The Colonies, 1492-1750

by Reuben Gold Thwaites

22. English Policy.

England.

England remains the only country which planted populous colonies within the present United States and retained them long after they were planted. Her insular position and fine harbors have given her a race of sailors; her climate has proved favorable for rearing a hardy people, who, secure in their boundaries and not necessarily entangled in Continental affairs, have been left free to develop and to push independent enterprises. As regards American exploration, the fact that England is the westernmost State in Europe had at first much to do with her pre-eminence. Until the close of the sixteenth century England's resources were slender, and her government was not desirous of incurring the hostility of stronger European neighbors by poaching too freely on their colonial preserves. Cabot went out at his own cost. Drake's operations, while adding to the glory of England, and directly favored by Queen Elizabeth, were continually endangering her with Spain. But in the face of all discouragements, the sixteenth century was a notable training period for English sea-rovers. The records of the age are aglow with the deeds of the Cabots, Frobisher, Davis, Drake, Cavendish, Gilbert, Raleigh, Grenville, and their like, who, while invariably failing in their persistent efforts at colonization, were charting the American coast-line, making the New World familiar to their countrymen, and striking out shorter paths across the Atlantic. At first outstripped by other European nations, England was becoming one of the principal maritime powers when the seventeenth century began. Spain, weakened by the defection of the Netherlands, and still further humiliated by the defeat of the Armada (1588), was by this time showing evidences of decay, and France was the growing rival in the West.

English occupation in North America, like the French, began with the fishermen who, following in Cabot's wake, early sought the banks of Newfoundland. |The English trading spirit.| They were courageous, businesslike men, who soon supplemented their calling as fishermen with a profitable native trade in peltries. The trading spirit has always been deeply implanted in the Teutonic races; when England had gathered sufficient strength to make it discreet to assert herself, we find that her reachings out for wider territory took the shape of commercial enterprise. The romantic adventurers of the age of Elizabeth, as much freebooters as explorers, were now succeeded by prosaic trading companies, which undertook to plant colonies along the Atlantic coast. In doing this they were impelled in part by a desire to relieve England from some of her surplus population; but in the main the colonies were to serve as trading and supply stations.

Scanty State aid.

In aiding these corporations, which succeeded after a fashion in planting colonies, but failed for the most part in reaping profits, the State expected increased revenue rather than the spread of European civilization. In England, State assistance to such undertakings was always slight and uncertain; the strength of the early colonies lay in the wealth and persistence of their promoters.

23. Character of English Emigrants.

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were full of trouble for the English people. |English impulse to emigration.| Religious restlessness was succeeded by revolution and civil war, while crude and oppressive economic conditions induced lawless disturbance and disaster. Colonizing schemes were readily taken up in such times of unrest. At first the notion prevailed that the colonies might profitably be utilized for clearing the mother-country of jail-birds and paupers, although with these went out many who were worthy pioneers. It remained for the Plymouth planting to demonstrate that only the honest and thrifty can work out the salvation of a wilderness. America attracted the attention alike of traders and settlers because its soil was supposed to be rich, because the climate was temperate and not unlike that of England, because there was plenty of room, and because the unknown land attracted the adventurous.

Englishmen as colonists.

Englishmen were soon found to be the best colonizers in the world. An intelligent, large, well-built, and handsome race, active in a high degree and passionately fond of out-door life and manly sports, they are brave and enterprising, will fight for supremacy, are tenacious of purpose, and carry with them in their migrations their ideas, their customs, and their laws. |Their characteristics,| They do not assimilate with other races,—in fact, there is inbred in them a strong disdain of foreigners, and still more of inferior races; but they rule with vigor, and make a lasting impress of their characteristics upon the communities they establish. Although Englishmen in the seventeenth century, when they colonized America, lacked many of the refinements of civilization, were coarse in their tastes and sentiments, and much given to dissipation and petty vices, a fibre of robust morality ran through the national life. The leaders were educated, they were ambitious for their race, and there was a healthy tone to their patriotic aspirations. Simple and reserved in manner, they prided themselves on repressing the utterance of their feelings, entering upon the serious business of rearing a nation in the wilds with most becoming gravity. Their conduct was often bad, but they were schooled in piety and reverence, and were steadfast in high aims.