British colonies

“ England, by these defences, would seem to say to the colonists—"Look there, my lads, and see the emblems of your protection, and of British rule in America for ever." By her legislation and free trade policy, she has unequivocally told them, "that she must buy her bread where she pleases; and they may find a government where they please." With one hand she has taken her colonies by the shoulder, and told them they must behave themselves: with the other, she has shaken hands with them, and told them they may kick up their heels as they please for all she cares. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If England tells the colonies that she needs their help, they will come, because their people are flesh of her flesh and blood of her blood, and also because they depend for their defense upon her navy, and if she were to go under they would go under, too. But the continental nations have no such claims upon the British colonies, which would not be in a hurry to make sacrifices in order to satisfy their appetites or their passions. ”

“ If I were to define the modern colonists, I should say they are the noble discoverers and settlers of a new world, from whence as from an endless source, wealth and plenty, the means of power, grandeur, and glory, in a degree unknown to the hungry chiefs of former ages, have been pouring into Europe for 300 years past in return for which those colonists have received from the several states of Europe, except from Great Britain only since the Revolution, nothing but ill-usage, slavery, and chains, as fast as the riches of their own earning could furnish the means of forging them. ”

“ On the continent of Europe, Great Britain had Frederick of Prussia for an ally; on the other side were France, Austria, Russia, and Sweden. Beyond the Atlantic, a French population in Canada, Acadia, and Louisiana of less than 90,000 souls was ranged against British colonies with a population at least thirteen times as numerous. One or other of the larger British colonies, taken alone, was better peopled with white colonists than Canada. ”

“ It is to be hoped that the present awakening on the subject of past failures of our government to enforce respect for its own principles may be a warning to all concerned against any transgression of those principles.
Continental friends with whom I have conversed on the subject of the British Colonies have sometimes appeared to me to leave out of account some considerations special to the subject. They regard British Colonization as having been accomplished by a series of acts of aggression, solely inspired by the love of conquest and desire for increased territory. ”

“ GREAT BRITAIN AND HER COLONIES How England Became Mistress of the Seas Great Britain as a Colonizing Power—Colonies in the Pacific Region—Colonization in Africa—British Colonies in Africa—The Mahdi Rebellion in Egypt—Gordon at Khartoum—Suppression of the Mahdi Revolt—Colonization in Asia—The British in India—Colonies in America—Development of Canada—Progress in Canada
In the era preceding the nineteenth century Spain, France, and Great Britain were the great colonizing Powers, the last named being the latest in the field, but rapidly rising to become the most important. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Three thousand miles away the wealth and power of England was represented by a number of settlements occupying a comparatively narrow strip of territory on the Atlantic seaboard of the North American continent. The American colonies were the proudest possessions of the British Empire. Through generation after generation, for more than two centuries, English daring and English courage had built up those colonies, reclaiming them from the wilderness and the swamp, wresting them from wild man and wild beast, fighting for them with European power after European power. ”

“ Anyone who knows English colonies knows that the British Government, wherever it has been possible to do so politically, that is, in all her colonies which are already properly organised and firmly established as British, has always met in a most generous and sympathetic way German, and indeed any foreign, trade or other enterprises. ”

“ Resolved That these united colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the british crown and that all political connection between them and the state of great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved
That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances. ”

“ In Great Britain the sixteenth century was the age of adventurers, casting about for ways to other worlds, or freebooting where Spain and Portugal claimed ownership of land and sea; but in that time two men stand out as having had definite views of settlement, and as having been colonizers in advance of their age. ”

“ Before the revolution, all the colonies constituted a part of the dominions of the king of Great Britain, and all the colonists were natural born subjects, entitled to all the privileges of British born subjects, and capable of inheriting lands in any part of the British dominions, as owing a common allegiance to the British crown. ”

“ Our colonies, while they have English blood in their veins, and have relations in England, and while they can get by trading with us, the stronger and greater they grow, the more this crown and kingdom will get by them; and nothing but such an arbitrary power as shall make them desperate can bring them to rebel. ”

“ The thirteen original colonies were now "full grown." Their population had increased to 2,000,000 and was fast growing. Their men had proven their bravery and generalship in the French and Indian War. Many of them had developed into fine officers, and all compared favorably with the British regulars. Their loyalty to England was proven by the 30,000 lives that had been given that she might conquer her traditional rival and enemy. ”

“ Continuity of English colonization meant little more than that the lands claimed by one colony were coterminous with those claimed by the next, and that no other European nation could plant a settlement between the Alleghanies and the sea without committing a trespass and fighting for its place. There was no continuity of what would now be called effective occupation. Colony was divided from colony by many miles of forest and backwood. ”

“ Common danger alone produced occasional signs of common action. The New England colonies, whose borders were most within reach of French raids, and whose shores reached to Acadia, showed far the most public spirit, and far the most power of combination. ”

“ They succeeded because their trade was war not peace, because they were roving adventurers who had only their lives to lose, ravening among quiet men of substance who had homes and wives and children to be plundered and slain. It was as certain that in course of time the cause of the English colonists would prevail, as that the Highland clans, who in Scotland marauded their southern neighbours, would eventually be broken, or that the Five Nations themselves, if left to fight alone, would eventually go down before the settled life of Canada. ”

“ Every colonist had a right to inhabit, if he pleased, in any other colony, and as a British subject he was capable of inheriting lands by descent in every other colony. The commercial intercourse of the colonies too was regulated by the general laws of the British empire, and could not be restrained or obstructed by colonial legislation. ”

“ These are the consequences to the colonies of the hearty assistance they gave to Great-Britain in the late war.——A war, undertaken solely for her own benefit. The objects of it were, the securing to herself the rich tracts of land on the back of these colonies, with the Indian trade, and Nova-Scotia with the fishery. These, and much more has that kingdom gained; but the inferior animals that hunted with the Lion, have been amply rewarded for all the sweat and blood their loyalty cost them, by the honour of having sweated and bled in such company. ”

“ Now the people of our colonies need no admission to citizenship. They are already British subjects; the essence of the modern colonial relation is that they remain British subjects. The inhabitants of the colonies, each man by himself, are the equals of the inhabitants of the United Kingdom; this or that colonist may be an elector in the United Kingdom; let him come and live in the United Kingdom and he may become a member of Parliament, a cabinet minister, a peer of the realm. It is only the communities, as communities, that are subject. ”

“ Now I look on the colonies as so many counties gained to Great Britain, and more advantageous to it than if they had been gained out of the seas around its coasts, and joined to its land: For being in different climates, they afford greater variety of produce, and being separated by the ocean, they increase much more its shipping and seamen; and since they are all included in the British empire, which has only extended itself by their means; and the strength and wealth of the parts are the strength and wealth of the whole ”

“ Up to pre-revolutionary times the colonists in the Maritime Provinces, in Canada, and in the Atlantic Colonies thought of themselves as British people merely separated from the people in the Old Country by the main of the Atlantic. ”

“ A full-blown colony was called into being under regulations which implied childhood, and the result was to leave the Canadians contented so long as they knew no other rules of life, but to leave them standing still, while their English rivals, neither too lawless nor too conservative, grew out of infancy into clumsy manhood, and proved their strength when the fullness of the time was come. ”

“ If the colonies, in truth, are to be made, or to be kept British, in anything else than in name—if even in name they can long be kept so—it must be by the infusion of the essential elements of British character and British principle into them, by means of British legislation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Let it be known that England considers only her immediate interests and will not exert herself, and the other colonies will know what they have to count upon, and the British Empire will dwindle down before long into a single insignificant island in the North Sea. ”

“ This we have seen reduced to practice in the present and preceding reigns, and have the highest reason, from the paternal care and goodness that His Majesty and the British Parliament have hitherto been graciously pleased to discover to all His Majesty's dutiful and loyal subjects, and to the colonists in particular, to rest satisfied that our privileges will remain sacred and inviolate. The connection between Great Britain and her colonies is so natural and strong as to make their mutual happiness depend upon their mutual support. ”

“ But in more modern ages, the spirit of violence being in some measure, if the expression may be allowed, sheathed in commerce, colonies have been settled by the nations of Europe for the purposes of trade. ”

“ When a nation takes possession of a different country and settles a colony there, that country, though separated from the principal establishment, or mother country, naturally becomes a part of the state equally with its ancient possessions. ”

“ 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 antipathy of the English settlers to the Indians was far too great to lead to the sort of miscegenation which was encouraged by the French in their part of the continent, and to which reference will be made later. In the British colonies the half-breed was looked upon as an Indian, whereas in the French colonies, as generally in all Colonial countries that had the Roman imperial tradition and the Roman Catholic religion, the half-breed was assimilated to the European group. ”