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CHANGES IN 1764 AND 1768

299 extended.1 At first a single court was provided for, which was to sit at Halifax and to have concurrent powers with the other viceadmiralty courts in America, but without the right of hearing appeals. Because of the troubles resulting from the passage of the Stamp Act this plan was given up, and in consequence of the passage of the Townshend Act in 1767, for the more easy and effectual recovery of the penalties and forfeiture inflicted by the Acts of Parliament, four courts were established, at Halifax, Boston, Philadelphia and Charleston, to have jurisdiction both original and appellate within a specified area. The older courts remained as before, but further right of appeal to England was forbidden, the new courts serving as courts of last resort. These courts were to be presided over by able civilians from Doctors' Commons, with salaries but no fees. Under the Act3 all breaches of the Navigation Acts might be tried either in the viceadmiralty courts or in those of the common law at the option of the prosecutor. This plan was duly carried out, except that the judges were not, as a rule, doctors of civil law. Thus, control over viceadmiralty matters in the colonies was finally centred in America and a new arrangement was entered into similar to that which was effected at the same time by the establishment of the American Board of Customs Commissioners. Both marked for the colonies on the continent a tightening of the British bonds, at a time, too, when the colonies themselves were feeling the urge of greater liberty and freedom; and both showed the determination of the British Government to enforce at any cost and by every means in its power the dependence of the colonies upon the authority of Crown and Parliament.

1 William Bollan, agent for Massachusetts, had urged such an extension in "Proposals" sent to the Board of Trade in 1749. C.O. 323/12, Ố. 61.

New York Colonial Documents, vшII, 445.

3

7 George III, c. 15, § xli.

CHAPTER X

RIVALRY FOR COLONIAL POWER, 1660-1713

THE half-century between 1660 and the Peace of Utrecht witnessed

1

a metamorphosis in Europe, and predicted and prepared an almost equal transformation in the world. In western Europe, its salient feature was the rise of Britain and the relative decline of France. The rise of Britain may be calculated from the datum of the Dutch, that "stomachful people" who, though emerging with credit from four momentous wars, sank from equality with her to be merely a cockboat in her wake. It was attested by the gravitation towards her of smaller States, notably of Portugal, for whom France had earlier seemed the only possible ally, and Savoy, always sensitive to the magnet of superior power. Despite her dynastic difficulties and party strife, moreover, Britain had improved in organisation and public safety no less than in wealth and numbers. The society of three kingdoms, ruled by a cabinet and inspired by Blenheim and Gibraltar, formed a far mightier force than the timid and unstable England of the Reformation. On three distant continents, as well as within her own boundaries, the future of Britain seemed in 1713 full of hope. The France of Louis XIV, on the other hand, had reached and passed her zenith. The subjects of her King, indeed, still outnumbered those of his northern neighbour by something like five to two. With all its strain and privation, the great half-century of his rule (16611715) had added fresh elements to their national well-being. They now possessed widened territory, a strengthened frontier, improved communications, new industries, a great military and naval apparatus, and the memory of high achievement in the domains of both intellect and war. Spain, their secular rival, was henceforth to be governed by a Bourbon line, and the Habsburg ring around their frontiers was broken. Above all, at however great a sacrifice, their national unity had been secured. Never again would pious Catholics cross the Atlantic to escape from Huguenot intolerance, while provincial disloyalties had melted in the beams of le Roi Soleil. Yet the hopes of 1664 had been dimmed, if not extinguished. "A most promising Prince he is, and all the Princes of Europe have their eyes upon him”, wrote Pepys in 1663 on the last day of the dying year. But, after Ryswick and Utrecht, never again would foreigners extol Louis as "fallen into the right way of making his kingdom great, as none of his ancestors ever did before". In a quarter of a century of struggle,

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1 Temple, Sir W., Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands, p. 129.

2 Carutti, D., Storia della diplomazia della corte di Savoia, IV, 3.

3 Leroy-Beaulieu, P., De la colonisation chez les peuples modernes, 1, 148.

Pepys, Diary, 6 November 1668.

EUROPE IN THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV

301 united Europe had dissipated his dreams of making the Dauphin Emperor and of himself dictating to the world. The wish uttered by Temple in 1669 had at last received fulfilment, for France "that grasps at all" had been "induced to leave the world some time in quiet".1

At the same time the Dutch and English had attained the aim explained in 1707 by Marlborough to Charles XII-a true balance of power. Thanks to their exertions, France could no longer make "offensive war daily and alone against all Europe, insulting her neighbours, invading their territories, and rendering the will of her King an universal law". This metamorphosis in the West found its parallel in other State systems within Europe. Thanks in large measure to Prince Eugène, the House of Austria was steadily gaining strength, and the Empire, which in 1664 owed salvation from the Turks to Louis' troops, had by 1714 tamed the Ottoman power. In the north, Brandenburg had developed into Prussia, while Sweden was about to sink from the first order among kingdoms to the third. On the side of Asia, the Muscovites, half-roused by Peter's relentless cudgel, were becoming an incalculable menace to the Europeans of the north and east.

During this half-century, however, neither the world map nor the map of Europe had undergone any startling change. Yet the way had been prepared for a revolution in values by which colonies and commerce would soon sway policy as at no earlier time. At Utrecht "we acquired...the commerce of the world", but at the same time no treaty between civilised States has ever embodied more challenges to war. The half-century after 1660 witnesses the germination of that colonial rivalry between France and Britain which dominated history until Waterloo.

At the outset, when Louis XIV, John de Witt and Clarendon had stepped to the forefront of the European stage, the world might seem destined to the calm which should follow the conclusion within thirteen years (1648-61) of six stubborn and widespread wars. With the religious question solved by exhaustion, the Habsburg and Vasa ambitions foiled, stable government restored in France and the will of the English people victorious over military rule, the time was surely ripe for the peaceful development of the riches of the earth. "The world is large", said the English ambassador to the Dutch in 1661, "there is trade enough for both, and if there were not, I do not see how it would be made more or more safe by their misunderstanding."4 For Europeans, it is true, the world was far smaller

1 Jones, D., Letters written by Sir William Temple...to the Earl of Arlington and Sir John Trevor, Secretaries of State (1699), p. 181.

? Besenval's report to Louis XIV; Coxe, W., Memoirs of the Duke of Marlborough, п1, 58. Acton, Lord, Lectures on Modern History, p. 263.

↑ Beresford, J., The Godfather of Downing Street: Sir George Downing, 1623–1684.

than even that portion of it which had already been laid down upon the map. A generation earlier, it had already become an axiom that the princes of Europe habitually enlarged their dominions upon the regions of the other three continents.1 Of Asia, Africa and America, however, the great bulk was inaccessible and unknown. For two centuries to come, islands and the coasts of the sea and of the greater rivers were to comprise most that was reckoned of value overseas. New England, it was said, was useful only to supply the West Indies, and in 1763 statesmen hesitated between Canada and Guadeloupe. Even Choiseul opined that Corsica was worth more to France than Canada had been or could become.2 Vast as the globe might seem, and few the Europeans, the search for new coasts and waterways had not yet become superfluous in the days of Charles II.

Although in the western nations bold adventurers were not lacking, exploration for the moment languished. To reach Cathay by a northwestern passage remained a dream which few attempted to realise. It would be wiser, men urged, to start from the South Seas and sail past the island of California towards Hudson Bay or homewards by the shores of Tartary.3 Frenchmen from New France found the Mississippi and followed it to the sea, while their Government urged them to restrain their roving fancies unless they could light upon an outlet from the Great Lakes to the Pacific.4 To Englishmen, the discovery to the east of southern South America of lands with climates demanding kerseys and heavy woollens seemed the most profitable line of research. For more than half the period, however, the maritime nations were struggling for their lives, and even in the breathingspaces buccaneering proved more attractive than exploration.

In colonising the known world, on the other hand, greater progress was effected. Such expansion of the European peoples has been caused in various ways. From the days of Abraham to our own, races have found the land too strait for them, and the human hive has swarmed. For seventeenth-century Europe, the simple trek which peopled Siberia or the Transvaal must be represented by a costly and perilous journey overseas, while there was little surplus population of normal men and women. Princes in general welcomed foreign immigration, if its religious complexion were not too bad, and they would not readily give their own subjects permission to depart. Colonisation meant transporting fresh labour to land hitherto waste or underpeopled, within the confines of the State. It implied the action of Government, in contrast with spontaneous emigration.

Some bold spirits, none the less, were prepared to seek by honest labour overseas the fortune that seemed to be unattainable at home,

1 Speed, J., A prospect of the most famous parts of the world, p. 155.

2 Mémoires du duc de Choiseul, 1719-1785, p. 245 (Memorandum of 1770).

3 Dampier, W., A new voyage round the world (4th edn. London, 1699), 1, 273; Defoe, D.,

A new voyage round the world, 1, 136.

4 Clément, P., Lettres, instructions et mémoires de Colbert, I, ii, 579.

THE MISSIONARY MOTIVE IN COLONISATION 303

and many were prompted or compelled to cross the ocean by the divergence between their opinions and those of their rulers on matters of morals and religion. Colonies of Catholics and Dissenters in British North America already bore witness to these motives, and Darien was to lend them a lurid illustration. But the French as yet preferred to send to the galleys such elements as Cromwell had utilised to supply the West Indies with white slaves, and the Dutch had no men to spare. The West Indies indeed remained almost the only regions that possessed a real attraction for the ordinary settler. The missionary motive which had inspired much of the colonial effort of an earlier age had for the moment declined in force. Roman Orders, notably the Society of Jesus, still formed missions, organising the Indians into simple communities of a few hundreds or thousands, whose main object could still be an orthodox and unambitious life. The knowledge and devotion of the "religious", indeed, was of vast service to the colonial movement in general, for it gave that culture which a nascent community must ordinarily forgo, and provided men competent to calculate, survey and build. The heretic nations, however, scarcely attempted propaganda, and they were the chief by sea.

Mere pride as a cause of annexation belongs in the main to a later age, when communications are easy, and great masses can read journals and interpret maps. Louis XIV, indeed, was ready to commission his subjects to acquire lands overseas for his glory, and he understood the effect upon France of the feeling that distant races revered and obeyed her King. But republics, Colbert said, "make no conquests except by the bad example of their liberty",1 and in that age the English were as unostentatious in their colonial acquisitions as were the Dutch. The day of establishments in remote regions for strategic purposes had likewise barely dawned. It was commerce that in the age of Louis XIV mainly promoted colonies and determined their governance and type. The migration of workers on the land, like the self-expatriation of missionaries or producers, counted then for far less than the desire of merchants to secure fixed points upon the coasts of countries with which it was profitable to trade. The resolve to keep all the trade to themselves and to buy cheap in the native markets might lead on to wars and conquests, but it was profit, not dominion, at which men primarily aimed. The factory or depôt, the fort, the presidency, the dominion, grew from the seed of barter, and the flag half reluctantly followed trade. Such was the origin of the Dutch Empire in the East Indies and of British India, and it was in the steps of the Dutch and British that such aspirants as the Great Elector strove to follow.2 Before Utrecht, it had become clear to men like Davenant that by holding India England "might become as 1 Clément, Lettres de Colbert, m, ii, 220 and 222.

2 Westergaard, W., The Danish West Indies under Company rule, chap. iii.

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