Map facing page 1: The North American Continent about 1696

     IN the early years of English colonization, the home government shewed neither a definite nor a consistent policy. The early Stuarts were the witnesses of a new movement, the development of which they could not clearly foresee; and their attitude was therefore hesitating and tentative. The remarkable tale of exploration and adventure which distinguished the Elizabethan age came to an end; and the interest of Englishmen in the New World took a fresh direction. The merchants who first visited America in search of the precious metals now began to see great possibilities in a more solid though less spectacular commerce; and sought to plant trading settlements. For this purpose they made application to the King for charters of privilege. James I attempted at first to confine the Virginia Company to the purely commercial activities of the new settlement there, but soon found it necessary to give wider powers of government to the company; and the charter subsequently given to the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay was of such a kind as to enable the entire government of that settlement to be carried on in the colony itself. The fertility of the soil speedily ensured the stability of the newly-established colonies, provided that the first difficulties of organization could be overcome; and the development of Virginia and the similar plantations in the West Indian islands, depending chiefly upon the production of tobacco and sugar, was rapid. Moreover, about the same time, religious dissension at home induced Puritans, and later, Roman Catholics, to take advantage of the new openings and to establish societies where their religious opinions would at least not be penalized. By this means settlements spread over considerable areas in New England and Maryland. The latter colony was also the type of the alternative method of government used by the Stuarts—that of the proprietorship. Lord Baltimore was given

powers of government within the settlement, with powers to make laws there; and as the century advanced the number of proprietary and charter governments increased, until the trend of colonial policy turned again to more intimate royal control—a development which had been suggested in 1623 by the abrogation of the Virginia Company’s charter, and the transference of political government to a governor and council appointed by the King¹.

     The beginning of the colonizing movement led naturally to the expression of ideas on the problems emerging therefrom, and more generally on the whole question of colonization. At first there was a tendency to welcome the new settlements as a dumping ground for the surplus population of the home country. There is much testimony to the bad character of many of those sent out to the colonies, although it is doubtful if, prior to 1650, convicts were transported thither without special mitigating circumstances²; and many of those considered unfit for the full extent of citizenship in England—religious dissidents, political prisoners—were by their very disqualifications rendered especially suitable to the pioneer work of colonization. Apart, too, from this aspect of the new settlements as a means of disposing of political and criminal offenders, there was a widespread opinion in England that the prevalence of poverty and its attendant evils could be checked by sending away part of the surplus population from which those evils were believed to derive. As the century progressed, however, this view was greatly modified³. In view of this popular opinion of the merits of colonization, it is not surprising that those who left the old world for the new should definitely express their wish to be independent of the country which had thus driven them to emigration; and in practice this independence was very great under James I and Charles I. Massachusetts could say in 1646:

     We have absolute power of government . . . to correct, punish, pardon, govern and rule the people absolutely . . . The laws of the Parliament of England reach no further, nor do the king’s writs under the Great Seal go further

[i.e. than while they lived in England]. Barbados in 1651 protested against being ‘subjected to the will and command of those who stay at home¹.’

     The supremacy of the parliament in the Civil War resulted in definite claims over the reluctant colonies. A charter was granted to Rhode Island, formed by separation from, and against the wishes of, Massachusetts; and other instances appear of assertion of rights by the home government, accepted unwillingly by the colonies. Cromwell’s accession to power carried on this policy. Cromwell himself, the first great Englishman to think imperially, actually suggested the settlement of Ireland from New England, as a means of diminishing a now formidable tendency to separation, whilst shortly before, the government had approved a suggestion from Colonel Modyford to solve the problem as far as Barbados was concerned, by representation in the English parliament. Cromwell’s period of rule was however too short for a reorganization of the colonial system. The capture from Spain of Jamaica in 1655-9, then a barren and ill-populated island, was destined to rank as an important colonial development, but it was not highly prized at the time. By now trading interests had become paramount and the logical result was the Dutch war, foreseen by Thomas Mun as early as 1628². The same interests induced Cromwell to encourage the deportation of vagrants; and instructions were issued for the Major-Generals to arrange for transportation of undesirables with merchants trading to the colonies.

The Navigation Laws

     In 1651 appeared an ordinance which represents the beginning of the series of restrictive statutes concerning English and colonial trade—the beginning, that is, of those Navigation Laws which were at the same time important and destined to be enforced. (Previous measures of like nature had failed in at least

one of these respects.) The Act of 1651 was aimed at Dutch shipping, and forbade exportation to, or importation from the colonies of any goods, except in English¹ or plantation-built ships. The development of the principle of Navigation Laws under the Restoration government started from this ordinance, and carried the system far beyond what was there intended. The Act of 1660 provided for preference to be given to English or Irish shipping in importation from Europe, and for a complete monopoly of the coasting trade. In both these cases, colonial ships were included as English. Trade with other parts, outside Europe, was confined to English (including colonial) or Irish ships, and these were compelled to use the place of production or the usual port for that trade. (A later exception was made in the case of Spanish and Portuguese colonial produce, which could be shipped direct from those colonies.) Finally, English trade with the English colonies had to be in English, Irish or colonial ships. As an afterthought to this series, a clause was added providing that no sugar, tobacco, cotton wool, indigo, ginger, or dyeing woods produced in the English colonies could be shipped elsewhere than to England, Ireland or some other English colony; and to enforce this clause, bonds were ordered to be taken from ships in England and in the colonies, to be forfeited if they took the goods elsewhere than where this act allowed. Further, by the Staple Act of 1663, no European goods with certain exceptions², could be imported direct to the colonies, but must be landed in, and re-exported from England. In 1673 export duties were imposed on goods of the enumerated class as above, on being shipped from one colony to another, complaints having arisen that by first taking the goods to another colony the restriction on shipping direct to Europe was evaded. The duty was in practice alternative to the forcing of bond. If bond was not given to take the goods to England only, the duty was to be levied, in the hopes that thereby illegal trade would be made unprofitable. It is worthy

of note also that, probably by technical oversight, the bonds taken from English merchants trading to the colonies bound them to bring back the goods obtained there to England only; whilst the colonial bonds required the merchants to take their goods to England or any other colony (with the qualifications mentioned above in the payment of duty). When this rule was enforced, at the end of the Restoration period, colonial merchants were thus given a monopoly of the inter-colonial trade. By this series of statutes, Scotland was excluded from participation in English colonial trade, although the royal dispensing power availed at times to the contrary; but individual Scotchmen had the right of settling in the colonies and trading there as English subjects, according to popular opinion, although controversy on this point prevailed throughout the century¹. The justification for the restrictions on colonial trade was mainly on the ground that England bore the burden of Imperial defence. In so far as this statement often implied or definitely included the whole of that burden, there was to be some ground for modification in the period following the Revolution. A secondary compensation was found in the privileges given to colonial products in the home market. Enumerated commodities were rated much lower in the tariff of import duties than similar foreign products; and cultivation of tobacco, the only one of those commodities which could be successfully grown in England, was prohibited there, the colonial monopoly being enforced with great effort, in face of considerable difficulty².

The old colonial system

     On this framework the colonial policy of the Restoration was built up. The period following the accession of Charles II was one of vitality and expansion in many directions. Charles himself took especial interest in trade and the plantations, and his example was followed by Clarendon, Arlington and other less known but careful students of policy. As a result of this renewed interest in colonization, certain precepts of the age emerged, giving a clue to much of the colonial history at that time. In

the first place, the idea of an over-populated England was disappearing, and instead, the doctrine that men were the wealth of a nation was coming to the fore. Thus it was objected that the colonies drained England of her true wealth, and should not be encouraged. The answer usually given was that the labour of the emigrants was of greater value to the home country after their settlement in the New World than it was at home, the example often given being that of the West Indian planter who employed perhaps twenty negroes to the one white man of whose labour England was deprived. Additional value was also obtained from the profit of plantation-grown commodities, either of different or of superior quality to those produced at home¹, and from the colonies’ function as market for home production. From this precept, two more were readily deduced. If labour was needed in the colonies, and yet should not be spared from England, the obvious source was from the criminal classes, and from other undesirables of similar or higher category. Thus, religious dissidents, such as Quakers, were sent from prison to the colonies; Irish rebels were sent over to Barbados in 1666, and many of the rebels of 1685 found labour in Barbados and Jamaica². Ordinary malefactors were often ‘ordered’ by the colonies which needed labour. Secondly, if the justification for genuine emigration rested on the employment of negro labour or on the cultivation of goods for which high prices could be obtained in Europe, then it followed that encouragement should be given only to those colonies in which these conditions were fulfilled. Hence followed the disapproval of the New England colonies, which was a marked feature of the Restoration period. This disapproval may be further understood when statistics revealed the proportion of trade between England and the Northern colonies—New England, New York and Pennsylvania—as a little more than one-tenth of the whole trade with American and West Indian Colonies³. A further justification for colonial activity was in the training of seamen and the employment of shipping. But here again the North failed, owing

to its relatively small trade, whilst its fisheries rivalled those of Newfoundland, the settlement of which was purposely discouraged in order that the fisheries might attract more shipping by the absence of a fixed colony as base.

     Allusion has been made to the question of imperial defence. At various times in the reign of Charles II, land forces were stationed at Barbados, Jamaica and St Kitts, to protect this nest of profitable plantations from sudden onslaught, in New York; for fear of French invasion, and in Virginia, because of Indian inroads; but at the end of the reign these garrisons had decreased, mainly through difficulties of pay, to a small force at the English part of St Kitts, and two companies of infantry at New York. The English government had also in certain cases, notably that of Jamaica, spent money on fortifications in the colonies.

     A typical feature of the Restoration colonial policy—due to the combination of revived interest with a plenitude of deserving and undeserving courtiers whom the restored monarch delighted to honour—was the system by which large areas of land in the colonies were granted as proprietaries to private individuals. New Amsterdam, conquered from the Dutch in 1664, was handed over to James, then Duke of York, who immediately transferred the part between the rivers Hudson and Delaware to two faithful friends, Berkeley and Carteret, to found New Jersey. A similar arrangement provided for the settlement of Carolina under eight noble proprietors, and also for that of the Bahama Islands; whilst the grant of Pennsylvania to its Quaker founder formed part of a settlement of financial affairs between Penn and the King. In all these proprietary settlements advancement of trade became the criterion of government.

The movement for independence

     Towards the close of Charles II’s reign, affairs in New England developed in such a way as to demand interference from home. Ever since the Restoration, Massachusetts had attempted to avoid definite recognition of its colonial status, and had worked against the principle embodied in the Navigation System, both by executive and legislative action. Trusting

to the reluctance of Charles to take drastic action, the colony had refused to send agents when required, had made laws contrary to its charter, and was proved to have indulged considerably in illegal trade. Under these circumstances the home government was constrained to take up a strong attitude. After hearing the evidence of several responsible witnesses, proceedings were instituted against the charter, which was annulled in 1684¹. Before fresh arrangements could be made for the government of Massachusetts, the King died. His attitude to the colonies had shewn some realization of their importance, and of the impossibility of a complete laissez-faire policy; and not the least of his achievements was the selection of governors who were something more than mere placemen.

The colonies under James II

     At the accession of James II, the outline of the North American colonies had begun to take the form which with some modifications is familiar up to the War of Independence. In the North were the colonies whose chief trade was in provisions (to the other settlements), furs and skins obtained from the Indians, and naval stores of timber, pitch and the like, in small quantities. These colonies competed with the mother country not only in the provision trade but also in their fisheries, which rivalled those of Newfoundland. Massachusetts, as has been stated above, was now waiting for the reorganization of its government after the abrogation of an exceptionally independent charter. Rhode Island and Connecticut had both received charters, whose fate was likely to be the same as that of the older one. New Plymouth had declined relatively in importance since the day of its famous founders and was not likely long to survive any attempt at increase of the royal power. New Hampshire and Maine were in an unsettled state, owing chiefly to large, vague and disputed grants of proprietorship to private individuals, grants further complicated by sale and bequest of rights. New York was still in its infancy, but gave promise of its future position; whilst by the accession of its proprietor to

the English throne it became a royal colony. The French menace however was speedily forcing New York into prominence, the more since in Dongan and Andros, its governors, English rights were stubbornly and ably upheld. New Jersey, like New York an agricultural colony, was in proprietary hands, and, divided into Eastern and Western portions, had a complicated constitutional history until the end of the century. Next to these came the newly-founded settlement of Pennsylvania, which under the peaceful Quaker merchants was beginning that course of commercial prosperity, which, combined with the pacific tendencies of the inhabitants, was destined speedily to arouse the jealousy of neighbouring states. Then came the more favoured of the colonies, Maryland, under the proprietorship of Lord Baltimore, and Virginia, the oldest royal colony, both of which depended for their prosperity on the tobacco plantations, although efforts were being made to develop other non-English products. Last of the mainland settlements came the Carolinas, proprietary colonies, as yet in a turbulent and uncertain condition.

The West Indies

     In the West Indies, Barbados enjoyed a long-established importance by virtue of its sugar trade. Proprietary government had been abolished by the crown in return for an annual export duty of 4½ per cent., and henceforward the island was concerned mainly with the price of sugar and with this duty, and with some minor productivities of which cotton growing was the principal. The Leeward Islands, of which Antigua, Nevis, Montserrat and (half) St Kitts were the important islands, formed a separate government, and sugar, ginger and tobacco were its main products. From Jamaica much was expected, but as yet the settlers had been too much diverted by more exciting pursuits among the neighbouring coasts to make much progress towards the fulfilment of these commercial hopes. Already a struggle had begun about the grant of a permanent revenue to the crown¹. The Bermudas, whose small islands

had but limited capabilities, were prosperous in a small way, in spite of a prolonged fight with the privileged Bermuda Company, which had finally resulted in the establishment of royal government in 1684. The peculiarly important strategic position of these islands gave them a greater importance than they could have ensured by their commercial possibilities alone. Finally, the proprietary group of the Bahamas made up the sum of British colonies in the New World. These islands were chiefly notorious as the resort of pirates and disorderly persons, and could hardly be dignified with the title of a responsible government. In all the colonies, of mainland and islands alike, the Navigation Acts were the matter of primary concern, and illegal trade was carried on to a great or small extent according as the colony in question was or was not remote and under indirect control from England.

Colonial administration

     The home government of the colonies was at this time carried on by a committee, composed of many of the chief state officials, together with the Committee of the Privy Council for Trade and Plantations, the whole body being known usually as the Lords of Trade. This committee had come into existence after many experiments with committees of the Privy Council, and with separate boards for Trade and for Plantations, or for both together; and, chiefly by virtue of the importance of its chief members, able to give the force of law to the greater part of its recommendations. In addition to this main authority, the Admiralty had jurisdiction over those branches of the colonial system concerned with prize-ships, and later with illegal traders, and had courts in the crown colonies to carry out this jurisdiction, on similar lines to the Vice-Admiralty courts in England. Another important source of authority concerning the Navigation System was the Treasury, which was concerned with the duties and bonds which formed a vital part of that system. To enforce the Laws of Trade in the colonies themselves, the governor usually appointed a ‘clerk of the naval office,’ known as the ‘naval officer’; whilst the Commissioners of Customs had their own collectors in each colony, supervised by the

Surveyor-General of Customs. (This latter office was now held by Edward Randolph, whose determination to enforce the letter of the law in face of all opposition had already brought him into disfavour in the colonies; and whose conduct typified, as did that of no other single man,the spirit of the Navigation System.) Local government in the colonies varied with the source of authority. In all cases there was a governor, appointed either by the crown, by the proprietors, or under the provisions of the charter in charter colonies. He governed with the assistance of a council, generally similarly appointed in whole or part; and the popular share in government was confined to an assembly which met under different names in most of the colonies, its power varying with the control over revenue which circumstances enabled it to exercise. In most cases it had final authority in deciding what money should be spent on domestic affairs.

The movement towards union

     The colonial administration of James II was chiefly notable for the first serious attempt at union of the colonies, and at centralization of colonial government. At one time or another during his short reign, the King instituted proceedings against all the private charters, and it was mainly a matter of chance which survived the fall of James. The first to go were the New England charters. In 1686 Sir Edmund Andros was sent to Boston as Governor-General of New England, with authority including Massachusetts, Plymouth, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Maine. He was instructed to enact laws ‘by governor and council,’ thus depriving the province of popularly elected assemblies. A further step was taken in 1688 when New York and the Jerseys were added to his governorship, and a special flag designed to symbolize the newly-attained unity. Before James could do more, the revolution overtook him, and deprived posterity of the results of an important administrative experiment. It is worth remembering that (in the words of Mr Fortescue) “under the superintendence of so capable an administrator as King James, colonial business was handled at

Whitehall with an energy and swiftness hitherto unknown¹.” And yet it was a period of ceaseless anxiety and trouble.

The French menace

     For while constitutional experiments were engaging the King’s attention, Dongan, his faithful deputy in New York until superseded by the new government of Andros, was concerned with equally momentous issues. The story of his relations with Denonville, the urbane governor of French Canada, has become well-known in the classic history of New France². Suffice it to say that in James II’s reign Anglo-French relations in Canada were becoming definitely hostile. From the discoveries of Champlain to the explorations of La Salle, some seventy years, French settlements-in Canada had steadily increased whilst the indomitable Frontenac, their governor, gave an added vitality to the French cause. The two systems of colonization, English and French, had grown side by side until by now the Iroquois tribes were the only buffer between the rival outposts of Corlaer and Onontio³. Consequently, the governorships of Dongan and Andros in New York were always concerned with the French menace. Both sides, French Jesuits and English merchants, were working for influence with the Five Nations of the Iroquois, and the reign of James was a state of half-war. Most of the Indian tribes of the Five Nations accepted an English alliance, if not a vague suzerainty, but the French were always active to undermine this alliance, not without much success at times. It is quite evident that behind all the protestations and proposals for neutrality in the event of war elsewhere, the two nations were being driven to war by conflicting interests. The climax came when the same year, 1689, which marked the accession of William of Orange to the English throne, saw also the return to Canada of Count Frontenac. The issue was a great one, for if the independent spirit of the New England colonies should prevail, the entire future of English colonial possessions might turn on the result of that war.

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