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is the prevailing system, with a Governor appointed by the Crown as the agent of the sovereign to watch imperial interests.

The proprietary colonies were Maryland, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Carolina, New Jersey, Georgia, and, in its early career, New York. In this class of colonies the soil was granted to and vested in certain proprietors or companies, who exercised the governmental powers which, in royalist colonies, were enjoyed by the king; they appointed administrative Councils to conduct public business; and sometimes they nominated their Governors, who had by charter the right of veto on the legislation of the colonial assemblies. This plan of colonization, which may be compared to that adopted by the East India Company, was found not to work satisfactorily as the population increased, and as conflicts between private and public interests arose. In time the proprietors became tired of continual quarrels and dissensions with the colonists, and one by one they either surrendered or lost their charters, until by degrees all the colonies assumed the royalist form of government, with the exception of two.

The chartered colonies were Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, in which, by their original title deeds from the Crown, the people had the right of choosing their own Governors, their own magistrates, and their own representatives, to make, interpret, and administer their own laws. They could repeal and abrogate the common law of England, except the general law of allegiance and dependence, without the danger of a veto by the Home Government. They could also repeal and abrogate the statute law of England, except such Acts as were expressly applicable to the whole empire. Massachusetts, however, lost its charter in consequence of proceedings taken against it in England by Charles II. After that it became a quasi-royalist colony. At the time of the revolution in 1770, Connecticut and Rhode Island were the only chartered colonies. It may be observed that the chartered colonies had a much larger instalment of constitutional liberty and local independence than any existing dependency of the British Crown.

Speaking generally of this survey of the political organization of the early North-American settlements, it is to be remarked that in their matured history they had local autonomy, self-government, selftaxation, and political equality, and that there was no State Church and no official aristocracy to become an incubus or a source of strife and bitterness. The transplanted institutions and franchises of the old country took root and flourished in the new country under the guidance and protection of bold and hardy bands of pioneers, who laid the foundations of a mighty Anglo-Saxon empire along the coast of the Atlantic. They carried with them the traditions and charters of their ancestors; Magna Charta, the Petition of Rights and the Bill of Rights formed a part of their political inheritance as much as those muniments of title were the birthright of those of their fellow countrymen whom they left behind them.

We are now in a position to notice the truth and importance of the statement with which this account of the American colonies was introduced. They were established not by Government agency, assistance or direction, but by private adventurers, who left their

native land in search of that freedom denied them at home. The Anglican Cavaliers of Virginia, the Puritans of New England, the Quakers of Pennsylvania and the Catholics of Maryland emigrated from the land of their forefathers, and fought their way in the waste wilderness of the new world in order that they might escape political proscription and religious persecution; that they might establish hearths, homes and hamlets where they would be far away from tyranny, spoliation and martyrdom. In other words, these colonies were places of refuge from the fierce political and ecclesiastical domination which prevailed in England in the seventeenth century, during the reigns of James I. and Charles I., the Protectorate, and the Restoration under Charles II. and James II.

WEST INDIAN COLONIES.-Leaving the thirteen provinces of the mainland, let us now glance at the progress of English colonization in other parts of the globe during the later half of the seventeenth century. Barbadoes is the oldest discovered British colony in the West Indies. It was taken possession of in 1605, when a party of roving Englishmen planted a cross on the island, and inscribed the words "James, King of England;" but no actual settlement was effected on it until 1624, when a patent for the island was granted to the Earl of Carlisle, as sole proprietor. A large number of royalists emigrated to Barbadoes during the civil war between Charles I. and his Parliament, and it became a prosperous and populous sugarproducing colony. Bermuda, another of the earliest West India plantations, was colonized from Virginia and England shortly after 1609. Jamaica, the largest and wealthiest of our West Indian possessions, was taken from the Dutch by an expedition sent out by Oliver Cromwell during his protectorate in the year 1655. Charles II., after the restoration of 1660, sent a Governor to Jamaica, and provided for the creation of an elective Council to legislate for the colony. This has been described as the first representative colonial Constitution granted by the Crown of England to any of its possessions and plantations abroad; for it will be remembered that there was no express grant of elective assemblies by the Crown to any of the American colonies. In the eighteenth century Jamaica became the greatest sugar-producing country in the world, but it afterwards declined through the exhaustion of the soil and the competition of new sugar countries.

CANADIAN COLONIES.-Glancing northward of the New England colonies, we come to Newfoundland, which was discovered by Cabot in 1497; but England had a very doubtful title and precarious possession of that territory up to the end of the sixteenth century, as it was claimed by powerful and persistent French rivals. Newfoundland was not permanently settled by English emigrants until 1624, fourteen years after the planting of Bermuda. Though it was not that part of the American soil which was first settled from England, Newfoundland claims to be the earliest of existing British colonies. from the fact that it was first discovered; and in the Colonial Conference held in London, in 1887, the representatives of Newfoundland were held entitled to the precedence attached to seniority.

At the time when Newfoundland was first colonized, Nova Scotia,

New Brunswick and Canada belonged to France by priority of occupation. Although the coast of Canada was discovered by Sebastian Cabot in 1497, its interior was not explored by Europeans until 1541, when Jacques Cartier, a French navigator, sailed up that great arm of the sea which penetrates into the lake country, to which he gave the name of the River St. Lawrence. Jacques Cartier founded the first settlement at St. Croix's Harbour, but little progress was made for nearly 100 years. In 1603, Samuel Champlain, a French naval officer and marine explorer, was commissioned to initiate colonizing establishments in the New World, and he is justly celebrated as the pioneer of French exploration in North America. In his first voyage Champlain ascended the St. Lawrence to the part where Jacques Cartier had been stopped. In his second voyage he visited the coast of Nova Scotia. In his third expedition, in 1608, he fixed the site of the town of Quebec on the heights of Abraham, overlooking the St. Lawrence, and he also ventured as far as Lake Ontario and Lake Champlain, to which he gave his name. Quebec was founded and French settlement began in Canada a few years before the voyage of the Mayflower, The French possessions were gradually extended westward and southward from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi, and down that river to its mouth. The whole of the country at the back or westward of the thirteen states of America, the Hinterland, including the valley of Ohio and all Canada, was in the beginning of the eighteenth century claimed by France, which contended that the Alleghanies were the western limits of the British dominions.

BRITISH POSSESSIONS IN INDIA.-Before proceeding to show how France lost that vast colonial empire, we may draw attention to the march of British influence and the planting of British trading stations in Africa and Asia. After many fruitless attempts to find a northwest passage to East India, English merchants, traders and adventurers adopted the route discovered by Vasco da Gama, and sent their vessels to India by the Cape of Good Hope. In 1585, Queen Elizabeth granted a patent to a company to trade to Gambia, on the West Coast of Africa, but no settlement of any consequence was effected in that region until 1625. In its subsequent history Gambia became a notorious centre of the slave trade.

In December, 1600, Queen Elizabeth granted a charter to a company formed for the purpose of carrying on a trade with countries beyond the Cape and the Straits of Magellan. This company, which was the beginning of the famous East India Company, established a few trading factories in India, but their commerce was for many years very meagre. By the end of the eighteenth century the progress of the East India Company in the Peninsula of Hindostan had not advanced beyond the factory stage. The Company were simply leaseholders under the great Indian Princes, by whose leave they established trading stations in various localities along the sea coast. In the struggle for commercial ascendancy the East Indian Company had to contend with powerful rivalry from the French and the Dutch. But the Company, which was incorporated by Royal Charter and vested with sovereign powers by the Crown, ultimately became master of the whole of India. The history of its struggles and final triumph

in laying the foundation of the British Empire in India is one of the most romantic and extraordinary in the whole record of colonization and conquest. These momentous events must be briefly summarised.

Madras, the present capital of the presidency of that name, situated on the Coromandel (south-east) coast, was founded in 1639 by the Company, who obtained from the Rajah of Chandgerry a grant of a piece of land for the erection of a town and fort. Fort St. George, built in this district, was the first place where the British obtained a permanent footing. Madras soon grew into a flourishing city and became the central station of the Company along the Coromandel Coast.

Bombay is, next to Madras, the oldest British possession in India. It was granted to the Portuguese by an Indian chief in 1530, ceded by Portugal to England in 1661, and transferred to the East Indian Company by King Charles II. in 1668.

The first factory established by the Company in Bengal was built on the Hoogly in 1664. The Company's representative, Job Charnock, was driven thence in 1686, and in 1690 he founded another settlement on the Hoogly, which expanded into the town of Calcutta. The site of the settlement was granted to the Company by the Nabob of Bengal, and the grant was confirmed by the Emperor Aurengzebe, the last of the Moguls. Fort William was built at Calcutta in 1699, and it was so named after William III.

Such were the early and humble beginnings of the British East India Company. After the death of Aurengzebe, in 1707, the native princes who owed feudal allegiance to the Mogul Empire began to quarrel among themselves, and the French and English interfered to quell the disturbances. It was then evident that the political organization of India was thoroughly rotten, and that only a strong arm was required to conquer and possess the whole country, and reduce the native princes to subjection. Then began the great contest between the French and British in India for the ascendancy and empire. At first the French maintained their superiority, but in the end they were defeated and driven out of India by the Company's forces, and the victory of Lord Clive at the Battle of Plassy on 26th June, 1756, established the exclusive sovereignty and supremacy of the British in India.

SOUTH AFRICAN COLONIES.-The Cape of Good Hope was first discovered in modern times by Bartholomew Diaz in the year 1486-7. The heavy seas which rolled along the coast prevented him from landing, and hence he named it the "Cabo doz tormentos," the "Cape of Storms," but King John II. of Portugal altered the name to “Cabo da Bona Esperanza," the Cape of Good Hope. Vasco da Gama doubled the Cape a few years afterwards on his voyage to India. The Portuguese, however, never formed any permanent establishment there. The Dutch took possession of it in 1650, and it became a powerful station for them in their journeys to and from their trading factories in India and Batavia. It was captured by the British in 1795, was restored to Holland at the Peace of Amiens in 1802, and was again captured in 1806. At the Congress of Vienna, in August, 1814, the Dutch colonies at the Cape of Good Hope, and in South America,

were ceded by the Netherlands Government to Great Britain, six millions sterling being paid as part consideration for the transfer. On 11th March, 1853, Cape Colony was granted a Representative Legislature, composed of two elective chambers, followed in 1872 by the concession of Responsible Government. Between 1861 and 1870, British Kaffraria was added to the colony, and in 1880 Fingoland and Griqualand West were similarly incorporated. In 1894 and 1895, West Pondoland and British Bechuanaland became part of the same growing Dominion. Dutch farmers or Boers, who left the colony shortly after 1835, established the Republics known as the Orange Free State and the Transvaal.

In May, 1843, Natal, where the Boers were prevented from forming a republic, was proclaimed a British settlement and remained a part of Cape Colony until 1856, when it became a separate colony under a Royal Charter, authorized by statute, with a Governor and a Legislative Council partly elective and partly nominated. In 1893, a new Constitution, embodying a bi-cameral legislature and accompanied by Responsible Government, was granted. In 1897, Zululand was made a province of Natal.

Through the enterprising operations of the British South Africa. Company, led by Mr. Cecil Rhodes, the vast regions south of the Zambesi, known as Southern Rhodesia, formerly Mashonaland and Matabeleland, and north of the Zambesi known as Northern Rhodesia, including Nyassaland, have been, since 1888, added to the Empire. They are destined in course of time to be partitioned into a group of self-governing colonies.

CONQUEST OF CANADA.-From this survey of the progress of the British flag in Asia and Africa, we return to our review of the march of events in the New World during the eighteenth century. The Seven Years War with France, which terminated in the Peace of Paris, 1762, left Great Britain the first State in the world, with the equivocal reputation of the "Tyrant of the Seas." It was in this war that she completely established her supremacy on the ocean, which she first began to assert upon the defeat of the Spanish Armada. It was in this war, so vigorously prosecuted by the first William Pitt, afterwards Lord Chatham, that England obtained possession of the whole of North America, and drove the French out of Canada as they had been driven out of India. The story of the invasion of Quebec by a British expedition sent up the St. Lawrence under the command of General Wolfe, the scaling of the Heights of Abraham by our troops. in the dead of night, the fierce battle which followed on the plateau, the gallant defence of the French under General Montcalm, the victory of the attacking party, and the death of both noble and heroic commanders in the midst of the fight, is one of the most thrilling in the whole range of naval and military history. This event was followed by the surrender of all Canada to the British, and the French power in that quarter of the globe was thus absolutely annihilated. But France had her revenge on Great Britain at a later date, when she assisted the American colonies in their revolt against the mother country.

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