Southern Colonies

“ In the South the rich soil was widely distributed, the rivers served as convenient highways, and the climate was mild; except for protection from the Indians, there was no necessity in colonial times for the massing of the people. Villages were few, and the plantations were strung along the streams, often many miles apart and separated by dense forests. The legislatures of the Southern provinces from time to time endeavored to create trading and manufacturing towns by statute ”

“ Character of the Period.—During the first quarter, or indeed the first half of the eighteenth century, colonial history contains few salient features apart from boundary disputes, quarrels with royal governors, and struggles with the French and Indians. There was a steady growth in numbers, which may be measured by the fact that from the first to the middle of the century New England increased fourfold, the Middle colonies sixfold, and the Southern colonies sevenfold in population. Wealth and general prosperity increased in fair proportion also. ”

“ Before the settlers were ready to resist, three hundred men, women and children had been slain. The local militia at last made headway against the savages, [Pg 44] and after the capture and death of the old chief in 1646 a treaty was made as to the boundary between the English and the Indians, under which peace reigned for thirty years.
It has been the fashion to regard Virginia as a purely Cavalier colony; this is probably due to an attempt to accentuate the difference between the Southern colony and the New England group. ”

“ These were authorized to plant a colony wherever they might choose between 38° and 45° of north latitude, and he gave to them a territory of similar limits and extent to that given to the first colony. He provided, however, that the plantation of whichever of the said two colonies should be last effected, should not be within one hundred miles of the other that might be first established. The company of the Southern colony came to be distinguished as the London company, and the other as the Plymouth company. ”

“ The staple of our Australian colonies, but more particularly of New South Wales, the climate and the soil of which are peculiarly suited to its production,—is fine wool. ”

“ While the Southern Colony had attracted the wealth and influence of leading adventurers who represented the more liberal party in the government, and were enabled to prosecute their plans of colonization with vigor to a good degree of success, the Northern Colony had signally failed from the beginning. ”

“ I must confess to no small amount of surprise at the complete isolation of the people of these colonies; the divisions among them; the separate pursuits, prejudices, languages; they seem to have nothing in common; no aggregation of interests; it is existence without nationality; sectionalism without emulation; a mere exotic life with not a fibre rooted firmly in the soil. The colonists are English, Irish, Scotch, French, for generation after generation. Why is this, O Picton? Why is it that the captain's lady has high cheek-bones, and speaks the pure Hibernise? ”

“ Widely different was the case of the English colonies in North America. All these settlements started under some form of grant or charter, derived ultimately from the Crown: the Crown from time to time interfered and made a show of its supremacy; but there was no system of any sort or kind, and communities grew up, which in practice had never been governed from home but governed themselves. Most of all, the New England colonies embodied to the full the spirit of colonial independence. ”

“ Crown Colonies.There is another group of British possessions which are peculiarly under the government of the Colonial Office, and which have often reason to be dissatisfied with that Government—I mean the Crown Colonies, the most important of which are the Straits Settlements, Ceylon, the West Indian Islands, and Mauritius. In nearly every Crown Colony, the white population bears a very small proportion to the natives, and is composed mainly of merchants, bankers, a few officials, and, in the West Indies, of planters. ”

“ From the circumstance of the aborigines not being subject to the authority of any sort of government except that of the strongest man, from the imperfection of their arms, and their mental incapacity for combination, their communications and skirmishes with the white intruders do not occupy that place in the history of the colony which is filled by the Bed Indian tribes in the history of North America, or the semi-civilised Peruvians and Mexicans in that of Spanish South America. ”

“ The natives, who less than one hundred years ago ruled the whole of South Africa with the exception of a small fraction of Cape Colony and several square miles on the east coast, have been relegated by the advances of civilization, until now they hold only small territories, or reservations, in the different colonies and republics. ”

“ The English and French colonists both wanted the sole right to trade in furs with the Indians, and often when England and France were at peace their colonies were keeping up a cruel warfare, and making attacks on each other's settlements. The French settlements were in what we now call Quebec and Nova Scotia, and in Louisiana, at the mouth of the Mississippi; while the English had thirteen colonies scattered along the eastern coast of North America. ”

“ And they believed, reasoning somewhat too hastily from the revolt of the North American Colonies, that as soon as the new English communities to which self-government had been or was in due course to be granted, reached a certain level of wealth and population they would demand and receive their independence. ”

“ The confederation of the United Colonies, first proposed by Connecticut, was an act of great wisdom, foreshadowing the more celebrated political unions of the English race on this continent, for they all have recognized the common maxim, that “Union is strength.” The colonists were surrounded by “people of several nations and strange language,” and the existence of the Indian tribes within the boundaries of the New England settlements was the source of ceaseless anxiety and alarm. ”

“ The brave band of aborigines who inhabit this colony were, like His Majesty’s other subjects, punished for their zeal and fidelity by the loss of their possessions in the late colonies, and rewarded by His Majesty with lands of superior value in this province. The faith of the British government has never yet been violated; the Indians feel that the soil they inherit is to them and their posterity protected from the base arts so frequently devised to over-reach their simplicity. ”

“ Under the royal care the people, being favoured with every advantage resulting from public security, an indulgent government, abundance of land, large credit, liberty to labour and to reap the whole fruits of it, protection to trade, and an excellent market for every staple, laboured with success. These were powerful motives to emigrate, strong incentives to industry, and the principal causes of its rapid advances towards maturity. No colony that ever was planted can boast of greater advantages. Few have, in the space of an hundred years, improved and flourished in an equal degree. ”

“ From small beginnings the English colonies came into being along the Eastern seaboard of America. Puritans and cavaliers, profligates and mechanics, all helped to create what might have been except for sad misunderstandings part of the British empire of to-day. Behind the Alleghany slopes another great power was attempting to form a colonial empire. North of the St Lawrence, New France had already [Pg 167] been established; by the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana had already been named. ”

“ I pass by the manifestations of the most cordial sympathy from other colonies, and the contributions from the towns and villages around us—my business lies, at present with the South—and my object is to remind some of the more rampant and furious of my abolition friends, who are of yesterday, that the people of the South, however hasty they may be, living under the sun’s fiercer rays, and however excited, when a Northern man, however respectable, comes to take up his quarters in their midst, and gather evidence against them, under their very noses—are not precisely outside barbarians. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is idle to talk of 'Mother and Daughter Lands' so long as we persist in regarding the Colonies on the same footing as the foreign countries to which alone men of our race may 'emigrate.' If it is such an alarming and melancholy thing to move from Stepney to Rhodesia, from West Ham to Manitoba, then the sooner we give the relationship its true name, and call the Colonies England's step-children, the quicker we shall arrive at actual conditions. ”

“ With two such divergent policies in force in South Africa, it is not surprising that the Coloured races viewed with the gravest apprehension the Union of the Colonies upon a basis which would give the Northern Colonies sufficient power and influence to shape the legislation of the Union. ”

“ A similar attempt is made, and with even less success, to represent the literature of the colonies as something fresh and vigorous and important. The imperialist magazines are constantly springing upon us some genius from Queensland or Canada, through whom we are expected to smell the odours of the bush or the prairie. ”

“ The Trustees replied that the introduction of negroes would be the introduction of a "baneful Commodity, which, it is well known by sad Experience, has brought our Neighbour Colonies to the Brink of Ruin, by driving out their White Inhabitants, who were their Glory and Strength, to make room for Black, who are now become the Terror of their unadvised Masters." ”

“ The social and economic condition of the people is described, and attention is paid to the political characteristics of the several colonies both in the conduct of their local affairs and in their relations with each other and the mother-country. It is shown that the causes of the Revolution were deep-seated in colonial history. Attention is also called to the fact, generally overlooked, that the thirteen mainland colonies which revolted in 1776 were not all of the English colonial establishments in America. ”

“ It may be also proper to authorise the persons so commissioned to restore such Province or Colony, so returning to its allegiance, to the free exercise of its trade and commerce, and to the same protection and security as if such Province or Colony had never revolted. ”

“ Both on the north and on the southeast the English colonies touched elbows with the French in active commercial and territorial competition. The West Indies were the emporium for sugar and slaves, and an extensive traffic was had in both commodities with the continental colonies. This important commerce has already been frequently referred to, particularly in the treatment of New England (page 185) , whose vessels did the bulk of the colonial carrying trade.
Why those neighbors did not revolt against England. ”

“ In the northerly portion, suitable for agriculture, this was carried on by natives; but their land was confiscated by the Germans, and, as Dr Bönn stated in a reading upon the Colony, "the framework of society is European; very little land is in the hands of natives." ”

“ In that way I believe the natives would reap great benefit from the white man, and vice versâ, and I am sure that there are many hundreds of families to be found who like to work—not emigrants or adventurers who only go in to enrich themselves within a few years, and such men are not the proper men to establish small Colonies in these kingdoms, and those colonists would form a kind of chain between our Colonies and the interior of Africa. ”

“ In 1701 it was pointed out by the Colonial Office of that day, that "by several letters, memorials, and other papers, as well from the inhabitants as Proprietors of both these provinces, that they are at present in confusion and anarchy; and that it is much to be apprehended lest [Pg 150] by the heats of the parties that are amongst them, they should fall into such violences as may endanger the lives of many persons and destroy the colony." ”

“ Colony was jealous of colony, petty legislatures wrangled, and farmers resented being called to fight instead of sowing or harvesting their crops. Over and above all, whether as friends or as foes, the Frenchmen stretched out their right hands to the native races of North America; the English lived their lives apart, and for the time they paid the penalty.
Thus the Five Nations made peace with the French at Montreal. At the very same time, at Albany,16 they gave the English a title to the lake regions. ”

“ From the earliest settlement of the country by the whites, down to 1817, the Colonies, and afterwards the thirteen States, met the emergencies of Indian contact as they arose. The parties to negotiation were often ill-defined, and the forms of procedure much as happened. Not only did each Colony, prior to 1774, conduct its own Indian relations, generally with little or no reference to the engagements or the interests of its white neighbors; but isolated settlements and even enterprising individuals made their own peace with the savages, or received the soil by deed from its native proprietors. ”