“Child, foreseeing from experience that men’s conduct must finally be decided [directed] by their principles, foretold the colonial revolt. De Foe, allowing his prejudices to obscure his sagacity, reprobated that suggestion, because he deemed interest a more strenuous prompter than enthusiasm.”
The pleasant hunter of curiosities then says:—
“The predictions of Harrington and De Foe are precisely such as we might expect from a petty calculator,—a political economist, who can see nothing farther than immediate results; but the true philosophical predictor was Child, who had read the past.”[281]
Disraeli was more curious than accurate. His excuse is, that he followed another writer.[282] The prediction attributed to Child belongs to Davenant.
The work of Child is practical rather than speculative, and shows a careful student of trade. Dwelling on the “plantations” of England and their value, he considers their original settlement, and here we find a painful contrast between New England and Virginia.[283] Passing from the settlement to the character, New England is described as “being a more independent government from this kingdom than any other of our plantations, and the people that went thither more one peculiar sort or sect than those that went to the rest of our plantations.”[284] He recognized in them “a people whose frugality, industry, and temperance, and the happiness of whose laws and institution, do promise to themselves long life, with a wonderful increase of people, riches, and power.”[285] And then: “Of all the American plantations, his Majesty hath none so apt for the building of shipping as New England, nor none comparably so qualified for breeding of seamen, not only by reason of the natural industry of that people, but principally by reason of their cod and mackerel fisheries.”[286] On his last page are words more than complimentary:—
“To conclude this chapter, and to do right to that most industrious English colony, I must confess, that, though we lose by their unlimited trade with our foreign plantations, yet we are very great gainers by their direct trade to and from Old England: our yearly exportations of English manufactures, malt, and other goods, from hence thither, amounting, in my opinion, to ten times the value of what is imported from thence.”[287]
Here is keen observation, but hardly prophecy.
Contrast this with Davenant:—
“As the case now stands, we shall show that they [the Colonies] are a spring of wealth to this nation, that they work for us, that their treasure centres all here, and that the laws have tied them fast enough to us; so that it must be through our own fault and misgovernment, if they become independent of England.… Corrupt governors by oppressing the inhabitants may hereafter provoke them to withdraw their obedience, and by supine negligence or upon mistaken measures we may let them grow, more especially New England, in naval strength and power, which if suffered, we cannot expect to hold them long in our subjection. If, as some have proposed, we should think to build ships of war there, we may teach them an art which will cost us some blows to make them forget. Some such courses may, indeed, drive them, or put it into their heads, to erect themselves into independent Commonwealths.”[288]