United Colonies

“ By them the united colonies of New England, viz. Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven, entered into a firm and perpetual league, offensive and defensive.
Each colony retained a distinct and separate jurisdiction; no two colonies could join in one jurisdiction without the consent of the whole; and no other colony could be received into the confederacy without the like consent.
The charge of all wars was to be borne by the colonies respectively, in proportion to the male inhabitants of each, between sixteen and sixty years of age. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It cannot too often be pointed out that the colonial period was a colonial period, and that the relations subsisting between England and the colonies were necessarily those subsisting between a sovereign state and its dependencies. There was no more reason for the colonist of Massachusetts or Barbadoes to consider himself entirely independent of English control, than there is for the settler in Alaska to consider himself wholly independent of the United States to-day. ”

“ Colonial Relations with the British Government It was neither the Indian wars nor the French wars that finally brought forth American nationality. That was the product of the long strife with the mother country which culminated in union for the war of independence. The forces that created this nation did not operate in the colonies alone. The character of the English sovereigns, the course of events in English domestic politics, and English measures of control over the colonies—executive, legislative, and judicial—must all be taken into account. ”

“ The citizen of the United Kingdom has often been compelled to regard the colonies as great dependencies which increased his responsibilities and multiplied his difficulties without returning to the mother-country, under their present organization, strength in men or resources, or even in exclusive commercial advantage. Every new colony or colonial interest was to him something new to defend, and augmented the burden of Empire. ”

“ The thirteen American colonies, which in 1775 dared defy the might of Great Britain, and which in a stubborn struggle were able to win their independence, were settled at various times, and by colonists actuated by widely different motives. ”

“ Though the colonies had a common origin, and owed a common allegiance, and the inhabitants of each were British subjects, they had no direct political connexion with each other. Each was independent of all the others; each, in a limited sense, was sovereign within its own territory. There was neither alliance nor confederacy between them. The assembly of one province could not make laws for another; nor confer privileges, which were to be enjoyed or exercised in another, farther than they could be in any independent foreign state. ”

“ That under the Constitution of the United States no power is given to the Federal Government to acquire territory to be held and governed permanently as colonies. The colonial system of European nations can not be established under our present Constitution, but all territory acquired by the Government, except such small amount as may be necessary for coaling stations, correction of boundaries, and similar governmental purposes, must be acquired and governed with the purpose of ultimately organizing such territory into States suitable for admission into the Union. ”

“ As a result of the separation from Great Britain by the colonies, acting as a unit, the powers of external sovereignty passed from the Crown not to the colonies severally, but to the colonies in their collective and corporate capacity as the United States of America. Even before the Declaration, the colonies were a unit in foreign affairs, acting through a common agency-namely, the Continental Congress, composed of delegates from the thirteen colonies. ”

“ The formation and progress of all the colonies which constituted the North American republic at the era of its independence, have now been traced up to the middle of the eighteenth century. From that period circumstances tended rapidly to promote that federation which eventually effected the independence of the colonies, and laid the basis of their future prosperity ”

“ In the history of this Nation, there has been a small number of men and women whose contributions to its traditions of freedom, justice, and individual rights have accorded them a special place of honor in our hearts and minds, and to whom all Americans owe a lasting debt. Among them are the men and women who founded the thirteen colonies that became the United States of America.
William Penn, as a British citizen, founded the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in order to carry out an experiment based upon representative government; ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The policy pursued by the British government towards the North American provinces alienated the affections of the people from the mother-country, and the idea of these extensive colonies becoming a great and independent empire, having gained possession of many minds, the Americans became impatient of their condition. ”

“ For that service, for all service, whether of revenue, trade or empire, my trust is in her interest in the British Constitution. My hold of the Colonies is in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are ties which, tho light as air, are as strong as links of iron. Let the Colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your government; they will cling and grapple to you, and no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance. ”

“ Thus the Government of the United States, no less than the people and authorities of Minnesota, were represented in the north-west movement.”
No matter how prosperous a colony of Great Britain may he, a colony it must be so long as it is not independent. The first result of the prosperity of an American colony is its independence as a State, and its incorporation as a member of the common sovereignty. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No state of slaves can stand—”
“How about the United States?” a man yelled from the audience.
“And how about it?” Martin retorted. “The thirteen colonies threw off their rulers and formed the Republic so-called. The slaves were their own masters. There were no more masters of the sword. But you couldn’t get along without masters of some sort, and there arose a new set of masters—not the great, virile, noble men, but the shrewd and spidery traders and money-lenders. ”

“ With the Colonies so loyal and so willing to assist Great Britain in time of trouble and danger, how was it that in a decade the Empire was shattered and the major portion of the Colonies were busy building up a nation of their own? ”

“ Thus, by his administration of the government of one colony, during only the short space of two years, he laid the foundation for that permanent union of this and all the other colonies with the parent state, which would secure the welfare and happiness of the millions by whom they are inhabited, and add to the strength, the power, and splendour of the British empire. ”

“ 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. ”

“ How to administer a new domain with equity and sound judgement; how to give to new subjects, acquired by conquest, the privileges enjoyed by the old colonies; how to reconcile the claims of the old colonies, whose inland borders had never been demarcated, with the undoubted rights of native races; how to promote trade and settlement without depriving the Indians of their heritage;—such were the problems which the British Government was called upon to face and if possible to solve. ”

“ In the same way the history of each colony and of the colonies taken together is interwoven with that of colonies of other European nations—the Spaniards, French, and Dutch—planted at first distant from the English settlements, but gradually expanding into dangerous proximity. It was from a desire to protect themselves against the danger of attack by their foreign neighbors and to press their territorial claims that the New England group of English colonies afforded the example of the first American confederation. ”

“ In little more than a century the colonies threw off the supremacy of the mother-country, and although many attempts were made to force them to acknowledge their dependency, they did not succeed, and now they have become free states, scarcely inferior in importance to the great empires of Columbia and Australia ”

“ We behold too, these colonies, amidst want, poverty and misfortunes, animated with the spirit of liberty and fortified by the rectitude of their cause, sustaining for nearly eight years, the weight of a cruel conflict upon their own soil. At length we behold them victorious; their enemies sullenly retiring from their shores, and these feeble colonies enrolled on the page of history as a free, sovereign and independent nation. ”

“ It is no longer a question of speculation whether a colony can or cannot be planted from the United States of free persons of color on the shores of Africa. It is a matter demonstrated; such a colony, in fact, exists, prospers, has made successful war, and honorable peace, and transacts all the multiplied business of a civilized and christian community.14 It now has about five hundred souls, disciplined troops, forts, and other means of defence, sovereignty over an extensive territory, and exerts a powerful and salutary influence over the neighboring clans. ”

“ The proposition of forming inland colonies in America is, we humbly conceive, entirely new: it adopts principles in respect to American settlements, different from what have hitherto been the policy of this kingdom, and leads to a system which, if pursued through all its consequences, is, in the present state of that country, of the greatest importance. ”

“ Source.—Debates in the Parliament of Canada on the Confederation of British North America, 1865.
The colonies are now in a transition state. Gradually a different colonial system is being developed—and it will become year by year less a case of dependence on our part, and of overruling protection on the part of the Mother-country, and more a case of a healthy and cordial alliance. Instead of looking upon us as a merely dependent colony, England will have in us a friendly nation—a subordinate but still a powerful people—to stand by her in North America in peace or in war. ”

“ Franklin had a scheme for North American union, comprising a President appointed by the Crown, and a general Council elected by the taxpayers of the colonies, the number of representatives of each colony to be determined by the amount of taxes paid. Plenary powers were to be given to the President and Council, including even power to make war and peace. Had the scheme been carried out, North America would have become one great self-governing colony, in some respects more independent, in others more restricted than the self-governing colonies of Great Britain at the present day. ”

“ In wealth, in population, the American Colonies far surpassed all that remained of her Empire; and the American Colonies were irrecoverably gone. It is no wonder that in the first shock of such a loss England looked on herself as on the verge of ruin, or that the Bourbon Courts believed her position as a world-power to be practically at an end. ”

“ The negro population grew by leaps and bounds, until on the eve of the Revolution it amounted to more than half a million. In five states—Maryland, Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia—the slaves nearly equalled or actually exceeded the whites in number. In South Carolina they formed almost two-thirds of the population. Even in the Middle colonies of Delaware and Pennsylvania about one-fifth of the inhabitants were from Africa. ”