and thousands of alguazils abound everywhere, but notwithstanding all these public abuses continue to multiply.’

It was not so much economic theory as distrust and jealousy which caused the refusal of Spain to allow any intercourse between her colonies and foreign nations. No foreigner might enter a Spanish colony without express permission, and the penalty of death was enacted against the colonist who should trade with any foreign ship. Even the intercourse of colony with colony was either absolutely prohibited or limited by severe restrictions. For a brief period, it would seem, in the sixteenth century the manufacturers of Spain could supply the demands of the colonies; but the short-sighted policy which put an end to the employment in Spain of foreign capital and foreign labour, necessitated that Spanish America should either starve or be supplied by foreign goods, though in the name of Spanish shippers. The complicated arrangements, under which goods were dispatched from the single port of Seville^[3] to America, added greatly to their cost. All goods shipped to South America proceeded under convoy once a-year to Carthagena and Portobello. Those destined for New Spain proceeded in similar fashion to Vera Cruz. By this means the Spanish export trade fell into the hands of a few monopolists, and prices were artificially raised in the absence of healthy competition. It should be further noted that Spain, unlike France and England, derived a direct revenue from its colonies.

Something has been already said of the Portuguese dominion in the East. The Portuguese were more traders than the Spaniards, and the fact of Portugal being for a time annexed by Spain gave the death-blow to that dominion, inasmuch as it stirred up the implacable enmity of the Dutch. More permanent results of the age of discovery were the African possessions and Brazil. The East African colonies were indeed for the most part neglected, but a sinister value was given to those on the west coast by the fact that they were the principal head quarters of the slave trade to the West Indies. The successful prosecution of this trade involved the spread of desolation and waste over the lands from which the slaves came, so that, when the slave trade was abolished, it was difficult for these districts to accustom themselves to the altered state of things.

The one example of genuine colonization which Portugal afforded was Brazil. The effective colonization of Brazil dates from about 1530, when the country was divided into several hereditary captaincies, distinct from each other. This system, however, did not succeed; and in 1549 a single captain-general was appointed for the whole country. Rio de Janeiro, discovered in 1531, was seat of the ill-fated French colony of Villegagnon, mentioned in a later chapter. The future capital of Brazil was built upon the ruins of the French colony. A more formidable foe than the French now appeared upon the scene. One of the first-fruits of the Dutch West India Company was the capture of San Salvador, the capital of Brazil, in 1624. By the end of 1635 the Dutch had reduced the whole of Brazil to the north of the Rio Francisco, the captaincies of Para and Maranhão being alone excepted. In 1636, however, an attack upon Bahia was repulsed with heavy losses. An attack by the Portuguese upon Pernambuco was equally disastrous. A wearisome guerilla warfare was apparently closed by a treaty of amity between Portugal and Holland, Portugal having become the enemy of Spain. Under this the Dutch retained their conquests. The Portuguese in Brazil, however, were indignant with this settlement, and the reduction of the Dutch garrisons gave opportunity to an insurrection, which finally put an end to the Dutch dominion, their last possession, Recipe, surrendering in January, 1654. Henceforth the authority of Portugal in Brazil was to be disputed by no other European power.

M. P. Leroy-Beaulieu has remarked that Brazil was founded rather after the English than after the Spanish method, and hence prospered more than did the Spanish colonies; ‘organization followed, instead of preceding the development of colonization.’ Brazil was for a time used as a convict colony, whither were transported Jews and criminals. The combination of the patient industry of the Jew with the reckless daring and spirit of adventure of the sixteenth-century convict, produced a state of things conducive to progress. The Jews introduced the culture of the sugar-cane, which ensured the prosperity of the colony. Many of the convicts married native wives, and migrating south, so as to remain for a hundred years outside the jurisdiction of the Portuguese authorities, founded the fierce race of hardy half-castes, termed Paulistas, who for so long gave trouble to the Portuguese authorities.

Meanwhile, the absence of restrictive regulations and the abundance of fertile lands open to occupation was causing a genuine emigration of the best kind of settlers from the mother country. The energy with which the Brazilian colonists threw themselves into the work of expelling the Dutch was a healthy sign of national life. Moreover, Brazil was favoured in this respect, that its mines were not opened out till its agricultural products had been for years a source of wealth. The gold, which began to be worked in 1700, and the diamonds, which were discovered some thirty years later, did not hinder but rather assisted the prosperity of the growers of sugar and coffee. On the labour question there was undoubtedly a dark side to this shield. The weakness of the government rendered the position of the Indian more miserable than it was under Spanish rule. The home government endeavoured, but with very little success, to prevent the enslavement of the Indians. The policy of isolating them in Jesuit missions was carried out, but did not always succeed against the greed of the colonists; and it is noteworthy that when at last the Portuguese minister, Pombal, was strong enough to enforce the decree enfranchising the Indians, the measure was at once followed by a rapid development of the slave trade with West Africa. By this means Brazil, unlike Spanish America, received a large negro population. In fact, the needs of capitalist production, the nearness of the African coast and the Portuguese possession of either coast, rendered this evil inevitable when once the cheaper Indian labour was no longer available.

The end of the Portuguese rule contrasted very strikingly with the end of the Spanish. Although Brazil claimed its independence in 1822, for many years the presence of a scion of the house of Braganza on its throne testified to the close connexion with the mother country. Brazil, like other tropical countries, has, in spite of its vast natural resources, doubtless troubles and difficulties before it; but at least the mother country may congratulate itself that such will not be mainly the damnosa haereditas of Portuguese rule.

The Books on the Subject of the preceding Chapter are very numerous; among them may be mentioned—

The Discoveries of Prince Henry the Navigator and their results, by R. H. Major, 1887 (with which should be read the chapter on ‘The Age of Discovery,’ by E. J. Payne, in the vol. on The Renaissance in The Cambridge Modern History).

Among the Hakluyt Society’s publications: Columbus’s Journal during first voyage, and documents relating to J. Cabot and G. Corte Real, 1893. Select letters of Columbus, 2nd ed., 1870. Journal of first voyage of Vasco da Gama, 1898. Magellan’s First voyage round the world, 1874. Hakluyt’s Divers Voyages, 1850 (contains Verrazano’s relation).

John and Sebastian Cabot, by C. R. Beazley, 1898.

For Cartier see Pinkerton’s Collection of Voyages, vol. xii.

Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico and Conquest of Peru, ed. by J. F. Kirk, Bohn ed., 1901 and 1902.

History of the New World called America, by E. J. Payne. Vol. i, 1892.

Robertson’s History of America. 3 vols., 7th ed., 1796.

A. v. Humboldt’s Essai politique sur le royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne, 5 t., 1811.

Chapters on ‘The New World’ by E. J. Payne, and ‘Economic change’ by Dr. Cunningham, in the vol. on The Renaissance in The Cambridge Modern History.

Winsor’s Narrative and Critical History of America, vols. ii, iii, and iv.

Southey’s History of Brazil. 3 pts., 1810-19.

For the Portuguese in the East consult Sir G. Birdwood’s Report on the old records of the India Office. 2nd Reprint, 1891.

The main lines of colonial expansion through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are not difficult to grasp. Although Spanish power is steadily on the wane, it remains too strong for Spain’s continental empire to be wrested from her hands. All the same, she is unable to prevent the entrance upon American soil of the new colonial western nations. At the beginning of the seventeenth century France and England both lay the foundations of their American dominions, and, from the outset, these colonies become the subject of dispute. Port Royal in Acadia, founded in 1604, is razed by the English Argall, and Quebec, founded in 1608, surrenders to Kirke in 1629. Diplomacy, however, restores what arms have won, and, although Acadia, again conquered by Sedgwick in 1654, remains English during Cromwell’s lifetime, its restoration by the Treaty of Breda (1667) does not shock the national conscience. It is dimly recognized that what is taking place is in the nature of a rehearsal: the time for the struggle for North America is not yet.

When the seventeenth century opens, Holland is the protagonist in the world-drama of colonial expansion. She first realizes the true meaning of colonies, the development of the home trade. Holland snatches from Portugal the control of the Eastern Archipelago, and threatens, through the efficiency of her mercantile marine, to absorb the whole carrying trade of the world. Next England takes up the challenge. By means of war she enforces her share of the Eastern trade, while by legislation she erects, through the Navigation Laws, an artificial bulwark against Dutch competition. The little republic has not the staying powers of England, and when later she is caught up in the toils of continental politics, her fate as a world-power is sealed, although in fact Holland has up to the present day retained an important colonial empire.

Not content with making good the claims of England against her Protestant rivals and kinsmen, Cromwell conceives the more congenial idea of pulling down the stronghold of Catholic monopoly by wresting from Spain her colonial possessions. The attack upon Hispaniola was intended as but the prologue to greater enterprises. That attack failed; though the conquest of Jamaica and the enforced recognition by Spain of the presence of other Powers in the West Indies redeemed the expedition from being fruitless.

In the last half of the seventeenth century the ambitions of France led to a prolonged struggle, wherein was decided among other issues, the question of the dominion both of the West and of the East. It has been often pointed out how France brought upon herself final failure by attempting the impossible. Great as were her resources, they did not suffice for her to be at once so strong on land that she could dictate to Europe, and also to possess that sea power which was indispensable, if she was to outstrip England in the race for colonial hegemony. In the long struggle, which only finally ended with the Peace of Paris, 1763, France lost Acadia or Nova Scotia^[1], Canada, the valley of the Ohio, and all the territory on the east side of the Mississippi with the exception of the city of New Orleans. The attempt to create a continuous line of French settlements from the Mississippi to Canada, at the back of the English colonies, proved a failure, the material and men available not being sufficient for the task. But, though it must be admitted that the more numerous population of the English colonies must always have made the idea of a French North America a vain dream, nevertheless superiority in generalship and the priceless advantage of a single controlling head might well have achieved such temporary success in war as to give the quietus to Great Britain’s imperial position in North America, however English might have remained the dominant type of that continent. That this calamity was averted, the Empire owes mainly to Pitt and to Wolfe.

The struggle for French predominance in America had its origin not only in the political ambitions of French kings, but also in the commercial policy of Colbert, which sought to make the French a great trading people. But neither kings nor statesmen can, in the long run, direct the channels in which the national character runs its course, and the French, as a nation, never threw themselves into the work of expansion, by means of trade and colonies, with the whole-hearted energy of the Dutch or of the English.

In the East as well as the West, the struggle between England and France for pre-eminence was enacted; and it is noteworthy that, while both the French and English East India Companies, or rather their agents, finally aimed at territorial sovereignty, it was the Frenchmen Dumas and Dupleix who set the example. Captain Mahan accounts for the failure of France and the triumph of England in the East by the superiority conferred upon the English by their possession of sea power. Otherwise the heritage of Clive might well have fallen to some successor of Dupleix.

Meanwhile, at the moment of England’s zenith, when the battle of Plassey had opened out the vision of a new empire in the East, and when the greater portion of North America had become an English possession, a new danger arose upon the horizon, and Great Britain’s foes proved to be those of her own household. The English American colonies had owed their origin to very different influences, and the only point common to them was their diversity from each other. ‘Different forms of government,’ wrote Franklin, ‘different interests, and in some of them, different religious persuasions and different manners.’ And yet they had this in common, that they had each and all been reared and grown up in an atmosphere of liberty. The New England Puritan, the Virginian Tory, the Pennsylvanian Quaker, and the Barbados planter, who had found a new home in South Carolina, were alike in this, that they needed to be driven with the lightest of light bits. The attempt of English statesmen, wanting in imagination, and more able to recognize the results of fiscal disorder than to foresee the consequences which might follow their attempted remedy, together with the security which had been obtained from the French Terror, led to a revolution which pronounced the doom of the colonial system as understood by the men of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. How, not without hesitation and difficulty, Great Britain evolved a new system of colonial polity, belongs to the history of the nineteenth century.

Having thus summarized the general tendencies of colonial expansion during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, we may note some of the doings in this connexion of the various Powers. The appearance upon the scene by Holland as a colonial Power was due to a single cause. So long as Portugal remained independent of Spain, the Dutch had no motive to seek colonies. The energies of the Portuguese were absorbed by the Eastern trade, and they were quite willing that the Dutch should call with their ships at Lisbon and obtain the profit from the lucrative coasting trade with the European ports. When, however, in 1580, Portugal became part of the territories of Philip II, their implacable foe, the Dutch had no alternative except either to acquiesce in the loss of their commerce, and thus be deprived of the chief means by which they were able to furnish the sinews of war, or else boldly to carry hostilities into the enemy’s camp and invade the colonies, from whose trade they had been thus excluded. Their great success was in the main due to the fact that in Holland national and class interests were identified, as was impossible in the case of the European monarchies. In England and France there were dynastic or political considerations which claimed the first place; whereas in Holland the merchants were the governing classes, and the trading company was but the State under another name. Before many years the Dutch East India Company had obtained complete control of the trade of the rich East India Islands. Until 1619 the seat of government was in the little island of Amboyna, but in that year it was transferred to the new city of Batavia in Java. The name Amboyna recalls the ruthless methods adopted by the Dutch in enforcing their monopoly, since it was here that a number of English merchants were in 1623 judicially murdered for having presumed to trade in these parts. How complete was the triumph of the Dutch is shown by the clause in the Treaty of Westphalia which compelled Spain and Portugal to trade with the East only round Cape Horn. By about the middle of the seventeenth century the Dutch had practically driven their Portuguese rivals out of the Indian seas. They had taken Mauritius and St. Helena, had planted a colony at the Cape, and had established factories on the shores of the Persian Gulf, in the Persian capital of Ispahan, along the Malabar and Coromandel coasts of India, in Bengal, in Burma and Cochin China. They had expelled the Portuguese from Ceylon, Malacca, and Formosa, and killed their trade with China and Japan. They had explored, too, while they traded, and had discovered Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand.

Such was their work in the East. Meanwhile Hudson, who had been sent out by the Dutch East India Company to carry on the vain search for a north-west passage to India, in 1609 sailed up the American river which still bears his name. In 1621 the Dutch West India Company was incorporated with exclusive rights to trade and colonize in America and on the west coast of Africa, and in 1622 the settlement of New Amsterdam was planted, where New York now stands. New Netherland was originally founded as a trading settlement in accordance with the general policy of the Dutch. The unprofitableness of its trade, however, led to the attempt in 1629 to establish settlements on the Hudson and Delaware rivers. Privileges were conferred upon ‘Patroons,’ viz. such persons as should introduce fifty colonists within four years. Although the area of such grants was afterwards restricted, still ‘many of the old “Patroon” estates long remained undivided, and the heirs of the founders claimed some semi-feudal privileges well into the nineteenth century^[2].’ The nearest approach to popular government conceived by the Dutch Company was that ‘the colonies . . . shall be at liberty to appoint a deputy, who shall give information to the Commander and Council of that western quarter, of all things relating to his colony.’ In this state of things it is not strange that the English conquest in 1664 was accepted with great philosophy by the majority of the Dutch inhabitants. The English element in America proved too strong for the Dutch, and although New Netherland was for a time restored to Holland, it was finally transferred to England in 1674 and became the colony of New York. The main object of the Dutch West India Company, however, was not to colonize North America, but to conquer Brazil. The first Dutch fleet sailed for Brazil at the end of 1623, and for some thirty years the north-east coast of the country, including the province of Pernambuco, was in Dutch hands. The Brazilians, however, offered an obstinate resistance, and the last Dutch possession was finally recaptured in 1654. The Dutch were also rivals with the Portuguese in West Africa, though here there were also present English, French, and Danes. The importance of the Guinea coast to the European Powers lay in the fact that it was the head quarters of the trade in slave labour to the West Indies. The capture by the Dutch of St. Jorge de Mina (Elmina) was a serious blow to the Portuguese power. So long as the slave trade lasted, West Africa and the West Indies were economically parts of a single whole.

It was the misfortune of Holland that the exigencies of its commercial expansion led to bitter rivalry with its natural ally, England, the resources of which were, in the long run, better able to sustain a protracted struggle. So strongly did Cromwell feel the unnaturalness, and yet, under existing conditions, the inevitableness of this war between the two chief representatives of Protestantism, that he seriously proposed a union ‘in such manner as they may become one people and commonwealth for the good of both.’ Under such a union natives of either country would have enjoyed ‘the like privileges and freedom in respect of habitations, possessions, trade, ports, fishing, and all other advantages whatsoever in each other’s countries as natives, without difference or distinction.’ The jealous provincialism of the Dutch rendered any such union of course impossible, and commercial jealousies also barred the way to any such grand Protestant alliance as was proposed by Cromwell, when the first idea proved impracticable. The treaty of 1654, which ended the first Dutch war, synchronizing as it did with the final expulsion from Brazil, ‘marked,’ we are told, ‘the turning-point in the industrial career of the United Provinces. . . . Henceforth the Dutch had to be content to refrain from commercial expansion in the West, and had to devote all their energies to keeping their possessions in the East. And here the monopoly which the Dutch had enforced with arrogance and cruelty was abolished by the treaty with England. This treaty recognized England’s rights in the East, checked the all-absorbing progress of Dutch commerce, and ultimately gave England a free hand in the Indian peninsula. In the North the Dutch attempt to monopolize the Baltic trade in naval stores was completely frustrated. On the other hand, England abandoned none of her claims—the dominion of the seas, the right to seize an enemy’s goods in neutral ships, the right to a monopoly of trade with her American colonies, and, above all, the right to build up her mercantile marine by legislation hostile to the interests of the Dutch^[3].’

The chartered companies, which were the instruments employed by Holland in her colonial expansion, owed their origin to the political and social conditions of the age. They introduced no new principle. Men were only slowly awakening from a conception of society, wherein the individual had no meaning save as member of a social group. This original tendency towards association had been encouraged, in the sphere of trade, by the insecurity of mediaeval life, caused by the weakness of the central government. It is worth noting that the chartered company only thrived when it was the outcome of associated individual effort. Inasmuch as they did not take so naturally to maritime trade, the Latin races did not as a rule succeed when they embarked upon chartered companies. The French companies trading to America were the creations of kings and statesmen, and never took root. The Spaniards disdained so bourgeois a method of expansion, and it was not till late in their colonial history that the Portuguese made trial in Brazil of the system of a chartered company. In any case the chartered companies of the seventeenth century were but the application to new needs of the principles which had given birth to the merchant adventurers and the other trading companies of the sixteenth century. Nor was the claim to some monopoly, in the special circumstances of the case, unreasonable. If the State had no settled revenue for furnishing the sinews of war required for the extension of the area of the national influence, and if the individual trader, by himself, was powerless to encounter the necessary risks, it was only fair that the company which provided against these should in return receive some compensation. If the private trader were free to trade in peace, through the security afforded by the company’s ships and forts, he would have been able to undersell the company in the home market. The idea of free trade was unknown to the seventeenth century, the choice lay between different forms of monopoly. The one new principle introduced by the chartered companies of the seventeenth century involved a distinct improvement. Hitherto trading companies had been what is known as ‘regulated’ companies. Such companies resembled trade corporations, and were merely collective bodies pursuing a particular trade. There was no common fund out of which payments could be made; save the casual revenue derived from the admission fees and from the corporation duties imposed upon the trade of the company. The directors had no particular interest in the prosperity of the general trade of the company. Indeed their own private profit might be better secured were the general trade to be not too prosperous. On the other hand the joint-stock company had command of a capital, a part of which might be employed in works which, though commercially unproductive, were necessary for the purposes of the company. Moreover the directors had no private interests separate from those of the company. In this state of things the superiority of the joint-stock over the regulated system is apparent, and it is not strange that the English East India Company, founded in 1600, was, after a short trial of the other system, converted into a joint-stock company.

The system of a chartered company for the Eastern trade was only adopted by the Dutch after trial had been made of the alternative system. The successful invasion of the Portuguese monopoly in the Eastern Archipelago by Cornelis Houtman de Gouda had been followed by an inroad of Dutch traders, the effect of whose competition was to raise prices against the buyers in the East and to lower them at home, through the market being flooded with goods. Recognizing the danger, the States-General called a meeting of the rival companies interested in the trade, and persuaded them to amalgamate in one great East India Company, upon which was conferred a monopoly of the trade from the Cape of Good Hope inclusive to all parts of the East. The management was in the hands of a directorate, consisting of sixty members, representing the different interests of Amsterdam, Zealand, Delft, Rotterdam, &c. Of these sixty an inner committee of seventeen more directly managed the affairs of the Company. Very extensive powers were conferred upon the Company, in the way of making peace or war, founding colonies, building forts, and coining money. In 1609 it possessed six hundred regular troops, eleven forts, and nine ships of war. In the same year a Governor-General was appointed over the Dutch possessions in the East. Although the Dutch Company had force behind it, it endeavoured so far as possible to restrict itself to commerce, and the Dutch commercial stations were almost everywhere established upon the ruins of those of some other European nation. The Company reached its zenith in the period between the foundation of Batavia (1619) and 1650. The capture of Malacca (1640) and the Portuguese strongholds in Ceylon put the coping-stone to its power. The establishment of a port of call at Cape Town was not intended as a reversal of the policy which discouraged colonization. The growth of the settlement was not due to encouragement by the Company.

The financial success of the Dutch East India Company led, however, to more stringent demands upon it from the State, when it became necessary to apply for the renewal of the charter. In 1669 we are told that, in spite of paying a dividend of forty per cent., it was loaded with debt. An army of ten thousand men and a fleet of forty ships of war, to protect its one hundred and fifty trading-vessels, might well make away with the largest profits. Moreover, the Company, from this time, as was inevitable, shared the diminishing fortunes of the parent State. Between the hammer of war with France in Europe and the anvil of commercial war in the East with England, her political ally, the fate of Holland was indeed hard. Still it must be admitted that in Java the Dutch East India Company showed little capacity to rise to the height of its opportunities; and when at last it fell, under the crash of the French Revolution, its fall was regretted by none.

An ugly side-light is thrown on the proceedings of the officials of the Dutch East India Company by the narrative of the Huguenot Leguat^[4]. Although the Governor-General was surrounded by a council, his authority, according to the Dutch Admiral Stevorinus, was in fact almost unbounded. The members of the council were in need of the governor’s good offices, ‘and if this was not sufficient to make them obey the nods of the governor, he was not destitute of the means of tormenting them, in every way, under various pretences, nay, of sending them prisoners to Europe.’ ‘An Englishman,’ the same authority asserts, ‘would never brook the insupportable arrogance with which the Dutch East India Company’s servants are treated by their superiors as well at Batavia as at the out-factories.’ ‘Every one,’ he adds, ‘attends solely to the main business of well and speedily lining his purse, and all look to the time when they shall be able to withdraw themselves from the insolent dominion of an arbitrary government, against which little or nothing can be said or done.’ At the same time another observer states, ‘the Dutch Company would have all that are in its service to thrive, and if any officer does not look after his own private business he is little look’t upon; the Hollanders believing that he who neglects his own will not be diligent in another’s concerns.’ That the Dutch traders of the seventeenth century were men of the same stock as those who a few years earlier had risen to such heights of heroism on behalf of their religion and country, is one of the standing puzzles of European history.

Darbishire & Stanford, Ltd., Oxford
Face p. 60

Although France, no less than Holland and England, made use of the chartered company, there was a great difference in the manner in which the new system was introduced. In Holland the whole energies of the nation were thrown into the new channel, and, in England, though it suffered sometimes at the hands of the Stuart kings, the movement was distinctly national. In France, on the other hand, it was the action of individuals like Champlain, or statesmen like Richelieu, who pushed on the work of colonization in spite of national apathy. We have already seen that a Breton sailor, Jacques Cartier, had in 1535 sailed up the St. Lawrence river. Cartier, and, even at a later date, Champlain, was still haunted by the desire to find a north-west passage to the East, and the report of gold to be found in the kingdom of Saguenay served to whet the appetites of the French explorers; but the true riches of the country consisted in the fish of its waters and the furs of its woods. For some years, though the fisheries and the fur trade were carried on with profit, there was no inclination shown in France to emigrate to the new colony. Political considerations, however, required that something should be done, as there was always present the danger lest some other nation should step in and forestall France of her inheritance. A commercial monopoly was therefore conferred upon a trading company; the consideration for the grant being an undertaking to introduce into the colony a certain number of emigrants. Unhappily, no colonists were willing to go, and the company was not in the least interested in the work of colonization. Company succeeded company, and still the results were no more favourable; so that in 1628, upon the formation of the fifth company, the country possessed two families of colonists! In truth, the inducements to emigrate do not appear to have been great. The colonists were forbidden to engage in the fur trade. They were compelled to buy their goods from the company at an exorbitant price, and to sell to the company their produce at about half its net value. Unable or unwilling to read the true moral of events, the French authorities continued to exact the same conditions which were never fulfilled. The development of colonies was part of the grandiose scheme conceived by Richelieu, under which the whole foreign trade of France would have been placed in the hands of one gigantic company. Although the scheme, as a whole, of necessity came to nothing, the company for New France was formed to fulfil one of its objects. The company was granted a monopoly of trade for fifteen years upon undertaking to introduce three hundred colonists a-year. Absolute ownership of the whole of the St. Lawrence valley was ceded to the company. A clause forbade the introduction of any but French Catholics. It is noteworthy as marking the jealousies at work that a provision in the grant allowing artisans who had plied their trade in the colony for six years, to rank as master-workmen on their return to France, was struck out by the Parliament of Paris. In spite of the high hopes with which the company for New France was founded, it was not until after its dissolution in 1663 that a serious effort was made to colonize the country.

No better success followed the great attempt of the heroic La Salle to confer upon Louis XIV a new territory named Louisiana, which should include ‘the fertile plains of Texas, the vast basin of the Mississippi from its frozen northern springs to the sultry borders of the gulf; from the woody ridges of the Alleghanies to the bare peaks of the Rocky Mountains.’ Louisiana indeed on a more modest scale became a French province, but here, as so often in French colonial history, the colonists did not follow in sufficient numbers upon the tracks of the pioneer, and, so far as French expansion was concerned, the splendid offspring of La Salle perished stillborn.

The history of French Canada is told in a subsequent volume of this series. It is there pointed out how ‘the effect of the geography of Canada on an incoming race, with the instincts and characteristics of the French, was to stimulate their natural inclination to attempt too much and to go too fast and too far.’ In the New World, no less than in Europe, France attempted too much, and therefore designs, ably conceived, and no less ably attempted, came to nought.

Some Authorities on Subject of preceding Chapter.

Seeley’s Expansion of England gives the best account of the general tendencies at work in the struggle for colonial supremacy. Consult also his Growth of British Policy, 2 vols., 1895, and Capt. Mahan’s Influence of Sea Power upon History. On Cromwell’s policy see, besides Beer, as cited, J. Geddes’s History of the Administration of J. de Witt, 1623-54, 1879.

For the Dutch East and West India Companies consult Bonnassieux, Les grandes compagnies de commerce, 1892: and for the Dutch in the East Indies Sir G. Birdwood’s Report on the old records of the India Office. 2nd Reprint, 1891.

The Early Chartered Companies, by G. Cawston and A. H. Keene. 1896.

Fiske’s The Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America, 1st vol., 1899, is the most readable account of New Netherland.

The Early Trading Companies of New France, by H. P. Biggar, Toronto, 1901, is based on elaborate researches in the French archives.

Col. Malleson’s History of the French in India, 1674-1761, is a standard book on the subject.

Parkman’s books: Pioneers of France in the New World; The old Régime in Canada; La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West; Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV; A Half-Century of Conflict; and Montcalm and Wolfe tell the story of the French in North America. See also vol. v of this series, and Winsor’s Narrative and Critical History of America, vols. iv and v.

We have already seen that the embryo of English colonization was laid by the Italian Cabot; much time, however, was to elapse before it came to birth. The sixteenth century was a period of preparation, wherein, in various ways, England was making ready for the coming work. In the first place, during the reign of Henry VIII, the royal navy underwent continuous and great improvement. Moreover, during the century, the energies of Englishmen were still concentrated upon discovery and adventure. The Elizabethan Frobisher and Davis, who went in search of a north-west passage to the Indies, carried on the tradition of Willoughby and Chancellor, who had sought such a passage by the north-east, in the previous reign. As early as the beginning of the century, the American fisheries were a recognized English industry. In 1527 there were English by the side of Portuguese and French vessels on the Bank. Fifty years later the English fishing fleet had become of greatly increased importance, though it was still outnumbered by the French and Bretons. We find the Newfoundland fisheries mentioned in an Act of Parliament of 1540, and by the end of the sixteenth century the industry had so greatly developed that over one hundred vessels, employing several thousand men and boys, carried on business annually in the Newfoundland fisheries. ‘If those should be lost,’ wrote Ralegh, ‘it would be the greatest blow ever given to England.’

While the sea power of England was being fostered by means such as these, the course of history was soon to put it to a sore trial. The accession of Elizabeth, and her profession of the Reformed Church, led to an inevitable struggle with Spain; the representative at once of Catholicism and of colonial expansion. The private war carried on for years by men like Sir Francis Drake against Spanish commerce, prepared the way for the victory over the Armada.

In the course of his memorable voyage (1577) round the world, Drake discovered the portion of North America now known as Oregon, and anticipated by centuries the progress of English colonization: the New Albion, which he took over from the Indians, being probably the British Columbia of to-day.

Had not the maritime power of Spain been in fact broken, it is impossible to suppose that she would have been content with diplomatic grumblings, when England at last claimed her share of the New World. Among those who helped to prepare the way for English colonization, Richard Hakluyt, the historian of English navigation, takes a high place. He himself describes how his thoughts were first turned in this direction. Happening, when a Westminster scholar, to visit his cousin and namesake at the Middle Temple, he ‘found lying open upon his boord certeine bookes of cosmographye with an universall mappe . . . which words of the Prophet’ (they that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; these see the works of the Lord and His wonders in the deep), ‘together with my cousin’s discourse, . . . tooke in me so deepe an impression that I constantly resolved if ever I were preferred to the University . . . I would by God’s assistance prosecute that knowledge and kinde of literature the doores whereof (after a sort) were so happily opened before me.’ His Divers voyages touching the discovery of America and the islands adjacent, published in 1582, and his Principal navigations, voyages, &c., of the English Navigators, published in 1589, proved how well he kept faith with his original resolve. In his dedication of the former to Sir Philip Sidney he wrote, ‘When I consider that there is a time for all men, and see the Portingales time to be out of date, and that the nakednesse of the Spaniards and their long hidden secretes are now at length espied, whereby they went about to delude the world, I conceive great hope that the time approcheth, and now is, that we of England may share and part stakes (if wee will ourselves) both with the Spaniards and the Portingale, in part of America and other regions as yet undiscovered.’ Undoubtedly Hakluyt’s writings and influence played an important part in the fulfilment of this prophecy.

Sir Humphrey Gilbert and his half-brother Ralegh may be held to be the true founders of the English Empire, though neither lived to see the full results of his work. Newfoundland had been for many years the summer resort of merchants and fishermen, who were governed in a rude fashion by admirals chosen ‘interchangeably,’ but, upon Gilbert’s landing (1583), the reading of his commission and the enactment of certain laws received the general assent. Inasmuch, however, as no further steps were taken to carry on the proprietary government after the death of Gilbert, which happened immediately, the claim of Newfoundland to be the oldest of English colonies cannot be accepted without reserve.

The name of Ralegh will always be connected with Virginia, but his actual attempts at colonization ended in failure. The first colonists, over a hundred in number, landed at Roanoake in 1585, but in the following year they were brought home by Sir Francis Drake, who, touching there after the attack on Carthagena, found them in great straits. In 1587 another expedition was sent out under John White. The fate of these colonists was tragic. For several years, owing to the stress of war with Spain, it was impossible to send relief to them, and when at last, in 1591, such relief arrived, not a living soul remained to tell their story, nor was the curtain ever raised over the mystery of their end. The efforts of Ralegh had, at least, shown that no one man, however great, was strong enough to found by himself a colonial empire. Nor, had even the will been present, was the seventeenth-century monarch an exception to this rule. In this state of things, it was only by the means of associated effort that the work could ever be achieved.

Something has been said already concerning chartered companies, the primary object of which was the expansion of trade, but the Virginia Company represents the movement on a new and more romantic side. Under the charter of 1606 the whole of North America, between 34° and 45°, was declared to belong to England, and placed under the Royal Council of Virginia. Out of this vast area of two million square miles, twenty thousand square miles were granted to the London and Plymouth Companies. Under the amended charter of 1609 the area of Virginia was enormously increased, it now extending over a million square miles, for two hundred miles north and for two hundred miles south of Point Comfort, and from sea to sea. The northern colony had never come into being under the first charter, but when in 1620 a new charter was obtained, the lands granted included the whole area between 40° and 48° north latitude.

If it be a good thing to widen the mental horizon, and interest men in matters which do not come within their immediate ken, then the chartered companies, whatever their merits in other respects, have played a great part as public educators. The incorporation under the amended charter of 1609 consisted of 56 city companies, and 659 private persons. Of these 21 were peers; 96 knights; 11 doctors, ministers, &c.; 53 captains; 28 esquires; 58 gentlemen; 110 merchants; and 282 citizens, and others not classified. Of the total number, about 230 paid £37 10s. or more; about 230 paid less than £37 10s., and about 200 failed to pay anything. At least 100 of the incorporators were members of the House of Commons at some time, and about 50 were members at the time of the granting of the charter. A circular was addressed to the Lord Mayor, urging him to put the claims of the Virginia Company before the various city companies, and, so far as can be gathered from the records, the response was satisfactory. Although the desire to win gold doubtless counted for much with many of the adventurers, it is remarkable how little stress was laid upon this in the official utterances of the Company. In the appeal made at the end of 1609, the main objects of the movement are stated to be the propagation of the gospel, the benefit conferred on England ‘by transplanting the rankness and multitude of increase in our people,’ and lastly ‘the appearance and assurance of private commodity to the particular undertakers by recovering and possessing to themselves a fruitful land, whence they may furnish and provide the kingdom with all such necessities and defects under which we labour, and are now enforced to buy and receive at the courtesy of other princes under the burden of great customs and high impositions.’

Just as without doubt many of the shareholders of the British South Africa Company regarded their investment, not from a commercial point of view, but as a stone added to the cairn of the Empire, so, in the genesis of English colonization, men were found ready to risk something on behalf of the new movement. The disinterested character of the undertaking is shown by the methods adopted with regard to profits. For seven years everything obtained from the land was to be put into joint stock, and no separate dividends were to be paid. This provision, so far as it applied to the settlers, has received the scorn of modern writers, but it must be remembered that the Company was under obligation to feed and clothe these emigrants, and to build and fortify for them houses during this period, while at the time of division they would become entitled to the same amount of land for every man, woman, and child, as would be secured by the adventuring of £12 10s. in the Company. Every adventurer of a share was entitled to one hundred acres upon the first division, and to a second hundred acres when the land of the first division had been sufficiently peopled; such grants not involving the payment of any rent. In all grants, however, one-fifth of the gold and silver was reserved to the Company, in addition to the one-fifth belonging to the Crown. When we consider that, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, money was by no means the indispensable medium of exchange which it is now, it seems very questionable how far the early difficulties of the Company were mainly due to these regulations.

In truth those difficulties admit of a more simple explanation. The main lion in the path in the way of successful colonization will always be the provision of an adequate labour supply. Granted that the lot of the English labouring classes at home was at the time hard, and that the advantages held out by emigration were very real and genuine, it by no means follows that the ordinary English labourer would not prefer to have the ills he knew than fly to the unknown perils of Virginia. The English labourer has the qualities of courage and endurance, but he is not as a rule adventurous, and the same characteristics which make him as a soldier touchingly dependent upon the presence of his officer, do not fit him to become a pioneer in colonization. The working classes indeed emigrate, but when the ground has been broken by adventurers of a different stamp. Hence, in the beginnings of English North America, it was all very well in sermons and essays to represent England as suffering from the evils of over-population, and anxious to pour out its overflow into the New World; in fact the English people, not greatly discontented with the state of things at home, showed little inclination to bear their part in the new development. What could be done to set forth the delights of the new colony, the Virginia Company did with no little zeal and ability. Again and again they called for blacksmiths, carpenters, coopers, shipwrights, turners, vignerons, hunters, fishermen, brickmakers, architects, bakers, weavers, shoemakers, sawyers, &c., but unfortunately the actual emigrants were to no small extent men of a different class. ‘Unruly gallants, packed thither by their friends to escape ill destinies,’ formed an inevitable proportion; though doubtless there were from the first very many of a better stamp. Still the spontaneous supply of labour by no means met the demand. The Company may have honestly regretted some of the methods adopted to recruit the colonial labour market, still they seem, in the circumstances, to have been inevitable.

The desire to stand well with the city authorities may have promoted acquiescence in the custom of shipping boys and girls, who lay starving in the London streets, to Virginia. The sending out of persons chargeable upon the rates appears to have been confined to the case of the young, in whose case such action was not open to objection. It does not appear that convicts were transported to Virginia at least before 1650, except when there existed special mitigating circumstances. The system of ‘indentured’ servants did not become common until after 1616, when the tobacco industry had grown into prominence. It must be remembered that at first the colonist carried his life in his hands, and his ordinary outfit was a full accoutrement of arms. The first years of Virginia were a sustained struggle with Indians, disease, and death. In 1616 there had been dispatched to the colony as many as 1,650 persons, and the actual population was only 351. Some 300 had returned to England, and about 1,000 had died on the voyage or in Virginia. In the five years between 1618 and 1623 it would seem that 5,000 emigrants were sent out, and yet in 1623 there were only 1,277 people in the colony, including all those born there. In 1622, however, there had occurred the massacre of the colonists by the Indians, which in some districts destroyed the whole English population. Considering all this, it is extremely likely that but for the purses, the credit and the constancy of a few determined men, of whom Sir Thomas Smith, the Treasurer and Governor of the Company, was chief, the enterprise would have been altogether abandoned. Many of the city merchants who were interested in the Virginia Company were also large shareholders in the East India Company, and the profits of the one probably made good the losses of the other. It is unnecessary to enter here into the later history of the Company. The rival factions which disputed the mastery furnished the excuse for James I to cancel the charter. Doubtless the ‘popularness’ of the Company’s meetings was extremely distasteful to the royal autocrat, but there is no reason to question the truth of the statement drawn up by the colonists in 1640, which affirmed that the interests of the colony had suffered no detriment through the resumption of the charter by the Crown.

It must be admitted that in one respect Virginia did not fulfil the intention of its founders. It was supposed that it would provide ample naval stores, so as to make England independent of the Scandinavian countries. In fact, while, as will be seen in a subsequent chapter, the American colonies never became of real importance in providing such stores, Virginia in this respect played a very secondary part.

The event which directed the course of Virginian economic and social history for the next 250 years, was the cultivation by Rolfe in 1612 of the tobacco-plant. It was the need of virgin lands for tobacco which led to the diffusion of the population over wide areas and the absence of towns. The system of cultivation involved large holdings and a cheap labour supply. Although the system of ‘indentured’ European labour prevailed during the rest of the seventeenth century, negro slavery, first introduced in 1619, was bound on such congenial soil to flourish and multiply. In 1671 there were 2,000 slaves in the colony, as against 6,000 white servants, but by the end of the century the number of slaves had probably risen to some 6,000, although during the whole colonial period slave labour never completely ousted the labour of white free men as it did at a later date. At first the average size of a Virginia holding was not large. In 1626 the size of the great majority of estates ranged from 100 to 150 acres.

It may be well to recapitulate a few of the leading facts in the beginnings of Virginia. The colonists sent out in 1607 by the Company, after anchoring at Cape Comfort on April 30, landed on May 13 on a peninsula on the north bank of the Powhattan River, which was renamed James River. The total number of the colonists was 105, and of these fifty had died before September. Of the extreme beauty and fertility of the land, which henceforth was to belong to the Anglo-Saxon race, the early settlers wrote with natural enthusiasm. When the wind was in the north-west the odour of the pine-trees and sassafras could be smelt far out to sea. Walnut-trees and chestnuts abounded in the forests. Wild fruits of every kind, including grapes, were plentiful, and the ground was carpeted with every variety of flower. The soil varied in character, but, for the most part, it was very rich and well adapted to the cultivation of tobacco and maize. ‘I protest unto you,’ wrote Dale to Sir Thomas Smith, ‘by the faith of a honest man, the more I range the country, the more I admire it. I have seen the best countries of Europe; I protest unto you before the living God, put them altogether this country will be equivalent unto them, if it be inhabited by good people.’ Moreover Virginia was especially fortunate in the character and abundance of its waters. Apart from the copious streams which watered its valleys, it possessed four great rivers, the Potomac, Rappahannock, York, and James, which in their lower sections resembled estuaries of the sea. By the means of the rivers, the planters dwelling up country could load their tobacco at their doors on ships direct to England. Such advantages, however, belonged to the future; a more pressing question for the first colonists was, what was the character of the climate? The heat of the summers was about the same as that of the summers in Spain, while the cold in winter resembled the climates of England and France. April and September were the rainy months, and the abruptness of the change in autumn proved very trying to English constitutions. Undoubtedly the death-rate in the colony for some time was very high. The neighbourhood of marsh lands caused a kind of malaria. Upon the other hand, there is strong evidence that famine more than illness accounted for the majority of deaths, while the sudden substitution of Indian corn for wheaten bread is said to have made the constitution more open to the attacks of disease. It must be remembered, moreover, that the colonists seldom arrived in a healthy condition. The mortality on shipboard was terrible. Fleets were reported to be ‘full of scurvey and calenture,’ and governors pointed to the unfairness of ascribing to the climate what was in fact due to the noisomeness of the vessels arriving in the colony. In any case it would seem that, when once they were acclimatized, Englishmen could thrive as well in Virginia as at home, although Jamestown was always unhealthy in midsummer.

In fact the choice of Jamestown for the capital of the colony had been made on strategic rather than economic considerations. The site offered great advantages for defence against attack from the river or the mainland. On the other hand, it transgressed the order of the Company that they should take care to choose a seat for habitation not overburthened with woods near it. The subsequent troubles were largely due to the difficulty of clearing the forest land. For the first winter all went well; the colonists receiving supplies from the native Indians. The following year saw the population diminished by one-half through hunger and exposure. Captain John Smith, who assumed the government in 1608, was the first to introduce among the English the culture of maize, ‘A crop which was to enter so deeply into the economic life of the modern communities of North America.’

Smith departed for England in the autumn of 1609, and in the following year the governor, Lord Delawarr, arrived in the colony. The Company had not been forgetful of the settlers, and in the preceding year an expedition had been sent forth consisting of 500 new colonists under the leadership of Sir Thomas Gates and Sir George Somers. The fleet was wrecked off the Bermudas, but in 1610 the survivors, to the number of about 140, under Somers, managed to reach Virginia. The year 1609 had been a terrible one to the colonists. It was known as ‘starving time,’ and out of a population of 500 only some sixty had survived. When Delawarr reached the colony he found Somers and Gates on the point of starting home with the remnant of the settlers. To Sir Thomas Dale, who arrived in May, 1611, belongs the credit of having established the colony on a firmer basis. By means of a régime of severe military discipline he sought to compel the colonists to become self-sufficing. A new settlement was founded at Henrico, the modern Farrar’s Island. More important in its results was the cultivation in 1612 of the tobacco-plant by John Rolfe, the husband of the Indian princess Pocahontas. The success of this experiment would have probably led to the exclusive cultivation of tobacco but for the measures taken by Dale to secure the growth of grain. The colonists were now for the first time provided with a ‘private garden’ of three acres in extent, of which two acres had to be planted with grain. New arrivals were allowed rent free a four-roomed house with twelve acres of ground, on condition that they confined themselves to food crops. A satisfactory feature during Dale’s administration was the very great increase in the number of live stock in the colony.

Dale returned to England in 1616, and, after a brief period during which George Yeardley acted as governor, the administration was for two years in the hands of Samuel Argall. Whatever may have been his qualities as a leader of men, his rapacity and private greed made his administration disastrous both to the colonists and to the Virginia Company. Instead of allowing the servants, who had served their time, to go free, he made them work on his own private behalf. He also diverted to his own use the labour of those who had been working in the common garden. He sold the public cattle on his own account; he rendered unprofitable the public magazine of the Company by allowing free purchase of tobacco and sassafras to the masters of ships; when Argall absconded in 1619 he left the property of the colonists and the Company alike run to waste. It is significant that the first representative Assembly met in the first six months of the administration of Yeardley, Argall’s successor. Argall’s rule had doubtless been an object-lesson in the risks of paternal government. It is but another amongst the numerous ironies of history that democratic government in Virginia and the introduction of negro slaves date from the same year. For the first time now the right of acquiring property in fee simple was freely granted. For a while the colony appears to have enjoyed abundant prosperity. It is stated in a paper quoted by Mr. Bruce that no happier people were to be found than the population of Virginia at this particular period, the quantity of provisions of all kind being so great that every man gave free entertainment to his friends and to strangers. This favourable state of things was rudely interrupted by the Indian massacre of 1622, when about 350 of the colonists lost their lives. The misfortunes of the colony were increased by the action of the home authorities, who introduced a large number of new settlers without making provision for their support. The year 1623 was marked by famine. ‘We have lost more by the immediate hand of God than by the treachery of the savages,’ wrote the Governor and Council. It was the distress of the time which rendered plausible the action of the king in depriving the Company of its charter.

Although for some years the position of the Assembly does not appear to have been altogether assured after the dissolution of the Company, the general life of the colony went on in the same way. During the long period from 1630 to 1676, including, however, the interregnum between 1651 and 1660, when the colony was practically independent, there were only two governors. Berkeley, who was appointed in 1641, was at last recalled in 1676. The period was on the whole one of steady progress. The population, which had been about 5,000 in 1634, in 1649 had risen to 15,000; in 1666 it was returned as 40,000. In spite of the reasons urging to a variety of products, economic advantages were more and more tending to make tobacco the staple crop of the colony. Meanwhile a new English nation was developing, in which a social order intensely aristocratic in character was set side by side with political institutions, partly autocratic and partly very democratic. The nature of the political constitution of the English colonies before the American War of Independence is treated in another chapter, but we may here note that the special circumstances of Virginia produced a class which might have occupied something of the position of the English House of Lords, had English statesmen ever taken up, with understanding, the problem of colonial government. No doubt for the time there seemed no danger to English supremacy, and the rebellion which occurred in 1676, known as Bacon’s rebellion, was more a protest against the arbitrary character of the governor, who seems to have grown somewhat eccentric with old age, and against his management of Indian affairs, than an organized resistance to the authority of the mother country. The leaven which was to alter the character of Virginia as a colony of Tories and Cavaliers, the influx of Scottish Presbyterians, did not begin till about fifty years later than the time of Bacon.

In the following chapter some account will be given of the beginnings of Maryland and the New England colonies. The Carolinas owed their existence to the active brain of Lord Shaftesbury. In 1663 a grant was made to Lord Clarendon, the Duke of Albemarle, Lord Ashley (Shaftesbury), and five others, of the territory lying to the south of Virginia. Under the charter and the amended charter of 1665, laws were to be enacted by the proprietors with the advice and assent of the freemen, or of the greater part of them, or of their delegates or deputies. The aim of the proprietors appears at first to have been to establish a variety of separate and independent colonies, each of which should have its own governor, its own assembly, and its own laws. The liberality of these founders has been questioned by the most recent and authoritative of the historians of South Carolina. In any case the colony did not thrive, the reasons being doubtless economic; the land being best suited to staple products such as rice, which required for their successful cultivation cheap labour, such as was afterwards afforded by negro slavery. Without this liberal grants of land proved unavailing to make the colony prosper.

The Fundamental Constitutions, although they affected little the actual life of the Carolinas, possess interest as the work of the philosopher John Locke. Parliaments were to be held biennially; the qualification for members and their constituents being the possession of five hundred and of fifty acres of freehold land respectively. An aristocracy was to be imposed upon the New World with the new titles of ‘landgrave’ and ‘cacique.’ To prevent the multiplication of laws all statutes were to become repealed at the end of one hundred years by efflux of time, and all manner of comment on or exposition of the Fundamental Constitutions was strictly forbidden. The original charter only empowered the Lords Proprietors to make laws ‘with the advice, assent, and approbation of the freemen of the said province or of the greater part of them or of their delegates and deputies’; and as the colonists were always averse to enacting the Fundamental Constitutions, they never obtained in the colony legal force.

The first attempt to colonize South Carolina from Barbados proved a failure, but in 1669 an expedition, composed of men partly from England and partly from Barbados, was sent out, and in the following year occupied the site where was founded the city of Charlestown. In 1672 the population of the colony was stated to be 263 men, 69 women, and 59 children. Charlestown had received its name in the preceding year.

The government at Albemarle to the north had been started even before that at Charlestown, and subsequently an attempt was made to found another colony on the Edisto. The paraphernalia of government contemplated by the Fundamental Constitutions were so elaborate, that it is extraordinary that able men like Locke and Shaftesbury should have supposed such a constitution applicable to the affairs of small and rough settlements.

At first the progress of South Carolina was slow, but a considerable impetus to it was given by the immigration of English Dissenters. By this means the population of the colony was doubled between 1680 and 1682. A few years later the population was further increased by an influx of French and Swiss.

South Carolina formed a singular medley of races and of creeds. Although under the charter the Church of England was the established Church of the colony, there were only about 1,700 of its members amongst a population of some 6,000. Besides Churchmen, there were ‘Independents from England Old and New, Baptists from Maine, and Huguenots from France and Switzerland, all zealous of their peculiar religious tenets, and many, if not most, with the tenacity of bigotry and fanaticism.’ South Carolina, from the first, possessed the nucleus of an aristocracy in the planter immigrants from Barbados, and with the extension of the cultivation of rice and the growth of negro slavery, the aristocratic character of the province socially was able to hold its own, in spite of the introduction of new colonists of very different type.

It has been already noted that in the beginnings of English North America the northern and southern colonies were divided by the Dutch New Netherland, which occupied the most commanding position on the continent, communicating with the St. Lawrence and the north by means of the Hudson River, and possessing a splendid natural harbour. New Netherland was destined from the first to a leading position among the American states. The Dutch, however, had not concerned themselves with the strategic possibilities of their position; and when the English fleet arrived in 1664, they found the colony for the most part undefended. The old governor, Stuyvesant, resented the overthrow of the Dutch power bitterly; but he was compelled to submit, and the Dutch inhabitants acquiesced very cheerfully in the change. The new English governor, Richard Nicolls, was a man of great tact and liberality, although he was opposed to the introduction of popular government into the new colony. Trial by jury was established, the criminal code amended and a civil code promulgated, and the Dutch citizens were secured in their rights and property.

Under the Peace of Breda, 1667, New Netherland was formally ceded to England in exchange for Surinam in South America and the island of Puli Roon, one of the Banda Islands. Nicolls resigned in the following year, and was succeeded by Francis Lovelace. During his administration the first mail was established between New York and Boston. It is well, as showing the difference between English and Spanish methods of colonial government, to note the language of Lovelace: ‘Consonant to the commands laid upon us by his sacred Majesty, who strictly enjoins all his American subjects to enter into a close correspondency with each other.’ Meanwhile, in spite of the liberality of the government in other ways, the English who had settled in Long Island greatly resented the absence of representative government. In 1673, in the course of the war between England and Holland, a Dutch fleet sailed for the West Indies, and captured New York, which was in the same undefended position as had been New Amsterdam. The English townships yielded only under protest, and their appeal found a ready echo in the hearts of their New England kinsfolk. Whatever might have resulted from such a temper, the matter was peacefully concluded by the Treaty of Westminster of 1674, which restored everywhere the status quo ante bellum. New Netherland thus became finally English, and a new governor, Andros, was sent out by the Duke of York, who had received a fresh grant of the province. Although James was of course by nature disinclined to popular government, it was impossible permanently to refuse to New York what was being granted to New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and Dongan, Andros’s successor, was instructed to summon a popular Assembly which met in 1683.

Darbishire & Stanford, Ltd., Oxford
Face p. 82

The accession of James II to the throne threatened to open out a new chapter in American history. The good qualities of James, no less than the bad, were of ill omen to American liberties. Autocratic and averse to liberty, he was in his way a patriot, and was prepared to undertake measures which should curb the French pretensions in the New World. For this purpose the whole of New England and New York was formed into a single government, which was given to Andros. Although military reasons were in favour of William III pursuing James’s policy, political considerations forbade so flagrant an interference with English liberties. How serious was the danger from the French we know from the elaborate instructions drawn up in 1689, with the aid of Frontenac, for an invasion of New York. Albany was to be seized by a coup de main; a French force was then to be conveyed down the Hudson to receive at New York the co-operation of the French fleet. The Indian allies of the English, the Iroquois of the five nations, would be powerless when no longer receiving arms and ammunition from the English, and New England would then be at the mercy of the French. Whatever in any case might have been the chances of such an expedition, it was rendered impossible by the action of the Iroquois, who, in 1689, burst into Canada, carrying with them desolation and death. Thanks, perhaps, in great measure to the buffer territory of the Iroquois, New York was able to develop its unrivalled natural advantages in peace and security. The story of the democrat Leisler, who upset the existing government when the news of James’s downfall first reached America, is interesting because it brings out the class antagonisms which were already active amidst a mercantile community. Leisler, whether well-meaning or not, was a demagogue, and demagogy, though it shouted for the Dutch king, was little to the mind of William III or his Whig advisers. A representative Assembly, however, could not be refused, and from 1691 there was continuous constitutional government in New York, the main line of cleavage between parties being the possession or absence of property. To New York and to Leisler belong the credit of calling the first continental Congress, which met in New York in 1690, and which led to the abortive Canada expedition of the same year. When a few years later (1697), Penn proposed a federal plan of union, under which deputies from the different provinces should, among other matters, decide on the respective contributions to be made by the different colonies for purposes of defence, it was New York which was suggested as the most convenient meeting-place. In many ways, from the cosmopolitan character of its population and from the consequent absence of strong local prejudice, New York was the most favourably situated of the colonies to take the lead in a movement towards closer co-operation and federation among the various British communities in North America. From the failure to accomplish this, ‘we see,’ in the words of the American historian, Mr. John Fiske, ‘the principal causes which led seventy years later to the Stamp Act.’

Some Authorities on the Subject of foregoing Chapter.

Drake and the Tudor Navy and The Successors of Drake, by Julian Corbett. 1898 and 1900.

Life of Sir Walter Ralegh, with Letters, by E. Edwards. 1868.

Genesis of the United States, by A. Brown. 1890.

Economic History of Virginia in Seventeenth Century, by P. A. Bruce. 1896.

History of South Carolina, by E. McCrady, vol. i. 1897.

Dutch and Quaker Colonies, by J. Fiske. 1899.

Narrative and Critical History of America, by J. Winsor, vols. iii and iv. 1882.

The English in America, Virginia, &c., by J. A. Doyle, and chs. i and ii. by the same author in vol. vii, The United States of the Cambridge Modern History. 1903.

It has been already noted that the credit of recognizing for the first time the part which might be played by religion in the foundation of colonies probably belongs to the French soldier and statesman, Coligny. It is impossible to say what might not have been the future of France as a great colonial Power, had the policy been pursued of treating colonies as a safety-valve for religious discontent at home, and had the Huguenot exodus, to which the Protestant nations and their colonies owed so much, at the end of the seventeenth century found a new home within the French dominions. Unhappily for France, whatever may have been Coligny’s aims, he was without the means to carry them into effect. Unlike the later Puritan movement, which was spontaneously evolved by those directly concerned, Coligny’s colonization schemes had not behind them the Protestant public opinion of the day. French Protestant emigrants did not come forward to support the expedition to Brazil, which the adventurer Villegagnon led forth in 1555. Indeed, without the assistance of Scottish soldiers, in addition to French criminals and adventurers, the scheme must have been abandoned. In any case the project was doomed to almost certain failure, but, if it had really been conceived in the Protestant interest, the climax of disaster was already reached when the leader of the expedition developed into a controversial orthodox theologian, more anxious to silence heretics than to develop the resources of the colony. The Florida colonists sent out by Coligny in 1562 and 1564 had better claims to represent the spirit of religious dissent. But in other ways the settlers of Fort Caroline were not of the right stuff to found new colonies, and though their tragic end, massacred almost to a man by the Spaniards, ‘not as Frenchmen but as Lutherans,’ gave dignity to the last moments of the colony, it is very doubtful how far, in any case, it could have emerged with success from the inevitable preliminary stages. From the point of view of Protestantism, however, the French Florida colonists did not live in vain. The privateering which did so much to cripple the power of Spain was, in great measure, the reply of the Protestant interest to the massacre at Fort Caroline. The vengeance inflicted by the Frenchman De Gourgues upon the Spaniards in Florida, hanged ‘not as Spaniards but as traitors, robbers, and murderers,’ was only part, and no considerable part, of the Nemesis which fell on Spain for the cruelty of Menendez.

A more successful example of the manner in which religious controversy has assisted the work of colonization is afforded by the Portuguese Jews in Brazil. Some had been transported thither and others emigrated thither from Holland, during the time of the Dutch predominance; finding in Brazil a home where they might speak their native language as well as practise their religious rites. This Jewish element in the population proved of great value in the development of the resources of the country.

It is, however, to the English colonization of the seventeenth century that the student must look who desires to realize the influence which religion has exerted over the foundation of colonies. It is only necessary to recall the names of the English colonies in America, and consider cursorily the circumstances in which they took their rise, in order to recognize how largely English America was the outcome of religious discontent at home. Of the thirteen States which signed the Declaration of Independence, the New England States (Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island), Maryland, and Pennsylvania were the direct outcome of such religious discontent. New Hampshire, so far as its population was concerned, was always at one with New England, and New Jersey and Delaware were for practical purposes part of Pennsylvania, so that of the thirteen no less than eight may be said to have owed their origin to religious influences. Nor does the matter end here, because the Carolinas owed not a little indirectly to the same cause. In considering the reasons for this state of things, the answer is not difficult to find. It cannot be too often repeated that, in the early days of colonization, emigration was always a very risky matter. Without those preparatory works which experience has shown to be indispensable to the settlement of new communities, ignorant of the most elementary laws of hygiene and sanitation, the seventeenth-century colonist found himself at a great disadvantage in the ceaseless struggle with nature and savage. In this state of things it required real enthusiasm to drive a man along the unknown paths of emigration. Such social discontent as there was in England was probably among a less educated and capable class than that which formed the backbone of the new settlements, while prospects at home, for such discontent as was merely political, never became black enough to justify the abandonment of the struggle in England. Religious toleration involved a far greater advance in human thought than did political enfranchisement; a truth which was to be again exemplified in the history of the Puritan emigrants, when, in their new home, they had themselves obtained the upper hand. So vigorous, however, proved the power of what has been termed the dissidence of dissent, that new offshoots from the parent colony owed their origin to similar motives to those which had prompted the first settlement.

The story of the Pilgrim Fathers must always remain a sacred page in the annals of America. In the year 1607, certain Nonconformists from Scrooby in Nottinghamshire, dissatisfied with their treatment at home, sought shelter in Holland. After a ten years’ residence in Holland, they decided to emigrate to America. There was for a time some question of their finding a new home in Dutch America, but it was finally decided to go to Virginia. A patent was accordingly obtained in 1619 from the Virginia Company, and in May, 1620, the Mayflower set sail with 102 passengers. They landed, a good deal to the north of their intended destination, at Cape Cod in November, and in the following month founded the settlement of New Plymouth. While still on shipboard they had drawn up a solemn compact of government, covenanting and combining themselves together into a civil body politic, ‘by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws . . . as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony, unto which we promise all due obedience and submission.’ Their charter having been granted by the Virginia Company, and their actual settlement being in New England, it became necessary to obtain a new charter from the Company, which had been formed in 1620 to take over the rights of the Plymouth Company, which had never existed save on paper. Although Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the ruling spirit of the new Company, was no friend of Puritans, the new charter was readily granted; while an informal promise of connivance at Puritanism in the New World appears to have been obtained, before the Pilgrims set out, from the English Secretary of State. The first years of the Plymouth colony involved sufferings and deaths, against which only the most indomitable enthusiasm could have struggled with success. The Pilgrims proved the boast well founded that ‘it was not with them as with other men whom small things can discourage or small discontentments cause to wish themselves at home again.’ The funds for the original settlement had been mainly found by London adventurers, and at first there was no private property in land or goods among the individual settlers. The system, however, proved very inconvenient, and did not remain in force long. A great step in advance was made when, in 1626, it became possible to buy up the interests of the London merchants, and thus make the colony independent of outside interference. The original compact, as we have seen, involved a pure democracy, but the influence of Bradford, who was for many years governor, and the religious temper of the people, made the government a kind of theocracy, and, as new colonists appeared upon the scene who were not of the original elect, the franchise was rigorously confined to church members.

The foundation of Massachusetts Bay (1629) was the enactment upon a larger scale of what had been initiated by the Pilgrims. Upon the one hand, the Puritans desired a new country where they might realize their ideals in Church and State, and where they might find a refuge from tyranny at home, should the need arise; while, on the other hand, Charles I, it would seem, was himself not averse (whatever may have been the temper of Archbishop Laud) to the foundation of a colony, which would both act as a safety-valve for dissent and promote the interests of English shipping and trade. The Massachusetts charter, at any rate, contained no mention of conformity to the Church of England, and Winthrop, the contemporary historian of New England, asserts that when the colony was arraigned before the Privy Council in 1633 on the charge that it had become wholly separate from the Church and laws of England, it was learned from members of the Privy Council ‘that his Majesty did not intend to impose the ceremonies of the Church of England upon us; for that it was considered that it was the freedom from such things that made people come over to us; and it was credibly informed to the Council that this country would in time be very beneficial to England for masts, cordage, &c., if the Sound should be debarred.’

In one respect the Massachusetts charter involved a bold innovation. Hitherto a provision had been always inserted fixing the government of a chartered company in England. Such a clause was in the original draft, but was afterwards, according to Winthrop, advisedly omitted. The result was that by transferring the head quarters of the Company to America it became, in spite of, or rather by means of, its royal charter, a practically independent community, linked only by a vague allegiance to the English Crown and Parliament. How close was the connexion between the emigration to the New England colonies and religious discontent is proved by the figures. The Massachusetts Bay Company made its first settlement at Salem in 1629, and in 1630 the great emigration began. During this year there arrived more than 1,000 immigrants, and during the next ten years no less than 20,000 Englishmen found a new home in the colony. With the triumph of the Puritan party in England, this immigration almost entirely ceased, and there was some slight movement in the opposite direction. It should be remarked that several of the leaders of the English Puritans had been for some time in New England, notably the younger Vane, who had been Governor of Massachusetts for one year, but whose notions of universal tolerance were in advance of the public opinion of the colony.

Meanwhile democratic government had taken vigorous root on American soil. The first New England settlers, Mr. Bryce writes in his great work on The American Commonwealth, ‘were largely townsfolk, accustomed to municipal life and vestry meetings. They planted their tiny communities along the sea-shore and the banks of rivers, enclosing them with stockades against the warlike Indians. Each was obliged to be self-sufficing, because, divided by rocks and woods from the others. Each had its common pasture, on which the inhabitants turned out their cattle, and which officers were elected to manage. Each was a religious as well as a civil body politic, gathered round the church as its centre; and the equality which prevailed in the congregations prevailed also in civil affairs, the whole community meeting under a President as moderator to discuss affairs of common interest. Each such settlement was called a town or township, and was in fact a miniature commonwealth. . . . Its centre was a group of dwellings, often surrounded by a fence or wall, but it included a rural area of several square miles, over which farm-houses and clusters of houses began to spring up, when the Indians retired. The name “town” covered the whole of this area, which was never too large for all the inhabitants to come together to a central place of meeting. This town organization remained strong and close, the colonists being men of narrow means and held together in each settlement by the needs of defence. And though presently the towns became aggregated into counties, and the legislature and governor, first of the whole colony, and after 1776 of the State, began to exert their superior authority, the towns (which, be it remembered, remained rural communities, making up the whole area of the State) held their ground, and are to this day the true units of political life in New England, the solid foundation of that well-compacted structure of self-government which European philosophers have admired, and the new States of the West have sought to reproduce.’

How far the New England townships can be traced to institutions common to our Teutonic forefathers, or how far it was the direct outcome of religious congregationalism, is a question on which the authorities are not altogether agreed. Its significance, for present purposes, lies in the form of colonization which it implied. The Puritan colonists were no miscellaneous collection of all sorts and conditions of men, driven forth by distress at home or the love of adventure; they were a community, most of whose members possessed previous knowledge of each other, and who shared a common aim and common principles. They did not so much emigrate, as Gibbon Wakefield has pointed out, to avoid persecution as to find a home where their own religion might be the religion of the place; to form a separate church as much as a separate community. The instructions to the first governor enjoined that persons not conformable should not be suffered to remain within the limits of the grant, but should be shipped back to England. Socially the settlers contained men of different ranks. Many of the leaders were of distinguished family and of considerable property. In fine, the Puritan exodus resembled in many respects the departure of a Greek colony. But, if this were so, it is manifest that a new state of things was finding birth, which it would be very difficult to accommodate to the established views with regard to the relations of colonies and mother country held by the public men of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. There was needed a different age and different men to realize that colonization, carried on under the auspices of religion, need not be the mere outcome of protest against the existing order of things. The settlements in New Zealand, of Canterbury and Otago, founded in connexion with the English Church and the Free Church of Scotland, proved, under different circumstances, the part which religion can play in the founding of new colonies, even where the motives are absent which inspired the Puritans of New England. Be this as it may, it is not too much to say that the whole subsequent attitude of the New England colonies in their relations with England was set in motion by the circumstances of their origin, and their independent attitude towards the Commonwealth Government is yet more striking than the dexterous diplomacy by which they managed to elude the demands of the Stuart Council of Trade and Plantations.

But though, so far as English interference was concerned, the New England colonists showed a united front, in other ways, they soon were profoundly at issue with each other. It was inevitable that the same spirit which gave rise to dissent from the established order of things, should show itself in new ways among the original Protestants. The Massachusetts colony, resembling in this the Plymouth, democratic as it was in form, was in fact at first largely a theocracy; a government wherein the ministers exercised sway over their obedient flock. Such a form of government was as intolerable to many eager spirits in America as it was to many of Cromwell’s Ironsides in England. Roger Williams, a Puritan minister who had come to Massachusetts in 1631, having fallen out with the authorities on various grounds, was finally ordered to leave the colony. To avoid being sent back to England, he escaped, and founded the town of Providence a few miles south of the Massachusetts boundary. The new colony was founded on the principle of the complete separation of Church and State. Williams, as was inevitable, soon found himself out-distanced by some of his followers, who maintained that there ought to be ‘no . . . officers, because all are equal in Christ, therefore no masters nor officers, no laws nor orders, no corrections nor punishments.’ The principle of toleration, Williams clearly saw, did not extend to those who held such subversive views.

The Massachusetts authorities were hardly free of Williams when a new disturber of the peace appeared upon the scene. Whatever may have been Anne Hutchinson’s religious views, the idea of a preaching woman, who preached moreover against the ministers as under a covenant of works, was enough to secure her banishment. With Williams’s help Anne Hutchinson was able to obtain Rhode Island, on which were founded the towns of Portsmouth and Newport.

Between 1635 and 1640 emigrants from Massachusetts, dissatisfied with the narrow spirit of those who controlled the government, settled in the Connecticut valley and founded the towns which were afterwards named Hartford, Windsor, and Weatherfield. In 1639 they drew up the Fundamental Orders or Constitution, which conferred the franchise, or right to vote for the deputies, whose business it was to elect the governor and magistrates, upon ‘all that are admitted inhabitants in the several towns and have taken the oath of fidelity.’

Newhaven, on the other hand, was founded in 1638 by some English emigrants under John Davenport, a leading London Nonconformist minister, and T. Eaton, a rich London merchant. The government was intended to be based upon the strict lines of Bible precept, and the franchise was expressly confined to church members. Only one settler seems to have raised his voice against this limitation of the rights of citizenship, and even he did not carry his opposition to the extent of opposing by his vote the proposition. The meeting, having settled the question of civil government, proceeded to the foundation of a church. How serious a view the men of the time took of the responsibilities of official position may be gathered from the following fact. Complaint was made against one of the twelve proposed founders that he had taken an excessive rate for meal which he had sold. ‘Which he confessed with grief, and declared that having been smitten in his heart and troubled in his conscience, he restored such a part of the price back again with confession of his sin to the party, as he thought himself bound to do. And it being feared that the report of his sins was heard farther than the report of his satisfaction, a course was concluded to make the satisfaction known to as many as heard of the sin.’

But, while in the recesses of the individual conscience centrifugal forces were actively at work, the political instincts of the community were moving in an opposite direction. In 1642, prompted by the news from England and by the fear of an Indian war, Massachusetts proposed to the Plymouth, Connecticut, and Newhaven colonies the scheme of a confederation. In accordance with this proposal, articles of confederation were agreed upon in the following May between the four colonies, henceforth to be known as ‘the United Colonies of New England.’ A league, offensive and defensive, was entered into by the four colonies ‘that, as in nation and religion, so in other respects we be and continue one.’ Each member of the Confederation preserved complete independence with reference to its own private concerns, and the common charges, incurred on behalf of the Confederation, were to be borne by each colony in proportion to the number of its male population. A weak point in the scheme was that the management of affairs was left to a body of commissioners, wherein the representation of Massachusetts was only the same as that of the other less important and populous colonies. Inasmuch as six out of the commissioners agreeing had power to settle and determine any matter, Massachusetts might have to find the greater portion of the cost of a war, which its representatives had opposed and considered unnecessary. Nevertheless the articles of confederation were a very notable sign of the times, showing, as they did, at once the independent spirit and the constructive statesmanship of the Puritan colonists. It is true that the articles were formally justified on the ground that ‘by reason of the sad distractions in England, which they (the Indians) have heard of, and by which they know we are hindered both from that humble way of seeking advice, and reaping those comfortable fruits of protection which, at other times, we might well expect’; but it should be noted that, when the Massachusetts general court decided to omit declaring allegiance to King Charles I, they did not substitute words expressing allegiance to the Long Parliament, and, when the offer was made by the English Puritans to promote such legislation in Parliament as the New England people might desire, Winthrop declined the offer, lest, he explained, it should establish a precedent for the interference of the English Parliament. There were limits, however, to the centripetal forces promoted by political need. The colonists of Providence and Rhode Island and the settlers in Maine remained rigorously excluded from the association. ‘Concerning the islanders,’ wrote Brewster of Plymouth, ‘we have no conversing with them further than necessity or humanity may require.’ The dwellers on the Maine coast, according to Winthrop, ‘ran a different course from us both in their ministry and their civil government.’ They had ‘lately made a tailor their mayor, and had entertained one Hull, an excommunicated person and very contentious, for their minister.’

The province of Maine had been granted to Sir Ferdinando Gorges in 1639, but nothing very effective was done by him to make good his claim. After his death some of the Maine settlements established a government of their own, which, in 1653, Massachusetts, in spite of the scandalous past of the Maine settlers, condescended to absorb. After the Restoration, constant bickerings took place between the Massachusetts authorities and the heirs of Gorges. An attempt was made, with little success, to set up a new government for the province, but the New England influence was too strong, and, in 1678, the title of the Gorges family was purchased by Massachusetts, which henceforth, to the chagrin of the home authorities, governed Maine as Lord Proprietor.

New Hampshire, which had been granted to Mason in 1629 and again in 1635, had a shadowy existence until absorbed by Massachusetts in 1643. In 1679, however, it was constituted a royal province, and, although again united to Massachusetts for a time in 1685, it was not included within the limits of Massachusetts as defined by the charter of 1691, and henceforth remained a Crown province till the time of the Declaration of Independence.

Returning to the confederate colonies we may note that, important as were the articles of confederation in the history of New England thought, and though their practical effect counted for something during the continuance of the war with the Indians, known as Philip’s war, which broke out in 1676, their significance was to some extent diminished by the fact that two of the confederate colonies were in the nature of things not destined for separate life. A shrewd observer must have predicted that Plymouth would eventually be absorbed in Massachusetts, as happened in 1691; and that Newhaven could not maintain a separate existence apart from Connecticut. In fact it was absorbed in the latter as early as 1662.

Space forbids to deal with the subsequent relations of the New England colonies with the mother country, but it should be noted that though those relations were always coloured by the special character of the original emigration, still, as time went on, religion counted for less and trade for more of the discontent in New England. Unfortunately the dissenting interest in England, which became powerful from the time of the accession of William and Mary to the throne, and which should have been the natural ally of the New England colonists, was the great upholder of the mercantile system under which the interests of the colonies were kept subordinate to those of the home trade.

In Child’s New Discourse of Trade we see the conflict in sympathies between the Whig Nonconformist and the business man with his eyes directed to the main chance. At the same time a new generation had grown up in Massachusetts, the keen traders who carried on the slave trade with a light heart, and who had lost much of the religious fervour of the early colonists. In their case the grievance of the Navigation Acts served to keep open sores which religious indifference might otherwise have caused to be forgotten. In any case the circumstances of New England were too exceptional to draw conclusions from them with regard to the general relations of colonies and mother country.

But while the principles of dissent from the Established Church were striking deep root in the congenial soil of New England, the yet more far-reaching principle of religious toleration was called in aid to assist in the foundation of Maryland. George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, who had been Secretary of State under James I, had been interested in schemes of colonization of Newfoundland. He became a Roman Catholic in 1624, and henceforth lived in retirement. In 1632, however, he obtained a grant of Maryland from Charles I, but he died before the patent had been executed. The charter was conferred upon his son, who in 1634 dispatched a body of about 200 colonists. According to the third Lord Baltimore, writing in 1678, Lord Baltimore ‘had absolute liberty to carry over any from His Majesty’s dominions willing to go. But he found very few but such as for some reason or other could not live in other places, and could not conform to the laws of England relating to religion. These declared themselves willing to plant in this province, if they might have a general toleration settled by a law, by which all, of all sorts, who professed Christianity in general, might be at liberty to worship God in the manner most agreeable to their conscience without being subject to any penalties.’ It is true that the wording of the charter appeared to point to the establishment of the Church of England, but if the clause meant more than to forbid the establishment by law of the Church of Rome, it was probably a paper provision intended to conciliate English public opinion. We know that, in fact, the first immigrants did consist largely of Roman Catholics, and in 1649 a Toleration Act was enacted by the Maryland Assembly, under which no man might be molested for his religious opinions, provided he were a Christian. This Act appears to have been the result of a compromise between the rival factions of Roman Catholics and Puritans. During the period of the Commonwealth the Puritans obtained the upper hand, and acted in direct violation of the Toleration Act. In 1657, however, it was re-enacted, and henceforth obtained general recognition.

The subsequent grant of Carolina to a body of proprietors, of whom Lord Ashley, afterwards Lord Shaftesbury, was the presiding spirit, is a yet more striking example of the manner in which the benefit of religious toleration was exploited for business ends. Lord Baltimore was at least a Roman Catholic, and his primary motive may well have been to benefit those of his own faith, but Lord Shaftesbury was a cynical man of the world, who approached the question from the point of view of his own interests. It was doubtless such private interests which dictated the clause in the Carolina charter which conferred religious toleration on the ground that nonconformity to the Church of England would be, ‘by reason of the remote distance of those places,’ ‘no breach of the unity and conformity established in this nation.’ In a paper setting forth the inducements to form settlements in the new colony, a prominent place was given to the promise of full and free liberty of conscience. That the principle of religious toleration was, in spite of the letter of Acts of Parliament, gaining ground in England is shown by the fact that, even with these inducements held out to them, persons willing to emigrate were only to a very limited extent forthcoming. Those who did come forward, belonged for the most part to a class who were attracted by reasons other than religious. It would seem that the Fundamental Constitutions, which were drawn up by the philosopher John Locke, and which enacted that no man could be a free man who did not acknowledge a God, and that God is publicly and solemnly to be worshipped, were addressed for the most part to a community whose recognition of God was chiefly shown by taking His name in vain. The Carolinas, like the other American colonies, found in time their salvation in the presence of a more worthy kind of population, but there is little evidence to show that such a consummation was much assisted by the provisions, with regard to religion, of the Carolina charter.

The same motives, no doubt, actuated the proprietors of New Jersey, Berkeley and Carteret, in the concession and agreement made with those who should become settlers. No persons were to be molested for any difference in opinion or practice in matter of religious concernments, who did not actually disturb the civil peace. All were allowed ‘freely and fully to have and enjoy his and their judgements and consciences in matters of religion.’ Religious toleration is always held out as an inducement side by side with the promise of political privileges.

But while the reiterated promise of attractions of this sort fell somewhat flat on the ears of the Englishmen of the second half of the seventeenth century, a new colony arose, which, in its way, recalled the spirit which had laid the foundations of New England. The curious intolerance evinced by the members of nearly all Christian denominations, of the one sect which endeavoured to put in actual force the precepts of the founder of Christianity, is among the paradoxes of religious history. So strong, however, in the seventeenth century was the prejudice against Quakers, that the Royal charter which conferred Pennsylvania on Penn did not, in express terms, grant religious liberty. The only reference to religion in the charter was in a clause which enacted that, if any twenty of the colonists demanded his services, a minister of the Church of England should be allowed to reside in the province ‘without any denial or molestation whatsoever.’ Even the enforcement of the oath of allegiance was not abrogated in express terms. When religious toleration had been allowed in Carolina, it had been expressly enacted in the charter that English statutes to the contrary should not prevail in the colony. The absence of such express enactment in the Pennsylvania patent might have led to serious results. At a later date, when an Act of Parliament was passed in England entitling Quakers to give affirmations not on oath in law courts, it was maintained by the Governor of Pennsylvania that, inasmuch as the same Act expressly forbade Quakers to hold the office of justice of the peace, the new law applied to Pennsylvania, and that accordingly it would be no longer legal to appoint Quaker magistrates. The public opinion of the colony was, however, too unanimous for the liberties of the colonists to have ever been in serious jeopardy.

Before the foundation of Pennsylvania Penn had already become interested in American property. In 1673 Lord Berkeley sold his half-share in the province of New Jersey to a Quaker, Fenwick, in trust for another Quaker, Byllinge. Byllinge became insolvent, and handed over his interests to trustees, of whom Penn was one. A colony was dispatched to West Jersey, and the town of Burlington was founded. A constitution had been drafted by Penn, providing that no man was to have power over another man’s conscience. At first difficulties arose through the new colony being claimed to be within the legal jurisdiction of New York, but Penn persuaded the Duke of York to grant a formal release of all his powers of sovereignty in West Jersey to the proprietors of West Jersey. Penn’s attention being thus directed to America, the fortunate fact that the king was indebted to his father for a sum which had never been paid, gave the excuse to petition Charles II for the grant of ‘a tract of land in America, lying north of Maryland, on the east bounded with Delaware River, on the west limited as Maryland, and northward to extend as far as plantable.’ The scheme appeared to be ‘a holy experiment.’ ‘For many,’ wrote Penn, ‘are drawn forth to be concerned with me, and perhaps this way of satisfaction hath more the hand of God in it than a downright payment. . . . For the matters of liberty and privilege I purpose that which is extraordinary, and to leave myself and succession no power of doing mischief, that the will of one man may not hinder the good of a whole country.’

In 1681 about three thousand Quakers found a new home in Pennsylvania. In the following year Penn visited the colony, and the city of Philadelphia was founded, which, by the end of the century, had a population of about four thousand, and fifty years later was the largest city of the English colonies, with a population of thirty thousand. The very liberal character of the Pennsylvanian government, together with the fact that Penn had a Dutch mother, and had travelled and was well known in Germany, led to Pennsylvania becoming the favourite resort of the German immigrants from the Palatinate. The Jews who emigrated from Europe went for the most part to New York, and the French Huguenots found mainly a new home in New York and South Carolina, but members of German sects of a kindred nature to the Quakers naturally gravitated to Pennsylvania, and these were followed by a far more numerous emigration from the Rhenish Palatinate, which was ravaged by the French troops in the great war. In 1708 and 1709 more than thirty thousand of these Germans were brought to England and thence carried to America; and a steady stream of emigration went on for many years. The majority went to the valley of the Susquehanna, where their language still survives in what is known as Pennsylvania Dutch.

Whatever may have been the shortcomings in the original charter, and in spite of the squalid controversies which were to ensue between the interests of proprietor and people, none the less the foundation of Pennsylvania marked a distinct forward step in the history of human progress. That those who had been under a social and religious ban in the New World as well as in the Old, should possess a haven of refuge where the economic advantages of just dealing might be written large in the prosperous records of an advancing community, involved the death-blow of another prejudice, and the recognition of the truth that because men styled themselves ‘Friends,’ they did not thereby become hostes humani generis. Although Pennsylvania was recruited from German and Scottish-Irish immigrants, nevertheless the Quaker character of the colony continued to the last, and remained one of the most striking object-lessons which English America affords to the student of modern progress.

Although no single colony owed its foundation to religious dissent after Pennsylvania, the motives of religious as well as civil discontent were actively at work throughout the first half of the eighteenth century in promoting emigration to the American colonies. The fatal statute of William III, which prohibited the exportation of all woollen goods from Ireland, excepting into England and Wales, appears undoubtedly to have been the starting-point of Ireland’s economic misfortunes. The emigration to America, which began soon after, was the direct consequence of this measure. ‘I am not in the least sorry to hear,’ wrote Swift, about 1725, ‘of the great numbers going to America, although very much for the causes that drive them from us, since the uncontrolled maxim that “people are the riches of a nation” is no maxim here under our circumstances. We have neither manufactures to employ them, nor food to support them.’ The emigrants were from Ulster, for the most part of Scoto-Irish stock, the descendants of the men who had been planted by James I and Cromwell to form an English garrison in Ireland. No wonder that in such circumstances the Ulster emigrants felt a special bitterness towards England. Moreover, religious discontent was also at work. The men of Ulster were for the most part Presbyterians, but the Established Church, instead of joining hands in a common struggle against the Roman Catholic surroundings, enforced its position of superiority by petty interferences most galling to a high-spirited people. So great was the exodus from Ireland that, between 1730 and 1770, more than one-half of the Presbyterian population of Ulster found a new home in America, and these formed at least one-sixth of the total population of the colonies at the time of the Declaration of Independence. The bulk of this emigration was directed to Pennsylvania, and the emigrants occupied the mountain country west of the Susquehanna, whence they penetrated into Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas. The invasion into Virginia was great enough to overthrow the preponderance of the Cavalier aristocracy, while it gave a new character to the population of North Carolina. Considering their heritage of wrongs, we might well expect that the Scottish-Irish would have thrown themselves into the struggle with England. But, at least so far as the men of South Carolina were concerned, this was not the case. They were themselves the victims of taxation without representation, and were more concerned with the pressing troubles of frontier life than with the speculative complaints regarding the tea duty or Navigation Acts. Their attitude during the first four years of the war was one of indifferent neutrality. What finally drove them into the arms of the revolutionary party was the treatment which they received from Tarleton’s Horse in 1780. Henceforth ‘the dormant fierceness and indomitable courage’ of the men, who were descended from the defenders of Londonderry, was aroused, and indifference gave place to implacable hatred.

The last founded of the thirteen colonies, Georgia, owed nothing to religious discontent, philanthropy replacing in this case the need of religious expansion. The well-intentioned scheme of Oglethorpe at once to relieve the destitute and to strengthen the Empire by forming the unemployed at home into a frontier guard against Spanish and Indian aggression has no bearing upon the subject of this chapter.

Putting aside, however, the first colony and the last, Virginia and Georgia, and New York, which stands on a different footing, all of the American colonies which formed the original United States owed, if not their existence, at least much of their prosperity to the influence of religious dissent.

Considering these things, it is in no way remarkable that the very able men, who from about 1830 sought to carry into effect systematic colonization, recognized the part which might be played therein by the appeal to religious convictions. Times had happily changed, so that there was no room for colonies as havens of refuge from religious intolerance at home, but the old feeling, which had led men to go out in congregations with their own ministers, might find still its satisfaction amidst new surroundings. The aim, as avowed by Gibbon Wakefield, was ‘to plant sectarian colonies; that is, colonies with the strong attraction for superior emigrants of a peculiar creed in each colony’: and Canterbury and Otago, as we have seen, were the partial fulfilment of such aim. Recognizing that in all successful colonization women must play a great, if not the leading part, the men of 1830 sought to enlist the religious sympathies of women in their undertakings. They sought, with some success, to shake the Established Church out of the apathy with which hitherto it had regarded colonial questions. Assuredly it was not much to the credit of the English Church that it was not until the United States had become an independent Power that there were bishops of the English Church upon American soil. ‘Until the Association was formed,’ Wakefield wrote, ‘which made New Zealand a British colony, nobody had proposed to establish bishoprics in new settlements: it was only in old colonies, which had made considerable progress in population, and in which most of the settlers had become Dissenters either from the Church of England or from all religion, that bishops had been hitherto appointed. We asked for a bishop for the first settlement in New Zealand. Everybody laughed at us. We could hardly obtain any serious attention to our proposal. The Colonial Office, which hated our whole proceedings, sneered at the episcopal scheme, and at us for making it, all the more openly because the public, so far as the public thought at all about the matter, supported the gentlemen in Downing Street in treating us as visionary enthusiasts . . . and even leading members of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, with the Bishop of London at their head, thought our proposal absurdly impracticable. We persevered, however. At length one of us, Dr. Hinds, the present Dean of Chichester, converted the late Archbishop of Canterbury to our view. By degrees the suggestion made way in high quarters, and became the parent of the bishoprics of Tasmania, South Australia, South Africa, Australia Felix, &c., &c.’ That, in order that it should be called in aid of the work of colonization, religion need not take the form of indignant protest against the existing order of things, is a truth which, when stated, appears self-evident; nevertheless, no attempt was made in modern times to give practical application to it before it found expression in the conduct of the New Zealand Company. To Wakefield himself religious colonization was purely a question of policy. ‘His own sympathies,’ as Dr. Garnett tells us, ‘were by no means ecclesiastical, . . . but to get his plans adopted . . . and to secure desirable emigrants for his beloved colony, he would have transplanted the Grand Lama of Tibet with all his praying wheels, and did actually nibble at the Chief Rabbi.’ Happily for the success of the plan, the High Church Peelites, who were associated with Wakefield, drew their inspiration from their own convictions, so that the fire of religious fervour could be added to the dry light of philosophic reason.

Books which may be consulted on Subject of preceding Chapter.

W. Besant. Coligny.

Doyle, J. A. The English in America, the Puritan Colonies. 2 vols. 1887.

Chapters i and ii by the same author in Vol. vii, The United States of the Cambridge Modern History.

Palfrey, J. G. History of New England. 1859-92.

Macdonald, W. Select Charters illustrative of American History, 1606-1775. 1899.

McCrady, E. History of South Carolina. 1st vol. ‘Under the Proprietary Government, 1670-1719.’ 1897.

Fiske, J. The Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America. 2nd vol. 1899.

Winsor, J. Narrative and Critical History of America. Vol. iii.

Channing, E. A Student’s History of the United States. 1898.

Wakefield, E. Gibbon. A View of the Art of Colonization. 1849.

It has been already pointed out that the motives which prompted the European nations to enter upon the field of colonization were in the main two, viz. the desire to win converts for the Church, and the desire to win wealth for themselves. Unhappily the missionary zeal was soon exhausted. When it was found that the unknown lands were peopled, not by civilized communities (as had been the expectation of Columbus) but by savages, weak for the most part in body and in mind, the work of religion was left to the priest; and laymen more and more confined themselves to the material side of the quest. Moreover, when the tide of Turkish aggression had been finally stemmed at Lepanto, and when the Reformation had opened a fissure in Christendom, the situation became radically altered. Colonists of the Puritan type, it must be admitted, appeared to found their ideal far more upon the Old Testament than upon the New, and, with a few honourable exceptions, seemed to regard the natives as Perizzites and Jebusites to be overthrown, rather than as brothers to become partakers in the mysteries of Christ. It is to the lasting credit of the Roman Catholic Church, and especially of the Jesuit Society, that it never faltered in the prosecution of its mission, and therefore succeeded in influencing the native tribes, whether in Canada, or in Brazil, or Paraguay, as no other Europeans, with the exception perhaps of the Moravian missionaries, have succeeded in influencing them.

Meanwhile, colonies, as the outcome of discovery, could only be justified as means to wealth. As such, the Spanish and Portuguese possessions seemed to have justified themselves abundantly. To all men gold and silver are the most obvious signs of wealth. The bullion which poured into Spain seemed the sure basis of national prosperity. In order, however, to remain rich, it is not enough to have riches, one must also know how to use them. The whole industry of the Spanish possessions was at first thrown into the channel of mining. To such lengths was this carried that the colonists depended for their food, as well as for manufactured goods, on the mother country. At the beginning of the sixteenth century there appears to have been a sudden development of Spanish agriculture and industry. But this was almost wholly due to the introduction of foreign capital and labour, and reactionary measures, which caused the withdrawal of these, nipped this source of prosperity in the bud. Meanwhile, the colonial demand forced up the price of foodstuffs and manufactures, and the Spaniards, unable to meet even the home, much less the colonial, demand, found themselves undersold in their own markets by foreign producers and manufacturers. So little was trade a subject of solicitude, that, in spite of the jealous character of the Spanish régime, protective tariffs were not imposed except to a very small extent. The one aim and object of Spanish policy was to prevent the export of bullion. How successful the Spaniards were in this we may learn from the old writer, Mun, who, about 1628, notes that ‘gold and silver is so scarce in Spain that they are forced to use base copper money.’ Of course, as Mun points out, ‘treasure is obtained by a necessity of commerce.’ It is impossible to doubt but that it was, in part, the object-lesson afforded by Spain’s inability to profit by the riches of her colonies, which prompted the policy which is generally known as the mercantile system. The same Mun, whose contemptuous criticism of Spanish methods has been quoted above, is generally acknowledged to have been the first English exponent of the system. The connexion between economic doctrine and colonial development were so close that it is impossible to omit in a book dealing with the genesis of the English colonies all mention of the mercantile system. In Adam Smith’s words, ‘the title of Mun’s book, England’s treasure in (sic) foreign trade, became a fundamental maxim in the political economy, not of England only but of all other commercial countries.’ The golden rule was to sell more to strangers yearly than we consume of theirs in value. Hence the problem of statesmanship became how to increase exports at the expense of imports. For this purpose it was necessary to look to the manufacturer as the source of wealth, and rigidly to disregard the interests of the consumer. It was from this point of view that the system encountered the hostility of Adam Smith, and it is on this ground that it finds its counterpart in the commercial policy of the United States and of other modern countries.

How close was the connexion between trade policy and colonial expansion may be gathered from the following reflection. The well-known chapters of Adam Smith which deal with colonies, the motives of their establishment, the causes of their prosperity, and their advantages, arise incidentally out of the statement that exportations were encouraged under the mercantile system sometimes ‘by the establishment of colonies,’ which procured not only particular privileges, but sometimes a monopoly for the goods and merchants of the country which established them. It is impossible then to enter into the spirit of past colonization unless we can form a clear idea of the economic system, which so long controlled both theory and practice.

What then was the mercantile system? Like other things, it changes its aspect from the point of view from which it is regarded. From the point of view of the convinced free trader it is the great mainstay of monopolies and vested interests, but historically it marked a definite progress from what had gone before. ‘The essence of the system,’ writes the German economist, Schmoller, ‘lies not in some doctrine of money or of the balance of trade: not in tariff barriers, protection duties, or navigation laws; but in something far greater, viz. in the total transformation of society and its organization, as well as of the State and its institutions, in the replacing of a local and territorial economic policy by that of the national State.’ To cast the weight of the power of the State into the scales of the balance, so as to protect national trade against foreign competition, seemed the natural policy, and it is doubtful whether such policy was not at the time wise. In order to understand the situation we must remember how recent was the sense of national unity political or economic. The splendid ideal of Dante, the divine temporal power, side by side with the divine spiritual power, represented the best thought of the Middle Ages. In conflict with this ideal there were no highly organized States, but merely the anarchy of warring feudal chiefs, and the jealousies of rival town communities. Even in the British Isles, where, for geographical and other reasons, the sense of national life took early root, the neighbourhood of a hostile Scotland and the Hundred Years’ War, with its continental interests, retarded the growth of genuine unity. The work of the seventeenth century was to fight its way up from local to national sentiment. Narrow as may appear the ideals of mercantilism, and unjust as may have been its consequences, it is none the less certain that it grew out of a still narrower system, and that the corporate egoism which it embodied was a distinct advance upon the separate egoisms of mediaeval life. Nevertheless, by giving to national interests a restricted meaning, which did not include the interests of the colonies, the system sowed the dragon’s teeth of future calamity. Its triumph involved the final abandonment of the view that the colonists were merely Englishmen settled beyond the sea, with all the rights and privileges of other Englishmen. That view had been admirably expressed by an early writer: ‘A State that intends to draw out a colony for the inhabiting of another country must look to the daughters and the mother with an equal eye, remembering that a colony is a part and member of her own body.’ Henceforth the colonies were to be regarded as ‘foreign plantations,’ and, as was pointed out by Seeley, the idea of possession became confused with the idea of settlement.

The mercantile system, or Colonial Pact, as with unconscious irony it was called in France, found expression in the following restrictions upon freedom of trade. (1) Goods could only be imported into or exported from the colony in ships belonging to the mother country or to the colony. (2) The export trade of the colony was to a great extent confined to the home market. (3) The goods of the mother country obtained a total or partial monopoly in the colonial market; while (4) in return for this, colonial products received preferential treatment in the mother country. Lastly, (5) the colonies were prohibited from setting on foot manufactories so as to compete with the home industries.

(1) For very many years the endeavour of the English legislature had been to secure the trade of England for English ships. At the same time the frequent recurrence of Acts of Parliament with this object in view suggests that such legislation was not very successful. Moreover under the early colonial charters freedom of trade was generally allowed at least for a term of years. In this state of things the active and enterprising Dutch had secured almost the entire carrying trade between England and the colonies. Owing to an abundance of cheap money and of skilled labour, the Dutch were able to build ships at less cost than the cost at which they could be built in England, and were thus able to carry goods with profit at a lower freight than that charged by the English vessels. Mun relates how he had heard ‘Italians discourse of the simplicity of Englishmen, that their thoughts and jealousies attend only upon the Spanish and French greatness, never once suspecting but constantly embracing the Netherlanders as our best friends and allies; when, in truth, there is no people in Christendom who do more undermine, hurt, and eclipse us daily in our navigation and trade both at home and abroad.’ The Navigation Act of 1651 proved that the English had learnt the lesson, and the general opinion of, at least, recent economists has been that these laws did help to secure to England its naval supremacy.

An ordinance of 1650 having already forbidden the ships of any foreign nation from coming to or trading with any of the English colonies in America without first obtaining a licence from the English authorities, under the Act of the following year ‘for increase of shipping and encouragement of the navigation of this nation,’ no colonial goods could be imported into England or Ireland or any of the colonies unless the ship in which they were brought was owned by an English or colonial proprietor, and had an English captain and a crew, the majority of whom were English. European goods could not be imported into England or the colonies except in English bottoms, as explained above, or in such foreign ships ‘as do truly and properly belong to the people of that country or place, of which the said goods are the growth, production, or manufacture.’ The insertion of this provision explains the intention of the statute. The Dutch were neither producers nor manufacturers, but mainly confined themselves to carrying other nations’ wares. The English had reached the conclusion, in Mr. G. L. Beer’s words, that one of two alternatives had become necessary: ‘war à outrance or the closest possible union was the only solution.’ Neither at this time nor later did the Dutch encourage the idea of union, so that there only remained war—commercial, when not political. The later statute of Charles II, generally known as the First Navigation Act, in substance re-enacted the same provision, except that the proportion of the crew, which must be English, was fixed at three-fourths.

(2) With regard to restrictions upon the export of colonial products, English regulations compared favourably with those of other countries. The first Navigation Law dealt only with shipping, and when, under the Act of Charles II, it was sought also to benefit the English trader by giving him the command of the colonial products, it was only with regard to certain commodities that the English colonies were confined to the market of the mother country. These ‘enumerated’ commodities consisted of sugar, tobacco, cotton-wool, indigo, ginger, fustic or other dyeing material. At a later date hides and skins were placed among the ‘enumerated’ articles, while sugar was in 1731 removed from the list. When in 1705 premiums were granted on the importation of naval stores, including masts, yards, and bowsprits, naval stores were also included among the ‘enumerated’ commodities. The non-enumerated articles could, for very many years, be exported to all parts of the world. When, however, lumber and rice were removed from the list of ‘enumerated’ commodities, their export was confined to countries south of Cape Finisterre, and in the time of George III this provision was extended to all non-enumerated articles. It must be noted that among the non-enumerated articles were some of the most important products of America and the West Indies, e.g. grain of all sorts, salt provisions, and fish. Moreover, there was complete freedom in the intercolonial trade.

With regard to (3) the importation into the colonies of European goods, English policy was, on the whole, generous. It is true that an Act of Charles II compelled all European goods to be first landed in England before being exported to the colonies, but liberal drawbacks were allowed upon the duties paid upon the re-exportation of the goods to the colonies. These drawbacks were intended indeed to benefit the English trader and not the colonist, but their result to the colonies was none the less favourable. The mother country ‘might frequently suffer both in her revenue by giving back a great part of the duties which had been paid upon the importation of such goods; and in her manufactures by being undersold in the colony markets, in consequence of the easy terms upon which foreign manufactures could be carried thither by means of those drawbacks.’ But this was no concern of the colonist, and according to Adam Smith, before the passing of an Act of Parliament in 1763, which put matters on a less indulgent footing, ‘many different sorts of foreign goods might have been bought cheaper in the plantations than in the mother country, and some may still.’ Hutchinson, the historian of Massachusetts, affirms that after the imposition of the memorable duty upon tea, ‘poor people in America drank the same tea in quality at 3s. the lb. which the people in England drank at 6s.’

(4) In another direction colonial interests were promoted, avowedly and in good faith. Prohibitive duties were placed upon the importation into England of foreign sugar, tobacco, and pig iron, so as to secure the English market for the produce of the colonies. With the same intention the cultivation of tobacco had been strictly forbidden in England. Moreover, the growth of certain products was encouraged by giving bounties upon their export to England. Of these the most important were those connected with naval stores. The practical monopoly which Scandinavia possessed of the tar, pitch, hemp, and timber needed for the navy was for generations a constant source of irritation and possible danger to England. Among the motives which had prompted the colonization of Virginia, one of the most powerful had been the opportunity thus afforded for the production of naval stores. ‘The masting and caulking of Gloriana’s ships’ had been already in the thoughts of sixteenth-century discoverers. Nevertheless, in spite of the solicitude of the Board of Trade, and of attempts to form chartered companies for the importation of stores, not much was achieved in this direction. In the reign of Anne bounties were conferred upon the importation into England of tar, pitch, hemp, masts, yards, and bowsprits. During the remainder of the colonial period the subject was frequently dealt with by Acts of Parliament. With regard to tar and allied products some stimulus to importation did undoubtedly result. The growth of hemp proved a failure in the colonies, mainly because it required greater skill in its cultivation than it received in the colonies. The question of utilizing the forests of America for the supply of timber for the royal navy was rendered difficult by the fact that the chief mast-producing district was New England. In New England ship-building had become a very important industry, so that the bounties held out offered less prospect of gain than could be got from the profits of the native industry. Moreover the matter was complicated by colonial disgust with the provision in the Massachusetts charter which reserved to the Crown the best trees. The Crown Surveyor found himself helpless in the face of the opposition around him. ‘I have showed the people the direction for making pitch, hemp, and tar,’ the unhappy surveyor wrote, ‘but, while they can cut pine-trees and steal them, they don’t think it worth while to do anything else, and are inclined to laugh at us for proposing it.’ In this state of things, little heed was taken of the promises held out by the English authorities. Bounties were also given on the export of indigo, raw silk, and other products. Indeed the loyalist who wrote under the signature of ‘Massachusatensis,’ asserts that the amount of bounties and encouragements paid out of the British revenue upon articles of American produce imported into England exceeded fourfold the amount of the duties with which the American trade was charged, but this statement may be somewhat exaggerated.

(5) But if even, when his benefit was intended, the independent American preferred very often to gang his own gait, careless of English bounties, it is obvious how irksome to a high-spirited nation must have been the legislation which sought to prevent it from developing its native manufactures. It is true, of course, that even to the end of the colonial period the grievance was not a very practical one, inasmuch as, in any case, the cheapness of land and the dearness and scarcity of labour must have stood greatly in the way of the development of manufactures. At the same time there had been some manufacturing on a small scale from very early times. As early as 1640 we hear of the manufacture of linen, wool, and other cloths in New England, and there were also ironworks and leather manufactories. The importance of the colonial hat trade is attested by its calling forth an Act of Parliament for its suppression. The woollen industry was the special favourite of English legislation, and an English statute prohibited the export of wool even from one plantation to another. Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas, with their staple products, had little temptation to embark in manufactures. It was in New England and New York, where there was no tobacco nor rice to exchange for English goods, that the scarcity of gold and silver made the temptation strong to set on foot domestic industries. It was the want of commodities to make returns for English goods which, as Lord Cornbury, the Governor of New York, wrote, ‘sets men’s wits to work, and has put them on a trade which I am sure will hurt England in a little time, viz. the woollen manufacture on Long Island and Connecticut. These colonies, which are but twigs to the main tree, ought to be kept entirely dependent upon and subservient to England, and that can never be if they are suffered to go on in the notions they have, that, as they are Englishmen, so they may set up the same manufactures here as people may do in England.’ With reference to iron, while encouragement was given to the manufacture of pig and bar iron, an absolute prohibition was imposed upon the erection of steel furnaces and slit mills^[1].

Such then was the mercantile system, so far as it affected the relations of mother country and colony. The system involved the theory that the colony was to be always the producer of the raw material, which the industry of the mother country should work up. By implication it denied the equality of colonial Englishmen with Englishmen at home, and by this means poisoned the wells of common patriotism. That Great Britain suffered more than other nations for her adoption of the system was not due to her greater guilt—in fact no other country had treated her colonies so generously—but rather to the material of which her colonists were composed. Planted in a temperate climate, surrounded by difficulties sufficient to make demands upon character, yet not sufficient to paralyse effort, a new people had been growing into manhood, whose full development was to mean the turning of a fresh page in the records of human history. The mercantile system, at worst, wrought pin-pricks on the sturdy frame of the youthful colonies, but pin-pricks are keenly felt and as keenly resented, while the dull pain of the cramping fetters may be borne resignedly for many years. The particular colonies were of course affected very differently by the mercantile system. The southern colonies, Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas, found a ready market for their staple products, and suffered little if at all from the action of the mother country. It was in the New England colonies and in New York that the shoe chiefly pinched. Yet even here the opportunities for evasion were so many, and the British official for the most part so helpless in his contest with the slim colonial trader, that it is impossible to gauge the actual effects of British legislation. Perhaps, in the long run, the worst result of the system was the lowering of the public conscience, which is the inevitable outcome of continuous successful evasion of the law. The difficulties of what is known as the critical period of American history, the period which followed upon the close of the War of Independence, were largely the heritage of a time wherein resentment at bad laws had led to contempt of law in general. In the artificial atmosphere of the mercantile system, quack remedies, such as inconvertible paper-money and land banks, found a monstrous growth. It is for their government having been the direct or indirect cause of these economic sins rather than for any acts of actual political misfeasance that Englishmen, in the study of American history, can never quite put off the white sheet.

The dominant policy of the time was well exemplified by the case of the West Indies. In these every encouragement was given to the cultivation of sugar. A practical monopoly was secured in the home market, and the slave trade, which secured a regular supply of labour for the planters, was the object of special solicitude. The interests of the British manufacturers forbade that the colonies should refine their own sugar, and the industry was, so far as possible, confined to the mother country. In this respect English methods compared unfavourably with French, the French islands possessing successful refineries. Adam Smith notes the change which followed the conquest of Grenada by the English.

It is unnecessary here to follow in detail the ghost of the mercantile system as it haunted British legislation till the final repeal of the timber duties in 1849. Clearly as all now must recognize that the revolt of the American colonies involved the doom of the old system, the statesmen of the day did not so read the signs of the times. It was impossible, however, permanently to close the American market to the West Indies, and gradually, under the influence of the principle of reciprocity, which gave favoured treatment to foreign nations in return for similar treatment, the system became so riddled with exceptions that it could hardly be said to exist. So far as its influence extended, it did benefit the colonies, and it was a serious blow to the West India interests when colonial sugar lost its preference in the home market. Moreover, the uncertainty of English legislation was an undoubted evil. Only a few years before the final triumph of Free Trade, the English tariff had contained provisions under which various new protected interests were created in the colonies. In Canada the complaint was not so much against Free Trade as against the particular circumstances in which it had been brought about.

In looking upon the whole history of the mercantile system, the question cannot but occur whether, if mercantilism was a necessary step in the evolution of the modern nation out of the mediaeval locality, it might not have found the remedy for the evils which it undoubtedly brought about, by a yet wider conception which should merge the separate nation in a wider corporate whole. Just as the nation was an advance upon the town community of the Middle Ages, so the nation itself might have given place to the ‘grand marine empire’ advocated by Pownall. An imperial Zollverein, with free interchange of commodities and uniform duties against the world without, would have been the fulfilment and not the negation of the mercantilist idea. How far such a state of things would have been desirable, and how it would have worked in practice, are difficult questions, which happily we are not concerned to answer. It is enough to note that at the time of the American Revolution, only one voice was raised in favour of such a solution of the problem, that of Thomas Pownall, who had been Governor of Massachusetts. Pownall received no support for his policy either in England or the colonies. Organized interests in England were still too strong to admit the colonists on a footing of complete equality. The thoughts of the colonists themselves had been turned to sterner ways of enforcing their claim to equal rights.

Books on the Mercantile System.

Adam Smith: Wealth of Nations. Book IV, Chapters i, vii, and viii.

T. Mun: England’s Treasure by Foreign Trade, 1664 (written earlier).

J. Child: A New Discourse of Trade, 1698.

F. List: The National System of Political Economy. Tr. by S. S. Lloyd. 1885.

Schmoller: The Mercantile System. Economic Classics. 1895.

W. Cunningham: Growth of English Industry and Commerce. 3rd ed. 1896.

The economic chapter by the same author in the volume on The Renaissance of The Cambridge Modern History.

G. L. Beer: Commercial Policy of England towards the American Colonies, 1893, and Cromwell’s Policy in its Economic Aspect. 1902.

Eleanor L. Lord: Industrial Experiments in the British Colonies of North America. 1898.

M. P. Leroy-Beaulieu’s La Colonisation chez les peuples modernes is especially valuable from the economic standpoint.

The greatest difficulty confronting the colonist, from the first days of the Spanish West Indian settlements till the times of the Johannesburg gold mines of to-day, has always been the scarcity and inconstancy of the labour supply. It was not from the general depravity of fallen human nature that the institution of negro slavery took its rise, but from the economic exigencies of colonial life. It is among the commonplaces of history that the introduction of negro slavery was first effectively suggested by the Christian missionary, Las Casas, who had well earned his title of the Protector of the Indians. The economic necessity of some kind of slavery was well exemplified by the report of the Commissioners sent out from Spain in 1517. The object of Cardinal Ximenes in sending them had been the enfranchisement of the Indians, and they were accompanied and prompted by Las Casas. Nevertheless they arrived at the conclusion that, unless the land was to remain uncultivated, native labour must be employed, while the only way to secure this, in a climate where the means of bare subsistence were so ready at hand, and in the case of a people so averse to labour as were the Indians, was to employ some form of compulsion. The Commissioners were therefore unable to recommend the discontinuance of the system of the repartimientos, or enforced distribution of the natives among the Spanish employers. At the same time they endeavoured to improve the moral and material condition of the Indians by securing a more rigid enforcement of the regulations enacted on their behalf. Las Casas, in despair at the failure of his plans to free the Indians, sought to find a substitute in negro labour. It is true that a few negro slaves had been introduced into the West Indies as early as 1503, but it was not till the adoption of Las Casas’s advice by Charles V that a regular commerce grew up in slaves between Africa and America. Although, however, negro slavery was first set on foot in the West Indies by Spain, it was not Spain which mainly developed the system. The formal partition of the world between Spain and Portugal assigned Africa to the latter, so that the control of the sources of supply was outside the Spanish jurisdiction. Moreover, the Spaniards were able to work their gold and silver mines with Indian labour, though both the waste of life was enormous and the output never attained the dimensions which it might have reached under more economic management. The Spaniards, however, satisfied with the natural advantages which they enjoyed, and not being by nature a commercial people, were at once too proud and too lazy to enter into the fierce trade rivalry of the European Powers, which forged the fetters of the mercantile system.

The geographical position of Brazil, lying at the point of America nearest to West Africa, made it a natural terminus of the slave traders. Meanwhile the plantation system of the French and English West India Islands, with its feverish exploitation of the land under the culture of the staple product, sugar, created an urgent need for negro slave labour. At the same time the commercial greed of the two maritime nations, Holland and England, was interested in feeding the appetite of the West India planter. The slave trade and slavery were concomitant symptoms, in the ghastly records of which it is hard to say which was cause and which effect. How dull was the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century conscience on questions of common humanity, where black men were concerned, is illustrated in a variety of ways. The first English slave trader, Sir John Hawkins, was a man of genuine piety and goodness, and it caused little shock to any one that such an enterprise was carried on in a ship which bore the name of Jesus. Queen Elizabeth at first felt some qualms of conscience at the trade, but these did not prevent her taking profits from the new industry. At a later date, among the shareholders of the New Royal Africa Company, founded in 1672 mainly with the object of carrying on the slave trade, we find the name of the philosopher John Locke. The upright and religious New Englanders thought it no shame to use their ships for importing slaves into the southern colonies. Assuredly it would have been impossible to profit by the advantages of slavery, unless men had been blind to the horrors of the slave trade. The economic effect of this system upon the West Indies and the Southern States of North America it is impossible to exaggerate. The tendency to concentrate all effort upon the growth of a few staple products was thereby fostered, if it was not created. Thus the introduction of negroes into Virginia synchronized with the development of tobacco growing upon a large scale. That cultivation, by means of slave labour, was for a long time extremely profitable is abundantly clear. The net produce, we are told, of a plantation in St. Domingo paid the purchase-money in six years, and Adam Smith states that the rent of a West India estate was paid by the rum and molasses obtained from it, leaving all other produce as profit. There was, however, always something feverish and unnatural about the prosperity of these countries depending upon slavery, like the luxuriance of plants which grow in some poisonous marsh. In fact, they were living on their capital. The exigencies of the growth of the staple product necessitated the gradual exhaustion of the soil. The economic victory always lay with the competitor which had entered last into the lists. Thus the older Antilles gave place to Jamaica, which was in turn displaced by the French islands, which again yielded the palm to Cuba. The efforts which are now, with labour and difficulty, being made to secure for the West India islands a variety of products and industries owe their necessity in great measure to the state of things brought about by negro slavery. Be this as it may, unhealthy as were from the first the conditions of West India production, they gave great satisfaction to public opinion at home. According to the received doctrine of the day, colonies were useful so far as they gave employment to English capital in industries which did not compete with the English agriculturist or manufacturer. From this point of view, the West Indies were model colonies, and so dominant was this line of thought that the American economist, Mr. G. L. Beer, has maintained that Cromwell’s motive in seeking to remove the New England colonists to the West Indies was to nip in the bud possible commercial rivalry. Economic ideals and vested interests, then, both tended to maintain the alliance between the West Indies and negro slavery. A main cause for congratulation in the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713 was the Assiento clause, or privilege conferred upon English shipping of carrying negro slaves to the Spanish-American colonies. England engaged to furnish 4,800 slaves annually, and, in return, was entitled to send two ships annually to the Spanish possessions. As late as 1775, the Board of Trade ‘could not allow the colonies to check or discourage a traffic so beneficial to the nation.’ Mr. Ireland quotes the language used by Lord Stowell in a judgement delivered in 1827: ‘Slavery was a very favoured introduction into the colonies; it was deemed a great source of the mercantile interest of the country, and was on that account largely considered by the mother country as a source of its wealth and strength. Treaties were made on that account, and the colonies were compelled to submit to those treaties by this country. The system continued entire. Instead of being considered as malus usus, it was regarded as a most eminent source of its riches and power. It was at a late period of the last century that it was condemned in England as an institution not fit to exist here for reasons peculiar to our own condition. But it has been continued in our own colonies, favoured and supported by our courts, which have liberally imparted to it their protection and encouragement. To such a system, while it is so supported, I rather feel it to be too strong to apply the maxim malus usus abolendus est.’ Nevertheless, the labours of a few good men, acting upon a public opinion which had become more sensitive to the claims of humanity, brought about first the abolition of the slave trade (1807), and finally the abolition of slavery. When once the former measure had been rendered effective, it was inevitable that the latter should come in time. Slavery could only be justified, if at all, on economic grounds; but, when once the regular source of supply was closed, it became extremely doubtful how far slave labour was really cheap. In order to have a sufficient supply of labourers, it had now become necessary to maintain a numerous body of non-effective women and children. The profits of the West India planter were not great enough to support the dead weight of this growing expenditure. Such considerations, along with the compensation paid to the owners by the British Government for the loss of their slaves, served to reconcile in some measure the West India interest to the change introduced by the Act of 1833. How great that change was is proved by the fact that of the slaves, over 600,000 in number, who were emancipated, more than half belonged to Jamaica alone.

The plan of apprenticeship for a period of years, which had been enacted by the original measure, broke down in the working, and complete emancipation was finally granted in 1838. The planters then found themselves face to face with the question—would the negro, when no longer under the stress of necessity, consent to work as a free labourer? The answer to this question depended upon the needs of the emancipated labourers. Few men anywhere would work save under the stress of social necessity, but the great danger in the West Indies lay in the abundance of fertile land, from which the occupier, under a congenial climate, could reap a bare but sufficient livelihood. The example of Hayti was before men’s eyes, where, under freedom from the restraints of white domination, every branch of cultivation requiring steady systematic labour had fallen into decay. The only means by which a willingness to work might have been stimulated, viz. the granting of such high wages as should enable the negro to gratify his love of luxury and display, was rendered impossible by the period of depression which followed the emancipation of the slaves. In this state of things, except in small crowded islands such as Barbados, where land could not be obtained at the asking, the labour supply proved inadequate; and it was recognized that, unless labour could be imported from abroad, the staple products of the West Indies could no longer be grown at a profit. How far measures such as that suggested by Gibbon Wakefield, and foreshadowed in an official report by Lord Glenelg, of only parting with the public lands at a high price, or that advocated by Lord Grey of making a system of efficient taxation accompany the granting of emancipation, might have met the economic needs of the planters, cannot now be decided. In fact the only remedy which appeared possible to British statesmen was the introduction of Asiatic labour. That English workmen were wholly unsuited to the task of tropical cultivation was fairly obvious, though disastrous experiments in such a direction might have been made at an earlier date. Neither did much result from the promises held out of an influx of free negro labour from the North American continent. It was not until the introduction, on a large scale, of Asiatic coolies that the labour problem was, in great measure, solved. The system requires careful organization and supervision by the government. Otherwise there would be an ever-present danger of the coolie traffic degenerating into a modified slave trade, and of the labourer becoming a slave under another name. Moreover, the danger was at first increased by the difficulty of making members of a half-civilized race understand the position in which they are placed by the terms of their contract, and the protection to which they are entitled from the law. The treatment recorded of Chinese coolies in the guano islands of Peru, and the abuses which from time to time have been alleged in connexion with the Pacific labour traffic, are evidence of the necessity which is laid on any civilized government of keeping coloured immigration strictly under control. So far as this side of the question is concerned, the elaborate rules and regulations drawn up on behalf of the imported labourers appear to have afforded ample protection. Special officers are appointed to take charge of their welfare, under special laws; medical aid is provided for them, and the employers, to whom they are indentured, are bound to pay a prescribed rate of wages. After a certain period of years they can, if they desire so to do, claim part of the cost of their return passages to India; if they give up their return passages they can have grants of land in lieu. Their lot would seem, upon the whole, in many respects enviable, and in fact they remit large sums of money to India. The system, however, has been criticized on altogether different grounds. M. P. Leroy-Beaulieu considers that, in its tendency to foster artificially the growth of certain staple products, and in its creation of a new alien population with a different religion and different ideals of social life, it tends to reproduce some of the worst social and economic evils connected with slavery. In any case it would appear that, although the theory of the contract system is to send labourers for a term of years only, and not to provide permanent settlers, and in spite of the provision of return passages where required, still the practical result of this form of immigration in the West Indies and, in a far greater degree, in Mauritius has been that a large Indian element has been added to the permanent population, an element which grows in importance year by year. Thus in a few generations it may be found that the importation of coolie labourers has in effect become a great measure of state-aided colonization^[1].

In considering the various ways in which the difficulty in connexion with the labour supply has been met by colonial governments, some mention should be made of the ‘culture system’ which prevailed in Dutch Java from about 1830 to 1870. Utilizing the institution of the corvée, or liability of the people to render a certain amount of unpaid service to the sovereign authority, the Dutch Governor Van der Bosch sought to secure European capital by liberal advances for the building of factories, and also by placing at the contractor’s disposal for the first two years a supply of state labourers. The government undertook that by the time a mill was in working order the surrounding villages should have a sufficient area planted with the required crop. For which purpose minute instructions were given to the villagers with respect to the cultivation of their land. Successful as appears to have been the system in practice, it is obvious that it belonged to an elementary stage of civilization, and, once outgrown, could never be again introduced.

Hitherto we have been concerned with the labour problem in plantations proper, colonies mainly devoted to the growth of special staple products, and which, by reason of their climate, do not afford a home to the ordinary English emigrant; but the problem has proved by no means easy of solution, even in the case of colonies which offer undoubted attractions to the working class emigrant. We have noticed in a previous chapter some of the difficulties which beset the pioneers of colonization. In the war against the wilderness the emigrant was a soldier, who carried his life in his hands. Conditions at home were by no means so desperate as to tempt any to emigrate save that special class of adventurers, who have in all ages sought dangers for their own sake. But for the rise of Puritanism and the discontent with the religious atmosphere at home, it is, as already pointed out, very doubtful how far English colonization would have surmounted this initial difficulty. Meanwhile, as was inevitable, efforts were from the first made to solve the labour problem by the application of force. The idea of transporting convicts to the colonies was known to the Spanish and to the Portuguese; indeed Brazil was to a great extent opened out by Portuguese convicts. Before the dawn of English colonization, we find a licence to Frobisher which empowered him to use the public prisons as sources of supply for the colonies which he might establish. In fact, however, little use was for a long time made of this material. Convicts do not appear to have been transported to Virginia during the first years of the colony, except where there existed special mitigating circumstances. The greater number of those sent from England were political offenders and not ordinary criminals. It was not until the time of George I that a regular system of transportation to the colonies came into use. The procedure was simple. The services of the convicts, during their unexpired term of sentence, were sold by the British Government to the captains of ships trading to the colonies, who on their arrival resold them to the colonial employers. The convicts then worked out their sentence as slaves under overseers. There are no trustworthy figures as to the number thus transported, but it has been estimated that in all some fifty thousand were dealt with in this fashion. Side by side with convict labour there was the system of ‘indented’ or indentured labour, under which the servant received a free passage, and undertook to remain with his employer for a stated term of years at a fixed wage. As a general rule, however, such a system will always break down in practice, because an employer, who has not sacrificed part of his capital in thus introducing labour, can always offer higher wages, and thus, directly or indirectly, entice the workman from the original employer. In a vast sparsely settled country, such as the English America of the colonial times, escape was always easy, and, in fact, the system appears only to have succeeded in the case of foreign immigrants, whose ignorance of the English language and habits kept them in a state of virtual slavery. The immigrants who were not introduced by an employer, but who were given free passages by the ships captains in advance, were termed ‘redemptioners.’ These were sold to defray the cost of their passage to the highest bidder at a price which, in South Carolina, appears to have averaged from £5 to £6. Mr. McCrady, in his History of South Carolina under the royal government, quotes an advertisement in the South Carolina Gazette: ‘Just imported and to be sold . . . Irish servants, men and women of good trades. Irish linen, household furniture, &c., &c.’ Of course, such a state of things lent itself readily to the gravest abuses. We hear much of kidnappers, men who made their living by the forcible abduction of men and women. Such ‘spiriting’ was made a felony, punishable by death, but the business was too profitable for it not to continue and abound. Upon the whole, it would seem that the problem of finding a sufficient labour supply was solved in a fairly satisfactory manner in the English North American colonies. The circumstances of New England were so special that it did not, to any great extent, require labour from outside; while the introduction of negroes, besides the English and foreign imported labour, met, to a great extent, the difficulty, so far as the southern and middle colonies were concerned.

When the subject of transportation seriously engaged the attention of English statesmen, it was approached, not from the point of view of colonial requirements, but of those of the mother country. The result of the American War of Independence had dammed the channel through which the home authorities had been able to pour a steady, though small, stream of criminal population, and few, at the time, were found to agree with the philosopher Bentham that it was the bounden duty of every nation to deal with its criminals within its own limits. In this state of things the proposal to found a new colony in Australia received a favourable hearing, because a means was thereby afforded of dealing, on a large scale, with convicted criminals. In Australia free emigration followed, instead of preceding, the transportation of convicts. The economic advantages of the system to the free emigrant were, at first, very great. Convict labour performed free of charge to the colonists such preparatory works as roads, &c., which are the main difficulty in the way of the pioneer; while the government establishments further benefited the colonist by providing a ready market for his produce. As the free emigrants became more numerous, they benefited in another way from the system of transportation. Convicts were ‘assigned’ to them, and thus they obtained valuable labour at a nominal cost. Upon the whole, it would seem that the system was economically a success. Considering the length and cost of the voyage from England to Australia, it is difficult to conceive how the new colony could ever have successfully fought its way through the preliminary stages of colonization had it not been for the government help which was associated with the existence of transportation. Upon the other hand, the moral results of the system were much less favourable. Allowing for the fact that the Chairman of the House of Commons Committee which considered the whole question in 1838 was Sir William Molesworth, who, with Archbishop Whately, was the most strenuous and able opponent of the system, still nothing can explain away the appalling picture of moral degradation which the report describes. The assignment system was especially open to abuse. The main industry of New South Wales was sheep-farming, but no life could have been less suited to convicts than the lonely life of a shepherd, with its temptations to crime and its tendency to develop insanity. Again, under the assignment system, the convict who was superior by education or by trade became a most dangerous element in social life. Convict tutors and editors, convict mechanics, courted for their special aptitude, threatened to demoralize the whole constitution of society. The terrible disproportion between the number of men and women in the colony was another cause contributing to immorality and vice; while the immense fortunes amassed by the more able of the emancipated convicts unblushingly gave the lie to the time-honoured maxim that honesty is the best policy. In this state of things the wonder was, not that demoralization was so widespread, but that its mischief was so transient and short-lived. From 1787 to 1836 over 75,000 persons had been transported to New South Wales, and from 1817 to 1836 nearly 20,000 had been transported to Van Diemen’s Land. The two colonies contained in 1836 about 38,000 convicts, of whom some 29,000 were assigned. In spite of the free emigration which had taken place, the total population of Australia was, in 1833, less than the number of convicts who had been transported thither, showing that during the whole life of the colony the deaths had greatly exceeded the births in number. No greater condemnation could be given of the whole system than this one fact. It is unnecessary now to inquire how far free emigration was prevented by the criminal taint of the colony. Probably there was some truth in Merivale’s contention that the real difficulty in the way was the distance and the cost, and that, when assisted passages were given, the English working classes were not deterred from accepting them by the fear of such taint. It is now manifest that, at the time of the anti-transportation crusade, economic as well as moral considerations were tending to the discontinuance of the system. On the whole, we may accept the judgement of Darwin, which has been often quoted. ‘As a plan of punishment it (transportation) has failed: as a real system of reform it has failed, as would every other plan: but as a means of making men outwardly honest, of converting vagabonds most useless in one country into active citizens of another, and thus giving birth to a new and splendid country, a grand centre of civilization, it has succeeded to a degree unparalleled perhaps in history.’ Yet, granting all this, the fact remained that the system had served its time, and must now be replaced by something wholly different. The report of the committee freely recognized that the prosperity of Australia in the past had been largely due to the system, but it went on to maintain, with convincing force, that the demand for labour in the colonies had now so expanded that it was no longer possible to transport a sufficient supply of convicts. As an instance of the different point of view of different generations it may be noticed that the report, while recommending generally the discontinuance of transportation, still advocated the encouragement of emigration to the colonies of convicts of good behaviour, who had served their time in England. The labours of the Transportation Committee were not without results. The system was in 1840 discontinued to New South Wales, though unfortunately Van Diemen’s Land was still kept a convict colony. The reluctance of Parliament to provide for the maintenance of convicts in England led to such a strain upon the resources of Van Diemen’s Land as threatened to prove intolerable. In 1846 an attempt was made to reimpose a modified system of transportation to New South Wales. After a certain amount of misunderstandings and recriminations between the home authorities and the colonists this order was again revoked, and finally, in 1852, transportation was discontinued to Van Diemen’s Land, which entered upon a new life under the new name of Tasmania. The last of the Australian colonies to receive convicts was Western Australia, in which the system was not finally abandoned till 1867. How far the moral evils of the transportation system might have been reduced, while preserving its economic advantages, is a question which has been discussed by political theorists. The system, often advocated, of carrying out preparatory works, such as roads, harbours, &c., by convict labour, which should, for the most part, be withdrawn with the entrance upon the scene of the free emigrants, has in practice never had a fair trial. Great practical difficulties stood in the way of any improvement of the assignment system. The economic interests of the individual colonist were at irreconcilable issue with the moral interests of the colony as a whole. Attempts at reforming the system seemed to lead to a hopeless impasse. Without assignment, the system offered no advantages to a colony except in its earliest stages. With assignment, it offered an almost inevitable premium on vice and wrong-doing.

The very able men who embarked upon the crusade against transportation were not content to take up a merely negative attitude on the question of the colonial labour supply. Their remedy was a system of assisted emigration, the funds for which should be provided by the sale of the public waste lands in the colonies. The reckless and wasteful disposal of these lands is a blot on English colonial history. In 1767 the whole of Prince Edward Island was given away to a few individuals in a single day. Both in Upper and Lower Canada immense tracts had been disposed of in the same spendthrift fashion, so that Lord Durham found little government land open for settlement compared to the area which had been already alienated. Even where the intention had been good, as in the granting of land to the United Empire loyalists and their families, the men who had preferred exile rather than to lose British nationality, the result had mainly been that the lands had fallen into the hands of speculators, who did little in the way of development. It is probable that these past misdoings weakened the case of the mother country, when the question arose whether the self-governing colonies should not be given the full ownership and control of the public lands within their limits, and led to a more ready acquiescence in the claims of the colonists. In theory it was doubtless true, in Lord Durham’s words, that these waste lands were ‘the rightful patrimony of the English people, the ample appanage which God and nature had set aside in the new world for those whose lot has assigned them but insufficient portions in the old’; but in practice it was difficult to resist the claims of colonies who had in all else been given the complete management of their own affairs. At any rate, a great deal in the way of systematic emigration, between the years 1840 and 1855, was done by the Land and Emigration Commissioners appointed in 1840. By this means substantial assistance was afforded to the colonial labour market. A beginning had been made in 1831, when Lord Howick, afterwards Lord Grey, under the influence of Gibbon Wakefield and the Colonization Society, issued regulations requiring all public lands to be sold by auction at an upset price for ready money, the proceeds to be applied to the emigration of women. The whole question was considered by a Parliamentary Committee in 1836, and it was owing to its recommendations that the Land and Emigration Board was established in 1840. In 1842 an Act of Parliament enacted what had been the previous practice of successive Secretaries of State. Land in Australia was to be sold by auction at a minimum upset price of 20s. per acre, subject to a charge for cost of surveying, and half of the gross proceeds was to be spent on immigration to the colony in which the land had been sold. The help thus afforded to the New South Wales employers was of the greatest service in enabling them to tide over the crisis occasioned by the discontinuance of transportation. Moreover, when the rush took place to the Victorian gold-diggings, the Land and Emigration Commissioners conferred a great benefit upon Australia by at once promoting the female emigration required to meet the disproportion in the number of women to men occasioned by the discovery of gold.

In Canada there were insuperable objections in the way of the provision of an emigration fund by the sale of public lands. The system prevailing in the United States, where land could be purchased at about 6s. 3d. an acre, made it difficult for Canada to maintain a high price. Moreover, Canada was pre-eminently the home of the small settler. There was no staple industry, such as sheep-farming, requiring labour. The cost of clearing and fencing the land was high, ranging from about £3 to £4 an acre. In this state of things it was probably wise to sell the land cheap, the State recognizing its responsibility in the matter of surveys and roads, indispensable adjuncts to successful colonization, wherein for a long time Canada compared unfavourably with the United States.

Although the system of providing a labour fund by the proceeds of the sale of the public lands was probably suggested by Gibbon Wakefield, what is known as the ‘Wakefield system’ of dealing with the land was never put into complete practice. According to Wakefield’s system the public lands should always be sold at ‘a sufficient’ price. The amount of such sufficient price would vary in time and place, but might be roughly defined as that price which would ensure that labourers would remain workmen for hire for a long enough time to prevent the economic development of the colony from being retarded by the need for labour. The main fault of the theory, according to the acute criticisms of Merivale and Leroy-Beaulieu, would seem to be that it did not distinguish between land suited for capitalist production and land suited for the ordinary settler. In the former case, the need both of a sufficient price and of an abundant labour supply is obviously greater.

Whatever be the merits of the Wakefield system, it cannot justly be charged with the failure of the South Australian experiment started in 1836. It is true that the colony was founded by adherents of the Wakefield system, but Wakefield himself had no faith in the Commissioners who were appointed. The system of a government divided between Commissioners in London and a Governor and Council on the spot courted failure, while the Micawber practice of living upon debt and indulging in blind extravagance must in any case have found its Nemesis, whatever was the system in force as to the disposal of the public lands. On the other hand, it would seem that the system helped the colony to right itself under the pruning-knife of Captain Grey more rapidly than would otherwise have been the case.

The example of New Zealand may be taken to show both the advantages and the limitations of the Wakefield system. Where the lands possessed peculiar advantages, as round Canterbury and Otago, their sale for as much as £3 an acre furnished a most valuable fund for immigration and education purposes; while, when they possessed no special advantages, but required capital to clear them, the attempt to enforce a high price ended in failure.

Although the claim of the mother country to have a voice in disposal of the Australian waste lands was formally renounced in 1855, the policy of assisted immigration was for a long time maintained by the colonial legislatures. The land fund was, however, no longer ear-marked for this particular purpose; and, as the government of the colonies grew more and more democratic in character, and as the working classes came to believe that the effect of assisted emigration must be to lower the standard of wages, the practice of assisted immigration was discontinued, except in the case of female domestic servants and of a limited number of agricultural labourers.

From the foregoing sketch, however brief, something may be gathered of the various ways in which the difficulties connected with the scarcity of labour in new colonies have been at different times met. Slavery, the corvée, ‘indented’ labour, transportation, assisted emigration are, from the economic standpoint, one and all halting-places along the same road, which leads to the equation of supply and demand in the market for labour. That, in the long run, it is profitable to found colonies is happily a truth written large on the page of history, but many an individual, both capitalist and labourer, may have to suffer much before final success is achieved, and all these things may be regarded as methods by which men have sought to gain extraneous assistance in that war with nature which is the burden of the founders of new states.

Some Authorities on Subject of foregoing Chapter.

Robertson’s History of America. 3 vols.

H. Merivale’s Lectures on Colonization and Colonies. 2nd ed. 1861. Lectures x-xiii.

P. Leroy-Beaulieu. De la colonisation chez les peuples modernes.

A. Ireland. Tropical Colonization. 1899.

Sir W. Molesworth’s Selected Speeches. 1903. With which is reprinted the ‘Report of House of Commons Committee on Transportation.’ 1838.

Gibbon Wakefield. A View of the Art of Colonization. 1849.

The government of colonies will, as a general rule, reflect the form of government prevailing in the mother country. A commercial people like the Dutch naturally regarded colonies from a strictly business standpoint, and all interests had to yield to the necessity of obtaining profits for the trading company. Autocratic Powers, such as Spain in the sixteenth and France in the seventeenth century, of necessity, sought to reproduce in their colonies the absolutism dominant at home; but they were in this difficulty, that their distance prevented the colonies from being governed directly from the central seat of authority, while to confer autocratic powers on a viceroy might be to create an imperium in imperio, dangerous to the home government. To avert this peril, an elaborate system of checks and balances was invented. By this means, as has been already noted, the governors in the Spanish colonies were deprived of all but the shadow of power. In the same way, in Canada, side by side with the Governor, who appeared upon the face of things an absolute viceroy, was the Intendant, generally a lawyer, whose business it was to act virtually as a spy upon the Governor-General, upon whose proceedings he wrote home elaborate reports. The council, which formally shared the government with the Governor-General and Intendant, was merely a registering body, after the likeness of the Parliament of Paris. A proposal by Frontenac to give the Canadian people some voice in the government, by calling together the three estates, received the severe rebuke of Louis XIV, and no such plan was ever again attempted in French Canada.

In turning to the English colonies we find ourselves at once in a wholly different atmosphere. In England the nobles had never wielded such power as to make their complete overthrow necessary before the security of a strong central government could be obtained. Just because its worst evils had been rendered impossible in England by the vigorous action of William the Conqueror, Henry II, and, at a later date, Edward I, feudalism was able there, as it was unable in other countries, to affix permanent imprints upon the national life, and to influence the whole course of English social and political history. Undoubtedly English colonial development owed not a little to the precedents of feudalism. The principle of subinfeudation, which lies at the back of the original grants of unknown lands to private individuals, carries with it the implication of practical independence in all else, so long as the particular conditions of the tenure are strictly complied with. All through the seventeenth century the form of grant suggests the conditions of feudal society. ‘The principle implied,’ to quote the language of Mr. Greene, ‘is distinctly feudal, namely the association of rights in the soil with rights of government; that is, the king parts with a portion of his prerogative, and exempts the particular piece of territory from the ordinary jurisdiction, very much as his predecessors had done when they created the Palatinates of Durham and Lancaster.’ Counties Palatine were so called a palatio, because the owners thereof had iura regalia as fully as the king had in his palace regalem potestatem in omnibus. Originally there had been three Palatinates in England, Chester, Lancaster, and Durham, but Durham was the only surviving one at the time of the Stuart grants. The absolute powers apparently conferred were somewhat modified by the terms of the grants. At the same time the form of authority set up would have been impossible but for the persistence of ideas derived from feudalism. The constitutional difficulties which afterwards arose between the American colonies and the mother country, owed their origin to the fact that the colonies had been founded at a time when the respective powers of the Crown and of Parliament had been by no means settled, when, in fact, it was not yet clear that there might not be an English Empire under the dominion of the Crown, apart from the English nation controlled by Parliament. The English colonies were founded in no spirit of distrust or suspicion, but, on the other hand, wide powers were granted to individuals or to corporations. Although it is true that royal government was to prove the predominant type in the colonies, nevertheless not one of the American colonies was founded by direct action of the Crown. A sufficient reason for this lay in the weakness and penury of the seventeenth-century executive. A government which was unable to provide for ordinary expenses at home was not likely to embark upon over-sea adventures. But, although all the American colonies owed their existence to private enterprise, they soon came to be divided into the two classes of royal and proprietary governments. Royal governments arose out of the forfeiture or lapse of grants made to individuals or corporations, while in proprietary governments the home authorities only acted indirectly upon the colonial people, through being able to bring influence to bear upon the proprietors. An important modification of the proprietary system of government was made by the New England type, wherein the government lay with the people themselves, subject to a vague allegiance to the Crown. Such elective form of government was secured to Massachusetts by the terms of its original charter, and it sprung up independently in Plymouth, Rhode Island, Providence, Connecticut, and Newhaven. In the case of the consolidated governments of Connecticut and Rhode Island it was subsequently secured by royal charter.

English colonial government dates from the Virginia charter of 1606. It is true that there had been in the reign of Elizabeth various grants to individuals such as Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Ralegh, containing the most extensive powers. These patents conferred the right to make laws or ordinances ‘as near as conveniently might be to the laws of the nation.’ Such provisions, as has been already noticed, owed their origin to feudal precedents, and it was not until the foundation of the Virginia Company that the problem of colonial government was really faced. The charter of 1606 instituted an imperial council for the whole of English North America, occupied or unoccupied, with local councils on the spot, for the two new colonies of the London and Plymouth Companies when they should come into existence. The idea may have been borrowed from the Spanish Council for the Indies, but in any case the proposal proved abortive. The numerous men of influence and means, who were incurring the risks connected with the Virginia Company, naturally expected to have the management of the affairs of their own colony. Wisdom might possibly agree with Bacon that it was not well for merchants to have the management of plantations, but the practical claims of the Company were too strong to be resisted. Under the charters of 1609 and 1612 legislative powers were conferred upon the Treasurers and Company of Adventurers for Virginia. At the same time authority was given ‘to elect and choose discreet persons to be of our said council for the first colony of Virginia, and to nominate and appoint such officers as they shall think fit and requisite for the government, managing, ordering, and dispatching of the affairs of the said Company.’ At first it was inevitable that the whole welfare and even the existence of the colony should centre round the personality of the governor. The material of which the first settlers were composed rendered something in the nature of martial law a necessity, and soldiers such as Delawarr and Dale were the most suitable governors. Still it is abundantly manifest that the English colonial empire did not take its origin in ideas of autocratic rule. Nations, it has been already explained, reproduce in their colonies the types of theory and practice which prevail at home. Just as the French colonial policy of the past few years is said by Frenchmen to reflect at once the sentimental aspirations of theoretic democracy and the bureaucratic meddlesomeness of French practice; so, at a time when the English national life was finding expression in its national Parliament, there was no serious effort to check in the colonies the development of popular aspirations.

It used to be the fashion to assert that popular government ‘broke out’ in Virginia in 1619; but it is now generally accepted that the first representative Assembly was convened under the authority of an ordinance similar to the one of 1621, which has come down to us. Under this the general Assembly, to be summoned by the governor once yearly and no oftener, except upon extraordinary and important occasions, was to consist of the ‘Council of State and of two burgesses out of every town, hundred or other particular plantation, to be respectively chosen by the inhabitants.’ Laws passed in the colony were not to take effect until confirmed by the Company, while at the same time no order of the Company was to bind the colony unless ratified in like manner in the general Assemblies. The council was to be nominated by the Virginia Company and was, for the present, to consist of twenty members, including the governor.

With the appearance of the Virginia Assembly we have the regular type of colonial government by governor, council, and assembly, such as exists to-day in the self-governing colonies. There was, however, as was natural, no clear division of functions. In fact, the necessities of the case compelled the governor to play a variety of parts. As representing the king, he was a real viceroy, with powers executive and legislative corresponding to the post; as agent of the home government his business was to take care that the interests of the mother country did not suffer by anything done in the colony; lastly, viewed from the economic standpoint, he was the manager of a business concern, the object of which was to bring profit to the parent company, or, if the company was abolished, to the parent state.

The revocation of the charter of the Virginia Company in 1624, followed, after the accession of Charles I, by a sonorous proclamation, wherein it was asserted not to be safe to entrust the ordering of state affairs to private companies, but that a single and uniform course of government must be established through all the monarchy, including the colonies, seemed to point to a change of policy. But, in fact, the proclamation was very soon contradicted by the grants to the Massachusetts Bay Company and to Lord Baltimore, while as early as 1640 under royal government the Virginia colonists were able to refer, among their advantages, to the freedom of annual Assemblies.

In spite of the difference of origin of the various colonies, the form of government did not vary very greatly. A general tendency was at work converting the proprietary governments, whether owned by individuals or by companies, into royal governments. Of the twelve colonies which formed at the time of the Declaration of Independence, along with Delaware, the United States, Virginia became a royal government in 1624; the Carolinas, granted to individual proprietors in 1663, became royal governments in 1719 and 1729; New York and New Jersey, granted to the Duke of York in 1664, became royal governments in 1685 and 1702; New Hampshire, which had in its beginnings been absorbed by Massachusetts, became a separate royal government in 1691. Under the terms of its charter, Georgia, founded in 1732, became a royal province in 1754. Massachusetts itself had become a royal government in 1691, so far as accepting a governor nominated by the Crown. Thus, then, there were eight royal governments; while, of the remaining four colonies, two only were proprietary governments, viz. Maryland and Pennsylvania. That the tendency of colonies belonging to individuals should be to fall under the direct control of the Crown was natural enough. The interests of the proprietor were by no means of necessity the same as those, either of the home authorities, through whom he held his power, or of the community, which stood to him in the relation of tenants. The scandal of disposing of colonial offices as purely private property wrought grave mischief in the proprietary colonies, while in Pennsylvania the outrageous custom grew up of the governor and proprietor refusing to pass bills, unless they were accompanied by a gift of money to themselves. It should be noted that the wise Penn’s experience of proprietary government led him to endeavour to sell his legal rights to the Crown. Unfortunately both for his colony and for his descendants he was unsuccessful in his attempt. As was inevitable, the private rights of the proprietor led to constant heart-burnings and complaints on the part of the colonists. Thus in Pennsylvania any willingness to take action against the French danger was arrested by the public indignation aroused by the claim of the proprietor that his private estate should remain exempt from taxation. Nor was it only the colonists who found their interests at issue with those of the proprietor. The Crown was no less a sufferer. It was obviously not to the private interest of the proprietor that the trade regulations enacted by the English Parliament should be efficiently enforced in his colony, and there was inevitable friction between the proprietary governors and the royal revenue and admiralty officers. The former were mere stewards, acting in the private interests of their employers. Moreover, the evils of absenteeism became strikingly manifest when the proprietor, domiciled in England, claimed to exercise the right of rejecting laws which had received the assent of his deputy. We know from the testimony of Franklin, no prejudiced admirer of royal government, that, whatever may have been the sins and omission of direct government by the Crown, it was in all ways preferable to the government which prevailed in the proprietary colonies.

It has been already noted that in addition to the proprietary governments which had their origin in grants conferred upon a single individual—as in the case of Maryland and Pennsylvania—or upon a group of individuals,—as in the case of the Carolinas,—there were the New England colonies of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, which were elective governments, protected by royal charter. On its face the charter granted to the Massachusetts Bay Company in 1629 appeared to contemplate a company after the model of the Virginia Company. The omission in it, however, of any direction compelling the business of the Company to be carried on in England, was of far-reaching consequence. Owing to this, the Massachusetts colonists were able to transfer the seat of government to America, and thus establish on a greater scale what had been already established by the Plymouth colony, viz. a virtually independent republic, subject to a shadowy allegiance to the English Crown. It is true that in 1691 the English authorities prevailed so far that, under its amended charter, Massachusetts recognized the right of the Crown to appoint its governors, but the lesson of independence once learnt could not be made of no effect by such half-measures as could alone commend themselves to William III and his Whig advisers. It is of course true that Connecticut and Rhode Island were tolerated as semi-independent states because of their trifling importance, and that, had they been more powerful, they would doubtless have shared the fate of Massachusetts. Nevertheless, the object-lesson afforded by these small communities of the manner in which the Navigation Acts might be evaded and the injunctions of the Board of Trade set at nought, must have counted for something in the creation of that independent American temper, which in time permeated the character of all the other colonies.

These things, however, were to remain for very many years on the knees of the gods after the foundation of the English colonial empire. For present purposes it is enough to consider the government by governor, council, and assembly as exemplified in the royal provinces. The great merit of the system has been its adaptability to new conditions. No statute was necessary to evolve responsible government out of the old colonial system. At the same time, everything depended upon the manner in which the system was worked, and hence, it must be confessed, it hardly ever received a fair trial. The task of the colonial governor was one requiring an extraordinary combination of ability and tact, but the impression left upon the student of the old records is that, with some few exceptions, the men chosen for the work were lamentably mediocre.

How far a colonial empire based on the underlying assumptions of the mercantile system could have been permanent is a difficult question, but, in any case, jobbery and dishonesty were early at work, undermining the foundations on which alone such an empire could have stood. Many of the colonial governors were doubtless honest men, and a few were eminent for character and ability, such as Stapleton, the Governor of the Leeward Islands in the time of Charles II, or Spotswood, who was Governor of Virginia in the early half of the eighteenth century. At the same time, it is unfortunately true that it was not exceptional for a governor to make use of his official position to feather his own private nest, and the extreme jealousy with which the colonial Assemblies doled out moneys for the purposes of government had its justification in the abuses to which previous grants had been applied. Mr. Greene quotes a report to the Board of Trade, wherein it is stated: ‘Governments have been sometimes given as a reward for services done to the Crown, and with design that such persons should thereby make their fortunes. But they are generally obtained by the favour of great men to some of their dependants or relations, and they have been sometimes given to persons who were obliged to divide the profit of them with those by whose means they were procured. The qualifications of such persons for government being seldom considered.’ Lamentable as was the state of things thus made manifest, both in the interests of England and of the colonies, it was with no deliberate intention to flout the colonists that such appointments were made. This will be made manifest if we consider that, of the ten royal governors of Massachusetts, no less than four were natives of the colony, and that, when New Jersey and New Hampshire were made separate governments, colonials were appointed as governors. In a similar spirit Dinwiddie, who had formerly lived in the colony and was well acquainted with its affairs, was given the government of Virginia.

The tenure of a royal governor was during the king’s pleasure, and no settled custom arose limiting the period to a definite term of years. A governor might be removed through a change of ministry at home, and intrigues were being constantly carried on in London by discontented colonists, with the object of prejudicing the home government against the governor. In this state of things it is curious to find that, in fact, governors appear generally to have held their posts for long periods. During eighty-two years Massachusetts had only ten, and during thirty-four years North Carolina had only three royal governors, and the first governor of New Hampshire enjoyed a term of twenty-six years.

The amount of the governor’s salary varied in the different colonies. In Virginia he received £2,000 a-year, secured on the tobacco dues, but the average amount in the colonies generally seems to have been about £1,000 sterling a-year. In Georgia alone was the salary paid by the home government. In the other colonies, with the exception of Maryland and North Carolina, besides Virginia, it was dependent on annual grants from the colonial Assemblies.

The powers of the colonial governor were in theory very great. At first they included the power of legislation, and, to the last, by means of ordinances and proclamations, the governor might on certain subjects supersede the ordinary law. Moreover, he possessed a controlling voice on legislation, through his right of assenting to or vetoing bills passed by the Assembly and council. The fact that the council consisted mainly of his own nominees gave him further indirect influence. At first the governors had claimed to sit and vote as members of the council, but this claim was afterwards resisted with success throughout the American colonies.

The governor, as the king’s viceroy, was of course commander-in-chief of the provincial military forces, and often charged with special instructions as to the conduct of general military operations in America. In practice, however, his dependence upon the Assembly for the granting of supplies, and the complicated character of the provisions contained in the Militia Acts of the various provinces, deprived him of most of the substance of executive power. As representing the Crown the governor was empowered to erect courts of justice, to select the recipients of judicial appointments, and to constitute, along with the council, a court of appeal in civil cases. Judicial appointments in the colonies were during the pleasure of the Crown instead of, as in England, during good behaviour. Under this provision great power appeared to rest with the governor, but, in fact, the Assemblies were the real masters of the judges, as with them lay the voting of the salaries, which were only given in annual grants. A compromise might surely have been made, under which the judges might have been appointed during good behaviour, in return for their salaries being permanently secured.

With regard to the Assembly, the powers of the governor were, in appearance, very wide. Except in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, where annual elections and sessions of the Assembly at fixed dates were secured by the terms of the charters, the governor had a general discretion as to the summoning of Assemblies. In some cases the governor claimed that the apportionment of electoral districts was the prerogative of the Crown, and such claim was supported by the home authorities. After the Assembly had met the governor retained the power of adjourning, proroguing, or dissolving it at his will. By these means the Assembly might sometimes be coerced into agreement. The fear of dissolution, however, was not great where the expenses of elections were small, and a greater danger arose from the practice of continuing favourable Assemblies from year to year. To meet this danger, septennial or triennial Acts were passed by the colonial legislatures. Such Acts were, however, disallowed at home, as tending to weaken the dependence of the colonies upon the Crown. In addition to his direct powers over the Assembly the governor possessed indirect ways of influence, so far as he was the fountain of dispensing patronage. We gather from the complaints of colonial governors that the greed of the home authorities on behalf of their poor relations or protégés tended to weaken this influence. But it was sufficiently great for the colonial legislatures to endeavour to counteract such insidious influence by enacting laws so as to disqualify placemen from seats in the Assembly.

A council had been associated with the governor from the beginnings of English colonization. Such a body might have greatly strengthened the hands of the home authorities in either of two ways. It might have developed into something of the nature of the English House of Lords, and, by attracting men of influence and property, have become a real check upon democratic tendencies. (In this connexion it is noteworthy that in Massachusetts, where the council was numerous and acquired strength from being the outcome of popular election, it did, to some extent, play this rôle.) Or if the council was not suited to play the part of the English House of Lords, it might, as an advisory body, have been of real service to the executive. Except in Massachusetts, where it numbered twenty-eight members, the council generally consisted of twelve members. Except in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts councillors were appointed by the Crown, generally on the recommendation of the governor.

The powers of the council were threefold. In the first place it formed, with the governor, a court of appeal in certain cases. In the second place it was, except in Pennsylvania, the Upper House of the colonial legislature. At first the council claimed the right to amend money bills sent to it from the Assembly, but this claim was resisted by the Assemblies, and, in spite of the support of the Board of Trade, could not be made good. Upon the whole, it does not seem that the council was in the colonies any serious check upon democratic tendencies. Lastly, it was an executive body, whose duty was to advise the governor and assist him in the work of administration. In this connexion it might have to advise the governor upon the legality of legislation to which it had already assented in its legislative capacity. Moreover, it by no means followed of necessity that governor and council were of one mind. Although, as a general rule, this was doubtless so, we sometimes find disputes and bickerings between them, and the power of suspension given to the governor, pending an appeal to England, was not infrequently exercised. The council stood, to some extent, in the position of a ministry to the governor as Prime Minister, so that, in the event of members of the council hostile to the governor receiving support at home, his enemies might be those of his own household. It was not, assuredly, that the English authorities were actuated by any jealousy of the governor’s position, but unfortunately they were amenable to influence, and the influence brought to bear on behalf of a hostile councillor might outweigh that exercised by the governor. Again, the absence of departmental responsibility, except in legal, customs, and admiralty matters, for different spheres of duty, was a main contributing cause to the weakness of the council as a branch of the colonial government. Vacant land will always find occupants, and the committees of the Assembly, which more and more invaded the province of the executive, found their justification in the fact that no authority barred their way, save the general paramount power of the governor.

Owing to the circumstances of colonial life, the Assembly was from the first a popular representative body, such as the English House of Commons has only been in modern times. That the Assembly would become the predominant partner in the colonial government might have been foreseen by any one who had studied the experience of English history, and could read the signs of the times. The governor might be given royal powers. He might have all those powers, on paper, with regard to the Assembly which have been already noted, but, in fact, he remained dependent upon the Assembly, because the Assembly held the purse strings, and in government he who has the power of the purse is virtual king. In a few of the colonies, viz. Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina, there was a permanent civil list, but even in these it was constantly necessary to make demands upon the Assemblies for different purposes. In the other colonies, however, the provisions for the support of the administration were strictly limited in time, generally for a period of twelve months. The long dispute between the home authorities and the colonists with reference to the governor’s salary serves to illustrate the question at issue. The English Board of Trade was naturally urgent that the governor’s position should be rendered secure by the voting of a fixed salary. The colonial Assemblies, on the other hand, with the object-lesson of Virginia before their eyes, where the granting of a fixed provision had indubitably led to the evils of an absentee governor subletting his duties to deputies, obstinately refused to grant more than an annual vote. The hapless governors, meanwhile, were forbidden by the home authorities to accept such temporary grants, although, in fact, leave was generally given ‘for this time only.’ And so the squalid controversy went on, till colonial obstinacy wore out official reluctance, and the practice of annual grants received in 1735 official recognition.

On more than one occasion the Board of Trade had advised, at the suggestion of governors, that the English Exchequer should furnish the salary, but such a solution naturally did not commend itself to the English politicians of the eighteenth century. Inasmuch as it formed part of the duty of English governors to veto legislation of a specified character, e.g. Acts imposing duties upon English goods, or making legal tender of a paper currency, the ingenuity of colonial legislators was employed in rendering the acceptance of such bills a condition precedent to the obtaining a salary. ‘Tacking,’ by which was meant the joining of a money bill to a bill otherwise repugnant to the home authorities, was reduced to a fine art.

Moreover, the right of voting supplies led to the claim, which was afterwards enforced, that the Assembly should have the right to nominate the official in whose hands should be the custody of the moneys raised. It was amongst the complaints of Pownall, the able ex-governor, who published, before the outbreak of the American War of Independence, a valuable book on The Administration of the Colonies, that the treasurer had become in the colonies the nominee of the Assembly. By this means the parts of Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the opposition were played by the same actor. Again, the Assemblies were careful to define narrowly and in strict detail the uses to which the moneys voted might be applied. Unhappily, the corrupt administration of governors like Lord Cornbury of New York, gave ample justification to these pretensions of the Assemblies. Under the Massachusetts charter the appointment of all civil officers, save those connected with the administration of justice, lay with the general court, and the example of Massachusetts was strenuously followed by the other colonies. In South Carolina it was asserted that ‘almost all the places of profit or of trust are disposed of by the general Assembly. . . . The executive part of the government is lodged in different sets of commissioners. . . . The above officers and most of the commissioners are named by the Assembly and are responsible to them alone. . . . Thus the people have the whole of the administration in their hands.’ To what lengths the Assemblies were prepared to go was shown by their interference with that branch of the executive which, if anything was, might be allowed to be the prerogative of the governor. In granting military supplies, the colonial Assemblies prescribed in detail the manner in which such supplies were to be expended; taking upon themselves, in effect, the direction of military operations and the disposition of troops. The actual conduct of military enterprises was sometimes controlled by committees of the Assembly, or by commissioners appointed by Acts of Assembly; and military discipline was interfered with through the appointment and removal of officers. The statement of Chalmers with regard to the last French colonial war is accepted by Mr. Greene as fairly representing the facts of this case. ‘The king’s representative acted merely as the correspondent of his ministers. The war was conducted by committees of Assembly.’

In another respect the position of the colonists was singularly favourable. Adam Smith has noted the moderate cost at which the government of the colonies was carried on. ‘The expense of the civil establishment of Massachusetts Bay, before the commencement of the present disturbances, used to be about £18,000 a-year. That of New Hampshire and Rhode Island £3,500 each. That of Connecticut £4,000. That of New York and Pennsylvania £4,500 each. That of New Jersey £1,200. That of Virginia and South Carolina £8,000 each.’ The English colonists contributed nothing to the defence of the mother country, while they themselves were to a very great extent defended against the French by the power of England. On the other hand, it is fair to state that the Americans themselves alleged that they did in fact make a substantial contribution to the English Exchequer by means of the regulations with regard to trade. In the address to the people of Great Britain of 1775, it is said: ‘It is alleged that we contribute nothing to the common defence. To this we answer that the advantages which Great Britain receives from the monopoly of our trade far exceed our proportion of the expense necessary for that purpose. But should these advantages be inadequate thereto, let the restrictions on our trade be removed, and we will cheerfully contribute such proportion when constitutionally recognized.’ Again, in the resolution of Congress of the same year, it is said: ‘If we are to contribute equally with the other parts of the Empire, let us, equally with them, enjoy free commerce with the rest of the world.’

Our business, however, here is happily not to enter into the merits of the dispute which ended in the rise of the United States, but merely to give a slight sketch of the form of government which prevailed in the English colonies during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Although it was at one time the fashion to lay too great stress on the manner in which the colonies were left to their own devices, and although a more complete study of the colonial records has shown that, in fact, whether wisely or unwisely, the home government was constantly interfering, still it is true that the dominant note of the whole period was the granting of a free hand to the colonists so long as they complied with the regulations of the Navigation Acts. The settled policy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was summed up in the words spoken to Penn by an English statesman: ‘Take care you injure not the revenue, and other matters ought to be left to your own satisfaction.’ The mother country was willing to give full political privileges in return for economic advantages. The mischief was that, while selfish considerations were tending to separate the interests of the colonists from those of England, no statesmanlike effort was made to stimulate the feeling of common patriotism, which, though dormant, was still strong. The fact that, at the beginning of the War of Independence, in spite of the Navigation Acts, in spite of their experience of English officials, in spite of George III and his obsequious Parliament, no less than about two-fifths of the American people appear to have been still at heart loyalist^[1], is the best proof of what might have been done by English statesmanship, had it known the ways belonging to its peace.

A few words may be added as to the manner in which the administration of colonial matters was carried on in England. It has been already noticed that the Virginia charter of 1606 established an imperial administrative council to deal with American affairs. When this charter was superseded by the new charter in 1609, colonial affairs were for a time left to the Privy Council. In 1634, however, a separate commission, consisting of the two Archbishops, the Lord Keeper, the Lord High Treasurer, and eight other officers of state, was again set on foot. From this time the principle of a separate body to deal with colonial affairs received continuous recognition. The special commissioners appointed by Parliament in 1643 to deal with colonial matters included most of the leaders of the parliamentary party. Cromwell, Pym, Sir H. Vane (junior), Sir A. Haselrig, and S. Vassall, were among its members. At the Restoration a new Council of Trade and Plantations was instituted, which was intended to be, to some extent, representative of trade interests. Statesmen such as Lord Clarendon and Lord Shaftesbury were especially interested in colonial questions, which seem to have much attracted the versatile mind of Charles II. In 1674 the commission of the Council of Trade and Plantations was revoked, and its business was transferred to a committee of the Privy Council, consisting of the Lord Treasurer, the Privy Seal, and seventeen other members. In the reign of William an effort was made to render more effective that protection of trade interests which was the final cause of the old colonial system. The Board of Trade, however, founded in 1696, disappointed the expectations of its founders. The new body was merely entrusted with the duty of collecting and conveying information, executive power remaining with the Secretary of State or the Privy Council. The confusion thence resulting is clearly shown by Pownall, who, as Governor of Massachusetts, had practical experience of the prevailing state of things. Colonial authorities were continually brought into contact with different departments, while the power of approaching either the Board of Trade, the Privy Council, or the Secretary of State, as choice might dictate, tended to check continuity of policy. The intention had doubtless been that, through the presence of members of the Privy Council at the Board of Trade, the two bodies should act in unison, but the great officials did not attend the meetings of the Board of Trade, while the Privy Council transacted colonial business without giving notice to the Board of Trade. Small improvements were from time to time introduced, but the system of divided responsibility prevailed till the time of the loss of the American colonies.

At first there appears to have been no distinct allocation of colonial matters to either one of the two Secretaries of State. When, however, the work of the Secretaries of State was divided into two separate departments, the Northern and Southern, colonial affairs were included in the province of the Secretary of State for the Southern department. A new Secretary of State for America was appointed in 1768, but this office, along with the Board of Trade, was abolished in 1782.

Some Authorities apart from Collections of the Records themselves.

The Provincial Governor in the English Colonies of North America, by E. B. Greene, 1898, gives the best account of the old English system of government.

A Short History of English Colonial Policy, by H. E. Egerton. 1897.

The Administration of the Colonies, by T. Pownall. 1768.

The Administration of Dependencies, by A. H. Snow. 1902.

There were various lessons which might have been learnt from the loss of the American colonies. The British Government seem to have drawn from that loss two morals: first, that never again must colonies be taxed for imperial purposes by the Parliament of the United Kingdom; and, secondly, that democratic institutions in a colony are a menace to the mother country, and should therefore, if possible, be avoided. It is impossible, in the face of the events of the first forty years of the nineteenth century, to maintain that Great Britain profited by the loss of the American colonies so as to approach colonial questions in a new spirit. An official report, issued in 1849, called attention to the fact that whereas before the end of the eighteenth century the almost invariable practice in the case of the British colonies had been to establish local legislatures consisting of three estates, in no one of the colonies acquired by cession or occupation in the beginning of the nineteenth century had this system been introduced. Doubtless in each particular case there were good reasons for what had been done. Nevertheless the trend of political thought was none the less apparent. Gibbon Wakefield asserted that at the very time of the Reform Bill a Secretary of State had declared that the effect of allowing a popular Assembly in the projected colony of South Australia would be ‘to create within the British monarchy a government purely republican.’ In the same spirit William IV declared to Lord Melbourne his ‘fixed resolution never to permit any dispatch to be sent to his Majesty’s representative in Canada or any other colony holding an allegiance to Great Britain that can for a moment hold out the most distant idea of the King ever permitting the question even to be entertained by his Majesty’s confidential servants of a most remote bearing relative to any change of the appointment in the King’s Councils in the numerous colonies. His Majesty is persuaded that the maintenance of this just prerogative in the hands of the Crown is the safeguard for the preservation of the wise and happy connexion between the mother country and the colonies which it is both the duty and the inclination of the King to maintain^[1].’ The panic-stricken manner in which William IV approaches the proposal of an elective council throws light on the attitude of the English governing classes towards the extension of democracy in the English colonies. The full story of the constitutional struggle in Canada will be told in a subsequent volume, and need not detain us here; but we may note that, while the Quebec Act of 1774 was assuredly not with intention directed against American liberties, and was in fact a very liberal measure, only opposed by a small British minority in the interests of Protestant ascendency, nevertheless it was doubtless not unwelcome to English statesmen to find a community which had received no apprenticeship in political enfranchisement, and which belonged to a proscribed religion, so that its government would have perforce to be carried on for many years on paternal lines. At the same time the successful prosecution of such a policy required that Canada should remain a reserved territory, uncontaminated by the intrusion of British immigrants. The English Government, however, while they fostered French nationality and French separate life, at the same time encouraged British immigration, laying thereby the seed of the future struggle of races. The Act of 1791, which divided Canada into the two provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, was probably the wisest solution of the difficulty open to the statesmen of the time. The influx into Upper Canada of loyalists from the United States who were unwilling to remain under a republican government, created the nucleus of a British population which had of course to receive representative institutions. To deny to the French what was given to the English would have been a reversal of that settled policy of conciliation which had prevailed since the conquest. At the same time it was unfortunate that the French had had no apprenticeship in local self-government. It was the want of such experience that left them an easy prey to the political demagogue. As time went on, the immigration into the towns of Lower Canada of a numerous English population, along with the jealousy excited by the enterprise of English capitalists, led to a state of things wherein the weakness of the English colonial system became flagrantly manifest. For many years the politics of Lower Canada were a hopeless labyrinth, wherein the motives of political enfranchisement, racial jealousy, and vulgar self-interest, were inextricably blended. The situation was complicated by the fact that Upper Canada, by its geographical situation, lay at the mercy of Lower Canada for its communication with the sea, so that the interference of the home government might be necessary to secure fair play to the economic interests of the British province.

The great reform, which revolutionized the relations between the mother country and the self-governing colonies, was the introduction of responsible government. So flexible is the form of the unwritten British constitution, that although the change effected by the introduction of responsible government was almost revolutionary in character, it required no legal enactment to effect its coming into force. Responsible government means the government of a ministry, which is responsible to the majority in Parliament, and which continues in power only so long as it receives the support of such majority. It was many years, even in England, before this theory of government prevailed. William III would have deeply resented the constitutional doctrine that the choice of his ministers rested with any one except himself. The expression still used, ‘the king’s ministers,’ recalls a time when the king was himself, so to speak, his own first minister. Undoubtedly the ignorance and carelessness with regard to English politics shown by George I, helped to establish the rule of parliamentary majorities. At the same time in England the greatness of the change was obscured by several circumstances. The fact of a restricted suffrage and the existence of pocket boroughs tended to weaken political interest, and rendered the majority an easy prey to the methods of organized bribery elaborated by the great minister Sir Robert Walpole. When George III sought to re-establish the power of the Crown, he went to work in an indirect manner by securing a number of personal adherents in Parliament, apart from the regular supporters of the ministry. It was the powerful personality of the younger Pitt which gave the final quietus to this subtle method of influencing Parliament. Both George III, however, and George IV, by their attitude with regard to the question of Catholic emancipation, clearly proved that they never accepted the full consequences of the theory of responsible government, and William IV, had he received any encouragement from the Duke of Wellington and Sir R. Peel, would perhaps have followed in the footsteps of his father and brother in his hostility to Reform. In this state of things at home it is no cause for wonder that responsible government was not introduced without difficulty and misgiving in the British colonies. It has been shown how vicious was the old system so far as the strength of government was concerned. In most of the American colonies executive power had fallen into the hands of the Assemblies, so that the outbreak of the Revolution and the flight of the royal governors made no such complete breach in the continuity of public life of the colony as must otherwise have occurred. When Great Britain emerged from the struggle with the loss of her greatest group of colonies, two methods of dealing with the evil, thus glaringly brought to the light of day, were possible. Either the executive should have been made stronger and the rôle of the Assembly reduced, apart from the granting of supplies, to the position of the English House of Commons of the time of Elizabeth, possessing the power to petition and to criticize, but not the power to act, or else the experiment should have been boldly tried of conferring responsibility where power already existed. English policy in Canada was for many years a vain attempt to shirk issues which would have in the end to be faced. It was in the mouths of English governors a matter for congratulation that the colonial revenue was not equal to the expenditure, because, forsooth, ‘in case the province could be induced to tax itself in a degree equal to the calls of the executive government, the right of regulation and control would probably be aspired to by the Assembly.’ The curious result thus obtained that between 1810 and 1818 the colonial Assembly was agitating to be allowed to defray all the necessary expenses of the civil government. This concession was made in 1818, and, for the next twenty years, the political history of Canada was a squalid and uninterrupted struggle between an Assembly, wholly uneducated in English methods of political procedure, and often employing political methods for racial objects, and governors for the most part ignorant of Canadian affairs and depending for advice upon a council which represented the racial, economic, and political interests most bitterly opposed to those of the bulk of the people. In this state of things public life was a maze wherein all men and all parties had lost their way. The clue of responsible government had indeed been suggested by the French-Canadian Bédard, but had not been taken up by his compatriots, and the Assembly seemed more intent to render government a deadlock than to substitute a more representative system. The governor, meanwhile, suffered in a singular degree from the absence of responsible advisers. There were no ministers of justice, education, public works, internal communication, finance, or trade. In the ordinary course of public business almost all matters came before the governor and his immediate assistant, the Civil Secretary of the province. The governor being a stranger, with little knowledge of the matters brought before him, was obliged to depend largely upon the advice of his executive council. The absence of separate departments with responsible heads deprived such advice of its chief value. ‘Each member of the council,’ wrote Lord Durham, ‘takes an equal part in all the business brought before it. The power of removing members being very rarely exercised, the council is, in fact, for the most part composed of persons placed in it long ago; and the governor is obliged either to take the advice of persons in whom he has no confidence, or to consult only a portion of his council. The secrecy of the proceedings adds to the irresponsibility of the body; and, when the governor takes an important step, it is not known, or not authoritatively known, whether he has taken the advice of his council or not, what members he has consulted, or by the advice of which of the body he has been finally guided.’

Another evil, which had been prevalent in the old colonial system, remained for many years unreformed. The rule of the British House of Commons that it is necessary to obtain the previous consent of the Crown for the introduction of money votes was not in force, and consequently it was open to any member to propose a money vote. Lord Durham thus describes the state of things resulting: ‘There is a perfect scramble among the whole body to get as much as possible of this fund for their constituents; cabals are formed by which the different members mutually play into each other’s hands; general politics are made to bear upon private business, and private business on general politics; and, at the close of the Parliament, the member who has succeeded in securing the largest portion of the prize for his constituents renders an easy account of his stewardship, with confident assurance of re-election.’

Considering all the difficulties in the way, it is probable that years might have elapsed before the introduction of responsible government, but for the publication of Lord Durham’s memorable report, which forced the hands of the home authorities. It is true that the full moral of the report was not at once drawn by the Whig ministry. Nevertheless from the publication of the report the leaven began to work, and, so far as historical events are ever due to the isolated actions of individuals, it is to Lord Durham that the Empire owes the form of its self-governing colonial system of to-day. As late as 1837 Lord John Russell showed his complete agreement with the general doctrine that responsible government for colonies was outside the pale of practical politics. After the abortive rebellion of that year, the Canadian constitution was suspended, and Lord Durham was sent out as High Commissioner for the adjustment of questions respecting the future government of the two provinces. Lord Durham, it must be admitted, exceeded his powers in the mode taken by him of dealing with the rebels, and failing to receive the support from the home ministry which he deemed his due, resigned his post. His work, however, was really achieved by the publication of his report, which he himself sent to the press, actuated either by vanity, as contemporary gossip averred, or by imperial patriotism, as we may now believe. In this report, along with the union of the two Canadas, so as to secure British ascendency, he advocated the unrestricted grant of responsible government. The home authorities were unable to ignore the recommendations of their own High Commissioner, and it was decided to alter the character of the tenure of colonial offices. But even now the full meaning of responsible government had not been grasped, as we see from the language of Poulett Thomson, who had been sent out as governor to administer the new system: ‘I have told the people plainly that as I cannot get rid of my responsibility to the home government, I will place no responsibility on the council; that they are a council for the governor to consult, but no more. Either the governor is the sovereign or the minister. If the first, he may have ministers but he cannot be responsible to the government at home, and all colonial government becomes impossible. He must therefore be the minister, in which case he cannot be under the control of men in the colonies.’ The modern constitutional doctrine is, of course, that in matters relating purely to the home affairs of the colony, where no imperial interest or statute of the British Parliament is affected, the governor stands in the position of a constitutional sovereign, and that with regard to such matters he has no personal responsibility to ministers at home. Where imperial issues are involved, his responsibility to the Crown remains unaffected. This theory, however, was not distinctly recognized and did not receive practical application till the time of Lord Elgin, who entered upon his duties as governor in the beginning of 1847. The same year saw the introduction of responsible government in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Prince Edward Island obtained it a few years later (1851).

The principle of responsible government, once accepted, was bound to find expression sooner or later in all the colonies where the majority of the population was British, and which already enjoyed representative institutions. Although, as we have seen, New South Wales had been started as a convict colony, before many years it began to attract a certain amount of independent immigration, and the introduction of merino sheep opened out new possibilities of wealth and attracted capital and settlers. A nominee Council had been established in 1823, and in 1842 a new Legislative Council was created, consisting of twenty-four elected and twelve nominated members. Van Diemen’s Land and Port Phillip, afterwards known as Victoria, were carved out of New South Wales in 1825 and 1850. New Zealand, which had formed a shadowy part of the original area included in New South Wales, took real life as a separate colony in 1840. Queensland was not separated from New South Wales till 1859, after the latter had obtained its new constitution. In 1850 an imperial Act practically gave general powers to the Australian colonies to settle themselves the exact form of their constitutions. By this means the door was opened for the introduction of responsible government, in 1855, in New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, and South Australia. From an imperial point of view the great advantage of the new system was, in the words of Sir C. Hotham, the Governor of Victoria, that under it popular anger was ‘directed not against the old country or against the governor, but against their own chosen government’; thus ‘their disputes and political animosities (were) exclusively confined to themselves.’ As early as December, 1854, the British ministry had assented readily to the introduction of responsible government in New Zealand. The last of the Australian colonies to receive responsible government was Western Australia, where the smallness of the population did not allow of the introduction of the system before 1890.

In Cape Colony the question was complicated by the presence of a numerous native population and by the recurrence of Kaffir wars. The colonists were reluctant to accept responsible government, because it meant the withdrawal of English troops. As late as 1870 the governor, Sir Philip Wodehouse, placed on record the statement that ‘this form of government was only suitable to communities who desired or looked forward to a severance at no distant date from the mother country, whether by transfer to another Power or by the establishment of an independent State.’ The change was, however, made in 1872, and in 1893 Natal also received responsible government.

With the widening of their political horizons a movement naturally began in the self-governing colonies towards a more complete realization of national consciousness. In Canada, especially, the neighbourhood of the great American Republic on the south rendered it necessary to set up an ideal grander than the petty and sometimes conflicting interests of rival provinces, if the tendencies making for a united Anglo-Saxon North America were to be counteracted. It is difficult at the present time to realize how serious was the risk in the middle of the nineteenth century that Upper Canada, angry with the economic policy of the mother country and out of sympathy with its French compatriots under the Union, might throw in its lot with the United States. Moreover, apart from ideals, the Union had not worked well in practice. ‘By 1864,’ a Canadian historian, Mr. J. C. Hopkins, writes, ‘owing largely to the racial and religious rivalries of the people, no government could obtain a working majority.’ The leaders of both political parties recognized the unsatisfactory situation of affairs, and in 1864 a coalition government was formed with the view of bringing about the confederation of North America. In the maritime provinces there had been for many years strong supporters of confederation, on the ground that loyalists’ interests would by this means be best safeguarded.

In the autumn of 1864 delegates from all the provinces of British North America met at Quebec, and arrived at the conclusions which were afterwards embodied in the British North America Act of 1867. Under that Act Upper Canada, henceforward known as Ontario, Lower Canada, henceforward known as Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia were confederated as the Dominion of Canada; power being given to the other provinces to enter the Dominion when they wished. British Columbia and Prince Edward Island became members in 1871 and 1873, and in 1870 a new province, Manitoba, joined the Confederation, the result of the purchase by the Dominion in 1869 of the possessions of the Hudson’s Bay Company. The North-west Territories beyond Manitoba, with the growth of their population, became afterwards members of the Confederation. The Dominion of Canada thus covers the whole ground of British North America, with the exception of Newfoundland.

Turning to Australia, we find that the reasons urging confederation were by no means so powerful. In these colonies there was no rival, possibly hostile, Power on their borders, and there had been no partial union leading to a deadlock. The population was throughout mainly of British stock. The advantages in favour of some kind of federation had been recognized as early as the fifties by English statesmen, but the local jealousies in the way were very strong. New South Wales was in favour of Free Trade, whereas Victoria was strongly Protectionist. A tentative step in the direction of confederation was, however, made by the passing of the Federal Council of Australasia Act of 1885, which gave limited powers to a council chosen from the various colonies. This council did not effect much, and shrewd observers of Australian politics were surprised when in 1899 a referendum to the electors of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, and Tasmania pronounced in favour of a bill to constitute the Commonwealth of Australia, which had been finally approved by a conference of the prime ministers of the different colonies in the same year. In accordance with this decision an imperial Act was passed in 1900, establishing the Commonwealth of Australia.

The different forms of Canadian and Australian confederation arose from special circumstances in either case. In Canada the need for a strong and united British North America was predominant, and the central Parliament therefore possesses all powers not expressly delegated to the provincial legislatures. Consequently the constituent parts of the Canadian Federation ceased to be self-governing colonies and became ‘provinces’ of the Dominion, so that they no longer retained any direct connexion with the imperial government, their only medium of communication with England being the Governor-General in Council. In Australia, on the other hand, the federal legislature has only those powers which have been expressly delegated to it. The six states of which the Commonwealth is composed remain self-governing colonies; and their governors are still appointed by the Crown. Although in Canada the members of the senate are nominated by the Governor-General for life, while in Australia they are elected by direct popular vote, in both cases the precedent of the American constitution is followed in making the Upper House the representative of provincial or state interests, as opposed to those of numerical majorities which are represented by the House of Commons or House of Representatives.

In South Africa, the third great portion of the world where Great Britain has self-governing colonies, the movement towards confederation has been checked by causes, racial and political, into which it is impossible to enter here. Under changed conditions it is probable that the powerful arguments, economic and other, making for confederation will have fair play, and that a confederate British South Africa will in time take its place by the side of the Dominion of Canada and the Commonwealth of Australia within the wide portals of the British Empire.

When first colonial confederation was proposed, there were not wanting prophets of evil who foretold that the first result of such confederation would be to weaken the links of the already feeble chain which bound the colonies to the mother country. On the other hand, experience tends to show that the uprooting of provincial prejudices and the growth of a sense of new nationhood serve to encourage rather than to counteract the development of an imperial patriotism which will include all portions of the Empire within its range. What is manifest is that without the development of such a patriotism the full meaning of Greater Britain must always remain unfulfilled.

It has been already noted that under the old colonial system one form of government, for the most part, prevailed. Whether the colony were royal, proprietary, or chartered, there were generally to be found a governor, council, and assembly. When, however, representative government, in the case of the great self-governing colonies, was carried to its logical conclusion and came to mean the combination of power and responsibility in the hands of the nominees of the colonial assemblies, it was inevitable that a broad gulf should be fixed between such colonies, and colonies which, from the nature of things, could only be granted a very incomplete measure of self-government.

It may be said shortly that the British colonies at the present day fall into three classes: First, colonies possessing responsible government, which are self-governing in the fullest sense; secondly, colonies possessing representative institutions but not responsible government; and thirdly, Crown colonies. To the first class belong the Dominion of Canada, Newfoundland, the Australasian colonies, and the Cape Colony and Natal. Of the second class, in which is included several mixtures of constitutions, Barbados may be taken as perhaps the best illustration, inasmuch as it has representative institutions dating from the far past, but is not self-governing in the sense of the executive being responsible to the legislature. Of the third class, Crown colonies, there are again various subdivisions, but Ceylon may be taken as a specimen of a pure Crown colony; the members of the Legislative Council in that colony, though representative of the various races and interests in the island, being not elected but nominated, and the official members outnumbering the non-official. Such are the three classes of colonies, but over and above the colonies proper a large area of the Empire consists of British Protectorates, which are distinct from colonies in that the soil is not British soil, though the foreign relations are under British control, and in many cases the rule is hardly to be distinguished from that of a British colony. The Protectorates, like the colonies, are in different stages. Some are under the Colonial Office, others, such as British East Africa, Uganda, and British Central Africa, under the Foreign Office. In some, such as Nigeria and British East Africa, chartered companies have done their work. In others, such as North Borneo, they are still at work; and in some cases a British Protectorate shades off into the more indefinite ‘sphere of British influence.’ Latter days have brought to birth yet another kind of possession within the British Empire, the new territory at Hong Kong and the territory at Wei-hai-Wei being held on long lease.

An interesting feature in the colonial expansion which came about in the latter years of the nineteenth century was the revival of the system of chartered companies. We have seen something of the part which these companies played in the beginnings of European colonization. But it seemed as if their work was done. The East India Company, the most illustrious and long-lived of them, passed out of existence after the suppression of the mutiny. The Hudson’s Bay Company had ceded its territorial rights. The whole system of chartered company seemed closely bound up with the idea of monopoly, and to a generation which had adopted the gospel of free trade, monopolies of every kind were the accursed thing. Nevertheless, it was not perhaps strange that a revival of the old desire after expansion should have brought about a revival of the old methods by which such expansion had been caused. ‘In the general scramble for the remaining waste places of the world, the English, true to their instincts and their traditions,’ fell back on the semi-private agencies of which they had made use in the past. The advantage of the presence of such companies to the parent state is obvious. That they have been deliberately planned as a screen to deceive foreign nations is of course false, but their effect has undoubtedly been to give to the imperial instincts of England a breathing time, so that government action has in some cases been delayed without lasting hurt. That Nigeria is at the present time an English and not a French colony is without doubt due to the Niger Company, and especially to its distinguished founder Sir G. Taubman Goldie. That Uganda is now a British Protectorate we have to thank the short-lived British East Africa Company and its founder Sir W. Mackinnon. A yet more conspicuous case will occur to most. It is possible that a policy of ‘hands off’ might have been asserted against the Boers and foreign Powers in Matabeleland and Mashonaland without the appearance upon the scene of the British South Africa Company, but assuredly that Rhodesia is now a prosperous British colony is due to the great man whose name it will always bear.

How far, under altered conditions, and with monopolies strictly forbidden, chartered companies are paying concerns for the shareholders who embark their money in them, is a more doubtful question. Given exceptional resources, mineral or other, the chartered company may prosper. The British North Borneo Company appears to have a flourishing future in store for it; ruling as it does over 31,000 square miles, and administering under the Colonial Office the little colony of Labuan. The British East Africa Company clearly attempted too much from the outset, but the absence of a monopoly may be compensated by a larger command of capital, and a better knowledge of local requirements. In fact the Royal Niger Company ceased to exist as a chartered company, not because the shareholders did not receive good dividends, but because for reasons connected with general foreign policy, the English Government came to the conclusion that the affairs of Nigeria should be placed under the control of officers directly responsible to the Crown. Southern Rhodesia is the single modern example of a colony, the administration of which is in the hands of a chartered company, which possesses a British population and is in every way suitable for British immigration. In Southern Rhodesia, however, there is a Resident Commissioner, appointed by the Secretary of State, besides the Company’s Administrator. There is also a Legislative Council, which consists, in addition to these officials and to five nominees of the Company, approved by the Secretary of State, of four members elected by the registered voters. The constitutional future of Southern Rhodesia will be followed with great interest by every student of colonial history.

Such, then, is the British Empire of to-day: an elaborate mosaic, wherein, side by side with the Empire of India, Dominion, Commonwealth, self-governing colony, Crown colony, chartered company, Protectorate, sphere of influence, adds each its lustre to the pavement which is ever being trod by fresh generations of our race as they pass to and fro.

Books on the Subject of preceding Chapter.

A Report on Canada, by Lord Durham, 1839. New edition, 1901.

Self-government in Canada, by F. Bradshaw. 1903.

Letters and Journals of Lord Elgin. 1872.

Federal Government in Canada, by G. Bourinot. 1889.

The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia, by W. H. Moore. 1902.

A Short History of British Colonial Policy, by H. E. Egerton. 1897.

British Rule and Jurisdiction beyond the Seas, by Sir H. Jenkyns. 1902.

The Colonial Office List.

Colonial Government, by P. S. Reinsch. 1902.

Introduction by C. P. Lucas to Sir G. Cornewall Lewis’s Essay on the Government of Dependencies. 1891.

The tendency of the times is in the direction of great nations. During the nineteenth century first Italy and then Germany accomplished the fulfilment of their aspirations after national unity, and in the case of Germany the full results of this movement may not yet have taken final shape. Every decade, since the great Civil War, has seen the central authority of the United States growing in influence at the expense of the separatist tendencies inherited from the colonial period. As we have already seen, the great self-governing British colonies, Canada and Australia, have become federal states; and the future has doubtless in store a British federated South Africa. In this state of things, it is natural for men to ask themselves, cannot the ties which bind the various portions of the Empire to each other be made closer? Has not the time almost come to transform the vague aspirations of imperial patriotism into an organism representing the full imperial life? We are told that we are at the parting of the ways. Either the British Empire must find a concrete embodiment of its unity, or else, under the dissolving force of separate interests and mutual ignorance, it will in time fall to pieces and perish, as have perished the other empires of the past. Upon the other hand, there is the opposite danger of premature action. In singularly impressive words Lord Salisbury in 1902 asserted: ‘There is nothing, there is no danger that appears more serious for the time that lies before us than an attempt to force the various parts of the Empire into a mutual subordination and arrangement for which they are not ready, and which may only produce a reaction in favour of the old state of things. . . . If we will be patient and careful, there is a tremendous destiny before us; if we are hasty, there may be the reverse of such a destiny. There may be the breaking apart of those forces which are necessary to construct the majestic fabric of a future empire. . . . Remember, that out of the confusion which recent events have caused, that out of the trouble and difficulties that have arisen, there is arising a state of things perfectly new to the world, a condition in which an empire, depending not on any territorial contiguity, but merely upon the action of its naval defences, . . . is slowly arising out of the sea, that it has behind it the feelings and affections of some of the most vehement races upon the face of the world, that the future destinies of the Empire depend upon the prudence and judgement with which those forces are guided.’

Whatever view be taken of the immediate situation, it would probably be admitted by all responsible statesmen that under conceivable circumstances some closer form of union between the scattered portions of the British Empire may become desirable; and secondly, that such union can only result as the outcome of the action of the self-governing colonies themselves. Mr. Chamberlain, of all living statesmen the most filled with the belief in the future of Greater Britain, has expressed after his visit to South Africa the opinion that, whereas formerly the imperial idea had not taken root in this country but was strong in the colonies, ‘now we have gone ahead; now, I think, we are, perhaps, even in advance of our colonies.’ In this state of opinion, inasmuch as imperial federation can only take place as the outcome of such imperial idea, and the demand for it must come first from the colonies, imperial federation is not, probably, a question of the immediate future.

Granting that some form of closer union is desirable, there are several ways in which it might be attained. The advocates for a Parliament of the Empire are not very numerous, outside the ranks of those who favour a federal Parliament upon other grounds. By this means, it is maintained, the congestion of business in the British House of Commons might be remedied, and the claims of the Irish people satisfied by making Home Rule for Ireland part of a general scheme of Home Rule in local concerns for England, Scotland, and Wales, and the several portions of the Empire. In such a case, the openings for friction and misunderstandings in an imperial Parliament would be very great. How would party government work, in the case of representatives from the other side of the globe? and, in the absence of party government, how would a unanimous minority from a colony tolerate the liability of being outvoted on questions of policy involving imperial taxation by a majority of English members? The latest authoritative utterance upon the subject of imperial federation was the speech of Mr. Chamberlain at the Colonial Conference of 1902. The political federation of the Empire was declared by him to be ‘within the limits of possibility.’ Quoting a saying of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, ‘If you want our aid, call us to your councils,’ Mr. Chamberlain affirmed that the mother country did require the aid of its colonies. If they were prepared at any time to take any proportionate share in the burdens of the Empire, Great Britain would be prepared to meet them in any proposal for giving to them a corresponding voice in the policy of the Empire. The fulfilment of such desire, he explained, need not necessitate the erection of a federal Parliament. Short of this, a real council of the Empire might be established, to which all questions of imperial interest might be referred. At first such a council might be merely advisory. At the same time ‘the object would not be fully secured until there had been conferred on such a council executive functions and perhaps also legislative powers^[1].’

Meanwhile, periodic conferences between the home government and the premiers of the self-governing colonies are a first step in this direction. At the Conference in 1902 it was agreed that it would be to the advantage of the Empire if conferences were held, so far as practicable, at intervals not exceeding four years, ‘at which questions of common interest, affecting the relations of the mother country and his Majesty’s dominions over the sea, could be discussed and considered as between the Secretary of State for the colonies and the prime ministers of the self-governing colonies.’

Considering how very satisfactory are the political relations now existing between Great Britain and the colonies, the question of a closer union might perhaps be allowed to slumber, but that such question is closely connected with the question of imperial defence. The rapid growth in recent years of the expenditure upon the British army and navy, rendered necessary, at least to a great extent, by the increase in the fleets of foreign Powers and by the growing responsibilities of our world-wide Empire, has had the inevitable result of calling attention to the unequal manner in which the different portions of the Empire provide for its defence. The weary Titan, staggering under the burden of heavy taxation, would fain enlist his stalwart kinsfolk to take some share of his load. The estimates for 1902 involved an expenditure of 29s. 3d. per head of the population of the United Kingdom for naval and military expenditure. In Canada such expenditure amounted to 2s. a head, and in Australia to about 3s. 6d. Moreover, the splendid service performed by the Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand troops in the late war, called attention to the mine of military strength which exists in the outlying portions of the Empire. At the Conference it was suggested by Mr. Brodrick that a special body of troops in the colonies should be reserved for imperial service. In the opinion, however, of the representatives of Canada and Australia, ‘to establish a special force set apart for general imperial service, and practically under the general control of the imperial government, was objectionable in principle as derogating from the powers of self-government enjoyed by them, and would be calculated to impede the general improvement in training and organization of their defence forces, and consequently their ability to render effective help, should it be required.’ In the memorandum concerning defence, issued by the Canadian representatives, it was stated that, ‘while the Canadian Government are obliged to dissent from the measures proposed, they fully appreciate the obligation of the Dominion to make the expenditures for the purpose of defence in proportion to the increasing population and wealth of the country. They are willing that these expenditures shall be so directed as to relieve the taxpayer of the mother country from some of the burdens which he bears; and they have the strongest desire to carry out their defence schemes in co-operation with the imperial authorities, and under the advice of experienced imperial officers, so far as that is consistent with the principle of local self-government, which has proved so great a factor in the promotion of imperial unity.’ The position thus taken up is natural enough, and it is satisfactory to find that, while many in Canada are prepared to go further in the direction of imperial support, the promise contained in the Canadian memorandum appears to receive the endorsement of nearly every section of the Canadian people. In naval matters the situation is rendered difficult by cross-currents making in a direction opposed to naval ideals. In Lord Selborne’s words: ‘The sea is all one, and the British navy is all one; and its solitary task in war must be to seek out the ships of the enemy wherever they are to be found, and destroy them. . . . If, on the contrary, the idea should unfortunately prevail that the problem is one of local defence, and that each part of the Empire can be content to have its allotment of ships for the purpose of the separate protection of an individual spot, the only possible result would be that an enemy, who had discarded this heresy and combined his fleets, would attack in detail and destroy those separated British squadrons, which united could have defied defeat.’ Nevertheless, the instinct which desires an outward and visible sign of the protection afforded is strong in the unregenerate man, both at home and in the colonies. Moreover, a sounder reason makes the Australian reluctant to show his interest in imperial defence by a mere money contribution to an imperial fleet. Both the Canadian and the Australian peoples are sea-going peoples, whose interests in the navy cannot be limited to a cash payment. Lord Brassey and others have called attention to the potential resources of the colonies in the matter of providing men for the royal navy; and the Canadian memorandum, quoted above, states that ‘on the sea coast of Canada there is a large number of men admirably qualified to form a naval reserve, and it is hoped that at an early day a system may be devised, which will lead to the training of these men and to the making of their services available for defence in time of need.’

As a result of the Conference, the Australian representatives promised that Australia would increase its contribution to £200,000 a-year towards the cost of an improved Australasian squadron and the establishment of a branch of the royal naval reserve. The New Zealand representative undertook that New Zealand would increase its annual contribution towards such purpose to £40,000. The Cape Colony and Natal representatives promised £50,000 and £35,000 a-year respectively ‘towards the general maintenance of the navy’; while Newfoundland finally promised £3,000 annually (and a capital sum of £1,800 in fitting up and preparing a drill ship) towards the maintenance of a branch of the royal naval reserve of not less than 600 men.

Small as may seem these beginnings to the enthusiast and expert, longing to organize at once the resources of the Empire for the purposes of imperial defence, they will not be despised by those who know how to respect the day of small things. Moreover, no policy could be more fatal in its results than such an insistence upon the moral claims of the mother country as should irritate our colonial fellow subjects, and transfer equitable considerations into the field of dry legal rights. The history of the relations between the mother country and the colonies during the last fifteen years has shown the part played by tact in the dealings between parent and grown-up children; it is not probable that statesmen will leave this track to embark upon the unknown seas of expostulations and threats.

The second vexata quaestio, which disturbs the minds of those concerned with the future of the British Empire, is the subject of the commercial relations between its various parts. Difficult as is the solution of the problem, it does not necessitate for its accomplishment any alteration in the political constitution of the Empire. The colonies are already, except in such matters as directly concern the imperial power, independent states, and trade relations can as easily be regulated by agreements between the component portions of the Empire as by commercial treaties with foreign Powers.

We have seen, in the first part of this volume, how the old colonial system was based upon trade considerations. The change brought about by free trade involved a complete revolution in theories respecting the colonies. At first, however, it was not realized that the colonies would claim complete independence in framing their trade policy. Colonial reformers of the type of Lord Durham, Charles Buller, and Gibbon Wakefield, never imagined that it would be in the power of colonies to levy hostile tariffs against the goods of the mother country. However, full powers in all local matters had been granted, and among such powers was not unnaturally claimed the right to raise revenue by fiscal regulations. ‘Self-government,’ it was asserted in the fifties, ‘would be utterly annihilated, if the views of the imperial government were to be preferred to those of the people of Canada.’

It is natural for communities still in their youth to depend largely upon import duties for their revenue. There is no mass of inherited or accumulated wealth, such as in an older country like England causes large sums from an income-tax to be raised easily. Moreover, in such communities democracy prevails, and a democracy, if it is itself to pay the taxes, will generally prefer indirect to direct taxation. Again, import duties appeal to democracies, because it is the interest of a democracy to build up native industries. The majority of political economists allow that, in the infancy of industries, protective duties may not be without their use in helping to build up the home industry, and a colony may generally assert with some show of reason that it has not yet reached the stage at which some kind of fostering can be forgone. In this state of things it is not unnatural that trade within the Empire finds itself hindered by the barrier of hostile tariffs. While public opinion in the colonies was strongly in favour of protection, in England the gospel of free trade was accepted with all its consequences. To the purists of such gospel an agreement to secure preferential terms for the goods of the mother country in the colonial market would have seemed a tampering with the accursed thing, protection; just as the commercial treaty with France arranged by Cobden appeared to the strictest sect of free traders a violation of first principles. Moreover the question was in the past complicated by the existence of provisions in commercial treaties, giving foreign nations ‘the most favoured nation’ treatment in the colonial markets. In this matter, however, a great change has taken place in the temper of English statesmen. The fierce competition to which British trade is subject at the hands of the United States and Germany has had the effect of emphasizing the importance of the colonial market. When therefore, in 1897, the Canadian Government gave to English manufacturers a preferential treatment of 12½ per cent., which has since been raised to 33½ per cent., the measure was received with genuine gratification in Great Britain. At the Conference of 1902 it was agreed that such preferential treatment was desirable, though it is necessary to add that the colonial prime ministers urged ‘the expediency of granting in the United Kingdom preferential treatment to the products and manufactures of the colonies, either by exemption from or reduction of duties now or hereafter imposed.’ The colonial representatives were prepared to recommend to their Parliaments, in the case of Canada, the existing preference of 33½ percent, and an additional preference on a list of selected articles, (a) by further reducing the duties in favour of the United Kingdom, (b) by raising the duties upon foreign imports, (c) by imposing duties on certain foreign imports now on the free list; in the case of Australia, preferential treatment not yet defined as to nature or extent; in the case of New Zealand, a general preference of 10 per cent. all round reduction of the present duty on British manufactured goods, or an equivalent in respect of a list of selected articles on the lines proposed by Canada; in the case of the Cape and Natal, a preference of 25 per cent. or its equivalent on dutiable goods other than specially rated articles, to be given by increasing the duties on foreign imports. In the present year (1903) the intercolonial South African Conference, consisting of representatives of Cape Colony, Natal, the Orange River Colony, the Transvaal and Southern Rhodesia, has agreed to the preferential treatment of British goods.

In these honest attempts to bind closer the commercial links which bind the separate parts of the Empire, is exemplified that spirit of compromise and of gradual and steady advance, which we can still claim as the characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon race. More sweeping changes are, however, often advocated. The best course from an English point of view seems likely to remain a counsel of perfection. Were the colonies to accept the gospel of free trade, the British manufacturer would for the most part be willing, in a fair field and with no favour, to meet in the colonial markets the competition of rival nations. But for reasons which have already been touched upon, it appears improbable that the great self-governing colonies will in the immediate future revolutionize their fiscal systems. So far as outsiders can observe, the cause of free trade does not seem to be gaining much ground either in Canada or in the Australasian colonies; and every year of delay means the further consolidation of vested interests, which stand in the way of change. Other advisers, recognizing that the triumph of free trade principles is a vain hope, propose an imperial Zollverein, i.e. a customs union within the Empire with hostile tariffs against the outside world. It must be admitted that many of the arguments against protection seem to lose much of their force when the area over which freedom of trade is secured is sufficiently wide. For example, protective duties in the case of the United States, the vast area of which includes every variety of plant and product, mean something very different from what they mean in the case of a small country like Belgium, or even Great Britain and Ireland. Could the scattered portions of the British Empire be placed upon the same footing of fiscal freedom as is the lot of Massachusetts and Oregon, Illinois and Louisiana, Great Britain, it is contended, might with safety abandon her settled policy of free imports with regard to the rest of the world. Granting that the trade of Great Britain with the self-governing colonies does not yet bulk very large compared with her trade with the Continent of Europe and the rest of the world, it may still be maintained that, to take a single instance, the stimulus given to Canadian wheat-growing by the imposition of duties upon wheat from the United States would so promote Canadian prosperity as to increase by leaps and bounds the imports into Canada of British manufactures. To answer the difficult question thus raised, a detailed knowledge is required of the various resources and possibilities of every part of the British Empire, as well as of the special conditions under which the manufactures of this country are carried on. The prosperity of our export trade, upon which a large proportion of our population is dependent, is apparently so intimately bound up with the free importation of raw products for manufacture, that a statesman, here at least, would need to think twice and thrice before he ventured to tamper with the complex anatomy of our mercantile life. For instance, the leading industry of Lancashire is, of course, the manufacture of cotton goods. Would it be possible to impose duties upon raw cotton from the Southern States of America, until the experiments which are being made with regard to the growth of cotton within the Empire had attained a great measure of success? Moreover, apart from this line of argument, it is very doubtful how far the labouring classes of our great towns would accept a policy the immediate effect of which might be a rise in the price of bread. These considerations are put forward in no spirit of controversy, or with the intention of dogmatizing on the abstruse questions involved; but it is impossible to avoid some mention of the difficulties which stand in the way of the reformer who seeks to promote by fiscal regulations the unity of the Empire. A further proposal may be mentioned which, originally made by Mr. Hofmeyr at the Colonial Conference of 1887, has been in a modified form taken up in Canada, and was advocated in England with great force and conviction by Colonel Denison in 1902. The proposal, as amended, is that ‘a special duty shall be imposed at every port in the British possessions on all foreign goods in order to provide a fund for imperial defence, which fund should be administered by a committee or council, in which the colonies should have representatives.’ By this proposal the questions of imperial defence, trade regulations, and political machinery are all dealt with at once. Upon the other hand, it has been urged by Sir Robert Giffen with considerable force that the adoption of such a measure would serve still further to add to the inequality of the amounts raised for defence purposes by the mother country and by the colonies^[2].

More recently Mr. Chamberlain has proposed a complete reversal of the British fiscal policy of the last fifty years. An inquiry is being made by the members of the cabinet, and, meanwhile, it is impossible to predict what will be its consequences. The motives which have influenced the Government appear to be the following. In the first place, realizing the growing importance of the colonial trade, they are desirous of satisfying the wishes of the colonial premiers that some form of preference should be given to the colonies in the British markets. In the second place, they are impressed with the view that it is hopeless to enter into negotiations with foreign Powers about commercial treaties while both hands are tied, and that it may be necessary in such negotiations to take measures in the interests of the colonies, should they be attacked because of preference given to the mother country. Lastly, the rapid growth of German and American exports, compared to the small increase in British exports, together with the action, or possible action, of gigantic foreign trusts, is considered a proper field for inquiry. With the general question, so far as it opens out the old controversy between Free Trade and Protection, we are not here concerned. The proposal, however, to tax articles of food from foreign countries cannot be ignored, so far as it affects the relations between the mother country and the colonies. The state of things which would result would be wholly different from that under a Zollverein, such as the United States or the German Empire. There would need to be bargaining with each individual colony as to the amount of the preference to be given to British goods. From a business point of view, assuming the interests of the export trade to be identical with those of the general community, the change would require to justify it such an increase in the export trade as should more than cover the increased cost of food in the home market. Unless the rate of duty be such as to enable the English manufacturer to compete on fair terms with the colonial, the preference given as against the foreigner might, in the future, become a mere paper gift. On the other hand, should the future permanent relations of the Empire require some sacrifice on the part of the present generation of Englishmen, such sacrifice might be incurred, though it is unfortunate that economic circumstances seem to require it to be made, for the most part, by those least able to make it. In any case, proposals of an undefined and inchoate character, which moreover are the subject of fierce controversy, cannot be properly discussed in these pages.

Whatever answer the future may have in store to the demand for closer political and fiscal connexion between the various portions of the Empire, there can happily be no question with regard to the great natural forces which are making for unity in the wider and more general usage of the term. Science has been the main factor in transforming the face of the globe as it has been of late years transformed. Great inventors and engineers have worked a far mightier revolution in history than all the statesmen and soldiers who have been leaders of their race.

A few illustrations will show the great effect which these inventions have already had on the English colonies. Take first the construction of ship canals. It is true that they hardly come under the head of new scientific discoveries, for similar works were carried out in very early times by the Babylonians and Egyptians, and Xerxes facilitated his invasion of Greece by cutting a ship canal through the isthmus of Mount Athos. But, at the same time, it may be safely said that since the days of ancient potentates, who held human life of no account, no work of such magnitude as the Suez Canal would have been attempted in the absence of modern engineering appliances and of the aid of steam. The Suez Canal has opened a new route to the East, shorter than that round the Cape. It has thereby brought India and the eastern colonies into closer communication with England. It has further increased the importance of our Mediterranean stations, and has made it nearly impossible for England to retire from Egypt. Being also an alternative and a shorter route to Australia, it has given the Australians, on their side, an interest in keeping open the communication, and has brought them, in short, more within the sphere of European politics than they were before.

In Central America a similar canal will now doubtless soon be made; and though, as far as can be seen, the work will not be of such vast importance to the British Empire as the Suez Canal, it is obvious that at least the whole group of West Indian colonies will be affected by it, and that a direct western line to Australia will be opened.

The cutting of these isthmuses, one in the east and one in the west, concerns the whole world. But even canals, which improve communication in a single colony only, have a great and lasting effect in holding the different districts together. Such, for instance, is the result of the canals by which the falls and rapids impeding the navigation of the St. Lawrence are surmounted; they rectify the flaws in the waterway between Upper and Lower Canada, they ensure steady and unbroken communication between the sea and the interior, and thus help in no small degree to weld together the provinces of the Dominion.

But if much would in any case have been effected in the way of greater speed and greater regularity of communication by the cutting of canals, the effect of steam and electricity has been far greater in bringing near the distant places of the earth. Space and time may indeed be said to be annihilated, when telegrams are received at the Colonial Office before they are sent out from an Eastern colony; and the regularity of steamers, as compared with sailing vessels dependent on wind and tide, is illustrated by the accuracy of the postal services, and the readiness with which a great company enters into a contract with the government, binding itself under forfeit to carry mails to certain places by certain definite dates. The time-table of the Peninsula and Oriental Company, for instance, shows that the Company has contracted to carry mails from Brindisi every week to Bombay, and every fortnight to Madras and Calcutta, and to China and Australia; and that the dates of arrival at and departure from the intermediate ports are fixed to the day, sometimes even to the hour. Communication by sea has, in short, become almost as regular as communication by land. From the trading point of view, it is clear that the effects of the introduction of steam and electricity cannot be overestimated. They tend to make the whole world one market—a natural consequence thwarted only by the artificial restrictions which the jealousies of different nations impose upon each other’s commerce.

But, apart from trade, it is interesting to notice the direct result of these forces upon the political and social relations of the component parts of the British Empire. During the nineteenth century the mother country was by these means brought into infinitely closer and more systematic communication with the colonies, the colonies with the mother country and each other, and the various districts of each great dependency one with another. There is now hardly a colony, however remote, which is not connected with the outer world by a regular line of steamers. Even the Falkland Islands are periodically visited by the ships of a Hamburg company on their way to and from the Pacific ports of South America. There are further very few colonies which do not enjoy the benefits of a submarine telegraph system, and a cable, spanning the globe, touching at only British stations, links the various portions of the Empire. The total length of the Pacific cable is nearly 8,000 nautical miles, the largest section being that between Vancouver Island and Fanning Island. The route is from Vancouver to Fanning Island, from Fanning Island to Fiji, from Fiji to Norfolk Island, from Norfolk Island to New Zealand, or by another branch to Australia.

Meanwhile, telegraph wires are being laid across the continent of Africa from south to north, connecting Cape Colony with Egypt. It was at one time expected that the wires would have been erected by the end of 1902, but the recent war of necessity retarded operations. In Australia there is telegraphic communication from south to north between Adelaide and Port Darwin.

During the second half of the nineteenth century the construction of railways played an important part in the political and social development of the British colonies. The Dominion of Canada as a confederate community may be said to owe its very existence to the making of a railway from ocean to ocean. But for the promise of such a railway British Columbia would probably have delayed joining the Dominion, and British North America as a single state, with a seaboard on both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, might have remained an unfulfilled aspiration. It is proposed to extend the system of the Grand Trunk Railway to the Pacific coast, and also to construct another trans-Canadian line to the north of the Canadian Pacific. It is everywhere recognized that without railways development is impossible. In this respect the last few years has witnessed in the Crown colonies of West Africa a forward movement; the Uganda railway, which has been built at great cost to the British taxpayer, from Mombasa on the sea coast of British East Africa to Kisumu on Lake Victoria, is only a conspicuous instance of a movement which is everywhere afoot. The grandiose scheme, first conceived and begun by Mr. Rhodes, of spanning the great African continent with a railway from south to north, will doubtless in time be accomplished. Already the railway is steadily penetrating north, and there will be before long connected communication between Capetown and the Victoria Falls of the Zambesi; whence the railway will be continued to Lake Tanganyika; while from the north it extends into the Soudan as far as Khartoum.

Another influence which tends to check the disintegrating force of distance and separation has been and is the cheapening of the postal service. At present the rate of postage to India, Canada, New Zealand, Cape Colony, Natal, the Transvaal, the Orange River Colony, and nearly all the Crown colonies is 1d. per half ounce, and, though the Commonwealth of Australia and Rhodesia have not been able hitherto to reduce their rates, there is a widespread desire that a uniform 1d. post should be established throughout the Empire. Considering that the great bulk of emigrants are working people, to whom the payment of 2½d. for a light letter means a considerable tax, the importance of cheap postage in keeping up the connexion between such emigrants and their friends and relatives in their old homes cannot be overestimated. In this connexion should be noted the efforts which are now being made by leagues to promote correspondence between children throughout the scattered divisions of the Empire. So far, however, as most men are concerned, what they read in newspapers insensibly influences their sympathies more than what they receive in private correspondence. Accordingly, at the 1902 conference the colonial Prime Ministers affirmed the desirability of adopting ‘the principle of cheap postage between the different parts of the British Empire on all newspapers and periodicals published therein.’ Hitherto, owing to the low rate of postage between the United States and Canada, Canadians have depended to a very great extent upon American newspapers for news with regard to English and European affairs. It is obvious that such a state of things is, from the point of imperial interests, undesirable. The news, or at any rate the form in which it is presented, may often be affected by the atmosphere of an unfriendly bias, and it is, in any case, an anomaly that subjects of the British Crown should have to go to foreign newspapers, however enterprising or friendly, for their knowledge of British affairs.

In these ways then the mother country and the colonies are now in intimate connexion such as was impossible in the past. Every steamer takes out Englishmen to one or other of the colonies, and brings back colonists to England. There are no long breaks of communication. If one ship is wrecked, two or three others arrive safely within a few days. If a telegraph cable gives way, there is probably another line still working, and the faulty cable is speedily repaired. Thus the great difficulty with which ancient states had to contend, that of keeping a hold on distant dependencies, is now in great measure surmounted, and steam and electricity go far to counteract the natural tendency of people who live at the other end of the earth to separate more and more from the original home. By this means steam and electricity are at work, resisting provincial or separatist tendencies, promoting unity of interest, multiplying intercourse and strengthening the bonds of common race and common language.

In the case of the tropical dependencies, there is a further result of steamers and railways which should be noted. In the tropics, as has been already pointed out, Englishmen do not make a permanent home. Consequently, while steamers and railways take out far more tourists to the East than would have travelled in the old days, they also bring back Englishmen from the East at far shorter intervals than of yore. Where a man would stay twenty years in India without coming back to Europe, he now stays five or six, probably sending his wife and children back even sooner. And so it follows that the East has become even less of a home to English people than it was in the old days. The Anglo-Indian is more of an ordinary Englishman, and has less Anglo-Indian idiosyncrasies than used to be the case. While at work in India he receives ten English letters and newspapers to one which he could have received in the past, and his mind and heart are more than ever set on England and things English. And so it is that modern inventions have brought about opposite results. Upon the one hand, tourists visit the East, and the stay-at-home public is well served with Indian news, so that India is brought far more closely home to the average Englishman; while, on the other hand, those whose calling lies in the East spend far less of their lives there, and even when on the spot are less wholly wrapped up in Indian matters.

Again, except in the case of such colonies as are self-governing, science has in effect revolutionized the government of colonies. What the colonial reformers of the thirties and forties accused the Colonial Office of attempting to do with failure can now be done with comparative success, and the central authority may dictate the policy which is sped along the telegraph wires. At the same time, public opinion, both at home and in the colonies, is brought to bear on all foreign and colonial questions to a degree which was formerly unknown. So far as abuses are prevented by all the world knowing at once any important step taken by officials, and so far as a uniform system of administration is produced by a regular correspondence, science has worked an unmixed good. But perhaps from another point of view the change wrought by modern inventions gives some cause for regret. Governors and administrators must nowadays be perforce less self-reliant, more afraid of responsibility, and less capable of strokes of genius than were their predecessors, although in most respects they are probably greatly superior. A man who lives at the end of the telegraph wire and within reach of the House of Commons, cannot think and act for himself as much as one who is cut off from the home government and is practically his own master: and now that each colony and dependency is brought into closer communion with the mother country, it will become increasingly difficult for the class of men to survive who, great alike in their merits and in their failings, built up the British Empire. The names of Sir Bartle Frere and of General Gordon will at once occur, as giving point to these remarks. The former was one of the old school of Indian administrators, who were trained by necessity to rely on themselves alone; and it is worth remembering that, when he went to South Africa and there initiated a strong forward policy, no submarine telegraph had, as yet, been laid to the Cape. General Gordon’s greatness throughout his life was coupled with absolute independence of action and freedom from official control; and he was never so great as at the last, when all telegraphic connexion between Khartoum and the outer world had been hopelessly cut off. When all is said and done, however, there will always be critical occasions when a decision must be arrived at by the man on the spot, and the stronger the minister at home, the more he will respect such decision. The world has not yet become such a dull place that there may not still be room within the spacious domains of the British Empire for the type of Englishman which in the past was associated with the growth of English greatness.

Some Authorities on Subject of Foregoing Chapter.

Report of Colonial Conference of 1902, and other Parliamentary Papers.

Problems of Greater Britain, by Sir C. Dilke. 2nd ed., 1890. Part VII.

Imperial Federation, by G. R. Parkin. 1892.

The Statesman’s Year Book, 1903.

By Mr. C. P. Lucas.

Newfoundland claims to be the earliest English colony. Long the resort of English sailors and fishermen, it was formally annexed to Great Britain by Sir Humphrey Gilbert in 1583; but it was not colonized till the following century, when a Bristol company in 1610, and Lord Baltimore in 1623, attempted to form settlements in the island, though with slight success; and it was not finally assured to the English empire till the peace of Utrecht in 1713.

The unsuccessful Scotch colony planted by Sir W. Alexander in the Acadian peninsula in 1621-3, which left behind it nothing but the name of Nova Scotia, gives some colour to the statement, that this territory was acquired by settlement at that time: but it is safer to date the acquisition from the peace of Utrecht, under the provisions of which Nova Scotia and New Brunswick were made over by France to England.

Barbados is English in virtue of settlement, and unlike most of the West Indies has never changed hands: 1605 is given as the date of its acquisition, but the first English colonists appear to have landed in 1625.

The solitary group of the Bermuda Islands in the North Atlantic Ocean was annexed in 1609 by Sir G. Somers, who was wrecked there on his way to Virginia, and who has left to the islands their second name^[2]: an English settlement is said to have been planted in them in 1611.

Soon afterwards the English claims upon the smaller West Indian Islands began. The settlement of St. Kitts dates from 1623, of Nevis from 1628, of the Bahamas and Turks Islands from 1629, of Antigua and Montserrat from 1632, of Anguilla from 1650, and of the Virgin Islands, where Dutch buccaneers were driven out by English adventurers, from 1666: while in 1655 Cromwell’s officers made amends for the failure of their attempt on Hispaniola, by taking the fine Spanish dependency of Jamaica.

The date assigned to the first English settlement at the Gambia is 1631, though a company was formed to open up the trade of this great West African river as early as 1618. In 1661 Cape Coast Castle on the Gold Coast was taken from the Dutch: other points on the coast were subsequently secured by the Royal African Company which was formed in 1672: and in 1651 the East India Company, anxious to find a halting-place in the South Atlantic on their road to the East, took possession of the little island of St. Helena, which the Dutch had already occupied but subsequently abandoned.

These are the dependencies at present under the Colonial Office, the acquisition of which dates from the seventeenth century. In India but little territory was annexed during the period: it was not till 1689 that the thought of sovereignty^[3] was entertained by the East India Company; and at the end of the century the English possessions in this quarter of the world consisted only of four stations or factories, viz. Madras, which was acquired in 1639, Bombay in 1661, Fort St. David in 1691, and Calcutta in 1696^[4]. Of these Bombay was transferred by the Portuguese government to the English crown as part of the dowry of Catherine, the Portuguese princess whom Charles the Second married, and was a few years afterwards (in 1668) handed over to the East India Company; while the other three stations were granted, leased, or sold to the Company by their native owners.

Face p. 205

The chief event of the century, however, in the field of colonization was the founding of the United States, the greatest colony, or series of colonies, which has ever been planted by a single people at one period of their history.

With the eighteenth century English colonization entered on a new and widely different phase. This second period, reaching down to 1814, comprises the years during which Great Britain became an Imperial power. It was a time when foreign policy engrossed the attention and the energies of her statesmen: and its record is a record of perpetual warfare with other European nations, especially with France. The dependencies, which England then won, were won chiefly at the point of the sword: and the men, to whom they were due, were statesmen and soldiers, not explorers or merchants or pioneers of peaceful settlement. The losses too which the country sustained, no less than its gains, show the special character of the period. The revolt of the United States followed close on the victories of Wolfe in Canada and Clive in India. The time when the greatest of English conquests was won, was the time when the greatest of English settlements was lost; for the spirit of the age, which favoured annexation by the strong arm of the state, ran counter to the feeling of independence, which had inspired the founding, and grown with the greatness, of the North American Colonies.

The period can be conveniently divided into two parts. The first closes with the Peace of Paris of 1763. The second with another Peace of Paris in 1814. But the main feature of both epochs was one and the same—the struggle between France and England for the leadership of the world.

The first foreign dependency secured by Great Britain during the eighteenth century was Gibraltar, taken from Spain in 1704, the year of the battle of Blenheim. It was the price paid by Spain for her alliance with France in the war of the Spanish succession: and though classed among English colonies, it has been from first to last a mere outpost in a foreign land, a fitting firstfruit of an age, in which it fell to the lot of England to conquer, not to colonize.

Of the West Indian Islands, the peace of 1763 gave to England Dominica in the Leeward group; and St. Vincent, the Grenadines, Grenada, and Tobago, in the Windward; all of which had either actually belonged to France or been claimed by her wholly or in part. The same peace assured the fruits of Wolfe’s great victory at Quebec in 1759, and transferred the Canadian possessions of France to Great Britain.

Meanwhile, in India as in America, France and England had met each other face to face. But the efforts of Dupleix, Labourdonnais, and Lally, proved eventually as unsuccessful in the East as those of Montcalm in Canada; and the battle of Plassey in 1757, and of Wandewash in 1759, decided, the former that a European race should rule in India, the latter that that race should be the English and not the French. Thus when the climax of the struggle between England and the power of the Bourbon monarchy was reached in 1763, the results of the strife were all in favour of the former. The English were victorious in the East. In the West they held nearly the whole of the North American Continent; and there was little to show, that in twenty years the finest of their American settlements would be lost to them, and that what are now the United States would be permanently severed from the English Crown.

The history of the years from 1763 to 1814 is again roughly a record of war between England and France; the imperialism of the Bourbons being succeeded by that of Napoleon, and the struggle resolving itself more and more into a contest between the first land power and the first sea power of the day. The general result of this second epoch, like that of the first, was to transfer to Great Britain possessions, which either belonged to France, or to powers which had become subordinate to her. Malta was taken from France in 1800. St. Lucia, the last of the Windward group, which, like so many other West Indian Islands, had long been bandied about between the two countries, in 1803. Mauritius, which under the government of Labourdonnais was of great account in the history of the French in the East, in 1810. From Holland England took Ceylon in 1795, the year in which Pichegru reduced the Netherlands to the condition of a French dependency; British Guiana, as it is now called, in 1803; and the Cape, the greatest of Dutch Colonies, in 1806.

All these dependencies were assured to England by the Peace of Paris in 1814, with the exception of Ceylon, to which the Dutch relinquished their claims under the provisions of the earlier Peace of Amiens in 1802.

The year 1797 saw the surrender of the Spanish island of Trinidad to an English fleet. In 1807 the capture of Heligoland from the Danes gave us an outpost in the North sea.

Meanwhile in India the English power was rapidly extended at the expense of native rulers and their French allies. The strong policy of Warren Hastings in the earlier years of the period, and of Lord Wellesley in the later, confirmed and broadened the supremacy which had been won by Clive. The Regulation Act of 1772, and Pitt’s India Bill of 1784, which established the Board of Control, practically recognized that the time had come for the state to exercise a direct supervision over the great work which was being carried out in the name of a private trading company.

In the Malay Indies the English had from early days competed with the Dutch^[5]; but it was only in 1786 that a permanent footing was obtained off the coast of the Malay peninsula. In that year the island of Penang was ceded by the Sultan of Quedah, and formed the nucleus of the still-growing colony of the Straits Settlements.

But though English colonization in the eighteenth century was mainly bound up with the foreign complications of the mother country, this account does not hold true of all colonies acquired during these years. For instance, the colony of British Honduras originated in a settlement which had been formed in that part of Spanish America by private adventurers from Jamaica, who, in spite of Spanish opposition, had carried on for many years a profitable timber trade: and the treaties made with Spain in 1783 and 1786, from which the English claim to this colony dates, were simply a formal recognition of the existing state of things. So also the acquisition of the West African peninsula of Sierra Leone, which in 1787 was ceded to England by its native owners, and shortly afterwards handed over to a company formed for the purpose of suppressing the slave trade, had no connexion with Imperial policy, and was simply an outward and visible sign of the growing antagonism in England to the iniquities of the slave system.

Another and more important event in the history of colonization took place in 1787. Up to the date of the Peace of Paris in 1763, the attention of European nations, when not concentrated on Europe itself, had been directed to the West or the East, to the struggle between France and England in Canada and India. But when the great duel on these two opposite sides of the world had been brought to a temporary close, the restless spirits of the two combatants seemed to look abroad for other fields. Such voyages as those of the Frenchman Bougainville, and the Englishman Cook, both of whom had served in Canada, opened up the Southern ocean; and as soon as England realized that she had finally lost the United States, she forthwith set herself to colonize Australia^[6].

In the autumn of 1787, the first ship-load of convicts was sent to Australia: they were landed at Botany Bay in the spring of 1788. A detachment was almost immediately sent to Norfolk Island; and in 1803 Tasmania received English colonists from the same doubtful source. But though the beginnings of Australian settlement fall within the century of conquest, they must rather be taken as the prelude to the third and last period of English colonization, dating from the year 1814 to the present day.

Of the smaller dependencies acquired since 1814, the little island of Ascension in the Atlantic to the North of St. Helena was appropriated as a coaling station in 1815. In 1819 the island of Singapore, at the southern end of the Malay peninsula, was secured by treaty with the natives: and, in 1824, the neighbouring Dutch colony of Malacca, which had already in 1795 fallen into English hands, but had been restored to the Netherlands, was finally transferred to England in exchange for Bencoolen, a settlement of the East India Company in the island of Sumatra^[7]. In 1833 the southernmost limit of the Empire was reached, possession being taken of the group of the Falkland Islands off the Straits of Magellan, which several powers had in previous years successively occupied and abandoned^[8]. In 1838 the rock of Aden, and in 1855 the island of Perim, were added to the list of outposts on the way to India. In 1841 the cession of the then almost uninhabited island of Hong Kong, at the mouth of the Canton river, gave England a footing on the coast of China. In 1846, owing to the efforts of Rajah Brooke, the island of Labuan was taken over from the Sultan of Borneo, though not occupied till two years later. In 1861 the island of Lagos on the Guinea coast was made over by its native king. In 1874 Fiji became in the same way a British colony. In 1878 Cyprus was occupied under treaty with the Turkish government.

To turn to the larger groups of colonies, this century has seen the extension of Canada to the Pacific; and the far-spreading districts, vaguely included in British North America, have been given a substantial existence as provinces of the Canadian Dominion. British Columbia was erected into a Colony in 1858, and in 1871 was incorporated with Canada; Manitoba was constituted a province of the Dominion in 1870. Prince Edward Island, which had been a separate colony since 1770, joined the confederation in 1873; and the North-West Territories, which up to the year 1871 had belonged to the Hudson’s Bay Company, were given a constitution in 1876. The same process of gradual subdivision and formation of provinces is still being carried out; and, as in the United States, other districts in the North-West are passing through intermediate stages, to be hereafter placed on an equal footing with the older members of the great confederation^[9].

In Australia, the military post stationed by the Governor of Sydney at King George’s Sound in 1826, and the Swan River Settlement of 1829, blossomed in due course into the colony of Western Australia. South Australia dates her separate existence as a colony from 1836. Victoria was separated from New South Wales in 1851, and Queensland in 1859. In 1840 the sovereignty of New Zealand was ceded to England by the native chiefs, the cession being followed by an English settlement in 1841.

The colonization of South Africa has been no easy task, owing to conflicting interests. The work has been complicated by the presence of Dutch settlers with long-established claims, and of a vast native population, not decaying in numbers but holding their own with the white man. Consequently the progress of the English power has been more faltering than in other parts of the world.

Natal, the second of the two South African colonies, was settled in 1837, by Dutch emigrants from the Cape: in 1843 it was annexed by the British Government, and, after a period of subordination to the older settlement at the Cape, was in 1856 constituted a separate colony. The territory of Griqualand West, including the diamond fields of Kimberley, came under English rule by right of cession in 1871, and in 1880 was incorporated with the Cape Colony: and the limits of the latter colony have been gradually extended, until on the West Coast they touch the Orange River, and include, besides, the detached port of Walfisch Bay far to the north on the tropic of Capricorn; while on the Eastern side they reach to within almost a hundred miles of the borders of Natal. Outside the boundaries of the two colonies, Basutoland and the southern part of Betshuanaland, are now English territory: a vague protectorate is exercised over other outlying districts; and a nominal suzerainty over the South African Republic in the Transvaal.

The development of the English Empire in India during the century has been almost entirely the outcome of a succession of wars, involving either direct annexation or the indirect subordination of native states under the guise of a protectorate.

The annexation of Scinde in 1843, and of the Punjaub in 1849, was the result of hard fighting. The possession of the Burmese provinces has been obtained at the cost of three wars, the first taking place in 1824, the second in 1852, and the third in 1885. Oude was annexed by Lord Dalhousie in 1856; and though the annexation was effected by peaceful means, the measure is supposed indirectly to have been one of the main causes of the great Indian Mutiny, which followed close upon it^[10]. The struggles with the Afghans in 1838-42 and in 1878-80, and the other troubled stages in the later history of the English in India, cannot here be traced. It can only be pointed out that, however valuable India may be to Great Britain in point of trade, and whatever advantages the native population may derive from just and systematic rule, yet this great possession has been obtained by force and is held by force, and India has been from first to last purely a conquered dependency. In 1858, after the Mutiny, the policy embodied in Pitt’s India Bill was carried out to its conclusion: the Board of Control was superseded by a Secretary of State and Council for India, and all the political rights of the East India Company were transferred to the Crown. Finally the proclamation of the Queen of England as Empress of India—Kaisar-i-Hind—in 1877, may be held to have been an intimation to the world at large, that the suzerainty of the Indian peninsula belongs to England and to England only, and that it has been won and is kept by the force of English arms.

It remains to notice the extension of English power which has lately taken place in the East Indian Archipelago on the border-line between Asia and Australia. English interference in Borneo began with the exploits of Rajah Brooke, who, in 1841, established himself as ruler of the native state of Sarawak with the sanction of the Sultan of the old native kingdom of Brunei. A few years later, he was appointed the first Governor of the little Crown colony of Labuan. Sarawak has, in spite of the wishes of its first ruler, never been taken over by the English Government, but remains to the present day an independent state, governed by a member of Sir James Brooke’s family, and administered by a staff of English officers. Meanwhile the northern peninsula of Borneo had passed into British hands, though not into the keeping of the British Government, having been sold by the Sultan of Brunei to the British North Borneo Company, whose charter of incorporation dates from November 1881.

In New Guinea, under pressure of foreign competition, and in deference to the wishes of the Australians, the home government has interfered more directly than in the case of Borneo: and in 1884 a British protectorate was proclaimed over the south-eastern part of the coast and over the adjacent islands, thereby securing a new field for the future expansion of the Australasian colonies.

[During the sixteen years which have elapsed since the first edition of this volume, there has been a great expansion of the British Empire in Africa. It is only needful to place the map of the Africa of to-day by the side of the map of the Africa of even twenty years ago to realize the transformation which has taken place. It is of course true that ‘spheres of influence’ exist, even now, to a great extent on paper, but the delimitation of the boundaries of the various Powers tends steadily and surely to effective occupation. The scramble for the unclaimed portions of Africa has necessitated a forward movement on the part of Great Britain. Even where colonies remain nominally the same their area has in fact been materially enlarged by the more effective occupation of their hinterlands. Thus, taking the West African colonies, the proclamation, in 1896, of a protectorate over the hinterland of Sierra Leone has practically greatly increased the area of that colony. In the Gold Coast the constitution of a separate district known as ‘the Northern Territories’ (1897) and the installation (1896) of a British Resident at Kumassi, the capital of the kingdom of Ashanti, have in the same way enlarged the sphere of British dominion. Lagos has been also increased by the inclusion in 1892 of a portion of the territory of the Jebus.

More important is the acquisition to the Crown of the vast territories known as Nigeria. The charter of the Royal Niger Company was obtained in 1886, and to its founder, Sir George Goldie, Great Britain owes that she was not forestalled in this region, perhaps destined to become another India, by the French. The administrative rights of the Company were in 1890 transferred to the Crown, but the task of establishing the pax Britannica throughout the vast territories of Northern Nigeria is not yet finally accomplished.

Upon the east coast of Africa the protected state of Zanzibar and the East Africa and Uganda Protectorates have come under British dominion since 1887. These Protectorates are partly due to the work of the British East Africa Company, incorporated by charter in 1888, which transferred its territories to the Crown in 1895, and are partly the outcome of the Anglo-German agreement of 1890. Uganda, as now constituted, stretches from the Egyptian Sudan to German East Africa. (It should further be noted that Great Britain shares with the Khedive authority over the Egyptian Sudan.)

Further south the British Central Africa Protectorate, which includes the country formerly known as Nyasaland, under British protection since 1891, and North-Eastern Rhodesia, represents a further share in the partition of Africa.

The name ‘North-Eastern Rhodesia’ connects the tropical possessions of Great Britain with the South African colonies, which are self-governing or on the road to self-government. Nowhere, in recent years, have such great changes been made in the limits of British territory as in South Africa. Rhodesia, which includes an area of some 750,000 miles, recalls the name of its great founder, who obtained in 1889 the charter of the Royal South Africa Company. Southern Rhodesia, which includes the former districts of Mashonaland and Matabeleland, will in time take its place by the side of the other self-governing colonies of South Africa. Northern Rhodesia includes, besides the north-eastern portion already mentioned, Barotziland North-Western Rhodesia, stretching to the Zambesi, the German South-West Africa Protectorate, the Portuguese possessions, the Congo Free State, and the Loengi River. The Orange River Colony and the Transvaal are now British, so that Great Britain possesses the main portion of South Africa, with Portuguese and German possessions on either flank.

In the East, apart from the affairs of India, the most important event of recent years has been the formal establishment under British superintendence, in 1895, following on preliminary steps taken in 1883 and subsequent years, of the Federated States of the Malay Peninsula. In North Borneo, Brunei, and Sarawak, British supremacy received in 1888 more formal recognition. In 1898 the area of territory attached to Hong Kong was extended, and in the same year Wei-hai-wei, on the north coast of the Shantung peninsula, was leased to Great Britain. Small islands have been annexed to the Empire in the Pacific Ocean since 1887, but these are not of sufficient importance to be mentioned in detail in a summary of this cursory character.

H. E. E.]

(In the foregoing list dates connected with the history of British India have not been included.)

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF PLACES MENTIONED IN APPENDIX

Clicking on a map will reveal an image of higher resolution.

Minor changes were made to hypenation to achieve consistency.

[The end of The Origin & Growth of the English Colonies and of their System of Government by Hugh Edward Egerton]