A. W. Ward

“ Alone among the leaders of English colonisation in the seventeenth century, he can claim to be a city-founder. That dignity, the result of symmetry and spaciousness, in which Philadelphia ranks above any city of its own age and kind, are largely due to Penn’s wise choice of a site and to his systematic construction.
It w'as inevitable that Penn’s colonial fortunes should sufier by the downfall of his patron James. There is no trace of any formal act of deprivation; but in 1692 Pennsylvania was included in the commission granted to Benjamin Fletcher as governor of New York. ”

“ To a modern reader the theology of New England, the sermons and the controversial treatises, can, with very rare exceptions, be nothing but a weariness. Their dogmatising is for the most part to us meaningless, buried under the successive strata of thought which three centuries have produced: their controversial fencing has the cumbrous elaboration and tortuousness which were the besetting vices of Elizabethan hterature. Yet they claim our respect as written not only by men, but for men, who did not shrink from resolute study and serious thought. ”

“ The trenches were pushed rapidly forward and the terrific fire of British artillery “served,” in the words of a French officer, “ with an activity not often seen,” played havoc with the masoniy, while a constant stream of bombs left the defenders, in a short time, not a spot in which they could with safety lay their heads. A sally in force was defeated and driven back. Wolfe was conspicuously active, now heading a charge, now erecting fresh batteries on the harbour side and working big guns with joyous energy. It was a gallant defence too, Drucour, the governor, behaved with infinite spirit ”

“ In 1743 Oglethorpe also departed, never to return. If Georgia had not become all that its founders hoped, one may at least say that Oglethorpe had attained a far larger measure of success than most men could have won with such material. Broken and shiftless men could not be made at once into prosperous and hard-working citizens. But the colony held together: it fulfilled its function as an outpost against the Spanish invasion: it had given the settlers a life far better than that which they left behind. ”

“ Loudon was of a desponding nature, and acquired a reputation for dilatoriness and other failings that was perhaps not fully deserved. The summer was consumed in strengthening Forts Edward and William Henry and in building the vast fleet of boats necessary for advancing down Lake George against the French, whose great fortress of Carillon or Ticonderoga, at the narrow entrance to Lake Champlain, bade defiance to the British and filled the surrounding forests with fierce bands of marauding scalp-hunting warriors, both red and white. ”

“ With the extinction of the Company the appointment of the governor and council devolved unchallenged, one may almost say of necessity, on the Crown. Thus the constitution assumed that form which henceforth became the normal type for British colonies, of a governor and two chambers, one nominated and one popularly elected. The economy of the colony soon put on that special form which it permanently retained. Those varied industries which the Company had endeavoured to foster came to nothing: tobacco became the one staple product of the country. ”

“ Absolute power lodged in the wise hands of a Colbert, even of a Seignelay or a Pontchartrain, gave scope for ideas undreamed of in England. In Biuke’s opinion “obedience to a wise government serves the French colonists for personal wisdom”; and the dangers involved in such exchange were not at first obvious. Absolute power had faith in the future, passed over questions of profit and loss, silenced or ignored the old grumble that the colonies did not enrich France. Policy, not commerce, dictated the retention of the St Lawrence, the Lakes and the Mississippi ”

“ In the colonies outside New England we have nothing that can be called a school of literature. We find men in whom colonial life had quickened the habit of observation, and who have left us vivid descriptions of what was striking in the physical life of the newly-discovered world. Virginia produced three waiters who at least showed that a colonist could attain a high standard of culture and expression. ”

“ With Howard began a system vicious in theory yet not without its practical advantages, whereby the nominal governor was an absentee, and his duties were discharged by a lieutenant-governor. That the office of governor should be bestowed on a wealthy and aristocratic non-resident was beyond doubt an abuse. A tribute was exacted from the colonists for a payment which, if made at all, ought to have been made from the Enghsh civil-list. But one must at least admit that honest and competent men were entrusted with what was virtually the supreme office in the colony. ”

“ Its immediate effect was enormously to increase, among the Indians, the prestige that the French by their activity had already been acquiring, and to hurl on the defenceless frontiers of the middle and southeni colonies a horde of savages, thirsting for scalps and eager for blood.
Two expeditions of less import were undertaken this year in the North. War had not yet been formally declared between France and England; but, when Braddock’s corps was despatched from Cork, France answered the challenge by sending 3000 soldiers to Canada. ”

“ In Virginia there was no sort of corporate union below that of the State. A New England colony was made up of a number of smaller organisms, each with an intensely strong sense of corporate life. In both colonies a community far removed from the nominal centre of government, conscious of needs and aspirations which its rulers wholly ignored or misunderstood, drifted into half-conscious republicanism. ”

“ Yet one may doubt whether any machinery could have done much for a Church which was clearly felt by the majority of the settlei-s, and especially by the most earnest and spiritually minded section of them, to be exotic, which could appeal to no inspiring associations in the past, and which had done little for the mental and spiritual life of the colonies since they had become separate communities.
Whatever might be the shortcomings of New England, her eyes were never shut to the truth that man does not live by bread alone. ”

“ But all French subjects taken since the war began were to be restored; each prisoner so delivered was to release from his parole a member of the garrison. The fort was then abandoned for a large entrenchment near by which had been included in the defence.
It was at the evacuation of this temporary refuge that the bloody scene was enacted which has stained Montcalm’s memory. The Indians, though they had joined in the agreement, could not tolerate the sight of vanquished enemies marching off, not merely with their lives and scalps, but with their clothes, arms and small possessions. ”

“ It is no exaggeration to say that the history of North C.arolina for the next fifty years is little more than a dreary and uninstructive record of disputes and insurrections. The colony indeed seems to have reached that chronic state of anarchy when the imprisonment and deposition of a governor is a passing incident which hardly influences the life of the community. ”

“ In Virginia and Maryland we find no trace of any foreign element, though doubtless there were individual foreign settlers. But the Carolinas were largely peopled by French Huguenots, by Swiss, by refugees from the Palatinate, and during the eighteenth century by Scottish and Irish immigrants.
In the northern colonies slavery was a mere excrescence, exercising no perceptible influence over industry or social life. Probably in 1700 there were not 6000 slaves in the whole territory between the Kennebec and Long Island. For the negro slave can only fulfil one of two functions. ”

“ The British colonists, he says, are opulent, with the appearance of not profiting by their wealth, while the Canadians conceal their poverty under an air of comfort. The Canadian enjoys all he has and often makes a show of having more than he has. The British colonist strives for his heir. The Canadian is content if he leaves his sons no worse off than he was at the beginning of life. The British Americans will not have war, for they have too much to lose; the French Canadian detests peace. ”