disadvantages of colonial business. Much capital was tied up in it because long term credit had to be given. There are definite indications of attempts to reduce the time allowed for payment. Eighteen months, it appears, were usually given by Glasgow merchants in the middle of the century. Later, twelve months seem the normal time, but some merchants were trying to insist on nine. They asserted that the shorter period represented the utmost extent of credit they could themselves secure.2 Commercial correspondence is full of complaints about outstanding debts and merchants engaged in the American trade were certainly often seriously pressed by their own creditors at home. Sometimes they had the bills of exchange sent them by their American customers protested when presented for payment, and sometimes they found it impossible to sell a vessel which they were instructed to dispose of in liquidation of debt at anything like the price which the debtor expected. It is not surprising, therefore, that they preferred a nearer market in which shorter credit was asked and in which the risks of trade were not so considerable. Industrial developments were providing new outlets for capital at home and colonial markets were beginning to occupy a less important place in British commerce. When the merchants of London came to consider the position created by the recognition of the independence of the United States in 1783 they arrived at the conclusion that the superiority of British manufactures would ensure them a preference over those of other countries, and if the future trade was conducted on a liberal system it was not likely that the Americans would make attempts to set up manufactures of their own. They would be of necessity mainly occupied in the clearing and cultivating of the land.3 This sensible conclusion was largely justified by the event.

1 Renwick, Robert, Records of the Burgh of Glasgow, VI.

" Letter of Hayley and Hopkins, London, 24 June 1769, in Commerce of Rhode Island, I, 282-3.

Observations of London Merchants on American Trade, 22 July 1783; Am. H.R. July 1913, pp. 773-80.

CHAPTER XXI

THE CONSTITUTION AND THE EMPIRE

FROM BACON TO BLACKSTONE

IN the moulding of modern thought no factor exercises a more

potent influence than the idea of evolution. It predisposes the mind when confronted with an array of facts to seek for some connecting principle by which they are related and to prove that there is an orderly development of idea. Governed by this conception, historians have been able to demonstrate the continuity of English history and to show how one age has prepared the ground for the work of its successor. The long range of England's history exhibits only one violent break from tradition, the Puritan Revolution, which proved to be but a short episode in the flowing tale of the national life. The concept of evolution, with the expectant, critical attitude of mind which is its offspring, was unknown to the people of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Had the idea of growth and development been as strongly rooted in their minds as it is in those of their successors, then the possibility of friction between the mother country and the colonies might have been generally anticipated. But even the ablest writers and thinkers before the eighteenth century seldom endeavoured to trace any connecting principle amid the facts with which they were confronted; for their view of history was a static one. Apart from a few exceptions they seemed unaware of the powerful forces by which the actions of men are inspired, took no account of the influence of environment on human development, and regarded government as a piece of machinery rather than a natural growth. Action preceded thought, and political theories were not formulated until events had suggested the need for them. Contemporary historians of the Empire, such as Sir Dalby Thomas1 and Oldmixon,2 contented themselves with presenting a collection of facts, for it never occurred to them that the relationship between the mother country and the colonies raised any difficulties, and their attitude faithfully mirrored that of the mass of the people.

Until men had progressed beyond the stage of regarding history statically, it was impossible for them to appreciate at its true value the importance of events which are now recognised as beacon lights in British colonial history. In the development of English colonial policy few events have had more significance than the Restoration and the Revolution. With the Restoration England turned her back on Puritanism, the Empire was augmented by the acquisition of new 1 Thomas, Dalby, Hist. Account of the Rise and Growth of the West India Colonies and of the Great Advantage they are to England in respect of Trade, Lond. 1690.

Oldmixon, John, The British Empire in America, Lond. 1708.

territories, and the colonial system at last assumed coherent form. In many respects the most interesting of these developments was the national rejection of Puritan ideas, possibly because these were largely derived from Holland.1 But though the movement was subordinated, it remained a potent influence in America, where its ideas were worked out more fully and with less restraint than had been possible in England. In the nature of things differences were bound to develop between those who crossed the Atlantic and those who stayed at home, but these were undoubtedly accentuated by the fact that the American point of view, partially shaped by ideas which England had rejected, had begun to diverge from that of England. The unhappy potentialities, however, of the Restoration in this respect were overlooked by contemporaries. Similarly the Revolution was regarded by Englishmen as merely a national affair, and its imperial bearings were not appreciated at their true worth.

In considering English views on the colonies during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it is vital, therefore, to keep in mind that these were not illumined by any idea of growth. Moreover domestic matters, particularly during the seventeenth century, were so engrossing that the colonies dropped out of public notice until the issue between Crown and Parliament had been settled. During the formative period of English colonisation, which we may take as extending to the Restoration, no large problems of colonial government arose; for the establishment of the first English settlements beyond the seas was nothing more than an extension of English commerce. Plantations, in fact, were the only means by which the national instinct for commerce could be satisfied, and the State was required merely to give a legal sanction to settlements formed by private enterprise. Settlements of this type were too weak at first to be treated as political communities; they were, in truth, private estates and were regarded as such. Consequently they were put on the same legal status as the guilds, boroughs, and trading companies of England. The movement, however, which resulted in the colonisation of New England, was of a totally different character; for it represented, in the minds of its founders, a schism from the State rather than a trading enterprise. The extent to which the expansion of England is linked up with commerce is amply proven by the tone of pamphlets issued not merely during the formative stage but throughout the whole period. Plantations were criticised on the ground that they were unprofitable to the kingdom, while supporters of the colonising movement sought to show that the settlements were of benefit to England. This commercial aspect is clearly brought out in the references of Bacon to the colonies.

Bacon, whose great fault was that he had no faith in his own maxim that knowledge is power, was too practical-minded to draft any 1 Campbell, D., The Puritan in Holland, England, and America (first ed. 1892), pp. xxvi-xxxi.

BACON AND THE PLANTATIONS

605

Utopian schemes of government. He was too conscious of his own defects to pasture on illusions, and he knew that the process of transporting a man to a new world would not change his nature. His scientific mind, however, revolted at the thought of missed opportunities, and he realised that the new world could not be used to the greatest advantage unless it was peopled by the best of the old. Few statements are better known than the oft-quoted remark in his essay "Of Plantations": "It is a shameful and unblessed thing to take the scum of people and wicked condemned men, to be the people with whom you plant". This was a noble protest against the practice of sending English gaol-birds to Virginia, and he repeated it in a letter of advice to George Villiers in 1616, in which he recommended "that if any transplant themselves into Plantations abroad, who are known schismaticks, outlaws, or criminal persons, that they may be sent for back upon the first notice: such persons are not fit to lay the foundation of a new colony". But his protest passed unheeded. The Government could not resist the temptation to use the colonies as receptacles for superfluous malefactors, and this degrading practice was continued beyond the middle of the nineteenth century.

But while Bacon paid due tribute to the commercial aims of Plantations, he saw that these oversea communities differed enormously from ordinary trading concerns. Some sort of government had to be devised to maintain law and order in the settlements, and with the experience of the Virginia Company in his mind he advised that government should be "in the hands of one, assisted with some counsel". Such advice was suited to the needs of his own age, and it would be unfair to assume that it represented his final word on colonial government. He was anxious that the utmost care should be taken to appoint suitable governors, and while he advocated the employment of the settlers in trades and manufactures, "such as may be useful to this Kingdom", he was opposed to the Plantations being managed solely in the interests of English merchants and tradesmen. Indeed he wished merchants to be restricted from taking part in government as far as possible since "they look ever to the present gain", while the long perspective is essential to the statesman. The colonies were but puny in Bacon's day, but his prediction of the development of the Plantations into "new kingdoms" suggests that. he had envisaged the possibility of England becoming the mother of nations.

While commerce was the true origin of English colonisation, the invincible tendency of the Englishman to idealise everything in which he is concerned disclosed itself in the emphasis which was placed upon the movement as a counter-blow against the national foe. Bacon entertained no apprehensions about the result of a duel with Spain, for "the wealth of both Indies seems, in great part, but an accessory

1 Bacon, F., Works, ed. Spedding, VI, 21.

to the command of the seas", and Spain's pretensions to maritime supremacy had been dispelled by the capture of Cadiz in 1596. National sentiment as expressed through Parliament remained faithful to the Elizabethan tradition and on the renewal of war with Spain in 1624 condemned "the diverting of his Majesty's course of wars from the West Indies, which was the most facile and hopeful way for this kingdom to prevail against the Spaniard, to an expenceful and successless attempt upon Cadiz".1 Parliament was as vigilant as the Crown in its regard for the welfare of the Plantations, and after the outbreak of the Civil War a Commission was appointed under the Earl of Warwick to supervise the colonies.2 After the establishment of the Commonwealth, when the first need of England was to frame a new constitution, even the dispassionate James Harrington, in the preface to his Oceana (1656), allowed himself to exult in the imperial destiny awaiting his country "upon the mightiest foundation that any has been laid from the beginning of the World to this day". Even Venice took rank below Oceana, for "the Sea gives law to the growth of Venice, but the growth of Oceana gives law to the Sea". The spirit of imperialism is contained in his statement that "to ask whether it be lawful for a Commonwealth to aspire to the Empire of the World, it is to ask whether it be lawful for it to do its duty, or to put the World into a better condition than it was before". But when he descended to particulars he struck a less confident note. "If you have subdued a nation that is capable of Liberty", he declared, "you shall make them a present of it"; while his well-known words that the colonies" are yet Babes that cannot live without sucking the breasts of the Mother Cities, but such as I mistake if when they come of age they do not wean themselves" seem prophetic of the disruption.

In truth, his imperial aspirations were at variance with his intellectual convictions, and possibly Harrington was the first Englishman to realise that the government of England and the government of an Empire were two very different things. Engaged in an attempt to solve the difficulty of England only, he saw that his solution, however satisfactory it might be to his countrymen, could not but prove irksome to the colonists. This recognition of the fact that the government of the Empire had to be considered apart from the government of the nation marks Harrington off from all other Englishmen of his age, and it was unfortunate that the difficulty which he discerned, though he refused to explore it, was not realised as clearly by the thinkers of the Revolution period, when the time was opportune for a reconsideration of the whole field of colonial government. His system of government expounded in Oceana had never any real chance of becoming operative, but it attracted considerable attention among his contemporaries by reason of the novelty of the devices which were

1 Stock, L. F., Proceedings and Debates of British Parliaments respecting North America, 1, 128. 2 Ibid. 1, 146.