In the Peace of Utrecht (1713), France gave up its claim to Nova Scotia: the Peace of Paris (1763) surrendered to Great Britain New Brunswick, and Cape Breton and Prince Edward islands. These are known at present as the maritime provinces. When the American War of Revolution began, thousands of loyalists emigrated to Nova Scotia, as well as to Upper Canada, from whom many of the present inhabitants are descended. The island of Vancouver, on the western coast of British Columbia, was surrendered to the navigator of this name by Quadra, a Spanish commander, in 1792. In 1843 a trading-post was established at Victoria by the Hudson Bay Company. The island forms politically a part of British Columbia. The Government of the Dominion, when British Columbia was received, engaged to construct a railway to the Pacific across British North America. England acquired a title to Newfoundland in 1713. It first received a constitution in 1832. The government was made responsible to the Assembly in 1852.
GREAT BRITAIN AND AUSTRALIA.—Australia, which covers an area of three million square miles, when it was first visited by Europeans was found to be inhabited by native tribes of the Papuan, Melanesian, or Australasian race, of whom about eighty thousand now remain. In the seventeenth century, various points along its coasts were touched by European voyagers, especially by the Dutch. The discoveries of Captain Cook (1769 to 1777) had an important influence in leading to settlements on this island-continent. New South Wales, a name given by Cook, is the oldest of the English provinces in Australia. Not Botany Bay, which he had selected for a settlement, but Port Jackson, was made a penal station (1788) for convicts from England. This place, however, continued to be erroneously called Botany Bay. The principal harbor was named Sydney Cove. In 1803 Van Dieman's Land, now called Tasmania, was first occupied. Thus the beginnings of colonization in Australia were made by the dregs of English society. The convicts labored for their own support, and, when their terms had expired, sometimes received as a gift small farms, and implements with which to till them. The character of the settlement, and the management of it, became much more humane after 1810, when Macquarie became governor. Free colonists, English and Scotch, came and joined it. The discovery of the upland pastures beyond the Blue Mountains, which were remarkably adapted to sheep, made an epoch in the history of the colony. Spanish merino sheep were introduced: wool became the chief staple; the production of it, especially after the invention of the combing-machine, became very profitable, and free emigrants poured in. The Australian Agricultural Company was formed in England. Western Australia began to be settled in 1829, but did not thrive. New colonies continued to be formed in Eastern Australia. South Australia was made prosperous by copper-mines. Victoria, which became a distinct province in 1851, owes its growth to gold mines. Melbourne, its chief town, was planted in 1837. The first British governors at Sydney were military officers, ruling with despotic authority. Representative institutions were gradually formed in the different provinces. The constitutions were framed on the model of the home government; but in Victoria and Tasmania the Upper House was made elective. After long conflicts with the home government, the Australian colonies escaped from the misfortune of being places to which convicts were transported. The discovery of gold in New South Wales and Victoria was made in 1851, and caused at once an immense influx of immigrants. Next to gold, the most important article of export has been wool. Wheat and copper have been exported in large quantities. The breeding of cattle has been a profitable employment in these communities.
NEW ZEALAND.—In 1838 the first regular and permanent settlement was made in New Zealand. Wellington was founded in the next year. New Zealand, with South Island and North Island, became a colony independent of Australia in 1841.
ENGLAND AND IRELAND.—The disaffection of the Irish, and their antipathy to English rule, broke out in different forms, as circumstances changed. For a long time the demand was for "Catholic emancipation." This was granted (p. 558); but most of the English concessions were made under such a pressure, and in appearance so grudgingly, that little was accomplished by them in placating Irish hostility. The outcry against tithes for the support of the Protestant Established Church was to a great extent quieted in 1838, when the odious features of this tax were removed. The Act disestablishing the Irish Protestant Church, carried by Mr. Gladstone in 1869, and put in execution in 1871, took away one of the great grievances of which the Irish nation had to complain. The repeal of the legislative union of England and Ireland was the watchword of O'Connell and his followers. In one form or another, the demand for local self-government or independence, which has been more lately urged under the name of "home rule," has been kept up with little intermission. It is about the special question of land reform that the most bitter conflicts have centered. The ownership of a great part of the land in Ireland by a few persons: the fact that great obstacles and great expenses—difficulties of late somewhat lightened—have existed in the way of the transference of land if any one had the means to purchase it: the circumstances that the owners have generally been, not residents, but absent landlords; that, in cases of dispute with tenants, the laws were for a long period framed in their interest; that the management of estates was left to agents or middle-men; that multitudes of tenants, whose holdings were small, could glean a bare subsistence from the soil, were doomed to famine if the potato-crop failed, and, when unable to pay the rent, were liable to "eviction," that is, to be turned out of doors, with their families, to perish,—these have been causes sufficient to give rise to endless disputes and conflicts. Add to these facts the inbred hostility arising from differences of race and religion; the memory, on the part of the Irish, of centuries of misgovernment, and the feeling that the lands held by sufferance were wrested from their ancestors by force,—and the animosity manifested in revolts and outrages is easily explained. The English government, in a series of measures,—in connection with which, acts of coercion for preventing and punishing violence have been passed,—undertook to lessen the evils that exist, and to produce a better state of feeling. The Encumbered Estates Court was established to render more easy the transfer of lands. This Act, and the Land Act passed the same year (1860), although well meant, failed to improve the situation of the tenants. Mr. Gladstone's great measure of disestablishment has been referred to. His second great reform measure was the Land Law of 1870, the effect of which was to make the landlord pay damages to the evicted tenant, to compensate him for improvements which he had made, etc. One object of this Act was to create a body of peasant proprietors in Ireland. Additional Acts, in 1880, were designed to assist tenants to purchase their holdings. The hopes as to the practical benefit to follow the Act of 1870 were disappointed. In 1877, 1878, and 1879, there was a partial failure of the crops. The Fenian movement, designed to secure Irish independence by force, was organized in the United States, 1857. By uniting with similar Irish brotherhoods, it extended itself in Great Britain as well as America, collected large funds, and, 1866, made ineffectual attempts to invade Canada. An armed rising in Ireland shortly after, under Fenian leadership, was suppressed. The national agitation consequent on these proceedings in Ireland, issued in the organization, 1870, of the Home Rule party, with Mr. Isaac Butt a leading promoter. The object was to secure an Irish Parliament for Irish affairs, and for the control of Irish resources; the Imperial Parliament being left to deal with imperial affairs. In this period (about 1874) Mr. Parnell grew to be conspicuous in politics. He became the leader of the Home Rule members of the House of Commons, who sought, by obstructing the progress of business, to compel the English government to withdraw its measures of coercion, and to legislate in accordance with the views of himself and his associates. The "obstructionists," by joining the Tories, effected the retirement of the Gladstone Cabinet (1885). In Ireland a system of "boycotting" was adopted for the punishment of landlords guilty of evicting tenants. This led to deeds of violence and blood. Parnell died in 1891. and Justin McCarthy became the leader of the Irish cause in Parliament. A Gladstone Cabinet again came into power in 1892, with an avowed object of securing Home Rule for Ireland.
CHAPTER VI. THE UNITED STATES (1815-1890): MEXICO: SOUTH AMERICAN STATES: EASTERN ASIA.
END OF THE FEDERAL PARTY.—The end of the war with Great Britain (1812-15) was marked by the extinction of the Federal party. But the Republicans, the opposing party, were now equally zealous for the perpetuity of the Union, and were quite ready to act on a liberal construction of the Constitution with respect to the powers conferred on the General Government. This had been shown in the purchase of Louisiana: it was further exemplified in 1816 in the establishment of a national bank, and in the enactment of a protective tariff. Then, and until 1832, presidential candidates were nominated by Congressional "caucuses." James Monroe (1817-25) received the votes of all of the States but three. The absence of party division has caused his time to be designated as "the era of good feeling."
PURCHASE OF FLORIDA.—Slaves in Georgia and Alabama frequently escaped from their masters, and fled for shelter to the swamps of Florida. The Creek and the Seminole Indians were always disposed to aid them. In 1817 General Andrew Jackson was appointed to conduct an expedition against the Seminoles. He came into conflict with the Spanish authorities in Florida, where he seized Spanish forts, and built a fort of his own. Finally, in 1819, the Floridas were purchased of Spain for five million dollars, and the United States gave up its claim to the extensive territory west of the Sabine River, which was known afterwards as Texas. This became a part of Mexico two years later.
SLAVERY: THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE.—In 1820 a sectional struggle arose in Congress, on the question of the admission of Missouri as a State with a constitution permitting slavery. The slave-trade had been carried on by the States separately, before the National Constitution was formed. It was abolished by Congress in 1808, the earliest date allowed by the Constitution for the power to abolish it to be exercised. The principal founders of the government, both in the North and South, considered slavery an evil, and looked forward to its gradual extinction. In the North, where the slaves were less numerous, laws for gradual emancipation were early passed. But the rapid increase of slaves in the South, the growing demand for cotton, and the stimulus given to the production of it by the cotton-gin, made the prospect of emancipation by legislative action less probable as time advanced. The American Colonization Society was formed in 1811; and the fallacious hope was entertained by many, that the negroes might be carried back to the Liberian settlement on the African coast. The extension of slavery in the territory north-west of the Ohio had been prevented by the Congressional ordinance of 1787. When the question of the admission of Missouri to the Union came up, the members of Congress from the North and the members from the South were in hostile array on the point, and a dangerous excitement was kindled. By the exertions of Henry Clay, the "Missouri Compromise" was adopted, by which the new State was admitted with slavery in it; but, as a kind of equivalent, slavery was prohibited forever in all the remaining territory of the United States north of 36° 30' north latitude, the southern boundary of Missouri.
THE "MONROE DOCTRINE."—When the "Holy Alliance" was engaged in its crusade against liberty in Europe, it was thought that they might attempt to conquer for Spain the revolted South American republics. Canning suggested to the American minister in England, that it would be well for the United States to take action against such a scheme. President Monroe, in his annual message in 1823, said that we should consider an attempt of the allied powers to extend their system in this country, or any interference on their part for the purpose of controlling the destiny of the American States, as unfriendly action towards the United States. This is the "Monroe Doctrine." An additional statement in disapproval of future colonization on the American continents by European powers was made in the same message. This second statement was never sanctioned by the House of Representatives. It is vague, and was probably meant to exclude indirect attempts to overthrow the liberty of the new American republics. The only thing which the "Monroe Doctrine" really contains is the intimation on the part of the United States of a right to resist attempts of European powers to alter the constitutions of American communities.
The true origin and intent of the "Monroe Doctrine" are often
misunderstood. They are set forth in Woolsey's International
Law, and in his article in Johnson's Encyclopedia, "Monroe
Doctrine;" also in Webster's writings, Vol. III. p. l78, and in
Calhoun's "Speech on the Panama Question." See also Foster, A
Century of American Diplomacy, Chap. XII.