that issued from that active brain, was to fall still-born. Nevertheless, had it succeeded, the whole history of the American continent might have run on altogether different lines.

But if in New England matters Cromwell evolved a subtle policy, the full significance of which has perhaps been generally overlooked, of his general Colonial policy there is no room for doubt. Here, though he shelters himself under "Queen Elizabeth of famous memory," he is really the successor of Raleigh. Like the great Elizabethan, his quarrel with Spain is twofold. On the side of Mammon, he covets Spanish treasure. On the side of God, he is opposing Anti-Christ. He must be a shallow critic, who finds in the strange, only half intelligible, expressions in his speeches, the note of hypocrisy. All, however, that we are here concerned with is the practical outcome of that policy in the conquest of Jamaica. At the time, it is true, the expedition seemed a failure. It was repulsed from Hispaniola, which had been its object, and the capture of a bare island, with only five hundred Spanish inhabitants, appeared a very poor compensation. Nevertheless in the long run, Jamaica proved as important an acquisition as would have been San Domingo. In judging of Cromwell's work, we must always remember the few years into which the events of his autocracy were crowded. He was proclaimed Protector in 1653 and he died in September 1658. "Time and I against the world," said Cromwell's great rival, Mazarin, but to Cromwell, the gods were less generous, and the necessary time was not given.

On the subject of emigration, the ideas of Cromwell were not before his age. In the nature of things, he was much occupied with the transportation of political prisoners. Readers of Carlyle will remember the passage 2 in which he speaks of Cromwell as "very apt to Barbados' an unruly man; has sent, and sends us by hundreds to Barbados, so that we have made an active verb of it—' Barbados you.""

1 Seeley, Growth of Br. Policy, Vol. II.

2 Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, Part IX., 1655.
E

In 1654 we find the draft of a bill for transporting vagrants Aug. 14, to the Western Colonies, and two years later a circular letter was addressed to the Majors-General and Commissioners for the different counties, ordering them to apprehend lewd and dangerous persons, rogues, vagrants, and those who have no way of livelihood and refuse to work, and to treat with merchants and others for the transporting them to the English plantations. The proceeds from the duty on the export of coals were to be appropriated to the carrying on of His Highness' affairs in America.

CHAPTER II

ment of

WE have already noticed the remark of Seeley how com- Policy of pletely English constitutional experiences have dictated the Governgeneral history of English development. The reign of Charles Charles II. well illustrates his meaning. It is almost

universally described as a time of disgrace and infamy, and yet, so far as both the administration and development of the Colonies were concerned, it compares very favourably with the times which came before and which followed. The policy it attempted to enforce may or may not have been wise, but, at any rate, we find in high quarters an enthusiasm with regard to the Colonies, and a superiority in the men who have to deal with them, which makes the period a singularly interesting one. Even after the great men, Clarendon and Shaftesbury, are no longer at work, we find the Colonial! Committee of the Privy Council, still, so far as good intentions and industry are concerned, meriting approval; and, if their efforts were unavailing against the canker of jobbery and corruption which was eating at the roots of English public life, at least in colonial matters, as perhaps nowhere else, some attempt was made to withstand this jobbery and corruption. The last years of Charles, along with the short rule of James, have been well described as a reign of terror, but even as late as 1681 we find the sun of Charles' Colonial policy setting splendidly with the foundation of the great Quaker colony of Pennsylvania.

II.

The presiding genius of the first period of Charles' reign Clarendon was, of course, Clarendon, and when greater England shall care to commemorate its makers, the great representative of the Via media will doubtless occupy a place by the side of Raleigh, Cromwell, Ashley, Pitt, Carleton, Sir George Grey, and the many distinguished Englishmen, who have carried

forward the torch of colonial development. When offered up as a victim to his enemies by the King, who resented his respectability, Clarendon, in his defence,1 asserted that, "soon after the Restoration, he used all the endeavours he could, to bring His Majesty to have a great esteem for his Plantations, and to encourage the improvement of them, and that he was confirmed in his opinion and desire by the entries at the Custom House, by which he found what a great revenue accrued to the King from these plantations; inasmuch as the receipts from them had repaired the decrease of the Customs which the late troubles had brought upon the parts of trade."

An examination of the English Colonial policy, at the time of the Restoration, fully bears out this claim. The first business of the restored monarchy, (and what more significant tribute could have been paid to the growing importance of the trading interest?) was to re-enact the Naviga Navigation Act, while at the same time, the scope of the measure was greatly enlarged. The 1651 Ordinance, as we c. 18. have already seen, was enacted in the interests of English shipping, the Act of 1660 extended its protection to English manufactures.

tion Act.

12 Car. ii.

The commercial attitude of England towards her Colonies had been, at the outset, a generous one. Under the charters, immunity had been, for the most part, given from all duties, except five per cent, for long periods of years. The provision allowing the Colonies to re-export goods from England, free of any fresh duty, at any time within twelve months, acted as an encouragement to colonial trade. Moreover, the readiness with which foreigners had been encouraged to settle in the various Colonies, showed a generous solicitude for their advancement. The spirit of this policy was now, however, to be changed. The Navigation Acts forged fetters wherein the Colonies were to be bound for many a long year.

1 There are numerous versions of this Defence, but the only one I have found, which contains the passage with respect to the Colonies, is in the Life of Lord Clarendon, Oxford ed. 1827, Vol. III.

These Acts, and their successors, cannot be looked on as isolated events in English economic history; in fact, they were but particular manifestations of that general European movement, which is known as the Mercantile system. The German economist, Schmoller, has maintained that mercantilism was a necessary step in the evolution of modern society.1 "In its innermost kernel it is nothing but statemaking. which creates, out of the political community, an economic community, and so gives it a heightened meaning." According to this view, the essence of the system lies, not in any theory, as to the precious metals, balance of trade, or the like, but "in the replacing of a local and territorial economic policy by that of the national state." The Mercantile system has been, for the most part, in England, judged from the modern standpoint. Compared with the particularism of the Town or Territory, it opened out a wider field of commercial freedom. Be this as it may, it involved, as commonly held, the subordination of the interests of the Colony to those of the mother state. The Dutch, "so lauded by the naïf free trader of our day, on account of the low customs-duties of their early days, were from the first the sternest and most warlike of monopolists." "2 "Their obstinate pursuit of monopoly," the same writer asserts, " gave rise to England's Navigation law, and Colbert's tariff, and attracted England and France themselves towards a like policy of pursuing narrowly mercantilist objects by force of arms."

But if it is impossible with fairness to condemn the authors of the Navigation Acts in the manner of English, and especially of American writers, it is none the less true that they mark the deliberate renunciation of an ideal, the putting forward of which might have led to much. If Mercantilism meant the national state as an economic community, as opposed to the Town or Territory, which had sufficed for the economic grasp of earlier times, might not a yet wider Mercantilism have gone one step further and substituted for the national State the national Empire? The ideal, which finds expression 1 The Mercantile System (Econ. classics), p. 50. 2 Ibid., p. 65. 3 Ibid., p. 66.