British North America

“ Her Majesty the Queen has already been pleased to express deep interest in a closer union of her North America colonies and will no doubt greatly appreciate this decided expression of your opinion, and the avowal of your desire that all British North America should unite in one community, under one strong and efficient government, which cannot but tend to hasten the accomplishment of this great measure. ”

“ The story of Great Britain's expansion contains the names of hundreds of gallant heroes, but they were at the same time sober and industrious men. The plodding and commercial characteristics possessed by the British colonial saved him from perpetrating those foolish errors of the Spaniard which arose from a desire to gain rapid wealth and a tawdry glory. One fact stands out pre-eminent amongst the reasons of British success—the English kept their period of exploration almost entirely separate from their epoch of settlement. ”

“ The British people of the North American Colonies are a people on whom we may safely rely, and to whom we must not grudge power. For it is not to the individuals who have been loudest in demanding the change, that I propose to concede the responsibility of the Colonial administration, but to the people themselves. ”

“ All the first settlers of America wanted was to be left to themselves.
When we compare the progress of Great Britain with that of North America, the contrast is sufficiently striking to attract our attention. While the progress of the former has been the work of ages, North America has sprung into wealth and power almost within a period which we can remember. But the colonists of North America should recollect, when they indulge in such comparisons, that their British ancestors took many centuries to civilise themselves, before they could send free and intelligent settlers to America. ”

“ But there were some circumstances that caused America to feel more independent of England than at an earlier period. Canada and Acadia had now become British provinces, and our fathers were no longer afraid of the bands of French and Indians who used to assault them in old times. For a century and a half this had been the great terror of New England. Now the old French soldier was driven from the north forever. And even had it been otherwise, the English colonies were growing so populous and powerful that they might have felt fully able to protect themselves without any help from England. ”

“ I am far from wishing to encourage indiscriminately these pretensions to superiority on the part of any particular race; but while the greater part of every portion of the American Continent is still uncleared and unoccupied, and while the English exhibit such constant and marked activity in colonization, so long will it be idle to imagine that there is any portion of that Continent into which that race will not penetrate, or in which, when it has penetrated, it will not predominate. ”

“ Magnitude of interests involved.These interests are indeed of great magnitude; and on the course which Your Majesty and Your Parliament may adopt, with respect to the North American Colonies, will depend the future destinies, not only of the million and a half of Your Majesty's subjects who at present inhabit those Provinces, but of that vast population which those ample and fertile territories are fit and destined hereafter to support. No portion of the American Continent possesses greater natural resources for the maintenance of large and flourishing communities. ”

“ Growth of population.
Although disturbed by wars with the French and Indians, by domestic political quarrels, and by disputes with the mother country regarding the regulation of commerce and manufactures, there was a steady growth of population in British North America during the first half of the seventeenth century. The rewards of industry were sufficient, coupled with considerable religious and political freedom, to entice a continuous, though fluctuating, immigration from England and the continent of Europe. ”

“ Great Britain, with the British power in America, is the only nation with whom, by absolute necessity, you must have the most intimate concerns, either of friendship or hostility. All other nations are three thousand miles distant from you. You may have political connexions with any of these distant nations, but with regard to Great Britain it must be so. Political intercourse and interests will obtrude themselves between our two countries, because they are the two great powers dividing the continent of North America. ”

“ Britain was quietly growing in wealth and power, and her colonies in population and importance. By the census of 1754 it appeared that the British colonists, occupying a strip of territory about 200 miles in width along the Atlantic coasts, numbered upwards of a million souls; whereas at that date, the whole white population under the French flag in North America did not exceed 80,000. ”

“ The new problems were how to administer and to develop not a small island or peninsula but a very large continental area, and how to rule a rival white race which from the [70] beginnings of colonization in North America had made that area, or part of it, its own. To these two most difficult problems was added a third, how to administer the new territory and to rule the French colonists, so as to work in harmony with the adjacent British colonies. Conquest and settlement, so to speak, overlapped. ”

“ BEFORE closing our record of the advance of the white man westwards, we must glance once more at British America, which we left on the eve of the great political crisis at the end of the last century—a crisis which, after long years of absorbing struggles, resulted in the consolidation into a single colony of Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, British Columbia, and the vast territories long held by the Hudson’s Bay and other North-west companies. ”

“ The result was the defeat of the French in North America, and the British conquest of Canada. Whatever might have been the result if the crisis had been postponed, it was not the British colonists but the troops from England, who, in 1758-60, decided the fate of North America. It is customary, in writing accounts of the colonial wars of Great Britain, to emphasize the merits of the colonial soldiers, who have the advantage of knowing the country and the mode of fighting appropriate to it ”

“ I allude to the striking contrast which is presented between the American and the British sides of the frontier line in respect to every sign of productive industry, increasing wealth, and progressive civilization.
Picture of the American side.By describing one side, and reversing the picture, the other would be also described. On the American side, all is activity and bustle. The forest has been widely cleared; every year numerous settlements are formed, and thousands of farms are created out of the waste; the country is intersected by common roads ”

“ It was not policy, it was not system, which gave North America to the English rather than to the French, and yet there was a certain gain even from the utter absence of both policy and system. Natural forces had more play on the English side than on the French, and in a sense it might be said of the English colonies that their strength was to sit still. ”

“ It left Central and South America under the stagnant and reactionary government of Spain and Portugal; the eastern coast of North America under the control of groups of self-governing Englishmen; Canada, still inhabited by Frenchmen, under British dominance; Java and the Spice Islands, together with the small settlement of Cape Colony, in the hands of the Dutch; a medley of European settlements in the West Indian islands, and a string of European factories along the coast of West Africa; and the beginning of an anomalous British dominion established at two points on the coast of India. ”

“ The idea of a great United British Empire seems to have originated on the North American Continent. When Canada was conquered and the power of France disappeared from North America, Great Britain then possessed the thirteen States or Colonies, as well as the Provinces of Quebec and Nova Scotia. ”

“ In fact it seems to be in the nature of things that the United States' prestige should grow and ours should wane in North America, and I wish we were well and creditably out of the scrape.
In the course of the previous year he had already expressed the opinion that the great problem for us in American politics was to find some fair and honourable way of dissolving all connection between England and our North American colonies. ”

“ Comparison with the United States.It is a singular and melancholy feature in the condition of these Provinces, that the resources rendered of so little avail to the population of Great Britain, are turned to better account by the enterprising inhabitants of the United States. While the emigration from the Province is large and constant, the adventurous farmers of New England cross the frontier, and occupy the best farming lands. Their fishermen enter our bays and rivers, and in some cases monopolise the occupations of our own unemployed countrymen ”

“ No imminent danger in other North American Provinces.With respect to the other North American Provinces, I will not speak of such evils as imminent, because I firmly believe that whatever discontent there may be, no irritation subsists which in any way weakens the feeling of attachment to the British Crown and Empire. ”

“ In all this the Government but pursued that line which [V2:pg 272] is the business of Governments--the preservation of the prosperity and power of the state. With the unexpected prolongation of the war and the British recognition of the Northern "will to conquer" there came, as is evident from a scrutiny of Russell's diplomatic tone and acts, a growing belief that the North might after all succeed in its purpose, at least of subjugating the South. This would mean the possibility of continuing that policy of friendship for a united America which had been determined upon in the 'fifties. ”

“ The answer seems obvious, for North America itself. But what did North America mean? It had a different meaning to different interests. The New Englander cared for little but the New England colonies, and the immediately adjacent lands and seas. To the Acadian settlers the Acadian peninsula, to the Canadian habitant the banks of the St. Lawrence, were all in all. The inland colonists of New York had in their minds not merely the safety of their colony, within its ill-defined boundaries, but also paramount influence over the Five Nations, and unrestricted trade with the western Indians. ”

“ How to make Colonial Government work harmoniously.The preceding pages have sufficiently pointed out the nature of those evils, to the extensive operation of which, I attribute the various practical grievances, and the present unsatisfactory condition of the North American Colonies. It is not by weakening, but strengthening the influence of the people on its Government ”

“ The English in North America, on the other hand, had rarely any policy and never any system.
The French policy was an imperial policy. It was clear, consistent, and far-reaching. The object aimed at was a French dominion in North America, the lines of communication being the two great rivers, the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi. Canada and Louisiana were to be joined; the English were to be kept between the Alleghanies and the Atlantic; the French King was to be lord of all; the French religion was to be supreme; the Indians were to be converted and made French in sympathies and interests. ”

“ New interests would be called into existence by an union.But the interests which are already in common between all these Provinces are small in comparison with those which the consequences of such an union might, and I think I may say assuredly would, call into existence; and the great discoveries of modern art, which have throughout the world, and no where more than in America, entirely altered the character and the channels of communication between distant countries, will bring all the North American Colonies into constant and speedy intercourse with each other. ”

“ Only, as colonization spread in the long course of years, the dwellers in one province came into contact with the dwellers in another, and both the one and the other came face to face with the French advance. Then the pressure of common danger made for union, and the race instinct gathered strength. The mother country sent out soldiers; colonists were enlisted in royal regiments to supplement the provincial militias; and in clumsy, most imperfect fashion, the English in North America began to shape themselves into a nation. ”

“ During the early part of the eighteenth century, the British North American provinces had made extraordinary progress in population and wealth—a progress then unequaled in the world's history, and only now excelled by that of the Australian settlements. From many of the European nations, swarms of the energetic and discontented poured into the land of plenty and comparative freedom. ”

“ The difference between the genius of the British constitution, which protects and governs North America, and that of the mercantile company which oppresses and domineers in the East Indies, cannot, perhaps, be better illustrated than by the different state of those countries. ”

“ For what country but Great Britain has ever sent forth from its bosom such a colony as now forms the United States of America? What colony could ever look back upon a loftier lineage than America, when, comparing her own wide and thriving domains with many of the sinking empires of Europe, she remembers her British descent, and feels, in a thousand traces of blood and thoughts and habits and morals, her connexion with "the inviolate island of the sage and free." ”