BERKELEY'S BERMUDA PROJECT 627 she had done nothing to protect from ill-treatment and injustice the races with which her settlers had come into contact, and his Bermuda scheme was designed to accomplish by private means what had been neglected as a public duty. It was, however, ill-adapted for the purpose that he had in view; for 600 miles separated Bermuda from the coast of America in whose bosom resided the Indians who were to be converted and civilised. In itself the particular scheme was not practicable, while it was incompatible with the all-pervading commercial spirit of the times. In an age when Great Britain still lacked a genuine imperial consciousness, the remarkable degree of support which the solicitations of Berkeley received, culminating in a grant from George I of a charter for his college in 1726 and a vote by the House of Commons of £20,000 towards its establishment, was rather a tribute to the gracious personality of Berkeley than a public realisation of a neglected duty. The money voted by the Commons was never paid, and the scheme was allowed to sink into oblivion. In emphasising care of the backward races as one of the obligations of empire Berkeley was in advance of his age, and in other respects, too, he showed a divergence from the ordinary standpoint. That he was not in favour of sending British criminals to the Plantations may be gathered from his suggestion in the Querist (1735) that they might be more usefully employed in public works at home than in being transported to America. As a political economist he anticipated in some respects the judgments of Adam Smith, and the tendency of his thought, as expressed in the Querist, was inimical to the school that thought of the balance of trade as the highest aim. He did not share the common delusion which confounded money and wealth, for he realised that "industry not gold causeth a nation to flourish", and one wishes that he had vouchsafed a more definite idea of what was in his mind when he suggested that Great Britain "ought to promote the prosperity of her colonies by all methods consistent with her own".1 As the eighteenth century progressed, interest in the colonies increased, and though most of it was coloured by the prejudices of the counting-house, traces of a loftier conception began to make their appearance. The wars in which Britain found herself engaged from 1739, and the realisation that their issue largely depended upon events in India and in America, made the mother country anxious on the one hand to improve the organisation for defence in America and on the other to keep the colonies in good humour. The effort to organise a union of the American colonies for defence which was made on the eve of the Seven Years' War, failed by reason of colonial jealousies and a fear of irritating the colonies whose goodwill the mother country needed during the critical struggle with France. At home people were beginning to grasp the fact that there was an imperial problem. Thus in 1741 the historian Oldmixon raised a 1 Berkeley, G., Works (ed. Fraser, A. C.), Iv, 475. question which he did not attempt to answer: "The Portuguese have so true a notion of the advantage of such colonies, that, to encourage them, they admit the citizens of Goa to send Deputies to sit in the Assembly of the Cortez; and if it were asked why our colonies have not their representatives, who could presently give a satisfactory answer?"1 In the same year very liberal views on colonial government were expressed by a writer in the Craftsman of 22 August 1741. The views therein laid down were in many respects contrary to the policy of the Government. In the first place all the colonies might be allowed the privilege of choosing their own governors like Connecticut and Rhode Island. The consequence of such a concession would be "no ill one", for in their own interest the colonies would choose good governors, while the mother country would gain from the fact that they would "rather fear than seek or wish a change" which would put them under another Power than Great Britain. Generous treatment was the only magic wand by which colonial loyalty could be won and would be vastly more effective than "troops, garrisons, armies, Governors, and Bashaws". So much trust had the essayist in this policy that he believed it would be more potent than force in bringing about the downfall of the Spanish Empire. "When our fleet and force comes to the American continent, now in the possession of Spain, must they not be irresistible, if they make this declaration to the Indians, to the Spaniards, and all people there, viz., 'You shall be henceforward governed by laws of your own making, enacted by a free, equal representative, that shall be annually chosen by you, or, if you will, removeable by their constituents at pleasure. The representative shall consist either of one House, or else of two Houses, the one like a committee to form and propose the laws, the other to confirm; it shall be which is thought best, by the best judges of such matters, or as you yourselves shall fix. Your laws shall be put in execution by magistrates of your own chusing, and chosen annually. You shall be protected by our fleets; defended by our garrisons: that is, so far, and so far only, and so long only, as you yourselves shall desire'."2 But when the essayist criticised the official policy of creating “a new topping place", "a Viceroy or a General Governor over all our colonies", he showed that what he really relied on to keep the colonies faithful to Great Britain was their disunion. The policy of divide et impera, which was never adopted officially, conformed to a very great extent with the national instinct, for there were many people in Great Britain who agreed with the essayist that the colonies were bound to the mother country by the fact that it was not in their power to revolt, since "what may discontent one of them, may not at the same time in the least affect the other". There were many who found the chief 1 Oldmixon, J., The British Empire in America (1741), I, xxvii. 2 Quoted in the Scots Magazine (1741), шI, 363–4. HUME ON THE INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE 629 assurance of British supremacy in their "distinctness and independency of one another", and the official policy of centralisation was consequently held in suspicion, since it might result in a "general discontent all at once throughout all" the colonies. The strength of this sentiment became most apparent after the American question was raised, and the following quotation sounded a note echoed in many pamphlets on the British side: "Our greatest security and power over them must consist in their disunion...we should rather make them rivals for our favour, than united friends in opposing us".1 Such utterances can be countered by those of other writers with a truer vision, but they undoubtedly expressed a section of opinion. The liberal concessions advocated by this essayist must be further discounted; they were all conditional on colonial commercial subordination. His interest in the Empire lay in the fact that "whatever is in any way got by the colonists there, does finally centre here in the superior or mother country". The sheet anchor of the Empire consisted of "our Act of Navigation, whereby they are obliged to traffick wholly with us; so that all their superfluous wealth, gained by the industrious, dissipated again by the luxurious, terminates here in the purchase of our costly manufactures". The apparent generosity of this writer, then, was fed on strictly business and selfish motives. Colonial loyalty was but a species of investment, not so safe, however, as colonial disunion. More liberal in character were the views expressed by David Hume in his Essays. He was not inspired by the reverential regard for the Glorious Revolution which characterised the earlier writers of the century, and he broke away from the static method of treating history in his recognition that it was "on opinion only that government is founded", and that opinion was in a state of perpetual flux through "the progress of learning and of liberty". In his exposure of unhistorical abstractions and in his respect for expediency he was the forerunner of Burke, and in his plea for the abolition of restrictions on trade he prepared the ground for Adam Smith. But while the general views of Hume manifested a real grasp of historical method, he was sometimes betrayed into rash conclusions. Thus in his essay Of National Characters (1742) he rejected the doctrine of Montesquieu that "the empire of the climate is the first, the most powerful of all empires", and sought to demonstrate that men did not "owe anything of their temper or genius to the air, food, or climate". This rejection of the theory of the eminent French thinker is particularly noteworthy, because the difficulty of adjusting relations between the mother country and the colonies was very greatly increased by the differences that had developed between the American character and that of England. When a cool and dispassionate 1 Scots Magazine (1765), xxvII, 636-8. 2 Hume, D., Essays and Treatises (1788), 1, 37. • Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, Bk. xvii (ed. of 1793), I, 334. Hume, D., op. cit. I, 179. thinker like Hume failed to discern the rise of a new nation, it is not surprising that most of his countrymen were equally at fault. Meanwhile an imperial consciousness was being fostered in Britain by the challenge of France, and the shifting of interest from the West Indies to the Hudson, which war involved, brought into greater prominence the hitherto neglected northern continental colonies. Governor William Shirley of Massachusetts had long been uneasily aware of the military weakness occasioned by the lack of co-operation among the British colonies which threatened to be fatal in face of the centralised power wielded by the Governor of New France, and his persistent advocacy of a plan of union for purposes of defence was responsible for the conference which with the approval of Lord Halifax assembled at Albany in 1754 and for making the subject of colonial union the most important issue before it. The scheme which was discussed and approved by the conference was the work of Benjamin Franklin. The colonies, however, objected to it on the ground that it infringed too much on their liberties, and Shirley disliked it because "the Prerogative is so much relaxed in the Albany Plan, that it doth not appear well calculated to strengthen the dependency of the Colonies upon the Crown, which seems a very important Article in the consideration of this Affair".1 Shirley proposed to keep the colonies in dependence by debarring them from any voice in the choice of the Grand Council and by taxing the colonies through the British Parliament. These suggestions were submitted to Franklin who at once took exception to them on the score that they violated the principle of "No taxation without representation". Though the colonies may be fairly criticised for having by their jealousies defeated a measure which was widely admitted to be an urgent reform, it is tolerably certain that a plan which failed to secure the approval of Franklin, who was a friend of union, would have excited active discontent throughout America at a time when the Government could not afford to sacrifice the goodwill of the colonies. Apart from the question of union the facts of the situation caused political and territorial problems to assume pre-eminence over mere matters of commerce, for in the course of the Seven Years' War British statesmen found themselves confronted with issues wherein the simple tenets of the mercantilists offered them no adequate guidance. Consequently the war closed amid an atmosphere of disturbing potentialities; for the Peace of Paris, by providing for the retention of Canada and the Ohio basin in preference to the French West Indian islands, marked the first serious departure of the British Government from the principles of the politico-economic school which had hitherto dominated colonial administration, and the assumption of a genuinely imperial policy. 1 1 Shirley, W., Correspondence (ed. Lincoln), II, 96, 111-16; Franklin, B., Works, ш, 57–68. THE AMERICAN QUESTION 631 Nation-building, however, predicated an idea for which the nation was as yet hardly prepared. It is true, as is shown elsewhere, that the so-called mercantile system existed rather as a doctrine than as a matter of practice, yet the nature of the pamphlets poured out from 1755 onwards testifies to the bondage of the national mind to commercial motives, and while there can be no question that there was a genuine national interest in the Empire, it was too much inspired by considerations of the convenience of the mother country. Time as well as knowledge was needed for the blossoming of a wider and more sympathetic feeling, and in the middle of the eighteenth century there were few qualified to follow Pitt. Among these few was Thomas Pownall who had captured something of the splendour of the true imperial idea. His plea for the application of the mercantile system on an imperial instead of a national basis by the development of a "grand marine dominion" was the fruit of a sentiment of imperial patriotism, which for him was lord and sovereign over every other consideration. The sentiment was one in which many Britons and colonists were lacking, but it was capable of being inspired by such a personality as Pitt's. During the critical years following the passing of the Stamp Act Pownall was quick to catch the first murmurs of the rising tide of American nationalism and he was anxious to keep the new American nation within the British Empire.1 The colonial protests evoked by the Stamp Act were a warning that the colonial system was in need of overhauling, and in 1765 Governor Bernard wrote to Lord Barrington that all the political evils in America arose "from the Want of Ascertaining the Relation between Great Britain and the American Colonies".2 The American question formed, in truth, the strongest possible test of the capacity of the British constitution to fulfil an imperial as well as a national function. In such a crisis, when at last the facts of the situation were being laid bare and analysed, everything depended on the manner in which the question was approached. Nothing could have been more disastrous for the Empire than that legalism should have taken the prominent place it did in the dispute. 3 Prior to 1763 the colonies had not denied the right of the British Parliament to legislate for them, but that was because up to that time the function of Parliament in colonial matters had been regulative rather than administrative. The Stamp Act, however, seemed to foreshadow the more active and sustained intervention of Parliament in their internal affairs, and the colonists, thoroughly alarmed, attacked the measure as unconstitutional. The controversy revealed a wide cleavage of idea between the Americans and the people of Britain. 1 Pownall, T., Administration of the Colonies (1774), pt II, pp. 84-6. a Bernard, F., op. cit. pp. 32-3. " Osgood, H. L., The American Colonies in the Eighteenth Century, III, 12. |