violation of the most sacred rights of mankind. Though they had not SECT. I. been prohibited from establishing such manufactures, yet in their present state of improvement, a regard to their own interest would, probably, have prevented them from doing so. In their present state of improvement, those prohibitions, perhaps, without cramping their industry, or restraining it from any employment to which it would have gone of its own accord, are only impertinent badges of slavery, imposed upon them, without any sufficient reason, by the groundless jealousy of the merchants and manufacturers of the mother country."

"Of the greater part of the regulations concerning the colony trade, the merchants who carry it on, it must be observed, have been the principal advisers. We must not wonder, therefore, if, in the greater part of them, their interest has been more considered than either that of the colonies or that of the mother country. In their exclusive privilege of supplying the colonies with all the goods which they wanted from Europe, and of purchasing all such parts of their surplus produce as could not interfere with any of the trades which they themselves carried on at home, the interest of the colonies was sacrificed to the interests of those merchants."

"If the whole surplus produce of America in grain of all sorts, in salt provisions, and in fish, had been put into the enumeration, and thereby forced into the market of Great Britain, it would have interfered too much with the produce of the industry of our own people. It was probably not so much from any regard to the interest of America, as from a jealousy of this interference, that those important commodities have not only been kept out of the enumeration, but that the importation into Great Britain of all grain, except rice, and of all salt provisions, has, in the ordinary state of the law, been prohibited."

"The non-enumerated commodities could originally be exported to all parts of the world. Lumber and rice having been once put into the enumeration, when they were afterwards taken out of it, were confined, as to the European market, to the countries that lie south of Cape Finisterre. By the 6th of George III. c. 51. all non-enumerated commodities were subjected to the like restriction. The parts of Europe which lie south of Cape Finisterre, are not manufacturing countries, and we were less jealous of the colony ships carrying home from them any manufactures which could interfere with our own."

3. As the plantations advanced in numbers, strength, wealth, and manufactures, they awakened a still more lively distrust, and jealous vigilance, in the mother country. In 1715, a bill was brought into the House of Commons to abolish all the charter governments; against which tyrannical project, the agent of Massachusetts, Dummer, published an elaborate and masterly pamphlet. One of the sections of his "Defence of the New England Charters," is headed thus," The objection that the charter colonies will grow great and formidable, answered:"-and the author details, with much anxiety, the circumstances which, in his opinion, established the probability of the reverse. He begins his argument with stating, "There is one thing I have heard often urged against the "colonies, and indeed, it is what one meets from people of "all conditions and qualities. 'Tis said, that their increasing "numbers and wealth, joined to their great distance from

PART I. "Great Britain, will give them an opportunity, in the course "of some years, to throw off their dependence on the nation, "and declare themselves a free state, if not curbed in time. "I have often wondered to hear some great men profess their "belief of the feasibleness of this, &c."* The House of Commons continued, as may be seen, from the portion given above, of their debate of 1733, on the petition from Rhode Island, to be tremblingly alive on this point. It displayed its sensibility even in a more marked way, a few years after. In 1740, it voted, upon the complaint preferred by the general court of Massachusetts, against governor Belcher, for denying to them the disposal of the public monies,— "That the complaint, contained in the New England "memorial and petition, was frivolous and groundless; an "high insult upon his majesty's government, and tending to "shake off the dependency of the said colony upon this kingdom, to which, by law and right, they are and ought to "be subject." When the general court ventured to censure one of their agents, Mr. Dunbar, for giving evidence before parliament on the bill for the better securing the trade of the sugar colonies, the House of Commons voted, nem. con."That the presuming to call any person to account, or pass a censure upon him; for evidence given by such person before that House, was an audacious proceeding, and an high violation of the privileges of that House."

The fate of the Albany plan of union, familiar to the memory of all who have read our history, affords additional proof of the temper which it is my object to illustrate. A confederacy of the colonies for the purpose of defence against the French and Indians, was at first instigated by the British government; but it could tolerate no arrangements except such as were incompatible with their liberties. It finally preferred leaving them exposed to the most formidable dangers, and itself to the cost and trouble of their protection, rather than acquiesce in any scheme of coalition, in the execution of which, they might, to use the language of Franklin, grow too military, and feel their own strength." In the pamphlet which this great statesman published, in 1760, to show the impolicy of restoring Canada to the French, there is a section allotted to the question, "whether the American colonies were dangerous in their nature to Great Britain." He found it necessary, on every occasion, when an advantage was sought for them, to set in formal array, all the considera

*

Page 73.

See Memoirs of Franklin, p. 142, American edition.

tions which pleaded against the bare supposition, of their being SECT. I. disposed or able, to effect their independence.

To lessen the danger, or obviate new hazards, for her sovereignty and monopoly, England embraced the policy, of confining the settlements in North America as much as possible to the sea coast. The great points of preventing the French power from being immoveably established at their back, and over the whole vast interior; of securing the Atlantic provinces not only from this evil, but from their cruel scourge the Indians; of opening the fruitful and beautiful countries beyond the Appalachian mountains to English cultivation and empire, were all postponed to views, of which it is difficult to say whether they were more selfish or short sighted. The plan of a colony on the Ohio, for the salutary and noble purposes just enumerated, was conceived in America in the middle of the last century, submitted fruitlessly to the British government in 1768, and offered anew by Dr. Franklin, in 1770, with the engagement on the part of the projectors, to be at the whole expense of establishing and maintaining the civil administration of the country to be settled. A few extracts from the two Reports* of the Board of Trade and Plantations, on the subject, to the Lords of the privy council, will explain the favourite system in relation to the plantations.

"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."

"And first with regard to the policy, we take leave to remind your lordships of that principle which was adopted by this Board, and approved and confirmed by his majesty, immediately after the treaty of Paris, viz. the confining the western extent of settlements to such a a distance from the sea coast, as that those settlements should lie zwithin the reach of the trade and commerce of this kingdom, upon which the strength and riches of it depend; and also of the exercise of that authority and jurisdiction, which was conceived to be necessary for the preservation of the colonies, in a due subordination to, and dependence upon, the mother country; and these we apprehend to have been two capital objects of his majesty's proclamation of the 7th of October, 1763, by which his majesty declares it to be his royal will and pleasure, to reserve, under his sovereignty, protection, and dominion, for the use of the Indians, all the lands not included within the three new governments, the limits of which are described therein, as also all the lands and territories lying to the westward of the sources of the rivers which shall fall into the sea from the west and north-west, and by which all persons are forbid to make any purchases or settlements whatever, or to take possession of any of the lands above reserved, without special license for that purpose."

* Fourth vol. Franklin's Works, article Ohio Settlement.

PART I.

"The same principles of policy, in reference to settlements at so great a distance from the sea coast as to be out of the reach of all advantageous intercourse with this kingdom, continue to exist in their full force and spirit; and though various propositions for erecting new colonies in the interior parts of America have been, in consequence of this extension of the boundary line, submitted to the consideration of government, (particularly in that part of the country wherein are situated the lands now prayed for, with a view to that object,) yet the dangers and disadvantages of complying with such proposals have been so obvious, as to defeat every attempt made for carrying them into execution."

"The effect of the policy of this kingdom in respect to colonizing America, in those colonies where there has been sufficient time for that effect to discover itself, will, we humbly apprehend, be a very strong argument against forming settlements in the interior country; more especially when every advantage derived from an established government would naturally tend to draw the stream of population ; fertility of soil, and temperature of climate, offering superior incitements to settlers, who, exposed to few hardships, and struggling with few difficulties, could, with little labour, earn an abundance for their own wants, but without a possibility of supplying ours with any considerable quantities." Admitting that the settlers in the country in question are nume rous as report states them to be, yet we submit that this is a fact which does, in the nature of it, operate strongly in point of argument against what is proposed—for if the foregoing reasoning has any weight, it certainly ought to induce you to advise his majesty to take every method to check the progress of these settlements, and not to make such grants of land as will have an immediate tendency to encourage them."

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The language of the royal servants of North America was of the same tenor with that of the Lords of Trade. The commander in chief of his majesty's forces there, wrote in 1769, to lord Hillsborough, who presided over the colonial department.

"As to increasing the settlements to respectable provinces, and to colonization in general terms in the remote countries, I conceive it altogether inconsistent with sound policy. I do not apprehend the inhabitants could have any commodities to barter for manufactures, except skins and furs, which will naturally decrease as the country increases in people, and the deserts are cultivated; so that in the course of a few years, necessity would force them to provide manufactures of some kind for themselves; and when all connexion upheld by commerce with the mother country shall cease, it may be expected that an independency in her government will soon follow. The laying open new tracts of fertile country in moderate climates might lessen the present supply of the commodities of America, for it is the passion of every man to be a land holder, and the people have a natural disposition to rove in search of good land, however distant."

The governor of Georgia, above named, is quoted with great deference by the Lords of Trade, as having written to them thus:

"This matter, my lords, of granting large bodies of land in the back parts of any of his majesty's northern colonies, appears to me in a very serious and alarming light; and I humbly conceive, may be attended with the greatest and worst of consequences; for, my lords, if a vast territory be granted to any set of gentlemen, who

really mean to people it, and actually do so, it must draw and carry SECT. I. out a great number of people from Great Britain; and I apprehend, they will soon become a kind of separate and independent people, who will set up for themselves; that they will soon have manufactures of their own, &c. in process of time, they will become formidable enough to oppose his majesty's authority," &c.

It is curious, and demonstrative of the sense commonly entertained of the views of the British government, that some of the advocates for the project of interior settlements, insisted, that such establishments would serve as a check upon attempts, on the part of the old colonies, to become independent, by draining them of their population. There is, in fact, much plausibility in the suggestion, which is made in one of the memorials on the subject, of the year 1767-that of general Lyman. “ The period will doubtless come, when North "America will no longer acknowledge a dependence on any part of Europe. But that period seems to be so remote, as "not to be at present an object of rational policy or human prevention, and it will be rendered still more remote by "opening new scenes of agriculture, and widening the space "which the colonists must first completely occupy.' *

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I shall not be considered as going wide of my subject, if I advert here, to the fact, that the British government has pursued, with respect to India, a policy similar to that recommended in the foregoing extracts, in relation to North America. I need only appeal to the authority of Mills, who, in his "History of British India," uses this emphatic language. If it were possible for the English government to learn wis"dom by experience, which governments rarely do, it might "at last see, with regret, some of the effects of that illiberal, "cowardly, and short-sighted policy, under which it has taken "the most solicitous precautions to prevent the settlement of "Englishmen; trembling, forsooth, lest Englishmen, if al"lowed to settle in India, should detest and cast off its yoke!"

"It is wonderful to see how the English government, every "now and then, voluntarily places itself in the station of a "government existing in opposition to the people, a govern"ment which hates, because it dreads the people, and is hated "by them in its turn. Its deportment with regard to the resi"dence of the Englishmen in India, speaks these unfavour"able sentiments with a force which language could not "easily possess."

The Edinburgh Review, in quoting the first of these para

* See Macpherson's Annals of Commerce. Quarto Ed. vol. iii. 469. B. 6. vol. iii. p. 334, 336.

VOL. I.-C