English settlement

“ The best hope of the English settlement must be, that in the common course of events, the time may arrive when the population will be sufficient to make its own markets; and awaiting that period, they must be resigned to sink their immediate interests in the prospect of laying the foundation of future fortune for their posterity. ”

“ No permanent English settlement in America was made until after the adoption of the ‘King’s Colors.’ Jamestown, Plymouth, Salem, and Boston were settled under the new flag, though the ships bringing over settlers, being English vessels, also carried the red cross as permitted. ”

“ The dominion of the English kings on the continent is of the highest European moment, but, from its geographical side, it is Gaul and not Britain which it affects. ♦English settlements beyond sea.♦ The really great geographical phænomenon of English history is that which it shares with Spain and Portugal, and in which it surpasses both. This is the vast extent of outlying English dominion and settlement, partly in Europe, but far more largely in the distant lands of Asia, Africa, America, and Australia. But it is not merely that England has become a great power in all quarters of the world ”

“ Views of the English settlers.The English population, an immigrant and enterprising population, looked on the American Provinces as a vast field for settlement and speculation, and in the common spirit of the Anglo-Saxon inhabitants of that continent, regarded it as the chief business of the Government, to promote, by all possible use of its legislative and administrative powers, the increase of population and the accumulation of property ”

“ Although, as I have said there was not an English settlement in America at the opening of 1607, you must not think no attempts had been made to form such colonies. Away up in New England parties of men had landed and tried to makes homes for themselves, but the climate was so rugged, and the hardships they had to face so trying, that they gave up, and those who did not die made haste to get back to Old England again. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In order that we may appreciate, somewhat, the broader political conditions under which the first settlers took up their abode here, which largely engrossed their thoughts and vitally affected them and their children for two generations, it is necessary, before taking up the narrative of their actual settlement here, to advert briefly to the state of affairs at that time in England, and on the continent of Europe, and in the English, French and Spanish Colonies of North America. ”

“ The Britons, then, subsist in large numbers, even in the eastern and southern counties, where the Germanic settlement was most dense, but they subsist as a conquered race; they till the ground in the country, and in the cities occupy themselves with manual labour. Wales and Cornwall alone, in the isle of Britain, were still places of refuge for independent Celts. The idiom and traditions of the ancient inhabitants were there preserved. ”

“ From their numbers, their situation, and the rivers that run into the English settlements, it is easy to conceive, that they can at any time make an attack upon, and constantly annoy as many of the exposed English settlements as they please, and those at any distance from each other. ”

“ But no one to-day would seek in the ruined villages and dwindling population of the countryside the spirit of an “England” four-fifths of whose people have now crowded into the cities. The little red-roofed towns and hamlets, the labourer in the fields at noontide or evening, the old English service in the old English village church, now stand but as the historical survival of a once great and splendid past. Is “England” then to be discovered in the feverish industrial energy of the manufacturing cities? In the vast welter and chaos of the capital of Empire? ”

“ Englishmen could not emigrate to distant parts of the world, and found settlements, without, in many and serious ways, involving the English nation—and that apart from the fact that the soil on which the most populous of the colonies grew up was the unquestioned property of the English Crown. ”

“ In addition to the home-land, England ruled, as colonies, Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands, sea fortresses, such as Gibraltar and Malta, Asiatic possessions, including in India an empire twenty times as populous as the ruling country, Canada, Jamaica, the Barbadoes, the Thirteen Colonies, etc. Our own thirteen colonies, which were not united among themselves and which were not different in the eyes of an Englishman from any other of the colonies, formed a small part geographically of the empire and had for their peculiar distinction only the larger proportion of English residents. ”

“ THE LANDING OF THE BRITISH SETTLERS OF 1820.
(Written on occasion of the celebration of the Settlers’ Jubilee in Grahamstown, in 1870.)
Winds of the North blew cold with icy breath,
And parting seemed a sorrow like to death,
When fifty years ago our little band
Of British settlers left their native land.{102}
They said farewell for ever! ah, farewell
The friends, the joys, the land, they loved so well.
We never more shall stand
On that dear English land,
Nor view our native skies ”

“ Whereas in England the common lands were being confiscated for the benefit of an aristocracy, and the arable turned into sheep-runs for the profit of the great proprietors, in New England the common lands were re-established with the founding of a new settlement. ”

“ In spite of the oppressive bonds of the East India Company, the young settlement, containing the noblest blood of old Europe as well as its most exalted aspirations, grew so powerfully that in 1806, when the Colony passed into the hands of England, a strong national sentiment and a spirit of liberty had already been developed. ”

“ As the conquest of Britain went on, many families who had not been in the war-band of the original invader came in to join the first settlers, and to dwell among them, so that the king had many English subjects besides his original gesiths. Some of the villages in his dominions would therefore be inhabited by the servile dependents of one of these early-coming military chiefs, others by the free bands of kinsmen who had drifted in of their own accord to settle in the land. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This was especially the case with the colonists of Plymouth and Massachusetts. Many of them were educated men, and all possessed their full share, according to their social condition, of the knowledge and attainments of that age. The distinctive characteristic of their settlement is the introduction of the civilization of Europe into a wilderness, without bringing with it the political institutions of Europe. The arts, sciences, and literature of England came over with the settlers. ”

“ In 1609, after some expensive and not very successful attempts at settlement had been made, a new and more enlarged charter was givne by the crown to the first colony, in which the king granted to the 'Treasurer and Company of Adventurers of the city of London for the first colony in Virginia,' in absolute property, the lands extending along the seacoast four hundred miles, and into the land throughout from sea to sea. ”

“ GROWTH OF THE ENGLISH COLONIES.—The English annexation of New Netherland in 1664, and the concessions of the French in 1763, left the English in undisputed possession of the greater part of the Atlantic seaboard. The English colonies in this area grew with astonishing rapidity. Cheap land, religious freedom, and the privilege of self-government attracted settlers from all parts of northern Europe. ”

“ The two first Colonies in New-England failing, there was a fresh supply of English who set down in other parts of the Countrey, and have continued in a flourishing condition to this day.
The whole Countrey now is divided into Colonies, and for your better understanding observe, a Colony is a sort of people that come to inhabit a place before not inhabited, or Colonus quasi, because they should be Tillers of the Earth. From hence by an usual figure the Countrey where they sit down, is called a Colony or Plantation. ”

“ Our lack of information is most probably due to the simple reason that the settlement, like all settlements of a new country, was a very gradual one, a few men coming over in the first instance for the purpose of trade either with Britons or Romans, or coming from the over-populated North to settle in a country which the paucity of archæological remains shows to have been thinly occupied. ”

“ The primary local body in the England which these first colonists to America knew, was the parish, or town, which had both an ecclesiastical and a temporal jurisdiction. Next above the parishes was the territorial division known as the county, with an independent magistracy and a judicial and military organization adapted to the needs of a large rural area. In making independent settlements on the American coast, the English commercial companies and proprietors were not establishing states ”

“ Though they counted among them many hardy backwoodsmen and fur-traders, who had explored all the waterways of the West, they could not back these pioneers up with solid masses of population. There were not more than 180,000 Pg 521 French emigrants in America, while the English colonies boasted at this time nearly 2,000,000 sturdy settlers. ”

“ Foreign nobles were quartered in every manor. A military organization of the country changed while it simplified the holding of every estate. Huge castles of white stone bridled town and country; huge stone minsters told how the Norman had bridled even the Church. But the change was in great measure an external one. The real life of the nation was little affected by the shock of the Conquest. English institutions, the local, judicial, and administrative forms of the country were the same as of old. Like the English tongue they remained practically unaltered. ”

“ As each colony becomes rich enough to suffice unto itself, and strong enough to defend itself, England says to the colonists: "You are now big enough to manage for yourselves, it is time you learnt to do without my help." This is what the Englishman says to his sons, as they come to man's estate. The colony forms its government, chooses its ministers, and its parliament; sends representatives to England to watch over its interests there, and becomes, as it were, a branch house of that [Pg 162] immense firm, known in every latitude, under the name of "John Bull and Company." ”

“ Questions which affect England alone, should be decided according to the views of the English people. Therefore, I advocate Home Rule for England as well as for Ireland, for Scotland, and for Wales, and in doing so, I no more than follow an accepted principle of the Liberal party. The Self-governing Colonies.Let us turn to the great self-governing colonies in North America, Australia, and South Africa. ”

“ The intermingling of peoples and the difference of tradition between town and country over wide areas are in part the cause of this, but it has also been suggested that, in the east of Europe, we have still surviving an earlier stage of the process of settlement in the cleared forest than farther west, while in the south-east {89} we note the persistence of elements still hardly settled at all. ”

“ Provision in the charter, and in the instructions of the royal council, for the creation of individual estates according to the laws and customs of England, not to mention the guarantee of full legal rights for the inhabitants of the colony and for their children, leave no more room for speculation as to the intended permanence of the settlement than there is doubt as to the expected diversity of its economic activity. ”

“ How shall we reveal to this immigrant what this great varied American life means and thus assimilate him into the body politic? Seeking an answer to this problem, the settlement houses have found one of their most effective means in the drama. The southern or southeastern European, filled with emotion, loves to act. In the settlement house, through carefully selected plays, he learns our language and gains the ideals of the land in which he is to live. ”

“ Their decrease in numbers seems to be as rapid in their own district as it is where they are brought into more intimate relations with the whites. The English authorities respect their ownership of lands, and not an acre of it is to be had without just payment for it. ”

“ That the settlement in adequate Volume of the Anglo-Saxon race in the British Dominions is deserving of the constant solicitude of the Home and Colonial Governments, who are hereby urged to consider what further or better steps than those at present existing should be taken to elaborate a general State-aided scheme at reduced rates to encourage emigration of suitable settlers under well-considered conditions. ”

“ In ten years after the first settling the population numbered twelve hundred, and this presently doubled and went on to increase. The early times were taken up with the wrestle with the forest, with the Indians, with Spanish alarms, with incompetent governors, with the Lords Proprietaries' Fundamental Constitutions, and with the restrictions which English Navigation Laws imposed upon English colonies. What grains and vegetables and tobacco they could grow, what cattle and swine they could breed and export, preoccupied the minds of these pioneer farmers. ”