THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
VOLUME I
THE AMERICAN COLONIES
1583-1763
First Edition, 1908
Second Edition, revised and reprinted, 1910
THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
VOLUME I
THE AMERICAN
I COLONIE S ,,.'
1583-1763
BY
A. WYATT TILBY
LONDON
CONSTABLE AND COMPANY
LIMITED
1910
Dfl
12
\f\\o
V.I
PREFACE
THIS book is in no sense a history of the English people
in their own island. The home life of our country, both
before and after the foundation of the colonies and pro-
tectorates, has been adequately treated by a host of previous
writers : the colonial field, on the contrary, remains almost
untracked, or marked out only in portions, by men who
have written with different aims, seen events from different
points of view, sketched in different perspective and painted
without reference to the relative importance of their small
foreground to the rest of the landscape. It has seemed to me
that the whole of our imperial career, as it has sprung from
one small group of islands, so it can best be treated as one series
of connected events to use a well-worn simile, as a drama
which, though its various acts take place in every con-
tinent and on every ocean, still preserves the fundamental
unity that even the constant shifting of the scene does not
obscure. The present work is an attempt to carry out that
idea.
The course of our history in other lands has often forced
me to step outside the strict limits of the title. It would be
impossible to understand our empire in India without some
slight notice of the Indians themselves previous to their
discovery by Europeans, and the Portuguese and Dutch
explorers there ; it would be impossible to understand
vi THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS
our history in America without mentioning the Spanish and
French empires that preceded and for a long time over-
shadowed the English colonies ; the record of South African
life is not that of English alone, but of English and Dutch
together. Even in Australasia, which occupies a unique
position in having afforded a footing to no other white race,
the aborigines played a part in the early history of the colonies
that cannot be passed over. The question, indeed, of the
contact of a white race with coloured peoples in all parts of
the world, which calls imperatively for treatment in a work of
this kind, is, upon the whole, the most difficult one to treat
impartially. It is almost impossible to pick the way clearly
through the trade statistics, official reports, missionary
experiments and political prejudice which obscure a scientific
treatment of the greater problems at issue.
I have resolutely excluded that mass of detail which
makes many modern histories so unreadably long, that
the narration of events takes more time than their action.
After all, there are other things in life than the study of
the past ; the present and the future may also claim -a little
attention. But it has been my first principle that no settle-
ment of the English-speaking people overseas should be
left unnoticed ; and my second that the actors in the great
drama should, as far as possible, speak for themselves from
the records they have left behind records that too often
lie buried under an accumulation of library dust which tells
that the sleep of the heroes they commemorate has seldom
been disturbed by inquirers of the present generation. And
while giving due notice to the long wars which in one sense
founded our empire, I have concentrated more attention on
that peaceful development of our institutions and society
PREFACE vii
which form its true basis and make it worth having, in a widely
different fashion from either the Roman Empire of ancient
history or the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages, or
indeed any previous empire that the world has seen.
A. WYATT TILBY.
BIBSTWITH, YORKSHIRE,
31st December 1907.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
THE publication of a new edition, in what I hope may prove a
more convenient form for reading, has given me the oppor-
tunity of correcting one or two errors that crept into the first
issue. The whole work has been very carefully revised before
being reprinted, and some paragraphs have been entirely
rewritten.
Several friends and some critics the two characters are
not necessarily separated in person have urged me to add
footnotes containing more information than it is possible to
give in the text as to the original sources on which the nar-
rative rests. I must own that I am not greatly enamoured
of the footnote, which is apt to resemble the proverbial poor
relation by interrupting the flow of conversation at incon-
venient moments ; nor is it always easy, in these days
when the materials are accumulating so rapidly, to specify
the exact ingredients and composition of every dish upon
the menu. It may ensure the honesty of the cook ; it may
also provoke indigestion.
However that may be, I have given the leading references,
somewhat briefly when the ground has been well covered by
previous writers and the facts are clear ; in more detail when
the subject is controversial or the quotation difficult to
identify. And this plan I propose to follow in the remaining
volumes of this work.
A. WYATT TILBY.
ROYAL COLONIAL INSTITUTE, LONDON,
July 1910.
vili
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE . . . . (i . . ( ._ . . v
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION viii
BOOK I
THE NEW WORLD. 1415-1624
CHAP.
i. THE FIRST EMPIRE . 1
n. THE LATIN ERA OF CONQUEST. 1415-1588 . * %,.,,_ 10
m. THE ENGLISH SEA-KINGS. 1558-1600 ' . . ., . 24
iv. THE MERCANTILE COMPANIES 38
v. THE IMPERIAL SPIRIT IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE . 44
vi. VIRGINIA. 1584-1624 ....... 50
BOOK II
THE PURITAN EMIGRATION. 1583-1660
i. PURITANISM IN ENGLAND. 1583-1649 .... 61
ii. THE FIRST PURITAN COLONIES. 1620-58 ... 65
in. PURITANISM TRIUMPHANT. 1649-58 .... 84
iv. THE CAVALIER COLONIES. 1624-60 .... 90
v. THE FALL OF PURITANISM. 1660 98
vi. THE WEST INDIES. 1605-1805 104
BOOK III
THE BEGINNING OF THE WORLD-STRUGGLE. 1588-1713
i. THE Loss OF SPAIN'S SUPREMACY. 1588-1700 . . 123
ii. THE RISE OF FRANCE. 1594-1663 131
in. THE DUTCH EMPIRE. 1572-1689 139
iv. THE SECOND SCANDINAVIAN EPOCH. 1611-1718 . . 152
CHA.P.
PAGE
THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
BOOK IV
THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 1658-1740
V. NEW ENGLAND AND NEW YORK. 1658-1740 . . .157
n. PENNSYLVANIA. 1680-1740 186
in. THE SOUTHERN PLANTATIONS. 1660-1740 . . . 196
iv. THE FRENCH COLONIES. 1663-1740 .... 210
v. ENGLAND IN THE WEST. 1740 218
BOOK V
THE EVOLUTION OF A LARGER SYNTHESIS. 1713-63
i. THE PEACE OF EXHAUSTION. 1713-42 . . . 246
n. THE GENERAL WAR. 1740-63 250
in. THE WAR IN AMERICA. 1740-63 259
iv. ENGLAND AS A WORLD-POWER. 1763 .... 278
THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
BOOK I
THE NEW WOELD: 1415-1624
CHAPTER I
CUT off from the continent of Europe by a narrow but ever
restless arm of the Atlantic, the British Islands seem marked
out by nature itself for a different destiny from Tne isolation
that of the mainland. In large measure such has of England,
been their fate during the twenty centuries that our written
history goes back. If the continental peoples have been
separated from each other by race, by language, by
modes of life that were mutually repellant, they know no
geographical divisions more formidable than great rivers and
mountain ranges. Communication, if insecure during un-
settled times, and restrained by the arbitrary hand of petty
tyrants or by laws that hindered all development, was at
any rate less terrible by land than by sea. The ideal of a
restored and universal Roman or German Empire, unsatis-
factory and often in abeyance as it was, at least provided some
slight bond of sympathy between the nations, or the tribes
that were being slowly forced into national consciousness.
And great movements of conquest, of thought, or of religion
passed at times over the continent and produced transitory
feelings of fellowship.
But from nearly all such influences England stood aloof.
A
For long periods there was no regular communication with the
mainland. The imperial idea appealed little to the English,
and few efforts were made by the great European monarchs
to induce them to enter the continental confederation, either
by conquest or alliance.
The continental countries were conquered and reconquered.
In England, on the other hand, with the exception of the one
great revolution at the Norman Conquest which has profoundly
modified our history, there have been no successful foreign
invasions. In ecclesiastical matters, if the distance from
Rome prevented the knowledge of some of the papal scandals,
it at the same time prevented any very fervent adherence
to the doctrine of Catholic unity. The people were prob-
ably as religious as any other mediaeval nation ; but they
were always quick to defend their political freedom from
priestly encroachments. The spirited action of king and
parliament prevented them from sinking to be mere fiefs of
the Holy See.
As a result of this severance from the great course of
continental life, there grew up a character differing in many
respects from that of the neighbouring nations. If we see its
disadvantages in a narrowness of thought that has too often
shown itself in an utter want of sympathy for foreigners and all
things foreign, in a complete alienation from the manners and
customs of other lands, at the same time we recognise its
compensations in a severely practical spirit that has overcome
difficulties which seemed insuperable, and above all in a
jealous defence of that personal liberty which has so often
been lost in Europe.
From the earliest times of which we have record, this
severance stands out as a noteworthy fact. When Gaul and
Spain became provinces of the Roman Empire, the language
of the conquered was lost in that of the conquerors. In the
later Teutonic conquest of those countries, Latin remained
the popular speech, and it is now the basis of modern French
THE NEW WORLD 3
and Spanish. In Britain, on the contrary, the Roman
civilisation was an exotic. When the falling fabric of empire
warned the rulers back to Italy after four centuries of dominion,
the aboriginal British people still spoke the same language
that Julius Csesar had heard on his first landing. The Saxon
invaders, the forefathers of our own England, left hardly a
trace of the older inhabitants in the east and south of the
island. The British tribes retreated westwards to Wales,
Cornwall, and Strathclyde, or even to Scotland or Ireland ;
where in remote hamlets the Celtic dialects are still spoken,
as pathetic survivals as the Basque in Spain, or the Wendish
in Germany. 1
The antipathy between the new Saxon and the older
Briton was shown in the severity of the struggle and the
thoroughness of the conquest. In every subse- TneUniflca
quent step that has led to the political unity of Won of
the British Isles, the same feeling has broken out : En ^ Iand -
in Wales in the terrible wars of the Plantagenets, as well as in
the popular rhyme that still speaks of Taffy, the Welshman,
as a thief, and calls the miserable rogue of the racecourse a
welsher ; in Scotland in the yet more merciless, wars, in the
long jealousy between the two countries, that continued even
after political union had come to pass a jealousy shown in
Smollett's novels and a hundred savage sarcasms of Dr.
Johnson ; a feeling that has now sunk happily to harmless
raillery on either side. In Ireland, the problem has been
graver. Conquest there brought no fusion of race or alliance
of interest ; it was but a prelude to the embittered strife that
many centuries have not ended.
Yet, relentless massacres as they often were, it is in these
wars against her neighbours that we see the first true ex-
pansion of England. It was not always the mere lust of
1 In common with many other invaders, however, the Saxons appear
frequently to have spared the aboriginal women for their own service
and enjoyment ; while those male captives whose lives were not forfeited
were condemned to slavery.
4 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
victory that made her aspire to dominion. Often as the love
of adventure has caused war, other reasons go to the making
of empires. Two opposing monarchies confined in narrow
compass become a mutual menace, and are enough to force
the more active or better placed people to subdue their
neighbours. The safety of the one great state is thus secured,
where two divided are defenceless. It was this lesson that
Spain partly learned under Ferdinand and Isabella, that
France learned about the same period, and that Germany and
Italy put off with such evil result to themselves until the
middle of the nineteenth century. This was the idea that lay
at the root of the Plantagenet schemes of conquest : England
was constantly threatened on both sides, and her civilisation,
defective as it was, was at least better than that of Scotland
or Ireland.
But neither in conquest nor in government was the success
of the English remarkable for several centuries. Only Wales
was thoroughly subdued before Tudor times ; both Scotland
and Ireland, despite a nominal allegiance, were practically
independent. The first plantations had been established in
America before the Scottish and English crowns were united.
Virginia was already flourishing before the English colonisation
of Ulster. The primitive townships of New England were
rising from the wilderness while the rest of Ireland was still
defiant.
It would seem, therefore, that that talent for rule which is
sometimes assumed to have been inborn in the English
character was acquired after long struggles rather than an
inherent faculty. Like the English constitution, it was
developed gradually : and although the slow advance towards
union of the British Isles, and the almost equally slow growth
of our early western colonies and the first trading-stations in
India contrasts unfavourably with the meteoric success of
the Spaniards and Portuguese at the same period, the per-
manence of the results achieved are more than compensation
THE NEW WORLD 5
when we compare the present condition of the British and
Latin colonies all over the world.
While, however, the descendants of Henry n. were making
slow advance in unifying the government of the British Isles,
a more ambitious dream began to influence their Th9 Firgt
actions. The old possessions of the Plantagenets English
in France still belonged to the kings of England ; ]
and from these as a foundation on which to base a scheme of
continental conquest, was evolved the vision of an English
empire in western Europe, in contradistinction to the German
Empire of middle Europe. In part the ideal was realised :
Edward in. owned many of the finest provinces of France,
and the armies of England were victorious both in Spain and
Flanders. For generations rulers and people alike cherished
the hope of placing Britain at the head of the west : but the
first overseas empire of England was shattered by a woman.
Our ill-gotten possessions in France were captured by Joan of
Arc ; only the one miserable outpost at Calais remained a
century longer as the last memorial of the imperial dreams of
the Plantagenets.
The attempted conquest of France has sunk to a mere
non-resultant episode in our history. But as we turn away
wearied from the record of war and carnage we note the real
progress shown by town and borough in England itself in
increasing freedom, as king or lord was forced to grant charters
of liberties in return for supplies to carry on the foreign
expeditions ; in growing prosperity as the long internal peace
continued, while Saxon and Norman forgot their old animosity
and united into one race of English ; in the beginnings of art
and learning, as cathedral and abbey rose over the land, and
universities and schools were founded ; in the first signs of a
great literature, as poet or historian told of previous times or
the life that ky around them.
But the literature of the country was as yet little save
imitation from the French. With the one exception of
6 THE ENGLISH' PEOPLE OVERSEAS
Chaucer, our language can boast no great original writer
previous to the renascence. In culture and general refine-
ment, indeed, the continent was ahead of England. The
influence exerted by France, in particular, on our civilisation
was profound, and but a sorry return was made for it in the
long misery of the Hundred Years' War into which our kings
plunged both nations.
If in refinement, however, England was far behind her
neighbour, the personal liberty and security that was to be
her greatest glory had already begun to appear. The long
fight for freedom was seldom relaxed, and throughout almost
the whole course of our history the same increasing purpose
shows. The liberties of other mediaeval states were lost one
by one. The Italian republics, the first to rise, were also the
first to fall, as they sold themselves to local tyrants, purchasing
peace, material prosperity, and the utmost development of
their culture at the price of their freedom. The ultimate
result was seen in a servitude under foreign masters that only
the nineteenth century was able to throw off. The liberties
of France went down before the cool policy of her kings,
which again gave power and wealth to the upper classes.
For centuries she was at the head of Europe : but the price
was too great, and the long terror of the Revolution was
necessary before the evil system could be abolished. The
old rights of Spain were crushed by Charles v. and the Inquisi-
tion ; and despite the resources of the new world, the country
has been slowly dying since. The rich burghers and the
turbulent democracy of the Flemish cities were both en-
chained by Philip n. ; and the deserted streets of Bruges and
Ghent are to this day eloquent of the oppressor of the sixteenth
century.
But while continental liberty was falling everywhere save
in the free cities of Germany and Switzerland, England clung
through good and evil to her freedom. It is not the aim of
this work to review the unceasing struggle with royal or
THE NEW WORLD 7
ecclesiastical or local tyrant, which left England, at the close
of the Middle Ages, in the words of Commines, ' among all
the world's lordships of which I have knowledge, that where
the public weal is best ordered and where least violence reigns
among the people.' It is our purpose only to show how the
rights which were so hardly gained have been extended to
new lands not then discovered ; how the settlers overseas did
not fear to fight for their own liberties when the mother country
was for a time led astray from the principles she had owned for
centuries ; and how the young colonies that have inherited
the English ideals have grown into new nations, destined
perhaps to excel the old English nation from which they have
sprung, even as we excel our forefathers who emigrated from
the Elbe to Thanet.
But although the French writer, comparing England with
his own country, desolated as it was with wars and internal
dissension, admitted the advantage of our institutions, the
advantage lay only in the comparison. A deeper observer
could have seen the abuses that overran the land, as the old
edifice of feudalism gave way everywhere before new forces of
life and thought. The struggles of the landowners to preserve
their power unimpaired, and the change in the character of
farming from agriculture that required many retainers to
sheep-breeding that required only few, filled the country with
distress. The increasingly independent lower classes, stimu-
lated by the spread of Lollardry and permeated with a vague
socialism, cried loudly for the redress of grievances. They
were sternly punished : insurrections were put down ; wander-
ing hordes of beggars were taken and hanged ; the statutes of
labourers tied the villein to the soil, and the price of his labour
was fixed by law.
But in spite of such measures, villeinage died out rapidly as
each lower class rose on the ruins of the older nobility, many
of whose proudest houses had been wrecked in the Wars of the
Roses : men willing to work, but unable to find employ-
8 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
ment, still roamed the country ; and the distress caused by
the general social advance remained a standing source of
danger. To Froissart indeed, the English seemed the worst
nation in the world, because their liberties made them insolent
to those whom Providence had placed over them : but while
he and many of those in authority saw in repression their only
hope, more liberal minds recognised the failure of this course,
and cast about for a true solution.
The problems arising out of the change from the old order
of things filled the thoughts of Englishmen as the settled
Utopia and P ower ^ ^he Tudor dynasty put an end to the
tbeNew factions that had struggled for the crown. The
or , 1516. rev j va ] O f learning, and the discovery of the East
and West Indies had enlarged the vision and the ideas of
the time ; and as the barren scholastic philosophy of the
Middle Ages gave way before the study of the Greek and
Latin masterpieces, the human interest in life again resumed
its proper place.
Thinking men were only too conscious of the terrible
contradiction between their ideals and the world in which
they lived. To those indeed who look back on the early
sixteenth century, its civilisation now seems worthless in
much that the modern world has learned to value, even as the
plague spots of our own time will obscure what is good in it
to the student of a future age. The want of comfort and
refinement, not less than the insanitary conditions which led
to such pests as the Black Death, the legal injustice which
went far to nullify the liberty to which every man was theo-
retically entitled, the oppression of the rich, the. discontent
and undefined aspirations of the poor, together with that
stubborn mass of stagnant indifference which is ever the most
powerful bar to progress in its hopelessness of better things,
combined to make England at the beginning of the renas-
cence the despair of its greatest man, Sir Thomas More. He
could not foresee the outburst of energy, resulting in great
THE NEW WORLD 9
part from the new learning of which he was one of the leaders,
which produced a new national life. There was nothing in the
work of the most brilliant writers of his day that could fore-
shadow Shakespeare and Spenser.
One of the finest dreams of the new movement, the spread
of religion, literature, and science, for the common good of
humanity, was already obscured by dark clouds of persecu-
tion and fanaticism. Where More and his colleagues looked
for peaceful reform and quiet toleration, the world saw instead
an Inquisition slaughtering thousands to preserve a theological
doctrine, and Luther throwing wisdom to the winds, setting
up a doctrine as dogmatic as that he had thrown down. To
those who witnessed the bloodshed that ruined half Europe
in the name of religion, and the growth of despotism from
which only England and Holland revolted successfully, it was
little wonder that More placed his imaginary commonwealth
in the region of Nowhere, for there only could it lie.
' There are many things there which I rather wish than
hope to see adopted in our own/ Such are the concluding
words of the Utopia. He admits the impossibility of improve-
ment in the old world ; but it is suggestive of the direction in
which intellectual men were looking that the one shadowy
hint of the whereabouts of Utopia places it in the new lands
that Latin daring had recently discovered. While the tales
of wonder that were brought back by travellers fired the
English imagination to adventures which culminated in the
exploits of the Elizabethan sea-kings, more serious men were
already dreaming of a freer, more self-developed life in
America dreams partially realised a century later when
the first English colonies on the Atlantic seaboard were
founded.
10 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
THE LATIN ERA OF CONQUEST: 1415-1588 l
THE Utopia shows that the attention of England had been
directed to the new world. But in the discoveries themselves
Englishmen had little or no part. The appeal of Columbus
to the court of Henry vn. was disregarded. Before the reign
of Elizabeth, the Cabots were the only English navigators of
note, and they were of Italian descent. In Holland, too,
where we found our greatest rivals at a later date, it was the
same. Persecution had not yet forced the Dutch to form
themselves into an independent commonwealth, and to snatch
the rich prize of sea traffic from their former masters. The
earliest of the great world-voyages were made by the Latins.
The new countries were all taken by them. The enormous
wealth of the new world all fell into their hands.
The Latins, indeed, who had inherited the older culture of
Greece, had been the leaders of Europe since Europe had had
The Latin an y civilisation at all : and it was natural that to
supremacy, them should come the first profits of the extension
of that civilisation overseas. While the Roman Empire
stood, the Latin peoples alone possessed culture ; even when
it was destroyed, it was from them and their religion that the
new civilisation was evolved. The faith and the government
of the Middle Ages were alike Latin ; the mediaeval ideals were
of Latin origin. When the northern barbarians flung them-
selves on Rome, with a passionate envy of the riches and the
1 The leading authorities for this period are the narratives of the
Portuguese and Spanish mariners in Kerr's Collection of Voyages, Hakluyt
and the valuable publications of the Hakluyt Society, Hunter's unfinished
History of British India, and Washington Irving's Columbus and his
Successors. Many of the original Portuguese authorities are mentioned
by Hunter. The epic of Portuguese discovery is written at length in the
Lusiad. For Spanish history, Prescott and Robertson ; Prescott describes
the conquests of Mexico and Peru in detail. The original Spanish
authorities are discussed in his notes.
THE NEW WORLD 11
beauty of the south, the Christianity of the Latins stemmed
the tide of invasion. It became the defence of the weak
against the strong. Its priests were necessarily drawn from
the subject Latin race, for among them were the only remains
of knowledge. Their sympathies were with the oppressed,
for they were of the oppressed. They were opposed to brute
force, for they had none themselves ; their only power lay in
moral suasion. And through the long darkness of the early
Middle Ages, the first true work of colonisation, and thence
of civilisation, came from the settlements of the Latin monks.
They supplied the rulers of the Church ; from time to time
the more fervent spirits went forth from the cloisters to spread
the faith among the unconverted. And if Christianity with
its hierarchy and visible head at Rome was the spiritual ideal
of the time, the revived Latin empire supplied the political
ideal.
The influence of the Church, though perfect in theory to
subdue the passions of man, was often of little effect. Seldom
able to rely on military power, and frequently forced to oppose
those who possessed it, the Church could only depend on the
hold that her doctrines had on the world at large. It was here
that the need for a strong political power was felt ; a power
like that of the Roman Empire, hard and merciless, able to
crush all opposition in obedience to the unceasing cry for
peace ; a power vested in one man, the emperor of the universe
such a little universe as Europe then knew.
The new empire came, and the firm rule of the great German
monarchs at its head forced some show of order on the turbu-
lent kings and princes under them. The hand of the oppressor
was a little stayed, and the first steps taken towards a
new Roman Empire, that should be no unworthy successor
of the old.
But the day of continental unity had passed away for ever ;
the day of national unity was not yet : it was the intermediate
epoch of small republics. Bitterly as it was regretted by men
12 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
like Dante, who saw only the turbulence and fickleness of
petty states, and were blind to the inevitable crushing out
of individuality by the imperial system as it was then under-
stood, the change was necessary. There was too little in
common between Germany and Italy for one sovereign to rule
both countries. The strongest monarch could only obtain a
partial unwilling obedience. The death of the emperor
frequently meant the temporary demise of the empire. As a
magnificent theory, it survived for centuries ; as a fact, it
was extinct before the Middle Ages passed away, save as a
pretext for some ambitious ruler to enlarge his territories.
Again the old form of government came to the front ; and
again the Latins showed the way. The imperial system
failed by reason of its very vastness : the small republic
offered better safeguards for life and property. As a free
man in a free town, the merchant or artificer was in a better
position than his fellow under the Empire. He had a voice
in the affairs of the hour ; the road for ambition lay open :
the success of his city was his success, nay, sometimes his very
existence. The Empire sank beneath its own weight, while
the republics amassed wealth from the growing commerce of
the age. But after a time, these too failed. They rested on
too narrow a basis : internal weakness was increased by the
jealousy of rivals ; sudden riches brought danger from leading
citizens ; and the free cities fell one by one under the rule of
tyrant or oligarchy. Yet, as it became evident that the
republic could not fully meet the needs of Europe, another and
more permanent force appeared, creating new divisions of
peoples, which in most cases are still strongly marked to-day.
Until near the close of the Middle Ages, there was no real
sentiment of national union. To an adherent of the Empire,
Europe was a commonwealth ruled by emperor and pope.
The Venetian or Florentine, on the other hand, ignored the
interests of Italy as a whole ; his state, to which alone he
owed allegiance, was Venice or Florence. The citizens of
THE NEW WORLD 13
Barcelona and Seville had little 4 in common ; they had not
yet realised that a peninsula cut off from the rest of Europe
was made for political unity. The world, in fact, had hardly
advanced beyond local rule. From primitive days, when
every one's hand was against his neighbour, men had come
to co-operate within the limits of their own town or province ;
but beyond this, they were strangers, and as strangers, enemies.
Indeed, the difficulties of travel, the constant war and rapine,
and the unending tumults of the day, rendered this distrust
inevitable.
But, as trade progressed, the merchant was no longer at
the mercy of the knight, a creature to be plundered at will :
the advance of military science made the knight himself less
powerful. The long wars and invasions of France forced the
people to some kind of unity, although divisions were ever
breaking out again. Similarly, racial and religious resentment
against an alien creed and kingdom on their soil united the
Christians of Spain. But the springs of the rising spirit of
nationality went deeper than the political exigencies of the
times.
They lay in the fact that the feud between Eoman and
German, between conquered and conqueror, which had long
been slowly dying, was now extinct. Continual war, occasional
intermarriage, and the need for common defence against
invaders of whatever race, had done their work. There was
no more a race question ; there was hardly a serious belief in
the imperial question. And in the new Europe that we see at
the close of the Middle Ages, it was still the descendants of the
old Roman stock who were predominant. In Spain, in France,
and Italy, the three provinces of the ancient world-empire
that had been the scene of the contest, it was the conquerors
and not the conquered who had lost their individuality and
their language. In all those lands on the continent where the
Roman eagle had ruled, the German tongue was no longer
spoken. It was the Latin, corrupted indeed but still essenti-
14 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS
ally Latin, that was understood by all. Still the language of
the north and east of Europe, German had gone down before
Latin in every place where Latin was the mother tongue, even
as the descendants of Goth, Frank, and Vandal had lost their
individuality among the peoples they had conquered. And the
new Latin dialects crystallised into new languages, when in the
rising literature of each country, new poets showed the rare
beauty of the forms that had been evolved from the common
speech. There was a fresh awakening to the splendour of
life and the value of the old culture, as Greek and Roman
letters were again studied. The hand of the Church lay less
heavy on independent thought, as her influence declined
through the scandals of papal schism and clerical immorality.
The old imperial belief in the one world-ruler became still more
impracticable as the wars that were waged in its name con-
tinued. The little republics that had defied great monarchs
became of less importance as they sold themselves to local
princes. A few strong kings by brilliant wars and unblushing
deception crushed the liberties of their subjects, thus making
themselves masters of great countries and furthering the
consolidation of warring provinces into a national unity that
later developed into national sympathy.
While this revolution was in gradual progress some daring
seamen of Latin race, venturing into the unknown outer
The ocean, discovered the further coasts of Africa, the
Discoveries, I n( li es > an d America. The impulse to exploration
1*15-98. came from the interruption of the mediaeval trade
routes which the Turkish conquests in eastern Europe had
closed ; for when Indian produce could no longer be brought
overland by caravan, or across the water by lagging barques
which hugged the shores from Indus to Suez, it was necessary
to discover an alternative way for commerce. Attempts
were made to find a new path overland, but every enterprise
was beaten back by failure ; and when at length the ancient
legend was recalled that a passage to Asia existed round the
THE NEW WOKLD 15
south of Africa, the young Prince Henry of Portugal, who had
been inspired by the recent capture of Ceuta from the Musal-
mns in 1415, consecrated the rest of his life to geographical
discovery.
In the teeth of the popular objections that his policy took
valuable men away from the kingdom, that the sea was too
perilous, and that the countries which his mariners discovered
were so burnt up by heat as to be worthless, the Prince
persevered. Progress was slow, for no Mediterranean galley
could live in the Atlantic, and it was long before he was able
to construct a satisfactory sailing vessel. Even then imper-
fect nautical instruments and the imagined terrors of the outer
ocean compelled the seamen to follow the coast as closely as
possible. But the Prince was upheld by the triple force of a
crusading zeal against Isla'm, by the hope of gain, and by the
desire of spreading Christianity among the heathen and
infidel nations of the earth. And wherever his explorers
landed, crosses were erected in token of their faith, and the
Prince's motto Talent de bien faire, the resolve to do greatly
was inscribed as a sign of the dominion of Portugal.
But the goal for which they sought was India, not Africa.
The Portuguese touched but the fringe of the dark continent,
and cared nothing for it or its inhabitants. Although Prince
Henry's hopes were shared by his sailors, it was not until the
route to India was open that there was any popular enthusiasm
for foreign adventure. The possession of Africa, which was
theirs by the double right of papal bulls and undisputed claim,
aroused little interest ; the impulse was ever onwards.
For thirty years after Henry's death in 1460, the Portuguese
seamen penetrated further and further south along the
seemingly interminable coasts of Africa. But when the Cape
of Good Hope was once rounded, the way was less uncertain.
At Mozambique the natives were found trading with the
Moors of India, ' buying from them silver, linen, pepper,
ginger, rings, pearls and rubies, and from a country beyond,
16 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS
gold/ Their appetite thus whetted by a sight of the treasures
of the East, the Portuguese pressed forward to Mombasa, a
trading city of Arabs, of pure and mixed blood, with rich,
well-dressed inhabitants, and especially ' women clothed in
silk, gold, and precious stones/
From that port it was necessary to strike out boldly across
the great open expanse of the Indian Ocean : and at length,
on 20th May 1498, the first European vessel to reach Asia cast
anchor before Calicut.
On that epochal day the European invasion of Asia
began.
Almost from the moment that they set foot in India the
Portuguese followed a definite policy. The royal treasury
The derived profit in plenty from each voyage. But
Empire^* peaceful gain alone was not enough, nor was it
1*98-1580. perhaps feasible. The Arabs, hereditary foes of
all Christendom as well as rivals in trade, had been encountered
in the east African ports ; and the trade of India soon proved
to be in their hands. Enmity between the two races was
instinctive : ' Devil take you, what brought you here ? ' said
an Arab merchant to the Portuguese when they first landed at
Calicut.
Despite the strangeness of the new scenes ' If this be
Satan, I worship God/ cried one on his first visit to an Indian
temple the Europeans took the upper hand almost from the
first. A bitter war was waged, in which religion, commerce,
and empire became oddly mingled forces. The Portuguese
rose to the idea of converting the whole of India to Christianity,
of concentrating all the traffic of the East in their own hands,
and of dominating Asia to the exclusion of rivals of whatever
race or creed for all time. And the adherents of so militant
a faith as Islm were not backward in defending their preserve
when temporal profit and spiritual advantage both depended
on the victory.
In no case was quarter given. The Portuguese attempted
THE NEW WORLD 17
to hide their real weakness by terrorising the East with a
display of ruthless barbarian strength. In 1502, for instance,
Vasco da Gama cut off the ears, hands, and noses of eight
hundred captives, which he sent, heaped up among dead
leaves, to an Indian prince to make curry of. The teeth of
prisoners were knocked down their throats with staves. A
high-caste Indian who was suspected of being a spy was out-
raged by having the ears of an unclean animal sewn to his head.
An Arab merchant was flogged until he fainted ; his mouth
was then filled with dirt, and covered with a piece of bacon
an abomination to a Musalman. Captives were blown from
guns, and the enemy ' saluted with their fragments/ Even
women were not respected by the chivalry of the West, when
they belonged to an alien faith in a foreign land. The hands
and ears of some female prisoners were cut off 'to take
off their bracelets and earrings to save time.' But those
Portuguese who suffered a like fate when they were defeated,
were revered as having died the martyr's death for their
religion and country.
Up to a point, indeed, they succeeded. Affonso Albu-
querque, the most able of their leaders in the East, drove
the Arab traders out of many of the Indian ports,
n J . . _. r Its Decline,
conquered or made treaties recognising European
overlordship with many of the rulers of the Indian mainland
and the southern archipelago, and even looked further east
and opened up relations with China and Japan.
Over a large part of the Indian Ocean the Portuguese be-
came supreme. But the effort was too great, the nation
too small ; and the first European domination of the East, if
that indeed can be called domination which never at its
zenith reached more than a few miles inland, passed away
almost as quickly as it rose.
The holy war, which with all its fanaticism had something
not far removed from nobility in its inception, degenerated
into a mere struggle for plunder and booty. The love of
B
18
exploration, in which adventure was the chief and often the
sole reward, sank to a striving for illicit profit at the expense
of the royal treasury. And the first generation of hardy
pioneers was succeeded by the listless magnificence of the
second, which made Goa, the Portuguese capital in the East,
a centre of idleness and immorality 1 whose memory still
lingers dimly to this day. Some indication of the change can
be seen in Albuquerque's dying words. ' In bad repute with
men because of the king, and in bad repute with the king
because of the men, it were well that I were gone/ he cried
in 1515 ; 'I have finished all my troubles without seeing any
satisfaction of them/
A rich traffic had promised with China and Japan : but
from both countries the Portuguese were expelled, because
they could not restrain their plundering instincts or propa-
gandist zeal. Although their king styled himself ' lord of the
conquest and navigation of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia, and the
Indies/ his name was known to few in those wide realms, and
his servants on the spot were venal and corrupt. In the year
1552 the civic authorities at Goa sent a petition to Lisbon
declaring that ' in all India there is no justice, either in your
viceroy, or in those who are to mete it out/ The one object
was the ' gathering together of money by every means. . . .
There is no Moor will trust a Portuguese. . . . Senhor, we
beg for mercy, mercy, mercy. Help us, Senhor ; help us,
Senhor, for we are sinking/
But no help came. Portugal was already exhausted by
the dual effort of discovering and founding an empire on the
other side of the earth ; and while she had by no means
exterminated her enemies, other nations in the West had begun
to look to the orient with longing eyes. They cared nothing
for the war of Catholic against infidel, under which pretence
the struggle in the East still masked itself : as protestant
1 There is a most interesting picture of the decay of Goa in Manucci,
Storia do Mogor.
THE NEW WORLD 19
heretics, the Dutch and English laughed at the papal
bull which a century before would have been respected
in every country of Europe ; while as enemies of the
neighbouring Spanish empire which now towered above
the greatness of Portugal until Lisbon became a mere
satellite of Madrid, they were ready to attack both powers
on sea and land.
With the prophetic instinct of a dying poet, Camoens, the
one Portuguese writer whose fame is universal, foresaw the
coming downfall of his country. He had spent the greater
part of his life wandering among her possessions in Africa
and Asia, and his epic tells the whole story of her maritime
glory ; but when he expired at Lisbon in 1579, a neglected,
broken-hearted man after years of privation, he exclaimed,
' The world shall witness how dearly I have loved my country.
I have returned, not merely to die in her bosom, but to die
with her/ The year after his death Portugal was annexed
by Spain, and all her vast protectorates incorporated with the
dominions of Philip n.
Spain too had won an empire from the unknown world :
and with larger resources from which to draw at home, and less
opposition to fear in the new lands that she claimed, The g aniBh
she was able to maintain her territories, if not her Empire,
supremacy, when Portugal had finally sunk to a 1492 - 1688 -
power of the third rank in Europe and the impotent owner of
some undeveloped colonies in Africa.
Inspired by the same hope of finding India that had carried
the Portuguese round the Cape of Good Hope, Christopher
Columbus took service under the King of Spain ; and sailing
westwards across the Atlantic in the year 1492, he landed on
the island of San Salvador in the West Indies. Under the
impression that the dream of his life had come true, he
proceeded to explore the archipelago, hoping and indeed
expecting to find a speedy proof that these were indeed the
Indian isles of the eastern seas. He died without discovering
20 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
his error ; but Spain reaped immediate advantage from her
new possessions.
In 1493 the town of Isabella was founded on the isle of
Hispaniola tke first European settlement in the western
world ; five years later, Trinidad had been seen, the Orinoco
was known, and a colony established at San Domingo. Further
voyages took the Spaniards along the coasts of Venezuela,
Colombia, and Brazil ; and from that time discovery con-
tinued unchecked, until in 1519 Magellan rounded South
America. After another three years, Cano accomplished the
unprecedented feat of sailing round the world. Peru was soon
open to the explorers ; a still more daring adventurer reached
Papua. Others travelled as far north as California ; one
intrepid band crossed the Andes, and navigated the
Amazon from source to mouth a difficult feat even at the
present day.
The first object of the discoverers was to secure the new
lands for their own country. Possession was taken in the
name of the King of Spain wherever they touched : and
despite the ingratitude of their master, who doomed his most
faithful servants to imprisonment or even death on their
return, they remained true. A loyalty that can stand that
test can stand any test ; and Spanish loyalty was justly
celebrated as the most unquestioning in the world.
But the haughty spirit that was obedient to the king was
pitiless when it encountered strangers. When the French
attempted to found a colony in Florida they were destroyed
by the Spaniards, ' not because they were Frenchmen, but
because they were heretics and enemies of God.' And when
the English appeared in Spanish waters they were branded as
pirates as well as heretics. The natives of Hispaniola were
sent to Europe as slaves. Those that remained behind were
forced to labour, under pain of torture ; and in 1517 the first
patent was granted for the importation of negroes to assist
them. In accordance with the custom of the age, they were
THE NEW WORLD 21
compelled to confess belief in the religion of their masters ;
and the machinery of the Inquisition was at once set in motion
in the new world. As the natives of Hispaniola died so
rapidly under Spanish rule that within a few years the original
stock was extinct, the holy fathers had need to haste in the
work of conversion, lest perchance some of the heathen
committed to their keeping should knock at the gate of
heaven in vain.
The suffering of the natives would have been great enough
had they merely been deprived of their lands and the fruits
of their unaccustomed toil ; but it was intensified by the
callousness of the Spaniards, and the terrible cruelties of
which they showed themselves capable. There was as yet no
sense of the duties and responsibility that devolve on a power-
ful race when it comes into contact with a weak : the battle
was wholly to the strong.
A few years after the western continent was discovered
Mexico had been conquered by Cortes and Peru by Pizarro ;
and the ability and courage of the two commanders only
brings out in stronger colours the ruthless savagery with
which they compassed their ends. The one Spanish colony
founded by peaceful means failed through the jealousy of a
neighbouring settlement ; and the good bishop Las Casas,
who saw and deplored the brutality of his countrymen, left
America in despair.
The splendour of their achievements in exploration, and
the magnificent daring that carried the Spaniards round the
world in small frail ships, or into the interior of an unknown
continent without knowledge or trustworthy information,
gives a romantic glamour to their exploits that blinds us to
the hideousness of the settled policy of the pioneers as a
whole. There was no attempt at conciliation of the aboriginal
inhabitants ; far less was there any of that finer diplomacy,
by which the French often trained their native subjects to
willing co-operation.
22 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
Some measures, indeed, were taken by the home administra-
tion to mitigate the severity of the pioneers. Franciscan monks
were sent out to convert the natives to Christianity. Soon
after Las Casas had published his Brief Relation of the tragic
events in America, a series of laws was passed to protect the
defenceless beings whose cause he championed. His treatise
in 1542 was followed by a declaration from Charles v. that the
aborigines were to be treated as free men and not slaves.
And in the year 1551 universities were founded at Mexico and
Lima.
But all such steps were in vain. Wherever the precious
metals were found, they were exported to Spain ; and the
king would do nothing to hamper a supply which enabled
him to pursue vast schemes of ambition in Europe. The great
empire which Philip n. was endeavouring to found by sub-
verting public freedom and religious liberty failed in the end
to rivet its chains on the other countries of Europe, and left
Spain ruined and exhausted ; but the wealth which he
squandered in the attempt was obtained at the cost of the
blood of thousands of those to whom the Christianity and
the civilisation of Europe had alike proved a curse.
The conquest of the feeble native kingdoms of the two
Americas had not proved difficult ; but it is by settlement,
and not by conquest, that a country is permanently subdued.
The number of those who crossed from Spain to America was
relatively small, and few indeed made their homes there.
The majority of emigrants went to get rich, and having done
so, they returned to Europe.
Thus the Latin colonies, in the west as in the Orient, had no
real root : and though the weakness of the native opposition,
and the ability of many of the Spanish governors, kept the
imperial provinces obedient to the reigning dynasty for more
than three centuries, there was no political life. The Spaniards
who were entrusted with the administration, as well as those
whose work it was to attend to the mines and the produce
THE NEW WOKLD 23
of the soil, were frequently endowed, indeed, with considerable
strength of character. But all the vices that were sapping
the national life at home throve unchecked in the outer
provinces ; and the result was utter stagnation. There
could be no advance where such conditions prevailed ; and
although the natural wealth of the colonies gave them
for long a seeming prosperity, the inability of the people
to develop anything but the most rudimentary form of
industry made them in the long run far less important than
lands favoured by nature in a less degree, but inhabited by an
active diligent race. 1
The seeds of decay thus already existed when the Spanish
Empire was at the zenith of its splendour; but its magnificent
extent, its seemingly overpowering strength, and the greatness
of its commerce east and west, prevented the decline from
becoming visible for many years. The first sign that it was
not omnipotent was the successful revolt of Holland, and the
English victory over the Armada in the year 1588 ; but even
then it was long before men could believe that an internal
cancer was eating away the world- wide heritage of Philip u.,
and for more than a century rivals shrank from touching it,
lest vitality should still lurk in some of the members that
during life had inspired such terror.
1 Almost the last words of Simon Bolivar, who died a disillusioned,
broken-hearted man after fighting for the liberation of Latin America
from Spain in the nineteenth century, show how little national feeling
had taken root in the Spanish colonies. ' Those who have served the
revolution,' he said, ' have ploughed the sea. The only thing to be done
is to emigrate. These countries will inevitably fall into the hands of an
uncurbed multitude, to pass later into those of tyrants of all colours and
all races. ' There was more truth in the prediction than in those of most
disappointed men.
24 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
CHAPTER III
THE ENGLISH SEA-KINGS: 1558-1600 *
WITH the loss of Calais and Guisnes in 1558 fell the last of
the old English possessions abroad. ' The chief jewel of the
realm,' as Queen Mary styled it, was taken by surprise ; and
from that day to this England has had no continental empire.
She has occupied isolated towns, as hostages from allies, as
Havre from the Huguenots, Flushing and Ostend from the
Dutch Republic, in the time of Elizabeth, and Dunkirk under
Cromwell ; the succession to the throne brought a long con-
nection with Hanover ; the vicissitudes of politics forced the
armies of England to fight in all parts of the continent ; islands
have been taken, ceded, or lost, as Heligoland and Minorca :
but there has been no serious attempt to build up a second
empire in Europe, after the disastrous failure of the first.
At the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth, nothing indeed
seemed more improbable than that England should develop
into a great power, especially into a great colonial power.
The whole of the new world was claimed by Spain and Portu-
gal ; they were in actual possession of a large part of it.
They were secured in their possessions by decrees from Rome,
which were respected by the greater part of Europe, and by a
very large number of people in England itself. Both Spaniards
and Portuguese had shown themselves invincible on sea and
land. The names of Vasca da Gama, Albuquerque, Columbus,
Cortes, and Pizarro, were justly world-famous. The treasures
of the new lands poured into Madrid and Lisbon. By diplo-
macy and marriage Portugal was brought under the rule of
1 Hakluyt and the publications of the Hakluyt Society are indis-
pensable for this period. Purchas his Pilgrimmes, and Kerr's Collection
of Voyages are valuable as additional authorities, and Captain Mahan's
works are useful for the doctrine of sea-power. For England herself at
this time Froude's History, which must be used with caution as a partial
view of the age, and J. R. Green.
THE NEW WORLD 25
Spain. Internal dangers to the state there seemed none. Civil
liberties had been crushed by Charles v. Heresy was stamped
out by the Inquisition. The sentiment of the people, loyal,
brave, and generous, with a passionate devotion to Catholic
king and Catholic religion, furnished a seemingly inexhaust-
ible supply of men and money for the extension of dominion.
The position of England was very different. The death of
Mary found the nation with neither fleet nor army. The
treasury was empty. Of the empire that the Plantagenets
had endeavoured to consolidate little remained. France was
not merely independent and hopelessly lost, but a dangerous
enemy. Every project for a union between Scotland and
England had utterly failed, and the old enmity was carefully
nursed by Mary Stuart. Four centuries of conquest and
tyranny had reduced Ireland to despair, and the very English
settlers in the sister island of ten joined the natives against their
own countrymen. In England itself religious feeling ran high
and divided the nation into warring camps; the social strife was
still unmitigated ; the natural resources of the land were not
yet developed ; discontent with the policy of the government
and its failure both abroad and at home were everywhere rife.
In the whole of Europe there was only one less likely rival
to the majesty of Spain than England, and that was Holland.
But these two nations possessed a hardy and daring race of
seamen, both ready to take advantage of the Latin discoveries,
both longing for the adventures and the rewards which were
to be found in the new lands, and none of them at all disin-
clined for a fight. The ' sea-dogs ' who came from the coasts
of England and Holland, pouring out of their little fishing
villages on rough Devon and Dorset or flat Zeeland shores,
loved the wild free waters and the wild free life they gave ;
and though the rulers of the two countries might fear the
vengeance of Spain if her territories were attacked, the Latin
supremacy which held the world in thrall only added further
zest to the efforts of their seafaring subjects.
26 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS
It was these men who laid the foundations of that second
English Empire overseas, the small beginnings of which first
moved the jealousy of Spain as the sixteenth century neared
its close.
The first Tudors had, indeed, already attempted enterprises
overseas. Under the command of Henry viz., John Cabot, a
The First navigator of Italian descent residing at Bristol,
English had received a patent, dated 5th March 1496, grant-
p orers. , . gong
deputies to sail to all parts, countries, and seas of the east,
west, and north at their own cost and charges with five ships ;
to seek out, discover, and find whatsoever islands, countries,
regions or provinces belonging to the heathens or infidels were
hitherto unknown to Christians ; and to subdue, occupy, and
possess all such towns, cities, castles, and islands as they might
be able, setting up the royal banners and ensigns in the same,
and to command over them as vassals and lieutenants of the
crown of England/
In spite of such enormous paper privileges, however, nothing
was done by the recipients, and on 13th February 1497, a new
license was granted them. The Cabots then fitted out an
expedition, and sailed westwards, expecting to find no land
between England and China. But on 24th June the island of
Newfoundland was discovered, called by them the First-Seen
Land, or from the religious festival of the day, St. John's,
which still survives in the name of the capital. The Cabots
then touched the American mainland which Columbus
himself had never reached and coasted along the shore ; but
seeing no channel that should lead westwards directly towards
China, they abandoned the attempt and returned home. 1
1 There has been & long controversy as to the actual spot at which the
Cabots touched on the mainland, and it has even been questioned whether
they succeeded in reaching Newfoundland at all. The whole dispute has
been well summed up by M. Harrisse, a French scholar, who has made an
exhaustive examination of the evidence, with the remark : ' The unbiassed
critic does not know, has no means of knowing, and probably never will
know, exactly where Cabot landed in 1497 and 1498.
THE NEW WORLD 27
The apparent failure did not discourage Henry. Another
charter was issued in 1502 ; and should any country be
discovered and taken, ' it is our will/ said the king, ' that men
and women from England be freely permitted to settle therein,
and to improve the same under the direction of these grantees,
whom we hereby empower to make laws/
This, the first colonial charter in our annals, possesses an
interest of its own, but it came to nothing. The men to whom
it was granted had not capital enough ; merchants did not yet
see that their profit lay in supporting such enterprises ; and
the king himself, who was so anxious for new dominions, and
from his great wealth the one best able to give assistance,
merely granted the empty privilege, and bore the smallest
share in the expense.
His successor, however, took more practical steps. The
beginning of the British Royal Navy may be dated from the
year 1512, and the Corporation of Trinity House was estab-
lished in the same year. In 1516, Sir Thomas Port, Vice-
Admiral of the fleet, and Sebastian Cabot, made a voyage to
South America : in 1516, 1527, and 1536 further efforts were
made by the king's orders to discover the North- West Passage,
and in the last expedition a colony was also projected.
But again there was no result at all ; it was private enter-
prise that first did anything. 1 In the year 1530 Captain
1 A pathetic letter is in existence, from Lord Edmund Howard to
Cardinal Wolsey, which shows that those in authority did not always
take advantage of the offers made of service overseas. 'I would trust,'
wrote that nobleman when in disgrace, ' to do acceptable service ; and
liefer I had to be in his grace's service at the furthest end of Christendom,
than to live thus wretchedly, and die with thought, sorrow, and care.
I may repent that I was ever a nobleman's son born, leading the sorrow-
ful life that I live. ... I am informed that there shall be a voyage made
into a new-found land with divers ships, and captains and soldiers in
them, and I am informed the voyage shall be profitable to the King's
grace. Sir, if your grace think my poor carcase anything meet to
serve the King's grace in the said voyage, for the bitter passion of Christ
be you my good lord therein ; for now I do live so wretched a life as ever
did gentleman being a true man. I have nothing to lose but my life, and
that I would gladly adventure in his service, and to get somewhat toward
my living.' The haughty Cardinal returned no answer.
28 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS
William Hawkins, of Plymouth, the first of those Devonshire
mariners who have so glorious a name in our naval history,
went to Guinea seeking for elephants' teeth, and thence sailed
onward from West Africa to Brazil. From that time till 1580,
when Portugal and her possessions fell to Spain, there was a
continual trade to Africa for ivory and gold-dust.
But the internal troubles in England caused a lull in the
voyages of trade and discovery ; and for some years our annals
of oversea adventures are almost bare. Some indications may,
however, be noticed that the outer world was not altogether
forgotten. One of the first acts of Edward vi. was to en-
courage the English fisheries off the Newfoundland coasts,
which had now become of considerable importance ; and it is
pleasant to notice that the services of the Cabots were not
forgotten, since in 1549 Sebastian was pensioned. In 1551 the
first English ships traded to Morocco ; and two years later
an expedition was sent out overland to discover the north-
eastern passage to China and India. Of the three ships that
then sailed under the command of Willoughby, two were
wrecked, and Willoughby himself was frozen to death : but
Chancellor in the third arrived at the castle of Archangel,
and proceeding inland on sleighs, visited the Czar at Moscow.
He was granted important privileges, and from this journey
sprang the trade with Russia, and the first of the great mercan-
tile companies.
What had been done as yet was very little. So far the
English were merely traders on sufferance, and small ones
The Menace at that. It was during the Elizabethan era that
from Spain. a new dare-devil spirit entered into the whole
nation. The menace from Spain grew daily darker, as the
queen coquetted with the proposals of Philip n. Her people,
proud, haughty and overbearing to a fault, inflamed with the
religious passions of the time, resentful of the disgrace and
persecution that Mary had brought on her country, envious
of the unknown splendour of the new world, and jealous of
THE NEW WORLD 29
those riches which were drawn from both Indies but in which
they had no share, were ready to risk their lives and fortunes
in a combat with the sovereign who represented the forces of
Catholicism, wealth and despotism allied in an overpowering
degree. Elizabeth hung back for a time from open conflict,
but the men of the western counties, whom she had compli-
mented as ' born courtiers and with a becoming confidence/
were already forcing her hand.
The English Channel became infested with privateers,
' sea-dogs ' in the language of the time, sea-kings as later ages
have loved to call them, who preyed on the Spanish maritime
traffic and assisted the French and Dutch protestants against
the tyrant whom all abhorred. A little later they carried the
contest to the West Indies, setting the pope's bulls at naught
and laughing to scorn the remonstrances of Philip. If they
were taken, they were thrown into the dungeons of the
Inquisition, ' laden with irons, without sight of sun or moon/
tortured or starved. If, as happened more often, they were
victorious, they brought the Spanish vessels laden with riches
into English ports. The supremacy of the Latins was no
longer uncontested on the high seas ; and Philip was soon to be
openly derided as ' a colossus stuffed with clouts.'
Longer voyages were again undertaken in the endeavour
to find a better route to the Indies and to secure Tlle search
territory for England herself. 1 But it was still f r India,
the elusive North- West Passage to the orient for which our
navigators sought.
On 7th June 1576 Martin Frobisher, a Yorkshireman, left
London, and the next day, ' being Friday about twelve of the
clock we weighed at Deptford and set sail all three of us
and bore down by the Court, 2 where we shot off our ordnance
1 In the year 1553, a Treatise of the New India was published by one
Richard Eden, to induce Englishmen to ' make attempts in the New
World to the glory of God and the Commodity of our Country. ' New
India, in the language of the times, was America.
2 Elizabeth frequently held her courts at Greenwich.
30 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
and made the best show we could ; her majesty beholding the
same commended it and bade us farewell with shaking her
hand at us out of the window.' After rounding Scotland and
sailing west and by north, they presently sighted Labrador.
Here they met ' people like to Tartars, with long black hair,
broad faces and flat noses, and tawny in colour, wearing seal-
skins, and so do the women, not differing in the fashion, but
marked in the face with blue streaks down the cheeks and round
about the eyes/ But they had no success in their quest, and
soon returned home.
The next year Frobisher went again, hoping to find the
route beyond America, which continent was still supposed
to be ' an island environed with the sea/ Still they dis-
covered no channel ; instead they brought back expectations
of gold. Spiders had been noticed, ' which, as many affirm,
are signs of great store of gold/ The hopes endured for
long, in spite of the homely wisdom of one member of the
expedition, who wrote that, if stones looked as gold, ' so
likewise doth the sand in the bright water all is not gold
that glistereth/
It was this thought of treasure that upheld many, and
often caused ruin to the early English colonial enterprises ;
to get rich quickly after the manner of the Spaniards was
the ambition of all. Richard Hakluyt, the contemporary
historian of early English maritime adventure, alone was
wiser. Pondering the discoveries of the age and the oppor-
tunities opening out for his countrymen, he sketched the true
policy for a settlement that was disregarded indeed in his time,
but perforce adopted later, when colonising was undertaken
by men of a different stamp from the brilliant Elizabethan
mariners. ' The first seat,' he remarked, is ' to be chosen on
the seaside, so as you may have your own navy, within bay,
river, or lake, in a temperate climate, in sweet air, where you
may possess always sweet water, wood, sea-coals or turf, with
fish, flesh, grains, roots and herbs. And for mines of gold,
THE NEW WORLD 31
silver, copper, quicksilver or any such precious thing, the
wants may be supplied from some other place by sea/
His advice was of no effect : the third expedition of Frobisher
set out in 1578, still looking for gold. It returned disheartened
a few months later, having met terrible storms, in which at
least once the mariners ' continued all the dismal and lament-
able night plunged in perplexity,' and later encountered ' a
hideous fog and mist/ There was little that they discovered,
save a country they named affectionately West England, and
a cliff which ' for a certain similitude we called Charing Cross/
In what the similitude lay was not explained. But with the
natives they were disgusted, ' since they defile their dens most
filthily with their beastly feeding and dwell so long in a place
until their sluttishness loathing them, they are forced to seek
a sweeter air/
But the triple failure of Frobisher did not discourage other
navigators. John Davis, a gentleman of Dartmouth, also made
three voyages to the north-west, but he too found nothing
save a dreary land, sufficiently characterised by the name he
gave it of Desolation. Yet he was still convinced that there
was ' no doubt the north parts of America are all islands/ 1
The storms and fogs which baffled our seamen had already
claimed their victims. Sir Humphrey Gilbert, another
mariner of Devon, had sailed for Newfoundland in 1583,
expecting to establish there a prosperous settlement, to civilise
the savages, and to bring employment home for the ' many
decayed towns ' which existed in England itself. He took
1 John Davis, who had been as near the arctic pole in his three north-
western voyages as any man of the Elizabethan age, was convinced that
the evil land of Desolation which he had discovered was but the un-
promising precursor of better regions further north. He argued that at
the pole the climate must be delightful, and that the people there ' have
a wonderful excellency, and an exceeding prerogative above all nations
of the earth . . . for they are in perpetual light and never know what
darkness meaneth, by the benefit of twilight and full moons.' The
prose of fact corrects the poetry of imagination ; and the pleasing
theory of Davis was abundantly disproved by the sufferings of later
arctic explorers.
32 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
possession of a place where was ' iron very plentiful, lead and
somewhere copper ; I will not aver of richer metals, albeit
more than hope may be conceived thereof/ But disasters
came, and the pioneers returned. ' I will not/ cried Gilbert,
when danger closed in on them, ' forsake my little company
going homeward, with whom I have passed so many storms
and perils ' : and his last recorded words, spoken shortly
before the vessel went down, were, ' We are as near to heaven
by sea as by land.'
The exploration of the bleak northern shores of America
bore rich fruit in after centuries, when the Hudson's Bay
Company ruled and traded between the Arctic and the far
Pacific ; but the earlier years of English enterprise in those
parts contained nothing but disaster. The riches of the Indies
had been the magnet which had drawn our seamen to search
for the passages of the North-East and the North- West ;
and when they failed to make their way through the im-
penetrable ice-fields of the Arctic regions there was nothing
left but to enter the magic ocean where Spain seemed secure,
or to abandon the hope of oriental wealth. Trade with the
Portuguese had long been permitted and found profitable ;
but no English vessel had yet reached the East.
The Spaniards, too, it had been remarked, ' were always
unhappy in the north and the French usurpers in our right.'
England was already claiming as her own that part of America
which Cabot had discovered, although her efforts to found a
New England there had all ended in disappointment. Such
enterprises could hardly move the wrath of Spain. It was
the incursion of Francis Drake into the southern seas that
opened Philip's eyes to the menace from England.
The most famous of all the Devonshire mariners, who had
come from the quiet inland town of Tavistock, had already
sir Francis seen service in the Dutch, French, and West Indian
Drake, 1577. wa ters, ' making much money by playing the sea-
man and the pirate.' In the year 1572 his imagination was
THE NEW WORLD 33
fired by a distant sight of the Pacific from Panama, when ' he
fell on his knees and prayed God that he might one day
navigate those waters ' ; but for some time the opportunity
he sought did not come. At length, however, in command of
five small vessels of a hundred down to fifteen tons each,
Drake departed from Plymouth with elaborate secrecy
' about five of the clock in the afternoon of 15 November,
1577/ on the first attempt made by an Englishman to circum-
navigate the globe.
After a storm which forced them to put back for repairs,
the adventurers again proceeded south, and soon found them-
selves in the open ocean, with ' nothing but sea beneath
us and air above us to be seen, as our eyes did behold the
wonderful works of God in his creatures which he had made
innumerable both small and great beasts/ Proceeding with
good fortune, ' as if we had been in a garden of pleasure,
April 5 we fell in with the coast of Brazil ' ; later, after a
desperate struggle with the elements in the Straits of Magellan,
they entered the sea, ' called by some Mare Pacificum, but
proving to us rather to be Mare Furiosum.' One ship returned
to England ; the others were lost, save only Drake's Golden
Hind, which had first been called the Pelican, and which now
seemed in truth as ' a pelican in the wilderness. 5
Still they pressed on, provisioning at Valparaiso, meeting
the Spanish fleet of thirty vessels at Lima, and presently
overtaking the great treasure ship that sailed once a year to
Cadiz, laden with provisions, jewels and stones, plate, gold,
silver, ' and the like trifles. We gave the master a little linen
and the like for those commodities ; he hastening somewhat
lighter than before to Panama/
This good business done, they proceeded joyfully on their
way, touching at California to repair before venturing across
the great waste of the Pacific, and staying there long enough
to discover the gold which was not worked for some three
hundred years more. Narrowly saving themselves from
c
34
shipwreck on the coast of Celebes, they rounded the Cape, and
dropped anchor again in Plymouth Sound on 26th September
1580.
The spoils Drake brought home exceeded a million and
a half sterling. He was received with general enthusiasm
throughout the country ; Elizabeth wore the jewels he had
captured in her crown ; and when Philip demanded his
surrender, the queen knighted him in cool defiance.
Such insolence was too much for the King of Spain to bear.
He had long planned an invasion of England, and now he
The Armada began to build a mighty Armada that should
sea-power^ conquer the first protestant state in Europe once
1588. for all. But the news of its preparation brought
Drake again to the front. Sailing from home with a fleet of
thirty small vessels, he burned the Spanish storeships and
galleys at Cadiz, and would have attacked the Armada itself
had he not been restrained by orders from England. But he
had ' singed the King of Spain's beard ' : and the Armada
itself was met next year with the same fearlessness.
Its defeat belongs to English history ; but the results of
the fight were incalculable in their bearing on our colonial
empire. From the day when ' the feathers of the Spaniard
were plucked one by one/ the balance of maritime power was
transferred from the south to the north ; it was no longer the
Latins, but the English, who were first on the water. Had
the Armada not been defeated, it is not too much to say
that there would have been no English colonial empire.
The American colonies, even if they could have been planted,
would have been at the mercy of the nation that for the time
being controlled the Atlantic ; alone they must have remained
far too feeble to resist. The fate that overtook the Dutch,
Swedish, and French colonies in North America is proof enough
of what would have happened to the English had England
not been supreme at sea. And without that supremacy it
would have been madness to attempt the conquest of India ;
THE NEW WORLD 35
even commercial transactions with the East would have been
precarious. The trade of the United Kingdom would have
been confined to the United Kingdom alone. The market
for its manufactures would have been merely the two islands
and the European continent ; no possibility would have ex-
isted for the race to expand over the whole of North America
and Australasia, no opportunity for British rule to domi-
nate Africa, or to reach out victoriously to the ends of the
earth.
At the time of Elizabeth, the meaning of sea-power was not
indeed fully understood, or its theory at least not fully enunci-
ated ; but the instinct of the nation guided it aright. The
lesson of its necessity was forgotten by the next two genera-
tions ; but Cromwell put it in the forefront of his policy.
Again neglected by the Stuarts after the Restoration, the
nation at large was still conscious of its importance, and
during the great wars of the eighteenth century it became part
of the general principles of national polity.
It is not our province to follow one by one the deeds of
the English sea-kings. From every port of the south and
west, both small and great, our mariners now put The sea-
forth to explore the world, and to extract some Kin e s -
profit, recognised or illicit, from the new lands of the earth.
Ruthless daring men roamed the seas, such as Cavendish,
who wrote that ' I navigated alongst the coast of Chili, Peru,
and Nueva Espane, where I made great spoils ; I burnt and
sunk nineteen sails of ships, small and great. All the villages
and towns that ever I landed at I burnt and spoiled ; and
had I not been discovered upon the coast I had taken great
quantity of treasure.' They were pirates, but the nation
gloried in their piracy ; and their deeds spread terror in all
the Spanish ports and throughout the two Americas.
Perhaps the most typical of all the achievements of all that
race of heroes was the fight of Richard Grenville off the
Azores. The Revenge, that had been employed on service
36 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS
to Virginia, and was Drake's flagship against the Armada,
was lying at anchor in the summer of 1591 with other vessels
near the Azores, looking out for the Spanish treasure-fleet.
But when the Spaniards appeared, the English had already
waited six months ; the forces were unequal, and many of
our sailors were sick or on shore. It was, therefore, felt
that an attack could not in prudence be ventured on. Gren-
ville, however, ' utterly refused to turn from the enemy,
alleging that he would rather choose to die than to dishonour
himself, his country, and her majesty's ship, persuading his
company that he would pass through the two squadrons in
despite of them.' The fight then ' beginning at three o'clock
in the afternoon, continued very terrible all that evening/
the Spaniards attempting to board, ' but were still repulsed
again and again, and at all times beaten back into their own
ships or into the seas.' The whole night the fight continued,
and as ' the day increased, so our men decreased ' ; the plight
of the Revenge was desperate ; ' all the powder to the last
barrel was now spent, all her pikes broken, forty of her best
men slain, and the most part of the rest hurt ; the masts all
beaten overboard, and all her tackle cut asunder.' But
Grenville was still undaunted. Though wounded in the head,
he refused to surrender, calling for the carpenter to split and
sink the ship, saying that they would ' yield themselves unto
God, and to the mercy of none else ; but as they had fought
like valiant, resolute men, they should not now shorten the
honour of their nation by prolonging their own lives for a few
hours, or a few days.' Some demurred, since the Spaniards
promised generous terms : Grenville was overruled, and taken
aboard the Spanish admiral's ship, where he was treated with
great honour ; and dying, on the third day, said at last,
' Here die I, Richard Grenville, with a joyful and quiet mind,
for that I have ended my life as a true soldier ought to do,
that hath fought for his country, queen, religion, and honour ;
whereby my soul most joyful departeth out of this body and
THE NEW WORLD 37
shall always leave behind it an everlasting fame of a valiant and
true soldier, that hath done his duty, as he was bound to do.'
In such words, and in the account of the hero given by
Ralegh, is enshrined the whole spirit of the sea-kings. Gren-
ville was but one of the many who roamed the waters, and the
same character belonged to all. A touch of not unjustifiable
vainglory that is seldom absent from men strong in action ;
a love of the wandering life they led for its own sake, a pride
in their country, a firm belief in its destiny, an exaggerated
contempt for foreigners, an unlimited confidence in their own
capacity, combined with great natural abilities and a necessary
unscrupulousness that generally ensured success ; carrying
out their conception of duty and honour to the death ; gener-
ous though shrewd, haughty and free, courteous and light-
hearted ; such were the sea-kings one and all.
Even in the early days of the Newfoundland fisheries the
English had been considered the masters in those waters,
and their exploits had by now made them feared in every port
on both sides the Atlantic. The year after the Spanish
Armada was defeated, Drake besieged Corunna, and drove
back a Spanish army on Spanish soil. He was at length
repulsed with heavy loss, mainly through the energy of a
brave Galician woman who raised the whole countryside
against the invaders ; but so great was the terror inspired
by his coming that the body of Saint James, the patron saint
of Spain, was removed from the neighbouring cathedral at
Santiago, and hidden from the unholy hands of the English
heretics.
Elsewhere prizes and treasure were captured every day.
When Philip n. threatened a second Armada, Cadiz was
sacked, the ships in its harbour destroyed, and the provisions
and munitions of war fired. In 1595 a descent was made on
the West Indies ; Drake and Hawkins lost their lives, but
not before they had done enormous damage to the Spanish
possessions.
38 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
In America the way was now clear for colonisation. The
voyages of Baffin and Hudson opened up the bays of Northern
Canada. Continuous efforts were made to plant a settlement in
Virginia. The African trade increased with every year, and
the son of Hawkins set out boldly for the East in the Daintie.
The sea-kings of Devon had done their work ; the road to
the Indies was free at last.
CHAPTER IV
THE MEKCANTILE COMPANIES 1
WITHIN the space of a few years the English sea-kings had
carried their flag from the bleak, misty shores of Labrador to
the scrub of the African coast, and onwards to India and the
eastern isles. The plunder of four continents was brought
home by them to excite the wonder of rustic and Londoner
alike.
They broke the enchantment that held the Spaniards
invincible. They laid the foundation of British supremacy on
the water. But glorious as these achievements were, it is
not by such that a nation becomes great and powerful. They
destroy others ; but they effect little themselves. The sea-
kings pointed the direction ; another body of men, and
another system of polity, founded the colonies and depend-
encies.
The mercantile chartered companies are not indeed peculiar
to Britain ; almost every nation has had recourse to the joint-
stock principle at one time or other. But it is in Britain that
they have developed to the fullest extent. The enormous
power of the East India Company, the Hudson's Bay Com-
pany, the African Chartered Companies of our own day, might
1 Authorities. Primarily Macpherson's History of Commerce. Many
of the charters and other documents are in Hakluyt. J. R. Green treats
the industrial development and the social legislation of the age fully.
THE NEW WORLD 39
be envied by many a prosperous European state ; and it is
in the formation of these and kindred associations that we
shall find the means that made the empire possible.
Trading associations and guilds had been common enough
in every country during the Middle Ages, when enterprises
that were too large for one man to undertake were Orowt i 1 of
naturally financed by several. The commercial British
republics of Italy and Germany, the cities of
Belgium, and the depots established everywhere by the
Hanseatic league, were at bottom nothing but societies of
merchants collected in one central spot by the conditions of
trade, and loosely banded together for safety.
In England, commerce advanced rapidly when the accession
of the Tudors brought stable rule ; but even before that time,
when the Portuguese mariners first began to explore the
outer world, English trade had grown sufficiently important
to move the jealousy of the great Hanseatic league, and a
state of open war frequently existed between the merchants
of the rival countries. From year to year the trade of England
extended, and a nation which had hitherto been unable to
supply its own wants began to export its manufactures
abroad. In 1498 a treaty was made with Riga, which shows
that the Baltic was open for English traffic. A few years
later the first direct business was done with the Levant ; it
was from this source that currants and tulips were first intro-
duced into England. In 1513 a consul was appointed for one
of the Grecian islands. London, Southampton, and Bristol
took a leading part in the Mediterranean trade, exporting
woollens, cloths, and skins, and receiving in return silk,
rhubarb, wine, oil, cotton-wool, Turkey carpets, galls and
Indian spices.
In 1552 the English commercial interest was strong enough
to secure the abolition of the exclusive privileges which the
Hanseatic traders had possessed ; and the following year
the first of the great trading companies was established.
40
Some London merchants formed themselves into an association
with a capital of 6000 in 240 shares of 25 each, to discover
the north-eastern passage to the extreme orient. In 1554
they were incorporated under the style of the Company of
Merchant Adventurers, who were to have one governor,
and twenty-eight of the ' most sad, discreet and honest
fellows, four to be called consuls, and the other twenty-four
assistants/ Among various privileges, they were permitted
to conquer such infidel lands as they might find.
It was in the first voyage made under their direction that
Willoughby perished and Chancellor reached Archangel :
The Russia an d after the Czar had granted trading concessions
company, to the latter, the Company was generally after-
wards called the Russia Company. But the merchants,
although they obtained a good profit on their transactions,
still looked to Asia as their ultimate goal, and fitted out
several expeditions to sail northwards towards China, all of
which came to nothing. To the south, however, they had
more success. Their agents sailed down the Volga and did
business in Persian and Indian goods ; at one time they hoped
to reach China through Persia, and expected all eastern trade
to come overland. In 1566 they were granted a monopoly
of English commerce with Russia : and although this was
revoked in later years and the Czar allowed other nations to
trade in his dominions, the Company continued to flourish.
The success of the Russia Company inspired other ventures.
In 1562 Captain John Hawkins began to trade in slaves from
other com- Guinea to America, and ten years later this was
panies. legalised by a treaty with Portugal : a Guinea
Company was afterwards formed. In 1579 a monopoly was
granted to merchants trading to the ' East-lands/ or countries
surrounded by the Baltic, in order to compete with the
Hanseatic league : this, however, was not a joint-stock
enterprise, but conducted on the principle that everybody
belonging to the association should take his own risk. In the
THE NEW WORLD 41
same year, the Sultan allowed English merchants to buy and
sell in Turkey as freely as other nations ; and the Levant
trade, which had languished since the accession of Queen
Mary, at once revived. In 1581 a Turkey Company was
formed, which brought Mediterranean and oriental produce
to England, rendering those commodities much cheaper than
before. The merchants of this corporation soon carried
their cloth and tin from Aleppo to Bagdad, down the Tigris
to Ormuz and so on to Goa, attempting to trade with India
by a different route from that which the Kussia Company
had used. It is possible they would have accomplished
much had not the East India Company come into being
twenty years later.
The aim of almost every explorer, and the hope of almost
every mercantile company, was to reach the Indies. For
that object expeditions had been fitted out and The search
large sums of money spent, as yet with no result. for India -
But in 1580 Drake returned from his voyage in the eastern
seas. The year before, Thomas Stevens, the first Englishman
to arrive in India, had sailed thither from Lisbon ; and his
letters describing the orient soon drew attention at home.
In 1583 a party of three merchants proceeded overland.
In 1588 Cavendish cruised in the Indian Ocean. In 1591
Raymond and Lancaster visited the East; and it now became
evident that the all-sea route was really the safest, cheapest
and most direct.
Accordingly in 1599 Elizabeth sent John Mildenhall as her
envoy to the court of the Great Mughal to apply for trading
privileges. He was opposed by the Spaniards and Portuguese.
But the East India Company was already formed : and after
a few years the Asiatic trade was a regular feature of London
business. The transactions with Asia fall to another chapter
of our history ; but we may note that for some decades there
was little to distinguish the East India Company from other
trading associations, whether the Russia, the Levant, or the
42 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS
Virginia Company that took over American colonisation from
Ralegh.
The development of the empire overseas rested financially
almost solely on the mercantile companies : for the proprie-
company tary colonies were seldom, save in the case of
Rule. Maryland and Pennsylvania, of much importance,
and the proprietors often made over their rights eventually
to a company. The rule of the latter brought both advantages
and disadvantages ; but the balance was generally and
substantially favourable. It is natural that, as business
men, the shareholders looked for a profit : and easy as it
is to blame them in this respect, one must not condemn
them too severely if they sometimes showed impatience at
the lack of dividends. There was, it is true, frequently a
measure of shortsightedness in their policy, due partly to
apparent prudence and partly to lack of imagination ; but
on the whole the administration was generally economical
and efficient, which would very probably not have been the
case had the British Government assumed control. And the
continual agitation for dividends, if it often resulted in
injustice and occasionally reacted to the disadvantage of
the company itself, at any rate prevented that most fatal
symptom of all in colonial rule, stagnation.
In future chapters, we shall have so often to mention the
faults of the companies that it is well to insist somewhat
emphatically here on their good features. The conquest
of India was practically complete before the East India
Company was abolished. Nearly all the American colonies
were established by British Chartered Companies. The de-
velopment of Africa has lain very largely in their hands.
Australasia does not owe so much to them, but neither the
Commonwealth nor New Zealand would have been so pros-
perous had not British capital found its way there in as great
a measure, albeit in a slightly different form.
The security of the empire admittedly rests on sea-power ;
THE NEW WORLD 43
its worth in the world springs from the broad basis of freedom
on which each colony is founded : but capital is essential to
open out new lands, and that has been supplied during three
centuries by an unbroken succession of commercial associa-
tions, whether under their old title of Merchant Adventurers
or under their present style of Chartered Companies.
The economic theories current in the sixteenth century
restricted trade to some extent, but many of the statutes
passed to regulate commerce were powerless to do anything
more than cause inconvenience. Sumptuary laws were made :
yet those who could afford the condemned articles continued
to use them ; only people not rich enough to transgress the
enactment obeyed it. The sumptuary laws, for instance,
seem to have made not the slightest difference in the imports
of Indian luxuries.
Far more serious obstacles to trade were the difficulties of
communicating between one place and another, the risks of
travelling and transport, the loss on exchange, and the small
amount of either floating or tied-up capital in a country.
But Elizabeth was interested in the expansion of trade, and
did all in her power to further it. The gentlemen at court
held shares in every new enterprise, as well as the merchants
who lived over their shops in the City of London. The offices
of Lombard Street soon became too small for the volume of
commerce, and in 1567 Gresham founded the Royal Exchange.
The Companies brought goods from the ends of the earth, and
when Antwerp fell to the Spaniards under Alva, much of the
traffic that had been concentrated in that wealthy port was
transferred to the Thames.
Behind all the romance and adventure of the age, in fact,
there was a practical commercial spirit, that looked for solid
gain as well as glory ; and it was the combination of daring on
the high seas with sound business at home that brought
success.
44 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
CHAPTER V
THE IMPERIAL SPIRIT IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE
IF it is in the exploits of the sea-kings who first carried the
flag of England far and wide, that we see the beginnings of
New Englands overseas ; if it is in the first transactions of
the Russia Company, the Levant Company, and the East
India Company that we see the beginnings of our industrial
empire : it is still through the works of the great writers who
flourished at the close of the reign of Elizabeth that we can
best understand the new spirit which then came over the nation
at large. The new literature is full of allusions to the new
world. The industrious Hakluyt was engaged in preparing
his collection of voyages. In the intervals of legal work and
scientific research, the philosopher Bacon pictured an ideal
commonwealth in the south seas. The satirist Hall included
among his subjects some adventurers trading to Guinea for
gold, a glance at the expeditions to that rich but deadly
country ; and in another place he pictured how ' The sturdy
ploughman doth the soldier see, All scarfed with pied colours
to the knee, Whom Indian pillage hath made fortunate ' :
probably not an uncommon sight in the last years of the
sixteenth century. In 1599 a book was published with the
quaint title, characteristic of the age, of ' A Mastiff Whelp,
with other rufi iland-like curs fetcht from amongst the Anti-
podes, which bite and bark at the fantastic humourists and
abusers of the time. Imprinted at the Antipodes, and are to
be bought where they are to be sold/
The great dramatists, reflecting every detail of the life
around them, have many scattered sentences which tell of
the interest taken in the lands where Englishmen were be-
ginning to show their face, and even to fight for common
THE NEW WOKLD 45
rights with the discoverers. In Marlowe's Faustus the
general sentiment was expressed :
' Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please,
I '11 have them fly to India for gold,
Ransack the ocean for orient pearl,
And search all corners of the new-found world
For pleasant fruits and princely delicates.'
The power of Spain, the ever-present cloud that darkened
the prospect but added yet another touch of romantic daring
to every expedition, is noted in,
' Make all nations to canonise us,
As Indian moors obey their Spanish lords,'
and again,
' The golden fleece,
That yearly stuffs old Philip's treasury.'
The strangely mingled fact and fiction related by the new
discoverers shows in the sentence, ' When it is winter here
with us, in the contrary circle it is summer with them, as in
India, Saba, and further countries in the East ' : inaccuracies
natural to an age whose geography was less defined than its
theology. Ben Jonson has similar allusions in The Alchemist.
1 Come on, sir. Now you set your foot on shore in Novo
Urbe ; here 'a the rich Peru : and there within, sir, are the
golden mines, great Solomon's Ophir/ . . . ' I '11 purchase
Devonshire and Cornwall and make them perfect Indies/ . . .
' My meat shall all come in, in Indian shells, dishes of agate
set in gold, and studded with emeralds, sapphires, hyacinths
and rubies/ . . . ' To be of power to pay an army in the
field, to buy the king of France out of his realms, or Spain out
of his Indies/ In the same author's Silent Woman, a character
who is utterly ruined is told that his knighthood ' shall not
hope to repair itself by Constantinople, Ireland, or Virginia,'
shrewd gibes at the crusades against the victorious Turks,
the confiscation of the Irish estates, and the hopes entertained
from Ralegh's new colony. In almost every drama are allu-
46 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS
sions to the might of Spain, the fabulous wealth of the new
world, exaggerated or mistaken accounts of which were
brought back by gallants, and satires on the contented
self-praise of those same gallants, who remain caricatured in
the braggart Bobadil to the end of time.
Shakespeare often touches on the same topic. FalstafE
discourses of his inamorata in the Garter Inn at Windsor,
declaring that the Merry Wives are ' a region in Guiana, all
gold and bounty. They shall be exchequers to me : my
East and West Indies, and I will trade with them both.'
The political aspect of the day is mentioned in the Comedy
of Errors as, ' America, the Indies, all o'er embellished with
rubies, carbuncles, sapphires, declined their rich aspect to
the hot breath of Spain, who sent whole armadas of carracks
to be ballast.' The extension of geographical knowledge
is made the subject of a telling comparison when vain
Malvolio is said to ' smile his face into more lines than
are in the new map, with the augmentation of the Indies/
The spirit of unrest, always strong in the English people,
but especially so in Elizabethan days, is naturally illustrated.
Shakespeare had himself felt the impulse in his quiet Warwick-
shire village before he came to London. He speaks of the
feeling three times, in each case in the earlier plays, and in each
case with approbation : in the Two Gentlemen of Verona we
hear that ' Home-keeping youth have ever homely wit/
and again that ' Some to the wars to try their fortunes
there, Some to discover islands far away ' have gone :
and in the Taming of the Shrew is mentioned ' Such wind
as scatters young men through the world, To seek their
fortunes further than at home, Where small experience
grows/ The adventurous spirit that ran in the blood of
the sea-dogs ran, not in their blood only, but in all England
of that day.
But there is a deeper tone of patriotism in Shakespeare.
While he laughs at the credulity that could rush to see ' a
THE EtEW WORLD 47
dead Indian,' or exposes unsparingly the tavern gallants,
Bardolph, Nym, and Pistol, types not merely of the French
wars of Henry v. but of the lower class adventurer of his own
and all time, he still, in the higher moments of his drama,
speaks of England with a faith in her destiny, a reverence for
his country and her people, that had been absent in all earlier
writers. Even in Chaucer, living in the midst of the great
French war, there are only the half-loving, half-cynical
accounts of the people around him ; there is no hint of the
fierce love of country that breaks out in Shakespeare in such
utterances as, ' Come the three corners of the world in arms,
and we shall shock them ; naught shall make us rue, if
England to herself do rest but true/ or the softer accents
of ' This precious stone set in the silver sea ' : and again
in ' Remember, sir, the natural bravery of your isle :
which stands as Neptune's park, ribbed and paled in
with rocks unscaleable and roaring waters, with sands,
that will not bear your enemy's boats, but suck them up
to the topmast/
But it is not merely in isolated utterances in the plays that
we notice the change from Chaucer to Shakespeare. The
historical dramas teach patriotism in a still fuller sense.
Their whole tendency is to paint an England true to herself,
united against enemies, strong under one king, and ruled
justly by him in co-operation with his nobles. Yet Shake-
speare's loyalty to the crown was of that sturdy type which
can allow that rebellion is justified by ill-doing. The lesson
of ' England to herself do rest but true/ taught in King John
is carried further in Richard the Second \ England would not
have rested true to herself had she been content with one who
was not worthy of her. The ideal of Elizabethan times is
shown in the warlike spirit of Henry the Fifth : and in the
magnificent closing lines of Henry the Eighth, if indeed they
are by Shakespeare, we can see the hopes of future great-
ness overseas that were already showing their first-fruits.
48 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS
Cramner's last speech, after telling of the fame that was
to be Elizabeth's, speaks of James the First :
' Wherever the bright sun of heaven shall shine,
His honour, and the greatness of his name,
Shall be, and mark new nations : he shall flourish,
And, like a mountain cedar, reach his branches
To all the plains about him : our children's children
Shall see this, and bless heaven.'
It is, however, from Spenser that we learn the most of
the feelings that moved the England of Elizabeth. Shake-
speare was the poet of all times and of all people ; his dramas
have the world for stage and mankind for actors. But
Spenser was the poet of England only, and his works have
been little known beyond his own country. All the serious-
ness, the faith in righteousness and moral purity that marked
the puritans before conflict had narrowed and soured them,
mix strangely in his works with the classical culture of the
renascence, the marvels of the new world, and the chivalrous
ideals of the old. To Spenser the contest between England
and Spain, between Elizabeth and Mary Stuart, between
protestant and catholic, was not merely one of force against
force, of culture against culture, of faith against faith. It
was a contest of right against wrong, of truth against untruth,
of God against devil : and the Faerie Queene is the epic of the
struggle.
The same allusions to the riches of the new world are found
in the magnificent music of his stanzas ' Dainty spices fetch
from farthest Ynd ' . . . ' Deck't with pearls which th'
Indian seas for her prepare ' but such allusions are merely
incidental. The whole poem indeed is one long allegory ;
and in every book, as the great fight of good against evil
continues, we can identify the characters of the times, idealised
from the stern political struggle into immortal verse. The
dreams of a larger England that Shakespeare had break out
again in Spenser :
THE NEW WORLD 49
' But a third kingdom yet is to arise
Out of the Trojan's scattered offspring
That in all glory and great enterprise
Both first and second Troy shall dare to equalise.'
and once more in,
' Rich Oranoaky, though but knowen late
And that huge river which doth beare his name
Of warlike Amazons, which doth possesse the same
Joy on those warlike women, which so long
Can from all men so rich a kingdom hold !
And shame on you, O men ! which boast your strong
And valiant hearts, in thoughts less hard and bold
Yet quaile in conquest of that land of gold.
But this to you, O Britons, most pertaines
To whom the right hereof itself hath sold
The which for sparing little cost or paines
Loose so immortal glory, and so endless gaines.'
Of Queen Elizabeth he recounts with pardonable flattery :
' In wildest ocean she her throne doth reare
That over all the earth it may be scene. . . .'
His hopes were destined to be realised, although not in the
way in which he dreamed. The expansion of England, of
which Spenser sang, which his friend Ralegh planned, and
which great seamen like Drake made possible, had actually
begun with the defeat of the Spanish Armada. The English
of Elizabeth's day were in numbers but a feeble folk, though
their spirit was great. Had Spenser lived three centuries
later, under a queen even more loved than Elizabeth, lie would
have found that the cod fisheries off Newfoundland, the
expeditions to Virginia, the efforts to reach India, had de-
veloped into the greatest empire that the world had seen,
more extensive than the Latin empire of his own day, more
extensive than that earlier Latin empire whose stern rule first
brought peace and order to Europe.
It was Tennyson who, in his love of country and loyal
devotion to his queen, not less than in his poems of the
D
50 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
chivalrous ideals of older days, became the only real successor
of Spenser in our literature. The earlier poet uttered the im-
perial sentiment of his day ; the later, seeing the empire of
which Spenser had dreamed built up, not only as Spenser had
hoped, through loyalty to monarch, but too often in the teeth
of persecution, political and religious, and in despite of party
feuds and the fury of opposing factions ; conscious also that
' the old order changeth, yielding place to new/ and that the
thoughts of the Elizabethan era were not those of the Victorian,
could still sing, in words that echo back the Faerie Queene :
' The loyal to their crown
Are loyal to their own far sons, who love
Our ocean-empire with her boundless homes
For ever-broadening England and her throne
In our vast Orient, and one isle, one isle
That knows not her own greatness : if she knows
And dreads it we are fall'n. . . .'
CHAPTER VI
VIRGINIA: 1584-1624
THE first edition of the Faerie Queene, published in 1590,
is dedicated to ' the most Mightie and Magnificent Empresse
Elizabethe, by the Grace of God queene of England, France,
and Ireland/ The later edition of 1595 is dedicated to the
' queene of England, France and Ireland, and of Virginia.'
The change in the dreaming poet's dedication of his great work
to his royal mistress shows the change through which England
1 Authorities. Bancroft's History of the United Stales. Ttoyltis English
in America. A Travell into Virginia Britannia, published by the
Hakluyt Society. Hakluyt and Purchas are invaluable. The records of
the Virginia Company still exist, as also the pamphlets inspired by the
interest of the time in the earliest English colonial enterprise. Many
of the latter will be found in Arber's English Scholar's Library, where
are also the complete works of Captain John Smith, whose writings are
indispensable for this period.
THE NEW WORLD 51
herself had passed. The title to France was still claimed ; 1
and it reminded men of the old continental empire, as the
fleur-de-lys in the arms of King's College, Cambridge, tell its
students to-day of the dead past in which that empire was a
living fact. But if the sovereignty of France was still claimed,
though the reality was gone for ever, the later dedication shows
the beginning of the second English empire which was destined
not to fail.
The disastrous adventures which accompanied the founda-
tion of Virginia still move us in the pages of Richard Hakluyt.
When he turned to the ' sweete studie of the history of cos-
mographie,' he found that the English adventurers, though
they might be as brave as the Latins, had indeed explored the
world, but ' not with the like golden success, not with such
deductions of colonies, nor attaining of conquests as their
rivals.' Too long had they searched the barren north ; and
now it was ' high time for us to weigh our ancre, to hoist up
our sails, to get clear of these boistrous, frosty and misty seas,
and with all speed to direct our course for the milde, lightsome,
temperate and warm Atlantic Ocean.' The result was
Virginia, and the beginning of the English dominion in
America.
Sir Humphrey Gilbert had lost his fortune and his life in
the attempt to found a colony in Newfoundland in the year
1583 ; another gentleman of Devon, his half- glr Walter
brother Walter Ralegh of Hayes near East Bud- Ralegh and
leigh, was already filled with the same ambition
of enlarging his country by the acquisition of territory over-
seas. To the fulfilment of that ambition Ralegh was to dedi-
cate the remaining years of his life ; passing by successive
stages of diminishing fortune from the brilliance of the hopes
which bade fair to be realised in the foundation of Virginia
and Guiana, through the losses and disappointments of middle
1 The claim of England to the kingdom of France was not formally
resigned until the treaty of Amiens in 1802.
52 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
age, when every scheme seemed fated to go awry, towards
the last sad end when a brave and honourable gentleman
met an unworthy doom upon the block. 1
The ready wit and courtly presence of Walter Ralegh
secured him the favour of his queen ; and he used that favour
for the worthy purpose of expanding her realm. On 24th
March 1584, he obtained letters-patent from Elizabeth,
granting to him and to his heirs ' free liberty to discover
barbarous countries, not actually possessed of any Christian
prince, and inhabited by Christian people, to occupy and
enjoy the same for ever ' ; and any colony that he founded
was to submit to English law, to acknowledge the English
crown, and its people were to possess every privilege which
belonged to the freemen of England.
With more prudence than the earlier adventurers had shown,
Ralegh equipped two ships, under the command of Captains
Arthur Barlow and Philip Amidas, to report on the promised
land. The voyage was successful ; and on their return,
the account of the travellers was enticing in the extreme.
The soil was fertile, the natives friendly ; it was a region of
fresh flowers and wild grapes. Thus fortified in his desires,
Walter Ralegh, whose knighthood probably dates from this
period, at once made preparations for a settlement.
On 9th April 1585, the first emigrant fleet for Virginia bore out
of Plymouth Sound on its way westwards. The seven vessels,
which were under the command of the great Sir Richard
Grenville, ranged from the Tyger, 140 tons, and the Lyon,
100 tons, to little craft of less than half that size ; and in
these frail bottoms the hundred or so men who were destined
to found a new England in America began their voyage across
the Atlantic.
The fleet arrived safely at Wokeken on 27th July ; four
weeks later Grenville returned home. The enterprise seemed
well begun.
1 For the last failure and death of Ralegh, see vol. iv. bk. xii. ch. i.
THE NEW WORLD 53
But almost from the day of their arrival misfortunes
pursued the settlers. Ralph Lane, who was in charge of the
colony, was a daring spirit and a brilliant soldier ; but he
insisted on exploring the interior, and hoped for ' the dis-
covery of a gold mine/ The settlers themselves, in the words
of one of their number, ' had little understanding, less dis-
cretion, and more tongue than was needful or requisite.
Because there were not to be found any English cities, nor
such fair houses, nor at their own wish any of their accustomed
dainty food, nor any soft beds of down or feathers, the country
was to them miserable, and their report thereof according/
There were too few labourers and too many ' gentlemen '
among them, and industry therefore languished. And inter-
course with the natives was no longer amicable ; misunder-
standings arose and treachery existed, probably on both sides.
The provisions that had been supplied ran short, and the
settlers had done little to cultivate the soil ; they, like their
leader, had been too much occupied in hunting for treasure
to sow any crops.
Lane, indeed, had maintained a bold front, ' undertaking
to remain, rather to lose our lives, than to defer the possession
of so noble a kingdom to the queen, our country, and our
noble patron, Sir Walter Ralegh ' ; but the whole colony
was in despair after a few months ; and when Drake's fleet
put in at the settlement in June 1586, the people unani-
mously demanded to be taken back to England.
With their return the failure of Ralegh's scheme was
evident ; but the gallant knight would not abandon hope.
' I shall yet see it an English nation/ he remarked doggedly
as he prepared another expedition. But further parties
were sent out without better success, and they met with a
worse fate. Many were massacred by the redskins ; none
succeeded in founding a colony.
Ralegh himself spent forty thousand pounds in the enter-
prise : but at length, sick at heart with his failure, he made
54 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
over his rights in America to others. And for a time Virginia
now suffered eclipse ; for the attention of England became
concentrated on Asiatic trade, while the project of. planting a
new nation in the far west was forgotten.
But not for long. The merchants of London took up the
work which was too great for any private man ; and early in
The Virginia ^ ne new re ^8 n ' on 10th April 1606, the Virginia
company, Company received its patent from James i.
On the first day of the following year two ships
and a pinnace containing 143 emigrants left for America.
The voyage was long and tedious ; but the fleet sighted
Cape Henry at length on 16th April, and four weeks later a
spot was chosen for the capital, which was called Jamestown.
But all the old troubles were again to be experienced. The
city was founded on unhealthy ground. Sickness carried
away forty, and only six healthy men remained in the fort.
Dissensions within, and difficulties with the natives outside,
had already made the prospects almost hopeless, when James-
town was burnt down. It was rebuilt ; but after three years
had passed, so little progress had been made that less than
fifty acres were under cultivation.
The colony was only saved from destruction by Captain
John Smith, that extraordinary man whose exploits have
Captain made him a hero of romance and a type of the
John smith. d ar i n g an d careless but able adventurer of the age.
John Smith, of Willoughby near Alford, in Lincolnshire, had
wandered all over Europe without much success as a soldier
of fortune from 1598 to 1604 ; and when the expedition to
Virginia was planned, he determined to join it. He was
imprisoned on the voyage out, on the supposition that he
intended to declare himself ruler of the new colony ; and for
some time his reputation lay under a cloud.
But when the troubles with the redskins first occurred,
it was to him that the settlers looked, and not to their in-
competent leaders, to extricate them. His own life was saved,
THE NEW WORLD 55
as the story goes, by Pocahontas, the daughter of the native
king, who intervened on his behalf when her countrymen had
Smith in their power ; and in the end he was able to conclude
a treaty of friendship, and to turn the attention of the colony
to more useful pursuits than the hunt for gold.
A half-humorous, half-melancholy picture of the condition
of Virginia at this time has been preserved. ' When the ships
departed, there remained/ it was said, ' neither tavern,
beer-house, nor place of relief but the common kettle. Had
we been as free from all sins as gluttony and drunkenness,
we might have been canonised for saints. . . . Our drink
was water ; our lodgings, castles in the air. With this
lodging and diet, our extreme toil in bearing and planting
palisades so strained and bruised us, and our continual
labour in the extremity of the heat had so weakened us, as
made us miserable. Fifty in this time we buried. From
May to September, those that escaped alive lived upon stur-
geon and sea-crabs/
From this wretchedness Smith rescued the people ; but his
term of office was short, and an accident compelled him to
return home. When he recovered, he did not again settle in
Virginia. He seems to have had, not unreasonably, small faith
in its prospects ; the roving disposition once more asserted
itself, and Smith wandered from the Bermudas and the West
Indies to New England, the country which he preferred
above all others, and back again to London.
But his day as a pioneer was over, and his last years were
spent, with the versatility of the true Elizabethan, in writing
histories of the colonies, in publishing warnings and hints for
the inexperienced who emigrated thither, and in giving
evidence before the royal commission on American affairs.
His motto ' To Christ and my country a true soldier and
faithful servant ' declares the man ; the account of him
given by the clerk of the council at Jamestown shows how
much his work and character had done for Virginia in her day
56 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
of distress. ' In all his proceedings/ wrote the clerk, he
' made justice his first guide, and experience his second :
ever hating baseness, sloth, pride and indignity more than
any dangers ; that never allowed more for himself than
his soldiers with him ; that upon no danger would
send them where he would not lead them himself ; that
would never see us want what he either had, or could by
any means get us ; that would rather want than borrow,
and starve than not pay ; that loved actions more than
words, and hated falsehood and cozenage more than death ;
whose adventures were our lives, and whose loss, our
deaths.'
Their deaths indeed ; for misfortunes again settled on
Virginia after his departure. The next governor was in
Continued weak health, and altogether incapable ; his
Misfortunes, successor was autocratic, and although under his
rule affairs improved somewhat, men fled from him in terror
for protection to the natives ; when they were recovered, they
were tortured. On his departure, a still worse fate was in
store. The new governor treated the planters as slaves ;
the profits went neither to them nor to the Company, but
were diverted into his own pockets.
A more unpromising beginning for an oversea empire
could not be imagined. But the cause of the failure lay on
the surface. The English were absolutely without experience
of colonial enterprises. The sea-kings, men to whom ad-
venture and the imminent deadly breach were as the very
breath of their being, were unable to settle down to the
monotonous daily toil that alone founds a new state. They
loved the wild life of the high seas, the sudden attack of an
enemy, the fierce fight, the plunder and the booty. But
on land, they had no thought save for treasure. ' No talk,
no hope, no work, but dig gold, work gold, refine gold, and
load gold/ is the description of them by a contemporary in
Virginia.
THE NEW WORLD 57
Such were the first men who went to America, under the
auspices of Ralegh. The second, who were emigrated by the
Virginia Company, were not more promising. They consisted
largely of the victims of economic distress in England, whom
the law branded as rogues, and who in fact frequently seem
to have deserved their legal title ; many were ' profane,
notorious, and full of mutiny : their bodies so diseased and
crazed that not sixty of them may be employed upon labour/
The vicious idea that lay at the root of much English colonial
enterprise for centuries was thus exemplified in the very first
settlement abroad ; it was intended that the basis of the state
should be convicts. 1
An absurdly strict legislative code was drawn up for use
in Virginia. To calumniate the king, the Company, or
any books published by their authority ; to root up any
crop maliciously or kill poultry or cattle ; to traffic privately
with ships visiting the country ; to blaspheme, or omit
church attendance on Sunday : the punishment was uni-
formly death. To omit daily worship was to incur six
months in the galleys.
Such a system worked its own abortion, since it could not
be enforced. All discipline was relaxed, and the settlers
would not labour, for they had small interest in prospering.
They played bowls in the streets of Jamestown, while the
houses crumbled. They sowed practically no corn. At one
time, there were but sixteen days' stores in hand ; at another,
1 With his usual wisdom, Lord Bacon condemned the transportation
of convicts in unmeasured terms as ' a shameful and unblessed thing, for
they will ever live like rogues, and not fall to work, but be lazy, and
do mischief, and spend victuals, and be quickly weary, and then certify
over to their country, to the discredit of the plantation.' The
best that could be said for the system was said by Hakluyt : ' If we
would behold with the eye of pity how all our prisons are pestered and
filled with able men to serve their country, which for small robberies
are daily hanged up in great numbers, we would hasten and further,
every man to his power, the deducting of some colonies of our superfluous
people into the temperate and fertile parts of America.' The worst that
could be said for the system was that it failed either to reform the
convicts or to profit the colony.
58 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
there were not even hogs or horses to eat. A famine killed a
hundred and fifty settlers. Once the colony would have been
totally abandoned, had not supplies arrived from England ;
later a conspiracy was set on foot.
The Virginia Company itself was unfitted for the work it
took up. It was cumbrous in theory and almost unworkable
in practice. It consisted originally of two bodies : the
London merchants who proposed to establish a plantation
between the thirty-eighth and forty-fifth degrees of north
latitude ; and the west-country gentlemen and traders,
whose sphere was from the thirty-fourth to the forty-first
degrees. A resident council of thirteen afterwards in-
creased to twenty-five were to govern in accordance with
the king's instructions ; but in fact one man secured pre-
ponderance.
There was naturally constant friction between Virginia and
London. The Company expected immediate dividends ;
they instructed one governor to discover either a lump of
gold, a passage to the south seas, or the lost settlers who
remained from Ralegh's last expedition. As the two former
did not exist, and the latter existed no more, he was un-
successful ; but the Company did not cease to press for
results.
They expected to make England, ' this little northern corner
of the world, to be in a short time the richest storehouse and
staple for merchandise in all Europe ' : but they forgot that
although the East India Company and the Levant Company
could be successful in transactions with already rich and
populous lands, Virginia was still a wilderness. The corpora-
tion was reconstructed in 1609 and 1612 ; but at one period
they were utterly disheartened, and subscriptions were
15,000 in arrear. The interest that had been aroused
at home again died down : the colony became the butt
of the stage, and a fit subject for the cheap wit of the pot-
house.
THE NEW WORLD 59
Affairs were in this wretched condition when a crown-
ing disaster fell upon Virginia. The redskins MaB8acre
attacked the settlements, and had massacred intrigue,
347 men and women before the English re- t^^/tfe"
covered sufficiently from their surprise to repel Company's
them. Even then the warfare on the side
of the whites was desultory ; the harvest was neglected, and
scarcity and sickness again devastated the land.
Meanwhile the jealousy of Spain was at work. The royal
court of Madrid had long watched the English attempts to
found a western empire with suspicion : but so low an opinion
did the Spanish government entertain of her ability, that for
some years they expected Virginia would be again, and this
time finally, abandoned. When they saw that despite hard-
ships, lack of success, and continual misfortune, the colony
continued to exist, their opposition became more menacing.
Unfortunately James i. readily listened to their remonstrances,
in his desire to arrange a marriage with the Spanish dynasty.
The Company were accordingly harassed by demands from
the crown ; they were compelled to undertake the sale of
Spanish tobacco in addition to their own, and their contribu-
tion to the revenue was increased. But this was merely a
preparation for their final abrogation. In the year 1623
they were summoned before the privy council, under thirty-
nine counts of indictment ; and on 24th July 1624, their
patent was annulled in the courts of law. From that day
Virginia was under royal control.
But already the colony had its own institutions. On
3rd July 1619, by the order of the Virginia Company, the first
meeting of an assembly of burgesses took place at Representa-
Jamestown. It was a sign that the representative tiveGovern-
idea which lay at the root of the English con- ]
stitution was strong enough to bear transplantation to
America ; it showed that the principle of self-government
would find its place in the English colonies overseas.
60 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
The new Assembly was not long before it obtained and
exercised power. It modified the harsh, illiberal penal code
in many respects ; more important, in the years 1623, 1631,
1632 and 1642 it claimed that it alone had the right of imposing
taxes. Aristocratic as was the society of Virginia, in sympathy
with the monarchy as were most of the settlers, the young
colonial parliament never permitted the least invasion of any
of the functions it had inherited from its English prototype.
It is thus with peculiar reverence that we must look at the
ruined village on the James River which to-day alone marks
the first capital of Virginia. The beauty of modern Richmond
may move us, and the memory of the hardships it endured in
the Civil War of 1861 as headquarters of the southern states
may recall many an interesting reminiscence ; the older city
of Williamsburg, the centre of colonial life and the fashionable
society of Virginia when Virginia was still a colony, reminds
us of the almost regal power of the eighteenth century gover-
nors, and the gay functions at which the rich planters of the
time attended ; but the forgotten settlement at the mouth of
the James River, which never prospered during its brief
existence, which witnessed so many vicissitudes and disasters,
and which was finally destroyed and deserted, is memorable
for all time as the first capital of the first colony of the English
people overseas, and the seat of the first parliament founded
by them outside their own proper land.
BOOK II
THE PURITAN EMIGRATION: 1583-1660
CHAPTER I
PURITANISM IN ENGLAND : 1583-1649
WITH the passing of Elizabeth there passed away also the
spirit of her age. There were no more sea-kings. Drake,
Hawkins, and Frobisher had gone. Ralegh still lingered
superfluous on the stage, till a dishonourable death overtook
one of the truest men of any era ; but he outlived his time.
The old love of adventure had vanished, or it found no longer
a legitimate outlet. The human interest in life and mankind
at large that made the ' merrie England ' of Shakespeare and
his brother dramatists, was likewise passing away. There
was to be no more of that broad tolerance which had been the
tradition of the new learning from the days of Erasmus and
More, and which Elizabeth might have preserved in religious
matters had not political events forced her hand. The deep
sympathy with everything human which inspired the great
writers, that gives us the speculations of Hamlet, the vows of
Romeo, the agony of Lear and Othello, the perfidy of lago,
the courage of Hotspur, and the incomparable gallery of fools
from Toby Belch and Ague-cheek to Shallow and Slender,
died out in the reign of James i. The love of the theatre still
indeed existed among the citizens of London and their wives
and apprentices, who could yet laugh at the mock heroism of
The Knight of itie Burning Pestle ; but the stage itself had
become corrupted, and the indecency and bloodshed which
61
62 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
disgusts us in such writers as Ford and Webster is some-
thing different from the occasional coarseness and tragic cata-
strophes which the too sensitive modern palate expurgates
in Shakespeare.
The interest indeed of the times was changing. Where
the intellects of the Elizabethan era had been occupied with
Puritanism the relation of man to man, the greatest intellects
in England. unc ler the first two Stuarts were occupied with the
relation of man to God. As the renascence in England died
away before puritanism, the intellectual loss was compensated
by the moral gain : but a narrower spirit of exclusiveness
grew up, fostered by persecution and the long civil strife, that
at times startles the student with the sourness of its orthodoxy,
its terrible limitation of vision, and the spiritual tyranny it set
up in place of the older tyranny it had tforn down.
Yet in this revolution England was but taking her part in
the great religious struggle throughout Europe. The Thirty
Years' War in Germany, the Huguenot wars in France,
the longer trials that made an independent nation in Holland,
find their counterpart in England rather in the rise of the
puritans than in the half-political, half-religious reform of the
Anglican Church under Henry viu. The early years of the
Reformation in England were unmarked by the events that
accompanied the general reformation in Europe. There was
no popular revolution. The Church was moulded by the bands
of politicians ; and the policy of the Tudors was to keep it in
subjection, by insisting on the royal supremacy, by ' tuning
the pulpits ' to their views, by depressing the power of the
clergy, and appointing as bishops creatures of the government.
The nation remained at heart Catholic, while the Church took
its cue from the king. 1
1 A striking remark made by Giovanni Michiel, the Venetian
Ambassador to England in the time of Mary, indicates the prevailing
apathy in religious matters. ' The example and authority of their
sovereign can do anything with them. . . . They would do the like by
the Mahometan or Jewish creed were their king to evince a belief in it,
THE PURITAN EMIGRATION 63
But the persecution of Mary and the open Bible worked a
change. The burnings and tortures in Smithfield filled the
people with disgust at a religion that could perpetrate such
atrocities. From catholic they became protestant ; and as
the words of the Bible touched them more and more, the real
reformation began and puritanism became a living force.
The more thoughtful and enthusiastic realised that the Church
of England was a compromise ; and they wished to carry out
the work of reformation to its logical end. The Calvinists
of the continent were unfettered in the lands where Calvinism
was acknowledged : the puritans, who came gradually to
accept the name at first thrown at them in derision, wished
for the same freedom at home.
But Elizabeth and her government would have none of
it. They saw the danger that sprang from warring religious
sects abroad ; and above all they felt it necessary that England
should have internal peace, if she were to make headway
against her enemies. The puritans were therefore oppressed
both by queen and Church.
They found, too, but little sympathy at first among the
people. ' I had as lief be a Brownist as a politician/ cried
honest Ague- cheek ; and the Brownists were the first and
strongest sect of the puritans. They were assailed with ridicule
in the plays and satires of the day ; with the exception of
Spenser, indeed, none of the great Elizabethan writers were
in sympathy with their conception of life.
Yet they increased ; and at the close of Elizabeth's reign
the puritan congregations were far larger than twenty years
before. When James i. endeavoured to force orthodoxy on
them, he succeeded only in exasperating them, and in identify-
ing puritanism still more with the great party that was
accommodating themselves to anything, but more willingly to such
doctrines as gave them hope, either of the greatest liberty and license in
their mode of life, or of some profit.' The opinion was not very flatter-
ing, and was probably somewhat exaggerated ; but it was not altogether
untrue, in spite of the martyrs of Smithfield.
64 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS
struggling for political liberty. 1 When his son Charles
tried to bring the whole country under civil and ecclesiastical
tyranny, he provoked the great rebellion that lost him his
crown and life ; and the leaders of that rebellion were puritans.
With the change in England we have directly little to
do. But from the puritans of England sprang the New
Puritanism England colonies of America ; and the history of
in America, those colonies epitomises much of the history of
the English people in America.
Despite the protection of Elizabeth, the guidance of Ealegh,
and the poetic benediction of Spenser, Virginia had not
prospered much ; and although in later years its advance was
considerable, it still, in its leisured wealth and aristocratic
institutions, reproduced too nearly the conservative mode of
thought in England to stand for much in the history of America.
The greatest patriot of all in the United States was indeed a
Virginian : but the large estates, the negro slavery, and the
comfortable ease which both assured militated against any
such characteristic development in Virginia as the ' plain
living and high thinking ' of New England or the rough but
' strenuous life ' of the early western states.
On the other hand, New England has been to America
what England has been to the United Kingdom, what Paris
has been to France, what Prussia has been to Germany.
Other states have been useful members : New England has
been the head and brain. From New England have sprung
American education and American literature ; the citizens of
those states bore the burden and heat of the dayin the Imperial
Civil War of 1776 ; in the second Civil War of 1861 the gener-
ous impulse of freedom, emanating from New England, freed
the negro slaves ; in the industrial development of the con-
tinent, the same states led the way, until the little villages and
1 Lancelot Andrewes, the Bishop of Winchester at this time, was a
tolerant man as the age went ; but when he was accused of allowing error
to exist in England, he was able to defend himself with the answer, ' We
have this very year burnt two anabaptists.'
THE PURITAN EMIGRATION 65
townships that were founded in the seventeenth century
became the enormous manufacturing cities of the twentieth.
In the pleasant lazy lands of Virginia and its off-shoots in the
southern states, ' a land in which it seemed always afternoon/
there has been the tranquil, unprogressive existence that one
associates with ages long since passed ; but in college and
university, in mill and factory, in the restless forward impulse
that marks every department of life in New England and the
sister states, we find the key to the real history of America.
CHAPTER II
THE FIRST PUKITAN COLONIES : 1620-58 l
THE grand remonstrance of the English House of Commons
against the tyranny of the Stuarts was passed in November
1641. ' Had it been rejected/ said Cromwell as he left the
House, ' I would have sold to-morrow all that I possess and
left England for ever/ His exclamation reveals a thought
that had sustained the puritans throughout the whole contest.
Had the struggle for freedom been hopeless in England itself,
there were still other refuges. While the protestant churches
existed on the Continent, the English reformers, who were all
in sympathy with the hard dogmatic Calvinism of Germany
and Holland, were sure of a welcome.
Many religious bodies had already made their home abroad
when the storm became too severe in England itself. The
fugitives were kindly received, as brethren who had suffered
for the true faith, even as the Huguenots had been received a
1 Authorities. Mainly Doyle and Bancroft : the former is a little
unsympathetic, the latter too rhetorical and effusive. The one is a
corrective of the other. Both mention many original writers, who may
be consulted for fuller details than the plan of this work allows. Of
these, Winthrop is by far the most important ; his writings are essential.
A mass of materials has grown up around the Winthrops ; there is &
bibliography under the article John Winthrop in the Dictionary oj
National Biography. Justin Winsor is also useful.
E
66 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS
generation before in England itself, and were again to be
received two generations later.
But the congregations of independents who fled to Amster-
dam and Leyden still loved their country and longed to return
to her bosom. After their early difficulties abroad were sur-
mounted they could indeed ' raise a comfortable li ving ' and
were able to enjoy ' much sweet and delightful society and
spiritual comfort together ' ; but they were always conscious
that they were strangers in a strange land. Some of the Dutch
customs displeased them. The looseness with which the
Sabbath was observed filled them with dislike. They had no
wish to remain the guests of Holland for ever, and there
were no prospects for their sons abroad. But freedom to
exercise their religion and to carry out their views was essential,
wherever they might go ; and since there was no longer any
hope for this in England, their thoughts turned naturally
towards the new world.
About the year 1590 some independents, ' falsely called
Brownists/ had petitioned Elizabeth for permission to go
The Puritans to ' a foreign and far country to the west/ hoping
in America, somewhat vaguely there to ' settle in Canada
and greatly annoy the bloody and persecuting Spaniard
in the Bay of Mexico/ Nothing came of the idea ; but some
seven years later an attempt was made to found a colony
in America. Its failure did not daunt the puritans : at
Leyden they were full of schemes to found their little common-
wealth in the newer, freer world.
In what country it should be they were not decided. Some
spoke of Guiana, others of the lands belonging to the Dutch
West India Company, others again of Virginia. All three
projects fell through. The first was too hazardous. The
second was as much a foreign country as Holland itself.
The third was tried but did not succeed. And to the diffi-
culties inherent in every colonial enterprise were added, in the
case of refugees, certain obstacles peculiar to themselves.
THE PURITAN EMIGRATION 67
They were a poor community ; they had no capital save the
paltry surplus from their labour. They had to overcome
the opposition of both Crown and Church, before they could
receive any concession to settle in a province claimed by
England ; and to such a province they were determined
to go.
It was at this time that their attention turned to the
country north of Virginia. There had been repeated attempts
and as many failures early in the seventeenth century at
colonising the district that was vaguely known as Northern
Virginia. In the year 1614 Captain John Smith had visited,
explored and named the desolate wilderness that has now
been converted into the richest and most prosperous part of
the United States. On his return home, he published a
pamphlet on New England. The name which he had given
was generally adopted, and in 1620 a new patent was given
to the Plymouth Company to develop the American territories
between the forty-fifth and forty-eighth degrees of north
latitude. The Company received the right to legislate, to
expel intruders by force of arms, and to take all profits from
the monopoly of trade with those parts after a tax of not
more than 4 per cent, had been paid to the Crown. More
important than these details from the puritan point of view,
no condition was laid down as to the religious belief of the
immigrants. Negotiations were opened, and it was decided
that the independent refugees in Holland should make their
home in New England. By a prudent arrangement, part of
the colony remained for a time at Leyden.
Eventually those who were to leave sailed from Delfts-
haven in July 1620, amid ' floods of tears ' and a mutual
' lifting up our hands to each other and our hearts The pugrim
for each other to the Lord our God.' On 5th Fathers,
August, some hundred and twenty men, women
and children left Southampton in two small vessels, the
Mayflower of 180 tons, and the Speedwell of 60. The latter
68 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
was forced to put into Dartmouth, and after a second trial
was condemned at Plymouth as unseaworthy. Some of the
congregation now abandoned the voyage, and others were
rejected as unfit ; the total number of passengers who finally
sailed in the May-flower was about a hundred. 1
At length on 6th September, the little vessel finally departed
from England. The passage was bad and lasted thirteen weeks .
It was not until 15th December that the travellers landed,
first at Cape Cod, and after further consultation at a spot
that was already vaguely known as Plymouth.
The emigrants, whom later ages have loved to remember
as the Pilgrim Fathers, kept to the name in memory of the
last place at which they had touched in England : and in the
little seaport that lies thirty-seven miles from Boston may
to-day be seen the Forefather's Rock which still marks the
traditional spot of their landing, as on the rough Barbican
quay of the older Plymouth in Devonshire a stone yet bears
the word ' Mayflower ' and the date of her departure. Thus
was the first of those seaports founded which commemorate
in their names the beautiful western town and harbour of
England whence so many emigrants have set sail ; in the
words of a nineteenth-century son of Connecticut, Elihu
Burritt, this was the earliest namesake of ' Plymouth ! old
Plymouth ! Mother of full forty Plymouths up and down
the wide world that wear her memory in their names, write it
in baptismal records of all their children and before the date
of every outward letter, this is the Mother Plymouth, sitting
by the sea/
But the troubles of the emigrants had but begun with their
landing. The year was far advanced before they
Hardships. . fj _. . , J ^ ,. , , , . , , , .
left England, and the voyage had delayed them
so long that it was already mid-winter before they arrived.
There were no houses in the wilderness, and they had few
1 A complete list of the travellers in the Mayflower is given in Brad-
ford's History of the Plymouth Settlement, which contains a full account
of the early hardships of the Pilgrim Fathers.
69
materials with which to build. Their food was bad and
scanty. They could not hunt on account of the season, and
they could not fish as they had no tackle. They were attacked
by cold and ague. Half of them died. At one time there
were but seven who were not ill.
But the puritans were no common men. To the courage of
a race that has seldom shown itself lacking they added an
unswerving trust in God and the practical ability that was
strongly characteristic of the middle classes of England.
They had come prepared for hardships. ' It is not with us as
with other men/ wrote one of them, ' whom small things can
discourage or small discontentments cause to wish themselves
home again/ They were ' well weaned from the delicate milk
of the mother country, and inured to the difficulties of a
strange land/
Above all religion upheld them. ' We are knit together as
a body in a most sacred covenant of the Lord, of the violation
thereof we make great conscience, and by virtue whereof we
hold ourselves strictly tied to all care of each other's good and
of the whole/
Through the long winter they did not lose heart. ' It
snowed and did blow all the day and night and froze withal ' ;
they saw ' men stagger by reason of faintness for want of food ';
after the first stock of maize was discovered, they found
' no more corn, nor anything else but graves/ Even when
the summer came there was little improvement. After three
years, ' they knew not at night where to have a bit in the
morning/
Fresh emigrants arrived, and disputes arose. Not all who
had come in the Mayflower were worthy : there were a few
thriftless and lazy members who took selfish advantage of
the communistic principles on which the colony had been
founded. Accordingly a modified system of private holdings
was instituted : but this again was unsatisfactory, since the
properties were changed annually, and the idle reaped what
70
they had not sown, while the industrious man was deprived
of the fruits of his labour and compelled to begin again. In
1624, however, the land was allotted in perpetuity ; and three
years later partnership was dissolved with the Plymouth
Company by mutual agreement. The first settlement in
New England was at last independent.
The settlers had already shown that industrious spirit
which has turned the eastern part of the modern United
industrial States into a land of factories. They had learnt
Progress. to cultivate maize from the redskins, and had
imported horned cattle from England ; a cow and two goats
were given to every thirteen persons in the general division
of property. The community was based on agriculture, trade
and fishing. In 1623 a pinnace was purchased to buy corn
and beavers from the natives ; but here they had been fore-
stalled by the Dutch of the New Netherlands : a little later,
however, they found a market among other tribes. Saltworks
were established without success. In 1627 a permanent
station was established at Buzzards Bay, and trading houses
for traffic with the redskins of the north about the same time.
Kelations with the Dutch were friendly, and there was
seldom trouble with the various native tribes of redskins :
the French colonists in Canada, however, looked with suspicion
on those who were rapidly becoming their rivals, and in 1631
attacked a New England trading house.
Although the pilgrims had thus advanced far from their
earlier helplessness, their numbers were still small. In 1624
Social Con- there were but a hundred and eighty inhabitants
dition. i n Plymouth ; five years afterwards, when further
emigrants arrived from Holland, there were three hundred.
The severe climate and the hardships of life killed off the weak ;
some also were discouraged and returned to England. Early
marriages and large families were the rule among the settlers,
but the lack of comforts caused a heavy death-rate among the
children. By the process of ruthless weeding-out which took
THE PURITAN EMIGRATION 71
place here and indeed everywhere among the puritan colonists,
a race of strong and masterful men was created, that later times
knew in the wiry indefatigable Yankee.
A spirit of exclusiveness also operated to keep away intend-
ing settlers. It is not probable that many cavaliers wished
to dwell among ' the elect of God/ they preferred rather the
easier morals and brighter life that was becoming characteristic
of Virginia ; but the puritans themselves were averse from
receiving strangers. When an emigrant ship was driven ashore
at Plymouth, a few that ' carried themselves very orderly '
were suffered to remain ; the rest, being ' untoward people/
were sent on to the south. And the discipline to which all
alike were subjected was harsh. Those who wished to become
householders had first to obtain the approval of the governors
and council ; churchgoing was compulsory, and agreement
with the narrow tenets of the religious creed enforced. An
attempt was made to keep all the settlers in one town, but
failed naturally as the colony grew in size; a second and a third
town were built, but not without grave misgivings at the
possibility of laxness, as increasing distance from Plymouth
made control less easy.
The severity, however, was pleasing to the stern puritan
spirit. ' Let it not be grievous unto you/ one had written
from England, ' that you have been instrumental intolerance
to break the ice for others. The honour shall be
yours to the world's end ' : and while they loved settlers.
their new home and still remembered the old in their
hearts and prayers, the puritan settlers did not relax by
one jot or tittle the form of worship for which they had
sacrificed all their possessions. They had revolted in order
to find freedom : yet others who afterwards came to share
their asylum in America found that they were still ignorant
of the first principles of toleration. Persecution as bitter was
indulged in by the puritan as by the Anglican Churchman,
and with this added horror, that whereas the Anglican had
72 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
some culture and some reverence for the beautiful in art and
life, the puritan had none. From his existence the beautiful
was now resolutely excluded as a danger and a delusion ;
a dark and melancholy orthodoxy was all that his creed
allowed. He looked with an eye of scorn that was seldom
disguised on practically every form of art, he banned the
theatre as immoral, he detested dancing as an unnecessary
pleasure, he looked with suspicion at any attempt to render
life more agreeable, especially pouring out the quintessence of
acrid wrath on all who wished to alleviate the rigid observance
of Sunday. The strength of the influence exerted by the
puritan on our national life is shown by the survival of some
traces of this feeling among ourselves to-day.
But doubtful as the pilgrims at Plymouth were at times
of their own brethren, they were utterly scandalised by other
neighbours who arrived. From Merrymount, an independent
cavalier settlement in the vicinity, it was reported with horror
that the people ' frisked like fairies or rather furies ' round the
maypole, and that ten pounds worth of strong liquor was
drunk in one morning. Of more real seriousness was the fact
that the revellers sold guns and ammunition to the aborigines.
Barren as the coasts of New England seemed to men accus-
tomed to the fertility of Virginia, the pilgrims were not the
only settlers in the north : and although the roysterers at
Merrymount were not true settlers, a fresh wave of immigra-
tion soon founded other states, where as yet only a few
solitary fishermen found shelter. The surrounding country
was by now explored, and a description of it had been published
by Purchas ; the Plymouth Company still claimed the
monopoly of the coasts, and despite the protests of the English
Parliament, their claim held good.
The first emigrants had already arrived in Maine : these,
>/ however, were royalists who unsuccessfully attempted to
found the colony of New Somerset. Near by, the beginnings
of New Hampshire were seen when Portsmouth and Dover
THE PURITAN EMIGRATION 73
were established. Here again little progress was made ; in
1653 the former town did not contain sixty families. Patents
for colonisation were granted by the king as lavishly as
baronetcies, and there were continual disputes between
those who received conflicting concessions. But it was
not to such causes that the great colony of Massachusetts
owed its rise.
The government of Charles I. had quickly shown itself
more arbitrary than that of his father : and the puritans of
England again turned to America as a land of The Found-
refuge. White, a puritan minister of Dorsetshire, gafhusetts
had conceived the design of a further settlement 1628.
in 1625 ; the puritan congregations of Lincolnshire were
debating similar projects at the same time. The idea de-
veloped, and three years later a territory was purchased,
lying between three miles south of the Charles and three
north of the Merrimac rivers, stretching westwards from
the Atlantic indefinitely as far as the Pacific.
Some hundred emigrants were sent out under Endicott, one
of the directors of the scheme and a puritan who was selected
as a ' fit instrument to begin this wilderness work/ In 1629 a
greater expedition followed, of two hundred men, who were
determined to leave ' the corruptions of the English Church '
behind, and to take ' only the best ' with them to America.
As the coast faded from sight, they cried, ' Farewell, dear
England ' : few of them saw their native land again.
The charter of Massachusetts neither affirmed nor denied
religious liberty. In the absence of any stipulation, there
is little doubt that both the king and Archbishop Laud
intended the Anglican Church to be set up at some future
date : the puritans were equally determined not to allow it.
' It would be a sinful violation of the worship of God/ declared
a minister during the outward voyage.
The new country was to be a land of godliness, which the
Lord Himself might contemplate with pleasure ; it was to
74 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
have no Romish superstitions, no episcopal ceremonies, but
the pure doctrine of the open Bible.
The settlers hoped to conciliate, perhaps even to convert,
the redskins. ' Particularly publish that no wrong or injury
be offered to the natives/ ran the directions ; they were to
avoid ' the least scruple of intrusion/ The very seal of the
s colony showed their expectations : a redskin stood erect
with an arrow in the right hand, and his motto was, ' Come
over and help us.'
The practical spirit which underlay all the actions of the
puritans appeared in the declaration that ' no idle drone may
live amongst us ' ; the colony, to survive and prosper, must
^have none but workers. Those whose morals were unsatis-
factory were left behind.
Every puritan family in England could by now discern
' a special hand of providence in raising this plantation ;
their hearts were generally stirred to come over/ A descrip-
., tion of New England was published, and three editions of the
work were sold in a few months : the one thing that held men
back was the fear lest it was wrong to flee from persecution.
This allowed, there was no more hesitation.
The stern religious enthusiasm against which the king
was later to fight helplessly showed in words such as those
winthrop, which Winthrop, a young puritan of East Anglia,
M a V sBa n chu 0f addressed to his father. ' I shall call that my
setts. country where I may most glorify God, and enjoy
the presence of my dearest friends. Therefore, herein I
submit myself to God's will and yours, and dedicate myself
to God and the company, with the whole endeavours both
of body and mind/ The entire life, indeed, of the man
/ shows how completely he, his family, and those who accom-
panied them, relied in every matter on divine guidance.
When still in England, and living with his young wife in his
native county of Suffolk, he ' covenanted with the Lord '
to give over shooting, and was persuaded of the evilness of
THE PURITAN EMIGRATION 75
drinking healths and the ' creature tobacco/ Later, when
grave trouble came upon the puritans, he was one of the
chief forwarders of the emigration scheme. ' My dearest
wife/ he wrote in 1629, ' I am verylye persuaded that God
will bring some heavy affliction upon this land, and that
speedylye. ... If the Lord seeth it will be good for us, he.,
will provide a shelter and a hiding-place for us. ... Evil
times are coming when the church must fly to the wilderness.'
And in much of his subsequent correspondence with his wife,
whom with a tender affection unusual in the reserved puritan
he addresses as ' mine own dear heart/ ' mine own sweet self/
or ' my love, my joy, my faithful one/ the same practical piety
breaks out. And on his arrival in the new world, while strug-
gling against great difficulties, he was still content. ' We now
enjoy God and Jesus Christ/ he wrote, ' and is not that enough?
I thank God I like so well to be here as I do not repent my
coming. I would not have altered my course though I had
foreseen all these afflictions.'
In the year 1630 some fifteen hundred persons crossed the**"
Atlantic. In 1631, when the hope of religious Boston City,
freedom again seemed about to dawn at home, 163 - **
there were but ninety : but in 1632 there were two hundred v
and fifty.
From that time the tide was steady. True it is that a few
returned, but these were the weaklings and those easily
discouraged ; their desertion was no loss to Massachusetts.
Most of those who remained were of a good courage ; ' Our
hearts/ they said in a message to the brethren at home,
' shall be a fountain of tears for your everlasting welfare,
when we shall be in our poor cottages in the wilderness.'
The settlers of 1628 had founded the city of Salem : the
real metropolis of New England was begun two years later
at Boston. Named in memory of that old town on the
Witham in Lincolnshire, from which so many of the puritans
had come, the city of Boston in America quickly became the
76 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
headquarters of the sect now that it had found a refuge over-
seas. Its situation was advantageous ; it was on ' good land,
affording rich cornfields and fruitful gardens ' ; it had ' sweet
and pleasant springs ' ; the harbour was convenient ; the
climate, though severe, was healthy.
At first, indeed, there were many hardships with which to
contend. If numbers of the colonists had died at Salem and
Gharlestown, their survivors saw others, ' weekly, yea, almost
daily, drop away before their eyes ' in Boston. Their habita-
tions were only hovels and tents. There was a scarcity of
food.
But the dogged nature which had deserted home and
country for religion triumphed over all ; within a few years
Boston was the most prosperous town in the new world, far
ahead of that Plymouth where the Pilgrim Fathers dwelt in
isolation, and larger already than Quebec and Jamestown.
If its manufactures date only from a time near our own,
and its fame as a literary centre but from last century, yet
the germs of both may be seen in the earlier puritan settle-
ment : of the first, in the spirit of industry and enterprise
which they brought with them ; of the second, in the love
of education which induced them to establish schools for their
children almost before the necessities of life were secured.
The democratic feeling inherent in puritanism, which
afterwards made Boston the centre of American political
disaffection, was in evidence from the beginning. Winthrop
was the first governor of the colony ; but he, though as we
have seen a strong believer in the principles for which he had
emigrated, had no trust in the rule of the people. His view
is well expressed in his own terse words. ' The best part of a
community is always the least, and of that least part the wiser
are still less/ This, however, was quite out of touch with the
general sentiment, and after a struggle a new governor was
appointed.
Yet it would be incorrect to speak of Massachusetts as a
THE PURITAN EMIGRATION 77
democracy ; it was rather a theocracy. There was neither
Catholic priest nor Anglican parson ; but the puritan minister
was equally tyrannical and desirous of power. The religious
feeling of the colony supported him ; a sermon was the
remedy for every ill and an integral part of every debate.
Nor was there any religious tolerance in the laws. In
1631 it was enacted that nobody should be a freeman of
Massachusetts unless professing membership of a church.
Those who disagreed were persecuted and practically outlawed.
The nonconformist was as rigid in his insistence on conformity
as those from whom he had dissented.
One at least revolted from the harshness of the system ;
and Massachusetts had not been settled a decade before it
became the parent of other colonies. Roger Rhode
Williams, ' a young minister, godly and zealous,' island,
was little over thirty years of age when he crossed the Atlantic.
His intellect was as clear as his enthusiasm was ardent. In a
few months he was loved by the people of Salem and Ply-
mouth : but the court of Boston looked askance at his views.
Nothing was more natural, for he taught a principle which
corresponded in great measure with that of the Quakers a
half-century later. To him the dictates of conscience were
sacred, and it followed logically that tolerance was essential :
' the doctrine of persecution/ he declared, ' for cause of con-
science is most evidently and lamentably contrary to the
doctrine of Christ Jesus/
The magistrates were alarmed ; a long examination of the
heretic was made. It was an axiom that outward profession
could secure inward godliness, but to Williams this seemed
only an encouragement of hypocrisy. The court remained
undecided ; but when he received an invitation to return to
Salem the other ministers raised an agitation. They de-
nounced as worthy of banishment those who thought that a
magistrate ' might not intermeddle even to stop a church
from apostacy ' ; they blamed the people of Salem ; and,
78 'THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
that punishment might wait on disobedience, they contrived
that some land which was claimed should be withheld from
the refractory parties. As that did not suffice, and Williams
remained firm, the town was disfranchised. Salem submitted,
and he was exiled.
Already he had planned another colony, where true freedom
might rule ; and the outcome was Narragansett Bay, or
Rhode Island, as it is now known. The first settlement had
to be abandoned, since it proved to be within the precincts
of Plymouth ; it was Governor Winthrop himself who sug-
gested that the unoccupied lands on the Narragansett would
be suitable. Williams accepted ' his prudent motion as a
voice from God ' ; and in June 1636, he embarked with five
companions in an Indian canoe.
These were the sole pioneers of the new state. The site
for the capital was soon chosen ; the first primitive dwellings
in the city of Providence were put up. All were busy ;
Williams was not only spiritual but temporal head of the
settlement ; and he was occupied ' day and night, at home
and abroad, on the land and water, at the hoe, at the oar, for
bread/ Others joined the democratic colony, and after the
early inevitable hardships had been bravely faced and con-
quered, it became as firmly established as any of the other
American settlements.
The small size of Rhode Island was its chief difficulty ; its
independence was not preserved without a struggle against
more powerful neighbours ; and since it possessed no charter
it had no legal rights. To remedy the irregularity Williams
went to England in 1643 ; and there, warmly befriended by
Sir Henry Vane and the Long Parliament, his request was
granted. A shadow, indeed, still hung over the little colony ;
and although no resentment was felt against the people of
Massachusetts Williams on one occasion risked his life
among the redskins on their account there was alwa/s the
fear of absorption by them. It was even noticeable more
THE PUEITAN EMIGRATION 79
than a century afterwards, when the articles that united
the thirteen independent states were being drawn up.
Williams would not accede to the natural desire of his
people that he should become their governor ; but he remained
among them until his death at Providence in 1683. It was
his pride that, within the state he had founded all men were
equal, and that there was true liberty for the soul as well as
for the body.
The assembly of the people met under an oak or on the
seashore at beat of drum, or when summoned by the herald ;
and if it was noted for ' headiness and tumults/ if party feuds
were as strong as in England, equally strong was the love of
order typical of the race. As to this latter, the records of
Rhode Island are emphatic. ' Our popularitie shall not, as
some conjecture it will, prove an anarchic, and so a common
tirannie ; for we are exceeding desirous to preserve every man
safe in his person, name, and estate.' Such was their language
in 1647 ; in 1654 their contentment appears in an address of
gratitude to Sir Henry Vane, to whose intervention their
preservation was ascribed. ' We have long been free/ they
declared, ' from the iron yoke of wolvish bishops ; we have
sitten dry from the streams of blood spilt by the wars in
our native country. We have not felt the new chains of
the presbyterian tyrants, nor in this colony have we been
consumed by the over-zealous fire of the (so-called) godly
Christian magistrates. We have not known what an excise
means ; we have almost forgotten what tithes are. We
have long drunk of the cup of as great liberties as any people
that we can hear of under the whole heaven/
If Rhode Island was as much a protest against puritanism
as puritanism had been against episcopacy, the new settlement
on the Connecticut River was of orthodox puritan The Found-
growth. The rich country there had been an object of ^ t ic u ^ n
desire from the day of its discovery, and the English 1635.
were but just in time to prevent its occupation by the Dutch.
80 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
Trading houses had sprung up at the mouth of the river
in the years after 1630. In the autumn of 1635 sixty men,
women, and children marched westwards through the forests
from Boston ; and although many died by the way and many
turned back, there were still enough left to organise a govern-
ment. Next spring a greater company arrived, travelling
over the same route, carrying their goods with them and
driving their cattle before them. For the white man it was
untrodden country through which they came ; they waded
through streams that now give power to factories, they crossed
the swamps that now are drained and the sites of cities :
their path was shown by the compass through a virgin land.
The redskins proved hostile, but were easily defeated ; at
least one tribe was annihilated.
The external danger thus averted, Connecticut advanced
quickly. Three townships were soon planted, among which
was Hartford, the future capital. A considerable trade in
furs was anticipated and realised, and agriculture soon made
headway.
The settlers brought with them the industrious habits of
the puritans ; they were equally imbued with the democratic
tendencies of the creed. With each successive settlement it
seemed that liberty was enlarged. Population was the basis
of representation ; a vote belonged to all who had taken the
oath of allegiance to the commonwealth ; the magistrates
and legislators were elected annually by ballot. In every-
thing essential Connecticut was a republic.
Meanwhile Massachusetts continued to prosper. In Win-
throp's journal we can trace its history almost from day to
day, from the political and religious disputes of the times
down to such small matters as ' a house near the Wear at
Watertown, made all of clapboards, burnt down by making
a fire in it when it had no chimney ' ; or the discovery of
' great store of eels and lobsters in the bay ; two or three
boys have brought in a bushel of great eels at a time, and
81
sixty great lobsters/ Occasionally a wet summer ruined part
of the crops, as in 1632, when the corn was ' much shorn down
close by the ground with worms/ and there were ' great store
of musketoes and rattle-snakes ' to beware of. The following
year harm was done by ' the spoil our hogs had made at
harvest, and the great quantity they had eaten in the winter,
there being no acorns ' : but ' the people,' we are told, ' lived
well with fish and the fruit of their gardens.'
But in spite of such troubles, and of epidemics ' John
Sagame died of the small-pox, and almost all his people ;
above thirty buried in one day ' is one entry by Winthrop
the number and comparative wealth of its inhabitants
quickly made Massachusetts the chief of the New England
colonies. Nothing shows its strength better, indeed, even
in those early years, than the rapidity with which it became
the parent of fresh settlements, while making continual
progress itself.
The New England colonies were by now firmly established.
But no mutual tie yet bound them together ; each was an
isolated republic with its own independent govern- The United
ment and independent governor. Massachusetts New^ng- 01
was distinct from Plymouth ; Connecticut from land, 1643.
Rhode Island. The northern settlements that later formed
the nucleus of Maine and New Hampshire soon acknow-
ledged, it is true, the authority of Massachusetts ; but to
all intents and purposes they continued separate states.
Boundary disputes were not rare.
Yet there was a general community of interest ; the broad
basis of every colony was puritanism. Outside dangers,
when they threatened, threatened all alike. The probability
of French aggression from the north and Dutch aggression
from the south now became evident. The redskins were
not formidable foes ; their attacks had been easily defeated,
and the general policy of the English was to make friends
with them ; but savages are fickle, and their sudden uprising
F
82 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
might destroy a colony. There was nothing now to be
feared from England, for the royalists were being chastened ;
the Lord had succoured His own, and the ' people of Israel '
were conquering the ungodly : but even at that, it was felt
that union in New England would be no disadvantage.
The first proposals for a general confederation were made by
Massachusetts in 1638, and renewed in 1642. Some would
and some would not come in ; Maine was excluded, ' because
they ran a different course from us, both in their ministry
and civil administration/ Few details of the negotiations
have survived : but in 1644 agreement was reached ; and
from that time the official title of the confederation, which
included Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and the
adjoining Newhaven, was ' The United Colonies of New
England/
It is thus that we notice the beginnings in America of that
synthetic unionist movement which, allied or opposed to the
analytic and disruptive movement, makes or destroys empires.
It was the first working there of a principle that we shall
constantly discover as we follow the advance of the English
people overseas, and it is interwoven in the history of every
race.
The interplay of the two forces correctly adjusted, makes
for progress ; the too great preponderance of one or other ends
in destruction. The earlier movement is analytic, since men
require freedom to develop ; the new colony, which at bottom
is the outcome of this necessity, seeks complete liberty and
isolation. But if it lives, and other colonies are planted in
the neighbourhood either by it or by the mother state, the
advantages of a common agreement become evident : and
according to the political ability of the leaders and people,
or according as external conditions are menacing or favourable,
this will change into an alliance, a confederation, or a prac-
tically complete fusion. In Europe and the older lands,
where counties have been amalgamated into provinces, pro-
THE PURITAN EMIGRATION 83
vinces into kingdoms, and kingdoms into empires, the process
has been carried out by rough hands, mostly at the cost of
war, and often against the popular wish. In many, it is
at the present day the subject for increasingly violent dis-
agreement, as nationalist feeling awakens ; and a forced
synthetic movement is succeeded by an exaggerated analytic
or disruptive tendency. 1
It has generally been the good fortune of English emigrants
to enter into possession of a new land, where the synthetic
movement may spring naturally from their own needs, and
as such contain the elements of permanence : developing from
the early phases of two or three settlements into great powers
like the United States, the Dominion of Canada, the Australian
Commonwealth ; perhaps even leading up in the future to a
general union of all the English states throughout the world
into one vast federated democratic empire.
The people of the United Colonies of New England, however,
were far from ideas such as these. Their union was hardly
even the germ of the later American Republic. The territorial
jurisdiction of each settlement was preserved as before.
No two colonies could unite without leave of the confederates,
and no new confederate could be admitted save by consent of
all. Two commissioners were to represent each colony ;
the president or chairman was to be elected from among them.
All the public charges were to be levied by contributions
levied on the colonies : each colony was free to raise its
contribution as it thought fit. A vote of six commissioners
was binding ; if no agreement was reached, it had to be
referred back. Annual meetings were to be held in each
colony in rotation, Massachusetts having two in succession,
as being the most important of the partners.
It is noteworthy that in all these arrangements there was no
reference to the mother country, and nothing shows better
1 The recent examples of Russia, Scandinavia, and Austria- Hungary
are sufficient proof.
84 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
the feeling of complete independence which animated the
The inde- puritan colonies. The court party in England
5 Hew * had h P ed to de P se ' Kin S Winthrop ' ; but the
England. Civil War at home hindered any interference with
America. And the leaders of the Commonwealth under
Cromwell were in full sympathy with colonial aims.
In other ways, too, the independence of New England was
shown. The general court of Massachusetts declared that
' our allegiance binds us not to the laws of England any longer
than while we live in England, for the laws of the Parliament
of England reach no further, nor do the king's writs under
the great seal go further/ Few references to English control
are made in Winthrop's annals of the colonies. Indeed,
there was no control : the struggle between roundhead and
cavalier at home prevented it.
For several years longer the colonies of New England were
left free to develop on their own lines ; and that freedom was
not without its influence on their descendants in the great
civil struggle that split the empire in twain a century and a half
later.
CHAPTER III
PURITANISM TRIUMPHANT: 1649-58 *
THE fortunes of the Civil War in England, which had inclined
at first to the King, veered round later to the Parliament.
Marston Moor and Naseby were decisive. Charles i. was
taken, imprisoned, and after due trial executed. The army
triumphed ; but behind the army stood the puritans : the
soldiers themselves were puritans. The government was
officially puritan. The monarchy was abolished, and an act
1 Authorities. Green's History, S. R. Gardiner, and Carlyle's Crom-
weU.
THE PURITAN EMIGRATION 85
was passed which declared ' That the people of England and
of all the dominions and territories thereunto belonging are,
and shall be, and are hereby constituted, made, established
and conformed to be a commonwealth and free state, and
shall henceforward be governed as a commonwealth and free
state by the supreme authority of this nation, the repre-
sentatives of the people in Parliament, and by such as they
shall appoint and constitute officers and ministers for the good
of the people, and that without any King or House of Lords/
The republic was a new experiment in our history : the
effort to build up a ' nation of God/ which was the ideal of the
highest puritans, was a new experiment in all history, save for
the parallel of the Jews, from whom the puritans themselves
took their inspiration.
The eleven years of the Commonwealth were among the
most prosperous that England had seen. Oliver Cromwell
was the natural head of the republic : and first as The Com-
soldier, afterwards as statesman, he served his monweaith.
country well. Order was restored at home ; and then, as his
invincible army defeated the Scots and Irish, the internal
danger to the state died away.
The royalists were crushed and deported to the West
Indies or Virginia : the government visited with a stern hand
sedition against itself ; insurrection, whether of cavalier or
fanatic reformer, became impossible. On a superficial view,
it at first seems that there was no more liberty under Crom-
well as protector than under Charles as king : but in fact the
difference was enormous. If the Commonwealth relied, as all
governments must rely, ultimately on force, it was at least
based on justice : and large ideas of freedom were current
under a government that employed Milton for its secretary,
that justified its acts to the European nations through his
writings, and allowed a license hitherto unknown in speech
and publishing. It is pathetic to notice the efforts to return
to the older constitutional ideas, in the Parliament's offer of
86 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS
the crown to Cromwell, in Cromwell's own creation of a House
of Lords. There was evident in this an honest and dis-
interested endeavour to give the country a solid foundation,
and, safe from the attacks of enemies at home and abroad, to
secure a good measure of progress for the future.
For the first time, too, England had a colonial policy under
Cromwell : and her name, which had sunk low in Europe
Cromwell's during the late civil strife, was again respected
colonial aD ^7 foreign nations when the Protector controlled
Policy. the national affairs.
His heart went out, and the heart of all puritanism went
out, to the emigrants who had gone to America when there
seemed no hope of religious freedom in England. The
heroism of the Pilgrim Fathers and the other congregations
which had followed them westwards was dear to those who
fought and conquered tyranny at home.
' We shall have the people driven into wildernesses/ burst
out Cromwell to Parliament in 1654, ' as they were when those
. poor and afflicted people, who forsook their estates and
inheritances, where they lived plentifully and comfortably,
were necessitated, for enjoyment of their liberty, to go into a
waste howling wilderness in New England where they have,
for liberty's sake, stripped themselves of all their comfort,
embracing rather loss of friends and want than be so ensnared
and in bondage.' ' Many of our brethren,' he cried again in
1655, ' forsook their native countries to seek their bread
from strangers in the howling wilderness.' In the last year
of his life his indignation was still burning. ' Driving them
. to seek their bread in the howling wilderness ! As was instanced
to our friends who were forced to fly for Holland, New England,
almost anywhere to find liberty for their conscience/
Among all the difficulties that surrounded the Common-
wealth at home, there was still time to attend to American
affairs, and to help the settlers by encouragement or advice.
It is on record that ' the Parliament, Oliver among and before
THE PUKITAN EMIGRATION 87
them, had taken solemn, anxious thought concerning propagat-
ing of the gospel in New England : and among other measures
passed an Act to that end, 27 July, 1649.' And Cromwell
corresponded with ' his esteemed friends ' at Boston and in
Rhode Island ; he intervened actively in the boundary
disputes that troubled the colonies.
A few years later, when the inaction of the Restoration
period had done much to lessen the influence of England,
Pepys remarked in his diary, ' Cromwell did value those places,
and would forever have made much of them ; but we have
given them away for nothing ' ; and although he refers by
name to Nova Scotia only, the contrast between the policy of
the Protector and that of Charles u. was scarcely less evident
in any other of the western settlements.
The key, indeed, to Cromwell's policy at home and abroad
lies in his remarkable speeches to Parliament. In those
noble utterances, which are full of practical good sense and
rough eloquence the uncut gems of oratory he discussed
his hopes and plans for the regeneration of England. ' If any
shall but desire to lead the life of godliness and honesty, let
him be protected/ He enunciated a doctrine as startling
to his own puritan comrades as to the cavaliers. ' Sir, the
state, in choosing men to serve it, takes no notice of their
opinions ; if they be willing faithfully to serve it, that suffices/
He made himself the political head of the protestant faith in
Europe, and the old hatred of Catholic Spain was revived
under the Commonwealth in all its intensity. The Stuarts
had truckled to the court of Madrid ; Cromwell, on the other
hand, set himself to humiliate it. In his speech on 7th
September 1656, he explained his objects to Parliament.
' When they (the Long Parliament) asked satisfaction (from
Spain) for the blood of your poor people unjustly shed in the
West Indies and for the wrongs done elsewhere ; when they
asked liberty of conscience for your people who traded thither
satisfaction in none of these things would be given, but was
88 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
denied. I say, they denied satisfaction either for your
messenger that was murdered, or for the blood that was shed,
or the damages that were done in the West Indies. No
^ satisfaction at all : nor any reason offered why there should not
be liberty given to your people that traded thither. Whose
trade was very considerable there and drew many of your
people thither. We thought, being denied just things we
thought it our duty to get that by the sword which was not to
be had otherwise ! And this hath been the spirit of English-
men/
The gauntlet was thrown down to the proud champion
of Catholicism ; and something of the spirit of Elizabethan
The Spanish ^ mea > or ^7 sterner and less wayward, showed again
and Dutch in the conflict that ensued. Jamaica was taken,
and the British flag was victorious in the West
Indies and the Mediterranean, while the admirals of the
Commonwealth recalled the old successes of the sea-kings.
The war with Spain was to the majority of Englishmen
essentially a religious war ; the war into which Cromwell
entered with Holland bore a different character. The two
nations were striving with each other for the mastery of the
sea and control of the trade routes east and west : 1 and the
keenness of the commercial rivalry which was engendered
thereby was shown by the new Navigation Laws of England.
Their enactment made war inevitable : but the Protector
did not shrink from a conflict with the great protestant power
of the Continent. If the Spanish war partook of the nature
of a crusade, the alliance with Cardinal Mazarin of France
and the rupture with the Netherlands, which had sheltered
the puritan refugees in the day of trouble, showed that
1 The real meaning of the struggle was thoroughly understood both in
England and Holland. In a despatch written at this time, the Dutch
authorities warned their colony at Cape Town that the English were
bent on appropriating all the trade, as well as the sovereignty and
property of the high seas, to themselves. The despatch is quoted in
Theal's History of Cape Colony.
THE PURITAN EMIGRATION 89
Cromwell recognised that the days of religious struggles
had ended with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The
national and mercantile struggles of the modern era were
beginning.
It was, in fact, the lesson of sea-power that was again
enforced in both wars. Neglected as the fleet had been
during the half-century that had elapsed since the Stuarts
came to the throne, other nations had encroached on the
supremacy that Drake and his fellows gave to England.
But with the triumphant cruise of Blake all danger from
Spain passed away ; the submission of Holland secured
English preponderance in the north ; and Cromwell saw no
menace in the growing strength of France.
Morally, it is true, both wars were absolutely unjustifiable,
the Dutch more conspicuously than the Spanish ; yet the
cloak of religion was used, and apparently without any
intentional hypocrisy. ' The Lord Himself/ wrote Cromwell,
' hath a controversy with your enemies ; in that respect we
fight the Lord's battles.' Without disputing his theory,
or either his good faith or good intentions, it must be admitted
that his policy was conspicuously successful. For a time,
the spirit of conquest flamed out triumphant, kindled by
religious and patriotic passion into victory ; and the last
year of the Commonwealth reflected a blaze of glory on
its ruler.
During the next thirty years of shame and suffering under a
legitimate king, thoughtful men sometimes remembered the
height to which England had reached when her destinies were
directed by the simple and unpolished farmer whom fate had
drawn from his quiet fields in marshy Huntingdon to the
palace at Whitehall. ' God knows,' he had exclaimed once,
when the burden seemed too heavy, ' God knows I would have
been glad to have lived under my woodside, and to have kept
a flock of sheep, rather than to have undertaken this govern-
ment.' But the devotion claimed by his country was freely
90 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
given : and when the disease which had often attacked
him struck a fatal blow, almost his last words were, ' I
would be willing to live to be further serviceable to God
and His people, but my work is done ! Yet God will be
with His people ! '
CHAPTER IV
THE CAVALIER COLONIES : 1624-1660 *
IF puritanism wrecked the monarchy and its adherents at
home, it had little effect in the colony of Virginia. The
settlers there had not moved so quickly, and the old Eliza-
bethan spirit was not extinct. There was an enormous differ-
ence between the Virginians, aristocratic to the core as the
Elizabethan age had been, and the New Englanders, reared in
the democratic tendency of the puritan system, and forced by
their very difficulties and weakness to accentuate the equality
of man and man. We have followed the fortunes of Virginia
during the first generation of its people ; we must now trace
its history till a period when it too became a land of refuge,
not for the persecuted sectary, but for the polished and
haughty cavalier.
The dissolution of the Virginia Company in 1624 brought
the colony under the direct control of the Crown. James I.
Virginia, intended to remodel the administration now that
1624 - matters were in his own hands, but his death
shortly afterwards prevented any interference ; and in the
reign of Charles i. there was little change in the form of
1 Authorities. Doyle, Bancroft, and Justin Winsor as before, with
the sources mentioned by them. For the Bermudas, the volume in the
Hakluyt Society's series, and Lefroy's exhaustive works. The West
Indies as a whole I have reserved for a later chapter ; but in the case of
the Bermudas, and other small isolated countries, it is convenient not
to break the continuity of the narrative. I have therefore given their
history from the beginning until the present day under one head.
THE PUEITAN EMIGRATION 91
government. In 1633 twelve commissioners were appointed
to take over the royal authority ; otherwise things continued
as before.
The great civil struggle in England prevented attention
from being given to the settlements overseas, and accordingly
Virginia was for some years to all intents and purposes an
independent state. There is apparently little of importance
to record during the next two decades. The spirit of unrest
that was evoked at the abrogation of the charter was quelled
by a few men of firm character. Some time later, when it was
proposed to revive the Company, the suggestion met with
disfavour among the Virginians ; for the Crown, as it hap-
pened, had left them in peace, while the Company had always
been troubled about its dividends. In 1644, after many years
of peace and seeming friendship with the redskins, the white
settlers were attacked, and some three hundred of their
number massacred ; the rising was, however, put down
without difficulty, and the native king captured.
But in fact the emptiness of Virginian annals merely
conceals the solid progress which the colony was making.
It was now securely founded. There were few Its
difficulties with the British government. Rela- Progress,
tions with the natives were generally pacific, and the whole-
some principle of the minimum of intercourse between the
white man and the red was adhered to. The well-meant
idea of introducing Christianity met with little sympathy,
and was tacitly abandoned as impracticable.
The great local industry of the place was now on a firm
footing. The cultivation of tobacco, which had become the
staple crop of the colony, advanced steadily ; and although
attempts were made to limit it, and to introduce other pro-
ducts, they all failed in face of the increasing market for the
divine narcotic in England. So large a part, in fact, did
tobacco play in the material progress of Virginia, that at one
time it was even recognised as currency among the settlers.
92 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
The population, which in the year 1628 was less than three
thousand, had grown by 1635 to nearly five thousand ; and
the houses of the whites now extended seventy miles inland
along the banks of the James River. But unfortunately a
large proportion of the people was of an unsatisfactory char-
acter, for the transportation of criminals and debtors from
England was still adhered to. They became naturally the serfs
and labourers of the landed proprietors ; the proprietors them-
selves already possessed the large estates, and led the easy
lives that are so outstanding a feature of Virginian history.
More gratifying than any other feature was the upgrowth
of a local patriotism, a love of their new country and homes,
which shows that the first period, when men emigrated to
become rich and to return to the motherland, had given way
to the time when Virginia was looked upon as a lasting abode.
The letters that were sent to old friends in England no longer
dwelt on the miseries and afflictions of the wilderness ; the
richness and delights of the land were now emphasised. There
was already the beginning of an unconscious national senti-
ment among the second generation of Englishmen in America.
But if the Virginians were loyal to their own country, they
were not less loyal to the throne of England ; and the execu-
Its tion of Charles i. in 1649 brought out their royalist
loyalty. sympathies in full force. Already three puritan
congregations had been compelled to leave a soil that was
sacred to the Anglican Church, whose interests were bound
up with those of the king ; and it was not in vain that
the cavaliers of England looked for assistance from the
cavalier colony of America in their struggle against the
roundheads.
When the news of the abolition of the monarchy of England
was known in Virginia, the Colonial Assembly immediately
recognised the right of Charles n. to the throne, declared that
commissions derived from the Crown were still valid, and for-
bade any justification of the recent proceedings in England
THE PURITAN EMIGRATION 93
as treason. In addition, a resolution was passed that whoso-
ever should ' go about by irreverent or scandalous words or
language to blast the memory and honour of the late most
pious King, deserving of altars and monuments in the hearts
of all good men/ was to be punished.
Speedy action was taken by the new government in England
to quell so dangerous a loyalty. The Commonwealth sent out
two ships to subdue the colony, and on condition that their
submission was recognised as voluntary, the American royalists
gave way. From that time, many a needy, broken cavalier
from England made his way towards Virginia, to recruit
his fortunes there among a more sympathetic society than
was left at home. They came merely till the evil days had
passed away : but when the monarchy was restored in
England, those who had been successful did not again return.
Among the old families who emigrated were the Washingtons
of Westmoreland, one of whose descendants a century later
fought bravely in the cause of liberty against the throne his
ancestors had succoured.
To the north of the Potomac another settlement had already
been planted, differing in its principles both from Virginia
and New England. The former was strongly Maryland,
cavalier and episcopal ; the latter as strongly 1632 -
roundhead and puritan. Maryland was neither. The colony,
whose name commemorates the queen of Charles i., was
founded on a system of complete toleration ; no religious test
was to be imposed on any member of any Christian community
within its borders. ' No person within this province profess-
ing to believe in Jesus Christ, shall be in any ways troubled,
molested or discountenanced for his or her religion, or in the
free exercise thereof/
The idea was far in advance of the seventeenth century,
and it was not arrived at till after a curious series of events
had taken place. When Calvert, first Lord Baltimore,
became a Roman Catholic in the reign of James I., he was
94 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS
forced by his conversion to abandon public life ; but he did
not lose the favour of the English government, and received
as a gift large territories in Ireland and Newfoundland, with
almost complete control over the latter. A small settlement
was begun there in 1623 ; but it was opposed by the French
of Acadia and the New Englanders. Against these the
settlers whom Baltimore had sent out made a successful stand ;
it was only the severity of the climate which forced them to
abandon the country.
Baltimore now hoped to found his plantation in Virginia ;
but here he was met by an uncompromising demand for the
oaths of allegiance and supremacy, which it was impossible
for a Catholic to take. In the result, his people left America :
but he did not yet give up hope.
Finally, in April 1632, he received from the king a grant
of land north of Virginia, with a charter that left him free
on every point, save that the places of worship were to be
dedicated and consecrated after the ecclesiastical laws of
the Anglican Church. Hardly was the concession given
when he died. His son took up the work ; and it was largely
to the peculiarities of his character that Maryland owed
those special features which distinguished her from the neigh-
bouring colonies of America.
He had more freedom of action than others interested in
oversea settlement, since his territory was proprietary, not
chartered or under royal rule as Virginia had been. And the
grant which conferred Maryland on him was so carelessly
worded that it gave him the right of making laws after con-
sulting with the freemen, but omitted to state what constituted
a freeman ; it permitted him to make ordinances of his own
will when the emergency of the colony required it, leaving
him judge of what constituted an emergency ; but at the same
time it nullified the result by stipulating that in such a case
no man should be affected as to his life or goods. No taxes
were to be levied by the Crown.
95
Under these auspices, the first party of three hundred
emigrants sailed for America, in charge of Leonard Calvert,
younger brother of Baltimore. They consisted for the most
part of agriculturalists and craftsmen ; and to the fact that
more labourers were taken than ' gentlemen/ may be attri-
buted the prosperity that marked the annals of Maryland from
the beginning. There were both protestants and catholics
among them.
The voyage began on 22nd November 1633, and after some
time had been spent in the West Indies, they arrived in Mary-
land at the end of the following February. A site was chosen
on the northern shore of the Potomac, in the midst of a
charming and fertile country. ' Nothing was wanting which
might serve for commerce or pleasure/ ran the report they sent
home ; corn was exported to New England in the first year of
the colony ; the only fault to be found with the soil was that
it was too rich.
From the beginning there was nothing to hinder material
progress ; increasing immigration only increased the general
wealth ; and relations with the redskins remained mostly
amicable. The early history of Maryland, indeed, is almost
devoid of incident ; nothing but its constitutional de-
velopment and the boundary disputes with Virginia claim
attention.
Its frontier overlapped that of Virginia for more than a
hundred miles ; and a protest was quickly addressed to the
Crown by the older colony against the infringement of its
rights. But no satisfaction was given : the two communities
were merely exhorted to live in friendship ; and after some
time, the main point in dispute was decided in favour of
Maryland. This was the isle of Kent, which had been included
in the Virginia concession, and indeed partly peopled from
Virginia. After a sea-fight, the isle remained in the hands of
Baltimore ; but the ill-feeling and jealousy that were con-
spicuous for many years all along the southern frontier found
96 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
no echo in Maryland itself or in the relations with its northern
neighbour, New England.
With wealth and toleration assured, the one thing needful
in Maryland was liberty. But the acts of its first Legislative
its con- Assembly were all annulled by Lord Baltimore in
stttution. 1635 ; in revenge, the laws which he sent over were
also all rejected by the colonists three years later. The
Legislative Assembly, however, was not established on a firm
footing ; for while at the beginning every freeman attended,
proxies were afterwards accepted ; and when elections were
instituted one settler who had voted in the minority claimed
a seat, on the ground that he was not represented. In 1642
the governor reverted to the old system of primary attendance ;
but eventually the regular system of election was instituted,
and in 1647 a division into two chambers was made. 1
Closely allied with Virginia in its history were the lonely
islets seven hundred miles to the east in mid- Atlantic on the
The Ber- wa ^ * England. They had been discovered about
mudas, 1609- the year 1511 by one Juan Bermudez, a Spanish
explorer ; but since then they had remained
uninhabited and almost unknown. A disaster first brought
them under the notice of England ; for in 1609, when the
Virginia fleet under Sir George Somers was wrecked in
the Archipelago, that captain was so greatly enamoured
of his involuntary discovery that he proposed to found a
settlement there.
Somers died prematurely ; but the Virginia Company took
up his project, and eventually a Bermuda Company was
formed. A governor was appointed to the islands, immigrants
arrived, and supplies were sent thither. Fortifications were
erected against the Spaniards, tobacco and potatoes sown,
and an attempt was made to acclimatise the silkworm.
1 Already some legislative experiments had been tried. In 1639
general legal and criminal codes were passed, in striking distinction to
the carelessness of Virginia, where the old English common law had been
accepted as sufficient.
THE PUEITAN EMIGRATION 97
In 1614, as many as four hundred and forty settlers came to
the island.
Unfortunately the usual difficulties arose. The Company
were dissatisfied that they had little immediate return on
their capital. The first governors were incompetent ; the
people were turbulent ; crime was common. The tobacco
traffic, which provided the revenue and even the currency of
the islands, was full of fraud. Dissensions in the community
were many ; the governor and parson were always at strife ;
on one occasion, when the latter was upbraiding some of the
congregation for gazing at women, the former called out in
church, ' And why not, I pray, sir ? Are they not God's
creatures ? '
But after a while the conditions bettered. A division into
parishes was approved, and in 1620 a Legislative Assembly
was constituted, thus forming the second English parliament
overseas. A few years later the Bermuda Company, ' that
ungrateful company,' as the early historian of the islands
stigmatises it, had its charter abrogated, and the Bermudas
prospered still more.
The adventures of the little ocean colonies had meanwhile
made a strong appeal to the imagination of England. There
are frequent allusions to the Bermudas in our literature.
In the last and most delicate of his comedies Shakespeare
introduced the dainty Ariel, saying, ' Once thou call'dst me
up at midnight to fetch dew from the still- vexed Bermoothes/
Waller recounted the battle of the summer-islands, ' Ber-
muda walTd with rocks who does not know ? . . . Heav'n
sure has kept this spot of earth uncurst, To show how all
things were created first.' His poem is full of inaccuracies
and is now deservedly forgotten ; but Andrew Marvell's song
is still celebrated :
' Where the remote Bermudas ride
In ocean's bosom unespied
From a small boat that rowed along
G
98 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
The listening winds received this song :
" What should we do but sing his praise
That led us through the watery maze
Unto an isle so long unknown
But still far kinder than our own ? " '
But this extraordinary enthusiasm was hardly justified.
The Bermudas were fertile, but they were small. Their natural
wealth was exaggerated ; in tobacco they could not compete
with Virginia. At the present day, however, they support
six thousand whites and ten thousand blacks, while their
perfect climate has brought them into favour as a health
resort for Americans. They are likewise valuable as a base
for the British navy in the Atlantic.
Officially classed as belonging to the West Indies until
1834, the Bermudas have ranked as a separate colony since
that time ; and they now possess a curiously complicated
constitutional apparatus. Their affairs are administered by
a governor with a nominated privy council of six members, a
legislative council of eight members with a president appointed
by the governor, and a legislative assembly of thirty-six
members returned by the nine tribes or parishes into which
the inhabited islands are divided. Very many of the larger
provinces of the empire are less amply provided with govern-
mental machinery than this tiny spot of British territory,
whose total extent is not more than twenty miles square.
CHAPTER V
THE FALL OF PURITANISM: 1660
ON 3rd September 1658, while a terrible tempest was raging
over England, Oliver Cromwell passed away, and the office of
Protector of the Commonwealth fell to his son Richard.
1 Authorities. Green's History, Burnet and Clarendon : Milton,
Bunyan, and the general literature of the period.
THE PUEITAN EMIGRATION 99
But the younger Cromwell possessed neither the indomitable
spirit nor the religious fervour of his father. Oliver had
cried in the battle of Dunbar, ' Let God arise, and let His
enemies be scattered ! Like as the mist vanisheth, so shalt
Thou drive them away ! ' and to the stern soldier it seemed
that his enemies were indeed the enemies of the Almighty.
His son, on the other hand, had little preference for the puritan
party. ' Here/ he said once to a malcontent, ' is Dick
Ingoldsby, who can neither pray nor preach, but I would trust
him before you all.' The fearless leadership that could alone
have kept the puritans in power was wanting in a man of this
calibre ; and the restoration of the old Stuart line to the
throne took place on 30th May 1660.
The tide of loyal reaction apparently swept all before it.
After a rule of eleven years, official puritanism was dead,
and the social history of the next half century The Restora-
showed how vain had been its attempt to build up tion -
a whole nation into a ' people of God.' 1 The immorality of
the court of Charles n., and the vicious life of most of the
aristocracy, disgusted common decency. The Restoration
dramatists were impure and licentious. Their plays dealt
with no subjects other than seduction and adultery ; their
wit, often meretriciously brilliant, was nearly always filthy. 2
The public life of the day was corrupt. Every statesman was
a traitor ; every member of parliament had his price. The
Anglican Church sank low ; the clergy preached the doctrines
of divine right and passive resistance assiduously until their
own liberties were touched : and then they revolted. But
1 John Dryden's couplet remains the best description ever penned of
Restoration England :
' A very merry, dancing, drinking,
Laughing, quaffing, and unthinking time.'
2 It must be admitted that they have paid the full penalty of their
crimes against decency. Congreve and Vanbrugh are not less witty than
Sheridan ; but the latter holds the boards, while no theatrical manager
careful of hia reputation would venture to revive the earlier comic
writers.
100
they raised no voice against the excesses of the day ; the acts
of the king seemed good in their eyes. Their motto might
have been the idle couplet of the fickle poet and royalist
parson Herrick, which reveals so much of the feeling of his
order during the seventeenth century :
' How am I bound to two ! God who doth give
The mind : the king, the means whereby I live.'
The same hatred against the puritans was shown every-
where. The bodies of the greatest men of the Commonwealth
were dug up and outraged. The ministers of religion were
driven from their parishes and forced to beg their bread.
The Restoration playwrights could not be bitter enough
against the party that had closed the theatres. They reviled
the puritans as ' sneaking cowardly company : fellows that
went to church, said grace to their meat, and had not the
least quality about them/ 1 The long epic of Hudibras
echoed the feeling in every line. Bitterly are satirised those
' Who build their faith upon,
The holy text of pike and gun ;
Decide all controversy by
Infallible artillery :
And prove their doctrine orthodox
By apostolic blows and knocks.'
The drawl, the whine, the upturned eyes, the Biblical
allusions, the hypocrisy, the narrowness, the cant of puritan-
Puritanism * sin were mercilessly ridiculed ; and if ridicule
asaPerma- could have killed, puritanism would have died a
nent Force, q^^ an( j unlamented death. But it did not.
Its noblest work was done after the Restoration. The poet
Milton, freed at length from his ofiicial duties, blind and
disappointed, turned in the evening of his life to the com-
position of his great epics. And John Bunyan wrote the best
1 See The Provoked Wife, produced in 1697. The hatred of the puritans
outlasted the first generation of playwrights after the Commonwealth ;
but it would hardly have been so bitter had not puritanism still been a
powerful force in England.
THE PUEITAN EMIGRATION 101
religious allegory of all time in the very years when Wycherley
was delighting a different taste with the foulest plays in
the English language. Nothing makes us realise the true
magnificence of puritanism better than the contrast between
the dissolute life of the upper classes in the later Caroline
period and the figure of the old poet, meditating in his house
at Finsbury, or the tinker in Bedford gaol, tormented by
doubts of his salvation, and picturing Christian with his load
of sin struggling through the Slough of Despond, tempted
now by Mr. Facing-both-ways and anon by Mr. Worldly
Wiseman.
But the mark left by puritanism on our literature was
small in comparison with its influence on our national life.
Nothing but official puritanism was ousted by the nd
Restoration : the time-servers, the Drydens who
could write one ode in praise of Cromwell and another a few
years later in praise of Charles, of course changed with the
political weather-glass ; but the great body of the puritan
party, the sincere members of the congregations that had
already been tried by adversity, remained true to their creed.
And to this hour puritanism has survived as a strong force in
England, working generally in silence, often little noticed, but
ready to burst forth at the call of a religious revival, the hint of
civil wrong, or a suspicion of moral evil. In many a northern
cottage or factory town, the old spirit of the Ironsides still
exists unimpaired, in its fervour, its narrowness, its love of
truth, its blunt outspokenness. This was the raw material
which lay ready to the hands of the Methodists when they first
began to preach ; this it is which has formed the main strength
of the various dissenting sects.
If puritanism was not dead in England, it was equally
tenacious of life in America. Every farmhouse in New
England sheltered a puritan family ; Boston was in
a centre of puritan culture. And the Yankee of Axa6Iica -
the eastern states has continued in his old faith until to-day.
102 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
The novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne show how universal
was the creed. The Scarlet Letter and The House with the
Seven Gables depict the quiet pietism that it developed, when
freed from the civil strife that had given it both grandeur and
hardness. In The Courtship of Miles Standish we see its
sweeter aspects. The sombre muse of Bryant was sternly
puritan. The songs of freedom of both Whittier and Lowell
echo the sentiments of the Pilgrim Fathers.
Puritanism, indeed, might claim to be the unofficial creed
of America, so profoundly has it influenced the life of the
republic. Alike in its worthy and unworthy aspects, the work-
ing of puritanism is visible in America. The hatred of sexual
immorality that is one of the most hopeful signs for the future
of the United States is a direct legacy of the creed that abhorred
any ' defilement ' of the ' human tabernacle ' ; the prudery
into which it degenerates when it clothes the nakedness of
piano legs and forces a conscious blush at the mention of
certain unsavoury but obvious facts of life is equally a mani-
festation of the same spirit run mad. . . .
The witch-burning that blots the early history of New
England is typical of the absolute reliance on the words of the
Bible, and especially of the Old Testament, that distinguished
puritanism.
Its influence, too, is shown in the very names of the towns
that dot the map of the eastern states. Concord, Providence,
Salem, Canaan and Babylon were obviously founded by men
to whom holy writ was the breath of life.
The puritan love of simplicity in religious worship has always
been steadfast. More than two hundred years after the
Pilgrim Fathers had debarked at Plymouth, one of their
descendants, then a consul of the United States in England,
attended the Easter Sunday service in York cathedral. He
remarked in his diary that ' the spirit of my puritan ancestors
was strong within me, and I did not wonder at their being out
of patience with all this mummery, which seemed to me
THE PURITAN EMIGRATION 103
worse than papistry, because it was a corruption of it/ So
strong had remained the enmity to that church of which
Charles i. and Laud had been the members and the favourite
martyrs, that to Nathaniel Hawthorne the noble and pathetic
liturgy, the magnificent organ whose tones resound through
the vast dimness of the great northern temple, the fresh young
voices of the choir chanting the triumphant paschal hymn,
conveyed nothing ; it was but ' mummery/ 1
But if puritanism continued in both hemispheres as a
living force, it was no longer paramount. England was no
nation of saints ; it never became the peculiar people after
God's own heart that Cromwell had hoped to see. The
spiritual tyranny that had for the moment seemed possible
under the Commonwealth died away ; and the latitudinarian
school of thought, which furnished the most brilliant theolo-
gians of the next century, eventually conquered the whole
country.
Once again a change came over the problem that the
English intellect set itself to solve. As the renascence gave
way to puritanism, so the latter again made place for science.
The ' spiritual strivings ' of the seventeenth century have
grown very dim to us : the wrestling with God and the conflict
with the devil have assumed other forms in our modern
world. But the change did not come about until puritanism
had done its work : in the political state, by ending once for
all the possibility of a despotism over the English people ;
in the inner national life, by infusing a deeper moral feeling
and a higher thought among all classes.
1 See the interesting diary imd notebooks of Nathaniel Hawthorne.
104 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
THE WEST INDIES: 1605-1805 '
ATHWART the sober annals of puritan England the brilliant
West Indian campaign which Cromwell planned falls like a
shaft of crimson sunlight on a sea of grey ; but while the war
which made Jamaica a dependency of the Commonwealth
in the year 1655 was but one of many against the mighty
power of Spain in the outer world, it was the first that gave
Britain an important tropical protectorate to rule, and secured
for her a definite place among the nations that were to control
the destinies of the West Indies.
The wealth and beauty of that vast chain of islands had, it
is true, fascinated Europe ever since Columbus had first set
foot in Hispaniola, and believed he had at last discovered a
nearer route to the far east of Asia. The West Indies were
thought to be ' things more divine than human ' in London ;
and other nations Spain, France, Holland, Sweden and
Denmark proved not less enthusiastic than the English, and
likewise coveted a share. The value of the islands was ex-
aggerated, while that of America was not yet realised ; and
the chequered history which has gathered round about every
rock and sandbank in the great archipelago shows how
ruthless and unceasing was the struggle for its possession.
But during the first century that they were known to
Europe, the West Indies were the monopoly of Spain. The
islands were the private property of Castile. The northern
coasts of the neighbouring continent of South America were
known as the Spanish mainland, a term which later became
contracted into the celebrated ' Spanish main.' And the
1 There are hundreds of writers on West Indian history ; I have
mentioned the leading authorities in vol. iv. bk. xii. ch. ii. The slave
trade is discussed at length in bk. xiii. ch. iii.
THE PURITAN EMIGRATION 105
attempts of other nations to secure a footing, if that expression
is not too imposing for their puny efforts on those shores,
were feeble and intermittent.
The English appeared there in 1516, but achieved nothing of
importance ; and the beginning of our direct connection with
the West Indies was in 1562, when Hawkins inaugurated the
slave trade. Sir Francis Drake carried fire and sword through
the islands, but no settlement was contemplated during the
Elizabethan age.
Other countries had done as much, or as little. The French
had ventured into the Caribbean seas about the year 1528,
and the Huguenots had founded colonies in Brazil and Florida,
two countries whose history is closely related to that of the
West Indies. But in both cases they had failed. The Dutch,
again, had a few pioneers in Guiana, but they limited them-
selves wholly to commerce ; in the words of an old writer,
they were ' in perpetual alliance with ready money, be it
English, French, or Spanish/
The Spaniards, therefore, were hardly disturbed in their
monopoly before the seventeenth century : but there were
already signs that they would not long be suffered to remain
in such peaceful security. The unbounded ' riches of the
Indies ' had fired the imagination of Europe, and nobody
could yet distinguish very accurately between the true Indies
of the East, and those thus named by mistake in the West.
The Spaniards, too, had not been colonisers, but conquerors.
They had sought for gold, and for gold only. They had left
the smaller islands untouched, occupying merely the more
important. And in the hunt for wealth the Spaniards had
made slaves of the aboriginal inhabitants, while under their
harsh rule the native races were practically exterminated.
To replace the latter the hardier negroes had been introduced
from Africa : and it was whilst plying the trade of shipping
these as slaves from Africa that the English first conceived
the idea of planting a colony in the West Indies.
106 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
In the year 1605, ' an English vessel called the Olive in her
return from a voyage to Guinea, touched at this island of
Barbados, Barbados, and landing there some men, they set
1605. U p a cross / Such is the short and simple account
of the earliest definite claim made by the English for those
islands which they were to have so hard a struggle to obtain
and to keep. To this day Barbados is the most English in
character of all the West Indies ; but for the moment the
attempt to found a colony there came to nothing.
It was not until the year 1625 that the first settlers arrived ;
and meanwhile in 1623 St. Kitts had been taken possession of
by both French and English. Of neither does much record
survive, but both nations seem to have been successful in
the enterprise, for the English colony extended to the neigh-
bouring islands of Nevis and Barbuda in 1628, and to Antigua
and Montserrat in 1632 ; while the French were evidently not
discouraged, since they formed a West India Company in
1625, and soon had colonies, or at any rate depots, in Guade-
loupe, Martinique, Dominica, St. Lucia, Grenada, and at
Tortuga in Haiti.
Barbados itself was claimed by various English proprietors ;
and since the Stuarts had no objection to giving successive
grants of the same land to different applicants, the rights
were often transferred, and not seldom in dispute. At times,
indeed, there were rival colonies of English on the island,
each equipped with its own governor, and contradictory
commands were issued from the two different camps.
But in spite of the factions thus caused, the place was
prosperous. By 1636 the population was some six thousand :
regular divisions into parishes were soon planned out, each
provided with parson, churchwarden, and school. The planters
were mostly cavaliers, staunch supporters of the Anglican
Church ; and when the monarchy was abolished at home
they showed their displeasure openly.
They submitted perforce to Cromwell in 1652 ; but the
THE PURITAN EMIGRATION 107
next year they declared themselves ready to separate from
the mother country, and to model ' this little limb of the
Commonwealth into a free state.' The scheme was im-
possible, for apart from England offering a ready market for
their produce, they received considerable benefits from the
puritan government. Before the time of Cromwell, too, the
English had only been allowed in the West Indies on suffer-
ance ; the capture of Jamaica in 1655 made them a power to
be feared and even respected.
An abundant supply of cheap labour was also secured to
Barbados, since the Irish rebels who had been crushed in the
stern campaign of Cromwell, and the prisoners who were
captured after the battles of Worcester and Salisbury, were
transported thither.
More important, perhaps, even than this was the cessation
of quarrels among the old proprietors, for their authority fell
with that of the Stuarts ; and all the English colonies were
directly ruled from London under the Commonwealth. So
much was this advantage felt that when the proprietors
claimed their own again at the Restoration in 1660, the settlers
refused to admit their right. Pamphlets of complaint were
published by the islanders, entitled The Groans of the Planta-
tions, and eventually the patentees were glad to accept in
compromise a perpetual export duty of 4| per cent. a tax
that was not abolished till 1838.
But the power of Spain declined as the seventeenth century
advanced, and other nations began to seize her commerce
and her possessions ; yet none were strong enough to control
what they had taken. Spain herself could not revenge the
injuries done : and with her authority waning every day, and
other countries holding merely insignificant islands, and
holding them insecurely at that, there was nobody to police
the West Indian seas.
An inevitable attraction drew thither all the wilder spirits
of the time. English, French, aud Dutch sailors alike cruised
108 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
in the waters around the Gulf of Mexico ; and the privateers
of each nation, known variously as buccaneers, filibusters,
or freebooters, all had the same object in view : to enrich
themselves by breaking down completely the show of monopoly
still held by Spain. They were not interfered with by their
own proper governments, since their marauding expeditions
were to the advantage of all save those whom they attacked.
And indeed they were soon too strong to be interfered with.
Having established their headquarters at Tortuga in Haiti
in 1630, the French colony founded on that island ten years
later was only allowed to exist on condition that it did not
molest their calling. It did not.
The continual onslaughts of the buccaneers paralysed the
Spaniards in America. They were not ordinary enemies,
who could be bought ofi by bribes, privileges, or treaties ;
for, with the love of adventure and of riches easily and law-
lessly gotten, they could obtain all they wanted with little
trouble. They were, in fact, the descendants of the sea-kings,
brilliant and daring as the Elizabethan navigators who had
poured out of Devonshire and the ports along the English
Channel, and degenerate more by force of circumstance than
for any other reason. The policy of the two first Stuarts
was all for alliance with Spain, when the whole instinct of the
nation was for war. The betrayal and execution of Ralegh
was the last of a series of acts which showed that there was no
longer any approval at home for brave deeds done abroad.
And a spirit the very antithesis of the Elizabethan spread
over England as puritanism grew in strength.
But the sons of the sea-kings still needed an outlet for their
energies, and since they could not find it in England, they
became buccaneers in the West Indies. There was again to
be enjoyed the struggle against the historic foe of their
country ; but the new calling tended to develop all their bad,
and to atrophy all their good qualities. The romance of ad-
venture continued : but there was no more queenly approval,
THE PURITAN EMIGRATION 109
no return in triumph to be knighted at court, to be worshipped
by the people, to play the part of careless hero in the
metropolis. It was no longer possible to feel that a crusade
was being waged against the enemies of the protestant faith.
With the finer aims thus lacking, attention was concentrated
on the booty and the rapine, features that with Drake and
Grenville had been the mere accessories. To the buccaneers
it became more and more the chief, and at last the sole object
of their life. As the unemployed workman sinks at last into
the unemployable, so did the Elizabethan mariner of the
magnificent type of Frobisher sink into the buccaneer, while
still keeping many of the old noble qualities ; and after a
generation or two the buccaneer sank further into the out-
lawed pirate, whom it was the common interest of every
nation to put down.
But when Oliver Cromwell revived the war with Spain,
there was no place for buccaneers in the puritan host ; and
the capture of Jamaica by England in the year 1655 was in
fact the beginning of the end of the era of lawlessness in the
West Indian seas.
The American plantations had submitted to the Common-
wealth, ' without any other damage or inconvenience/ as
Clarendon confessed, ' than the having citizens and inferior
persons put to govern them, instead of gentlemen, who
had been entrusted by the king in those places/ The little
island of Barbados, however, was too prosperous to be
* greatly discontented with the revolution : it was ' much
the richest colony, principally inhabited by men who had
retired thither only to be quiet, and to be free from the noise
and oppressions in England ; having served the king with
fidelity and courage during the war, and that being ended, made
that island their refuge. Having now gotten good estates there
(as it is incredible to what fortunes men raised themselves in
a few years), they were more willing to live in subjection to
that government at that distance, than to return to England/
110 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
The royalist historian himself thus bears testimony to
the good results of Cromwell's rule : and it was therefore to
Barbados, as the chief British possession in the West Indies,
that the puritan fleet was directed in 1655, under the com-
mand of Venables and Penn, the father of the great Quaker.
They attacked Hispaniola as ordered, but were foiled, as much
by the climate as by the enemy ' two and a half days in the
woods and uneasy passages, and in the terrible heat of that
country's sun, where they found no water to drink ' but,
not to return home empty-handed, they attempted and took
Jamaica on 10th May, ' a place fruitful in itself, and abounding
in many good provisions, and a perpetual sharp thorn in the
sides of the Spaniard.'
Disappointed as Cromwell was at the failure to capture
Hispaniola ' he committed both Penn and Venables to the
Jamaica, Tower, and could never be persuaded to trust either
1665. o f them again ; and could not, in a long time, speak
temperately of that affair ' he was not the man to neglect a
new possession. Many thought it was useless and too far
away ; the Protector immediately perceived one of its main
advantages. It was a splendid base from which to continue
the war with Spain, and as such he used it.
The Restoration of the Stuarts restored the Stuart policy
of friendship with Spain, but Jamaica was not ceded. In-
stead, it became a place of refuge for the puritan soldiers,
as Virginia and Barbados had been for the cavaliers. And
within a few years its population was of a most heterogeneous
description. From the first the English had fraternised with
the older inhabitants, the majority of whom were Spaniards.
It was not long before a small number of Jews added themselves
to the trading class. Some Swiss and French Huguenots and
Moravians also arrived from Europe ; and on the failure of the
Darien enterprise in 1699, the unlucky Scottish settlers came
over from Panama.
The great want of the island was cheap labour, and the
THE PURITAN EMIGRATION 111
usual expedients to obtain it were tried. In the time of the
Commonwealth, instructions were given in Scotland to
apprehend the ' idle and vagrant/ and to ship them to Jamaica.
Those who were captured after the Rye House plot, after
Sedgmoor, and after the Pretenders' invasions of 1715 and
1745, were mostly sent thither. Unlike Barbados, which was
so emphatically English that at one time a law was passed
forbidding the immigration of any Irish settlers, Jamaica
desired Celtic inhabitants, and by an order in council issued by
the Commonwealth in 1656, a thousand young men and the
same number of young girls were sent over from Ireland.
Settlers from Nevis and the other neighbouring isles sought
to better their fortunes in Jamaica, and often succeeded in
doing so. But still the cry was for cheap labour ; and since
that of the ' mean white ' class was invariably unsatisfactory,
whether in Virginia or the West Indies, recourse was naturally
had to the importation of African negroes.
How rapidly their numbers grew is shown by the census
returns. In 1675, there were 7768 whites and 9504 negroes
in Jamaica ; in 1768 there were 17,000 whites and 167,000
negroes ; and in 1800 there were 30,000 whites and 300,000
negroes. With the means of cultivation thus assured, the
island developed quickly, and the planters became richer year
by year.
By the middle of the eighteenth century, a West Indian
heiress with a fortune of thirty thousand pounds was as much
a stock figure of the London stage as the wealthy East Indian
merchant, and it was almost as desirable to marry a girl from
the former country as to have an uncle in the latter.
At first the chief product of Jamaica was cocoa, with indigo
and hides as important but secondary industries. Coffee was
introduced in 1734 ; guinea grass a few years afterwards ;
and in 1795 there were imported for cultivation from Asia the
breadfruit, the mango, the China orange, the cocoanut, and
plums.
112 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
But long before this the cultivation of the sugar-cane had
become the staple of Jamaica, and the source of great wealth
both to the planters of the island and the Bristol merchants
who imported it. Jamaica sugar fetched prices half as high
again as that from Barbados ; and it was naturally grown in
much larger quantities on the larger island. As easy a road
to riches as could be found by an Englishman of the Georgian
epoch was to own an estate in Jamaica ; and, by appointing
an agent, it was not necessary for him always to live there,
although there were many who loved the country and made it
their home.
But regular industry was not the only source of income
possessed by Jamaica. It was by far the largest British
colony in the West Indies, and its capitals soon became the
metropolis for all our enterprises, lawful or unlawful, in that
part of the world. At Spanish Town were the headquarters
of the planters : Port Royal was the centre of a very different
traffic. ' Always like a continental mart or fair/ as the latter
city was described, it was thither that the buccaneers brought
their spoils ; and the prizes taken from the Spaniards and other
nations were all exhibited on the quays.
Efforts were made indeed to suppress privateering in 1675,
but it soon revived ; and even the destruction of Port Royal
by earthquake in 1692 did not entirely stop the traffic. So
long as it was possible to gain a living from piracy, a living
hazardous and adventurous it is true, but attractive to many
for that very reason, so long did buccaneering continue : and
so long as Jamaica found it profitable as well as the buccaneers,
no very serious steps were taken to put it down.
But in spite of its prosperity, Jamaica had many a crisis
to go through : its history, like that of most of our tropical
possessions, seems to partake of the intensity of the climate ;
for while the colonies in temperate lands show a more equable
progress, and have seldom touched the extremes either of
poverty or of wealth, those nearer the equator have undergone
THE PUEITAN EMIGRATION 113
every vicissitude. And though the fertility of their soil has
made them rich, the ravages of nature and of man have
frequently destroyed much that industry has created.
It was not long before the unhealthiness of Jamaica
became a proverb : the fatal yellow fever was feared by
every sailor who touched there and by every planter ;
and Smollett warned people in one of his novels against
' that ill-fated island which has been the grave of so many
Europeans.'
Earthquakes, too, were not rare, and were generally followed
by fire. Two awful catastrophes of this kind destroyed Port
Royal and many thousands of its inhabitants. In addition,
Jamaica was attacked by the French in 1691 and 1702. And
the enormous number of slaves was a standing danger when-
ever control over them was at all relaxed. Many were the
risings that were suppressed, and when the French were
massacred by their slaves in San Domingo there was a serious
danger that the revolt would spread to Jamaica.
No trouble was experienced from the aborigines, for the
Spaniards had already exterminated them : but when the
island was captured by the English, the negro The Maroon
slaves who belonged to its former owners hid them- Wars -
selves in the interior. An attempt was made to conquer them :
but the up-country was mountainous and covered with tropical
forest ; the British soldiers were intent on plunder, and soon
mutinied, and it was found impossible to penetrate the fast-
nesses to which the negroes had retreated.
The failure was a legacy of ill for Jamaica. From it sprang
the disastrous Maroon, or mountain, wars, the first of which
began in 1694, only a few years after two great slave rebellions
had been suppressed. It continued till 1739, when negotia-
tions brought about a temporary peace, which only empha-
sised our inability to conquer the free blacks. Their success
naturally reacted on the slaves in the plantations, and the
unrest and rebellions among the latter doubtless fomented the
H
114 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
discontent of their fellows in the interior. Money was voted
and other offers were held out to induce them to submit, but
without avail. Many further wars took place, and indeed
it would hardly be incorrect to describe the country as being
in a state of chronic war. In the year 1796 some six
hundred free blacks were captured and shipped to Nova
Scotia and afterwards to Sierra Leone ; and the war of
1801 was terminated by employing bloodhounds to track
the insurgent negroes. In 1842 those who remained in
the island were given the full rights of British citizens :
but they still remained irreconcilable.
Jamaica would not have been a British colony had it not
had its constitutional disputes and parliamentary crises.
Jamaican Cromwell died before he could institute the civil
tionai Dis- government he had planned : and it was not till
putes. 1664 that the first Legislative Assembly of thirty
members was called together. Their names have been pre-
served, but they did little that was noteworthy, and they
were probably not very different in character from the great
majority of the planter class. The first event of importance
came in 1678, when it was evident that Charles n. wished to
introduce the despotic methods of the Stuarts in the colony,
since he sent out instructions that the Poyning's Act, which
had been passed by the English Parliament in the reign of
Henry vu. with sole reference to Ireland, should apply to
Jamaica. Such arbitrary conduct could not for a moment
be tolerated, especially as it was accompanied by a code of
laws, one of which would have had the effect of securing a
permanent revenue to the Crown.
On protest being made from the colony, the king gave way :
but he took a petty revenge, for few of the statutes passed by
the Jamaican Legislature received the royal consent, and it
was further declared, with a fine disregard for constitutional
doctrine, that ordinary British law did not hold in the island,
unless it was specially so laid down in each individual statute.
THE PUKITAN EMIGRATION 115
The controversy was carried on until the next generation,
when in 1728 a final settlement was arrived at, by which the
Crown gave up all points in dispute, on consideration of re-
ceiving an irrevocable revenue of 8000 per annum.
With the opening of the eighteenth century there was a
gradual change in the fortunes of most of the West Indian
islands, and not least in those of Jamaica. It Kingston
was destined to be the most brilliant epoch of ^jj^ es1
their history. The buccaneers were dying out, society,
and the last tinge of romance in their career died also as
their successors became mere pirates, who could not be
acknowledged any longer by European governments under
the pretence that they were privateers. With the destruction
of Port Royal they lost their base of operations ; and when the
new capital of Jamaica grew up at Kingston, they were no
more strong enough to enforce the old privilege of using it as
a storehouse. Kingston, in fact, became a city of merchants
and the centre of Jamaican trade, soon after its foundation by
the refugees who fled from the wreck of Port Royal ; and after
the year 1703 it grew rapidly in importance, until in 1755 the
seat of government was transferred there for a time, although
the influence of the planters removed it again to the rival
capital of Spanish Town.
Kingston was soon a larger and wealthier place than Port
Royal had ever been, and its riches were for the most part
gained by less dubious means. As the chief English city in
the West Indies, it became the home station for those
merchants who were already establishing themselves at Belize,
and laying the foundations of the colony of Honduras ; it
was also the port of call for others, less important perhaps as
yet, who were trading with that mainland to the south where
the fabled El Dorado was supposed to be, and preparing the
way for the colony of British Guiana.
From both of these Kingston drew its profit : in ad-
dition, the sugar exported to, and the manufactured goods
116 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS
imported from England, were loaded and unloaded upon its
quays.
But ' v/ar/ it was said, ' has ever been the best friend of this
town ' ; and in the great struggles between the European
powers for the West Indies, Kingston was at once the centre
from which the British navy started off 'on its expeditions
against other islands or the Spanish possessions of the main-
land, and that to which it returned with its prizes. When
Havana was plundered in 1762, the whole of the booty was
brought to Kingston, and this was but the most valuable of a
series of captures.
During these years, the social life of the place attained a
distinction which it possessed neither before nor since. The
brilliant and careless existence of the planters knew few
troubles, for their profits were secure, and there was hardly a
whisper yet of negro emancipation. The market was good,
and apparently it would remain so for ever, for the com-
petition of sugar-beet was unknown. The Maroon wars
and the slave revolts were dangers to which men had
become accustomed.
What was lacking to their amusements was supplied by the
officers stationed in Jamaica ; and a certain zest of excite-
ment was added to life by the kaleidoscopic variety of
changes in the political situation around them. Island
after island passed from hand to hand, as the sea-power
of England, Holland, France, or Spain waxed or waned in
turn ; the recall of a squadron might mean the loss of an
archipelago, and the unexpected arrival of a cruiser cause the
capture of a whole group of foreign colonies.
As the British power spread in the Caribbean Sea, it was
Turks is- no rare event for the sons of those who had
land, 1678. founded one island colony 1 to migrate and found
another elsewhere. Such was the origin of the settlements
1 Detailed accounts of each of the British West Indian Islands \vill be
found in vol. iv. bk. xii. ch. ii.
THE PUEITAN EMIGRATION 117
on Turks Islands and Caicos, where from 1678 traders from
the Bermudas paid annual visits to obtain the rich deposits
of salt. Driven out by the Spaniards in 1710, they returned
the next year ; attacked by the French in 1764, an indemnity
was demanded at Paris, and paid. From that time a
British agent resided on the islands as governor, and they
may thenceforward be considered as recognised possessions
of the Crown.
The numberless islands and islets known as the Bahamas
were also generally colonised from the Bermudas, the American
mainland, and Britain. Apparently formed of The Baba-
the sand and debris washed down from the Gulf mas > 1629 -
of Mexico, they seemed less valuable to Europeans than
the rest of the West Indies, and accordingly remained in
British hands without much dispute. Granted to the company
which colonised Carolina, they were not regularly occupied, and
soon became a resort of pirates. It was difficult to dislodge
the hordes who took refuge there; but this was eventually
done, and regular government was established in 1718.
The Windward and the Leeward Isles were more stoutly
contested. Their extraordinary beauty, their extreme fertility,
and the belief that they contained mineral wealth, ^g Wlnd .
made them objects of desire to every nation ; and ward isles,
their history is one succession of revolutions.
Of the three islands, St. Vincent, Grenada, and St. Lucia,
which compose the former group, the first was chiefly
inhabited by natives ; the second was for long a French
possession ; a mere list of the changes of allegiance forced
on the third gives a better idea of the tremendous conflict
in West Indian waters than any number of battle-scenes.
Discovered by the Spaniards in 1502, it belonged to them
by virtue of their monopoly for over a century. When
their power began to decline, it was taken by the French
in 1635 ; from them it was seized by the English in
1639. The next year the whole settlement there was
118 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
massacred by the Garibs, the fiercest and last remaining
of the West Indian aborigines. Deserted awhile, it passed
again to the French in 1642 ; in 1663 it was attacked and
captured by the English for the second time. Restored by
treaty in 1667, it had over a century of repose, during which
it prospered greatly. Untouched during the wars of the
earlier part of the eighteenth century, probably because it
seemed too strong to attack, it was captured by Rodney in
1782, but restored the following year. In 1794, however, it
was once more seized, and ruled by England till restored in
1802. Its capture in 1803 brought it finally into British hands.
Such are the annals of a typical small island in the West Indies,
during the period when anything larger than a rock in those
parts seemed worth the despatch of a squadron.
Of the Leeward Isles, there is little different to be said.
Antigua, so called from a church at Seville, with its depend-
The Leeward encies of Barbuda and Redonda, the round island ;
isles. g^ Christopher or St. Kitts ; Nevis, with snow-
capped peak rising direct out of its tropical waters ; Mont-
serrat, named in memory of the mountains near Barcelona ;
Dominica, so called from being discovered on a Sunday ;
the innumerable Virgin Isles, that owe their title to the
legend of St. Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins : all
alike were won and lost many times during the century and
a half that the struggle continued.
In curious contrast to the fury of the fight for most of
the islands was the somnolent solitude that overlay Trinidad.
Trinidad, A Spanish possession where Spanish indolence
1797. prevailed, inaccessible from the sea on three sides,
and altogether more like the most northerly part of South
America than the most southerly of the West Indies, Trinidad
was troubled by none save the echoes of the struggle. Spanish
in government, its settlers were mostly French : there was
little national sentiment on the island, and it passed to
England in 1797 with hardly an effort at resistance.
THE PUKITAN EMIGRATION 119
The long series of wars which consolidated British power
in the West Indies belongs rather to naval than colonial
history. Beginning with the desire to wrest that The Naval
from Spain which Spain had never thoroughly struggle,
conquered, the first blows were struck by Ralegh, Drake,
John Smith and their fellows of the Elizabethan age. That
epoch ended with the death of the queen ; and our seamen,
denied at home, became buccaneers. The Latin monopoly
was already threatened by the terror of the sea-kings : the
buccaneers destroyed it altogether. But they did little to set
up any stable government in its place, while the Dutch were
already trading peaceably and the French undertaking colonisa-
tion in the neighbouring districts.
The rich families of England who bought concessions from
the first two Stuarts were the real founders of British power
in the West Indies.
The Commonwealth came : and Cromwell, while sympathis-
ing with neither buccaneer nor cavalier, neither disturbed nor
encouraged them, for they were doing England's work over-
seas, albeit in a different manner from that favoured by
puritanism. He carried on the war against Spain independ-
ently of them ; and if he failed to take Cuba, he captured
Jamaica, the future capital of the British West Indies.
The Stuart Restoration brought back the old timorous
policy : but the buccaneers, although fallen from their former
splendour, waxed prosperous and still kept Spanish influence
low in the western seas. A few islands were added as uncertain
possessions of the empire ; but with negro slavery introduced
on a large scale, those few became rich.
Meanwhile France had risen into a great European and
colonial power : henceforth the struggle was against her as
well as Spain. A naval conflict, that hardly ceased for over a
hundred years, raged in the Caribbean Sea. Its commence-
ment, as frequently happens in our wars, was unfortunate ;
Admiral Benbow failed ignominiously in 1702 to do the work
120 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
required of him. But the nation was determined. Although
Scotland lost heavily in the Darien project, and England in
the South Sea scheme, neither country could be deterred.
The attacks on Carthagena failed : but among all the glorious
victories of the Seven Years' War, that of Rodney in the
West Indies was not the least conspicuous. At the Peace of
Paris in 1763 the capture of many of those islands was con-
firmed ; but on the outbreak of the Imperial Civil War all
was again in jeopardy.
Yet when the fate of the whole empire trembled in the
balance, the swift and decisive blows that Rodney struck in
the West Indies in the years 1780, 1781 and 1782 again saved
England from complete disaster. Once more there was peace
for a while ; but in the terrific final struggle with France the
West Indian seas again resounded to the cannon of Nelson,
Abercrombie and Moore. Not one of the plantations on the
islands was secure during the years that Napoleon was supreme
in Europe ; but after the battle of Trafalgar had at last given
Britain the mastery of the ocean, they were seldom subjected
to further attack.
Trafalgar, in fact, ended the contest for the West Indies.
Those beautiful lands had been known to Europe for more
Peace and than three centuries, and during all that time they
Miafortunee. ^ seen no thing but war. They had been the
focus of European politics. Every nation had striven to
conquer them.
When peace was concluded, Spain still possessed the pearl
which repeated attempts had not been able to snatch from
her jealous hands ; Cuba floated the red and yellow flag for
another ninety years. But if Spain held the finest, England
had the largest share. France had likewise some rich de-
pendencies, while Holland and Denmark maintained their own
small settlements.
A peace that was to be permanent now dawned upon the
West Indies. The seas that had been sacred to the adventurer,
THE PURITAN EMIGRATION 121
the buccaneer, and the warship, were to know nothing more
exciting than the sailing or steam packet, the commercial
traveller, the missionary, and the globe-trotter.
But by a strange paradox, the West Indies were more
prosperous in war than in peace. The victory that brought
them security sealed their doom. The most brilliant period
of their history was over ; it proved also the more flourishing ;
and the clouds were already gathering that have never since
been wholly dispelled.
Newer and larger areas of production opened out elsewhere.
The sugar-cane, the source of most West Indian wealth, was
shortly to be supplanted by the sugar-beet. The excellence
of the tobacco grown on the islands was indeed unapproachable
anywhere ; but other countries improved and extended their
crops.
If the products of the West Indies were thus menaced on the
one hand, the means by which those products were supplied
were menaced on the other. The treatment of the negro
slaves, and the whole question of slavery, was taken up in
Europe. In spite of protests from the planters that their
ruin was certain, emancipation of the negroes was insisted on
by the British Government : and whatever view we may take
of the rights and wrongs of slavery, it must be admitted that
the planters did not in this instance exaggerate more than men
inevitably do when their livelihood is threatened.
The French had already been driven out of Haiti by their
slaves : and Europe was watching, with hopes destined to be
rudely shattered, the experiment of a negro republic in that
island. The shadow of approaching disaster lay over all
the West Indies. The famous French phrase, ' Perish the
colonies rather than perish a principle,' had gone forth : the
principle of freedom for the negroes and their equality with the
whites was about to be essayed by all the colonising powers ;
and if it cannot be said that the West Indies have perished
since that principle has been introduced, it must be allowed
122 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
that, whether it springs from the abolition of slavery or the
adoption of Free Trade by Britain a few years later, or
from both causes combined, they have perished as an
economic factor in the world's industry. During a cen-
tury their star has declined : and the remainder of their
history offers little but gloom a gloom that is the more
depressing when contrasted with the brightness of their past,
and the ideal beauty of their situation.
BOOK III
THE BEGINNING OF THE WORLD
STRUGGLE: 1588-1713
CHAPTER I
THE LOSS OF SPAIN'S SUPREMACY: 1588-1700 l
THE close of the Middle Ages in Europe was marked by
three great events. When Constantinople was taken by the
Turks in the year 1453, the West was again awakened to the
danger of being crushed beneath the civil and religious
despotism of an alien race. Forty years later, the discovery
of America and the new routes to the Indies more than
compensated for the loss of the Greek empire. And mean-
while the renascence was slowly spreading from Italy into
every country that had any pretence to civilisation.
The peril, from Isldm proved illusory. The Turks were ex-
hausted by their last great effort ; and although they made
many more incursions westwards, one even so far as Vienna,
they were always driven back, and the hatred and fear with
which they were regarded changed gradually to contempt, as
the power of the Crescent declined.
1 Authorities. Prescott and Robertson are still useful as showing the
internal state of the country. There is an invaluable chapter on the
decline of Spain in Buckle's History of Civilisation. The modern history
of Spain exists only in fragments ; Coxe's Bourbon Kings is the best for
the English reader ; and Major Hume throws light on the last century.
Cervantes gives an inimitable picture of the life of his country in
the time of Philip in. ; Calderon, whom Sismondi calls the poet of the
Inquisition, and Lope de Vega have an endless series of dramas. Despite
Napoleon's dictum to the contrary, Lesage's Oil Bias may be taken as an
accurate description of Spain in the generations after Don Quixote.
123
124 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
The effects of the renascence, mingling with, attracted to
or repelled by the reformation in religion, were different in
TheBenas- different countries, illustrating curiously the dis-
cence in tinctions of race and thought in Europe.
In Italy, where liberty was already dead, the
lustre of the liberal arts hid the tyranny and depravity of
her princes. In the land which had conserved more of the
ancient traditions than any other, the enthusiasm for classical
learning reached its highest point under the patronage of
splendid despots. But the wisdom of its scholars was of a
temper coldly intellectual ; there was no moral or religious
reformation. The denunciations of Savonarola fell helplessly
against the indifference of Florence, as he died the martyr
of a ruined cause ; the moral decadence of Venice and Naples
was then, as now, cloaked with the fatal gift of beauty
that has been vouchsafed the whole peninsula. The lower
people were untouched by the renascence ; the upper classes,
having thrown aside the old garment of faith, donned no new
one. And the outer contrast of palace and hovel was and is
still deepened by the inner contrast of careless disbelief and
unquestioning devotion, of haughty pride and pathetic
servility.
In France, the religious indifference of Italy mingled with
the religious fervour of Germany, as renascence and reforma-
tion clashed against the older Catholicism and each other.
Civil war that developed into anarchy invaded the land.
Patriotism hid her head ; liberty was lost. The political
ruin which disunion brought upon Germany might have been
the fate of France had not Henry of Navarre, with a cynicism
worthy of Montaigne, changed his religion as the price of his
kingdom. But with the abandonment of the Huguenots
by the king, France as a whole came slowly round to the old
belief, and the strength of Catholicism was probably deepened
by the bitter struggle. Yet the scoffers were not subdued ;
side by side with the untroubled faith that exists to the
BEGINNING OF THE WORLD STRUGGLE 125
present day in Brittany and Quebec there grew up the doubters.
Weak at first, and as in the case of Descartes not daring openly
to deny ecclesiastical doctrines that conflicted with their own
theory, and perhaps at all times mostly composed of these
whose indifference to all but gaiety and enjoyment did not
compel them to quit the established creed, this party, uncon-
scious of being a party, had a very direct connection with the
school of philosophic doubt that in the eighteenth century
owned Voltaire for its master mind.
In Germany, the renascence was swamped by the religious
reformation and the dissensions it induced. In Holland,
slowly emerging from the struggle for existence, the fierceness
of the contest produced a marriage of convenience between the
two forces the only instance in Europe at that time of two
such incompatible partners being linked together in a mutual
toleration.
In Spain, where the dead hand of the Inquisition crushed
all freedom of thought, there was still art and music, and
romance and beauty and faith, while the theatre The internal
under Calderon and Lope de Vega rose to a condition of
magnificence that was only equalled in England. pam '
Cervantes has left us a perfect picture of his country, and in
the glorious history of Don Quixote the life of Spain passes
before us as though we ourselves had lived at La Mancha by
the side of that pattern knight. One sees the grandees in their
pride, the Moriscoes and their love for their native land, the
high carriage of the ' old Christian/ the all-pervading Inquisi-
tion, the ballad-loving people still singing of the defeat of the
French at Roncesvalles, the hill banditti, the pirates at sea,
the travelling actors with puppet players and dancing apes,
the company assembled at inns, the host sometimes eating
with his guests, the proverbs of the country of which Sancho
had such an inexhaustible stock, the traffic and riches of the
Indies, the slave trade and shipping of negroes, and the wages
of the common people, Sancho receiving his two ducats a
126 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
month and food as a farm labourer, his daughter Sanchica
earning her eight maravedi a day by making bone-lace, the
painter with his two ducats for painting the king's arms on
the gate of the city hall. . . .
But the fair flower of Spanish progress was killed by the
Inquisition and the false ideas of honour and chivalry that had
spread through the land. As all inducement to philosophy
and thought was repressed, philosophy and thought them-
selves died out ; and in the catalogue of great men who have
influenced the higher life of Europe, we look in vain for the
name of a Spaniard.
It may seem, at first sight, that the intellectual condition of
a nation has little bearing on the part it plays in the politics
of the world. The defeat of the Spanish Armada would
probably not have been avoided had Medina Sidonia been an
ardent Calvinist and Drake a believer in transubstantiation.
But in fact the mental efficiency of a people has a very direct
relation to the forces they are able to bring to an international
struggle. It was not merely a coincidence that Greece pro-
duced no masters under the Roman rule, that Roman literature
died as the empire sank into ineptitude, that Italian literature
flourished with Italian commerce, and that both fell from their
supremacy together. It is no fanciful connection that one
traces between the reception given by the different countries
of Europe to the renascence, and the forces they were able
to bring to that great contest for the mastery of the world
which began with the third great event that marks the close
of the Middle Ages the discovery of America and the new
route to India.
Of those discoveries Spain and Portugal had obtained
almost the monopoly ; and that monopoly was secured them
The External ^7 ^ ne P a pal bull. In Europe itself, the posses-
Splendour of sions of the King of Spain were considerable ;
when he succeeded in uniting Spain and Portugal
he seemed irresistible. Champion of the Catholic faith
BEGINNING OF THE WOULD STRUGGLE 127
throughout the world, Philip n. endeavoured to enforce a
double political and religious tyranny on every nation. For
a time it seemed that he would succeed. Italy was cowed
before him ; a large party in France worked in his interest
and was paid from his treasury ; England was tied by his
marriage with Queen Mary ; the Netherlands revolted, but
Belgium fell before his armies ; the German confederation
was always divided, and his influence there was paramount ;
the Turks were defeated in the great naval battle of Lepanto ;
a constant crusade was maintained against Isldm in Africa.
But the prize of universal empire was not for Spain. The
foundations were destroyed, while the superstructure grew ;
and the country sank from the chief to one of the Her Decline
least among the European powers. In 1571 the and Defeat,
victory at Lepanto saw the nation at the zenith of its fame.
The following year the Netherlands rebelled. From that
time Holland, though hard pressed and devastated by Alva,
was independent ; but it was eighty years before Spain would
acknowledge the freedom that defied her. The accession of
Elizabeth had severed the English connection with Philip ;
in 1588 the defeat of the great Armada broke the spell of
Spanish maritime supremacy, and the attacks of the English
and Dutch became more persistent. The unwieldiness of the
leviathan was shown in the next decade, when the Spanish
treasure fleets were seized upon the high seas, and the shipping
in the home ports was plundered and burnt. ' That is the
string/ said Leicester truly, ' that touches the king indeed.'
The death of Philip n. in 1598 removed the careful toiler
who had directed the machine of government ; and the
Spanish historians themselves date the decline of their country
from the close of his career. He was the last of the great kings
who attended personally to affairs of state. His successors
were utterly incapable : ignorant, infirm of purpose, and
debauched, they were superstitious in the extreme, overawed
by the Roman Church in every thought, and controlled by
128 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
their ministers of state in every action. Philip HI. and Philip
iv. were as contemptible as the rois faineants of France ;
Charles 11., the last of his line, was scarcely more human than
Caliban. In a land where the monarchy was everything,
the whole nation was reduced to the last extremity with its
disorganisation. Portugal revolted in 1640 ; and with her
defection the last chance of uniting the whole peninsula under
one central authority vanished.
It was now that the evil results of the internal policy
which had been pursued were visible to the world ; although,
by a strange blindness, they were hidden from the Spaniards
themselves. The renascence had been welcomed in every
other country ; in Spain alone was it crushed. The reforma-
tion had shown its head for a few years only ; the Inquisition
soon stamped out every vestige of the new thought. But the
mission of the Inquisitors was cordially approved by the people
at large, for the new thought was not orthodox ; and in Spain,
what was not orthodox was doomed. The scientific theories
and discoveries that opened out new vistas to other nations
were expelled from Spanish soil ; they also were not orthodox.
The threadbare scholastic theology of mediaeval doctors was
held in higher esteem than the conjectures of new philosophers.
Bacon and Descartes appealed to reason and not to the voice
of the Church ; and having thus committed the unpardonable
sins of innovation and rebellion, their teaching could find no
footing in a nation which placed its creed before its intellect :
the dry skeleton to which Catholicism had reduced the system
of Aristotle was preferred in its place. Modern physicians
discarded the old medical formulas, and thus spared and
prolonged some lives whose end their remedies had formerly
hastened ; but their innovations were received with disfavour
in Spain. It was better to be killed by an orthodox attendant
than to be cured by one of unsound faith. The sarcasms of
Gil Bias on the Castilian doctors have moved the laughter of
the rest of the world for two centuries ; but their quackery
BEGINNING OF THE WORLD STRUGGLE 129
was esteemed in Spain, since their theological dogmas were
above reproach.
When a nation is thus reactionary in thought, its political
condition will not be more advanced. The orthodoxy that is
demanded in theory will be insisted on in practice. The
settled maxim of Philip n. had been, ' It is better not to reign
at all than to reign over heretics ' ; and the merciless bigotry
that developed among the whole people left neither Jew,
Musalman nor protestant in the land.
The decay of Spain during the seventeenth century was in
marked contrast to its previous flourishing condition. The
population of Madrid diminished by half ; other towns
suffered as heavily. Burgos, says one observer, lost every-
thing but its name : to this day it has not recovered. When
the Moriscoes were expelled in 1609, none were left to raise the
crops of Granada and Valencia : the country suffered the
horrors of famine and its invariable accompaniment, plague.
Manufactures ceased ; mining was discontinued ; agriculture
was almost forgotten. The belief that manual labour was
derogatory had grown up among all classes until industry
died. The people could not have paid the taxes, even if they
would. Philip n. had exhausted the wealth, not only of his
own land, but of his oversea possessions, with endless wars
and intrigues ; before his death he was forced to repudiate
his debts ; under his successors national bankruptcy became
unavoidable. The army was unpaid and unclothed ; the
navy almost ceased to exist ; and the seamen were no longer
the daring navigators of the days of Columbus and Cortes.
The people were unable to defend themselves ; the govern-
ment were unable to do it for them. But though destitute,
ignorant, famished, and humiliated, they were orthodox ;
and therefore content.
Other nations, which had not silenced the voice of reason
at the bidding of their priests, had risen, and were ready to
snatch the mastery of the world from the paralysed hands that
I
130
held [it. In 1704 Gibraltar, the gate not only of Spain but
of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, fell into English
hands ; and though the Pillars of Hercules, the old boundaries
of knowledge, still appear on the coins of the kingdom, the
impregnable rock they represent is forbidden soil to Spanish
feet.
Abroad, the empire was falling to pieces, now that the
central authority had gone. The same colonies were indeed
still subject to Spain and Portugal. The same monopoly of
trade was claimed ; the same evil colonial system was in
vogue, which had compelled the planters to root up their vines
and olives, lest their products should compete with those of
the mother country ; the same miserable policy of keeping
the natives in ignorance and superstition, and of subjecting
them to extortion and tyranny, was pursued as of old. But
the monopoly of trade could not be enforced, and it produced
endless smuggling and disastrous wars : and during a period of
two centuries, until the crowning humiliation of the war with
the United States in 1898, Spain lost one possession after
another by conquest or revolt in the stern struggle for the
mastery of the world. In whatever quarter she was attacked
she was defeated ; by whatever people she was assaulted she
was worsted.
The decline of Portugal was less rapid, though not less
marked. As the Spanish monopoly in America shrank
The Decline from the lordly supremacy of the sixteenth century
of Portugal. a mere assertion of the rights secured by the
papal bull, so the Portuguese lost little by little their influence
in Asia and Africa. Even when they again secured their
independence, they could not regenerate their people. The
great era when their seamen roamed the world, when their
generals conquered the most distant lands, when Camoens
sang the national glory, had passed away for ever.
The arrival of the Dutch and English in the Indian seas
was fatal to them. By 1593 the tide had begun to turn. In
BEGINNING OF THE WORLD STRUGGLE 131
that year the English took Pernambuco. In 1622 the Portu-
guese lost Ormuz ; in 1637 they were defeated by the Dutch
in Bengal ; in 1640 they were driven from Malacca, a blow
from which they never recovered ; in 1658 their last stronghold
in Ceylon was captured. Another twenty years and they had
lost Malabar, St. Thome, Macassar and the Coromandel coast.
In the eighteenth century they could not even protect them-
selves against the natives. The Marathas subdued them in
Basseia. It was there, a few miles from Madras, that they
had built the cathedral of St. Joseph, a century and a half
before, when at the height of their power ; and the traveller
can see the ruins to-day a dwelling-place for bats and
jackals, and a melancholy reminder of a lost empire.
Of the reasons for its loss, one of the national historians
himself says, ' Perfidy presiding over almost all compacts
and negotiations, conversions to Christianity serving as a
transparent veil to covetousness, these are the fearful pictures
from which we would desire to turn away our eyes. It was
to this moral leprosy, to these internal cankers, that Gaspar
Correa chiefly alluded, and to which Diego da Gonto attributed
the loss of the Indies, saying that they had been won with
much truth, fidelity, valour and perseverance, and that they
were lost through the absence of these virtues/
CHAPTER II
THE RISE OF FRANCE : 1594-1663 *
As Spain sank gradually from her predominant position,
a new and brighter star arose in Europe. Under the wise
1 Authorities. The Histoire de la Nouvelle France, by Charlevoix, is a
complete but not always trustworthy record of the French in America ;
it may be supplemented by L'Escarbot's New France, and Champlain.
Garneau is also useful, and Sagard's History of Canada. Parkman is the
most brilliant English writer on the subject, and Kingsford should be
consulted. For the French in India, see vol. ii. bk. vi. ch. iv.
132 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
government of Henry of Navarre, France emerged from
disaster. She was freed to a great extent from the religious
strife which the reformation had caused. Restored to a
comparative internal peace, she was again able to give atten-
tion to the culture in which her inhabitants have ever asserted
their superiority. The French renascence, only less brilliant
than the Italian, broadened out into a national movement
that stretches with an almost unbroken record of great works
from the day of Montaigne to our own. The artistic sense of
the nation found its proper outlet ; and as Italy was degraded
and devastated by foreign armies and domestic discord,
France became more truly the home of the muses.
It is, however, with political developments that we are
here concerned. The conflicts of the Middle Ages had pre-
vented France from attaining the national unity and national
feeling that we find in England during the same period.
Unfortunate in being always the scene of war, whether
amongst her own nobles or attacked by the English, France
had not progressed constitutionally as far as her island
neighbour. The power of her aristocracy was greater ; in-
deed, at times the nobility were stronger than the king. No
national consciousness was possible while such was the case :
and, in addition, the influence of the people was smaller, and
they were less in sympathy with their rulers.
1 But the wonderful vitality of the French nation, its phcenix-
like power of rising victorious from what seems to be utter
destruction, which has so often astonished the world, was
strongly marked during the reigns of Louis xi. and Francis i.
The ostentatious part taken by the latter king in European
affairs could not have been attempted without a vigorous
nation at his back. He was overshadowed by his great rival,
the Emperor Charles v. ; and the religious troubles of the
times and the personal incapacity of his successors again
kept France in a lowly position. But despite bad government
and theological dissensions that descended to civil war, the
BEGINNING OF THE WOULD STRUGGLE 133
nation progressed as a whole ; and already might be seen
the beginnings of a New France overseas, the foundation of
an empire in the west which for two hundred years rivalled
that of England, and ultimately left a permanent mark upon
modern America.
Yet the man who exercised the greatest influence on the
making of modern France was Richelieu. Cold, hard,
reserved, with no intimates save a mysterious priest Ricnelieu
named Father Joseph and a favourite niece ; and French
occupying a position that was always insecure, Unit y-
Cardinal Richelieu was an ideal type of the ecclesiastical
politician at his best. In the gallery of the world's statesmen
he stands among the select few who have controlled and
have not followed the circumstances of their epoch. Con-
tinuously in office from 1624 till his death in 1642, his power
was almost unlimited, and the king's trust in him was
implicit, in spite of the incessant cabals and intrigues of
opponents.
He gave France the unity she needed. He found the
Huguenots forming a state within a state ; and his whole
policy was to make the state itself supreme. He crushed
their liberties, but gave them religious toleration ; and
within a generation the Huguenots were among the most
loyal of the sons of France. Local independence, whether of
prince or noble or municipality, he put down with a stern
hand everywhere. All administration was centralised in
Paris ; and with the strong man's love of work Richelieu
centralised it in his own hands. Towards the close of his
ministry he declared to the king, ' When your majesty
resolved to admit me to his council and to a share in his
confidence, I can say with truth that the Huguenots divided
the state with the monarchy, that the nobles behaved as if
they were not subjects, and that the chief governors of pro-
vinces acted as if they had been independent sovereigns. . . .
I then undertook to employ all my energy and all the authority
134 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
that you were pleased to give me to ruin the Huguenot
faction, to humble the pride of the nobles, to recall all your
subjects to their duty, and to exalt your name to its proper
position among foreign nations/ He saw, indeed, that only
with a king who was supreme could France have internal
peace ; and it is no disgrace to him that he did not attempt
to foster the States-General and to enlarge the old parlia-
mentary institutions of the country. The political medicine
that ensures national unity can seldom be combined with
the strong tonic of popular freedom.
In foreign politics Richelieu's genius also shone. He
began the system of aggrandisement at the expense of the
Richelieu small surrounding states which characterised
^nslonof ^ rencn policy f r more than a century. In his
France. steps Mazarin and Louis xiv. walked more feebly
after he had gone. From his day to a time near our own
Fiance was the arbiter of Europe, in that with her rested the
question of peace or war.
Overseas as well as in Europe, Richelieu protected the
interests of his country. He endeavoured to secure some
share of the oriental traffic that was now becoming important,
and to that end he founded the French East India Company.
In America he saw the weakness of the infant French colonies,
and did his best to assist them. Alone he could do little,
but his attention was at any rate better than the utter neglect
that had previously been shown by the rulers of France.
For the beginning of the New France that was now growing
up in Canada, we must look back a century in the history of
New France, the mother country. In the reign of Francis I.
1534-1663. curiosity had been aroused by the marvellous
discoveries of the Spaniards in the West ; and Breton fisher
boats had quickly made their appearance off the coast of
Newfoundland. The king was seized with the idea of claiming
part of America for himself, and employed Verrazano, an
Italian navigator, to undertake exploration for that purpose.
BEGINNING OF THE WOULD STRUGGLE 135
The voyage was made in 1524, but nothing came of it ; it
was fittingly reserved for an inhabitant of France to lay the
foundation of the new French empire in America.
Ten years after Verrazano's expedition Jacques Cartier,
a Breton fisherman from St. Malo, sailed across the Atlantic
and came within sight of the bleak and lonely island of
Anticosti. Attracted by the prospect of further discoveries,
he repeated the voyage in 1535, when he explored and named
the St. Lawrence, penetrating as far as the island where
Montreal now stands.
Near the site of the present city of Quebec the first tempo-
rary settlement was made. As winter drew on, the hardships
inseparable from pioneering work began to be felt. Sickness
and scurvy claimed many lives ; there was little food and no
proper means of securing it. And when the next spring came at
last, it was but a small company that reached St. Malo again.
Cartier published a report of his experiences, but it contained
nothing remarkable : ' he spoke but of pigmies, black men, red
men, and wild beasts ; there were few marvels and no gold/
In the opinion of most people at that day, the latter con-
sideration alone was enough to show that Canada was worth-
less. But for all that, the dominion of France had begun in
America : the cross which Cartier had brought as an emblem
of sovereignty was a true symbol. A viceroy was now
appointed ; but beyond building a fort and looking for a
passage to India he did little. His death a few years later
and the renewed outbreak of war in Europe put a stop to all
colonial enterprise for a time.
A chance allusion to Canada in the Heptameron, 1 however,
is a proof that the West was not forgotten : but the next
French settlement overseas was one of Huguenot refugees in
1 See the sixty -seventh of those salacious novels. When I was an
ingenuous youth, it surprised and disconcerted me to discover that the
Heptameron was written by a woman ; but since I have enlarged my
acquaintance with modern fiction, I can no longer force a blush at the
minor indecencies of Margaret de Valois.
136
Florida. The sadness of their fate has rescued the short
existence of their colony from oblivion. The religious war
was carried into the new world by the zealots of Spain ; and
in 1566 the French Huguenots were massacred, ' not because
they are French/ declared the Spaniards, ' but because they
are heretics :and enemies of God/ Revenge was quickly taken,
and the French left it on record that they killed their foes,
' not because they are Spaniards, but because they are traitors,
robbers, and murderers/ Yet after several attempts, the
project in Florida had to be abandoned, and for nearly
half a century subsequently nothing further was done in
Canada.
At length in the year 1598 the Marquis de la Roche, a Breton,
obtained a patent to colonise New France ; and under the
guidance of Samuel Champlain, the greatest pioneering
genius among the many that France has produced, a settle-
ment was begun.
On 3rd July 1608, the city of Quebec was founded ; but so
slow was its advance that after five years it consisted only of a
fortified post at the foot of the cliff and a few cabins. Its
population was under fifty, of whom four were Franciscans.
For twenty years there were constant hardships to be
undergone. The little colony was frequently on the verge
of extinction. No help was forthcoming from the king.
The English attacked and took Quebec in 1629, during the
war between the two countries : and so low was the place
reduced that, in the words of one of the British officers,
' There was not in the sayde forte at the tyme of the rendition
of the same, to this examinator's knowledge, any victuals,
save only one tub of bitter roots/
Quebec was restored with the other French possessions in
Canada and Acadia on the conclusion of peace, but already
Richelieu had reformed the colonial administration. In
1627 a company of one hundred associates, with himself at
the head, took over the government of Canada. The company
BEGINNING OF THE WORLD STRUGGLE 137
lasted till 1663, when the second period of French colonisation
began with the assumption of supreme and direct power by
the royal house.
The peculiar lines upon which the early French settlements
were conducted were by that time fully apparent, and their
origin may be traced back to the first voyage of R 6l i ff i oug
Jacques Cartier. Far different from the vulgar influences
hope of finding new sources of wealth which ani-
mated Francis i. and Verrazano, Cartier's journey had been
as much a religious mission as an adventurous quest.
True to the deep Catholic feeling which is still noticeable
in every village of his native Brittany, his emblem was a cross.
Much of the terror of the wilderness to himself and his com-
panions was the possibility of their dying unshriven. When
Champlain crossed the Atlantic, he was accompanied by
monks. French priests soon went on long expeditions to
convert the natives. Jesuits lived with the tribes in remote
forests. Ladies left their homes in France to become nuns in
the rude convent at Quebec. By the direction of Richelieu,
only Catholics were allowed to settle in Canada. The first
bishop of New France arrived in 1659, when the whole popula-
tion of Quebec was still less than six hundred. Montreal,
where the first permanent settlement took place in 1642, was
known as the city of Mary. The names of holy men were
given to the capes and bays. The very river was called after
a saint. Quebec was full of churches and religious houses.
And there was enthusiasm at home for the lonely outpost of
the true faith ; the eldest daughter of the Church had planted
a new branch in the far west, and it was hoped to make
Canada into a great Catholic community, and to convert and
unite the redskins under French control.
It was a magnificent dream, and in part it was fulfilled.
The missionaries understood instinctively how to deal with
the people to whom they preached. There were no forced
conversions, such as those by which the Spaniards had
138
baptised thousands of Mexicans in a day ; there was none of
the religious indifference which the English mostly displayed ;
it was by gentle persuasion and argument, occasionally by a
simple miracle, that the French priest convinced his hearers.
The objection raised by one of the Huron tribe to the
foreign creed shows the way in which it was sought to win
them. ' Do you not see/ said the native, ' that we inhabit
a different world from yours, and there ought therefore to be
another paradise for us, and consequently another way by
which to arrive ? '
The sincerity of the missionaries is proved by the protest
they made when brandy was sold to the natives. ' They have
brought themselves to nakedness, and their families to
beggary. They have even gone so far as to sell their children
to procure the means of satisfying their raging passion. I
cannot describe the evils caused by. these disorders to the
infant church. My ink is not black enough to paint them in
proper colours. It would require the gall of the dragon to
express the bitterness we have experienced from them. It
may suffice to say that we lose in one month the fruits of the
toil and labour of thirty years/
So strove the missionaries to plant their creed in Canada.
New France became a religious community, filled with the
spirit of mediaeval Catholicism, and ennobled by the self-
sacrificing efforts of holy men, who often laid down their lives
in the wilderness, forgetful of themselves in their cause,
regretting only that they were spared no longer to be of service
to their Lord.
Something of the atmosphere they brought from the old
world still lingers in the city of Quebec. For a century and a
half Canada has been in English hands : modern energy
palpitates in Toronto and Winnipeg ; Montreal has long lost
its ancient tranquillity ; industry is developing everywhere
under the strenuous conditions of the present day. But in
Quebec, the one American city which recalls the older cities
BEGINNING OF THE WORLD STRUGGLE 139
of Europe, the past is not yet dead. Some quarters in the
first French town in America remain almost untouched by
the enormous traffic of the river-highway and the railroad
that runs direct to the Rockies ; and in the Ursuline convent,
the Hotel Dieu, the Basilica, and the Seminary are the best
and most enduring monuments to the founders of that New
France overseas, which it was hoped by the dreamers at home
in old France would bring civilisation into the wilderness and
eternal salvation to its inhabitants.
CHAPTER III
THE DUTCH EMPIRE : 1572-1689
THERE seem few less likely spots for the seat of an empire
than Holland. An express train can now traverse the
kingdom from east to west in three hours ; the greater part
of the land lies below the level of the sea. Centuries ago the
waves broke in upon the northern provinces, and the shallow
Zuyder still covers what was once an inhabited country.
Elsewhere the soil has been improved by scientific culture
into fertile, profitable farms ; a complicated system of canals
is at once the means of irrigating the land and distributing
its produce, and too often of perfuming the immediate neigh-
bourhood. Comfortable farmhouses dot the country, and
picturesque towns appear every few miles ; the whole aspect
is one of quiet prosperity. There is at first sight little to
indicate its ancient greatness, in the Holland which the
passing traveller or casual tourist sees to-day. The slow-
moving, phlegmatic population give no sign of the heroism
which made the Dutch an unconquerable people, albeit the
1 Authorities. For Holland itself, Motley's works on the Netherlands ;
Bancroft and Justin Winsor give a full account of the colonies in
America, and refer to the original Dutch authorities. The latter may be
consulted in the libraries at The Hague and Amsterdam.
140
dogged spirit of the northmen still exists behind the placid
features of the modern Hollander.
In the sixteenth century, when the protestant Netherlands
were ruled by the catholic Hapsburgs, its people were sub-
jected to the tortures of the Inquisition, under the auspices of
the Most Christian King. Fifty thousand persons were put to
death before the year 1566. In the following six years, when
Alva was viceroy of the Netherlands, he boasted that he
had exterminated eighteen thousand heretics, besides a still
greater number who were slain in battle. Had he and his
master been as successful as they hoped in enforcing obedience
on their recalcitrant subjects, there is little doubt what would
have been the ultimate result. Holland would have sunk,
even as Spain sank, into the slumber of orthodoxy that knows
no waking; the slumber that acquires indeed priestly approval,
but entails atrophy in every faculty that makes for progress
and an advancing civilisation.
Happily for Holland, its people were of sterner stuff.
In 1572 they rebelled ; and from that moment the history
The Fight of the Dutch empire begins. It seemed indeed a
for Freedom, contest of mice against men, this revolt of the
poorest province in the enormous realm which Philip n. ruled.
Every battle was lost, every campaign failed. The Spanish
troops were irresistible ; the Spanish treasury was full.
Ultimate freedom appeared impossible. William the Silent,
the leader of the infant republic, had already prepared a
scheme for transplanting his people bodily to America, there
to find, as the English puritans found in the next generation,
the liberty that was denied in Europe. And as year after
year wore away, the Belgian provinces returned to a dis-
honourable obedience ; under the generalship of Alexander
Farnese, they were now used as headquarters for the army
that was to reduce Holland.
But the tactics of that soldier, brilliant as they were,
his perfidy, unexampled 'as it seems in the light of his
BEGINNING OF THE WORLD STRUGGLE 141
despatches, effected nothing. The assassination of the
Prince of Orange while ascending the stairs of the Stadhuis
of Delft made no difference to the determination of the people.
Slowly the tide began to turn. The enemies of Philip were
assisted by England and France ; and now the Dutch and
English found the advantage of their seamanship, as they
attacked the Spaniards on the water. ' All the maritime
heretics of the world/ said Champigny in 1590, ' since heresy
is best suited to navigators, will be banded together, and then
woe to the Spanish Indies, which England and Holland are
always threatening.' The next few years proved the truth of
his words. ' I dare be bound,' wrote Elizabeth's representa-
tive in Holland, ' if you will join with Treslong, the States-
Admiral, and send off three score sail to the Indies, we will
force him (Philip) to retire from conquering further and to let
other princes live as well as he.' When Drake burst into the
charmed circle of the Spanish power, he discovered how
weakly defended were the highways along which the treasure-
ships came, and both Dutch and English then realised that
the essential point was to prevent the arrival of supplies from
the new world. ' While the riches of the Indies continue,'
wrote Leicester to Burghley, ' he (Philip) thinketh he will be
able to weary out all other princes : and I know by good
means that he more feareth this action of Sir Francis Drake
than he ever did anything that has been attempted against
him.'
The Dutch had already sent out nine war vessels to cruise
off the Cape Verde Islands for the homeward-bound Spanish
fleet from America, with orders if they missed it to proceed to
the West Indies. But the defeat of the Armada in 1588 was
the beginning of the end. If Spain retracted none of her
pretensions, it at least became evident what those pretensions
were worth. The campaigns against Holland continued ;
but the death of Farnese four years later deprived Philip of
his most able general ; ruined and unsuccessful, Philip himself
142 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
died soon afterwards of a loathsome disease. Still the war
dragged on : nothing now, however, could shake the steadily
increasing power of the Dutch Republic.
That republic was the first in modern Europe, and it
embodied a principle new to the world. William the Silent
had already impressed the necessity of religious toleration
on his people : and a noble announcement by the States-
General in 1587 declared that they would ' respect the differ-
ence in religious opinions ; and leaving all churches in their
freedom, they chose to compel no man's conscience a course
which all statesmen knowing the diversity of human opinions
had considered necessary in order to maintain fraternal
harmony/ Had the Dutch done nothing else, to have intro-
duced religious toleration into the working of the state, in
advance of all other nations, would have been their sufficient
glory to the end of time.
But in fact Holland was fast becoming a centre of culture,
as well as of freedom and commerce. The school of artists
that has made Dutch painting celebrated throughout the world
was beginning its great career. This was the epoch of the
greatest of their poets. Splendid editions of the classics
were produced by their printers. Grotius, the first inter-
national lawyer, was born in Delft the year before William
the Silent met his death in that pleasant city, in which the
lime-trees overhang the quiet waterways as if brooding on
the eventful past. In the next age Spinoza thought out
his vast shadowy philosophy in Amsterdam and The Hague.
The siege of Leyden was no sooner raised than the citizens
commemorated their resistance by the foundation of a uni-
versity. The issue of the struggle was yet uncertain ; even
Barneveld, the head of the state, assured the ambassador of
France in 1603 that the Dutch were becoming desperate, and
were capable of totally abandoning the country and finding
an asylum beyond the seas. But the university of Leyden is
still standing, and as one strolls to-day through the old-
BEGINNING OF THE WORLD STRUGGLE 143
fashioned streets of the town, or maybe wanders along the
dunes that lead to the adjacent fishing village of Katwyk,
where the pitiless North Sea beats in vain against the great
dyke, the memory involuntarily goes back to the days when
the Spanish armies covered the land. Their standards now
hang in the church at Leyden ; the thumb-screw and the
rack in the Havanna Poort museum at The Hague are the
darker relics of their cruelty. Instead of the political servitude
and the religious inquisition that would have resulted from
submission, the Dutch founded a new nation, a new culture,
and a new empire.
Commerce made the empire possible ; the seamen made
the commerce possible. The hardy Frisians and Zeelanders
were men of the same breed as the English sea- The Dutch
kings. They attacked and plundered the Span- Empire,
iards ; they penetrated as far north as Spitzbergen, as far south
as Australia. True to the old unconquerable Teutonic stock
from which they sprang, they dared everything.
The history of their voyages reads like a romance of the
Vikings. In 1595 they made a descent on India, and obtained
a footing in Java, from which they have never been dislodged.
In 1598 they captured Mauritius : and a description by
Wytfliet of ' Australis Terra ' as ' the most southern of all
lands ' leads to a belief that they had already reached, or at
least seen in the distance, the great southern continent.
In 1603 they seized Colombo ; a year later their ships visited
Macao, where the Chinese, faithful to the policy of isolation
which they have ever pursued, refused to trade.
In 1605 the Dutch touched the coast of Australia, to which
they gave the name of New Holland ; in 1616 Dirk Hartog
visited it again, and two years later Captain Zeachan dis-
covered the land of Arnhem and part of Van Dieman's Land.
In 1622 further discoveries were made on the south-west coast
of Australia ; and in another twenty years Jan Tasman was
making his great voyages in the southern seas.
144 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
It was at this great period of expansion and national energy
that Descartes, studying quietly in Holland, remarked in a
letter that every day he saw people returning from the anti-
podes. The Dutchman, in fact, had taken the world for his
home, and was no longer bound by the little provinces that
made his country and the narrow seas that surrounded it.
While the navigators were thus exploring the ends of the
earth, the merchants who remained at home were not less
active. The trade that had belonged to Antwerp in the
Middle Ages was gradually transferred to Rotterdam and
Amsterdam, as well as to London. Increasing commerce
alone enabled the Dutch to support the war with Spain.
Companies were formed to trade with the East and West
Indies : intercourse was opened with Japan, and a rivalry
that lasted a century and a half now began with the
English in India.
On the conclusion of peace with Spain in 1609, a secret
clause in the treaty guaranteed Holland freedom of trade with
the Indies. The Dutch now established factories at every
available mart in Asia ; and, as was inevitable, the commercial
tie soon developed into a political one, and they became masters
of colonies and protectorates. They practically destroyed
the Portuguese power in the East : many of the great islands
of which they took possession, such as Java, Sumatra, and
Borneo, are prosperous at the present day under their rule ;
and Batavia, which they founded in 1618, has ever since been
the capital of their Indian dominions. In 1651, they estab-
lished a settlement in South Africa, founding a port of call at
the Cape on the way to and from India. Holland was a
world-power a hundred years after it had been but an in-
significant corner of Europe.
It was not to be expected that the English, now also begin-
ning their career as colonisers and traders, should see such
redoubtable rivals grow so rapidly in might with unmixed
pleasure ; and the same feelings animated the Dutch in their
BEGINNING OF THE WORLD STRUGGLE 145
turn, as they felt the British competition become more severe
every year.
The two nations had, it is true, been allied against Spain,
when Philip n. menaced both. The protestantism of the
Netherlands, and especially the uncompromising The Wars
Calvinism that had taken root there, had inspired with
the puritans of England with affection ; the
Brownists and other sects had found a refuge in Leyden ;
and Holland was the temporary retreat of the Pilgrim
Fathers. The republicanism of the English Independents
likewise saw an example of success in Holland, which, joined
as it was with a rebellion against episcopacy and ritual,
found peculiar sympathy among the party that was struggling
at home against the policy of Charles and Laud.
But while these reasons made for friendship between the
two foremost protestant powers of Europe, there were other
and graver reasons for dissension. The age was one of
transition, and the religious crusades of the sixteenth century
were beginning to give way before the industrial strife of the
next epoch. Newer and more material forces were coming into
play ; and in the evolution of a larger political synthesis
theological dogmas were neglected.
The rivalry of English and Dutch on the seas and in the
east quickly grew to acute enmity, and it culminated in 1623
in the Amboyna outrage. 1 This was indeed smoothed over
by arbitration and the payment of compensation ; but from
that time until the revolution of 1689 united the two countries,
there was little intermission in a struggle that endangered
every foreign settlement of both peoples.
Amusing evidence of our jealousy, and at the same time
of our respect for the prowess of the Dutch, peeps out at times
in the old English comedies. ' Take care of the Hollanders :
your ships may leak else/ cries a character in Rule a Wife and
Have a Wife, one of the last plays acted before the puritans
1 See vol. ii. bk. vi. ch. iii.
146 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
suppressed the theatre : and even so late as 1717, an irate
merchant in A Bold Stroke for a Wife exclaims, ' The devil 's in
that nation : it rivals us in everything/ Neither Dryden nor
Cowper have a good word for the ' heavy Hollander/ And
the Dutch on their part by no means despised their enemy.
' English sailors may be killed but they cannot be conquered/
admitted De Witt after a stern fight ; and the whole long
conflict proved that it was as true of one side as the other. 1
The rivalry between England and Holland in India, and
the later contest between Briton and Boer in South Africa,
The Dutch fell to otter chapters of this work ; the ill-fated
in America. Dutch colonies in America may properly be treated
here. When Henry Hudson, the British navigator who had
taken service with Holland when no further opportunities
offered in England, discovered the great bay that now bears
his name, it was believed that it furnished an open passage to
the southern ocean ; and that, together with a knowledge of
the riches of the West Indies and the profit derived by other
nations from America, determined the Dutch to embark on
transatlantic enterprise.
The formation of the Dutch West India Company was de-
layed by negotiations with Spain, and the first vessel for that
service was not fitted out until 1623 ; but already in 1609
Hudson had reached Cape Cod, naming the district New
Holland : and on 3rd September of that year his ship, the
Crescent, anchored within Sandy Hook.
He sailed up the beautiful river to which his name has since
clung, until he passed the spot where the present city of
Albany stands ; and on his return to Europe he gave an
encouraging account of the magnificent land of forest and
mountain that he had discovered. In the same year the
Dutch East India Company fitted out an expedition to trade
1 On the other hand, in an old English sea song of 1666, quoted in
Naval Songs and Ballads, is the expression : ' What Amsterdamnable
cowards are these ! '
BEGINNING OF THE WORLD STRUGGLE 147
with the natives near the Hudson River, which proved
profitable; it was repeated a twelvemonth later, and some
rude hovels were erected in 1612. Such was the beginning of
the city of New York, which for another half-century was called
New Amsterdam, as the Dutch metropolis of the West.
The States-General of Holland gave a four years' monopoly
to those who discovered new countries ; and a number of
merchants quickly entered into partnership to extend the
American trade. It was probably in 1614 that the first fort
was erected at Manhattan Island, and in another year there
was a station at Albany.
As yet, however, these were trading depots pure and simple,
similar to those possessed by European companies in India ;
no families had emigrated, and beyond the precarious traffic
with the redskins, there was no foundation for a colony. In
this manner things continued for some years.
At length in 1621, when the internal troubles of Holland
had died down, the Dutch West India Company was incor-
porated, with the enormous rights of a monopoly of commerce
and colonisation on the African coast from the tropic of
Cancer to the Cape of Good Hope, and in America from the
Straits of Magellan to the extreme north. The great impetus
which this new movement gave to Dutch enterprise was
immediately apparent. Stations were opened on the Dela-
ware, in New Jersey, at Hoboken, on Staten Island, on Long
Island, and in Connecticut. But the Company cared nothing
for the possession of colonies : it aimed only at dividends,
and these accrued as yet chiefly from the capture of Spanish
vessels in the Atlantic.
Not all the stations were successful. The settlers on the
Delaware perished ; others found themselves in continual
difficulties. The Dutch right to certain places was disputed :
the Swedish colonies were planted in territory claimed by
Holland, and although they eventually went under, the
Dutch themselves had to retreat before the English on the
148 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
Connecticut River. Despite the good relations with the
Pilgrim Fathers ' our children after us/ said the latter,
' shall never forget the good and courteous entreaty which we
found in your country, and shall desire your prosperity for
ever ' there was considerable commercial jealousy between
the two peoples in America, which increased after Massa-
chusetts was founded : and the English principle that colonisa-
tion and not discovery constituted possession, soon rendered
the relations with Holland strained.
It is of profound interest, not merely to the student of
colonial history, but to the statesman who seeks the safe
path of imperial rule, to observe that every nation
The Vicious J , - . J
Dutch save one engaged in oversea enterprise started
colonial with a ready-made system. The one exception
was England ; and her colonies, as distinct from
protectorates, alone have survived. This does not mean
that all systems are wrong ; it certainly does not mean
that the haphazard English method, or lack of method, is
right. The Dutch and French systems have generally been
successful in dealing with lands where there was already a
large native population to be governed, although it may fairly
be claimed that the English also have been more successful
in that direction than both Holland and France together ;
but it is in the work of planting fresh branches of the state, in
the work of colonisation in the true sense, that the English
have succeeded where others have failed.
The cause lies on the surface. The colonies of the French,
the Dutch, the Portuguese, and the Spaniards, were founded
primarily for the aggrandisement of the mother country.
Wherever the interest of the oversea settlements conflicted
with those of the parent state, it was the former that gave
way. The colonies were governed from Madrid or Amsterdam
by governors of Madrid or Amsterdam for the benefit of Madrid
or Amsterdam ; we have borne the cost, ran the argument,
to us shall come the profit.
BEGINNING OF THE WORLD STRUGGLE 149
The argument was specious, but it was false. If the colonies
were to be nothing but trading stations, it might be allowed,
although with limitations, as the head office of a business
house has the undoubted right to control the minor establish-
ments : but if the colonies were to become new branches of the
state, if they were to have vitality and a solid foundation,
they must have freedom of action. The most enlightened
and liberal burgher of Amsterdam could not know the needs
of New Amsterdam so well as the average citizen of the
latter ; he should therefore have refrained from dictating its
policy. The utmost he could do with advantage was to advise,
to suggest, to hint ; even that required rare tact and foresight :
and even if he could not rise to the idea of a colony, but con-
fined himself to the hope of a dividend-paying trading station,
he should still have recognised that the men on the spot could
often direct his business better for him than he could himself
on the other side of the ocean.
It is true that the same narrow idea often appeared in
England ; but it was seldom paramount. The Virginia
Company tried it, but the Company went down, and not
Virginia. Proprietors tried it ; they lost their concessions,
while the colonies they founded prospered. The parliament
and the Crown both tried it later ; and they it was who lost.
The English colonies were not indeed definitely founded with
the intention of giving them local control over their local
affairs : but local control had been ingrained in the whole idea
of English rule for centuries, and it could not be abandoned
when American enterprise began ; the settlers ordered their
own affairs almost from their first arrival, whether it was
directly permitted, connived at, ignored, or flatly forbidden by
those who were nominally their rulers. It was this that in
one way more than compensated for the lack of system and
many of the abuses in English colonial enterprise ; the vitality
and freedom of the dependencies amply recompensed them for
the neglect which the Imperial Government generally showed
150 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
them. It may be said that not all men are fit to govern
themselves. Granted : they are also not fit to found a
colony.
From the first the Dutch in America were surrounded by
prohibitions. The West India Company had the monopoly
The Fail of trade and absolute power over its possessions.
America ^ s was ^ ne case a ^ ^ ne Cape of Good Hope and at
166*. Batavia, the people counted for little, while the
profit was everything. A cautious, prudent policy was
adhered to. The directors indeed encouraged emigration,
for ' population was known to be the bulwark of every
state/ They saw too that ' farmers and labourers, foreigners
and exiles, men inured to toil and penury/ were the men to
be assisted ; and all the persecuted sects in Europe flocked
to the New Netherlands. Absolute honesty was insisted
on in the administration : Stuyvesant, the governor, was
charged ' to keep every contract inviolate ' ; he was cen-
sured for tampering with the coinage, for interference with
the merchants, and with the religious belief of the people.
As regards the latter, at least, there was liberty. ' Let
every peaceful citizen,' wrote the directors, ' enjoy freedom
of conscience ; this maxim has made our city the asylum
for fugitives from every land ; tread in its steps, and you
shall be blessed/ The colony, therefore, was flourishing, and
a time was looked for ' when your commerce becomes estab-
lished, and your ships ride on every part of the ocean, throngs
that look towards you with eager eyes will be allured to embark
for your island/ It was to become the granary of Holland,
a refuge for the fatherland in time of distress, a land of plenty
for the new generation.
But beneath the prosperity of the colony were grave dis-
contents. The inhabitants of New England were pressing
more and more forward, and ousting the Hollanders ; but the
directors of the Dutch West India Company were timid :
' war/ said they, ' cannot in any event be for our advantage/
BEGINNING OF THE WORLD STRUGGLE 151
and it would certainly have reduced their profits. From the
New Englanders, however, the example of political liberty
was taken ; and the Dutch began to agitate for their own
provincial parliament. Here, however, the directors were
adamant. The governor had no faith in ' the wavering
multitude ' ; ' the directors would never make themselves
responsible to subjects ' ; the laws were to be made by the
directors and council.
' Evil manners produce good laws for their restraint, and
therefore the laws are good/ ran the pronouncement of the
authorities : ' if the election of magistrates be left to the
rabble, every man will vote for one of his own stamp, the
thief for a thief, the smuggler for a smuggler, and fraud and
vice will become privileged/ The answer was the stock one of
autocracy ; but it fell on the wrong soil. The people refused
to pay taxes not levied by their consent ; the Company in-
sisted, but it availed nothing.
The Dutch settlers saw with envy the freedom of the
neighbouring English colonies. They were not averse from
union with them. Their land on the south was claimed by
Lord Baltimore for England. The puritan settlements on
the north were still encroaching. Stuyvesant complained at
Hartford ; it was replied that the charter of Connecticut
extended to the Pacific. ' Where then is New Netherlands ? '
asked the Dutch ambassador. With cool indifference came
the answer, ' We do not know/
The West India Company was naturally indignant at the
usurpation, and resolved to defend its rights, ' even to the
spilling of blood/ But it was without the support of the
people who had settled under it ; for although the directors
gave way so far as to grant a legislative assembly, it was now
too late. ' I have not time/ wrote Stuyvesant, ' to tell how
the Company is cursed and scolded/
There were rumours of invasion from New England, which
soon took place in fact ; and though the governor planned
152 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
resistance, the burghers protested at his attitude, and framed
articles of surrender.
So passed the New Netherlands into English hands : so
ended the Dutch empire in North America. The whole coast
from Maine to Florida belonged to England from the year 1664
onwards.
THE SECOND SCANDINAVIAN EPOCH, 1611-1718
AMONG the records that tell us of the life of our ancestors,
some of the most important are the sagas of the north, which
show us the faith, the rude ideals of that hardy stock which
swept the earth, fearless, proud, and barbarous ; imbued
with the electric spark of courage that could dare the elements
and defy the gods ; contemptuous of death and its black
terror ; careless of the world and all within it, save only the
last great shame of slavery. . . .
These were the men who burst like the tempest from
their frozen north, and with the Germans, their cousins,
ended in one vast avalanche of ruin the older civilisation.
Their arms reached Sicily and eastern Europe ; some tribes
entered Africa and were remembered later only in the legend
which pictured a kingdom of white men in the tropics. Their
descendants, still untamed, brought destruction on France ere
they settled in Normandy : the Danes ravaged all England.
Their colonies extended far across the ocean. The Faroe
Isles, whose inaccessibility and cheerlessness seem to offer
footing but to the cormorant and penguin, were seized by
1 Authorities. The materials for the obscure Scandinavian colonies
are scanty, in English at least. Bancroft has a short description of New
Sweden ; Justin Winsor has further information ; the Swedish and
Danish East and West India Companies are only mentioned in the
various English works dealing with those countries.
BEGINNING OF THE WOKLD STRUGGLE 153
the northmen ; Iceland, still more inaccessible and still more
terribly lonely, was the seat of their most extensive and most
advanced settlement.
But this was not yet enough. They were established in
Greenland ; if tradition and modern excavations speak true,
they were the first European discoverers of America. The
whole of the arctic seas were the haunt of the northmen ;
there they wandered at will, happy in the rough waters which
matched their character so well.
For centuries it lasted, the freedom, the irresponsibility,
the plunder ; and then came the first great union of the north.
It was the dream of a mighty prince to bring Scandinavia,
the British Isles and the distant colonies of the northmen
under one authority. It was the earliest attempt to impose
order on the countries which had perforce been left out of
the view of Charlemagne and Otho, when they endeavoured to
reincarnate the Roman Empire. For a time there seemed a
possibility of success ; and under the wise government of
Cnut, an unwonted peace reigned in the north. But the idea
of a Scandinavian empire died with him. His followers on
the throne were little better than beasts ; and England shrank
from union with such men as Harthacnut. She was too far
from Denmark and too advanced, even under Saxon rule, to be
tied permanently to those countries on the Baltic from which
her own population had sprung : the Vikings were still too
wild to understand anything of a central authority ; and the
first empire of the north passed like the dream that it was.
But, as the centuries again went by, something of the
influence that was forming tribes into nations in central and
western Europe reached Scandinavia. The kings extended
their sway little by little over the chiefs ; allegiance became
more than nominal. Even Iceland, the home of the malcon-
tents of Norway and one of the most flourishing republics of
the Middle Ages, submitted. With many a set-back to the
old age of rebellion, many a gap in the chain of authority, the
154 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
idea of a settled rule progressed until in 1389 Norway, Sweden,
and Denmark all acknowledged the same monarch ; the latter
country, then as always, taking the lead. But the union was
again dissolved : and the Scandinavian synthesis that seemed
probable has never been accomplished.
The interest of the northern lands of Europe and their
history lies for us in the colonies they founded. They too
The entered into the competition for America and
American India. From the days of Gustavus Adolphus to
those of Charles xn. there was a remote possibility
that Scandinavia might become one of the world-powers. Had
not the first essential of union at home been lacking, the efforts
which were then put forward to found a colonial empire might
not have proved fruitless. In the absence of that union, the
second Scandinavian epoch, which began brilliantly enough,
does no more than furnish a curious and little known chapter
of history that has left few traces on the map to-day.
Gustavus Adolphus was attracted by the prospect of
planting colonies in America, and a Company was incorporated
New Sweden, m 1626 that was to be governed by the royal
1626-55. council. Men were invited to come ' from all
the nations of Europe ' ; and the proposal awakened the
imagination of the protestant world, to whom it was to furnish
a refuge from the persecution that was inevitable if the
catholic counter-revolution continued to make way.
To Gustavus, New Sweden seemed the ' jewel of his king-
dom/ and considerable pains were taken to secure its success.
Slavery was forbidden, in an age when slavery was recognised
in almost every European colony ; for ' slaves/ it was said,
' cost a great deal, labour with reluctance, and soon perish
with hard usage ; the Swedish nation is laborious and in-
telligent, and surely we shall gain more by a free people
with wives and children/ On this basis New Sweden was
founded ; and full of hope, two vessels of Swedes and Finns
arrived in Delaware Bay in 1638. Land within the limit of
BEGINNING OF THE WORLD STRUGGLE 155
the present state of Delaware was purchased from the natives,
and Christiania Fort was built.
More immigrants arrived within the next decade ; all
seemed prosperous. The colony extended, and the nucleus
of a town arose where Philadelphia was to stand some years
later ; those settlers of a different nationality who were
already in the country either submitted to Sweden or removed.
The colony, however, was founded on land claimed by the
Dutch of the neighbouring New Netherlands ; it was subject
to the rivalry of the New Englanders : and when Sweden in
a few years lost much of her authority in Europe, her offspring
in America were also attacked. In 1653 there were only two
hundred men, women and children in the colony ; and the
mother country was unable to help them in any way, or indeed
to communicate with them. ' The settled families/ wrote the
governor, ' do well, and are supplied with cattle. The country
yields a fair revenue. ... It is now five and a half years since
a letter was received from home/
Two years later New Sweden was conquered by the Dutch.
The inhabitants remained in possession of their its conquest
estates, and continued to enjoy the fruits of their Dutch,
industry : but the idea of a Swedish empire in the West had
vanished.
The Swedish East and West India Companies also did
not last long. Sweden was already exhausted by the pro-
tracted European strife, and from this time drifted FaU ? the
Scandina-
into the back currents of the world's history, vian Empire.
The effort to become a great power had been too
severe for the strength of Scandinavia ; and the cause of the
failure lay in the want of union at home, and the waste of life
in the wars abroad. At the end of the nineteenth century,
Denmark, the heart of what might have been, and one day
still may be a confederation, preserved as forlorn relics of the
past, Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroes in the north. Santa
Cruz in the West Indies she had owned since 1643 ; St.
156 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
Thomas since 1671 ; and St. John since 1717. Sweden had
lost everything ; and although thousands of Scandinavians
have emigrated to America, and although they have been
among the most useful settlers in the West, it has been their
fate to lose their nationality among that sister race of English
to whom the political power of the continent has fallen.
BOOK IV
THE AMEEICAN COLONIES: 1658-1740
CHAPTEE I
NEW ENGLAND AND NEW YOKE: 1658-1740 *
THE fall of puritanism brought with it the fall of the imperial
ideas that animated Cromwell. In the royalist reaction
which followed, the desire to wrest the new world from Spain,
and to make England mistress of the seas, was again lost.
Charles n. had other schemes on hand. A bribe from Louis
xiv. was more important to the merry monarch than the
greatness of his country. With an inimitable lightness of
heart, he could forget the honour of his people at the kiss of a
courtesan ; he would leave affairs of State to dally with a
prostitute. He followed the primrose path : it was doubtless
pleasant enough. . . .
Nevertheless, the vagaries of a king can neither make the
earth stand still nor a free people turn from its onward course.
The thirty years that the Stuarts were at the court of White-
hall after the Restoration, years of shame as they were for
England at home, were full of progress in the colonies. They
1 Authorities. There is a vast collection of historical literature on the
subject. Bancroft, Doyle, and Justin Winsor are the chief authorities,
as before, with the original writers mentioned by them. The collected
works of the elder Winthrop are still useful, as throwing light on the
early years of New England : the Life and Letters of his son, who also
became governor of Massachusetts in due course, are a less complete
guide to the next generation. The works of Increase and Cotton Mather
are full of interest for the period of the native war and the witch-burn-
ing : Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography outlines, rather coldly, the life
of the early eighteenth century.
157
158 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
saw an extension of British power in Asia, as Bombay was
acquired and the East India Company placed on a firm footing ;
they saw an increase in the African slave trade which, however
disgraceful, still accorded with the moral notions of the age :
and more important, they saw an enormous advance in
America. A charter was granted to Carolina, a vast tract of
land which included not only the present northern and
southern states of that name, but also Georgia, Tennessee,
Alabama, Missouri, Louisiana, Arkansas, and part of Florida,
Texas, and Mexico. And while almost the whole of what is
now the ' solid south ' of the United States was thus marked
out for English influence, Pennsylvania was added in the east
and its capital Philadelphia founded. Further north, the
great corporation of the Hudson's Bay began operations :
New York, the future commercial capital of the North Ameri-
can continent, passed finally into English hands ; and the
settlements in the New England district continued to flourish.
The social life of the latter colonies had already assumed
a distinctive form. The people were no longer exiles when
Life in New the Commonwealth was established in England.
England. At last, they said, the justice of the Lord had over-
taken the false prophets; the wolves in sheep's clothing were
driven forth from the flock of the faithful ; the seducers
of the righteous were hiding under the robes of the scarlet
woman ; the promised land, the goodly land flowing with
milk and honey, the land specially prepared for the favoured
of the Almighty, was now open for the sojourn of His chosen
people. Every minister offered up thanksgivings of unctuous
praise ; every stern old settler who had battled his way
through the hardships of the early years of Massachusetts felt
his heart beat quicker when he knew that the tyrants had fallen
who had forced him to emigrate from the ' dear England ' of
his childhood. The saints of God had conquered.
But when the Restoration came, New England anticipated
with sorrow a return of the evil days. The puritans had
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 159
reason to dread the royalist revenge ; they feared lest they
might be disciplined into the surrender of some of their rights.
Charles n. soon showed his interest in colonial affairs ; and it
was some time before the colonists could bereassured, especially
since the king was lavish in granting to courtiers territories
already incorporated by charter.
But meanwhile the settlements advanced : and as the first
generation of native-born Americans grew to manhood there
were naturally some changes in their outlook on political life.
It seems probable that a good deal of the original resentment
against the English Government vanished when there was no
longer a personal grievance with each individual ; but equally
so a good deal of the affection for England herself must also
have vanished. The feeling of independence which had been
shown in the federation of the colonies was generally main-
tained ; and there were many disputes as to the extent of
British authority. Alater English writer of 1731 remarked that
' New England has shown an uncommon stiffness in affairs ' ;
and he had already begun to speculate about the possibilities
of rebellion, in the fatal spirit which believes that ' a small
squadron of light frigates would entirely cut off their trade/
and the matter be ended thereby. 1
In spite of almost republican institutions, the governments
of New England were in reality theocracies ; the ministers of
religion were the most powerful men in the com- KS Religious
munity. There were occasional signs, indeed, of a condition,
reaction against them : in 1646, for instance, a law was drawn
up to relax the condition which required every freeman to be a
churchgoer. But it seems not to have passed ; and some
time after, a few who petitioned for the right of unconditional
citizenship were tried and punished.
Religion pervaded every action ; there was still the feeling
1 See The Trade and Navigation of Oreat Britain Considered, showing
that the surest way for a nation to increase in riches is to prevent the im-
portation of such foreign commodities as may be raised at home. The pam-
phlet is anonymous.
160 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
that New England was ' a refuge for the people of Israel ' ;
and while no tolerance was granted to Catholic or episcopalian,
the puritans were equally strong against unorthodox forms of
dissent. The Quakers met with a bitter reception when first
they came to America. This, however, cannot in fairness be
alleged solely against the puritans, since the Anglicans even
in the little colony of Bermuda were also enemies of the
disciples of Fox.
But the puritan, having won freedom for himself, was in no
mood to grant it to others : he was at least as dogmatic in
defence of the tenets for which he believed he had divine
authority as the Anglican or Catholic. The sentiments of the
community may be judged from a book published in the year
1645. It was written indeed by a minister of religion, but it
was popular for very long among all classes. ' It is said/
wrote the author, ' that men ought to have liberty of their
conscience, that it is persecution to deter them from it. I
can rather stand amazed than reply to this : it is an astonish-
ment to think that the brains of men should be parboiled in
such impious ignorance. He that is willing to tolerate any
religion, or discrepant way of religion besides his own, unless
it be in matters merely indifferent, either doubts of his own, or
is not sincere in it/
Such sentiments might have won praise from a Torquemada
or a Dominic ; they were incongruous among those who had
The increas- rebelled in order to obtain liberty of conscience.
to^oTerate*" But *^ e intolerance so openly expressed and so
views. unequivocally accepted was, however, not only
a sign of the narrow views of the people. It was also
a proof that the new latitudinarian school of thought had
already made itself felt. Henceforth the struggle in New
England was between strict puritanism and those who wished
either to compromise, or to allow fuller religious liberty, or by
recognising other sects to destroy the absolute ascendency
which the clergy of the dominant belief then exercised.
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 161
All those who were discontented naturally joined forces.
There were some who had always adhered to another creed,
in spite of the political disfranchisement it involved. There
were some who were dissatisfied with the doctrines officially
taught. There were some who hated the general restrictions
and the rigid puritan rule of life. There were some, but pro-
bably few, who were influenced by the abstract considerations
raised by men like Jeremy Taylor in England. Together
they made a considerable number, although far from equal
to those holding orthodox views. But the latter did not
increase as time went on ; the former did.
The lamentations of the clergy thirty years later shows
that the progress of the seceders was considerable. They were
branded by the synod as ' the corrupting gangrene, the in-
fecting spreading plague, the provoking image of jealousy set
up before the Lord, the accursed thing which hath provoked
divine wrath, and doth threaten further destruction/ The
increasing strength of the language used by the clergy marks
the gradual decay of their power ; and the persecution and
burning of the witches was practically the last open attempt
to enforce their authority, by emphasising the literal inter-
pretation of the Bible and playing on the fears of the less
intelligent among the people.
The treatment of the witches, however, throws such a
strong light on the state of opinion in New Puritan
-rt ^ j j.i_ L -J. j -ui j 11 -j. Religious
England that it is advisable to dwell upon it Fanaticism,
with fuller detail than upon other events apparently more
important.
It is obvious from the mass of evidence which has accumu-
lated as to the belief in witchcraft and demonology in different
countries, that most of the unhappy creatures who were
accused of being possessed by evil spirits, or of having made
a compact with the devil, were either insane or were suffer-
ing from a physical malady or psychic abnormality which
produced the outward symptoms of insanity. The people of
162 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
the Middle Ages, strongly imbued as they were with the
miraculous conception of the universe, naturally believed
that the person thus afflicted was in league with evil spirits ;
and in their panic they took the most appalling measures to
rid themselves of one who, on their theory, was an extreme
danger to the community. Not until knowledge had ad-
vanced considerably could the baselessness of the theory
be proved ; indeed it still lingers in some obscure parts
to-day.
Protestantism was in itself essentially no more rationalis
than 'Catholicism : the Scottish presbyterian, the Englisi
independent, the New England puritan were at bottom a
strong belitJTwjrjj in miracles as the Spanish Catholic and tie
Orthodox Russian. The intervention of the superhumtn
powers for good or evil wa* an article of faith with all ; anc it
exists, though certainly in a modified form, among them sill.
The modern scientific conception of the universe would tien
have been thought as impious in Bosto^ as m Rome.
In addition, the puritan dwelt in an ntmosphere of religion
as pronounced as that which prevailed in seventeenth-certury
Scotland. His belief gave him strength to re sist civil oppres-
sion in England and to found colonies in America ; hit as
there is no strength without its corresponding ^eamess
existing in the same body, his reliance on ajyi ne %{& m jjj s
own projects made him equally ready to see the work :>f the
devil in the designs of other men. And the hionotony of his
life, from which all forms of pleasure had ^ een resolutely
excluded, left him liable to break out with peculiar violence
whenever human nature asserted itself. His ? a p ses f rDm the
moral code were rare ; but when he fell, as he felj fr Om a greater
height than other men, so he fell also to a great er depth and
since the public sentiment of the community exercised a
strict supervision, he was forced to become a hypocrite as
well. When once civil freedom was secured an( ^ the danger
of attacks from the aborigines died away, ;ne sole form of
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 163
excitement that entered into the life of the puritan was of a
religious character ; and neither the strength of his convictions
nor the general soberness of his thought could prevent that
fanaticism which all experience teaches is the inevitable
outcome of such conditions.
In the case of Massachusetts, a pastor named Cotton
Mather was the direct cause of the campaign against witch-
craft. In 1688 he proclaimed that ' there are The witcn-
multitudes of Sadducees in our day : a devil, in burnings of
Massa-
the apprehension of these mighty acute philoso- chusetts,
phers, is no more than a quality or distemper ; 1 688-92.
men count it wisdom to credit nothing but what they see and
feel ; they never saw any witches ; therefore, there are none/
But according to the clergy, an instance of witchcraft had
already occurred in Boston, which was ' food for faith ' ; and
the age ' was a debauched one ' because it did not believe in
the manifestation. The sermon of Cotton Mather on the
subject was printed and widely circulated : its author declared
that he would look on ' the denial of devils, or of witches ' as
the sign of ' ignorance, incivility, or dishonest impudence.'
Till now New England had remained generally indifferent ;
but in a year or two the book produced its effect. Mather
was determined to rekindle the religious enthusiasm of the
land : ' I obtained of the Lord/ said he, ' that He would use
me to be .a herald of His kingdom now approaching.'
The outbreak came in 1692. The minister of Salem village
denounced his native servant as a witch. Another woman,
probably suffering from melancholia, was likewise accused.
Mather prayed for ' a good issue ' ; the admissions of the
wretched prisoners were published by him as ' the assault
of the evil angels upon the country, as a peculiar defiance unto
himself/ Other accusations were made ; many people were
examined and committed. The magistrates, however, were
reluctant to convict, and the juries at times could not agree.
But the clergy were not content with such results. Even
164 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
though the trial was unfair ' I have confessed things contrary
to my conscience and knowledge,' wrote one of the witnesses,
' through the magistrates' threatenings and my own vile heart '
it was in vain. The prisoners were executed. ' There hang
eight firebrands of hell,' said a minister as he passed the bodies
swaying on the scaffold.
Some twenty persons were put to death ; over fifty were
tortured or terrified into confessing their imaginary crimes.
Still Mather was not satisfied. He hoped ' to lift up a standard
against the infernal enemy ' : he asked for accounts of the
trials that would convince ' one that believed nothing reason-
able ' ; he promised to ' box it about among his neighbours
till it comes he knows not where at last.' By the autumn of
1692, he was ready with a book on the Wonders of the Invisible
World, which he thought should raise ' a pious thankfulness to
God for justice being so far exercised among us.'
The danger for the whole community was now great.
Charges of witchcraft could be launched against anybody in
malice or enmity, and those charges it was extremely difficult
to disprove. To appear as a witness was an easy way of
gaining fame.
But a reaction had already come. ' We know not who can
think himself safe,' said the inhabitants of Andover, ' if the
accusations of children, and others under a diabolical influence,
shall be received against persons of good fame.' The terror
gradually died away. 1 Mather continued in his delusions ;
but his power had gone. And as if in punishment for his
obsession by religious mania, later in life he was himself
troubled by doubts : he confesses in his diary that he had
1 England cannot claim to have been any more enlightened than New
England as regards the belief in witches and witchcraft. Between the
years 1649 and 1685 over three hundred persons were tried for witch-
craft in England ; arid so late as 1716 two women were hanged at Hunt-
ingdon ' for raising a storm of wind by pulling off their stockings, and
making a lather of soap in a basin in league- with the devil.' The belief
in witchcraft lingered on in remote country districts until the end of the
nineteenth century.
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 165
' temptations to atheism, and to the abandonment of all
religion as a mere delusion/ The mental agonies which the
wretched man must have undergone were a fitting penalty
for the misery he had brought upon others.
The failure of Mather's efforts proves that New England,
however provincial and however isolated it might be from
the world of thought, was yet moving in the same social Re-
direction as other countries. The clergy were ^New^
indeed obeyed ; but they could not now go England,
beyond certain limits. A remark by Mather that in a
' country whose interests are remarkably inwrapped in
ecclesiastical circumstances, ministers ought to concern
themselves in politics/ would not have been made unless
they were losing their general grip of affairs.
Nevertheless the sour traditions of puritanism remained
strong during the whole seventeenth century. The hard
Calvinist doctrines were everywhere enforced. The law that
church-membership was essential to citizenship was unaltered
till 1662 ; and even then it was the conditions of church-
membership that were relaxed, and not the law itself, and that
only at the instance of the English Government. As might
have been anticipated, there were those attempts at legislative
restriction that are the mark of a mind honest perhaps, but
limited and narrow to a degree. In the elder Winthrop's time,
there was a serious discussion among the elders whether the
women should be allowed to wear veils. In the year 1634,
the use of gold and silver girdles, hatbands, belts, ruffs, and
beaver hats was prohibited. In 1651 this was extended to
gold lace and great boots, which were confined to the families
of magistrates and those possessing two hundred pounds a
year an enormous sum in New England in those days.
Amusements were rigidly repressed. Dramatic perform-
ances, dice, card-playing, shovel-board, masquerading in vizors,
and health-drinking were forbidden. The wearing of long hair
by men was not allowed, since it was both forbidden by holy
166 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
writ and a relic of the godless habits of the English cavalier.
Dancing was prohibited in inns, although generally allowed
elsewhere ; if hardly considered expedient, it could not be
condemned as unlawful, since it was mentioned in the Bible.
A system of public penance, reminiscent of the Middle Ages
in Europe, was introduced. He who ' behaved contemptu-
ously towards the word preached or the minister thereof/
was labelled a ' wanton gospeller/ A convicted drunkard
was forced to walk about carrying a large red letter D. The
woman who had been incontinent with a redskin had likewise
to bear the figure of her paramour cut out in red cloth on her
sleeve. 1 Liars were punished, first by fine, afterwards by
flogging and disfranchisement. And the legislators of New
England did not stop here. They admonished all and sundry
whom in their exalted wisdom they thought required it.
A woman was cautioned for ' wanton going in company of
young men ' : a man was warned to take heed of his ' light
carriage.' The wonder is that he was able to be cheerful at
all in such dismal society. What the legislature lacked, the
discipline of the Church was ready to supply ; and a formidable
discipline it was, enforced by the pastor, teachers, elders, and
deacons, who were doubtless assisted by the righteous busy-
bodies that flourish exceedingly in every community. A
rate was levied in each township for the maintenance of the
minister as great an intolerance as some of those against
which the puritans had rebelled in England.
It used to be asserted by too zealous protestants that the
detestable assumption of superhuman power and knowledge
Superstition ^7 the clergy was confined to those of the Catholic
and super- faith. The truth is that it is an error inci-
naturaiism. (j en ^ a i o ^ e wno i e profession when not checked
by public opinion ; it lurks equally beneath the cassock of
Rome and the black gown of Geneva. The presbyterian was
1 Readers of Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter will remember a kindred
instance, terrible in its cruelty.
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 167
as ready to see the wrath of heaven called down on the un-
faithful as any papist wonder-worker whom he denounced ;
the New England minister was behind neither. The sermons
of Cotton Mather are full of signal warnings. He records that
when an English girl was carried off in a canoe by redskins,
the soldiers were afraid to fire at the natives, lest they might
hit the girl. ' The Lord will direct the bullet/ cried a minister,
and no harm was done. It was a serious portent when some
mice were found to have eaten Winthrop's copy of the Anglican
prayer book, leaving the Bible untouched. On one occasion,
when two men went gathering oysters, they were washed out
to sea and drowned by their own carelessness ; it was attri-
buted to the fact that one of them had spoken blasphemously
a short time previously. When two antinomians were over-
taken by a loathsome disease, it was not ascribed to natural
causes, but to the fact that they were not puritans. It is a
melancholy thought that human credulity could accept, and
in some places can still accept, such teaching, in spite of the
plain words of Christ Himself to the contrary.
Enough has been said to show that in New England religion
was still one of the chief, or perhaps even the chief, affair of life ;
but it could now seldom degenerate into real fanaticism, and it
became increasingly less likely that it would do so. The
terrible doctrines of Calvin became less appalling as they grew
more familiar ; but it is significant that the growing number
of suicides was noticed by the legislature in 1660.
Yet the fiery faith of earlier days was changing slowly into
a gentle and even pleasing belief, that eventually made some
approach to toleration of other creeds, although the laws
against idolatry, blasphemy, and heresy continued for long on
the statute-book. But freedom of thought, if still trammelled,
was not crushed. In the agitation against witchcraft it is
possible to see the result of a consciousness among the clerical
element that their influence was declining, and a violent
attempt to restore and increase their authority. The fact
168 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
that they failed in the end to establish a permanent theocracy
shows that New England had secured not only political
freedom, but would in the end secure religious liberty as well.
The natural human emotions, in short, were beginning to
emerge from the torpor to which religious intemperance had
condemned them.
A chill monotony inevitably overlay New England
social life, when such were its conditions. And in addition
the difficulties of communicating between town and town
were very great. The postal service, although better than
that in the southern colonies, was miserably inadequate.
There could be little society, and in any case there was little
scope for social gifts. Perhaps even more significant than the
absence of any but theological books from the colonies was
the absence of musical instruments : the only one of which
any mention can be found during this period in the whole of
New England are some Jew's harps among a trader's stock.
As they do not occur in the inventories of any houses of the
day, there is nothing to show that he succeeded in selling them.
But puritanism or rather the unlovely thing it had
become, not that grand ideal which inspired Spenser and
Education Milton carried within itself the seed of its own
in New destruction. The love of education had remained
strong in New England, if the love of literature
and art had vanished. One of the first acts of the settlers
was to erect a school in every township. In 1636 the general
court of Massachusetts granted four hundred pounds for the
establishment of a grammar-school, and the sum was equal to
a whole year's taxation of the province. The result was the
foundation of Cambridge University. The next year John
Harvard bequeathed to the college a sum of seven hundred
pounds and his library of two hundred and sixty books the
latter almost as valuable a gift as the former. The university
syllabus included Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and the kindred
languages, classics, geometry, moral philosophy, logic and
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 169
natural science. In 1638 the first printing-press was sent out
by the recently founded Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts ; and the same year a complete
translation of the Bible in one of the native languages was
published in itself no mean achievement.
The rapidity with which the country was advancing com-
mercially is best shown by a few examples. The first vessel
built in New England crossed the Atlantic in 1638 ; industrial
by 1665 the inhabitants of Massachusetts possessed Advance.
192 ships of various sorts and sizes. In the same year there
were more than twenty sawmills on the Piscataqua River.
Timber and tar were exported, as well as fish and furs. Rough
cloth was manufactured ; Boston contained a few weavers
and spinners, coopers and shoemakers, and in 1650 a goldsmith.
Although the people did not look for gold-mines, they knew
that there was iron in the colony ; and in 1643 Winthrop
formed a company to work a foundry.
One of the earliest difficulties had been the scarcity of
currency : payment was generally made in goods. Corn
was legal tender in each colony, and in addition, wampum
in some parts, fish or beaver in others. Wages and prices were
regulated for a time by the community without success.
But in 1652 a mint was built in Massachusetts without refer-
ence to England, and from that time the inconvenience of
the lack of money grew gradually less. ' The poor/ it was
stated, ' live by their labours and great wages proportionately
better than the rich by their stocks, which, without exceeding
great care, quickly waste/ The failure of negro slavery to
take root in New England left the white workman independent,
and enhanced the dignity of his work.
The colonies were generally and increasingly prosperous.
The towns were growing larger, and the houses more sub-
stantial. In Boston, at least, the latter were frequently
made of brick, while glass played a greater part in their
construction than before. The population grew steadily ;
170 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS
even when emigration no longer flowed from England, the
natural yearly increment was large.
The puritan colonies produced a race of sound rather than
brilliant men. If it would be too severe to call them mediocre,
there was at least no man of sufficiently outstanding ability
to be much remembered two centuries later. Pious and
God-fearing, yet withal keenly intent on trade and the material
profits of this world, the Yankee emphasised the practical
ability of his English forefathers, while losing perhaps some of
their never too conspicuous idealism.
As the great peaceful revolution making for religious
toleration in New England was thus gradually consummated,
The New the social life of the colonies continued with little
System 1 change save that occasioned by natural and orderly
1660. development during the next century, until the
years immediately preceding the wars with France ; but
politically the restoration of the Stuart line brought a new
epoch for all the dependencies overseas.
A new colonial system was now inaugurated. The system
that had at first been adopted for the colonies if it can be
called a system was taken from the earlier English empire
in Europe. The old French duchies had not been interfered
with by Parliament, but were considered the special pre-
rogative of the Crown, or rather of the Kings and the Privy
Council. In this manner Jersey and Guernsey claim to
the present day that they are independent of the jurisdiction
of Westminster. Calais was the one exception, and that city
received direct representation.
The same principle of royal authority was originally ex-
tended to the American colonies. But in the upheaval of the
Civil War at home, the colonies necessarily fell to the control
of Parliament, and at the Kestoration, it would not wholly
abandon them. In 1660, however, Clarendon formed a plan,
that eventually resulted in the constitution of a ' Council of
Foreign Plantations/ ' to sit apart for the most particular
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 171
inspection, regulation, and care of the foreign plantations/
In 1672 this Council was amalgamated with the council of
trade, and henceforth known as the ' Council of Trade and
Plantations/ Three years later, however, the Board was
abolished.
But when the Revolution of 1688 had done its work, it
was seen that some Board was necessary to regulate imperial
affairs overseas. In 1695 the Council was therefore revived,
and it continued with little alteration till 1781, when the
revolt of the colonies made its utter inadequacy visible.
As a specimen of its work, it may be mentioned that one of
the ideas animating it was to consider ' how noxious and
unprofitable persons may be transplanted to the general
advantage of the public and commodity of our foreign planta-
tions/ This was the vicious thought that underlay all our
colonial administration until the middle of the nineteenth
century, when the Australian agitation against the transporta-
tion of convicts finally stopped it.
Apart from this, the new Board would have filled a most
useful place, had the statesmanship of the age been capable
of devising a colonial system satisfactory enough colonial
to satisfy both the mother country and the Aspirations,
, , J . T . . , ., . Jealousies,
dependencies. If its failure was conspicuous andDis-
almost from the first, it must be remembered in
excuse that no nation has yet discovered a final solution.
A colony that has any vitality is naturally enterprising : it
is proud of its success, it reaches forward to further under-
takings, and it hopes for further liberty ; it has its local
patriotism and local aspirations, quite distinct from the im-
perial ideas that may also stir it profoundly. It is jealous of
its honour and its reputation : its very consciousness of the
contrast between its present unimportance and its future
possibilities makes it the more assertive. It is hard enough
to reconcile its aims with those of a distant parent without
occasional disputes and disagreements.
172 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
But if such is the case to-day, much more was it difficult
to form a basis of government that gave the greatest amount of
local freedom and the greatest amount of security to the empire
at large in the seventeenth century. On the one hand, the
people of New England were of unbending material ; they
were still resentful that their fathers had been ' driven out
into the wilderness ' : they had a legitimate and hereditary
distrust of the Stuarts. On the other hand, the British
Government saw, and it is to its credit that it did see, that the
anomalies in colonial administration could not continue.
Neither Company nor proprietary rule was ultimately satis-
factory. The independent colonies were too weak to stand
against an outside enemy ; and the probabilities of foreign
interference became more evident every year, as the struggle
for power in Europe broadened out into a struggle for the new
world as well.
The colonies were none too friendly among themselves.
There was an ancient feud between Virginia and Maryland.
The four New England colonies, although at the convention of
1643 they were ' all desirous of union and studious of peace/
and although they ' readily yielded to each other in such things
as tended to common utility/ still found many subjects of
disagreement. The preponderance of Massachusetts was gall-
ing to the others ; her disproportionate contributions and
allowance towards the general defences were galling to
Massachusetts herself. During a boundary dispute with
Connecticut in 1650, feeling ran so high that import and export
duties were imposed as a penal measure. The general union
was maintained for many years ; but Rhode Island was
not included, and that colony remained an object of suspicion
and jealousy to the rest. When the conquest of New York
was accomplished that province required constant super-
vision. To the north the settlers in Maine and New Hamp-
shire were a cause of trouble ; other parties of pioneers were
reaching out still further and claiming Acadia. And in the
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 173
west, the English were penetrating the forests towards the
Ohio.
Again, in Africa and India there were important national
interests to be safeguarded, that could by no possibility be
looked after by the merchants directly interested. TiieRestric-
The 'Council of Foreign Plantations' would jJJJiS
thus have had a difficult task, had its members Trade,
and the king been possessed of the most exalted wisdom,
the most delicate tact, and supreme practical ability. As it
was, however, the statesmanship of the Restoration period
was remarkable for none of these gifts. Both the good deeds
and the bad deeds of the Council irritated the colonists : the
former by demanding the removal of those religious restric-
tions which puritan sentiment believed to be necessary ; the
latter by imposing commercial restrictions which fettered
the development of American trade. The unwise manner in
which both were insisted on did much to alienate New England:
and the outstanding feature of its history for many years is the
struggle against the encroachments of the British Government.
The Navigation Act of Cromwell was expanded into a com-
plete system; but it was an evil system for the colonies. Cer-
tain fixed dutieswere imposed on colonial imports and exports.
No vessel was to trade with the colonies in any way unless
it belonged to an English subject, and three-fourths of its
crew were English. No foreigner was to trade either as factor
or merchant. A later ' Act for the Encouragement of Trade '
hoped for ' the keeping of the plantations in a firmer depend-
ence on the kingdom of England, rendering them yet more
beneficial and advantageous in the employment and increase
of English shipping and seamen, and vent of English woollen
and other manufactures and commodities, making this king-
dom the mart and staple, not only of the commodities of the
plantations, but also of the commodities of other countries
and places/ To that end no European goods might be brought
to the colony unless first landed in England.
174 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
Only two exceptions were permitted to this system ; and
in 1672 the laws were carried still further, by the imposition
of duties on goods passing from one colony to another. Had
the system been strictly enforced, it would have strangled
American trade ; it was treating the colonies on the evil
principle that Spain had introduced a principle whose
failure should already have been apparent. Massachusetts
protested in vain. It took its stand on the firm ground that,
being unrepresented in the British Parliament, no taxes could
legally be imposed : but when no countenance was given
to this view, the justice of which could not be disputed,
the practice of smuggling became general, and the most
determined efforts of the British Government could not
stop it.
On other points likewise the Council at home strove to
have its way. In 1664 a commission was appointed to
Political inspect and administer New England ; but the
In -*l r rence commissioners were badly chosen, and did little
with New
England. more than annoy the colonists and cause some
scandal. Massachusetts flatly refused to allow the use of
the Anglican Church prayer-book, or to admit the right
of appeal to a superior tribunal in England in legal dis-
putes : and although the former may partly be put down
to theological animus, the puritans were justified in fearing
the effect of episcopacy obtaining a foothold in their country,
seeing what its record had been in England since the Restora-
tion. And as regards the legal appeal to England, the manner
in which the law was administered under the Stuarts was more
than enough to induce the colonies to abide by their own
tribunals.
A further attempt was made to set up the royal arms in
the colonial courts of law, to have writs run in the king's
name, and to march the train bands under the royal colours.
Such efforts were hardly less irritating to the colonies than
those acts of the Council which may be approved in principle,
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 175
but condemned in fact as an interference with the rights of
what had long been self-governed states.
The Quakers were protected for a time, but for a time only :
the king was proclaimed, but it was specially ordered that
his health should not be drunk, as a concession to puritan
scruples. The right of coining money stood over awhile ;
other matters in dispute were left open, and it was declared
that nothing would be done until the colonies had been heard
in their own defence. In 1666, however, a circular letter was
addressed to each of the northern colonies announcing that
further action was about to be taken ; but the war with
Holland prevented the king from attending to such matters
for some years.
But feeling in New England had also changed a good
deal, and that not for the better. There was now a tone of
servility in the communications, that sounds The Charter
strangely from the sons of Winthrop and his ofMassa-
, J . T . , chussetts
fellow-emigrants. It is true that an anonymous annulled,
writer called Phileroy Philopatris spoke in the 1683 -
old manly style when he declared that ' it is doubtful
whether any bond unites the colonies to the Crown, save the
charter : the colony as it stands is a gain to the Crown, and
nothing can make it more so ; if the king uses force, cui bono
to those who can withdraw inland ? All help that the people
have hitherto received is from God, not man ; (they may)
make a shift to live poorly without much trade/ rather than
lose their freedom.
But such was not the prevailing style. On his accession,
Charles n. was saluted as David in addresses of congratulation,
and fulsome flattery was indulged in. Some twenty years
later, a servile letter to the king begged him, ' like a god on
earth,' to ' permit his poor people to enjoy the liberties that
they have purchased at so dear a rate/ It is difficult to realise
that the men who held such language were the descendants of
those who had rebelled against oppression.
176 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
Happily a more healthy tone soon prevailed, and the history
of Massachusetts shows no repetition of such weakness. It
was merely a passing phase, whose cause may partly be as-
cribed to the fear that the infant industries of the country
might be ruined, partly to the inevitable reaction that comes
after civil strife, partly to the desire to live peaceably that
was becoming characteristic of the New Englanders, and in
great measurfe to the disagreements among themselves,
which caused a dissolution of the union of the four colonies,
and numerous petty jealousies and boundary disputes. At
any rate, after years of recrimination with the English Govern-
ment, a writ of Quo Warranto was issued against Massachusetts
in 1683, calling upon the colony to appear on behalf of its
charter. All hasty projects for a compromise failed, as they
were bound to do, since the proceedings were a farce : and the
charter was annulled.
Thus was lost the chief instrument of New England liberties :
but its loss must be ascribed solely to the insane attempts of
the Stuarts to introduce despotism within the empire. A
general campaign had been started against charters and
corporations at home and abroad ; and when the City of
London had its privileges abrogated, no colony could hope for
safety. But happily liberty does not dwell in the script but
in the determination of the people ; and so long as the old
will to be free remained the guiding principle of the English
nation at home and overseas, it was in vain that Charles and
his successor James tried to impose their yoke. For a time,
indeed, Massachusetts made little resistance. The country
seemed stunned by the blow, and it had not yet fully recovered
from the aboriginal war of 1676.
So long a time had passed since the natives had shown a
disposition to rise, that the English in America had forgotten
The Native the danger. The laws relating to the sale of fire-
war, 1676. arms were relaxed ; the white settlements were
scattered far and wide. Some native converts had been made
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 177
to Christianity ; much trade that was mutually beneficial
was carried on. The puritan could honestly declare that
his record was generally clear of ill-treatment or oppres-
sion. His ancestors had had fewer skirmishes with the
natives than the French or the Virginians ; there seemed no
reason why he should fear attack. But in fact there was a
very real reason why the redskins were uneasy. Year by
year the numbers of the English increased. Year by year
the natives diminished. They were already far fewer than
the whites ; in power they had long been a negligible quantity.
Some of them were driven further back as their lands were
purchased ; some of them were hemmed in as the colonies
extended. They saw their ancient patrimony disappearing :
and in comparison, the compensating advantages, of educa-
tion, of religion, of protection, and of alliance, were obviously
small.
It is little wonder that as the tragedy of their peaceful, but
merciless extirpation, dawned on them, they endeavoured to
make one last great effort to save the race. It was in the
autumn of 1675 that the war began, against the wish of the
native king ; and it continued for a year. The result was a
foregone conclusion : but the guerilla attacks, the surprises,
the ambushes, the sudden onslaught and the quick retreat of
the redskins, kept the colonists at bay.
The English were fearful of the tortures to which they or
their children might be put if captured ; the wretched Cotton
Mather did his best to create panic by seeing visions and
portents : but when the tide turned, the misery of the abor-
igines was complete, as they were driven from wood to wood
into the interior, till they at last took refuge in a cedar swamp,
or any obscure hiding-place they might chance to find. ' We
will fight these twenty years/ said one of the chiefs, ' you
have houses, barns, and corn ; we have nothing to lose/
But the contest was hopeless ; the natives were disunited.
Some had remained true to the English allegiance they had
M
178
sworn ; there was treachery among the rebels ; and they
had few arms and not much provisions.
But when the war ended in their submission, New England
was no more the same prosperous country for a while. Entire
villages had been destroyed in Massachusetts ; Providence
was fired, Warwick was no more. The little townships of
Maine and the north were in ruins. There were few families
throughout the whole country that had not to mourn the loss
of one of their members a father or son slain in the fight,
a mother or her child attacked and killed while remaining
defenceless at home.
Yet the war showed the strength of New England as
nothing else could have done. At its conclusion, it was certain
The last that no attack from the natives would annihilate
stuart the colonies ; and the victory had been won with-
the Revolu- out the help of a single soldier from England,
tion, 1686-91. ]\j ew England was therefore self-contained
and self-supporting. As such, and with its sturdy stock of
settlers, it was evident that the spirit of independence
would again grow strong : although there might be hesita-
tion when the charter was revoked, and a wish not to
proceed to extremities while peaceful remedies seemed still
possible, a permanent denial of liberty was out of the
question. Randolph, the English emissary who was em-
ployed immediately after the war to enforce obedience and
to put down smuggling, had found himself baffled ; Andros,
who arrived in 1686 to carry out the inflexible will of James n.,
had no better success.
The latter was invested with almost absolute power. He
could appoint or remove members of the Council at his pleasure.
With their consent a purely nominal provision, since he could
appoint his own puppets he could enforce laws and taxes,
and control the militia. He was to encourage the Anglican
Church. He was to sustain his authority by force. He was
to denounce the meeting of a municipality for deliberation as
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 179
a riot or sedition. The dark and bigoted mind of the king,
which with evil ingenuity had recognised its most potent
enemy, had further devised a restriction still more galling :
no printing-press was to be tolerated.
The colonists, in the scriptural phraseology that was their
natural language, lamented that ' the wicked walked on every
side, and the vilest men were exalted ' : for Andros was a fit
tool for his master. ' Do not think/ said one of the' judges
he appointed, ' that the laws of England follow you to the
ends of the earth/ It was useless to plead the charter, for
it was null and void. It was useless to plead the rights of
freedom : ' You have no privilege/ said one of the Council,
' but not to be sold as slaves/ The Anglican Church service
was performed. The schools, which had been the pride of the
country, suffered neglect and decay. Additional taxes of a
penny in the pound, and a poll-tax of twenty pence, were
imposed. The customs duties were increased. ' Our con-
dition is little better than absolute slavery/ wrote one in-
habitant of Massachusetts ; and what applied to the leading
colony applied to all.
They submitted indeed for a time : they could do nothing
else. But when in April 1689, news of the fall of the Stuarts
reached New England, the citizens of Boston at once rose
against Andros. The old form of government was restored
during the interregnum, and there was ' a general buzzing
among the people, great with expectation of their old charter/
In September 1691, the new charters arrived.
The danger henceforth for the colonies was not that the
despotic rule of the monarchy should be introduced : it
was rather the commercial than the political classes Furtlier
in England that were to be feared. It is true that commercial
their influence was exerted through Parliament ; Restrictlons -
but the post-revolution parliaments were strongly intent
upon commerce. The growing manufacturing interests at
home were seeking out fresh markets everywhere for their
180 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
goods : but above all they wished to be assured of the colonial
monopoly. Sir Josiah Child, in a ' Discourse on Trade/
showed how much England would lose if the colonies started
their own factories ; a few years later, one of the governors
of Connecticut was alarmed at the increase of trade in that
colony, and he reported that ' if allowed it will soon appear
to be a mighty prejudice to the consumption of the manu-
factures of England, which I hope England will never allow
of/ Further taxes were accordingly devised, whose main
result was again an increase of smuggling.
The first causes of the rebellion seventy years afterwards
were already working when the legitimate development of
the empire was thus hampered : the essential doctrine of
imperial maintenance, that only by the free action of each
component part can the whole be held together, was not yet
discovered.
The problem was, however, complicated by another diffi-
culty. The Council of Foreign Plantations thirty years
Continued before had seen the necessity of unifying the
Jealousy and colonies, and since then the situation had become
Distrust. more urgent. The struggle with France had begun
in Europe ; it would evidently continue for many years.
French encroachments were becoming more serious in America.
Yet practically nothing had been done to unify the colonies.
James n. had indeed placed them under a single jurisdiction,
but the arrangement had fallen to pieces as soon as it was
made.
The colonies of New England were indeed populous and
progressive. Massachusetts had some 50,000 inhabitants,
Connecticut more than 20,000, Rhode Island over 7000, and
the independent settlements of New Hampshire and Plymouth
a smaller number. But with divided interests and divided
policy they could do little against the united power of France.
They saw the cloud that overhung them : but the natural
distrust which had been engendered through the action of
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 181
the Stuarts kept them from accepting any plans put forward
by England : their own internal disagreements prevented
them from formulating a successful scheme of their own.
England in the one case, Massachusetts in the other, would
have had too great a voice, if not actually the controlling voice,
in the destiny of the country : and neither plan could be ac-
cepted unless all other means failed. That the problem was
not insoluble must be granted by all who believe to-day in the
federation of the greater British Empire of the twentieth
century : but it was insoluble to a nation animated with the
ideas of the Georgian times ; it was insoluble to a nation
which thought it could restrict its people overseas as they had
never been restricted at home, to a parliament which thought
it could tax those over whom it had no authority, to merchants
who thought that the colonies existed mainly for their own
pecuniary advantage.
Meantime, while New England was becoming gradually
more able to rely on its own resources, the British Tne
Government tried its hand at consolidating the colonies,
colonies of the New York district.
Taken by conquest from Holland, there was still a
residue of Dutch and Scandinavian settlers in the pleasant
lands watered by the Hudson and the Delaware, which
now form the states of New York, New Jersey, and
Delaware. It had been agreed in the articles of surrender
that the customs, the religion, the possessions and the munici-
pal institutions of the inhabitants should continue as before.
Little did they know how much trust could be put in the
word of a Stuart. For a time indeed all was quiet. The name
of Manhattan was changed to New York, and Port The stuart
Orange became Albany, in honour of the Duke of Tyranny
York and Albany, afterwards James n. But all affain>
power was centred in the hands of the Governor and his
council ; and that power was used in the same fashion that
had brought about the Civil War in England, and was later to
182 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS
bring about the Kevolution of 1688. ' The method for
keeping the people in order is severity, and laying such taxes
as may give them liberty for no thought but how to discharge
them/ Such were the instructions sent by Governor Lovelace
to his subordinates in 1669 ; and when protest was made it
was censured as ' scandalous, illegal, and seditious, alienating
the peaceable from their duty and obedience/ and the offend-
ing addresses were publicly burnt before the town-house of
New York.
Unfortunately for the Stuarts, the two nations of all others
least able to stomach tyranny were the Dutch and the English ;
and when the war broke out in 1673 between England and
Holland, the province of New York reverted to the latter
without striking a blow.
At the peace fifteen months later, all conquests on either
side were restored. From that time the provinces of the New
York district remained uninterruptedly in British hands, and
their history till the Imperial Civil War partakes of the
character of the New England colonies in the struggle against
the despotism both of king and parliament.
It was still the wish of James n. to consolidate all the
northern colonies : but the means by which he attempted to
carry out a justifiable and statesmanlike policy were unjustifi-
able in the extreme ; and they miscarried grievously when
tried on the stiff-necked population of New York and New
England.
To the Stuarts, consolidation meant uniformity : but the
northern colonies were not ready for the former, and no
English settlement has ever submitted to the latter. Even a
hundred years later, when the spirit of local patriotism was
beginning to advance into a more general national American
patriotism, it was only with constant friction that the colonies
could co-operate : at the end of the seventeenth century it
was out of the question.
But the ignorance of James 11. was shown as much in his
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 183
dealings with America as with England : in both he followed
the same path, hoping to restrict the people where the cry
was ever for more liberty, and to introduce Catholicism where
protestant feeling was most uncompromising. Andros, the
governor of the New York provinces after their final incorpora-
tion as British colonies, was responsible to nobody save
his master ; and though reactionary and narrow-minded, he
was an honest man. He advised James to concede repre-
sentative institutions to the inhabitants of Long Island, since
they claimed it as the inalienable right of Englishmen : but
James himself disliked popular government of any sort, and
he replied to Andros, ' I cannot but suspect assemblies would
be of dangerous consequence ; nothing being more known
than the aptness of such bodies to assume to themselves many
privileges, which prove destructive to, or very often disturb,
the peace of government,when they are allowed. Neither do
I see any use for them. Things that need redress may be sure
of rinding it at the quarter sessions, or by the legal and ordinary
ways, or, lastly, by appeals to myself. However, I shall be
ready to consider of any proposal you shall send.'
But there was no denying the people : if New Jersey could
not plead its right to possess its own parliament under the
royal seal of the colony, it fell back on the old privileges of
Englishmen : ' the great charter of England,' it was said,
' is the only rule, privilege, and joint safety of every free-born
Englishman/
The same dangers threatened Massachusetts as New
York and its neighbours ; and two events helped to draw
the middle and northern colonies closer together. The gg^yg^
The bonds of common suffering, it might have been Refugees,
said, became the beginnings of the bond of national
union. Like New York, Massachusetts was menaced by the
arbitrary rule of the Stuarts in these years ; all the settlements
on the coast felt the danger of French encroachments at their
rear, and all had reason to fear the native peril.
184 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
By treaties and trade with the latter the menace was
averted, although it hovered over British America like a black
cloud over the water for many years subsequently ; but the
French difficulty was more serious.
Another point that made for mutual goodwill was the fact
that, as New England owed its prosperity to the religious
refugees who had been driven from England by the Stuarts,
so did New Jersey owe much of its prosperity to the Scottish
refugees whom a continuance of persecution under Charles n.
also drove thither. The Cameronians were cruelly hunted
from Scotland, tortured and executed if caught ; the whole
sect was to be extirpated. ' It were better/ said Lauderdale,
' the country bore windle straws and sand-larks than bore
rebels to the King/ There was no more any hope of freedom
for Scotland, when the libertine Charles n. determined on
introducing episcopacy ; and his policy was carried out with
ruthless vigour by his successor.
The Cameronians looked abroad, as the puritans had done :
and from the year 1682 the same tide of emigration flowed to
America as half a century before. In the ' gallant, plentiful '
land of New Jersey, where nature was kind, even to providing
' brave oysters ' and ' brooks with curious clear water/ the
Cameronians found a home ; and after the turmoil through
which they had come, it seemed to them that heaven had
indeed opened out before them.
Peace and plenty were the characteristics of the place in
which they made their homes : there was ' not a poor body,
or one that wanted/ New Jersey was described as a ' terres-
trial Canaan ; the inhabitants were blessed in their basket
and in their store ; they were free from pride : and a waggon
gave as good content as in Europe a coach : their home-made
cloth as the finest lawns : the doors of the low-roofed houses,
which luxury never entered, stood wide open to charity and
to the stranger/
The Cameronians were in most respects as good pioneers as
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 185
the puritans had been. They were of the same hard, un-
bending material, loving toil for toil's sake, caring little for
the refinements of life, or for what men cast in a lighter mould
would call its pleasures. Their religion gave them faith to
build their homes in the wilderness, believing that God would
provide for them as His predestined and elect saints both in
the present and the future ; and the strength of character
which had prevented them from bowing the knee to an auto-
crat in their own country was not likely to desert them when it
became necessary to strike a blow for freedom in another.
All the schemes that were floated about this time for in-
dependent Scottish colonies went astray, whether in Panama,
Nova Scotia, or elsewhere ; but in New Jersey the Scots
became part of a province that had already received its first
shaping from other hands : and while preserving their own
distinctive nationality, the entire burden of responsibility
did not fall upon them. As is the case with the Germans of
modern times, they failed at first in the original work of
colonising, but they proved excellent citizens in a community
that was founded by men with more experience.
For the rest, New York was settled by emigration from
England or New England, and its annals contain few special
features that call for comment. The old Dutch families held
aloof from the newer English and Scottish arrivals : and while
the colonies were still in a state of infancy, there was nothing
to mark out New York City as the future capital of America.
It remained merely the port of the province, as Boston was
the port of Massachusetts.
After the Revolution of 1688, the history of New York and
New England runs in parallel lines, and may be considered as
one. The fall of Andros at Boston was received with joy by
the people of both provinces, for it seemed to mark the end
of tyranny. But their hopes were only partially justified.
From the British Crown there was indeed little more to fear :
the enemyhenceforth was the British Parliament, and it proved
186 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
no less subversive of the liberties of the colonies than the
Crown had been.
But when this factor become evident, the struggle had
already assumed another phase. It was beginning to enlarge
into the demand, half-unconscious as yet, for complete
independence ; but the demand was checked by the danger
that France would in a few years wipe out the whole of the
British states in the new world.
CHAPTER II
PENNSYLVANIA: 1680-1740 1
WHILE puritanism was yet struggling for the mastery in
England, the founder of a new religious sect was born. During
The Quakers the early days of the Commonwealth the first of the
in England. Quakers or Ranters, to give them the derisive
name by which they were commonly known, became notice-
able ; but it was not until the Restoration swept the country
with a tide of reactionary loyalty that their peculiar doctrines
drew attention ; and some years passed before the heavy
hand of the Anglican Church was laid on them.
They were certainly the weakest, and probably the poorest,
of the nonconforming bodies ; their creed of non-resistance,
their consistent love of peace, and their generally inoffensive
mannerisms, 2 would seem as if they should have been immune
from the attacks directed by zealous episcopalians on other
1 Authorities. The Journal of George Fox, the autobiography of
Baxter, and the works of Penn relate the early history of the Quakers in
England. There are many accounts of the persecution to which they
were subjected : the best is, perhaps, the Sufferings of the People called
Quakers, printed in London in 1680, and signed by Penn and others.
Penn's life is told by Hepworth Dixon. The history of Pennsylvania is
given at length in Bancroft and Justin Winsor : other original sources are
mentioned by them in detail.
2 Some of the more enthusiastic converts, however, revealed a good
deal more than the doctrines they professed by running about naked in
the streets ; an exhibition of the inner man that was somewhat too
intimate even for the Restoration period.
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 187
dissenters. But it was the misfortune of the Quakers to
inspire an unreasoning hostility both in England and America ;
and the early annals of the Society of Friends contain little
more than continual sufferings, relieved by the one splendid
achievement of the establishment of Pennsylvania.
The apostle of the new movement was George Fox. His
career was in essentials that of most religious reformers.
In common with them, he saw visions, he dreamed dreams ;
in common also with them, he felt he had a special call from
God to regenerate mankind. His ideas were accepted by
the lowly and the simple ; and a few insignificant congrega-
tions soon held what was prophesied would become the
universal faith of the world. There have been so many. . . .
In an age when theology was the medium through which
new views of life were expressed, the Quaker at length at-
tracted the notice of the government. If the puritans prided
themselves on being the ' peculiar people/ and were full of
the pride of spiritual exaltation, the Quakers made a larger
appeal to all mankind. Their emissaries were despatched to
convert the Turk and the Pope, even to the mythical Prester
John.
Their success in these strange missions was not equal to
their faith ; but they showed by their acts that they were as
firm in their belief as the puritans. ' They are a people/
confessed Cromwell, ' whom I cannot win with gifts, honours,
offices, or places/ In the days of Charles n. the gaols were
filled with Quakers. Their contempt for human authority
and human ceremonies brought them into constant trouble ;
their peculiar dress and form of speech rendered them con-
spicuous ; they were styled ' an abominable sect ' by acts of
parliament ; their principles were declared to be ' inconsistent
with any kind of government/
Yet they alone, of all the forms of religious belief, recognised
in practice the virtue of toleration ; while combating the
errors of others, they never descended to persecution. Among
188 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
all the various shapes which Christianity has assumed, the
Quakers seem to have assimilated most of the spirit of Christ,
and to this day they have departed the least from His teaching.
America was still a land of refuge for the persecuted sects
of the old world, and thither they flocked. But here again
they were outcasts. In Massachusetts they were
examined on the charge of heresy, and either
banished or whipped and imprisoned. As they continued to
enter that province, a deterrent act was passed sentencing
them to death. It had no effect, and four were hanged.
In Virginia, they were fined for absence from the Church of
England under the Elizabethan statute, and were forbidden
to hold their own meetings. A burgess was expelled, ' because
he was well affected to the Quakers ' : many were cited
before the courts as recusants. ' Tender consciences/ said
one of them, ' must obey the law of God, however they suffer/
The only answer he received from the magistrate was, ' There
is no toleration for wicked consciences/
In Maryland they were fined and imprisoned, although
not for their religious belief, but for refusing to undertake
military duty. In New Jersey it was the same. The fanatical
element among them, which was blown about by every wind
of doctrine and attracted by every new scheme of faith, had
certainly committed some excesses, such as to insult the con-
stituted magistrates and ministers, and at times to run naked
in the streets ; but the punishment was altogether dispro-
portionate. The age, however, did not understand tolera-
tion : and it is the peculiar glory of the Quakers that at a
time when the theory was hardly enunciated, they put it into
practice.
With the example of others before them, it was natural
that the idea of founding their own state should arise. The
A Quaker fi 18 ^ outcome was West New Jersey. The whole
state, 1674. district of New Jersey had been English only a
few years, but the danger of Swedish and Dutch colonisation
THE AMEKICAN COLONIES 189
now existed no more, and the French were yet far away. So
suitable did it seem that the western part was bought in
1674 for 1000 : next year the first company of Friends
sailed up the Delaware River, and laid the foundations of
Salem, ' the home of peace/
The basis of Quaker society was democratic freedom.
' We lay a foundation,' ran the message of the proprietors,
' for after ages to understand their liberty as Christians and
as men, that they may not be brought into bondage, but by
their own consent; for we put the power in the people/
For the rest, the first laws followed the common English
tradition ; but on two points they were in advance of the
time. There was no imprisonment for debt, and the orphan
was to be educated by the state.
A spirit of mutual help pervaded the community. ' You
that are governors and judges/ directed a letter from England,
' you should be eyes to the blind, feet to the lame, and fathers
to the poor ; that you may gain the blessing of those who are
ready to perish, and cause the widow's heart to sing for glad-
ness/ These merciful principles were everywhere faithfully
adhered to by the society. Meanwhile amicable relations
were entered into with the aborigines ; Quaker and redskin
greeted each other as brothers.
The colony prospered, and in November 1681, the first
legislative assembly was convened. West New Jersey was
eventually reunited with the rest of the district in 1702, and
no longer remained an absolutely Quaker community : but
a far greater colony of the Friends had already been founded
by William Penn.
If George Fox was the spiritual father of Quakerism,
William Penn was its political genius. A son of the admiral
who captured Jamaica, of comfortable means,
with a career at the Stuart court open and all
the gaieties that awaited a beau of the Restoration period to
entice him, the young man with the sweet serious face which
190 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
was curiously similar to that of Milton was converted to
Quakerism at the age of twenty-three by hearing a sermon in
Ireland. He was turned out of doors for his foolishness by
his father, and imprisoned in the Tower of London by the
ministers of State.
The punishment was of no effect : Penn's time was occupied
by writing religious works, one of which, entitled No Cross,
No Crown, has still a certain vogue. Later he travelled
abroad : on the death of Admiral Penn he was a rich man ;
soon afterwards he married.
He was concerned in the promotion of the West New Jersey
scheme : but many years previously he had been occupied
with planning ' the holy experiment of planting a religious
democracy in the new world ' : even at Oxford he had medi-
tated on it. And the time now came to carry out the idea in
full. Penn had purchased East New Jersey, but this was
extensively settled by puritans, and therefore unsuitable for
the new project. After muchj opposition, he obtained a
charter in 1680 for the territory west of the Delaware, to which
the king himself gave the name of Pennsylvania.
Penn has left a record of the event in his own words :
' After many waitings, watchings, solicitings, and disputes in
council, my country was confirmed to me under the great seal
of England. God will bless it and make it the seed of a nation.
I shall have a tender care of the government, that it be well
laid at first.'
The spirit in which he intended to rule is shown by a letter
to his new subjects. ' You shall be governed by laws of your
own making, and live a free, and if you will, a sober and
industrious people. I shall not usurp the right of any, or
oppress his person. ... In short, whatever sober and free
men can reasonably desire for the security and improvement of
their own happiness, I shall heartily comply with/
The territory included a population of Swedes, and probably
some Dutch and a few Englishmen. The first company of
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 191
emigrants brought full instructions with them. The redskins
were conciliated by a letter of friendship. The proposed
system of government was made public. A free society of
traders was organised. The ' free colony for all mankind '
was thus begun : shortly afterwards, in October 1682, Penn
himself arrived.
Addressing his people and visiting the neighbouring states
occupied his first weeks in America ; a little later a treaty
was concluded with the natives, the details of which are still
preserved by a beautiful tradition. ' We meet/ said Penn to
them, ' on the broad pathway of good faith and good will :
no advantage shall be taken on either side, but all shall be
openness and love. I will not call you children, for parents
sometimes chide their children too severely ; nor brothers
only, for brothers differ. The friendship between you and
me I will not compare to a chain, for that the rains might
rust or the falling tree might break. We are the same as if
one man's body were to be divided into two parts : we are
all one flesh and blood/ The response was simple and
sincere. ' We will live/ said the natives, ' in love with
William Penn and his children, as long as the moon and
sun shall endure/
The compact of peace was kept, as it was made, in good
faith : the spot where the conference was held is still marked
by a monument in Philadelphia. The capital city
of Pennsylvania had already been the subject of
anxious thought to the founder of the colony. It was to bear
the mark of the Quakers : it must be in a convenient and
healthy position, accessible to trade by land and water ; yet
withal it was to be different from the towns of the old
world. It was to have none of their crowded narrow ways, their
insanitary conditions, their slums, their dens of vice : it was
to be ' a greene country town/ each house surrounded by a
garden, each street a broad avenue, running parallel with and
at right angles to the others. The love of order and comfort
192
which characterised the Society of Friends was to be main-
tained in its very plan.
All these conditions Philadelphia fulfilled. The site, in
Penn's own words, was ' not surpassed by any one among all
the many places he had seen in the world.' Early in the year
1683, the first streets were marked out ; by August, a few
cottages had already been built. Two years more, and it
contained some six hundred houses, a school, and a printing-
press.
From the day of its foundation Philadelphia prospered.
Pleasant suburbs grew up ; the Swedish settlers were located
in their own quarter of Southwark, the Germans in German-
town. There was soon a large foreign population ; the
oppressed sects of all Europe flocked thither.
Ideally situated at the mouth of the Delaware River,
midway between the northern colonies and the southern
plantations, Philadelphia was for long the real metropolis of
British America. The busy manufacturing city of to-day,
surpassed in size only by New York and Chicago, has indeed
little in common with the home of the Friends established by
Penn. The enormous riches of the colony attracted many
besides Quakers ; as industry developed, the distinctly
religious element became less and less important. If modern
Philadelphia has slums, it is because every other commercial
centre throughout the world has them also : but it is a sad
commentary on the futility of human aspirations that the
' city of brotherly love 'lias been degraded into one of the most
notorious examples of municipal corruption : ' hell with the
lid off ' is a twentieth-century American phrase for a place
which it was hoped would be the abode of democratic justice
and equal rights.
This, however, was mercifully hidden from Penn : when
he returned to England in 1684 he could say that ' things
went on sweetly/ and his parting message to his colony ran,
' Thou, Philadelphia, the virgin settlement of this province,
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 193
my soul prays to God for thee, that thou mayst stand in the
day of trial, and that thy children may be blessed : dear
friends, my love salutes you all/
On the death of George Fox seven years later, his thoughts
also were with his people ; almost his last injunction was to
' mind poor Friends in America/ But the colony was now
firmly established. Its boundaries were settled. Its trade
increased. Slavery in a modified form was introduced ; after
much debate, it was provided that black servants should be
freed at the end of fourteen years' service.
The prosperity of Pennsylvania was too secure to be
endangered by the disputes that arose ; but practical diffi-
culties soon became apparent. The Quaker regulated his
conduct by the inspiration of the inner light : and as the sect
was not exempt from the usual number of foolish adherents,
some remarkable results of the promptings of conscience were
shown. The scandal of a heresy or schism was narrowly
avoided ; but in the progress of time enthusiasm was sobered.
Though still retaining all that was good in the system of Fox,
the exuberant excrescences of behaviour which had character-
ised the apostle of the movement were dropped one by one.
As they approached nearer to the common run of humanity,
the Quakers kept some of their old observances as a tradition :
at the present day, they are very few and very old-fashioned
members who don the distinctive costume ; and their differ-
ence from other creeds is most noticeable in the generally high
standard of morality which is maintained.
A more serious subject of disagreement in America related
to the government of the colony. It was proprietary, yet it
had a free constitution. From such an arrange- Quaker
ment only friction could arise, even under the Government
mild sway of Penn, and with the most friendly disposition on
the part of the settlers.
At the English Revolution of 1688, however, his possessions
were confiscated, since he had been an adherent of the Stuarts ;
N
194
and Pennsylvania passed under royal control. Shortly after-
wards it was restored, but Penn found that the people had
meantime got out of hand. His first act, indeed, had given
them self-government ; his one reservation had been the right
to some unoccupied lands. Nothing could revoke that, nor
did he wish to do so : but the ingratitude and calumnies of
his enemies embittered his later days.
An old man, wearied by the turmoil of change in England,
he returned to Pennsylvania in 1699 to see for the last time
the fruits of his life-work. His wife was dead. His fortune
was gone. Of his children, one was too weak to live ; another
was a rake, and brought scandal on the family name. His
second marriage, though apparently happy, was one of con-
venience only. His family grew weary of the colony, and all
returned to England. Penn himself remonstrated gently
with his people. ' I went thither/ he said, ' to lay the founda-
tions of a free colony for all mankind. The charter I granted
was intended to shelter them against a violent and arbitrary
government imposed on us ; but that they should turn it
against me is very unworthy and provoking ; especially
as I alone have been at all the expense. I assure thee that
if the people would only settle 600 a year upon me as
governor I would hasten over. . . . Cultivate this among
the Friends/
The remonstrance was of no avail ; they would do nothing,
and the last years of the great Quaker passed quietly till his
death in 1718 at his country house in England, playing with
and instructing the children of his second marriage.
The conduct of the Pennsylvanians, it must be admitted,
was none too amiable. At the same time, it is easy to criticise
their harshness ; it is less easy to remember that they were
uncompromising with Penn, not as a man, but as their pro-
prietor. It was an anomaly for a free people to be under a
proprietor ; a proprietor, moreover, who had resigned his
rights^and declared in favour of the liberty of his subjects.
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 195
And Penn was personally popular : on his second arrival at
Philadelphia he had an enthusiastic reception.
The struggle for complete independence continued under
his successors. The settlements were prosperous and con-
tinually extending ; but the unappropriated land belonged
to the proprietor. Here then was a fruitful theme for disputes.
' Popular zeal raged as high there as in any country,' wrote the
agent in 1729 : ' liberty and privileges are ever the cry/
The spirit of unrest was never still : there was ' a most licen-
tious use of thinking, in relation to those powers, most in-
dustriously inculcated and fomented/ There could not indeed
be any peace while the chain remained.
The Quaker was at bottom of the same stuff as the puritan.
Though he detested war, and would not allow an armed force
in his territories, yet the danger of French encroachment on
the Ohio at his rear converted him to a modified belief in the
righteousness of military defence. The pressure that was to
draw the American colonies together was already felt as the
first generation of native Pennsylvanians grew to manhood.
The struggle for full liberty to act and expand had begun.
The disturbance, however, was as yet concealed beneath
the surface, and the people were unconscious of the forces
that were fermenting in their minds. When Benjamin Frank-
lin came to Philadelphia in 1723, he found a happy and con-
tented community. Its customs were somewhat different
from those of his native Boston ; it was probably richer
he noticed with astonishment the cheapness of bread and the
astute young New Englander, by attending steadily to his
business through a long series of quiet years, at length amassed
a fair competence and gained the respect of his adopted city,
without giving an indication in the earlier part of his auto-
biography that either politics or national rivalries ever troubled
the idyllic if somewhat monotonous repose of the peaceful
colony.
196
THE SOUTHERN PLANTATIONS: 1660-1740
THE Restoration of the Stuart line, which was received with
horror and prophesyings of evil in New England, evoked
nothing but joy in Virginia. ' True as the dial to the sun,
although it be not shined upon/ were the cavaliers overseas,
as well as at home ; and they were happy to hear that he
whom they had always recognised as their lawful sovereign
had come into his own at last, that the men who had wrecked
Church and State were in hiding from vengeance.
The annals of both Virginia and Maryland during the century
after the Restoration show a peaceful progress seldom inter-
rupted. There were no more searches for gold on the part of
the settlers. The misfortunes which had pursued Ralegh till
the last ' day of a tempestuous life, drawn on to the very
evening, those inmost and soul-piercing wounds ever aching
while uncured ' which he lamented, no longer troubled the
men who made their homes in the colony he had founded.
The treasure city of Manoa in Guiana for which he had
searched in vain was left to the Spaniards to find ; it was a
different and more contented existence that the planters led.
A marked distinction had been noticeable from the first
between the social life of the northern and southern colonies.
That distinction was now further emphasised, and
a peculiar tone was given to the south by the
adoption of negro slavery. 2
1 Authorities. Primarily Doyle, Justin Winsor, and Bancroft. There
are many references to the foundation of the Carol inas in the English
political writings and memoirs of the closing seventeenth century : Georgia
in the same fashion interested the times of George II. Curious side-lights
on the latter colony may be found in the valuable Journals of Wesley.
Carlyle's Frederick the Great details the cause of the foreign immigration
thither.
2 A general account of the African slave trade and the system of slavery
adopted in the American colonies will be found in vol. iv. bk. xiii. ch. iii.
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 197
Slavery had been known to the Spanish provinces in
America for a century ; and it was successful in those
islands of the West Indies which belonged to England. The
earliest arrival of slaves at Jamestown in Virginia is recorded
in 1620 ; and though for a time they increased but slowly,
they eventually drove out almost all the white labour of the
colony.
The small proprietors could not live when the great land-
owners cultivated their estates cheaply by means of negroes ;
the majority of the white servants were unable to compete
against the blacks ; and the lower classes of the colony were
generally not of high character, being drawn mostly from the
criminals and failures of England. In their place the negroes
offered an economical and efficient substitute ; and despite
the efforts that were made to introduce indentured white
labour by means of bounties, the slaves continued to be
imported. Experience has since proved that slavery will
drive out free labour wherever it is tried ; and the Virginians
could hardly be blamed for taking up a system which offered
them such advantages, even had it run counter to the moral
ideas of the age, which it did not.
In addition, they were practically encouraged by the
Colonial Board which sat in London. They had been at first
supplied from England with rebels, beggars, and vagrants ;
kidnapped children, runaway apprentices, and fugitives from
justice often arrived. These, however, were naturally un-
satisfactory, and the legislature attempted to stop the traffic,
which furnished a lucrative living to many Bristol shipowners.
It died a natural death when negroes were imported ; and
since both Charles n. and his brother were members of the
Royal African Company, which was interested in the tranship-
ment of slaves, there were no questions raised as to the number
a Virginian landowner should employ.
So successful, in fact, did the institution of slavery prove,
that it spread into Maryland, while it existed in Carolina from
198 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS
the beginning, and in Georgia within a few years of its founda-
tion. As each of the other southern states was founded, slavery
was introduced into them, until it became part of the settled
order of things, that remained undisturbed until the civil war
of 1861.
'' ; vi Whatever its ultimate effect might be, slavery brought
immediate prosperity to the south. And it -also perpetuated
Life in the an d deepened the aristocratic feelings which had
south. always been more or less in evidence. The
Virginian planter became the local lord, with far more influence
than the nobility possessed in England. There were no
towns beyond the capital, and no hotels ; but the boundless
hospitality of the planters provided the traveller with all
that was needful. The planters were the magistrates of their
districts, and the greater landowners were very autocrats.
To say that they abused their power at times is merely to
admit that they were human beings : but, upon the whole,
unless self-interest tempted them strongly, their actions
were moderate and benevolent.
Tobacco remained the staple industry of the colony,
although efforts were made to introduce other crops : often,
indeed, it was the sole currency. There were no manufactures,
and everything was imported from England ; the popularity
of Virginian tobacco in Europe furnished ample funds for the
purchase by the planter of the luxuries of the day. The rich
settlers were men of culture, and generally sent their children
to be educated in England, or at least engaged a tutor to come
over ; the negroes were kept in ignorance, and the poorer
whites, who gradually diminished and degenerated into the
' mean white ' of a later day, had hardly any knowledge save
what they picked up by chance, and probably seldom felt the
need of it.
K^The houses of the rich were improved from log cottages into
large and rambling wooden mansions, of a rude magnificence
and comfort, such as Thackeray describes as belonging to the
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 199
Warringtons : 1 these were surrounded at a distance by the
huts of negroes and dependents.
The chief occupation of the gentry was to look after their
estates ; and their recreations were much the same as
those of their forefathers in England, hunting, fishing, and
other sports. An occasional ball or dance, a journey to
Jamestown or later to Williamsburg, perhaps even to Phila-
delphia or New York, an expedition into the forest, or, twice
or thrice in a lifetime, a voyage to England such were the
landmarks in the existence of a southern proprietor.
The political history of the two colonies of Virginia and
Maryland offers few points of interest or importance ; their
gradual development, which from its being un-
noticed by the people of the times, has not been
recorded, would be of far more worth than the acts of the
legislative assemblies or the squabbles with neighbours.
The war with Holland, which terminated in the taking of
the Dutch possessions in America, threatened dangers that
were not realised. More serious was the last insurrection of
the redskins in 1676, which was not got under without the
English malcontents also raising a rebellion, in the course
of which Jamestown was burnt.
The unscrupulous policy of the Stuarts after the Restoration,
in granting whole territories to court favourites, was resisted,
and inefficient and dishonest governors did much to alienate
the colonists from their attachment to the Crown. When
the Revolution of 1689 came, it was accepted without regret,
and the new capital of Williamsburg was named after William
in.
It was there that the first college of the southern colonies
was inaugurated with much pomp, as a university worthy to
rank with those of the old world : but a description of it
some thirty years later by one of its own fellows indicates
1 See The Virginians, which still remains the best picture of southern
colonial life in the eighteenth century.
200 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
that its usefulness was limited. It was said to be ' a college
without a chapel, without a scholarship, and without a statute ;
a library without books, a president without a fixed salary,
and a burgess without electors.' It remained, in fact, the
mere parody of a university : the headquarters of American
learning were in New England.
Virginia had the apparatus of education without the thing ;
Maryland had neither. The colony, indeed, was even worse
provided with towns than its older rival. The
Maryland.
capital till after the Restoration was at St. Mary's,
and consisted of some thirty houses straggling along the
river, standing each about three hundred yards apart.
Not until 1696 was Annapolis constituted a city, and to this
day it has not ten thousand inhabitants. There could be
nothing but rural life in a land whose main industry consisted
in the cultivation of tobacco ; even the road to the capital
was for many years only indicated by notches on the trunks
of trees, and a reward was offered for every wolf that was
captured.
Maryland followed Virginia in the introduction of slave
labour, though in a less degree, as the climate was more
favourable to the whites : in other ways, the likeness to its
southern neighbour became closer. The proprietorship of
the Baltimores, which if mild, had been absolute, was checked
by the Stuarts, and abolished by William in. : and when it
was afterwards restored, their personal influence was gone.
But the religious tolerance which they had established had
already been the means of attracting many settlers : Quakers
and puritans from England, Huguenots from France, sectaries
from the protestant countries of the north of Europe and
from Bohemia ; all arrived, and all were received with indul-
gence. As, however, the protestant atmosphere grew stronger,
bigotry came by its own : the Catholics who had founded the
colony were disfranchised, their creed proscribed, and their
teachers forbidden. Thus did Maryland, which had been in
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 201
advance of the seventeenth century on one of the main points
of freedom, fall behind its own record at the bidding of the
Anglican Church when the eighteenth had already placed
religious belief beyond the pale of political interference.
The outburst of colonising energy after the Restoration,
which was responsible for the Council of Foreign Plantations
in England and the foundation of Pennsylvania, The Caro-
had another result in the establishment of the two Unas 1663>
Carolinas in the south. The district had already been marked
out for settlement in the time of Charles i., in honour of whom
it received its name ; but for many years only a few scattered
huts marked the country between the Roanoake and the Gulf
of Mexico. Its real development began with the charter
granted to eight courtiers of Charles n. in March 1663, by
which they acquired the territories from the southern frontier
of Virginia to the river St. Mathius in Florida. In 1665 the
grant was extended, so that it included all the land from the
Atlantic to the Pacific between twenty-nine and thirty-six
and a half degrees north latitude.
Such an enormous territory was more than an empire in
itself ; but the proprietors were men of large ideas, and almost
their first step showed how great were their expectations.
The sagacious and unscrupulous Shaftesbury, perhaps the most
typical of that detestable race of statesmen evolved by the
Restoration, was one of the patentees ; and he called in John
Locke, the foremost philosopher of the age, to frame the
constitution of Carolina.
The intentions of both were doubtless good ; the result was
neither good nor evil ; it was simply abortive. The funda-
mental fact that laws are born of local conditions and to suit
the necessities of local society was forgotten, as it was two
centuries later in a similar case in New Zealand.
The colony of Carolina was to be divided into counties of
equal size ; it was to contain four political orders the pro-
prietors, the landgraves, the caciques, and the commons.
202 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS
It was to be provided with a parliament, it was to guarantee
toleration ; it was to possess a court for the superintendence
of the press, and another for the consideration of ' ceremonies
and pedigrees/ of ' fashions and sports/
Its theory was indeed perfect : but it had the misfortune
to be launched in an imperfect world. In consequence, it
North was a dead letter from the first, and whatever
Carolina. interest it may have for political thinkers as a
specimen of the highest and most liberal thought of the later
seventeenth century, it had no influence on American history.
Only one of the ' fundamental constitutions ' was put into force
in North Carolina, and that was the one allowing each pro-
prietor to nominate a deputy. The only laws made were :
1. That for five years no man should be sued for debts con-
tracted put of the colony. 2. That all settlers should for one
year be exempt from taxes. 3. That a simple declaration of
mutual consent in the presence of the governor constituted
a legal marriage. It is unnecessary to point out what a
significant index these statutes give to the state of society
and morality in North Carolina.
For the rest, the history of the colony is a blank. Its only
emergence from obscurity is the chronicle of a rebellion, an
outrage, or a native war ; its rulers were dishonest, its pro-
prietors were absentees, and its settlers were generally vaga-
bonds or adventurers, refugees from Virginia or the Barbados.
Eventually in 1729 it was converted into a Crown colony.
The one relief in the dreary annals of North Carolina is
the record left by George Fox of his visit there. The Quaker
George FOX missionary had been travelling in Virginia and
car*oi2a, Maryland, and in the year 1672 he determined to
1672. see the place where some of the refugees of his sect
had gone to avoid persecution.
The country he crossed was wild and difficult. ' Our way
to Carolina grew worse, being much of it plashy and wet, and
pretty full of great bogs and swamps ... we were commonly
203
wet to the knees . . . and lay abroad a-nights in the woods
by a fire/ Yet he found means to deliver his message.
' Many did receive us gladly ... so acceptable was the word
of truth in that wilderness country . . . the people were
tender, and much desired after meetings . . . the world's
people were taken with the truth/ With a few companions,
he crossed the fearsome district known as the Dismal Swamp,
where mournful forests of cypress and cedar droop and sob
over the land for miles. Seventeen years later, Fox remem-
bered the lonely settlers he had visited in a circular letter
addressed to the brethren from England.
But the peaceful Quakers were never many in number, and
they soon lost what influence they might have had when a less
desirable class of settlers appeared. It was licence rather
than liberty that reigned in North Carolina, and the colony
was the least progressive of any in America. There was
no regular minister of religion before 1703. No church was
built till 1705, and no proper court-house existed before 1722.
The first printing-press was set up in 1754. There were no
towns ; Raleigh, the present state capital, was only founded
many years afterwards, and it is still little larger than an
overgrown village. Yet the people were content ; and if we
are to believe the annalist of the place, they thought themselves
the happiest on earth. The inhabitants had been drawn
chiefly from Virginia, and only the least successful and the
least enterprising seem to have come from the premier colony.
Better results attended South Carolina. The proprietors
were more careful to keep control over it than they had been
over North Carolina. Most of their rules were south caro-
just, and many were far-seeing. Unlimited squat- Una > 167 -
ting rights were forbidden. The class of men to be admitted,
and the products to be grown, were carefully regulated.
Towns were to be laid out, in order that there might be
one central place for administration and trade, the want of
which was so greatly felt elsewhere.
204 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
The first inhabitants of the colony came from England and
Barbados. It had been intended to bring settlers from
Ireland, but the state of that country had improved so greatly
that the inducement to emigrate was no longer sufficient.
It was the West Indians who formed the backbone of South
Carolina, and they brought with them a firm belief in the
advantages of negro slavery. The colony accordingly soon
became the stronghold of the system.
The first immigrants, who arrived in 1670, settled at Albe-
marle Point, afterwards called Charlestown. This site,
however, proved unsuitable, and the capital was removed to
its present position in 1680 : from which time it gradually
grew in importance until it became the second city of the
south.
The richness of the soil was at first a disadvantage, for the
bounty of nature discouraged human toil ; and tobacco,
which seemed the most likely crop, was practically monopo-
lised by Virginia.
When cotton was once introduced, however, there was a
steady advance ; and if the supply of negroes ran short,
slaves were made of the redskins. The colony was several
times involved in war on this account : in the conflict of 1716,
two hundred of its people were killed ; but it was in vain that
the proprietors attempted to put a stop to the kidnapping of
the natives.
Industrial progress was generally steady, but it was
hampered by political troubles. Fresh arrivals came from
New York ; French Huguenots and Scottish presbyterians
also reached Carolina, and the proprietors at one time sent
over a number of Irish paupers, who were far from
welcome.
Such a conglomeration of races engendered jealousy :
there were internal dissensions, inflamed by religious disputes.
Other troubles came ; an expedition against the pirates who
infested the coasts, and the native wars, burdened the colony
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 205
with a heavy debt. Once a rebellion was raised against the
proprietors, which was unsuccessful ; but after a time they
became so detested that the Popular Association which was
formed proclaimed the authority of the Crown to be supreme.
The proprietors did not protest, and indeed all the advantages
which they had hoped to reap from the Carolinas had resulted
in nothing : the Crown could not well refuse the allegiance
which was voluntarily offered, even if it had wished ; and
thus the revolution was effected in 1719 which brought
South Carolina under the same authority as the sister
states of America. The process of unification had already
begun.
The last of the southern plantations founded directly under
British auspices was Georgia ; and its history is in some
respects more animated than the dreary records of The Found-
the Carolinas. Its inception was due to a recogni- ^ r ^ a
tion on the part of one man of the evils which negro 1732.
slavery imposed, and of the wrongs suffered by the social
outcasts of England and the religious outcasts of the continent ;
and, as such, the early years of Georgia form a noble effort
and a magnificent protest that unhappily proved fruitless in
the end.
The names of Oglethorpe and Wesley are indissolubly
linked with Georgia, as are those of Fox with Carolina and
Penn with the Quaker colony. James Oglethorpe, of whom
Pope spoke as flying ' from pole to pole/ had already greatly
distinguished himself in English public life and the continental
wars, when, in middle age, he began to investigate a question
which afterwards occupied Howard the condition of the
prisons. The judicial system of the day, full as it was of
injustice, had no greater blot than the scandalous method by
which a petty theft was punished with hanging, while a debtor
was condemned to prison until he paid or died : the prisons
themselves were horrible and pestilential holes, managed with
no regard to decency : the law gave no opportunity to procure
206 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
release, save by the intervention of friends. A debtor has
few friends, and they are seldom less likely to come forward
than at the moment he is incarcerated. Those ' who by long
confinement were strangers and helpless in the country of
their birth ' were to have a new. start in a new country where
their helplessness could not be mocked at ; and the protestants
who were persecuted by the royal house of Austria were also
invited to come freely.
A charter was granted in June 1732, for the colony of
Georgia ; parliament contributed 10,000 : the Society for
the Propagation of the Gospel lent assistance : all the British
philanthropy of the age was aroused.
In November Oglethorpe sailed for America with some 120
emigrants : and soon after their arrival the capital of Sa van-
its Phiian- nah was founded. In a few months the town of
t&ropic Aims. Augusta was laid out, followed by Frederica ; and
before this the first of the Moravian refugees had arrived.
Their simple faith, reminiscent of a quieter puritanism, had
carried them safely through the fresh scenes and the dis-
comforts and strangeness of a voyage ; and they became
peaceful and industrious citizens of the new state.
The redskins were friendly. The work of Oglethorpe was
everywhere appreciated. The governor of South Carolina
declared that ' he nobly devotes all his powers to serve the
poor, and rescue them from their wretchedness/ ' He bears
a great love/ wrote the Moravian pastor, ' to the servants and
children of God . . . others would not in many years have
accomplished what he has brought about in one/
Within a decade Georgia was a prosperous colony ; and it
was said with truth in London that ' no settlement was ever
before established on so humane a plan/ The founders of
Methodism were attracted ; the two Wesleys sailed thither
in 1735, in order, as they said, ' to save our souls ; to live
wholly to the glory of God/ Their first service showed the
eagerness of the people, who ' crowded into the! church,
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 207
received the word with deep attention, and seriousness after-
wards sat on all their faces/
But disappointment came ; Wesley gave offence, and
being unable to preach to the redskins, who had not ' the
least desire of being instructed/ he returned to The
England. Oglethorpe remained for some years ;
but even before he left, environment claimed slavery.
Georgia for its own. He had been almost the first to see the
dishonour of slavery ; it was his boast that ' the misfortune
if not the dishonour of other plantations, is absolutely pro-
scribed ' in Georgia. It was to be a white man's country,
and such it remained for a few years. But the example of
Virginia and the Carolinas was too strong : three years
had not passed before several ' of the better sort of
people in Savannah ' petitioned the trustees ' for the use of
negroes/
Permission was sternly refused ; and several, believing
success impossible on the old conditions, prepared to leave
the colony. A little later, however, they had their way.
Oglethorpe had gone ; and the opposition of the Moravians
was overcome, on the ground that if the slaves were taken
' in faith, and with the intention of conducting them to
Christ, the action will not be a sin, but may prove a bene-
diction/ Even Whitefield, the evangelist, pleaded for their
introduction. Eventually, slave ships from Africa sailed
regularly for Savannah, and Georgia became a slave state
with little to distinguish it from its neighbours.
Each of the southern colonies had sprung from a different
impulse. Virginia was the child of the Elizabethans. Mary-
land was the forerunner of an age of toleration. The south-
The Carolinas represented in miniature the ern Colonies,
greedy and the philosophic forces that mingled grotesquely at
the Restoration. Georgia, again, was the firstfruits of the
philanthropic eighteenth century. The four differed funda-
mentally from each other at their foundation and for many
208 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
years after ; yet did the chain of circumstance envelop them,
and a common want produce a common interest. Tobacco
was the product of the two first ; rice and cotton of the two
last. For all, negro labour was cheaper and better than
white : and negro labour accordingly was procured.
A further tie that bound them together was a common
danger that now threatened from without. The French were
blocking the way inland : the Spaniards prevented expansion
southwards, and indeed claimed the very soil on which they
stood. The great colonial wars were at hand, which taught
all the English dependencies in America to sink their differ-
ences for a time, and stand together. And in these wars
vanished almost the last of the distinctions which had been
so carefully planned : the southern colonies already formed
the nucleus of the ' solid south ' that nearly wrecked the
United States a century later.
On the whole, the English colonies had been materially
successful during the century and a half they had been in
The Scottish ex i s t ence ; and they were now firmly rooted,
settlements, Far different was the result of the first Scottish
attempt at an establishment overseas : the
disasters that overtook the settlement at Darien were
irretrievable.
One small band of ten families that had established itself
in South Carolina as the pioneers of Scottish colonisation
was wiped out by the Spaniards in 1680, but this did not
discourage a magnificent enterprise that was formed shortly
afterwards. An act passed by the Parliament at Edinburgh
in 1695 established a company that was to trade to Africa
and the Indies. Designed expressly to compete with the
English East India Company, it at once caught the
imagination of the Scots, and ' subscriptions sucked up
all the money in the country/ The project was well
formed ; and on the advice of Paterson, the foremost
financier of the age and the founder of the Bank of
209
England, it was decided to erect a house of trade on the
isthmus of Darien or Panama.
Panama and Suez are the natural meeting-places of east
and west : but whereas the latter is now the world's highway,
a peculiar fatality has followed the former and kept it out of
its heritage. It was at Panama that the Spanish explorer
' stood silent upon a peak ' as he first saw the vast Pacific
in the distance, and understood dimly something of its
importance ; and here the Scottish traders, who had sailed
from Leith in the summer of 1698 amid the envious cheers
of their friends, landed to lay the foundation of the New
Caledonia of which they had dreamed.
At first all went well. Two cities were planned, to be
called New Edinburgh and New St. Andrews. The institu-
tions of the old country were to be grafted on the new ; a
branch of the Presbyterian Church was to establish the faith
of New Scotland overseas.
But provisions ran short ; sickness and disorder ensued,
and after nine months, the attempt was abandoned. Three
vessels re-embarked the remaining weak and hopeless settlers,
not knowing whither they should sail or where they might
find a refuge. A second and a third expedition were as
unfortunate. The enmity of Spain was aroused, and they
were forced to capitulate. The Company was bankrupt,
and the people disheartened. The early history of Virginia
had been almost exactly reproduced in the outcome of the
Darien scheme, but the promoters of the latter enterprise
were unable to contribute further.
Such was the dismal end of the first Scots colony. For
many years it seemed likely to be the last ; it was long before
the nation discovered that its genius for pioneering was at
least equal to that of the English.
210 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
CHAPTER IV
THE FRENCH COLONIES: 1663-1740 l
THE hundred associates of Richelieu's company had dwindled
to forty-five before Canada came under the royal control of
the Kings of France in the year 1663. The colony had, in-
deed, been scandalously neglected by its earlier masters, and
despite the high ideal of founding a new Christian realm in
the West, the power of France in America still rested on a basis
as uncertain as it was narrow. Monks and nuns are not the
best pioneers, nor is the cloister the fittest training-ground
for the settler who is to make his home in a new country.
But the chief difficulty which faced the French colony on
the St. Lawrence was the lack of population. In the year
The 1660 the city of Quebec had been in existence
weakness for over half a century ; yet the total number of
j cana a. ^ g i n h a kit an t s was } ess than six hundred. It is
true that the government of Louis xiv. at once took active
steps to secure a considerable increase*of settlers in the pro-
vinces of New France. The king himself paid every year the
cost of emigrating some three hundred men ; and when after
a few years there were many men but hardly any women
in Canada, the deficiency was quickly supplied from France.
Happy indeed must have been the lot of the young ladies
who were now sent out to Canada by a paternal administra-
tion, for they were immediately chosen and wedded by the
expectant bachelors not against the feminine will, it was
1 Authorities. Charlevoix and the other writers mentioned in the
previous section on the foundation of the French empire in America.
The westward and southern movement along the Mississippi towards
Louisiana is treated by Bancroft and Justin Winsor. The history of the
Scottish failure in Acadia is given in full in the Correspondence of Sir
William Alexander ; this, however, with Newfoundland, and the Hudson's
Bay Company, I have reserved for the general history of Canada in the
third volume.
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 211
duly provided by enactment ; and the day after the wedding,
' the governor caused the couple to be presented with an ox,
a cow, a pair of swine, a pair of fowls, two barrels of salted
meat, and eleven crowns in money.'
Further even than this did the state go, in its desire to
increase the scanty population. A system of rewards and
punishments was instituted ; a girl who married under the
age of sixteen was presented with a bounty derived pre-
sumably from the tax that was levied on men who would not
marry at all. If ten children were born of any union, a yearly
pension of three hundred livres was given to the parents, which
was increased to four hundred when the twelfth child arrived.
As the scheme provided for no more, it may be assumed that
a dozen children were considered the limit of a citizen's duty
or capacity.
But even with such inducements, the whole population of
Canada in 1688 was only 11,249.
In other ways also the colony was weak. Aristocratic
institutions had been implanted advisedly by the founders.
The system of land tenure was mediaeval. The proprietor
held directly from the king ; the peasant held of the pro-
prietor, and his possession was clogged by the provision that
he must pay part of the rent in produce, that he must grind
his corn at the proprietor's mill, bake his bread in the pro-
prietor's oven, pay the proprietor one fish in every eleven,
and give one or two days' labour in every year to his master.
Independence thus checked found no outlet through freedom
of government. When one of the viceroys instituted the old
French custom of convoking in assembly the three orders
of nobles, priests and people, he was rebuked from Versailles ;
and the experiment was not again tried.
The trade of the colony was small. It consisted chiefly
in the purchase of furs from the redskins : and the merchants
of New England were competing for this traffic more strongly
every year.
212 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
The danger from without hung threateningly over New
France. The efforts of the missionaries had not removed
the enmity of the aborigines, and their attacks were constantly
dreaded at Quebec. In 1682 the settlement on the isle of
Montreal was invaded by the native tribes ; two hundred
men, women, and children were killed or taken away to the
torture.
Nor was New France free from the convulsions of nature.
In 1663 Quebec suffered severely from an earthquake ; to a
superstitious nun of that city ' it seemed to be the eve of the
day of judgment . . . the conversions were extraordinary ;
one ecclesiastic assured me that he had taken more than
eight hundred confessions/ And in the year 1682 the capital
was destroyed by fire.
The colonists were not even agreed among themselves.
There was a constant feud between the Governor and the
Jesuits ; mutual complaints and recriminations were sent
home by each vessel that sailed. The judicial code was too
severe and too much in evidence : the list of punishable
offences was read out every Sunday at the church door.
Many of the settlers would not remain in the colony under
these strict conditions, but escaped to the forests, where they
laughed at the discipline that could not reach them. And
many thought common agriculture beneath them.
With such disadvantages and such sources of weakness,
it would not have been astonishing had Canada remained
Expansion utterly stagnant, and fallen sooner or later a prey
westwards, to the redskins. It is a splendid testimony to the
ability of the few leaders, not merely that they retained the
colony as long as they did, but that to a great extent they ruled
the natives, and for many years seemed to have laid the
foundations of an empire that would eventually embrace
nearly the whole of the northern continent.
At what date exactly the dream of an enormous New
France came, or to whom it first came, it is impossible to say ;
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 213
it probably developed gradually, as one outpost after another
was established in the wilderness. The territories that were
claimed in 1672 are vaguely indicated by the appointment of
Frontenac as Governor of Canada, Acadia, Newfoundland,
and the other countries of Northern France. The Hudson
Bay had already been claimed in 1656, and an empty ceremony
was often repeated in token of possession. Acadia had been
taken by the English, and given by James i. to a Scottish
favourite with the title of Nova Scotia ; restored and again
taken, it was given back to France in 1667. Authority was
also claimed over Newfoundland.
But the most significant move was made westwards
into the interior of the continent. In that direction the first
act of the royal government had been to send out a punitive
expedition against the Mohock tribe. When peace was
restored, the Jesuits again began their work among the
natives. Mission stations were established at Sault Sainte
Marie, at La Pointe on the western end of Lake Superior,
at Green Bay on the foot of Lake Michigan, at Michilimackinac
between the Michigan and Huron.
Such stations could easily be altered, as at a later day
they were altered, into forts. And when about this time
intelligence was received from the natives of a great river
that flowed southwards, an expedition was fitted out to trace
it and its course. In 1673 the Mississippi was found and
traversed as far as its junction with the Arkansas. The king
expressed approval : ' We have nothing more at heart/ he
wrote, ' than the exploration of this country, through which
to all appearance a way may be found to Mexico.' And from
that day the extension of the French possessions in America
was sedulously striven for.
The occasion produced the man. La Salle, a native of
Rouen, was one of those extraordinary leaders who appear at
times among every colonising people. Of the same type as
Cortes, as intrepid as the English adventurers who crossed
214
Australia and Africa, he possessed in addition a faculty as
dangerous as it is valuable, which has been vouchsafed in
peculiar degree to the French. He was animated by the same
vast designs of conquest that Dupleix had in India : with no
assistance from home, and with scarcely any to be looked for
from the settlements already established, he hoped by his
own personal exertions to found an empire. Both La Salle and
Dupleix went far to realise their ambition, but both eventually
failed and ruined the cause they had thought to advance. 1
The first expedition of La Salle left Canada in 1678. After
terrible privations, and the discovery that some of the French
Tne Found- stations in the West had been destroyed by the
Louisiana natives, he sailed down the whole length of the
1682. Mississippi, reaching the Gulf of Mexico in 1682.
A cross was set up bearing the arms of France, and the district
was called Louisiana in honour of the king.
Eeturning to Paris, La Salle was received at court with
more sympathy than had been shown him in Canada. Help
was given : it was arranged that a fort should be established
at the mouth of the river, and it was anticipated that the
enormous new territory would be at least as great a source of
wealth to France as Virginia to England.
But a second expedition was wrecked on an unhealthy
malarial coast far from the river, and La Salle and his followers
were reduced to the last extremity. When all hope of success
had vanished, he determined to penetrate northwards through
the unknown lands that lay between them and Canada.
The explorers travelled long across prairie, swamp, forest, and
savannah ; and it is probable that Quebec would have been
1 The tragic fate which overtook them has made their names memor-
able : a project essentially similar has in a later day only covered its
author with deserved ridicule. Jacques Lebaudy, self-styled emperor of
the Sahara, was in many respects the same stamp of man as La Salle and
Dupleix. He also had the great plans of foreign conquest and dominion :
but in his case an entire absence of common sense and an utter lack of
proportion made him seem rather the hero of a comic opera than a subject
worthy serious consideration.
THE AMEEICAN COLONIES 215
reached in safety had not a member of the band treacherously
shot La Salle as he still pressed onwards.
The province of Louisiana, as the name was understood
in the seventeenth century, applied to the whole of America
west of the Mississippi, in the same indefinite p^,^
manner that the term Carolina was used in colonial
England to cover the continent as far as the Pacific. '
But for years after the death of La Salle, nothing was done
to develop it ; in 1700 none save a few Canadian emigrants
had settled on the site of New Orleans. It was not till 1717
that the city itself was founded.
All this time, however, the French were extending their
power in America, and it is significant of the national tendency
that their policy, directly contrary to that pursued by the
English, was almost exactly the same as that which they
afterwards set on foot in India. The English mixed as little
as possible with the natives, and only enlarged their settlements
when the growth of population made it necessary. The
French, on the other hand, were not secure at Quebec and
Montreal, yet they gradually extended their line of stations
or forts along the great lakes and down the Mississippi and
Ohio. They cultivated friendly relations with the redskins.
They cherished the hope of gallicising them, and finally of
uniting them in one great confederation under French direction,
to be used in expelling the English altogether from America.
For to that it had now come. The old enmity was not
forgotten in the new world. At first, indeed, there had been
the semblance of friendship. The New Englanders Its Animua
had proposed in 1648 to make an eternal treaty against
of peace with Canada irrespective of the exist- En land -
ence of peace or war between England and France in Europe.
But the endeavour was fruitless. Ill-feeling already
existed between the puritans and Catholics of neighbouring
English and French colonies, and the friction was embittered
by the keen competition for the fur-trade. The native tribes
216 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
were incited by one side to attack the other ; and neither
French nor English can plead innocence in this respect.
The English settlements meantime were increasing in
population more quickly than the French, while the vast pro-
jects of the French in the West filled the English with fear,
and became a direct inducement to a closer union of the
northern and southern Atlantic states. And when the French
began to expand southwards from the north, while the
English expanded westwards from the east, it was evidently
only a question of time before the inevitable collision occurred
in the interior of the continent. As early, indeed, as the
first decade of the eighteenth century, it was clear to far-seeing
men that there could be no agreement between England and
France in America ; one nation must drive out the other,
since each menaced the other's existence.
The decisive struggle was averted for some years longer ;
and meanwhile the fortunes of Canada and Acadia con-
industnai tinued with little change. Adventurers fled to
Progress of the woods as of old ; the peasants increased in
Canada. number, and extended the lands under cultivation.
Flax and hemp were grown. Cloth-weaving was carried on.
Leather, grain, oil, and fish were exported to France.
After the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, an insecure peace
settled on Canada for thirty years : and although Newfound-
land, Hudson Bay, and Acadia were now lost to France, hope
was always entertained of their restoration. The total
population of French America increased, but slowly : in
1710 it was little more than fifteen thousand. About thirty
years later, a traveller tells us there were hardly seven thou-
sand inhabitants in the city of Quebec ; but Montreal was
almost as large.
Life, however, was happy. ' In the American colonies
social under the British/ remarked a traveller at this
conditions, time, ' there is a wealth which the people seem
not to understand how to use ; but in New France there is
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 217
poverty hidden under an air of ease which does not seem
forced. The English amass riches, and spend nothing un-
necessarily ; the French enjoy what they have, and often
make a parade of what they have not.' The richer men in-
dulged in a round of gaiety ; the pleasures of the capital were
a rude copy of those at Paris. Side by side with the convents
and the churches which told of the old missionary spirit,
there existed the dissipated upper class whose license and
depravity had much to do with the eventual loss of the
colony.
On the other hand, the industrious country people were the
real backbone of Canada, and, except where they were in close
proximity to the British settlements, they had but small part
in the growing feeling of enmity to England. Far from their
own Normandy, where the lazy Seine meanders among
orchards and meadows, where stately cathedral and quaint
mediaeval city vary the placid landscape with old romance, the
French farmers had found a peaceful home in the West.
They were not yet concerned with the great wars. Some
of the fire of their race was lost in the new abode ; isolated
alike from the progress and the factions of their fellows,
they lived and were forgotten. Idyllic was their retreat from
the tumults of the larger world, and for years it was almost
unbroken. Then the tempest broke, as France and England
contended for the mastery ; and in the struggle hundreds of
peaceful homes were ruined.
The inhabitants of Acadia were driven out ; its very name
was obliterated. But in the curious old villages of Quebec
the traveller can still see the life of the first French settlers ;
and the tragedy which destroyed Acadia has been immortal-
ised by Longfellow, as he recounts the fortunes of Evangeline
and her lover. Other relics of the French empire are yet
visible in North America : in the narrow streets and decorated
houses of New Orleans, in the names of St. Louis, Detroit,
and Louisiana ; but the language, the customs, and the
218
doctrines of old France exist alone in the homesteads of
Eastern Canada. They were the first and the only permanent
Gallic colonies across the Atlantic.
CHAPTER V
ENGLAND IN THE WEST : 1740 *
Two hundred years after its discovery by Columbus, America
was still in the leading-strings of Europe. There was not a
single independent state in the whole continent. But Europe
as a whole took little interest in the West. In England men
spoke vaguely of ' the plantations ' ; the stay-at-home
citizens of France occasionally heard of a far-away, shadowy
New France ; the Spaniard claimed his monopoly and made
his fortune by questionable means. But it cannot be said
that any man thought of the western continent as a factor
of the greatest importance in the future history of the world.
By far the greater part of America was still unexplored.
Scientific expeditions of discovery did not yet exist. The
European colonies, though generally prosperous, were mainly
situated along a narrow strip of coast ; and for long the
1 Authorities. The materials for this section may be found in the
colonial state-papers, in the memoirs and letters of American and
English writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and in the
recognised histories, many of which have been indicated in previous
chapters. The constitutional history of the connection between Great
Britain and the colonies, as also the constitutional history of the colonies
themselves, is unfortunately in a very fragmentary and unsatisfactory
state, and has generally to be sought in the records of each colony in
turn. Seeley's Expansion of England and the works of J. A. Froude
may be usefully consulted in this connection. Happily recent publi-
cations show that, so far at least as Canada is concerned, the void will
soon be filled ; an official series of colonial records is being published
at Ottawa, and Egerton and Grant's Canadian Constitutional Develop-
ment summarises this aspect of the Dominion's history in pre-federation
days. It may be hoped that other colonies will follow so excellent an
example.
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 219
vaguest ideas prevailed as to the general conditions, resources,
and extent of America.
One who had been to Virginia about the year 1611 ' supposed
there may be found the descent into the south sea ... so
meeting with the doubtful north-west passage which leads
into the east of China.' The soil was ' lusty and very rich ' ;
the settlers expected crops of tobacco, cotton, wool, potatoes,
pines, oranges, and French vines, while the old delusive
hope of treasure had not been abandoned ; ' sure it is that
precious metals have there been found.'
It was many years before any suspicion of the agricultural
possibilities of the interior and west were entertained. And
the mere fact that the early settlers expected to find the
precious metals which were afterwards discovered in Nevada
and California proves nothing, for they expected to find
treasure wherever they went. The names of the British
colonies at the rebellion in 1776 show how little the English
movement had gravitated westwards. And when the geo-
graphy of a land is almost unknown, its ultimate possibilities
cannot be greatly appreciated.
But steadily, remorselessly, albeit slowly, the white man
was advancing his settlements. The aborigines were every-
where being displaced ; yet they were still a formidable enemy
and a powerful ally.
In England, the American redskin, or Red Indian as he
was popularly called, was known and caressed as an interesting
barbarian, after Pocahontas had moved the The American
admiration of London in the time of James I. Aborigines.
Many attempts were subsequently made to convert the
American tribes to Christianity ; but all were doomed to failure,
and Pope could depict with truth ' the poor Indian, whose un-
tutored mind sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind.'
The colonists themselves generally troubled little about the
natives ; it was early discovered to be a sound maxim, that
the less the intercourse between them the better were the rela-
220
tions. Acts of treachery were infrequent, taking into con-
sideration the mutual ignorance, the traditions of the redskins,
and the natural distrust of the settlers.
It may be said generally that there was a desire to deal
justly with the original inhabitants, conspicuously among
the New Englanders and Pennsylvanians ; with the southern
planters the feeling was less in evidence. 1 There was even
a sincere wish to purchase the land from the natives ; but
this, however honourable in intention, had small result in
practice, since the natives did not understand the value of
that which they had to sell, and were ignorant of the worth-
lessness of the gifts presented to them ; while the English
undertook a more or less speculative enterprise, and the
uncultivated territories they acquired had a merely potential
value until developed by European labour.
The aborigines, however, are of very secondary importance
in the history of America. Ethnologically they are an
enigma ; and if we disregard the attributes with which
romance has too plentifully bedecked them from the days of
Captain John Smith to Fenimore Cooper, we shall find them
a race far removed indeed from the lowest people in a wild
state, but perhaps in some respects almost as far from the
highest. While different tribes had very different attain-
ments and characters, as a whole they proved themselves
incapable of advancing along their own lines, or of assimilating
the civilisation of a superior nation. In many ways curi-
ously similar to the Maories, they stand perhaps as a whole
on a lower level than the New Zealanders. Their stoicism,
like that of many another undeveloped nation, proves merely
the absence of a highly strung organisation. They could not
combine against the common European foe ; on the contrary,
they fell a prey to the invader by allying themselves with the
1 It was a common proverb among the English colonists in America
that 'the only good Indian was a dead Indian.' But the diseases
which the white man brought with him were as fatal to the aborigines as
his guns and his liquor.
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 221
French or English, and thus they frequently wasted their
strength against each other. They had no settled habitations,
and had scarcely advanced beyond the nomadic state. Their
conception of religion, though vaguely magnificent in a
shadowy fashion, was hardly so high as the Maori. Their
literature, as expressed in such songs and epics as survive,
was certainly less beautiful ; and their language, so far as can
be judged, less melodious. On the whole, the national stock
was less vital.
But the progress of America is not concerned with the
redskins, except in so far as their disappearance indicates
the advance of civilisation. It is the growth of Th e European
the European colonies that is important. Six Colonies,
nations had planted settlements in the West; but by the year
1740 two, Holland and Scandinavia, had already lost theirs.
Of the other four, the condition of the Spanish and Portuguese
lands remained stationary. The French on the whole were
successful in Quebec, and its subsequent history to the
present day shows that the foundations of this province of
New France were well and truly laid. Conspicuous ability
was manifested in dealing with the natives, who were often
induced to serve under the Bourbon flag. The St. Lawrence
was a natural highway, and a line of forts stretched along that
river and through the interior down to the Gulf of Mexico.
A chain was thus formed which marked out the whole of
western and northern America for the French. Unfortunately
for them, the extension westwards was undertaken without due
thought for the frail basis on which Quebec rested, and the am-
bitious policy ultimately led to their ruin. No sign of this, how-
ever, was apparent in the year 1740 : rather did it seem that
they would control the whole continent within a few decades.
The English colo'nies were situated somewhat differently.
If they had no magnificent river which opened up The English
the interior they had at any rate a seaboard colonies,
with many harbours that were ice-free the whole year.
222 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
Communication with the interior was difficult, and not often
undertaken ; but if here the French had the advantage, the
English were better connected with Europe, while the mari-
time supremacy of Great Britain rendered her colonies safe
from naval attack.
But among themselves, the English in America were
disunited. There was an utter lack of homogeneity ; there
was little sympathy between the members of one community
and another. The Virginian planter laughed at the Penn-
sylvanian Quaker and looked with contempt at the puritan
townsman of New England. The latter, on the other hand,
hated the looseness and gaiety of southern life.
The differences between the various English colonies could
hardly be better illustrated than by the influence they exerted
Education on ^ ne m tellectual life of the community. Though
and inteUec- the rich settlers of Virginia were cultured and
tual Life. polite, they had no love for education, or at least
no wish to see it imparted to their inferiors. ' I thank God/
wrote the governor of that province in 1671, ' there are no
free schools or printing, and I hope these hundred years,
for learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects
into the world, and printing has divulged them and libels
against the best government. God keep us from both/
In any case, the form of society, the dubious character
of the lower class whites, the status of the negroes, and the
scattered nature of the plantations, would have made education
a matter of difficulty in the south ; when allied with a spirit
such as this, it became practically impossible. The first
college was not founded at Williamsburg till 1692, by which
time the puritan institution at Harvard was more than half
a century old.
But indeed the puritans had always loved instruction.
' When New England was poor, and they were but few in
number, there was a spirit to encourage learning/ A law was
early Passed, that ' none of the brethren shall suffer so much
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 223
barbarism in their families, as not to teach their children
and apprentices so much learning as may enable them per-
fectly to read the English tongue.' It was ordered that ' every
township, after the Lord hath increased them to the number
of fifty householders, shall appoint one to teach all children
to write and read ; and where any town shall increase to the
number of one hundred families, they shall set up a grammar-
school : the masters thereof being able to instruct youth so
far as they may be fitted for the university.' Learning thus
became a tradition in New England ; and the success of the
modern Yankees may in great part be deduced therefrom.
The standard of education was often higher than in England
itself, and it reached a much greater number of the people.
But, for all that, nothing original was produced in the higher
fields of intellectual work. The plant, so carefully sown
and so tenderly watered, had not yet borne fruit. In thought,
indeed, the colonies were still absolutely under the dominion
of England, and the golden age of art which the philosophic
Bishop Berkeley prophesied in the empire of the west showed
no signs of existence.
Tame and frigid imitations of the classics, the usual works
of devotion, and an occasional inadequate news-sheet, repre-
sented the intellectual life of the English across the Atlantic :
there was no indication whatever that such masterpieces as
Evangeline and Thanatopsis would be produced in America.
The catalogue of a seventeenth-century book shop in Boston
is enough to show the literary taste of the community. Most
of the Latin classics were there, but none of the Greek ; there
was one play by Fortunatus, although Shakespeare was still
tabu ; the Pilgrim's Progress was included, but not Milton :
Drayton and Fletcher were allowed, as well as Fairfax's
translation of Tasso ; sermons furnished the greater part of
the stock.
The books that were read in the south were probably
lighter in character, but it may be surmised that they were
224 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
fewer in number. It was not until some time after the
Revolution brought complete independence that American
literature existed ; the natural soil had first to be conquered
before intellectual culture could have any being.
But the difference between north and south was shown
in religious profession as well as in the system of education
and the different standard of taste : and here again the north
had the advantage, or so at least it seemed to an observer
as acute as Lawrence Washington, who wrote in his diary,
' Pennsylvania has flourished under that delightful liberty,
so as to become the admiration of every man who considers
the short time it has been settled. This colony (Virginia)
was greatly settled in the latter part of Charles i.'s time and
during the usurpation by the zealous churchmen ; and that
spirit which was then brought in has ever since continued,
so that except a few Quakers we have no dissenters. But what
has been the consequence ? We have increased by slow
degrees, whilst our neighbouring colonies, whose natural
advantages are greatly inferior to ours, have become popu-
lous/
The contrast between north and south was in part caused
by climate, in part by the class of men who formed the popula-
Differences tion, and in part by different modes of life. The
between differences were fundamental, and although they
Northern and . ., n ... . , 6 _ J
southern were bridged over during the war with r ranee
Colonies. an( j ^he Revolution, they were by no means
extinguished, or even rendered invisible during those conflicts.
They flamed out again in 1861, and it would be idle to pretend
that they have since died out.
But in the year 1740, if the main distinction between north
and south was already clearly fixed, the differences between
the individual colonies on either side were becoming less
marked. Virginia, Maryland, Carolina, and Georgia generally
stood together, recognising the first as their head ; Massa-
chusetts was the natural leader of the New England colonies,
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 225
with Boston as a central and convenient capital ; while
the intermediate group of Pennsylvania, the Jerseys,
and New York, partook in some degree of the charac-
teristics of both, with a few special features of their own
that had been introduced by the foreign element which still
survived.
The main distinction between south and north may be
roughly stated as slavery and non-slavery. The whole
question of the forced labour of inferior races will Negro
come up for treatment later in this work : 1 but it sl a v eT-
must be remembered here that slavery was only introduced in
Virginia and the sister states after white labour had proved
unsatisfactory ; and once introduced, the negroes spread
rapidly.
They were not, however, unknown in the north, but they
never gained any permanent or secure footing in New England.
Their success in the south was mainly due to the advantage
they obtained over the whites from the climate. The white
landed proprietors were practically forced to become slave-
owners, once the system was thoroughly introduced ; for
although probably few had any real objection to cheap labour
of whatever colour, Georgia was founded on a non-slavery
basis, but was obliged later to come into line with the other
southern plantations.
In the north, as has been said, slavery gained no real hold.
Pennsylvania was the dividing line, with some, but not by
any means a majority of the richer Quakers ItsAbsence
owning slaves ; there were a few cases in New in the
England, but both the public feeling of those Nortl1 -
colonies and the climatic conditions were against the system.
Legislation was passed in Massachusetts to prevent the
increase of black servants ; but this was not on account of
the injustice of the system to the negroes, the consciousness
of which affected the north so profoundly during the nineteenth
1 See vol. iv. bk. xiii. ch. iii.
P
226 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
century. It would be difficult to find any trace of such a
feeling before the Eevolution.
The reasons for which the north disliked the introduction
of negroes were quite other, and at least as well founded.
It was felt that they lowered the general standard of life ;
and along with a certain amount of perhaps inevitable pre-
judice, it was recognised that the presence of an alien popula-
tion, economically inferior if not absolutely inferior in all
respects, was a danger to the community which should be
avoided.
A healthy instinct compelled the New Englanders to do their
utmost to keep the race pure. Intermarriage with the native
tribes was utterly repugnant to them, although that could not
altogether be stopped ; there were some few instances where
the white and redskin were mated. But intermarriage or
illicit intercourse with the negroes could be avoided by
preventing their arrival ; and thus the New Englanders
were saved from any of that racial admixture and contamina-
tion which was so disastrous elsewhere.
In later times the soundness of their position has been
demonstrated, and it has developed into a great ideal in
Australia, where the purity of the race is jealously guarded
and its improvement striven for ; but it is curious to notice
that this question, of supreme importance to a nation that
was to spread into every quarter of the world, was tackled
and solved by one of the first offshoots from the mother
country. The English expansion westwards in America
was undertaken more largely by the people of New England
than by the southerners : and although this may be due
in part to their springing from a more vigorous stock, and
living in a more bracing climate, it must also be allowed
that no race tainted with the blood of a completely alien and
inferior stock would have been able to show the indomitable
energy which subdued a continent within a century.
In the year 1740, however, the River Ohio was the extreme
THE AMEEICAN COLONIES 227
west, and few pioneers indeed had reached so far. What is
now the city of Pittsburg was then a French fort. The vast
stretches of country that lay beyond were track-
less wastes, still sacred to the bison ; never a
European hunter had yet ventured on the Kansas prairie.
The wealth of which Ralegh and his gallants had dreamed lay
hidden unsuspected in distant Nevada and Colorado. And
the true pathway to the Far East for which the sea-kings
had ventured and lost their lives lay, not through a narrow
channel or open ocean, but across thousands of miles of wild
and trackless country, where as yet there was no route, and
where indeed the engineer more than a century later achieved
success only in the face of terrible difficulties after his enter-
prise had been scouted as impossible.
The English population lay along the Atlantic coast ; but
in the townships of New England where the majority dwelt,
one of the most noticeable differences between The Eastern
America and Europe had already appeared, cities.
The cities of New England were laid out on a regular system.
In the old world they had grown haphazard, as occasion
required ; in the new they were planned.
The change was exemplified in the first settlement of the
puritans, as described by a Dutch visitor who saw Plymouth
in the year 1627.
That city stood upon rising ground, separated from the sea
by some twenty yards of sand, and was formed of two streets
crossing each other at right angles. At the point where they
met was the governor's house, and in front lay an open space,
guarded by four cannon, one commanding each way. The
houses were substantial log huts, enclosed with a palisade all
round, a,nd destined later to be embowered in orchards.
There were four entrances to the town, three of which were
guarded by gates, while the fourth was sufficiently protected
by the sea. On a hill at the rear stood a building, that was
used alternately as a fort, a public storehouse, and a place of
228 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
worship. To the south was arable land, divided into small
patches of corn, and further to the rear was the common
pasture, the same ' mark ' that still survives in some English
villages.
Boston, the first city founded in English America that was
destined to become important, had, it is true, the straggling
streets that are associated with old European towns ; but
Philadelphia again was laid out in squares and angles by Penn.
The convenience of the plan, and the limitless space which men
had at their command, soon brought it into general use ;
and it spread into all the new lands which the white man
settled, as well as into some of those older lands which he
conquered, or from which he came.
Many of the American cities impressed European visitors
by their lack of finish, but the gibes which were cast at the
inhabitants were quite uncalled for. Rathershould it have been
a matter for praise that so much had been done in so little time.
At the period of which we speak, however, there were no
signs of the astonishing growth that has since characterised
America. The colonial capitals, however flourishing, depended
entirely on trade; they had few factories, and those few were
small. It is the development of the means of communication
that has been the main factor among many other causes in
accelerating American growth : the facilities, or rather the lack
of facilities of transport, were the same at the fall of the
Roman Empire and at the rise of the English. Not until near
the middle of the nineteenth century did any change take
place ; America before that time was both dependent on, and
isolated from, Europe.
It is undoubtedly the function of history to picture the
life of past ages, as much in the home and the streets as in
the court and the parliament. Unfortunately, the historian
must be diffident as to the possibility of success ; the social
life of the past is far more elusive than its politics. The
latter is merely a question of industrious digging ; the former
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 229
is one of a vanished atmosphere. Nevertheless, an attempt
to vignette two aspects of American life in the eighteenth
century may be permissible.
The Virginian planter lived a life of rough plenty, in many
respects similar to that of the English landed proprietor
from whom he had sprung. His house was not The South-
so elaborate as the Tudor or Queen Anne mansion em *iartr-
of the mother country ; it was a long, low, comfortable build-
ing, open to the air as the climate required, with verandahs
all round. The owner was essentially an aristocrat, having
in place of white servants and tenants a number of slaves to
cultivate his estates and attend to his house ; these lived in
huts or cottages at some distance.
It was both a duty and a pleasure to dispense hospitality
to every comer ; but society was limited, as the plantations
lay at some distance from each other ; George Washington,
for instance, hardly met his relatives once a year. It was at
Williamsburg that the gay functions of the colony took place,
and there the legislature held its session : at other times
the planter was occupied in the care of his estate, in writing
to his agent in England, or in sport.
He had shooting, hunting, and fishing in plenty ; an
excursion to the backwoods, where a few settlers were disputing
the country with the redskins, furnished him with adventure.
In these expeditions, a hard but enjoyable life was led :
' Every one was his own cook/ says Washington ; ' our
spits were forked sticks, our plates were large chips ; as for
dishes we had none/
At home, there was comfort, plenty, and leisure ; but any-
thing that was not produced on the estate had to be imported
from England. When they required a simple book on
agriculture at Mount Vernon, or a machine for rooting up
trees, both had to be obtained from the motherland.
To visit England in person was the wish of every proprietor,
or if he could not go himself, to send his sons there to complete
230 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
their education. He brought up his children on the stiff
English model then in vogue, even to the stately form of
parental address ; he copied English customs, or rather they
had never become strange in Virginia.
The colony was loyal. There was as yet no sign of inde-
pendence, or of any wish for it. England was still spoken
of as home, as it is to-day in Tasmania and New Zealand.
The best example of the affection that was felt for England is
the man who afterwards became the leader of the revolt against
her ; the best example that we have of southern life in one of
its most pleasing phases is in the biography of that same man
who founded the American Republic.
In the north the feeling was different. The Virginian
indeed loved Virginia as much as the New Englander loved
New England ; but he loved England as well with
Tlie Yankee
the sentiment that springs naturally from a rever-
ence for tradition and the past. The New Englander, on the
other hand, possessed a very subdued affection for the mother
country which many of his ancestors had left in anger ;
and the handicap of the tariff laws, which weighed far more
heavily on him than on the Virginian, did not greatly help him
to realise the blessing of forming part of the empire.
But his life was not unpleasant to him. If he lived in
the country, his farmhouse was simple but commodious,
plain but comfortable. If he lived in a town, his house
would be of brick or wood according to his means, containing
little beyond the necessaries of life, and generally less
comfortably furnished than those of the south.
His interests lay in trade or his farm : he was always ready
for a bargain ; he was concerned in the local religious or
political happenings, often taking an active part in both.
Like the Virginian, he awaited with extreme interest the arrival
of the English packet and the London newspapers, and he
had one or two local newspapers at home, which kept him
acquainted with the affairs of the province. Beyond this,
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 231
he had few thoughts. He lived in a stern but homely atmo-
sphere ; he was not particularly intellectual, and his mind
was confined in orthodox channels. Keenly discussing the
local preachers and their doctrines, as is still done in the
more religious villages of the remoter part of England at the
present time ; fearful of but ready to combat a French
invasion, jealous of interference from, but perhaps on the
whole proud of the old country, he was engrossed in a some-
what petty round. He did his duty well as he understood it,
and was faithful to the everlasting laws of heaven as they
had been fixed by puritan divines.
The oversea states of the empire were thus generally
prosperous, and they already bade fair to develop into new
nations. At the same time the danger that Briti8ll
France would overwhelm them was growing ever colonial
greater. The duty of the mother country towards ] lllcyt
them was therefore clear. If she valued her colonial posses-
sions, she was bound to protect them from the enemy which
threatened their ruin ; and she was equally bound to assist
their development by every means that lay in her power.
The government of these colonies should have absorbed
some of the best energies of the best class of Englishmen ;
there should have been a spirit of mutual sympathy between
the English in America and the English in England ; an
imperial ideal should have been the guiding-star of the states-
men of the communities on either side of the Atlantic.
In part, indeed, the duty was fulfilled. England protected
her colonies successfully from France : but as regards any
further interest in their welfare, she proved but an indifferent
mother ; and by her neglect and injustice she had already
sown the seeds of that great disaster which has divided the
English race for ever.
As we trace the constitutional history of the connection
between the American colonies and England, we shall have
to confess with shame that the fault which caused the dis-
232 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS
ruption lay at the door of England rather than of the colonies :
and we shall notice presently that it sprang mainly from the
prevailing ignorance and indifference concerning the colonies
at home, and from that lack of sympathy and imagination
in the national character whose results have so often to be
deplored in our history. England had indeed no settled
policy in the development of her colonies, and she was content
to have none. No English statesman save Cromwell before
the time of the elder Pitt had risen to the idea.
A cynical observer might even now declare that Britain
has not, and never has had, a colonial policy, and although the
assertion would not be strictly accurate, it would contain
enough truth to make it difficult of contradiction. Even
at the present day continuity in colonial policy is not an
accepted doctrine of the state, nor can it be until there is a
clearer conception of what is meant by the term ; and mean-
while we have the spectacle of one British ministry undoing
the work of its predecessors, throwing old settlements into
the melting-pot, scoring petty points over its rivals in opposi-
tion by some miserable sacrifice of imperial interests to the
wire-pullers of the hour. . . .
The earlier colonies, whether proprietary or chartered,
possessed various rights and privileges : but these latter
Early were none f them too seriously regarded by the
colonial Crown that guaranteed them. The divine right to
break their word, to confiscate property, and to
alienate lands that had already been settled, was zealously
guarded by the Stuarts ; nor was there any attempt to
formulate a principle of rule before the Council of Foreign
Plantations was inaugurated by Clarendon. When that
failed, an effort was made by James n. to unify the colonial
administration. Within certain limits, this would have been
an excellent step ; but the last of the Stuarts was the worst
man possible to initiate such a system. His main idea was
to crush the liberties of his American subjects, but it too
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 233
failed miserably. The Revolution of 1688 in England there-
fore came at a time of absolute chaos so far as colonial
administration was concerned.
We shall see in a later chapter 1 that England did not under-
stand the splendour of the empire that had fallen to her. Yet
in a sense she valued her conquests,her settlements, The Value
her ' plantations/ The modern imperial ideal was of the
indeed lacking. There was no conception of a Col es '
confederation of self-governing sister states, all of whom
were responsible for their own acts, and each of whom had
that voice in an imperial council as to the general policy of the
empire which was consonant with its importance within it.
Such an idea would have been ridiculed as preposterous by
British statesmen previous to the outbreak of the Imperial
Civil War in 1775. England, in fact, valued her colonies
for three very different reasons : as a handy place to which
criminals, rebels, and unfortunates might be transported ;
as the source of a steady revenue ; and as a fresh market for
her growing industries.
The first reason was continually in mind, and it became
a tradition in that department of the state which was charged
with the administration of colonial affairs. The ^ Trans-
unemployed of England were sent to Virginia, portation.
the oldest of the American colonies, in the last years of Eliza-
beth. The puritans, as rebels against the Anglican Church,
were contemptuously granted permission to go to Massa-
chusetts in the reign of Charles i. The defeated royalists
and Irish rebels were sent to the West Indies by Cromwell
after the Civil War. The founders of Carolina shipped off
the unfortunates of the Restoration period to their estates.
The advisers of Charles n. were happy to be free of the Quakers
when Pennsylvania was founded. The captives who were
taken in the risings of 1715 and 1745 were sent to Jamaica.
It was an easy way to be rid of a burden, and the habit was
1 See bk. v. ch. iv.
234 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
too deeply rooted to be lightly eradicated. The first use to
which Australia was put was to send convicts to Botany Bay ;
the Falkland Islands were considered valuable on account
of the ease with which they could be turned into a remote
and inaccessible prison ; Tasmania was polluted with the
foulest scum of our gaols ; and when the eastern colonies
of Australia revolted against the system, West Australia
was looked upon as a convenient dumping ground for the
off-scourings of England.
Not until the middle of the nineteenth century was it
accepted as a sound doctrine that each province of the empire
should provide for its own criminals within its own boundaries,
and even then the idea was only received in England because
the colonies refused to accommodate anymore such unwelcome
immigrants.
For the mother country transportation furnished a cheap
and simple solution of a difficult problem ; her failures troubled
her no more. But the policy merely shifted the burden on to
the shoulders of others, who naturally and with good cause
resented it. The labour of criminals and paupers was un-
satisfactory, and dear at any price. The hope that they
would abandon old habits in a new country was generally
illusory. Their presence was a standing danger, and the fear
of a mutiny or a conspiracy was never absent from the place
in which they were domiciled. Their existence lowered the
whole social tone of a colony ; and while professional criminals
brought with them the habits for which they had been exiled,
those paupers who were not strong enough to gain a living in
England were seldom fitted to earn their bread in the rough
and strenuous pioneer work of a new colony. Of so little use
was the presence of both that they were nearly always super-
seded immediately slave labour was introduced.
Thus the first reason for which England valued the planta-
tions was founded on a misconception both as regards the
methods to be taken with criminals and paupers, and the use to
THE AMEKICAN COLONIES 235
which a colony should be put. The second reason, that a
steady revenue could be obtained from possessions overseas,
was even more false in the sense in which it was
, , T , , . ....,.._..., 2. Revenue.
understood. If there is one principle of the British
constitution about which there is no doubt, it is that no
taxation can be imposed without representation. Yet the
colonies were not represented either directly or indirectly
in the British Parliament ; there was neither Colonial Con-
ference nor Imperial Council in which they could express their
views ; their protests were disregarded, and censured as
impertinence or disloyalty. It must be remembered that the
principle was not finally conceded in England itself until
after the Civil War with Charles i. : but, had Britain had her
way, the liberties she had won for herself would never have
been conceded to her colonies. This was the chief cause
among a number that presently brought about the Imperial
Civil War ; it was the main reason for the innumerable
disputes that took place between England and America before
the rupture. 1
The question of taxing the colonies is involved with the
third reason for which they were prized at home. The
oversea possessions of England, if not avowedly 3. New
existing in the eyes of British statesmen entirely Markets,
for the profit of the mother country, as was the case with the
colonies of France, Holland, and Spain, were at any rate
looked upon by the English people as valuable mainly in that
they furnished fresh outlets for our trade. The Navigation
Acts of Cromwell, and the extension of his policy which was
continued after the fall of the Commonwealth, restricted
their commerce, and the tendency was to increase the re-
strictions. The underlying idea was that British products
should possess a monopoly of the colonial market ; the
corollary, that colonial products should receive compensating
1 The whole question of colonial taxation is discussed at length in
vol. iii. bk. ix.
236 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS
preference in the British market, was not always considered
of such importance.
It was regarded as just that Britain should possess the
advantage in commerce, in return for the protection granted
by the British flag to the colonies, and in view of the fact that
the burden of maintaining the empire fell upon England
alone. On a narrow view of the case, this might be correct ;
although it should have been remembered that any law
which hinders national development will always be un-
popular, and will act as a focus of disaffection among
those whom it hampers.
It would be impossible, truly, to put too high a value on
the services rendered by the British fleet to the colonies
during the long wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries ; without that, they would have been attacked
continually by France and Holland. It was solely due to
the supremacy of Britain at sea that the colonies were never
cut off from communicating with each other and with England.
The British army was naturally not of so much use, since it was
small and generally engaged in European operations.
But if the British fleet protected the colonies, the blow it
struck at the enemies of the empire was frequently delivered
on the other side of the ocean. The colonists knew little of
this, and it is natural to depreciate services of whose extent
one is ignorant. They were mostly more alive to the danger
from the French in Canada than from the French upon the
high seas, because the fleet could not protect them from the
former, and it did from the latter. Practically the entire
inland defence of the colonies was usually undertaken by
the colonists themselves : yet they were expected to pay the
mother country for a protection which was often invisible ;
and no attempt was ever made to provide them with a reason
for, or, what was of more importance, a voice in, the payment.
An extraordinary instance of the haphazard manner in
which the empire was built up is afforded by the fact that
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 237
no system of imperial defence had been worked out. The
general responsibility of England to care for her offspring
was admitted ; with the more readiness perhaps on the
mother's side since she derived considerable profit from the
commercial relations with them. The general principle that
the colonies should be to some extent under British control
was also recognised both by them and Britain ; with the less
alacrity on the colonial side since Britain was apt to push
that authority to excess, and rarely to manifest any other
interest in her possessions than in the amount of cash or
goods they sent over.
There was, as we shall see, an almost universal ignorance
of the ' plantations ' in Great Britain. Although most
educated men knew that sugar came from Jamaica, tobacco
from Virginia, and neither from New England, there were few
who understood that different systems of government were
required in the different colonies. The unification scheme of
James n. allowed for no difference of administration between
Carolina and Massachusetts.
Again, any importunate favourite of a minister was con-
sidered good enough to be sent out as a colonial governor :
there could be no better illustration of the contempt with which
the colonies were regarded than the worthless men who were
thought capable of ruling them. The scandals caused by
the venality and incompetence of the king's representatives
in his dominions overseas were frequently distressing, and
they must have been a severe trial to the loyalty of his colonial
subjects. They were to a certain extent nullified by the
carelessness of his ministers at home, who seldom read, and
hardly ever acted upon, the querulous, grumbling despatches
written by colonial governors ; but then neither did they
attend to the complaints, legitimate or illegitimate, of the
colonists themselves.
So far as there was any British policy in imperial matters,
it was one of studied neglect. It was allowed in time that
238 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
the colonies had the right to legislate in regard to their own
internal affairs, subject to the general approval of the British
Parliament ; but peculiar ideas prevailed as to what con-
stituted those internal affairs. They were not to develop their
industries too much, since it was believed that this would be
at the expense of British commerce ; they were not to trade
directly with foreign countries, since this would have been at
the expense of British ports and shipping : and they were not
permitted to fix the amount of their contributions to the
imperial exchequer.
Some examples have already been given of the friction
which arose from these restrictions ; a few further instances
may be adduced. In Virginia it was complained that ' the
Administra- (legislative) Assembly concluded itself entitled
tive Friction. to a n fae rights and privileges of an English
Parliament ' ; and in consequence the Governor reported
the existence of ' faction in the civil government ' ; he saw
' schism creep into the Church ' ; and ' pernicious notions,
fatal to the royal prerogative, were improving daily/ This
was in the oldest colony, that had always been remarkable
for loyalty.
There was a rebellion in Carolina : ' every one did what
was right in his own eyes, paying tribute neither to God nor
to Caesar ' ; and the Governor could not consider ' a country
safe which had such dangerous incendiaries ' within it ; the
people ' refused to make provision for defending any part of
their country/ unless ' they could introduce into the govern-
ment the persons most obnoxious for the late rebellion/
In 1695, the men of. Delaware would have ' their privileges
granted before they would give any money/ This was an un-
heard-of demand, and was refused accordingly ; the colonists
therefore convoked the Assembly of their own right, and
were told in 1697 by the Governor in consequent reproof,
' You are met, not by virtue of any writ of mine, but of
a law made by yourselves/
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 239
The citizens of Pennsylvania had a good understanding
of their rights : in 1693 they declared that ' we know the laws
to be our laws, and we are in the enjoyment of them ; the
sealing does not make the law, but the consent of Governor,
Council, and Assembly/ The Governor of the colony was
unpopular, and he complained that ' My door was never shut,
but it was avoided, as if it were treason for the Speaker, or any
representative, to be seen in my company during your session/
In the New York states it was as bad. Queen Anne dis-
liked the freedom of the press : ' great inconvenience may
arise by the liberty of printing/ and nothing was allowed
to be published without a licence. But the fundamental
principle of liberty had been laid down in New York in 1691 :
' no tax whatever shall be levied on his majesty's subjects
in the province, or on their estates, on any pretence whatso-
ever, but by the act and consent of the representatives of
the people in general Assembly convened/
So strong was the feeling here that in 1697 the Governor
complained to the legislators of the province, ' there are none
of you but what are big with the privileges of Englishmen
and Magna Charta/ Some time later they were censured
as ' very unmannerly ; there was never an amendment
desired by the council board but what was rejected : it is a
sign of stubborn ill-temper/ In 1712 the Governor of New
Jersey burst out petulantly, ' I am used like a dog ; I have
spent three years in such torment and vexation that nothing
in life can ever make amends for it/
Although the Crown always strove to limit the colonial
charters, the colonists insisted on their strict interpretation.
' To give the command of the militia/ it was said in 1693,
' to the Governor of another colony, is in effect to put our
persons, interests, and liberties entirely into his power : by
our charter, the Governor and Company themselves have a
commission of command/
A Governor wrote home in 1703, ' This vast continent will
240 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS
never be useful to England till all the proprietary and charter
governments are brought under the Crown/ The year before,
it had been said, ' This country (Massachusetts) will never be
worth living in, for lawyers and gentlemen, till the charter
is taken away/
We may fittingly close with the scene that took place in
Hartford, Connecticut, in 1693. ' I will not/ said the king's
representative from New York, ' set my foot out of this
colony till I have seen his majesty's commission obeyed/
As it was being read, the drums of the local train-band began
to beat. ' Silence ! ' ordered the Governor. ' Drum ! drum !
I say ! ' cried the captain of the band, and then, turning to
the Governor, ' If I am interrupted again, I will make the
sun shine through you in a moment/ The Governor was
compelled by this audacious threat to return to his own pro-
vince. In such a way did the colonists show their jealous spirit
when their rulers endeavoured to deprive them of their rights,
and to place them under the command of another province,
in defiance of their charter.
In rare cases a good Governor was appointed : in this
category may be placed the one who stated on taking up
office, ' I will pocket none of the public money myself, nor
shall there be any embezzlement by others/ That the declara-
tion should have been made at all is indictment enough of
the system of appointment. Broken-down gentlemen, needy
adventurers, poor hangers-on of great families, composed the
general run of the Governors sent out to the American colonies ;
and we cannot wonder if such men looked at their position
rather as a means of restoring their fortunes than as a public
duty, and only considered the interests of the colonies in a
very perfunctory fashion.
If the Americans objected, as they generally did with
vigour, complaints were sent home that sedition was rife,
that conspiracy was in the air, that the king's authority was
flouted, and that a rebellion was at hand. The general fate
THE AMEEICAN COLONIES 241
of such despatches was to be docketed unread ; but if they
were read, and the minister responsible for the administration
of the colonies found time to attend to the matter, a stern,
harsh Governor of the Andros type was sent out, with in-
structions to repress the evil spirit that reigned in the planta-
tions. The inevitable consequence was a further loosening of
the bonds of empire.
While it was looked upon as exile, and mostly as unwelcome
exile, to be appointed governor of a colony, first-rate men
could not be obtained for the post ; in general it would be
placing an extreme value on their abilities to call them even
third-rate.
That the American colonies were not easy to rule may be
granted. It is not easy to found and retain an empire.
That there were peculiar difficulties to be faced in governing
America properly may be also admitted. The man who
could preside with dignity and social grace over the sporting
and pleasure-loving planters of Virginia would have been un-
fitted for the stern religious and commercial population of
New England. It required a diplomat to smooth over the
racial differences among the settlers of various nationalities
in New York ; a quiet, peaceful being with pietist tendencies
would have been popular among the Pennsylvanians. Such
men could have been found in England, but there seems to
have been no attempt made to put the right man in the right
place. Each colony had a strongly marked individuality,
and it was absurd to send the same official indifferently to
Jamaica or Connecticut.
There were inevitable jealousies between the rival American
settlements. The individualism that is so strongly char-
acteristic of the English people gave rise to The
essentially the same situation as afterwards synthetic
appeared again in the early history of Australia,
when New South Wales, Victoria, and Tasmania resembled
anything but brethren dwelling together in unity. The
Q
242 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
characteristic might be traced back to the first kingdoms
in England itself, when Mercia, Wessex, and Northumbria
strove mercilessly in turn for separate independence and
the overlordship of each other. It was a relic, indeed, of
that old love of isolation and freedom which led each hamlet
in our first ancestral homes on the Elbe to guard itself with
hedge or wall or forest belt, beyond which no stranger dare
come without formal announcement of his presence on pain of
death.
But if each new settlement of the race has begun in isolation
and jealousy of its neighbours, there has always been mani-
fested later a contrary tendency leading to a union or con-
federation of all the separate states. It was so in England
under the last of the Saxon kings. It was so in Canada when
the Dominion that was founded in 1867 linked up the north
of the American continent from Atlantic to Pacific. It was
so in India when successive Viceroys centralised the ad-
ministration of the provinces into one empire. It was so in
Australia, when on the first day of the twentieth century
a united Commonwealth of the whole continent was pro-
claimed ; and it was so again in South Africa eight years
later. It was so in America when the United States emerged
triumphant from the struggle with Great Britain.
In each case but the last there was no break in continuity,
and there need be none. The ordered progress that is the
great glory of English history has never been interrupted, save
in the one instance when the Empire was divided against
itself. And even in that one instance the synthetic movement
towards partial colonial union was visible for many years
before the outbreak of the Imperial Civil War.
The southern provinces of British America were already
being drawn together by the similarity of their industrial
conditions, < which were all based on negro slave labour.
The northern provinces likewise felt the stirrings of mutual
sympathy ; their ancestors had all been refugees, and the
243
younger generation were all wishing to turn the potential
riches of the soil into tangible wealth, but the harsh com-
mercial laws of the mother country prevented them. North
and south were indeed strongly opposed to one another in
feeling, but in the middle as a buffer came the more cosmo-
politan New York states.
Every politician of the middle eighteenth century should
have seen that a confederation of all the colonies must sooner
or later have been formed ; and it should have been the
business of British statesmen to provide that that confedera-
tion came about naturally in the process of time, and was not
forced by external events ; above all, it should have been
their business to see that when it came, the American colonies
remained within the Empire, and were not driven outside it.
British statesmen, however, did nothing of the sort. They
ordered where they should have advised. They repressed
where they should have conciliated. They abused, most
unjustifiably, the cowardice of the Americans, when they
should rather have praised the courage that was shown by
the New Englanders in the invasion of Canada. By such means
they effectually completed the work of alienation ; and the
colonies, albeit with many jarrings, with much conflict of
interests, and after a disastrous war, seceded from the Empire.
We may cast a hasty glance forward at British colonial
policy as it has been since that time. Almost immediately
there was an improvement. Within a very few The Policy
years of the loss of America a constitution was Modern
given to Canada, thanks to the liberal school of Empire,
thought which saw that self-government was as necessary for
the English overseas as for the English at home. Federa-
tion was encouraged, sometimes with excessive zeal ; the
liberties of the colonies were emphasised, occasionally in a
tone which seemed to indicate that Britain would be glad to
see the imperial connection severed altogether. ' Friends
indeed, but better friends if we were parted/ was the burden
244 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
of many speeches ; there was a disposition to enlarge on the
burdens of empire and to forget its advantages. But a great
step forward was made when the first Colonial Conference
was called in the later years of the nineteenth century : it
was a further advance when the idea naturally developed
into an Imperial Council : it will be a still greater evidence
of progress when that idea has taken full root among our
peoples.
The ideal of British imperial policy at the beginning of the
twentieth century was the exact opposite of that which
obtained when the American colonies revolted : it was
elastic where it formerly was fixed ; it gave freedom ungrudg-
ingly where in the old days chartered rights were denied ;
it accepted no contributions save voluntary ones where
revenue used to be exacted.
Too often, indeed, the ideal was not reached. Too often,
it must be confessed, did those whom the swing of the electoral
pendulum had placed in power at home misunderstand the
basis of colonial rule. British politicians at home were
sometimes apt to forget that the British Parliament had no
more right to interfere in the internal affairs of the colonies
possessing responsible government than those colonies had
to interfere in the affairs of the mother country. From
motives doubtless well meant but certainly mistaken, they
were known to advocate a paternal rule over the colonies,
which they would have been the first to resist had they
themselves been colonists.
There was even yet at times a disposition to overlook the wide
distinction between the oversea states of the empire, between
the colonies with responsible, representative or Crown govern-
ment, and the great protectorates populated by alien races.
The first we may advise as a sister ; the second we may
counsel as a mother does a daughter on the verge of woman-
hood ; the third we must rule, lovingly but firmly, as a parent
does a child whose career is yet undecided, but whom it is
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 245
hoped will be trained to walk firmly in the footsteps of its
guardian.
But with the reservation that among many persons at home
ignorance of the outer empire is still colossal ; with the
acknowledgment that even now we frequently show a lack
of sympathy with colonial aims ; with the admission that we
sometimes push to illogical lengths principles which may be
suited to Britain, but would be detrimental elsewhere : with
these shortcomings granted, it must be admitted that the
ideal of empire has advanced immeasurably from what was
considered good enough for the colonies immediately before
the great American wars of the eighteenth century.
BOOK V
THE EVOLUTION OF A LARGER
SYNTHESIS: 1713-63
THE PEACE OF EXHAUSTION : 1713-42
THE Peace of Utrecht in 1713 gave a breathing time to
Europe. At a period when nations were more often at war
than at peace, a few years' truce it can hardly be called by
a different name acquired importance as a means of recupera-
tion. The terrific struggles, protracted from one decade to
another, wore out every one but the kings and generals whose
trade it was. To them a peace was a little longer holiday
than usual before the next campaign.
The plan of this work enables, or rather forces us to
dismiss in a few sentences, projects, negotiations, and cam-
paigns that held the attention of mankind for years. The
internal affairs of Europe are not our concern ; nevertheless,
it is convenient to summarise those events on the continent
which had so great an influence on the outside world. The
justification of the War of the Grand Alliance was the over-
powering strength of France, which pressed upon the other
members of what one may be pardoned for calling the common-
wealth of Europe. The justification of the War of the
Spanish Succession was the fear of the union of the
French and Spanish crowns on one head or in one family
a scheme that remained a favourite one at Paris, even under
the Second Empire in the nineteenth century. Both wars
246
EVOLUTION OF A LARGER SYNTHESIS 247
closed with the Peace of Utrecht in 1713 ; and in both the
decision was deferred till a later period. France was still a
menace to her neighbours ; the Court of Madrid was still
under her influence. The long duel with England was yet to
come.
The struggle that was concluded at Utrecht was but one
of a series ; but it was the first of a new series. The older
struggles of the Middle Ages had been important ^ Con
only as they affected the states which waged tinentai
them. The wars of the Reformation, of which stru ^ le -
religious differences were the real cause, had come to an end.
The wars of which that of the Grand Alliance was the first,
were political struggles : and if not national in the sense in
which the word is used at present, they were at least national
in the sense that a higher ideal of nationality was produced
as they continued their weary course through the century.
As we look back on them, we can see what was hidden from
most of the participants at the time : the evolution of the
larger synthesis which has resulted in the great homogeneous
powers of the modern world, in place of the little states of
the Middle Ages.
The people of the different nations concerned had indeed
small voice in the matter. The disputes of the time were
conducted with little or no reference to the popular wish
if indeed it can be conceded that there was a popular wish,
or that it could find expression. Provinces were carved out
as suited the convenience of diplomats. Rulers were given
to states, of whom the inhabitants had never heard. Monarchs
undertook the government of people, of whose language,
thought and sentiment, they were ignorant. Nations seemed
made for the king, not the king for the nation. But still,
in the wars of the eighteenth century, united nations were
being hammered out of a number of jarring provinces as the
iron is hammered out of its original shapeless mass on the
anvil, unconscious of the higher end to be achieved, but
248 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
perhaps painfully conscious of the inconvenience of the
process. . . .
In another sense, the struggles of the time come in a different
category from those of the preceding ages. In them it was
The World- decided who was to develop the outer world,
struggle. ft was gfciU an open question what nation was to
take the lead in colonising America ; it was still an open
question what nation would secure most permanent influence
in Asia. Africa, it may be remarked in passing, was as
yet considered of small importance. Australia was almost
unknown.
But the European struggle was no longer confined to
Europe : the wars now touched every quarter of the world
where the white man had settled ; the statesman had now to
think not only of Paris and London, but of Quebec and Boston,
of Pondicherri and Bombay. In places, indeed, the struggle
had already begun. The weaker combatants had gone to the
wall. The Scandinavian colonies in America had been
conquered by the Dutch ; the Dutch in their turn had fallen
before the English. But the main contest was yet to come,
both in the east and west, and the whole eighteenth century
was occupied with its decision.
But when Europe as a whole seemed likely to plunge
again into war, England at first held as much as possible
The Peace of aloof . The one thing needful was rest. The
Exhaustion. CO untry had been one of the chief parties in the
recent international struggle. There had been unceasing
turmoil at home for nearly a century. The Stuart dynasty
had brought nothing but civil strife. The danger of invasion
from without and conspiracy within yet hung threateningly.
The ' Bloodless Revolution ' had not brought the millennium
in its train ; and a large party still wished to undo the work
of 1688. An exhaustion that seemed to produce utter stag-
nation crept over the land. There are few years in our
history more uninteresting than the first decades of the
EVOLUTION OF A LARGER SYNTHESIS 249
Hanoverian princes : yet there are few that have had deeper
significance or have laid the seed of more momentous changes.
But for the time England was sick at heart and full of
forebodings of impending ruin. The nation lost its high spirit
for a while. The accession of the new line, peaceful and
assured by Parliament as it was, was not received with
enthusiasm ; and the first two Georges occupied a more
precarious position on the throne than can well be realised
after the lapse of two hundred years. The strife of parties,
the constant struggle between whigs, tones, and Jacobites,
the low state of political and public morals, reduced the whole
people to temporary inertia. The system of subsidies to petty
German states, of hiring their soldiers, of importing regiments
of Hanoverians, of Dutch, of Hessians, whenever danger
occurred, lessened the self-reliance of the nation. Predictions
of the loss of liberty and of commercial bankruptcy were
heard on every side.
In all the memoirs of the age the same sentiment is ex-
pressed. In 1745, Henry Fox wrote, ' England is for the
first comer. . . . The French are not come, God be thanked !
But had five thousand landed in any part of this island a
week ago, I verily believe the entire conquest would not have
cost them a battle.' Horace Walpole thought it ' time for
England to slip her cables and float away into some unknown
ocean ' ; and his feeling was shared by Chesterfield. ' Whoever
is in or whoever is out/ says the latter, ' we are undone both at
home and abroad ; at home by our own increasing debt and
expenses ; abroad by our ill-luck and incapacity. . . . We are
no longer a nation. I never yet saw so dreadful a prospect/
Through these years of depression the ship of state was
steered by Robert Walpole. Coarse, materialist, and a
scoffer as he was, he kept the peace steadfastly for twenty
years, when peace was most needed ; and that is the main,
and indeed sufficient, justification of his rule. The one great
measure of reform that he introduced was unpopular. He saw
250 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
that its enforcement would lead to bloodshed; and accordingly
the Excise Bill was dropped. He would have no part in schemes
of colonial taxation. ' I have Old England set against me/ said
he, ' and do you think I will have New England likewise ? '
His domestic policy was one of inactivity ; and at that
period at least it was the best. The commercial spirit that
was growing up in the nation asked only to be left alone. And
abroad Walpole gave all his efforts to the maintenance of
peace. The alliances that he made were always to guard
against war ; he would hear nothing of schemes of aggression
and conquest.
But the popular temper was slowly rising during the later
years of his ministry. The quarter-oentury of quiet had had
its effect. Even in 1734, the peace then reigning was declared
at the general election to be ' tame tranquillity/ This was
at the time only the factious cry of opposition ; but it gradu-
ally became the cry of the nation, which Walpole was power-
less to resist. Yet he held to his post despite the clamour
against his policy, which grew greater every week : he refused
to give way until the last moment ; and when the public joy
at the announcement of war with Spain broke out uncontrolled,
he exclaimed bitterly, ' They may ring the bells now ; before
long they will be wringing their hands/
It was, in fact, the beginning of a general conflagration
that in a few months was raging equally in Europe, Asia,
and America.
CHAPTER II
THE GENEEAL WAK : 1740-63 1
FOR years before the war actually broke out in 1739,
there had been a feeling of pronounced irritation between
1 Authorities. Stanhope, Lecky, and Carlyle's Frederick the Great.
Anson's Voyages for the great expedition round the world.
EVOLUTION OF A LAEGEK SYNTHESIS 251
Spain and England. The position of Britain had grown
stronger in the West Indies, and she was more ready to protest
against the monopoly of South American trade which Spain
still claimed. From their scattered possessions in those
islands, the English buccaneers had attacked and raided
unceasingly all the Spanish colonies. It is true that they
were disavowed at home ; but nothing was done to stop
their depredations. From the West Indies too the merchants
of England had built up an illicit trade with the towns on
the South American coast. Various restrictions had been
imposed by the treaties of 1667 and 1670 ; and finally in
1729 the South Sea Company was allowed to send one ship
annually to trade with the Spanish colonies.
But the rule was constantly evaded. The one ship indeed
appeared ; but it was always attended by other vessels at a
distance, which supplied it with fresh goods, as its original
cargo was unladen. Thus the limitations became of little
effect ; British merchandise was sold everywhere in South
America, while the Spanish revenues suffered accordingly.
Smuggling was extensive all along the coast.
Spain complained with reason of the breach of faith : but
the Government in London was unable to do anything, if
indeed it had the desire. The Spaniards then introduced a
system of coast patrols to detect illegitimate trade : but
these sometimes exceeded their right, and insisted on search-
ing British vessels on the open seas ; occasionally ships were
unjustly detained and the men severely treated.
Actions of this character gave colour to such complaints
as that of Captain Jenkins, which finally set England on
fire. Early in the year 1738, Jenkins was examined as a
witness at the bar of the House of Commons. He had been
master of a trading sloop in Jamaica, and apparently engaged
in the illicit trade with South America. His vessel was
boarded and searched by a Spanish coastguard. No proofs
of smuggling were discovered. Nevertheless the captain was
252 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
outraged. One of his ears was torn off ; and he was bidden,
according to his own statement, to take it to King George,
and to tell his majesty that were he present, he would be
treated in the same fashion. For seven years the gallant
Jenkins had nursed his wrong, carrying about the precious
ear wrapped in cotton-wool.
But once his story was told, all the grievances of the British
against Spain were focussed into one irresistible demand for
war. With a court as tenacious of its rights as that of
Madrid, and a mercantile nation as enterprising as the British,
the dispute would in any case have been difficult enough to
settle ; but it was complicated by two other grievances
which Spain had against us. The boundaries of the new
English colony of Georgia were not recognised by her ; and
the right of British traders to cut logwood on the Bay of
Campeachy was denied.
Walpole still endeavoured to maintain peace ; but the
Opposition stigmatised his conduct as cowardly. They told
harrowing tales, some of which may have been true, of the
wrongs of English sailors, plundered, tortured, imprisoned in
dungeons, compelled to work in foreign dockyards, confined
in irons, their bodies a prey to loathsome vermin, their souls
a prey to not less loathsome Jesuits. The people as a whole
grew wild for war. When it became known that a convention
had been arranged between the two countries, by which Spain
agreed to pay 95,000 in full settlement of British claims, and
still adhered to the right of search, the indignation was intense,
and Walpole bent before it. War was declared by England
on 19th October 1739.
With the end of the peace he had guarded the influence
of Walpole was gone. His enemies were too strong for him.
The Spanish His health and cheerfulness deserted him. He
War, 1739. clung to office for two years more, but could do
little else than be carried on by the wave of popular feeling :
and at the end of January 1742, he resigned.
EVOLUTION OF A LARGER SYNTHESIS 253
Meanwhile the war had been waged with varying fortunes.
The Spaniards were content with defence. They could do
little more, for although the political state of the nation had
improved under a system which raised foreigners to the
chief places in the state, the previous century of decay and
the long struggle of the Succession War had left an ineffaceable
mark.
England, however, had fitted out two expeditions, both
of which were directed against South America. One under
Admiral Vernon sailed in July 1739 for the West Indies. In
November it captured the unimportant fortress of Porto
Bello after two days' siege. ' They found more danger
and difficulty in demolishing those works than in taking
them,' says a contemporary. The squadron then returned
to Jamaica, and waited a year for reinforcements. When
these arrived, Carthagena was attacked in 1741, but un-
successfully : and after this repulse, a fatal tropical sickness
which laid the troops low ended all hopes of any further
advance.
The other expedition under Anson achieved more brilliant
results, but no permanent conquest. Indeed, the latter was
hardly expected, since the admiral's instructions Jaiaoa > a
were merely to sail round Cape Horn and plunder Voyage,
Peru. After delays in England, and fearful 1741 ' 4 -
storms when passing Tierra del Fuego, scurvy broke out :
and when the fleet put in at the island of Juan Fernandez
the place in which Alexander Selkirk had taken refuge, and
Defoe had been wrongly supposed to celebrate as the abode
of Robinson Crusoe it was in such a pitiable condition that
the whole squadron seemed doomed.
But Anson was not the man to turn back. Only three
vessels and 335 men were now left ; but with this small force
he took many rich merchantmen, seized the town of Paita,
and plundered the coast. His great scheme to capture the
galleon that sailed annually from Manila to Acapulco failed ;
254
but nothing daunted, lie struck directly across the Pacific.
His ship, the Centurion, was now the only one remaining :
scurvy again appeared ; and when they at length arrived in
the Ladrones, the total strength of men capable of service
was reduced to eleven. They were thousands of miles from
home, in an ocean dominated by the enemy, with the nearest
British possession but a trading station in India. Yet amid
all the difficulties and obstacles that surrounded him, Anson
did not falter. The Centurion was repaired ; but a gale
carried her away while the commander and crew were on
shore. In a Spanish vessel of some fifteen tons, which they
had seized on their arrival, they determined to make the best
of their way to Macao, a friendly Portuguese settlement six
hundred leagues distant on the coast of China. Fortunately
they were spared this last trial. The three men who were on
board the Centurion when she was blown out to sea managed
to steer her back to port, and in their old ship, they reached
Macao.
The Portuguese and Chinese there were both timid of giving
help. A little plain-speaking, however, decided them. Anson
declared that he was at once able and ready to destroy
the whole navigation of Canton, if assistance were refused ;
that his men, long inured to hunger when no food was to be
found, could not be expected to starve in a land of plenty ;
and that should they be reduced to cannibalism, they would
prefer a plump well-fed Chinaman to their emaciated comrades.
The argument was immediate and effective, and sufficient
supplies were obtained to enable the Centurion to put to sea.
Shortly afterwards the Manila galleon with five hundred
men and a million and a half of dollars was captured ; the
prisoners were landed in Canton, and the long homeward
voyage was begun, the prize in tow. The Cape of Good Hope
was rounded ; no further misfortunes befell ; and in June
1744, after an absence of three years and nine months from
England, Anson cast anchor at Spithead, having circum-
EVOLUTION OF A LARGER SYNTHESIS 255
navigated the globe, attacked the Spaniards east and west, and
retrieved the conduct of what was otherwise a disastrous and
laxly-waged war.
In the interval the contest had developed into a general
European struggle. Again the cannon ruled the continent.
Frederick of Prussia invaded Silesia ; French The
armies appeared in Germany. The allied British European
and Hanoverian troops took part against them. War > m4 -
' A ridiculous situation/ wrote Horace Walpole, ' we have
the name of war with Spain without the thing, and war
with France without the name/
The position was soon to be rectified. In 1744 the French
Government concluded an alliance, offensive and defensive,
with Spain ; in March they declared war. To counteract
this, a new quadruple alliance was formed between England,
Holland, Austria and Saxony. Four land campaigns were
conducted with no great advantage to either side : at sea
England was more successful.
But people had become weary of a long strife that led
nowhere. The ministers were incapable. The finances
were disorganised. ' Money/ wrote Chesterfield,
. *1. Peace, 1748.
was never so scarce in the City, nor the stocks so
low . . . twelve per cent, is offered for money, and even that
will not do/ At length in 1748 the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle
concluded peace on the basis of mutual restitution by the
powers of all conquests in all parts of the world ; and a few
years of precarious tranquillity were thus gained. But the
questions at issue were not settled : and in 1756 the Seven
Years' War began.
England entered into the contest dispirited and fearful of
disaster. Yet the next years were years of triumph in all
parts of the world, such as her arms had never
. The first Pitt,
before known. One man alone made that triumph
possible, and that man was William Pitt. ' I know that I can
save the country/ he cried, ' and I know that no one else can/
256 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
His boast was justified. He was full of zeal, and ' he was
possessed/ says one who knew him, ' of the happy talent of
transfusing his own zeal into the souls of all those who were
to have a share in carrying his projects into execution ; and
it is a matter well known to many officers now in the House,
that no man ever entered the earl's closet who did not feel
himself, if possible, braver at his return than when he went in/
To those, indeed, who heard him speak, he seemed a being
of another species. He poured out denunciation, invective,
sarcasm, plans, schemes for the future, and defence of the
past, in one resistless stream. There was, indeed, a great gulf
fixed between him and his contemporaries. His haughty
spirit disdained the corruption of the day, the traffic in
boroughs, the buying and selling of votes, the political bribes.
He refused the perquisites of office, which the most noble
stooped to secure. ' My hands are clean/ he cried, when at-
tacked, ' none of it sticks to them/
If Pitt drew his power from his oratory, he did not use his
tongue to flatter the mob. The City of London idolised
him, but he rebuked it sternly when it demurred to the
demand for fresh troops. When Wilkes came into popular
favour, Pitt would give him no countenance. At a later
time, when England was seized with madness, and attempted
to discipline the colonies, Pitt's voice was the strongest in
opposition. If any man could have prevented their secession,
it was Pitt ; so said the Americans during the war, so dis-
covered the English afterwards when too late. It was Pitt
who first saw the necessity of reforming the East India
Company. While other factions were disputing, sometimes
honestly, more often dishonestly, that great statesman's
eagle eye took in the whole horizon. Other politicians
have too often considered their aim in life accomplished
when they enter office ; Pitt considered his not more than
begun.
If he was loved at home, he was feared and hated abroad.
EVOLUTION OF A LARGER SYNTHESIS 257
It was recognised that he was the man who inspired his country
to victory, that his was the magic voice which could carry
unprecedented votes for supply through parliament, that his
was the eye which could discover genius in an obscure young
soldier like Wolfe, and fearlessly raise him to command.
' It is worth two victories to us/ exclaimed a Frenchman who
heard of Pitt's dismissal from office.
The first results of the war on the water were not, indeed,
particularly brilliant. Minorca was lost ; an expedition
was sent against Rochefort with no result, and .^ Seyen
another against Cherbourg. The king remarked Years' war,
of the latter with the blunt common sense 1756 ' 63 -
that was often noticeable in the Georges, in the absence of
finer qualities, ' I never had any opinion of it ; we shall brag
of having burnt their ships, and they of driving us away/
Our failure indeed in all offensive tactics on the European
continent might have been taken by the superstitious as a
sign that the old English empire of the Middle Ages had passed
away for ever with the loss of Calais anything that seemed
like an attempt to renew it was destined to defeat.
On the high seas the war was waged with vigour, and its
net results indicated accurately enough the relative position
of France and England. In 1758 we took or destroyed 16
of their warships, 49 privateers, besides 104 merchant ships,
and 176 neutral ships ; while they took from us 3 warships,
7 privateers, and 300 merchant ships. Thus it may be said
without boasting that in seamanship we proved ourselves
superior ; in captures of peaceful shipping we were bound to
suffer most, our merchant vessels being much more numerous
than those of France.
But in the following year the results of Pitt's policy were
fully seen. In January arrived news of the conquest of Goree ;
in June of Guadeloupe ; in August of the victory of Minden ;
in September of Lagos ; in October the capture of Quebec was
known ; in November the defeat of the French invaders off
258
Quiberon. The splendour of such continued successes
produced their effect at home. Horace Walpole sitting in
leisured ease amusing himself with his correspondence, his
bric-a-brac, his versifying, wrote in his usual lively manner,
' One is forced to ask every morning what victory there is, for
fear of missing one.'
Two years later came a repetition on a smaller scale a St.
Martin's summer of conquest. Belleisle and Dominica were
taken, and Pondicherri fell. It was the last stronghold of the
French in India ; and with its capture ended their Asiatic
empire. Their American empire had already vanished.
But the rule of Pitt was nearly at an end. Spain was
now bound to France by a ' family compact,' and had
agreed to declare war against Britain in May 1762. When
information of this new enemy arrived in London, Pitt was
anxious to declare war with Spain at once, to get in the
first blow. ' On this principle,' said he, ' I submitted my
advice for an immediate declaration of war to a trembling
Council.' But the Cabinet would have none of it. Earl
Granville, the president, replied obstinately, ' Though he
(Pitt) may possibly have convinced himself of his infallibility,
still it remains that we should be equally convinced before
we can resign our understandings to his direction, or join
with him in the measures he proposes.'
On 5th October 1761, Pitt resigned ; but he soon had the
satisfaction of seeing the policy he had advocated forced upon
his successors. The language of Spain grew more menacing :
a conflict became inevitable ; and England issued her declara-
tion of war on 4th January 1762. That year all the Caribees
and Havana fell before Rodney in the west ; in the east the
Philippines were taken ; on the high seas millions of dollars
of Spanish merchandise and bullion were captured.
Thus the victories that Pitt had inspired graced the councils
of his unworthy successors : as the indefatigable Horace
Walpole wrote, ' The single eloquence of Mr. Pitt, like an
EVOLUTION OF A LARGER SYNTHESIS 259
annihilated star, can shine many months after it has set ;
I tell you it has conquered Martinique/
But in one respect the new Cabinet was radically different.
Bute, the Prime Minister, was determined on peace. He
had already abandoned Prussia, the ally of Britain : and he
soon opened the negotiations that ended in the signature of
the Treaty of Paris on 10th February 1763, the main provisions
of which were connected with the great colonial war whose
events we have now to narrate.
CHAPTER III
THE WAR IN AMERICA : 1740-63 l
THE war which broke out in 1740 quickly spread beyond
the limits of Europe. It developed into far more than a mere
contest between two or three ruling families, Euro ean
that could be ended at the will of those families. Rivalry
It became a struggle between all the colonies and Overseas -
dependencies that had been planted by European nations
overseas. In India the French were endeavouring to found
an Asiatic empire and to expel the Dutch, English, and
Portuguese traders. In America they were endeavouring to
1 A whole library of writers may be cited as authorities for this
chapter, and many of the events which I have had to compress into a
paragraph have furnished material for several volumes. Irving's Life of
Washington should be consulted for the Virginia campaign ; Justin
Winsor and Bancroft are also useful in this connection. Pitt's Corre-
spontlence is essential ; it should be read in conjunction with Corbitt's
brilliant study of England in the Seven Years' War; and Fortescue's
History of the British Army. Carlyle's Frederick the Great goes to the
root of the matter, in spite of occasional small inaccuracies ; Parkman's
Montcalm and Wolfe is perhaps the best detailed account of the struggle
in Canada. For long the standard work, it has been partly superseded
by the official documents, printed in six volumes, on The Siege of Quebec,
by A. G. Doughty ; many of these are incorporated in Major Wood's
The Fight for Canada, an excellent work in small compass. Bradley's
Fight with France for North America covers much the same ground, with
great literary charm.
260 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
extend their forts and settlements throughout the great west,
in a way that would cut off from their English rivals any
possibility of advance. And the colonists and settlers on either
side, both east and west, were jealous of their neighbours,
and forward in planning and revenging acts of enmity.
The world-struggle, in fact, had come to a head : the
question that now hung in the balance was whether America
was to be French or English, whether the first power in Asia
was to be France or England. That question could only be
decided by the god of battles ; and to the god of battles it was
referred.
There had been many disagreements before it came to war.
Acadia had been taken and retaken ; Quebec had been be-
sieged, captured, and restored more than once. New England
had often been menaced by the French Canadians ; Florida was
an equal battleground between Spain, France, and Britain.
All the English colonies along the Atlantic coast of North
America were hampered by the French expansion at their
rear. The English would have been brought to a standstill
had the French been able to complete their plan of building
a line of forts along the Kiver Ohio. The French forts, on the
other hand, would have been useless had the English continued
to expand their trade.
The weaker rivals of the two nations had, indeed, already
been expelled. Both Sweden and Holland had lost their
possessions a century back. Despite the possession of Mexico
and California, Spain hardly counted as a political force in
North America. The contest therefore lay between France
and England only ; and the expulsion of the lesser colonising
powers had cleared the ground for its decision.
The English colonies had the advantage in population, in
The English wealth, in independence, in initiative. But they
SonTeT Ch were not united as were the French. Their
Compared, means of attack were beneath contempt. The
French, on the other hand, had good troops, ably com-
EVOLUTION OF A LARGER SYNTHESIS 261
manded. There were no contradictory authorities among
their colonies ; New France was one state. But within they
had to contend with dishonesty and disaffection ; if the
enormous extent of their territory was imposing, it was
French only in name, and the original colonies had been
weakened by the projects of expansion in the west and
south. And while the relative strength of France and England
in Europe was apparently equal, the latter had an advantage
in sea-power that told tremendously in the struggle for
America ; and the French, as was afterwards proved, were
only able to wage war inefficiently and weakly in the new
world.
But for years before the actual struggle the danger of French
expansion in the interior of America had hung like a storm-
cloud over the English settlements on the coast. The extra-
ordinary ability of a few pioneers made the progress of France
in the unknown lands of the west seem terribly real to the
people of Massachusetts and Virginia. At no time, indeed,
were the inhabitants of New France numerous, or their pro-
jects more than the shadows of dreams ; at no time was their
hold of the vast territories they had penetrated secure. But
there was genius in their policy of expansion : and if they failed
in the end, they failed only because genius cannot succeed
when it is neglected and despised by those who should support
it. Their empire was magnificent in its proportions, in some
of its leaders, in many of its ideals ; but it had no foundation,
and it fell eventually before the English colonies, which were
divided among themselves, which before Washington pro-
duced no man of conspicuous ability, whose main thought
was to live peaceably and comfortably, and whose people
would have left the forests and rivers of the great west un-
explored for many years more had not the French forced
them either to conquer or be conquered.
The earliest impulse towards French colonisation in the
far west had been religious as well as commercial or political.
262
A spirit of missionary enthusiasm, such as had inspired the
monks of mediaeval Europe, forced the French emissaries
The French ^ ^ ne Catholic faith to penetrate the American
Empire in wilderness in the seventeenth century. To Champ-
enca " lain, the first great governor of Canada, ' the salva-
tion of a soul was worth more than the conquest of an empire/
Others saw visions of the glory of martyrdom, and not
infrequently the missionaries suffered death at the hands
of those redskins to whom they had offered the gift of
eternal life. ' What shall I render to Thee, Jesus, my Lord,
for all Thy benefits ? ' cried one of them : ' I will accept Thy
cup, and invoke Thy name/ was the answer he gave to his
own question ; and the cup of mortal sacrifice was drunk
by many.
They never flinched from a fate that was always possible :
Lallemand, one of their number, was stripped naked, smeared
with rosin, and burnt ; but before he expired he exclaimed
to the companion who was about to be scalped, in words
that recall Latimer's last encouragement to Ridley at the
stake, ' We are made a spectacle unto the world, and to
angels, and to men/ One, a Jesuit, was murdered for baptiz-
ing a native infant ; another, who trusted only ' in the
providence which feeds the little birds of the desert, and
clothes the wild flowers of the forests/ wrote to a friend that
' in three or four months you may add me to the memento of
deaths ' : and in truth he never returned.
The work at times seemed hopeless, for the natives would
not be taught. ' Our life/ it was said, ' is passed in roaming
through thick woods, in clambering over hills, in paddling
the canoe across lakes and rivers, to catch a poor savage who
flies from us, and whom we can tame neither by teachings
nor by caresses/ But courage never deserted the devoted
men ; and, armed only with crucifix and breviary, the French
missionaries continued to plunge into the wilderness, not
knowing what or whom they might meet. The way was hard,
EVOLUTION OF A LARGER SYNTHESIS 263
but they loved it. ' In thesejjvast, uninhabited forest regions,
where in twelve days not a soul was met, a journey where
there was no village, no bridge, no^ferry, no boat, no house,
no beaten path, and over boundless prairies, intersected by
rivulets and rivers, through forests and thickets filled with
briers and thorns, through marshes, where we plunged some-
times to the girdle/ in such scenes, hitherto unknown to the
white man, the French missionaries passed their lives, and
unwittingly opened the road to European settlement.
But the first generation which thought only of the Church
was followed by a second which thought of the state as well.
The first missionaries had taught the redskins nothing but
the gospel. Their successors taught it with a political bias :
it was complained by the British colonists that the French
' persuaded these people (the natives) that the Virgin Mary
was born in Paris, and that our Saviour was crucified at London
by the English/ The inevitable result followed. Religion
gave way before politics : and at the same time that the sons
of the French farmers of Quebec were leaving their homes
for the more profitable trade in furs bought from the redskins
of the forest, the missionaries were becoming the ambassadors
of an earthly as well as a heavenly king. In neither instance
did they have much real success. 1
By such means were laid the foundations of the colonies
of Illinois, Ohio, and Wisconsin, as from one lonely its outward
outpost after another were flown the lilies of Magmfl-
France. The condition of those first inland Real weak-
stations was as primitive as that of the earlier ness -
English settlements on the coast. Even the commandant's
1 The same political bias in missionary teaching was discovered by
Richard Spence the botanist in South America, as related in his post-
humous notes. ' I have been gravely told by a Jibaro Indian in the Andes,'
he states, ' that France and England were two towns, standing on
opposite banks of a river, the people on the left bank being Christians,
and those on the right heathens a piece of ethnology derived from the
teaching of Catholic missionaries. ' I am not sure that our own mission-
aries have always correctly distinguished the kingdom of heaven from
the British Empire.
264 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
house at Illinois, says Charlevoix, was but a sorry one, and
was only called a fort from its being surrounded with an
indifferent palisade ; and all the rest were in much the same
condition. From Illinois, however, great hopes were at first
entertained of silver, copper, and lead mines ; and when these
failed, there was still agriculture. But the missionary glory
altogether departed from New France when it was given over
to a commercial corporation : and the chartered companies
licensed by the Bourbons were far less competent, and they
pursued a far less statesmanlike policy, than their British
competitors.
The dreary records of Louisiana under a trading corpora-
tion will be sufficient illustration of the decadence of French
The Failure colonisation. The vast territory at the mouth of
in Louisiana. ne Mississippi was given over to a Company, in
whose thoughts religion played but small part ; tobacco, rice,
and indigo seemed more profitable and more certain products
to eighteenth century Paris than the conversion of the abori-
gines. But under incompetent management, they were not :
and the history of Louisiana proves the weakness of a colonial
policy into which free settlement and free development hardly
entered. None but criminals were sent over by the Company ;
they were all ' the scum of Europe, which France had, as it
were, vomited forth into the new world/ The whole population
consisted of convicts, vagrants, and women of low character ;
the very troops were made up of deserters from the royal army.
The administration of the Company was bad to a degree
which has rarely been paralleled. ' The unfortunates who were
sent to Louisiana/ it was reported, ' had to brave not only the
insalubrity of the climate and the cruelty of the savages, but
in addition they were kept in a condition of oppressive slavery.
They could only buy of the Company at the Company's price.
They could only sell to the Company for such sum as it chose
to pay ; and they could only leave the colony by permission
of the Company.' When the condition of the settlement at
EVOLUTION OF A LARGER SYNTHESIS 265
last became too scandalous the French Government resumed
control in 1733 : but it is not recorded that there was
much improvement. On the contrary, it was stated that in
Louisiana ' a child of six knew more of raking and swearing
than a young man of twenty-five in France/ There was no
moral tone in the community at all, nor could there be in a
society composed of such refuse : and since appeals were still
sent to France for food, it is evident that, even in a physical
sense, the colony had no foundation.
But the English did not know the fundamental weakness
of New France ; they perceived only the imposing nature
of the superstructure. They saw the forts which New France
were being built at their rear ; they could not see by g the t6d
the factions within. They feared the success of Bourbons,
a French alliance with the natives ; they did not know
that the French colonists suffered at least as severely from
native depredations as the English. And in spite of the
activity of the missionaries only an infinitesimal number of
the redskins had been converted to Christianity ; in spite
of the activity of the French diplomats, few tribes had been
won over to the imperial Bourbon dream. And the Bourbons
themselves did little for their dominions in America. They
sent advice, but not assistance. The enormous sums that
Louis xv. squandered on his courtesans might have gone to
strengthen the forts on the Arkansas and the Mississippi ;
the men whom he sent to die in fruitless European wars
might have been used to consolidate the French empire in
the West : but they were not. The French pioneers in
Canada received little help from home : even during the last
desperate crisis, when Montcalm was appealing for aid in the
defence of Quebec lest New France should be totally con-
quered, he received only the promise of a few hundred men
and a supply of munitions for the campaign. It was indeed
' the little which was precious to those who had nothing/
as he remarked ; but it was not enough.
266 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
Yet in spite of their real weakness, which was only hidden
from others, the French continued to expand. Throughout
The struggle ^ ne wno ^ e ^ the ^^ ^ a ^ ^ ^ ne eighteenth century,
for Ohio, the British colonies had to fear the descent of
native tribes, who had been instigated by their
rivals to harry the peaceful fields and townships of Massa-
chusetts and Pennsylvania : and that cruel method of war-
fare, in which mercy was unknown and quarter was never
given, was equally resorted to on both sides. With the means
of enlarging their possessions cut off in the rear, with their
very homes threatened, the English grew nervous of their
safety ; while with the knowledge that the English colonies
were increasing in population and wealth every year, the
French became more and more determined to cut them ofi
from the vast countries of the interior.
The inevitable collision occurred at last in Ohio. The
earlier operations of the war which broke out in 1740 had been
confined to the old battle-ground of Nova Scotia and the
neighbouring lands : but when the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle
was concluded in 1748 no peace was recognised between
the French and English in America. An English Company
was formed in the year 1750 to develop the territories border-
ing on the Ohio Eiver ; but the French claimed that district
for their own. They insisted ; and the British Government
was urged by the English colonists to seize the land in dispute
by force. But in the weak condition of the British administra-
tion at the time, the accounts of French encroachment were
treated as fables ; it was suspected that they were simply
stories circulated to force the Government to aid the none
too prosperous Ohio Company. For the present, therefore,
the Cabinet took no steps ; England was not at war with
France in Europe, and it appeared foolish to pursue a course
which might lead to war in America.
But the British colonies were less backward. Raiding
parties, composed of the adventurous sons of the great planters
EVOLUTION OF A LARGER SYNTHESIS 267
of Virginia, penetrated the forests at their rear, nominally
on hunting expeditions, and warned the French against
establishing themselves in the British territory of Tlie Bug^t
the Ohio. The French answered by the construe- Repulsed,
tion of Fort Duquesne in 1754. Its existence at 6 '
once became a direct menace to the British, for it cut them
off from the far side of the Alleghany Mountains ; it was one
more link in the great chain of defence which would soon
stretch from Quebec to New Orleans.
Six years previously, the French commander at Detroit had
received the order ' to oppose peremptorily every English
establishment not only at Detroit, but on the Ohio or its
tributaries, by warning first, and then by force, if warning
do not serve.' With both sides claiming the same territory,
and neither willing to give up its claim at the bluster of
opponents, deeds soon took the place of words.
In the preliminary skirmish of the war which at once ensued
on the building of Fort Duquesne, we first hear the name of
George Washington, at that time a land-surveyor twenty-two
years old, and the leader of a small band of colonial levies.
His party were the aggressors ; shots were exchanged, and
Washington fell back. The Virginians threw up entrench-
ments, which were named Fort Necessity ; but they were
no match for the French, and they were forced to retreat on
1st July 1754. They were in the utmost peril ; it was with
difficulty that the French could restrain their native allies
from butchering the whole party. Even as it was, the horses
and cattle of the English were destroyed, and the wounded
men had to be carried through the tangled undergrowth of
the forest on the backs of the survivors ; and when the dismal
return march was at last accomplished, there was not a single
British flag left in the great valley of the Ohio to mark our
claim to that region.
Nor did the prospect seem likely to improve. The British
colonies became suddenly curiously apathetic. New England,
268 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
which had .always been foremost in opposing the French,
made no sign of moving. The Quakers of Pennsylvania were
Their Dis- by their creed bound to disapprove of war : and
and^m s ment ^ ne strong foreign element in that state could not
agreements, be expected to feel any great impulse of enmity
towards the French ; for the Swedes, the Dutch, and the
Germans who formed a large part of the population of
Pennsylvania were already living under a foreign power.
Maryland, as usual, was indifferent to anything occurring
beyond her own frontiers ; while in Virginia, which from her
geographical contiguity naturally had a greater interest in the
future destiny of Ohio, the failure 'of Washington caused
discouragement, and its people seemed to find more pleasure
in disputing points of constitutional procedure with the
Governor than in organising the defence of the colony. The
very fact that he was alive to the danger of French encroach-
ment and urged them to take the necessary steps to prevent
it, seemed to make them the more determined not to vote
supplies. For once, however, Dinwiddie, the unpopular
Governor, understood the situation better than the colonists ;
and, seeing that nothing would be done in Virginia itself, he
appealed to England for aid.
His request was answered by the despatch of two regiments
under the command of General Braddock. The scandalous
Braddock's g oss ip of London hinted that the latter would
Expedition, never have been appointed to the post at all,
had it not been for his importunity in begging
to be placed on active service, in order that he might pay
his gambling debts ; and in truth his reputation, even as a
man about town, was not spotless. Satirised in one of Field-
ing's comedies as Captain Bilkum, he was perhaps more
celebrated for his intrigues with actresses than for any emin-
ence in his profession ; and though his bravery was beyond
dispute, an obstinate prejudice of assumed superiority, too
common at that day in England, and for long after, prevented
EVOLUTION OF A LARGER SYNTHESIS 269
him from accepting the advice of the colonists as to the best
plan of operations against the French, while he sneered at
their militia in a way that was not politic, even had its
inferiority to the regulars justified him, which it did not
altogether.
Even now it was only with the greatest difficulty that a
start was made. The colonists still refused to co-operate,
and Virginia had some reason to fear an insur- Furtlier De-
rection of the slaves. Petty jealousies were still feat of the
rife. Many of the regular troops were of bad
character, while the colonists were not yet ready to take the
field. At length it was arranged that the French should be
attacked at four separate points of their dominions ; and
Braddock started at the head of twelve hundred men in the
chief expedition, which was to be directed against Fort
Duquesne.
Utterly ignorant of redskin methods of forest warfare,
the British troops reached Monongahela on 9th July 1755,
where an ambuscade had been prepared for them by the French
and natives. Unaware of this, Braddock was taken entirely
by surprise, and attacked by the redskins, who remained
hidden ; by this means were the flanks of his army thrown
into disorder, and as soon as the main body of men came up,
they too were nonplussed by the impossibility of fighting an
invisible foe. The pitched battles of European campaigns
had prepared them for no such situation ; and after two hours'
stubborn but hopeless resistance, they turned back in panic-
stricken retreat.
Braddock bravely tried to persuade his men to form again
into line ; but in the long grass and dense thickets of the
forest, harassed by a foe whom they could feel and hear but
not see, it was not feasible to bring them again into fighting
order. Several horses were shot under Braddock, and at last
he was badly wounded. Carried away with the retreating
army, he lingered a few days, and then died, saying with his
270
last breath, 'We shall know better how to deal with them next
time/ His body was buried before dawn, in the track over
which the army was to pass, in order that the trampling of
the soldiers' feet might obliterate the grave, and thus save the
corpse from desecration by the natives.
The other expeditions against New France likewise failed,
and the general depression which had overhung Britain and her
colonies of late was intensified. The outbreak of the Seven
Years' War in 1756 for England and France had been
nominally at peace while Canada and the British American
states were attacking each other found Britain still un-
prepared. The whole nation feared disaster ; even Pitt
wrote that he dreaded to hear from America.
That year and the next passed without decisive events ;
Montcalm, the new French general in Canada, was extremely
The Position cau tious, and in any case a defensive policy was
of the French all that he could pursue. For, in spite of the
ana a. kriUramjy of the French successes on the Ohio,
and the menacing attitude which they had assumed in
America, there was little real ground for optimism in their
position. The discontent of the Canadians with their govern-
ment had not diminished with the passage of years. The
farmers were defrauded by the corrupt official company
with which they were forced to deal, and which they nick-
named in hate and derision ' la friponne/ The bureaucracy
was of the same unworthy type that then prevailed in the
mother country. Vaudreuil, the Governor of the colony,
distrusted Montcalm, and Montcalm in his turn distrusted the
Governor. There was little money in the treasury, and little
help to be had from France ; few preparations could be made
for the coming struggle.
Yet the Canadian winter season of 1757-8 passed in the usual
round of thoughtless gaiety ; never had the provincial society
of Montreal and Quebec been more brilliant, or more given
over to festivity, than during these last two years of the
French dominion. If New France was weak, there was no
sign that any attacks more formidable than those of the
inexperienced Washington and the inept Braddock would
have to be met ; and such attacks Montcalm could justly
despise.
But Pitt was now supreme in the British Cabinet, and
his influence radiated fresh hope among his countrymen
throughout the world. He had thought out a new p^^ plan
plan of campaign against the French in America : of cam-
and the three expeditions which were to attack paign> 1768 *
their western empire began operations in 1758. One under
Abercrombie indeed failed ; but Louisbourg, the great French
fortress on Cape Breton Island, fell before Amherst, while a
cautious Scottish soldier, John Forbes, marched against Fort
Duquesne. He led his men slowly by a new route over the
Alleghanies, dallying on the way in order to tire out the
natives who hung upon the line of march. The latter object
he achieved ; the savage allies of the French departed ; and
such tribes as he met were conciliated by a treaty of
peace, and the promise of friendship with ' their cousins the
Highlanders/
Taken ill on the march by a ' cursed flux/ Forbes directed
operations from a litter : but when he arrived at Fort
Duquesne, it was already abandoned by the French. For
Montcalm had found it necessary to recall all the garrisons
which had held the chain of outposts that shut in the English
colonies, in order that Canada itself might be defended :
he had seen the change that Pitt had made in the conduct
of the war, and taken his measures accordingly. Forbes
altered the name of Fort Duquesne to Fort Pitt, whence it
has become the Pittsburg of to-day ; and returning to Phila-
delphia, he died a few months later of the disease which had
attacked him on the march.
The next year, 1759, the way was free for the completion
of Pitt's daring plan, the general advance on Canada. Am-
272 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
herst, a man as cautious and staunch as Forbes, was made
The Cam- Commander-in-Chief. It was arranged that he
paign of should march on Ticonderoga and Crown Point,
capture those places, and thus reach the St.
Lawrence. Other commanders were to take Fort Niagara,
and having done so, were to pass down Lake Ontario,
securing Montreal by the way, and then to press on to the
combined attack which the whole army was to make on
Quebec, being there joined by the naval expedition which
was to be sent up the river from Louisbourg under General
Wolfe. The combination failed, owing to the difficulties of
working together in so vast a country ; but each individual
leader succeeded in the work that had been allotted him.
The fall of Fort Niagara divided the middle of Canada from
the west ; and Amherst still advanced slowly from the south.
But the hand that struck the fatal blow against the power of
France in North America was not his. John Forbes and
Amherst had undermined New France. Yet the impregnable
fortress of Quebec still remained untaken ; and while the Bour-
bon flag continued to fly from its ramparts, the Bourbon
empire in the West remained a living thing ; injured indeed
and weakened, but with terrible powers of resistance, and
possibly of recuperation, still lurking within it.
The man who had been selected by Pitt to attempt the
capture of Quebec was an industrious and painstaking young
General officer of thirty-two years, whose reputation had
Wolfe. hitherto hardly extended beyond the immediate
circle of the army. James Wolfe 1 had been born in the sleepy
Kentish village of Westerham in 1727. Weak and delicate
when a child, his health forced him to give up an early plan
of going to the West Indies ; and while he was able eventually
1 The biography of Wolfe has been written by Wright, Bradley,
Beckles Willson, and Salmon. The first is now superseded by the dis-
covery of fresh material ; the second I have not examined closely. The
third is very full, and contains much hitherto unpublished material ; the
fourth is a useful monograph in short compass.
EVOLUTION OF A LARGER SYNTHESIS 273
to enter the army, his entire life was a struggle with disease.
' My strength/ he wrote as a youth, ' is not so great as I
imagined ' : his whole correspondence, indeed, is full of
references to his suffering.
But, although physical infirmity imposed a severe handicap,
and reserve draped him with a cloak of modesty, he was
ambitious withal. Singularly lacking as he was in the power
of self-expression, on the rare occasions when Wolfe's ambition
got the better of his reserve, it was exaggerated until it ap-
peared incongruous gasconade ; at times his modesty seemed
affectation. Horace Walpole, who had seen him in a boasting
mood, sneered that ' the world could not expect more from
him than he thought himself capable of performing ' : but
the true Wolfe was seen in a letter to his mother, in which
he complained that it was ' a very great misfortune to this
country that I, your son, who have, I know, but a very
moderate capacity, and some degree of diligence, a little
above the ordinary run, should be thought, as I generally am,
one of the best officers of my rank in the service/ He owned
himself ' a whimsical sort of person ... at times arrogant
and vain ' ; military routine was irksome to him ; ' the care
of a regiment/ he wrote, ' is very heavy, exceeding trouble-
some, and not at all the thing I delight in ' : yet he came
through the European campaigns of the earlier war with credit,
and his name was soon known as that of a useful soldier.
He was full of enthusiasm, and the mistakes of the campaign
against France in 1757 sickened him. ' We blundered most
egregiously/ he said, ' on all sides, sea and land ; no zeal,
no ardour, no care and concern for the good and honour of
the country/ With the advent of Pitt to power, however,
England recovered her nerve ; and Wolfe now found his
opportunity. He accepted a commission to join in the attack
of 1758 against Louisbourg, though disease was ever clutching
him tighter ; ' I know the very passage threatens my life,
and that my constitution must be utterly ruined and undone/
s
274 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
were his words : but when that fortress was brilliantly
captured, a result in no small part due to his ability, he still
recommended ' an offensive daring kind of war/ and promised
Amherst that ' if you will attempt to cut up New France by
the roots, I will come back with pleasure to assist/ He
returned to England for the last time at the close of the
American campaign of 1758, ' in a very bad condition both
with the gravel and the rheumatism/
Wolfe was dying, and he knew it ; but when Pitt offered him
command of the forces in the next year's operations against
Quebec, he resolved to accept the appointment. At his last
interview with the heads of the British Government, excite-
ment overcame him ; the strange fit of boasting again ap-
peared, as he drew his sword and bragged of his ability to
conquer the French. Pitt was distressed, and perhaps for a
moment doubtful of the wisdom of his choice : but he knew his
man, and Wolfe sailed for America.
To those without the prescience of Pitt, it seemed a hazard-
ous thing to place the conduct of the most important and
most difficult campaign of the war in the hands of a young
officer whose days were numbered. But older men had al-
ready failed ; and there were no others. The obstacles con-
fronting Wolfe were indeed formidable. The navigation of
the St. Lawrence was extremely difficult. Quebec was a
natural stronghold, and it had been well fortified. The
caution of Montcalm, if it unfitted him to be a general of
the first rank, was not out of place when only defence was
required. And in spite of the negligence of the French
Government, there were 14,000 French soldiers besides
redskins in a fortified camp below the city ; while between
one and two thousand men were available for the internal
defence of Quebec. There were 106 cannon on the city walls ;
gunboats and fireships patrolled the river ; and a boom had
been ( stretched across the stream. Only confidence was
lacking : and this Wolfe could not know.
EVOLUTION OF A LARGER SYNTHESIS 275
On 6th June 1759, Wolfe sailed from Louisbourg. On
21st June, the masts of the English vessels were first seen
from Quebec. Fireships were sent against them, The capture
but without result ; and the British army of 9000 of Quebec,
men was landed safely on the Isle d'Orleans near the city.
A constant cannonade was kept up against them from the
walls of Quebec without success. Fireships were again sent
to burn Wolfe's boats, but the sailors grappled with them
and towed them ashore. The British soldiers now occupied
Point Levi opposite the city, and poured shot and shell into it ;
the non-combatants were forced to leave. So far all had
gone well : the real struggle was yet to come.
But Wolfe was now sick unto death. ' I know perfectly
well you cannot cure my complaint/ he had said to his
physician, ' but pray make me up so that I may be without
pain for a few days, and able to do my duty ; that is all I
want/ His disease seemed about to wreck the expedition :
he complained that he was ' hindered from executing his
own plan ; it was of too desperate a nature to order others
to execute/ A slight improvement took place, but he was
oppressed by fears ; ' I am so far recovered as to do business,
but my constitution is entirely ruined, without the consolation
of having done any considerable service to the state, or without
any prospect of it.'
One at least of his officers thought his generalship as bad
as his health. For weeks the capture of the fortress appeared
impossible. One manoeuvre after another was tried to draw
Montcalm's army from the place where it was entrenched,
only to fail. On 9th September, Wolfe wrote a despatch
which seemed to despair of victory.
A day or two afterwards, the bold idea occurred to him
to surprise the Heights of Abraham on the Quebec side of the
river, since siege was impossible, and winter was nigh. It
was a desperate attempt. If the device succeeded, the city
must fall ; if it failed, Wolfe must return to England defeated :
276 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
and there would be no further opportunity for the dying
general.
But desperate as was the attempt, Wolfe determined to
hazard it, and to stake the existence of his army and of
New France on a single blow. Feints were made to distract
the attention of Montcalm, and boats were collected for the
main design. There were not enough, and the army was
compelled to cross the St. Lawrence in two divisions.
Very early on the morning of the 13th September the attack
was begun, Wolfe's last order to the army running that
' the officers and men will remember what their country
expects from them, and what a determined body of soldiers
are capable of doing against five weak battalions, mingled
with a disorderly peasantry. The soldiers must be attentive
to their officers, and resolute in the execution of their duty.'
The boats dropped down the river ; and not a voice broke
the dark silence that comes before the dawn save that of
Wolfe. Quietly reciting Gray's Elegy to his companions,
he remarked at the close, ' I would rather be the author of
that poem than take Quebec.' 1 But land was now reached
and Wolfe leaped ashore and began to climb the narrow path
leading to the Heights. It was so narrow that no two men
could go abreast, and they were forced to pull themselves up
by clutching hold of bushes and crags. Toiling terribly,
they dragged one piece of artillery with them ; and when
morning appeared the army stood in battle array before
Quebec.
The surprise was complete, but Montcalm hastened to
give battle. A steady fire met his raw levies, and at the
first advance of the British troops his men gave way. A
charge headed by Wolfe broke the French line, and they
1 The conflicting evidence as to the truth of this episode is discussed at
length in Major Wood's Fight for Canada. He inclines to believe that
the anecdote is authentic, although not necessarily in the form in which
it is usually related ; and I am disposed to think that the positive testi-
mony in its favour is sufficient to outweigh the objections.
EVOLUTION OF A LARGER SYNTHESIS 277
fled. But a ball had pierced the British general's breast
at the very moment of victory, and the wound was mortal.
' Don't grieve for me/ he said to some grenadiers as he fell ;
' I shall be happy in a few minutes. Take care of yourself,
as I see you are wounded/ An officer in whose arms he was
supported exclaimed, ' They run ! I protest they run ! '
' Who run ? ' asked Wolfe, rallying feebly. ' The French/
came the answer. At this, related the officer afterwards,
he ' raised himself up and smiled in my face/ ' Now/ said
he, ' I die contented ' ; and from that moment the smile
never left his face till he died.
Montcalm likewise had fallen wounded, as the ranks of
his army broke into disorder ; and he was borne into the
neighbouring Convent of the Ursulines to die. pan O f t be
The actual battle had lasted twelve minutes. French
Five days later Quebec capitulated ; and with its America,
loss ended the French empire in America. Mon- 176 -
treal indeed belonged to France a few months longer ;
but, isolated by the fall of the greater fortress lower down
the St. Lawrence, its resistance was hopeless. Many of
the French settlements in the backwoods of Ohio and the
neighbouring territories had already been captured or aban-
doned ; none survived the loss of the parent city of Quebec.
Louisiana alone remained, and it alone was not attacked ;
the miserable plight of that colony and its inhabitants offered
no attractions to the British. Some years more it continued
useless and forlorn under France and Spain, neglected by the
Bourbons, forgotten in the turmoil of the Revolution, and
despised by all. It was finally made the subject of a diplo-
matic bargain between Napoleon and the United States.
Its existence as a French colony was an anomaly after the
capture of Quebec by the British : for, with the exception of
the swamps at the mouth of the Mississippi where lay New
Orleans, and the torpid possessions of the Spaniards in
California and Mexico, the rest of America belonged to England.
278 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
The long struggle of the European nations for the west
ended on 13th September 1759, at that spot overlooking the
St. Lawrence where stands to-day the monument inscribed,
' Here died Wolfe victorious/
CHAPTER IV
ENGLAND AS A WORLD-POWER: 1763 1
THE Peace of Paris was signed on 10th February 1763,
and the Seven Years' War came to an end. In the final
Tne Terms treaty both England and France agreed to refrain
of Peace. from taking any further part in the German
contest. Minorca was exchanged for Belleisle. The naval
works at Dunkirk, which threatened England, were to be
demolished. In America, France ceded Canada, Nova
Scotia, and Cape Breton, with the stipulation that the Roman
Catholics of Canada should be free to exercise their religion,
and permission given for such as chose to leave the country
and transport their goods within the next eighteen months.
The boundaries of Louisiana, which still belonged to France,
were defined. The French retained the right of fishing on
the coast of Newfoundland and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence,
together with possession of the small islands of St. Pierre and
Authorities. I have drawn much on the memoirs and light literature
of the eighteenth century. Lecky and Stanhope are useful for the
detailed history of the times ; Green as usual sketches the period with
the hand of a master ; its deeper thought is well treated by Sir Leslie
Stephen. A complete and excellent account of English industry at this
period was published by Sir Henry T. Wood in the Journal of the Royal
Society of Arts in April-May 1910. For Scotland, Buckle's examination
of Scotch intellect is indispensable as a collection of facts : it is a pity
that he unites the advocacy of a special pleader with the professed in-
fallibility of the judge, thus making his History of Civilisation distaste-
ful to many readers. For Ireland, Lecky and Froude : the latter is
unfortunately never absolutely trustworthy in his statements, and must
be read with caution. It is probably partiality for a favourite novelist
that makes me prefer Barry Lyndon to either.
EVOLUTION OF A LARGEK SYNTHESIS 279
Miquelon, as a shelter for their fishermen, on condition of
never raising any batteries, or maintaining more than fifty
soldiers as a guard. The islands of Guadeloupe, Martinique,
and St. Lucia were restored ; but Tobago, Dominica, St.
Vincent and Grenada remained to England. In Africa the
French relinquished Senegal, but recovered Goree. In India
they recovered their factories and settlements in Bengal, on
condition of keeping no troops and raising no fortifications
there. It was further agreed that any conquests in any part
of the globe not yet known should be restored without com-
pensation. In the event the Philippines were returned to
Spain, while Florida was given to England in exchange
for Havana : in recompense for which loss to Spain France
was to cede Louisiana to the latter. All the Spanish claims
on England were rejected. 1
The ambition of France was thus checked and practically
the whole of her colonial empire lost. Further, the enormous
efforts the nation had put forth, the enormous losses that
had been sustained in the upkeep of a powerful army and
navy, a court that was wilfully and recklessly extravagant,
and an aristocracy whose members outvied each other in
expensive display, had exhausted the people and reduced
them to pitiable misery. The train was already laid to the
powder magazine whose explosion is called the French Revolu-
1 Many opinions have been expressed as to the relative advantages
of the Peace of Paris ; and at least one critic has taken me to task for
not joining in the chorus of contemporary English condemnation of
Lord Bute for his agreement to these terms when better terms
might have been obtained. But apart from my own foolish leaning to
mercy in judgment, it must be remembered that the French were as
dissatisfied as the British, and, like the British, believed that they had
been betrayed by their diplomatists ; a French pamphlet of the day re-
marks, for instance, that ' When we consider the vile concessions made
of our territories, rights, and possessions, what shall we most wonder at
-the ambition and arrogance of the British Ministry, or the pusillanimity,
or perhaps open treachery, of our own ? ' When both sides are thus
angry, it is probable that rough justice is done ; and except for the
provisions relating to the Newfoundland fisheries, the British had little
reason to complain.
280 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEESEAS
tion. On the other hand, Prussia emerged from the conflict
a great and powerful state, terribly scarred, it is true, and still
poorer than France in the aggregate ; but yet the beginnings
of German union were seen, which, after another baptism
of fire from Napoleon a half-century later, resulted in the
formation of a kingdom strong enough to control the other
states of central Europe, and, after a further struggle, to unite
them into the German Empire of to-day.
But these were, in fact, the smaller results of the Seven
Years' War. The chief gainer in the contest was Britain.
Her arms had been everywhere victorious, and her empire now
towered above all others.
The Spaniards, the French, and the Dutch had disputed the
possession of the known world with Britain and each other.
Spain had not only lost her monopoly abroad, but had sunk
at home to a dull internal lethargy. France still possessed
a few factories in India, a few islands in different places, and
some shadowy fishing rights off the American coast. Holland
was still a great power, but had fallen from her former magni-
tude.
Britain alone controlled the sea. To her belonged North
America. The future of India lay in her hands ; and through
India, of other parts of Asia. Her flag was soon to penetrate
into the unknown wastes of the Pacific, and to be supreme
in every ocean. Her influence, indeed, was not small in the
councils of Europe ; but that was now a secondary considera-
tion. With the rest of the world open for the expansion of
England, Europe could be left to work out its own salvation,
unassisted or unhindered by the British.
It is with some curiosity that we turn from the magnificent
The England prospect opening out before England, to a view
of 1763. O f England itself of that day. The question at
once arises, if other nations failed, was England worthy to
succeed ?
It is always difficult to reconstruct a picture of the past,
EVOLUTION OF A LARGER SYNTHESIS 281
without insisting too much on certain points in the develop-
ment of a people, which have been especially studied, or
which from their prominence force themselves on the historian.
And in the eighteenth century this difficulty is more than
usually apparent. We are apt to form our conclusions from
the great events which lie in the surface, while forgetting the
general social progress of which the former are merely par-
ticular manifestations. Thus, the corruption of parliament,
the venality of voters, the buying and selling of seats, the
pocket boroughs with few electors, the large towns with no
representation at all, were undoubtedly great evils throughout
the whole Hanoverian period, and they are immediately
noticeable on the most cursory survey of the times. But they
were little in evidence before the Revolution of 1688, and the
first Reform Bill of 1832 swept the majority of them away.
The two contending parties of the seventeenth century, the
puritans and the royalists, were each fairly represented at
Westminster at different times. The Long Parliament and
the fellow-members of Praise-God Barebones were typical of
the former ; the first Restoration parliament, with its frenzied
loyalty, did the will of the latter. The franchise, it is true,
was restricted : but this seems to have produced few practical
inconveniences ; the population of the country was small,
and in such unsettled times it grew but slowly. The lower
classes were uneducated, and counted for little until puritan-
ism, with its religious fervour, seized them, and its system of
religious equality elevated their position. But, at any rate,
they stood infinitely higher than the villeins of the Middle
Ages ; they were not tied to the soil and bound to labour
for one master ; they were free men, at liberty to come and
go : their cottages were often substantial, and they were not
without some of the creature comforts of the age. The fact
that they had no vote was probably the smallest of their
grievances. The terrible drag of pauperism which reduced
nearly a quarter of the population to occasional dependence
282 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS
on the poor rates was a far more dangerous feature of the
time.
The eighteenth century brought a momentous change.
The political turmoil of the preceding generations died
away. The struggle between king and parliament ended in
the complete victory of the latter ; and the incompetence of
the first two sovereigns of the Hanoverian line only empha-
sised its success. The struggle between the people and the
parliament for the possession of their own house had not yet
begun. The sittings of the House of Commons were still
secret, when all danger of royal interference had passed away.
It was forbidden to publish their debates for some years after
the Peace of Paris had been concluded. The members'
jealousy of their privileges, the want of an influential press,
and the lack of means of communication, were effectual
barriers against the co-operation of the country in their
proceedings. It was not only to the king that their debates
were unknown ; the same precautions kept the people also
ignorant. The members had executed the wishes of their
constituents well enough in the old days when the Crown had
been more powerful than themselves ; but now that the House
of Commons rose to the first place in the state it was emanci-
pated from the control of both the monarchy and the electors.
The members became to a great extent a body of placemen
who bought their seats, or were installed into them by a
politician who required their votes for his party. The
average price for a small borough was 4000 : but Oxford,
conscious perhaps of the worth of its historical traditions,
would not sell itself for less than 7500, on at least one occa-
sion. In the general election of 1761, Sudbury advertised
publicly for a buyer. In Pitt's great administration, he
refused to touch the work of bribery ; but Newcastle, his
nominal chief, pulled the strings that secured him a majority.
Thus the corruption of parliament, and the consequent
abortion of the representative idea which lies at the root
EVOLUTION OF A LARGER SYNTHESIS 283
of the English constitution, is one of the superficial facts
of the eighteenth century. It produced an apparent torpor
in the whole nation, and it was a material factor in bringing
about the Imperial Civil War of 1776. For at least two
generations, there was no healthy political public opinion,
and no adequate means of expressing it. At one time, indeed,
there seemed a danger that parliament would degenerate into
an oligarchy, and that the liberties which had been so hardly
won would be lost in a general atrophy.
Nevertheless, the people saved themselves from such an
unworthy fate. The agitation which began with the time
of John Wilkes, and ended a century later with the passage of
the Reform Bills, showed that the torpor was only temporary.
It had been induced by the enormous exertions of the struggle
with the Stuarts, and the settlement achieved in 1688 secured
a peace which the conservative instincts of the nation hesitated
to disturb, until the need for action again became too pressing
to be postponed.
But great as were the evils produced by the degeneration
of parliament, the degeneration itself was caused by, and
it was but a symptom of that change coming over The Begin-
the country at large, which gradually altered the ^u s rua e
' merrie England ' of Shakespeare and the ' godly Age.
England ' of Milton into the busy manufacturing England
of the Victorian age. That was the fact which lay at
the bottom of the difficulties of the eighteenth century,
and the solution of the new industrial problems which faced
England at that time brought about likewise the solution of
the problem of government, that bulks so large on a cursory
view of the period. The political instincts of the people
were then, as always, sound ; but in 1763 no breath of reform
yet stirred the heavy air.
The most obvious result of the Revolution of 1688 was the
long constitutional peace which it secured. That Revolution
marked the end of eighty years of misgovernment and civil
284 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
war. From the accession of William and Mary to our own
time there have been rumours and scares of invasions from
abroad ; the Old Pretender tried to regain the throne in 1715
and his successor in 1745. But both projects ended in a
fiasco : and with these two exceptions there was a profound
internal peace. It is true that the European war raged
without, and that England was one of the chief participators
therein. But the policy of Walpole steered the country clear
of danger for twenty years ; and neither the first struggle
which ended in the Treaty of Utrecht nor the second which
ended in the Treaty of Paris, touched Britain at home.
Possessed of freedom and security at home, commerce
advanced continually, at times slowly, at times by leaps and
bounds. The England of Elizabeth was, notwithstanding
its outward magnificence, a poor country. The England of
Victoria was, notwithstanding the destitution of the pro-
letariat, a rich country.
It was the change in the character of industry that worked
the transformation. The chartered companies were instru-
mental in great increases of trade. Ocean-borne commerce
expanded, as England became more and more the mistress of
the seas. The navigation laws of Cromwell struck hard at
the Dutch ; the wars dealt havoc with the shipping of other
nations. And the most significant alteration was about to
take place at home in the extension of manufactures and the
consequent rise of large towns.
At the signature of the Peace of Paris the change was
but beginning. The population of England in 1710 had been
5,066,000. In 1780 it was still only 7,814,000. The cities
of Yorkshire and Lancashire, that another half-century was
to make formidable rivals of London, were yet hardly more
than large villages that dotted the desolate moors. The
spinster turned the distaff in the country cottage. Hand-
labour was everywhere supreme. No mechanical contrivance
had superseded the weaver. No great iron-foundries belched
EVOLUTION OF A LARGER SYNTHESIS 285
forth their smoke over Sheffield. No enormous docks drew
ships to Liverpool Bristol was the chief port for the trans-
atlantic trade. No factory hooter disturbed the morning
repose of Leeds. No clogs made the cobbles of Manchester
streets ring to the tramp of lasses hurrying to the cotton
works. The rush of business was unknown in Birmingham.
The Black Country of the midlands was still green. Produce
was carted slowly and with difficulty over uneven roads by
wagon or pack-horse. In the absence of canals, tramways
or railways, the cost of transport was often greater than that
of the article itself. It was the merchant rather than the
manufacturer who had increased the wealth of the country.
But the commercial movement had taken hold of the
land. The thoughts of the people were all directed to com-
merce. A few years after the Seven Years' War had closed,
the first of those great inventions that were to revolutionise
the world's industry was introduced. In 1764 Hargreaves
invented the spinning-jenny. In 1769 Arkwright took out a
patent for spinning by rollers. In 1776 Compton constructed
the mule. The shuttle and lathe rapidly died out before the
competition of such machines. In 1763 Wedgwood produced
his first earthenware. Improved means of transport engaged
the attention of the Duke of Bridgewater and his engineer,
Brindley. In 1766, the Trent-Mersey canal was dug by them
and the great trunk navigation system opened. James Watt
was employed in canalising Scotland. In 1768 the great
Caledonian Canal was begun. And the same Watt was busy
with investigations on a medium that has since proved more
important than canals and all other means of transport put
together. The Greenock engineer was experimenting with
the steam engine, which the next generation discovered to
be as capable of locomotion as of stationary work. In the
year 1767 the old tramway system that had been laid at
Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1602 was improved by the substitution
of cast-iron bars for the wooden rails. Horse-drawn vehicles
286 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
still ran along it, but a long step had been made to the steel
tracks of the nineteenth century.
The new inventions were not unnaturally attacked by
the lower-class workers, who saw in such labour-saving
appliances their own loss of employment, and could not
see the ultimate advantage to the whole community. But
happily mobs can only retard and not destroy the work
of genius ; the inventions took their place in the great body
of human achievements. Production was immediately stimu-
lated, and the cost of the manufactured article reduced. The
first factories, as distinguished from manufactories and the
old trading depots, erroneously called factories, came into
being. The consequent congregation of workers in one place,
and the kindred interests engendered by the wants of a
large community, founded new towns.
The collective wealth of the country now advanced pro-
digiously. Nothing shows better the increasing wealth of
England even under the old commercial system than the
South Sea Bubble. It would not have been such a gamble,
and its evil effects would not have been so easily surmounted,
had the kingdom not been rich. A century previously it
would have been impossible. Again, the drain of continual
war could not have been borne had not trade advanced.
The national debt in 1688 was 661,263 : in 1763 it was
122,600,000 : in 1817 it was 840,850,591 ; yet England
was far better able to bear the enormous burden of the nine-
teenth century than she had supported the insignificant sum
of the seventeenth.
That the distribution of wealth was uneven need hardly be
said. It was the new merchants and manufacturers who
English profited most. The growth of the middle class
social Life. j s observable throughout the century, and the
improvement in their social condition was continuous. Trade
was no longer contemptible when its rewards were so great.
Brewers like the Thrales were able to afford a splendid country-
EVOLUTION OF A LARGER SYNTHESIS 287
house at Streatham. The slave-shippers of Bristol drew
princely incomes from their nefarious trade. Factory-owners
like the Peels laid the foundations of their fortune in the
mills of the north country. The directors of the chartered
companies could bribe members of the Government with
enormous sums, and still build palaces from the residue of
their dividends. The Jamaica merchant, the dealer in
Virginian tobacco, and the retired Anglo-Indian could spend
more at Bath or Tunbridge Wells than any aristocrat. The
trader's marriageable daughter with a dowry of thirty thousand
pounds was a stock figure of every new comedy at the theatre.
The voice of the parvenu was heard in our land, from which
its enchanting music was destined not again to cease.
The higher classes, at the same time, reaped the profit
from the increased value of their estates, and the direction
of the government, which remained their prerogative ; while
the lower people of peasants, farmers and small tradesmen,
from whom were recruited the great labouring army of the
new industry, seem for a time at least to have worsened
rather than bettered their condition. At any rate, for a
healthy if hard country life, they substituted existence in the
fetid slums of a manufacturing town, or the sunless subterran-
ean channels of a mine. Their wages, it is true, were higher ;
but expenses were proportionately more. The fiction of a
freedom of contract between master and man was upheld by
the political economists of the day ; and thus no efforts were
made to protect the labourer by legal enactments. The
inventions that facilitated manufactures introduced hard-
ships, as trades that had been carried on in country cottages
by hand labour were superseded. The great mechanical
discoveries rendered such competition impossible, and many
were driven to want from this cause. But in most cases the
privations were temporary, and the permanent advantages
far outweighed them.
Burke had been enthusiastic when he saw the English
288 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
countryside ; ' Every village as neat and compact as a bee-
hive ; the inns like palaces/ Goldsmith in well-known lines
lamented the decay of the peasantry. Neither foretold, or
could foretell, the prosperity of the skilled artisan of the nine-
teenth century, whose grandfather had forsaken the plough
for the workshop, and whose father had attended a loom for
a pound a week. But it is unfortunate that in our economic
ignorance we are unable to see the results of such movements
of industry in time to understand and remove their evil
effects on the poor ; it is to the latter that the hardships are
confined, for those who can take the position of masters feel
the benefits of a new wave of commercial progress immedi-
ately. As honest Cassio protested, the captain is saved before
the ancient in modern phraseology, the capitalist before the
labourer : but his simple philosophy, however obvious to
the former, brings little comfort to the latter.
While the middle class moved thus steadily upward, and
the lower, despite temporary hardships, saw the beginning
of a new era, the aristocracy underwent little change. The
pressure from below made them relatively less conspicuous ;
some of their influence was undoubtedly lost : and in com-
parison with the nobility of the continent, they had certainly
few political privileges. But such had always been the case
in England : and the chief sign of their loss of power was the
increasing strength of the House of Commons, which rendered
the upper chamber much less important.
As to their life, it is depicted in the novels of the time.
Debauched and corrupt as we must admit it to have been, it
still showed an enormous advance on the swinish excesses
of the Restoration period. Most of the peers were fast livers,
hard drinkers and high players ; yet probably the feature
that most strikes the student of the eighteenth century is
neither the vices nor the virtues of the time, but the coarse-
ness. The few who, like Horace Walpole, were cultivated,
were affected. The majority were not monsters of wicked-
EVOLUTION OF A LARGER SYNTHESIS 289
ness, and it would be unfair to take the Marquis of Queens-
berry, ' wicked old Q./ as a specimen of his class ; neither
were they angels of light ; and to do them justice, they were
not hypocrites enough to pose as such. But they were often
vulgar and commonplace, of the type that Thackeray has
pictured so admirably in the Crawleys of Vanity Fair, and the
Castlewood family in The Virginians.
The same may indeed be said of the whole society of that
period. Novels such as Tom Jones and Humphrey Clinker
bring home to us the general status of the age better than
any historical essay ; and a masterpiece of refined black-
guardism such as Peregrine Pickle shows how low was the
general standpoint. The ' free quality way ' that was so
disconcerting to poor Pamela, the polish of Bath and Tun-
bridge, the fine society of the London drawing-rooms, dis-
played all the insolence inseparable from imaginary social
superiority ; but that may be forgiven as inevitable.
The literature of the age faithfully reflects its character.
The novelists are realistic enough, and give us a roystering
view of the time ; but with the exceptions of Richardson,
who is now unreadable, Miss Burney, who is almost forgotten,
and Goldsmith, they leave a nasty taste in the mouth. The
authors themselves were in wretched condition, and seldom
got beyond an attic in Grub Street, or a cellar in Drury Lane.
The vivid description that every writer of fiction gives of the
Fleet prison for debtors shows how intimate was their acquaint-
ance with it.
The status of a journalist was even lower. In the biography
of that wretched creature Dr. Dodd, it is remarked that at
one time he even descended so low as to become the editor of
a newspaper as though it was a serious aggravation of his
original offence of forgery. Horace Walpole was careful not
to acquire the reputation of a literary man, lest it should
tarnish his brilliancy as a gentleman : and traces of the same
feeling still linger with us to-day, in the supreme popular con-
T
290 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
tempt for all such literary or scientific pursuits as do not
immediately bring a monetary reward.
The arts were held in perhaps even lower estimation. Sir
Joshua Reynolds could be regaled with honour by the
bohemians of the ' Club,' but the calling of an artist or
musician was generally considered derogatory to a man of
good birth, unless he was satisfied with being the most jejune
of dilettantis. Every one will recollect the contempt of good
Mrs. Newcome and Lord Farintosh for ' painter fellows ' ;
and the musicians of the day were considered as servants rather
than as guests in the houses of the great.
The universities had likewise lost much of their reputation.
Oxford, it is true, was still a hotbed of legitimism and clerical-
ism ; but no formidable blasts came from the royalist strong-
hold in the eighteenth century, and no great teachers issued
from her venerable portals. The peace of apparent death had
come upon her.
The decline of religion was everywhere evident. The
Church of England was sinking lower year by year. The
bishops took no interest in their dioceses. Sacred buildings
were left to decay, and the services were slovenly performed.
The poor parson was a mere hanger-on of the great families,
while the rich cleric was often a fox-hunter and a tippler.
The Methodists, who kept alive the old puritan thought that
was still strong in the body of the nation, were ridiculed.
Theological narrowness barred the way for state employment
for nonconformists, Catholics, and Jews with the Test Acts.
The suggestion of abolishing sectarian religious disabilities
led to riots a few years later : and when it was proposed to
admit dissenters into the universities, Doctor Johnson replied
with a brutal simile of a bull in a flower-garden.
Increasing wealth seemed to have brought no inclination
to tackle the old social problems ; most of the abuses indicated
by More in his Utopia still continued. The criminal law
remained barbarously severe. Men were sentenced to death
EVOLUTION OF A LAEGER SYNTHESIS 291
for forgery and sheep-stealing. Goldsmith remarked, ' I
cannot tell whether it is from the number of our penal laws
or the licentiousness of our people that this country should
show more convicts than half the dominions of Europe
united ' ; the experience of later reformers showed that the
system of punishment was to blame. The administration of
the prisons was a scandal. And meanwhile the development
of industry was bringing about new problems of wages, of
housing, and of health, that were hardly noticed and indeed
were not acute until the next generation, which had to pay
the usual penalty of neglect.
The eighteenth century was in fact the beginning of another
era for the world ; and England was the first to enter it.
The conflicts of religions faded into the past : the industrial
epoch, with its commercial wars, its hostile tariffs, its business
enterprise, took their place.
The first results of the transition were apparently evil ;
men seemed to have lost their ideals, and with their ideals
their imagination. The ugly clouds of materialism darkened
the horizon of thought, and appeared to shut out its higher
aspects altogether : Burke lamented that ' the age of chivalry
is dead ' ; Carlyle declaimed at large against ledger-bibles
and payment in cash as the new golden rule. Ruskin followed
in their train, using the whole force of his eloquence against
the machinery and the mechanical contrivances of the day.
To such men the centuries that had gone showed something
nobler ; the advent of bargaining and self-advertisement,
which was all they saw in the new movement, was sordid and
unworthy. But the change was inevitable ; and if at its first
steps we see merely coarseness in the upper ranks, self-satisfied
complacency in the middle, and discontent in the lower, it is
because the weakening of old forces to which men had been
accustomed from time immemorial deprived them of the old
hopes, while the new were not yet formed.
If, as an indication of the capacity of England to manage
292 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVEKSEAS
her colonial empire, we turn from her internal condition to
England and her relations with Scotland and Ireland, we shall
the Empire. no ^ fi n( j m uch room for encouragement. The union
of England and Scotland in 1707 into one kingdom of Great
Britain had been accomplished without much difficulty, and
nobody had seriously proposed to undo it. But the old feeling
of enmity was still strong, especially in the south, which seemed
to be invaded by lanky, red-haired men with high cheek-bones,
an abominable accent, and an indomitable passion for work,
that generally ended in their capturing the best positions. 1
The Earl of Bute when premier was disliked as much on
account of his Scottish nationality as because he was a court
favourite : ' a pert prim prater of the northern race, guilt in
his heart and famine in his face,' sang the bitter political
satirist Churchill of him. And Dr. Johnson had the indecency
to reproach the Scots for the poverty of their country ; he
declared that the best road a Scotsman ever saw was the road
to England, and that what was food for horses in England
was food for men in Scotland. And this was at a time when
education in the north was infinitely better than in England,
and when the northern philosophers and men of science
were becoming celebrated through the world.
But nobody has ever reproached the Scots with being unable
to take care of themselves ; and beyond a little bad blood,
no harm was done. A feeling of mutual respect soon grew up,
as the two nations came to appreciate each other's qualities ;
and nobody would to-day suspect that Britain had ever
contained two implacable and resentful peoples, whose only
common sentiment was that they cordially detested each
other.
1 The late Professor Blackie is said to have attributed a great part of
the material success of Scotsmen to the fact that they had diligently
studied the biblical Book of Proverbs in their youth. If this view were
correct, I should feel almost inclined to attribute the original credit for
the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway to Solomon rather than
to Lord Strathcona.
EVOLUTION OF A LAEGER SYNTHESIS 293
Far different was the situation in Ireland. That country
had not yet emerged from the condition of the Middle Ages.
The religious question was still uppermost. Four-fifths of
the population were Catholics, and as such they were excluded
from any share in the government of their country. Their
Church was proscribed. Their creed was insulted. An
Anglican priest was set up in their midst ; but he preached,
if he preached at all, to empty benches. Nevertheless he
drew the revenues. Protestants alone elected for, and sat in,
the parliament in Dublin. The Orangeman, whose name has
become a byword for theological narrowness, alone made
and executed the laws. Their severity and their unfairness
would have raised a protest in the court of an Asiatic despot ;
but no protest came from the Irish. The spirit of the race
seemed broken : and the unhappy Celts, poor, ignorant,
and superstitious, received insult and upbraiding from their
masters, the rich and prosperous settlers of Ulster, with scarcely
a hope of revenge.
No remedial measures were applied to alleviate their con-
ditions ; no attempt was made to educate them. It would
perhaps be unfair to charge the English people with consciously
increasing the evil of their condition ; but they must plead
guilty to having looked on without protest and perhaps
with secret complacency while crimes were perpetrated in the
name of England on that brave and unfortunate nation whose
destiny was irrevocably placed in the hands of the larger island.
The harshness and lack of sympathy in the English character
which we note in its relations with Scotland and Ireland
was full of danger for the future. The commercialism of the
day saw nothing but its own immediate profit ; and that
seemed to lie in the restriction of other people's trade. The
religion of the day saw nothing but the triumph of its creed ;
and that seemed to lie in the oppression of others. The
politicians of the day saw little but the good of their party
and their purse ; and that seemed to lie in the monopoly of
294 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
power and the largest possible enjoyment of the sweets of
office.
Glaring as such faults are, when looked at from a more
advanced standpoint, England was still in better condition
than her continental neighbours. No other country, save
Holland, had constitutional government. France was drifting
slowly towards revolution. Germany was exhausted and
divided, and could not yet boast any such revival of thought
as had animated France since the days of Voltaire. Goethe
was but fourteen years old at the Peace of Paris. Schiller
was still in the nursery. The learning of the country consisted
only in the pedantry of Leipzig, and the Gallicism of Berlin.
The state of Italy was still worse. Insulted and trampled on
by her own petty princes and foreign usurpers, materially
poor and intellectually bankrupt, the country had entered on a
long slumber that lasted well into the next century. In Spain,
the accession of a foreign and enlightened government had
galvanised the land into some improvements ; but, as we
have seen in a former chapter, the people were dead to all
progress.
England was therefore in a very real sense, the leading
power of Europe. The larger question remained, of her
fitness to govern the empire she had acquired. Would the
English be able to rise to a sense of their responsibility, as
the chief citizens in the first free empire that the world had
seen, or were they merely to copy the Romans and the
Spaniards, in looking upon outlying provinces as material
for plunder and extortion ? The answer is somewhat curious,
and interesting as showing the gradual education of a people
to higher ideas.
The British possessions at the Peace of 1763 lay either
in America or India, if we exclude Gibraltar and Minorca as
purely military stations, and the, as yet, unimportant African
settlements. Within a few years the American colonies had
been driven to revolt by a policy of repression, that was
EVOLUTION OF A LARGER SYNTHESIS 295
inaugurated indeed by the king, but was heartily endorsed
by the nation at large. The Asiatic provinces, on the other
hand, were kept and added to. It is true that the people
could not rebel under the stern rule of their masters. It is
true that both Clive and Warren Hastings were at times
cruel and hard, that the East India Company was grasping,
its officers rapacious, and mostly engaged in making a fortune
rapidly and returning home. It is true that in England
itself there was then a colossal ignorance of oriental matters
that would have put to the blush even the present-day
ignorance of a self-satisfied Cockney.
But the anomaly lies in this. While the American colonists,
men of the same blood and tongue as ourselves, were treated
as the dirt beneath our feet, and hated because they had
dared to exhibit the same love of freedom that had been the
cause of England's own greatness, the wrongs of the Indians
raised an intense indignation. Both Clive and Hastings
were tried for misconduct ; the Company was brought under
the control of parliament : and the beginnings were made
of a government in the East which has developed into the
modern empire of India, with its universities, schools,
and hospitals, its marvellous civil service, and its constant
endeavours towards betterment, as it introduces railways,
canals, granaries, and manufactures. In other words, the
English attitude towards America was mediaeval ; towards
Asia it was in advance of the age.
What and how great was the prejudice against ' the planta-
tions/ as the western provinces of the empire were generally
called, we shall see better when we come to the The
history of the Imperial Civil War. It is enough against*
here to take the evidence which has come down to America,
us from the conversations and memoirs of the day words
spoken and written by the most intellectual men of the
age, with no thought of their preservation.
Among the foremost stands Samuel Johnson, the leading
296 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
spirit of the great club which included Gibbon, Goldsmith,
and Reynolds, ponderously learned and transparently honest,
but illiberal and tyrannical as a Dominican friar, and unable
to appreciate anything beyond his own little world of Fleet
Street and Streatham. In the inimitable biography of his
master, Boswell, whose whole-hearted devotion hardly admits
that there were any spots on his literary sun, allows that
' his violent prejudice against our West Indian and American
settlers appeared whenever there was an opportunity.'
What that prejudice was, we have Johnson's own words to
show. ' In America there is little to be observed except
natural curiosities.' ' The planters of America, a race of
men whom I suppose no other man wishes to resemble.'
' So they (the Americans) are a race of convicts, and ought
to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging.'
' I am willing to love all mankind, except an American
robbers, rascals, pirates, etc.' He wished to send Rousseau
to work in the plantations, as the worst fate that could befall
him. He was the author of Taxation no Tyranny, in which he
defended the claim of England to tax America. He thundered
abuse at all who defended the insurgents ; even his biographer
admits that ' he attacked the Americans with intemperate
vehemence of abuse.' A casual visitor, it is said, could not
but be very obnoxious to Johnson, for he was not only a
patriot, but an American.
At about the same time, two of the king's ministers spoke
of the Americans in Parliament as ' arrant cowards.' The
ignorance which gave rise to such misconceptions was pro-
found. Save those few who had been to America nobody
learned, or cared to learn, anything of the colonies. The
diarist Evelyn knew nothing save ' unheard-of stories of the
increase of witches in New England, men, women, and children
devoting themselves to the service of the devil.' Pepys was
little wiser. He mentions Nova Scotia as ' the only place
in America that hath coals that we know of . .we are to
EVOLUTION OF A LARGER SYNTHESIS 297
give to the king of France : I do not know the importance of
it.' Virginia tobacco was celebrated : the Spectator recom-
mended it, and Pope thought it better than a bishop's blessing ;
but few knew much more about the premier colony.
Such was the spirit that animated the most cultured
Englishmen of the age, and it was shared by the general
body of the nation. It was this that made the policy of
George m. and his ministers possible. It was this unfitness
for government, this provincialism of ideas, this blindness
to the grander horizon that had opened out on England,
that brought about the split of empire. Against such a spirit
Pitt's warning voice was raised in vain : he was a prophet
crying in the wilderness when he exclaimed passionately,
' This kingdom has no right to lay a tax on the colonies. . . .
You cannot conquer America ! If I were an American as I
am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my
country, I would never lay down my arms never, never,
never ! ' England did not yet understand that the freedom
she had acquired at so much cost was her most precious gift
to her sons ; and, as a consequence of her ignorance, the first
and greatest was converted into an enemy.
While America had been despised in its weakness and
was to be hated in its strength, India had roused a different
interest and a greater enthusiasm. It was at first The interest
solely in its material sense, as a means of obtaining "* Indla -
wealth, that it appealed to England in a way that ' the
plantations ' had never done, since Ralegh's hopes were
blasted. Marlowe's bombast of the ' pampered jades of Asia '
reflected the dreams of an impossible luxury current in that
age. Milton, in a well-known passage, pictured the prince of
darkness ' high on a throne of royal state, which far outshone
the wealth of Ormuz and of Ind, or when the gorgeous east
with richest hand showers on her kings barbaric pearl and
gold.' It was not until later that knowledge became more
precise, and men could imagine the East without visions of
298 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
untold precious metals in fact, traces of the old idea linger
in our popular speech to-day.
But as we read the comedies and essays of the century
after the Restoration we realise how the commoner com-
modities and more striking customs of Asia became gradually
familiarised at home, and how employment by the East India
Company now presented itself as a new and profitable career
to the young men of the age. The costumes and perfumes of
the East had already furnished Shakespeare with two of his
prettiest images ' Ornament . . . the beauteous scarf, veil-
ing an Indian beauty/ and, ' In the spiced Indian air, by night,
Full often hath she gossiped at my side : and sat with me on
Neptune's yellow sands Marking the embarked traders on the
flood, When we have laughed to see the sails conceive And
grow big-bellied with the wanton wind/ Milton notices
the growing commerce when describing the fleet ' Close sailing
from Bengala, or the isles of Ternate or Tedore, whence
merchants bring their spicy drugs.' He alludes to ' Ganges
or Hydaspes, Indian streams/ the Indus, ' Agra and Lahore
of Great Mogul/ and again, ' India and the golden Chersonese
And utmost Indian isle Taprobane, Dark faces with white
silken turbans wreathed/ In Comus, he speaks of ' The
nice morn on the Indian steep/ which had already given
Spenser his ' Morrow next appear 'd with purple hayre yet
dropping fresh out of the Indian fount/
Herrick turned for a moment from the monotonous cata-
logue of his mistresses to mention the ' rough pepper ' and
' the scorched, clove ' of the ' eastern Ind ' ; Cowley regretted
that fate denied him ' Indian pearl or Persian plate/ And
prudent Pepys observed with amazement ' in the hold of an
Indian ship, the greatest wealth lie in confusion that a man
can see in the world. Pepper scattered through every
chink, you trod upon it ; and in cloves and nutmegs I walked
above the knees whole rooms full. And silk in bales, and
boxes of copper-plate ... as noble a sight as ever I saw in
EVOLUTION OF A LARGER SYNTHESIS 299
my life/ At this time too he first ' did send for a cup of tee
(a China drink), of which I had never drank before/
The journals of Queen Anne's time speak of oriental pro-
ducts often enough. The Toiler humorously suggests that
the East India Company should accept of heroic poems in
payment for their sealed bonds. The Guardian was the dread
of ' poor Celia, whose wrapping-gown is not right India/
To Dryden India was ' fraught with all the riches of the rising
sun/ and Pope knew India as the land of glowing gems.
In- every drama are scattered allusions to the wealth of
the East. Ponderous virtue is made to declare that all the
riches of India should not corrupt it. A rich English mer-
chant, one is told, ' may make himself a match for the daughter
of a nabob/ 1 And Sir Oliver Surface had been in the Indies
a long time ' a devilish rich uncle ; the climate has hurt him
considerably, the little nabob. He has transmitted bullion,
rupees, pagodas, china, shawls, congo tea, avadavats, and
Indian crackers/
Shops were opened in London for the sale of oriental
goods ; and from sundry hints in the light literature of the
day, it may be surmised that these places, which were known
as India houses, often served as meeting-places for distressed
or sometimes dishonourable lovers. A whole scene in a
comedy takes place as ' a frolicsome supper at an Indian
house'; 2 while another author remarks that 'it would be
proper to nail the tongues of talkativeness to Indian houses/ 3
The diarists of the day are not silent on the subject of India.
It would be wearisome to set out at length every mention of
the orient that even a superficial acquaintance with the
writings of the time affords : but it is noteworthy that there
was no exact acquaintance with eastern affairs ; when men
came to give fuller details, they generally fell into the absurd
1 The Clandestine Marriage, published in 1766.
2 The Provoked Hiisband (1727); there are similar references in The
Careless Husband (1704).
3 The Guardian, No. 66.
300 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
anachronisms that we find in such plays as Dryden's Aurung-
zebe.
Such allusions, scattered through our literature, prove
that India had become something more than a name to the
England that heard of Olive's victories ; but they prove
nothing more. If the conquests in the East appealed to the
nation, it was because of their commercial value ; it was not
realised at first that they had a deeper meaning. A few
years later, however, the misdeeds of the conquerors roused a
storm of indignation ; their conduct was investigated. The
East India Company was reformed and brought under the
direct control of Parliament : vigilant attention was thence-
forward directed to oriental affairs.
But there was nothing of the grander imperialism of an
after age. It would be difficult to find any trace whatever
England's of that spirit in our writers of the first half of the
lack of eighteenth century. However great the number
Imperial . .
Conscious- of pamphlets specially published on matters
relating to India and the colonies, the expansion
of England left no mark on her literature.
England was in fact unconscious of being a world-power.
She did not grasp the full significance of the victories of the
Seven Years' War until it was too late. Exultant as the
nation was at its success over France, it saw in it nothing
more than a victory over an old enemy, and an opportunity
for new trade. The American colonies were lost before the
true meaning of the empire was understood. The whole
country was yet blind to the vast possibilities before it.
Its imagination was still sunk in a dull torpor ; it had not
completely shaken off the stagnation that ushered in the
beginning of the industrial age.
But a change was at hand. It was on the great statesmen
that the mantle of the prophet and the poet fell. The in-
vective, the rhetoric, the passionate appeals of Pitt, Burke and
their successors roused the people at last. The parliamentary
EVOLUTION OF A LARGER SYNTHESIS 301
oratory of the next half-century rang in the ears of the nation
in a way that was never forgotten. The French Revolution
stirred conservative England to a fresh renascence of thought.
The old ideals that had seemed forgotten were transformed
and bettered. There was henceforth a manful combat with
the problems that had too long cumbered the earth. The new
issues raised by the new order of things were studied and
faced. The country entered a fresh era of progress. There
was a firm determination to evolve a better civilisation.
At home, one reform succeeded another. When the war
broke out again abroad into a still greater struggle, the
victories of our seamen recalled the old achievements of
the sea-kings. The daring flights of the Elizabethan singers
were renewed in such writers as Coleridge, Shelley and Byron.
The obstinacy that lost America was not repeated. A
constitution was given to Canada ; the government of India
was improved. Some sense of the responsibility of empire
was evoked, as the British flag triumphed everywhere.
There was indeed even then no imperialism : neither it
nor its bastard progeny, jingoism, came into being until
Victorian times ; and our own poets and thinkers, conscious
that the ideal is not yet perfect, ever dreaming of a better
future, feel sadly how much we still lack, how blind we
even now are. They can see the rents and soils on the garment
that is so proudly flaunted in the world's market-place ;
they can tell that the strength and power of Britain could be
more worthily used ; they know that the vital is often for-
gotten while the irrelevant is insisted on. The Pax Britannica,
that shall replace the Pax Romana of the ancient world, is
still far off. The Codex Britannicus, that shall standardise
our laws into one great system on a scientific basis, is almost
unthought of. The union of the empire is imperfect. The
political aspirations of our peoples, good as they are, could be
more inspiring. The social life of the whole community
could be ampler and higher. The imperialism of the day
302 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE OVERSEAS
could breathe less of the cannon and more of the rule of
justice, freedom, and peace ; it could devote less attention
to decrying the advance of other races, and more to the true
development of our own.
But the eighteenth century had nothing of this. The
head of gold and the feet of clay were alike wanting. If,
however, there was no imperialism as we know it, another
feeling sprang up gradually from the commercialism of
tne time. When a long tranquillity succeeded to the Napo-
leonic wars, there was a new sense of the brotherhood of man
among the European nations. The old Christian message of
peace and goodwill, that had been borne by so many unknown
evangelists into the wilderness, received a fuller meaning.
For a time, at least, the world seemed on the threshold of
the golden age. The splendid illusion of universal concord,
more beautiful than the imaginary San Graal of chivalry,
appeared ; after centuries of wandering, the promised land
seemed at length in sight ... for a little while. . . .
END OF VOLUME THE FIRST
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at the Edinburgh University Press
Tilby, Aubrey Wyatt
The English people over-
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1910
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