UBRm ^^msiJY OF CAUFORHIA THE GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE THE GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE A HANDBOOK TO THE HISTORY OF GREATER BRITAIN V-' By ARTHUR W. JOSE WITH 31 MAPS LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET I 90 I J^3 NOTE THIS BOOK IS ISSUED BY ARRANGPIMENT WITH MESSRS ANGUS & ROBERTSON, OK SYDNEY, AND JS NOT FOR SALE IN THE AUSTRALIAN COLONIES '? PREFACE " The name of this book, I hope, sufficiently expresses its object. It is an attempt to portray, interestingly if possible, accurately as far as may be, the growth of that British Empire of which we are all free citizens ; to show it in all its stages from acorn to oak as an organic whole, stirred by the same winds of fluctuating policy, nourished in every leaf by the same springing sap of British blood. We have histories enough, large and small, of India and Canada and Australia and South Africa: we still lack the Imperial historian, the man who shall do for Seeley what the Herschels did for Newton. We lack him, but we need him ; and it may be that the very imperfections of a mere outline sketch, such as this is, will rouse the right man to do the work that is waiting for him. For my own work, I make bold to hope this fate at least — that it may interest the busy man, stimulate the indifferent man, and whet the appetite of the student ; and that every one who reads it, be he young or old, may feel himself a product and a part of what he reads about, — in whose life the fact of the Empire's existence, and the methods of its growth, have been and are an important and a determining influence. We are of the viii PREFACE race and nation of the Empire-builders, and it is our business to understand their building in order rightly to maintain it." So much of the original preface I may, perhaps, be pardoned for quoting ; both because I have found no new way of describing my aims and my hopes, and because the favourable reception of two editions in Australia encourages one to believe that the hopes are being fulfilled. Here, at any rate, is the book as it was originally planned — not cut short in the sixties, and ended off with the merest resume oi all modern Imperial work, but giving a record of British expansion up to the present time in such a form as to show from our past history the inevitableness of recent failures and suc- cesses. To deal with so vast a subject in so confined a space, one must be content to neglect a mass of interest- ing matter ; and my principle of selection has been always to choose for description those events, those lines of policy, those currents of opinion in the past which throw most light on events and policies and opinions of to-day. In this edition the first seven chapters (the Intro- ductory and I. -VI.) stand much as they did in earlier editions. Chapter VII. — on Africa — has been very largely re-written after a closer study of original authorities in South Africa itself Chapters VIII. and IX. are almost entirely new, and include not only a fuller treatment of recent events within the Empire, but also some account of Imperial work in Egypt and China. The maps are designed specially to illustrate the text, by giving in clearly visible form informa- PREFACE ix tion which the ordinary atlas either omits or hides among a crowd of details. There are many people whom I ought lo thank for hints and criticisms, which have added much to whatever value this work possesses : personal friends, reviewers, fellow-students in the same subject. If they chance upon the book in its new form, they will know that no hint and no criticism have been neglected, that all have contributed directly or indirectly to its re-shaping. That, I believe, is the best way in which I can thank them. A. W. J. TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE PAGE vii INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER : THE BRITISH EMPIRE— A. WHAT IS IT? B. HOW DID IT COME INTO BEING? C. BRITONS AS COLONIZERS CHAPTER I : BEGINNINGS OF THE EMPIRE— A. THE ELIZABETHAN ADVENTURERS B. NEW ENGLAND C. OTHER MAINLAND SETILEMENTS I). THE WEST INDIES . E. THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTKM . F. EASTERN TRADE AND STATIONS CHAPTER II : ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN AMERICA- A. THE LAND AND THE NATIVES B. INDIAN WARS C. THE TREATY OF UTRECHT AND ITS RESULTS . 1). NORTH AMERICA, I714-48 .... E. THE FRENCH ADVANCE ALL ALONG THE LINE F. MISMANAGED WAR G. WILLIAM rnr I 6 9 16 24 27 34 45 54 58 62 69 76 81 Xll TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER III : BRITISH CANADA— A. THE NEW RULE IN CANADA .... B. DISAFKECTION IN THE COLONIES C. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION .... n. THE NEW CONSTITUTION .... E, CONSTITUTIONAL STRUGGLES AND REFORMS . F. BOUNDARY SETTLEMENTS .... CHAPTER lY : INDIA— A. THE COUNTRY IN I74O B. THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN ENGLAND AND FRANCE C. THE BRITISH GAIN A FOOTHOLD IN BENGAL . D. FIRST ATTEMPTS AT RULING .... K. THE PRESIDENCY OF WARREN HASTINGS F. MAHRATTA AND MYSORE WARS CHAPTER V: BRITISH INDIA— A. CORNWALLIS AND REFORM IN BENGAL . B. WELLESLEY CREATES OUR INDIAN EMPIRE C. WELLESLEY'S system COMPLETED . D. BENTINCK AND INTERNAL REFORM E. WARS AGAIN F. DALHOUSIE G. THE MUTINY CHAPTER VI : AUSTRALASIA— A. EARLY DISCOVERIES B. THE CONVICT SETTLEMENT C. THE NEW SOUTH WALES CORPS D. THE BEGINNINGS OF FREEDOM E. THE DAUGHTER COLONIES F. OTHER AUSTRALASIAN SETTLEMENTS G. THE GRANTING OF CONSTITUTIONS. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER Vn : AFRICA— I. WEST AFRICA II. EAST AFRICA AND THE I.AKKS III. SOUTH AFRICA — A. THE DUTCH SETTLEMENT B. BRITISH RULE BEGINS .... C. THE ZULU TERROR D. THE PHILANTHROPISTS .... E. THE GREAT TREK F. THE SHAPING OF SOUTH AFRICA CHAPTER Vni : THE DEVELOPING OF AFRICA- A. DIAMONDS AND FEDERAL SCHEMES, B. THE UNQUIET TRANSVAAL C. THE RUSH FOR AFRICA . D. CHARTERED COMPANIES . E. THE NILE VALLEY . F. CECIL RHODES . CHAPTER IX: IMPERIAL DEVELOPMENTS— A. THE AMERICAN COLONIES B. AUSTRALASIA C. THE INDIAN EMPIRE D. CEYLON AND FURTHER INDIA E. TRADE ROUTES AND THEIR DEFENCE APPENDIX A : COLONIAL ARTICLES OF IMPORTANT TREATIES APPENDIX B: BRI'IISH COLONIES AND THEIR CONSTITUTIONS INDEX OF NAMES, ETC PAGE 270 279 283 289 296 310 319 322 329 333 341 347 357 367 375 385 394 401 407 411 MAPS The Empire in 1901 . The Weimar map, showing the Pope's line Verazzano's map of North and Central America (i The Early Partition of America . The West Indies ..... The Canadian Borderlands . The Empire in 1698 .... Eastern North America in 1754 . The Empire in 1763 .... America after the Quebec Act Boundary Questions in Maine and Oregon India — Physical Features India as left by Clive (1767) India as left by Wellesley (1S05) . India as left by Lord Hastings (1S23) . India as left by Dalhousie (1856) . Australasia — Physical Features Australia in 1826 Australia about 1842 .... New Zealand in 1S43 .... Africa — Physical Features . 529) Frontispiece To face paqe 16 Page 19 „ 31 „ 37 „ 56 To face page 60 80 96 Page 107 To face page 1 36 „ 140 Page 158 „ 186 M 192 ,, 210 To face page 224 240 248 ,, 260 ,, 269 MAPS Africa in 1843 .... The Empire in 1815 . South Africa in 1S54 . . . . Africa in 1879 . . . . , Africa in 1901 . . . . , Boundary Disputes in Western Canada Australia in 1863 . . . . New Zealand in 1S75 . . . , Oceania in 1901 . . . . . The Indian Empire in 1901 . 7o face page 278 )i 290 Page 314 To face page 325 340 Page 363 To face page 368 370 372 Page 381 GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE — + — INTRODUCTORY THE BRITISH EMPIRE. A. What is it? When one begins to study a subject seriously, it is well to commence (like Euclid) with a few definitions of the terms in most frequent use. And few phrases need a clearer definition, and more do we r 1 1 r • • 1 mean by constant remembrance of that definition, than "British the phrase which heads this chapter. There have been so many Empires, and so many of them have been associated with ideas of tyranny, that the name has sometimes an evil odour ; and the word " Imperial," which should nowadays proudly sum up the achievements of a nation, retains shreds of a worn-out meaning and suffers from our prejudice against individual and irresponsible rule. In common language, an empire is the combination of a number of countries under one central govern- ment ; strictly speaking, it should have • 1 , , • , 1 1 T-i Ancient a single head with absolute power. i he empires t • (- • • 1 T-> • were all three great empires of antiquity — the rersian, Macedonian, and Roman — were all empires in the strictest sense of the word, and had four points in A ^ 2 THE BRITISH EMPIRE common. TJiey all originaied from conquest. Some small state or tribe, more warlike than its won by ' conquest; ncighbours, became aggressive, established first an ascendency and then an absolute control over the nearest tribes, and, by absorbing their fighting men into its ranks, created an army large enough to extend its dominion far and wide. Again, the con- quei'cd tribes tvere retained in subjection. This was necessary from the very fact of their sub- of subject jugation ; in the most enlightened of the three — the Roman empire — it was a sign of weakened control when foreigners were admitted to the citizen- ship, and the very admission but hastened the ruin of the empire. Each empire was won by the superior fighting power of the conquering nation, not by virtue of its higher culture. The Persians were distinctly inferior in the arts of peace to indepen- ,-i»/rT a ■ it^ ■ 11 dent of the Medians, Assyrians, and Egyptians, all civiiiza- of whom they conquered ; Macedon could not boast of higher culture than Greece or the Persia of its day ; the early Romans were below the Etruscans, and the later below Greece and Egypt, in all that pertained to science and philosophy. In every case superior fighting power, and that alone, paved the vvay for rule. And in every case, tribes and nations being then small, the dominion was stretched and of a ^^^'i?^' vuiuy nationalities, and was practically nati-on°" bascd, as long as it stood firm, on the fear '"'"y- of the Roman name — to take one instance — and the pride of Roman citizenship. Summing up, it may be said that ancient empires were uniform, being acquired by conquest, founded on the complete sub- jection of the conquered, independent of their superior culture, and unconnected with any sentiment among them of a common nationalit)'. WHAT IS IT? 3 Modern emigres, on the contrary, are anything but uniform ; and each differs in several of these points from its ancient fellows. The German empire, Modem for instance, of to-day represents strongly p';^^'., the feeling of common nationality. Much su^h"" as some of the other German states disliked similarity. Prussian supremacy, they yearned for German unity more ; and there results a compact, coherent .j,^^ aggregate of states differing largely in reli- German: gion and interests, but linked together by strong ties of blood and language. Contrasted with this we find in the Austrian empire a heterogeneous assemblage ^^^ of states, diverse in blood, language, interests, Austrian: religion, and united only by their ruler, — to whom they came mostly by converging inheritance of his ancestors, partly by diplomatic treaty arrangements, because they happened to lie on his borders. The third great empire of modern Europe is a composite one. Russia, like Germany, is a mass of small states more completely absorbed than the German ^^^ into one great body, depending for its coherence Russian: not only on blood and language, but even more securely on unity of religion ; but added to this great Slav dominion there is another empire of con- quest, Asiatic Russia, founded distinctly upon the superior civilization of the conquerors. It, too, is compact, bound up like' Germany and Austria within one continuous frontier line. We may also notice, in passing, the now extinct colonial empire of Spain, which shows clearly the results of applying ^,,6 the ancient Imperial system to an empire of s^^^,^f colonies ; for it is to be noticed that the ex- ^^'"p'^'"- tension of a dominion by colonization is a purely modern phenomenon. So Spain, the first of the great modern colonizing powers, spoilt an opportunity un- 4 THE BRITISH EMPIRE paralleled in the history of the world, and ruined her new wine by pouring it into the old bottles of con- quered and subject empire. And her acquisitions, ruled by the old method, fell from her in the historic way. Like the provinces of Macedon, partitioned among Alexander's generals, where the conquering race was soon absorbed in the greater mass of the resident population, the South American Republics became the prey of a succession of dictators, and the intrusive Spaniard became gradually indistinguishable from the Indian races over whom he had once held sway. Apart from all these stands the British Empire of the present day, resembling them in many points, but distinguished by its complex composition, British the wide severance and dissimilarity of its parts, is more and the curiously incongruous character of the tCtfa^y ties which unite them to the mother country. For convenience we may consider it under two heads — the colonial empire (which is not, except in the case of purely Crown colonies, an empire in the technical sense at all) and the Indian empire. The colonial dependencies of Britain fall into three groups — (a) the great self-governing dominions, federated ^^^ or not, Canada, Australia, and South Africa ; {b) Colonies, \_\yq mass of Small colonies * administered by officials from home, but possessing a voice in the making of their own laws (in training, as it were, for future self- government) ; and {c) the military stations under complete control of the Home Government, which, together with a few districts such as the West African settlements, where the native element is disproportion- ately strong, compose the real " British possessions." They are nearly all colonies of conquest, but of a peculiar * Rhodesia is large in area, but small as regards its white population. WHAT IS IT? 5 kind of conquest. Either, as in the case of Australia and of those colonies which are now the United States, the conquest was gradual, an occupation of land which the original inhabitants were too few to fill and too un- skilful to use to the full ; or it was a conquest not of the original owners at all, but of a previously invading race, such as took place in Canada and at the Cape. And in this latter st}^le of acquisition lay a great danger, not yet entirely overcome ; for Canada was even during this century disturbed by attempts of some French colonists to regain their lost power, and in South Africa the Boer element has long been a serious hindrance to the closer union of the colonies there. Thus even among the self-governing colonies we have to draw a line between those which are linked to Britain by blood and language and those which are kept in the empire by little else than its superior civilization, its moral prestige, and a certain amount of community in interests. In the less independent colonies the tie of nationality is weaker still. Negroes in the West Indies, Malayans and Chinese in the East, savage tribes in all the outlying settlements, complicate the relations between government and governed ; and the diversity of races is far surpassed by the diversity of religions. Turning to the Indian empire, we are in a different atmosphere altogether. India, apart from British rule in it, is simply a geographical expression — a large piece of the earth cut off by high mountains from the rest of Asia, and so conveniently spoken of under one name — peopled by tribes of different tongues, different origins, different religions, constantly (in old times) at war with each other, an aggregation of the least similar constituents that were ever crowded together on the face of the earth. Mountaineers and plain-men, warriors and philosophers, snake - worshippers, Brahminists and 6 THE BRITISH EMPIRE Mohammedans, with many others, are all included under one head when we talk about India; and the solitary bond between them is their subordination to British rule. Here, then, we have an empire proper, administered by a central government composed entirely of an alien race ; an empire ^cpt in check partly by alien forces, partly by ^'^o\d ^ judicious utilisation of internal differences ; style, governed on alien principles, and very largely with alien institutions, which must help to give the alien higher privileges than the native. In fact, we have the nearest approach possible in modern times to the old Roman system of empire, but with one great difference but with in favour of British rule. For the last hundred fmponint years it has been the theory in our government of difference. j]^(-|ja^ ^q which the practlcc has more and more approximated, that India is to be governed for its own benefit. Though more completely a British possession by right of conquest than any large territory in our dominions, we hold it for its own sake far more than for ours ; and the growing trade which constitutes its chief value for the rest of the empire, and which, it must be confessed, would probably be ruined by any separation, has been allowed to increase naturally, unfettered since the British nation has governed India by any selfish and restrictive laws. B. How DID IT COME INTO BEING? How did this complicated political system come into being? It is a question all the more interesting because not so long ago no one would have dared to predict such a state of things. Its growth is a matter of two spaces in or three centuries only ; and though we are apt '^ °'^^" to think of everything before the French Revolu- tion as very ancient history indeed, a century in a nation's HOW DID IT COME INTO BEING? 7 life is no more than ten years in a man's. It is a useful rule for gettinj^ at the proportions of things in history to divide all your time-spaces by ten, and to remember that modern politics were no more born at the French Re- volution than a young man of twent}' was born when he first got into trousers. So we must remember that the British Empire is a very modern thing indeed. Barely four hundred )-ears have passed since there began to stream out of '■ ^ Four Europe a long line of adventurers and explorers, hundred traders and settlers, all eager for great deeds and great discoveries and great rewards, for the spices of the East Indies and the precious metals of the West. Southern Asia and the African coast fell to the share of Portugal ; all the New World lay open to the will of Spain. What Spain neglected France explored ; Holland snatched a great trade-empire when Portugal lost her freedom. After a hundred and fifty years of this European enterprise Britain alone of the Western powers was lagging behind ; her colonies were comprised in two strips of the North American seaboard, with hostile powers on either flank and Dutch and Swedish settlements between them. To-day the empire of Spain has dwindled to a few islands and a strip of barren coast. Portugal holds, in a vague fashion, territory about as large as South Australia. The Dutch Islands in all are smaller. France, indeed, has an empire (including the Western Sahara) nearly half as large again as India ; but only about one-fiftieth of that has been hers for more than fifty years. And Britain, the seeming laggard, holds more than eleven million square miles of the earth's surface — the area of Africa inhabited by the population of Europe ; while the two colonies that barely held their own against the four other occupants of North America have 8 THE BRITISH EMPIRE developed into an aggregate of three million and a half miles more, inhabited by nearly seventy millions of people. It is easy to see why Britain was so far behind the others. Before a nation can begin to colonize it must first have consolidated itself. That is why Portugal in the fifteenth century was ahead of Spain in nation to matters of colonizing, and why Germany has only coi°ecdons just appeared on the field. Now it was under wiUnTt^^ Elizabeth that England first contained a united nation, and under her began the acquisition of distant colonies. But it so happened that after her death there cropped up several religious and political questions of great importance, and these had to be fought out and finally settled before colonization could be taken up in earnest. So the serious history of the British Empire really begins with the eighteenth century. It was during that time that the Scottish kingdom, after fifty years of close union with England, became itself a coherent whole, and brought fresh power to the task of Empire-making: Ireland, too, which the British Govern- ment had been in the habit of treating as a distant colony — on the same lines, one might almost say, as Jamaica — was gradually admitted in practice to the rank of a sister kingdom, and took her part in the expansion of Britain. But by this time the greater part of the habitable world had been allotted. By the middle of the seven- teenth century there was hardly any room left, at least for a new colonizing power. How was room made? In two ways. In the first place, Britain at once insisted on the rule which Germany, in a similar difficulty, revived in 1884. The land Britain belonged, said the British traders, to those who room for occupled it. It was futile for Spain to claim general ownership of South America, or for France to nail lead-plates on half a dozen trees in the tance sea- jwer. BRITONS AS COLONIZERS 9 Ohio valley. The government might sometimes yield a weak assent to such claims, but the merchant-explorers pooh-poohed them. Wherever other Christian nations had actual settlements, they were generally willing to acknowledge their prior right ; but unoccupied country (and in those da}'s all nations meant by that " unoccupied by Christian Europeans ") was fair game. And having thus got foothold on the new countries, they took advan- tage of every opportunity through which an European war could be forced on the home government to extend their own area of occupation over the colonies of the countries which Britain might be fighting. They were the Theim- better able to do this because the British navy ^f\^^l rapidly made itself master of all the other Euro- p"'' pean navies ; and the command of the sea, which resulted from this, enabled British colonists, while drawing their own supplies of men and material from home, to cut off the supplies of their hostile neighbours. C. Britons as Colonizers. The detailed proof of all this will be found in the remaining chapters of this book. There is still one more question which we ought to consider here. What made Britain a colonizing 7iation ? All growing nations are at some time or other bound to spread beyond their original borders : and the nation that holds g^ ^g^. control of the sea routes is in the best position to PfJ^^"" expand effectively without being broken up in account the process. Yet this does not account for all '^°''"- the facts in the case we are dealing with. Within two hundred and fifty years a state occupying less than a hundred and fifty thousand square miles of land has grown into an empire that includes more than eleven million square miles ; and that is not done by sea-power only. lo THE BRITISH EMPIRE There are seven qualities specially useful in the work of colonization. All colonizing nations colonizing posscss somc of these qualities ; British success qualities. . , , , . . - , ^_, IS based on the majority oi them. 1 hey are — (i.) Physical Strength. — In the competition for colonies all parts of the earth have been occupied, and that nation must be most successful which can best stand all varieties of climate and come through all dangers with least per- manent harm. Such a nation will be bred in the tem- perate climates, and on the whole the further north the better. Britain, France, and Germany have this advan- tage over Mediterranean nations. We may add here the tendency to rapid increase in populatio7i which helps to occupy rapidly, and so main- tain a hold on, the comparatively waste lands where colonies are formed. (ii.) Adventurousness. — Nations mainly continental are slow to move ; it is the maritime powers that scatter their explorers over the world. And it is a great advantage here that a nation should be composite, not all of one stock. The Spaniards who followed in the track of Columbus were a blend of many races — Gaul, Visigoth, Roman, Moor, Jew ; and in French colonization to-day it is the men of mixed blood, Normans, Bretons, Gascons, who do most of the work. The French peasant of the central districts knows nothing of colonies, and would feel it a worse than Siberian exile to go there. (iii.) Tradiiig Spirit. — It is not enough to discover new lands ; the colonizer must have some motive for holding them. When Portugal in 1580 fell into the hands of Spain, all her valuable East Indian colonies were practically thrown away because the Spaniards, adven- turous as they were, cared for nothing but gold-seeking. So the Dutch, the most ardent traders of that day, were able to annex nearly all Portugal's colonial empire ; and BRITONS AS COLONIZERS li their commercial zeal has stimulated them to hold their conquests ever since. (iv.) Settling Spirit. — After all, a trading colony like the Dutch East Indies is not our idea of a colony at all. To hold one or two towns along the coast of a big island and keep some order among the native chiefs is not work that can build up new states. The empire-making races must contain men who will open up new countries with the hope of living in them. The Frenchman in Tonquin hopes to get back to France before the best of his life is over ; so does, as a rule, the English official in India ; but the English colonist at Buluwayo is there to make him- self a home. (v.) Fighting Spirit. — This does not mean aggressive- ness, but the determination to "stand no nonsense." It is the carrying out of the old advice : " Beware Of entrance to a quarrel ; but, being in, Bear 't that the opposed may beware of thee." Not so long ago France and Germany had mere strips of coast side by side in the Gulf of Guinea, and the native tribes of the inland country troubled both. The Germans, brave enough when they must fight, and never over-lenient to natives, yet concluded for quietness' sake to confine their operations to the coastal districts. The French were determined to make themselves respected by their neighbours up country. And to-day the German Cameroons is shut in all round by the French Congo, which has spread north-east into Central Africa till its boundaries march with those of Egypt and British East Africa, and is edging its way round Lake Tchad to meet other French expansions from the Niger and Algeria. (vi.) Adaptability to the native element. — The Red Indians in North America, the Bantu tribes of South 12 THE BRITISH EMPIRE Africa, the Aztecs of Spanish America, were all im- portant factors in the settlement of those countries ; they were too many to be despised and too warlike to be cowed. The nation that could best humour them gained an advantage over its competitors. So France, by making friends with the Indians, long held her own against overwhelming numbers of English colonists in the struggle for the Mississippi valley ; and has recently used the Senegalese with similar success in her African empire-making. To this adaptability also is largely due the Russian conquest of Central Asia. Here England is lacking. "It is not anywhere," said Lord Durham, "a virtue of the English race to look with complacency on any manners, customs, or laws which appear strange to them." (vii.) Dominance. — You can utilize native tribes by humouring them ; but to establish an empire among them you must be able also to master them, and to do it in such a way that they will own the mastership without chafing under it. To make the men you have conquered follow you gladly — that is the secret of empire ; to be obeyed because you are trusted, and feared only by the shifty and crooked. On this all our Indian empire rests. We conquered the Sikhs in 1848, and they stood by us in the Mutiny nine years later. We occupied Hunza- Nagar in 1890, and in 1895 the tribes marched with our men to relieve Chitral. British rule in India is based, indirectly but no less certainly for that, on the consent of the governed. It is worth while remembering that British coloniza- tion is not carried on only with men of the British race. Britain The Same qualities that hold the empire together "aces°I^" make it possible for other races to transfer colonists, themselves within the empire from continent to continent. Such migrations brought perforce the negro to his beloved West Indies, and now stock Guiana with BRITONS AS COLONIZERS 13 Hindu coolies and set the Sikh to civiHze Nyassaland ; while under less fortunate stars the Banyan has invaded Natal,* and the ubiquitous Chinaman descends from a British birthplace at Singapore upon the warm lands that back Port Darwin. We have now got some idea of the foundations which uphold this great fabric of the Empire. From end to end it has been built up by the adventurousness our Em- of men always ready both to fight and to trade, creadonof The great colonies are British because beyond all ''^'^''^c'^- others that race of men can make a home in new lands without breaking loose from the mother country. India is British because the same race supplies for its govern- ment continually men of heroic masterfulness and splendid incorruptibility. Everywhere it is the race, not the State as such, that has done the permanent work of colonization — for Australia, the one State-founded colony, has ever since been trying to forget the methods of her founding, while she bears, and private will for many years bear, marks of her origin in the insatiable craving of her people for Government aid in all their undertakings. Not so was born the proud self- reliance of New England and of British India : a private company founded Massachusetts, a private company won Bengal : and to-day on the Zambesi and on the Niger alike the strength and the resources of private citizens have added new provinces to our African Dominion. But while private enterprise has nearly always taken the initiative, and has often carried its adven- turous achievements through without State help, state has yet the State has helped. For the last 150 years British war-policy has mainly been commercial and * When English influence was slill predominant in Madagascar, the Bombay Banyans made there what was ahnost a little Mohammedan kingdom, which later on gave the French a good deal of anxiety. 14 THE BRITISH EMPIRE colonial in its aims, not dynastic or ministerial. Since Walpole was forced into unwilling war with Spain by the smuggler-merchants of London, the popular voice has generally instigated and always supported the policy of fighting. For Britain since then the day of Kings' wars has been over ; the one King's war of that period — the War of American Independence — was at first backed by a popular feeling that counted the colonists ungrateful, and when it lost that backing it died a natural death. In other countries we have still seen wars brought on for the sake of a dynasty, or to distract attention from a vicious government at home ; but it was not the Hanoverianism of George II., or the anti-republicanism of George III., that set us fighting in 1755 and 1793 — it was the insistent and inevitable demand of British settlers and British traders that their expansion should be unhindered by land and sea. And to maintain this the nation has never refused to spend blood and treasure like water. The National Debt is the memorial of its lavishness, the capital which it has raised with- imperiai out stiut to found aud establish this great joint- stock business that we call the Empire. We should never forget that the home Briton pays in peace- time nearly two-thirds of his income tax (five-pence in the pound) as interest on that capital, and therefore as the price mainly of colonial freedom. The actual figures are worth having : ^35,000,000 was the price of Nova Scotia and in part of India, since the profits of the Assiento contract went to establish the British Company in India. ;^87,ooo,ooo was the price of American freedom — the expulsion of France from Canada ; BRITONS AS COLONIZERS 15 and if ^116,000,000 was spent in trying to retain within the Empire the colonies which had ah-eady cost so much, it was scarcely too dear a price at which to buy the ruin of personal monarchy and the bankruptcy of monarchic France. Finally, i^62 1 ,000,000 spent in the great European wars that crushed Napoleon and established our supremacy on the oceans, is the price of Australia and South Africa, and of the power to expand into new lands without disturbance that we enjo}'ed for seventy years after Waterloo. Certain qualities of body and mind, therefore, make Britons good colonists : the initiative in that work has usually been left to private enterprise : and ' . 1 1 • 1 Summary. the nation has not grudged its support to the private adventurer. With such aids the Briton has mastered his fate, wherever it set him down to the struggle — whether his task has been to impose upon the warring civilizations of India a rule whose strength is in its justice, or himself to civilize that other Indian of the West from hunter into farmer : whether he must tame in Africa the Zulu and the Fulah, or in Australia fight against drought and fire and the mere vastness and emptiness of the land. CHAPTER I BEGINNINGS OF THE EMPIRE. A. The Elizabethan Adventurers. The building of our empire began in the later years of the reign of Elizabeth. Our first permanent Greater colony, indeed, dates its existence from three dates from ycars after her death ; and by that time the ofElfzf" other nations of Western Europe had been for ^^'^- a hundred years busy in exploring and dividing among themselves the new coast-lands which Columbus and his successors added to the map of the world. It is a fairly well-known story, the tale of that outrush of adventurers, that scramble for American Other territory, which matched the fairy tales of ahead" Eastem art with stranger realities of Western of us: travel, and turned of a sudden the hard-fighting, clean-blooded Spaniard into a pampered millionaire. Portugal studded with her trading forts the long stretch of Western African coast and the Portugal in 1434, whole curving shore-line of the Indian Ocean from Mozambique to Malacca, seizing in her passage south the great Brazilian promontory, and thrusting her ships through the tangled straits of Malaysia till e ■ . they had commerce with half-mythical Japan. hpain in -^ j j i '492- Spain, borrowing her guide Columbus from those ancient mariners the Genoese, steered a more daring course through open ocean for the same Indian goal, and found her passage barred by a land more 16 f ^ lA \tv. r'^3^ Oh •£ ►^ -a •53 - -g 3 4J Of a. S W ni ca O T3 On.iS oj t> 1585-86. shores of Hudson's Bay. Enghsh traders voyaged along the coasts of Spanish America, trading peaceably The sea- whcre they could,* enforcing trade with their H^wkms guns if the Spanish officer in charge of a town 1562-7. tried to prevent them — unless, indeed, the damage was likely to be so great that the authorities at Madrid might complain to Queen Elizabeth about them. International law had not yet insisted very strongly on the principle that a State is responsible for the behaviour of its citizens beyond its own boundaries ; audacious individuals did what they liked and took what they could at their own risk, and trusted that sooner or later their States would help those who had not too liberally helped themselves. When the Spaniards, at San Juan d'Ulloa, treacherously entrapped Hawkins and Drake, the victims simply set their teeth and looked T^ , , out for their chance of retaliation ; and the sack Drake at ' Nombre of Nombrc de Dios was the first-fruits of Drake's de Dios, 1572- vengeance, which was destined to play so large and so successful a part in the first of England's great commercial wars. But all this was not colonizing. Frobisher was on the hunt for gold and the north-west passage to Cathay ; * Hawkins claimed free trade with Spanish ports in virtue of a com- mercial treaty between England and Philip of Burgundy, father of Charles V. I.] THE ELIZABETHAN ADVENTURERS 21 Drake was on the hunt for Spanish treasure and the other end of the same passage — a quest which led him up the Oregon coast in 1579. The honour of the new conception — the permanent occupation voyage ^ 1 1 • 1 1 1-1 round the of new lands with men who were to live by world, their own labour — must be given to three of the men about Elizabeth's court : Humphrey Gilbert, his half-brother Walter Raleigh, and their friend and protege Richard Hakluyt. We make too little of Hakluyt, as a rule, though he was the Homer pioneers of Elizabethan adventure and the Tyrtaeus of our first colonists. Oxford may be proud that she trained him, the friend not only of Gilbert and jj^^|^ .^ Raleigh, but of Sidney and Walsingham and 1553-1616. Cecil ; the scholar whose delight it was to champion British pluck against the arrogance of the Spaniards, to exalt our " valiant knights " and " famous pilots " above da Gama and Columbus themselves, and to write ab Anglis inventa across the hitherto blank regions of his maps. " If there were in us," he wrote, " that desire to advance the honour of our country which ought to be in every good man, we could not all this while have for- slown the possessing of these regions " ; and he went on to advocate " the deducting of some colonies of our superfluous people into those temperate and fertile parts of America which are yet unpossessed by any Christians." Gilbert and Raleigh were fully of the same mind, and were indefatigable in planting small colonies of the new kind. Raleigh's first attempt was made in j^aj^i^hin Ireland, where a large tract of Munster lay waste f g" ^^d after one of the ever-recurring wars between onwards. Desmonds and Ormonds ; as Desmond had committed high treason by calling the Spanish in to his aid, his defeat meant the confiscation of his lands to the Crown, 22 BEGINNINGS OF THE EMPIRE [chap. and Raleigh got twelve thousand acres of them, which he settled with yeomen from Devon. Gilbert, in his turn, made two attempts to colonize Newfoundland ; but the crews of his emigrant ships thought of in New- nothing but gold and Spaniard-fighting, and on foundland, , , /"■•n j_ i • ir i 1579 and the second voyage (jilbert himselt was lost m a storm. Raleigh, seeing that we were by this time as much at war with Spain as we were ever likely to be, and therefore need not any longer admit the Spanish claims to the unoccupied North American mainland, sent his fleets further south than Gilbert had done, bidding them work upwards from the borders of Spanish Florida till they found a place worth Raleigh's ^ ,. . ^ . ^ ships on setthng m. They annexed the country about Roanoke, the Roanoke and Pamlico Sound, just the place for a colony of Raleigh's pattern — but they, too, had no taste for that sort of life, and while describing the land as " the goodliest isle under the cope of heaven," added that nothing but "the discovery of a good mine or a passage to the South Sea " could induce Englishmen to settle there. So after spending his treasure on five expeditions, each of which either abandoned the settlement or was murdered by the natives, Raleigh gave up Virginia in despair, having got from it only tobacco, which he at once introduced into England, and potatoes, which he distributed among the farmers on his Irish estates. All his enthusiasm and his able schemes failed because he committed them to others to carry out ; with an ambition no less than Bacon's he had taken all statesmanship to be his pro- vince, and the results in each case were equally impos- ing and equally unpractical, and in the end equally fruitful of good when others developed them in detail. But one memento of Raleicfh's Virginia was still left I.] THE ELIZABETHAN ADVENTURERS 23 — the charter for its occupation granted to him by EHzabeth. This he passed on to a company 1 1 1 1 , Raleigh's of merchants, and they to another, on the Virginia chance that something might come of it. In 1602 reports came back to Plymouth of a fine country further north, well watered and with good Gosnold's harbours — which the southern settlement had expiora- , , 1 1 • 1 tion.s,i6o2. not ; and the Plymouth people, taking counsel with Hakluyt and the holders of Raleigh's charter, arranged for the formation of a big joint-stock company in two divisions, to which James ^j^^ issued a new charter of a stricter kind. The com"an- London branch of the company took the coast- '^°^- strip from Cape Fear to the Hudson ; the Plymouth branch was given lands from the Delaware to the Bay of Fundy ; as these strips overlapped, neither branch was to make settlements within a hundred miles of the other. The King of his own personal act gave the charter, and appointed nominee councils at home and in America to keep order and administer English law. The Londoners were first in the field, and in May, 1607, landed their emigrants on the banks of the James River. At once the colony commenced London to go to pieces ; the new-comers were a shiftless pany's lot, and were under the old illusions about gold '^°'-'"^' and the South Sea passage. Then stood forth John Smith, a typical Briton in many other things besides his name, and took those vagabonds by the collar, ^ ,^^ bidding them till the ground and make friends ^'"''''• with the Indians ; he wrote also indignant letters to London, asking why they shipped goldsmiths and idlers to a land that needed carpenters and fishermen and farmers ; it was he, in fact, who by his sturdy common sense and strong will pulled the baby colony through its 24 BEGINNINGS OF THE EMPIRE [chap. years of teething, and gave England her firm grip on the North American mainland. The Plymouth Company had for a long time no rru success at all. It tried to colonize the Kennebec The Plymouth valley, and the first winter killed the emigrants Com- -' ' " fan^r^- °^ ' '^ ^^^^ John Smith out some years later, but 1607. he left behind him in those regions only the name he gave them, New England. At last, ,^^ stirred up by the success of Virginia, which Smith ]-|^j jygi- received an elective Assembly names •' ■' ^""■^ , and a large share of self-government, the England, s> o ' i^M- Company appHed for a new charter (which gave them as boundaries New Jersey and Gaspe) with a monopoly of trade and power to sub-let its land Its second .,..,, , , . . charter, to uidividuals or Smaller companies. it was, however, dissolved in 1624, and soon afterwards the Plymouth colony bought up all English interests. B. New England. Meanwhile in England the nation which Eliza- beth had made was falling apart under the stress of religious quarrels. To Elizabeth her- reiigious sclf, and for a long time to the mass of quarrels of , • i i i • • i Elizabeth's the iiatioii, the church question was mixed up with the political question ; those who upheld the Queen were churchmen, those who wished to see her deposed were dissenters. But when the collapse of the Armada had secured her supremacy, men felt able to air their own theories of church government without being traitors to their country. Neither Elizabeth, however, nor James after her, quite realized this change in the religious situation, and protests against the details of church discipline were punished as harshly as plots against the Crown. The split went deeper than mere details. Elizabeth's I.] NEW ENGLAND 25 mariners could pray and fight and joke at once, and went with equal zest to church and theatre ; but before her reign was over the movement had begun ° , The (and the hoggishness of James I.'s court gave Puritan .,, ,\ 1-1 I'-iiT^ 1 1 movement. It irresistible strength) which divided Kngland into two camps, one full of fun and frivolity and vice, the other of stern, severe, and narrow men, to whom seriousness meant gloom, and piety was the grimmest of pleasures. These Puritans inherited the best of the Elizabethan virtues, it is true ; but the man who dares not use the whole of his nature is fighting with one hand tied behind his back. It was a body of these men, belonging to the party known as Independents, because in church matters they wished each congregation to look Piigrim after its own affairs without outside interference, that came to the Plymouth Company's rescue. The intolerance of James I. forced them out of England to live for a time in Holland, where they were treated kindly ; but they were Englishmen, not land, happy under a foreign flag, and if the old country had not room for them they would make them- selves a new one that should be English still. They negotiated with the London Company for a tract between the Delaware and the Hudson, formed them- selves into a small joint-stock company, and sailed hopefully for the New World. But by this J^fay- time the Dutch had busied themselves about Sept. 6, American trading stations, and were building forts on the very land which these English emigrants proposed to take up. The Mayflower, steered too far north, found herself off Cape Cod; her captain ;,^j^g^ declared he could not take her further south, and {'-"g'and. ' Dec. 22, after six weeks of close scrutiny of the wintry and ^^~°- uninviting coast the Pilgrim Fathers made their firstsettle- 26 BEGINNINGS OF THE EMPIRE [chap. ment at Plymouth on Cape Cod Bay, obtaining a charter from the Plymouth Company before the end of the next year. The example thus set was soon followed. In 1623 a Dorchester merchant -company made a settlement Endicott's at Cape Ann, which five years later became settlement, '■ , 1628. the Puritan colony of Massachusetts. Gorges, th^e'^MlMa. Governor of Plymouth in England, who had BLy^Com- becn the moving spirit in the Plymouth Com- Mar^c'h^ P^riyj obtained for himself and a friend grants i62q. Qf j^j^^ along the coast from the Merrimac northward, which grew into the colonies of Maine Maine aud New Hampshire. Plymouth (New En^- 1622. land) explorers, mtent on the fur trade, Hamp. met the Dutch on the Connecticut River, wded, ^^^d forced them back westwards, thus saving 1622. £qj. ]7i-)crland the colony to which that river Settlement . . \ i i on the has given its name. And religious disturb- cut, 1633. ances in Massachusetts, whose people were nearly as intolerant in their way as James I, had Rhode been, drove two small parties of religious in- isiand novators to found the tiniest colony of all — colonised, -' 1636. Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. These five settlements, all originating within a period of sixteen years, peopled mainly by men of one type, whose religion was their politics, and ingofNew cut off by Frauce on the north and Holland on the west from their kin in Newfound- land and Virginia, were gradually welded into a fairly coherent mass, and became the " United Colonies of New England." * They lived a quiet life of their own, deliberately isolated from the * Massachusetts, Connecticut, Plymouth and Newhaven first formed this confederation ; but Massachusetts repeatedly usurped jurisdiction over New Hampshire and Maine, while Connecticut took the first opportunity of anne.xing Newhaven. I.] OTHER MAINLAND SETTLEMENTS 27 political troubles of Britain ; they refused to support Charles I., but they also refused obedience to the Long Parliament, and treated with Cromwell as an ally on equal terms. At the Restoration they proclaimed Charles II. after a good deal of pressure, but made it quite clear that they intended to keep control of their own affairs. When they were hard pressed in the calamitous Indian war, known as King ^j^^^ Philip's, from the chief who organized it — wlr''''^ the first war of importance in which they were ^^^s-e. engaged, for their early relations with the Indian tribes were friendly on the whole — not even the destruction of more than half their towns and the slaughter of their best fighting men could compel them to seek help from the mother country. At last Charles II. decided to take strenuous ^, Charters action, and cancelled the Massachusetts cancelled, 1684-7. charter ; while his brother a year or two later treated the other colonies in the same way, and set a royal governor at Boston with absolute ^, J <-> Edmund power over the whole country from Acadia to Andros, the Delaware. This tyranny was abolished, it is true, by the Revolution of 1688, and William III. arranged the divisions of New England as they stood thenceforth to the days of absorbed Independence. But in the eyes of British chusetts, politicians a principle had been established ; the stubbornest of colonies had submitted once to the annulling of their charters, and would henceforth have no leeal excuse for not submitting again. C. Other Mainland Settlements. While England was thus securing the coast-land, France had no less persistently followed up the 28 BEGINNINGS OF THE EMPIRE [chap. lead of her explorers in the St Lawrence valley. Long before, indeed, there had been further The open- ... r-\T t-> i i ingupof south a Huguenot anticipation ot JNew Lngland ; as the Pilgrim Fathers hoped to escape Stuart intolerance, so Coligny had sought a refuge for his persecuted co-religionists in the lands Hugue- they named Carolina after Charles IX., the Carolina, Frcnch king of their day. But the Spaniards of Florida (probably with that very king's approval) wiped that young colony out of existence, and the tolerance of a new king, Henry of Navarre, took away any reason for attempts to renew it. In the founding of Canada the one great name that stands out is that of Samuel Champlain. lain, For good and for evil his work settled the destinies of New France. It was he who fixed the first French trading post in the pleasant p^j.^ meadows of Port Royal ; he who, when J^°y^' , hostile influences in Paris for a time broke tounaed, 1604. up that colony, occupied the master-head- land of Quebec, whose forts maintain dominion from Lake Superior to the Gulf; he who, still founded, in search of a phantom strait that should give access to the Pacific,* opened the Ottawa route to Lake Nipissing and secured French control over the three great Western lakes that lead to the Mississippi valley. But it was he also who threw the weight of French support upon the Huron side in their perpetual quarrels with the Iroquois, and so made deadly enemies of the finest warriors in Eastern North America, whose raids were the New World's counterpart of the Zulu terror, while their defensive strategy and their skilfully-built fortresses have not * II is discovery of Lake Champlain was not improbably due to the same search. I.] OTHER MAINLAND SETTLEMENTS 29 been matched by savages except among the New Zealand Maoris. And what Iroquois hostility meant to New France we shall see in the story of the frontier wars. Champlain's colony was founded on the corner-stone of Quebec. Along the St Lawrence, between this post and Cartier's island of Montreal, French settlements soon began to extend themselves, and to alternate with mission-stations where friendly Indians received baptism and a certain amount of domestication. Richelieu handed the new province over to a company called " The Hundred Associates," and under its The auspices Montreal was founded by an associa- assocI-"^^ tion of religious devotees ; but the company had 1627. no Clives among its officers, and its whole Montreal ° ' lounded, territory outside the fort walls remained for '^32- years at the mercy of Iroquois raid^., which were pushed even to the capture of Frenchmen in sight of Quebec itself The statesmanship of Colbert and the j^^,^^^ }'outhful ambition of Louis XIV. roused Canada '661-83. from this nightmare, and the colony became aggressive : the Iroquois were chastised, the Western lake-country formally annexed, the Mississippi * reached from , ,.^ the western shores of Lake Michigan, and the '673- explorer La Salle, navigating it from the Illinois Aprii^ ^' to its mouth, claimed all its valley for the King '^^^' of France under the name of Louisiana. North of New England the English had never made very great efforts to obtain a foothold. Argall drove the French from Port Royal, and some years later 1613- the peninsula was given by James I. to one of ander's his Scottish favourites, who began his work as scolfan colonizer by the distribution of titles among his le'j?"^^' friends and the scattering of Scottish river - names * Named Colbert by its discoverer. 30 BEGINNINGS OF THE EMPIRE [chap. over the map of Acadia. An English fleet took Quebec during the short French war of 1628-9, but Charles gave both Acadia and Quebec back to France Treaty of '^ , "" r , • • r , , St Ger- to secure the payment 01 his wiie s dower Laye, moucy. Gilbert had formally annexed New- foundland, and Lord Baltimore made another attempt to colonize it forty years later ; yet it re- Hudson's rnained for more than a hundred years merely fov^rld ^ depot for our fishing fleet. In Hudson's Bay 1610. t-j-^g English ships which penetrated so far saw only a possible route to the Pacific, and so paid most attention to its northern shores and the strait into the Arctic Ocean ; until a Frenchman who was looking for ^.„ , new districts for the fur trade found his GiUam s 166^^^668- enthusiasm chilly received at Quebec, and in- 71- duced a Boston ship-captain to explore the bay's southern extremity, and, with the help of Prince Rupert, to build forts there. Between the still bright vision Hudson's of a north-west passage and the reality of much Company beavcr-skin, the Hudson's Bay Company was 1670. ' born ; it started with a fine scheme of coloniza- tion and a charter as free as that of Massachusetts, but by the time it had placed the name of New land South Wales on the map between Fort Nelson and James Bay, the settlement idea was aban- doned, and its operations confined to a brisk trade in furs. "The Company," said a colonist in 1752, " have for eighty years slept at the edge of a frozen sea." The coast-line south of New England — the strip where the Plymouth and London Companies' grants ^j^^ overlapped — had been, perhaps for that reason. North'" actively colonized by neither Company. Its America, intended occupation by the Pilgrim Fathers was defeated as we have seen ; and even before I.] OTHER MAINLAND SETTLEMENTS 31 iralAcr&Boutallsc. 32 BEGINNINGS OF THE EMPIRE [chap. that time the Dutch, whose explorer Hudson* Dutch discovered in 1609 the river that bears his West India i i i -i r i • r i Company name, had built torts on the sites ot the 1621. ' present Albany and New York. North of Albany they came across the Iroquois, full of anp;er at Champlain's attack on them, and New ° ^ , . . ' Nether- ready to make friends with any white men lands. ,.,,,, ^1 who might help them to revenge. Traders themselves rather than settlers, they imported colonists from the Spanish Netherlands (Walloons), and wel- comed Huguenots from France and refugees from New England intolerance, so that New Amsterdam (the Dutch town on Manhattan Island) became the most polyglot and incoherent of American towns. In 1655 they swallowed up a Swedish colony Sweden, whicli Gustavus Adolphus had planted on the Delaware ; but it was only a prelude to their own conquest by an English fleet in 1664, when the area they had claimed as the New Nether- Uutch •' , colonies laiids was divided by its new possessor, the taken by „.__.. . ..^ .__,. itv"^ England, Dukc of York, luto Ncw York and New Jersey. The latter colony, falling partly into Newjer- ^j-^g hands of a Quaker community, gave sey sepa- ^^ y ' fc> rated, William Penn the hint on which he sug- 1665. _ _ o gested to his friend, King Charles, that forty thousand square miles of good American soil would be a good substitute for the ;^ 16,000 which the English Admiralty owed his father. The hint was taken, and the father's name affixed to the grant ; p^_^^ and this creation in 168 1 of the province founded °^ Pennsylvania made up the tale of English '^S'- colonies until, fifty years later, Oglethorpe founded Georgia to relieve the debtors' prisons in England. * Hudson was a Londoner, in Dutch employ, when he sailed up Hudson River, in Enghsh employ when he discovered Hudson's Bay. I.] OTHER MAINLAND SETTLEMENTS 33 For around Virginia, too, as around Plymouth in the years after 1620, new settlements had begun to bud. A Catholic refuree colony spransf T»T 1 1 -1 xiT^i- Maryland up m Maryland, with Lord Baltmiore as founded, its founder and almost absolute lord. North Carolina spread from Albemarle, the home of a small party driven for religious reasons from settle- the strictly Anglican Virginia ; South Carolina AibemarU was settled partly from Barbados, partly by '^"; an immigration from the north to Charleston, doi^'iges'; while the Huguenots at a later date con- ^tcharks- tributed materially to the colony's popula- '°"' '^7°- tion. Here for some years was seen in action Huguenot the most fantastic of political comedies ; Charles [^^"'^s.?. H. had presented the Carolinas to a few of his favourite nobles, and they determined to do everything in the best possible style by getting a great philosopher to draw up their constitu- The ^. '^ ^ ^ "Funda- tion for them. One wonders whether Locke mental ,,,.,, T- 1 1 Constitu- was serious when he devised the " r undamental tions"of ^^ . . ,,.,,. . . , . C.-irolina, Constitutions with their seignories, baronies, 1668. and precincts, their sliding scale of landgraves and caciques, and their attempt to make every one either an aristocratic landowner or a serf bound hand and foot to the land he lived on. The Constitutions would not work ; their only result was to make the Albemarle settlers impatient of any government at all, and in twenty-four years they were formally abandoned with- out ever bavins; been thoroughly enforced. In TT- • • • ir 1 • , 1 , • r 11 Thetrans- Virgmia itself, which by the creation ot all formation 11 1-111 1 of Virginia. these daughter-colonies had been narrowed to its present coast-line, with indefinite power of inland extension west and north-west, the deliberate charter r 1 X 1 ^-. 11- 1 cancelled, policy of the London Company had given the 1624. settlers so large a measure of constitutional freedom c 34 BEGINNINGS OF THE EMPIRE [chap. that James I. cancelled its charter ; after which it grew by degrees into an Anglican and Cavalier colony, which upon the execution of Charles I. offered his son a refuge in America.* Europe affected all these Southern colonies to an extent unknown in New England ; even in Virginia there was a Puritan rule, as well as a Cavalier reaction in 1660 ; those useful Huguenots ., ,,. iirr ri invir- bees m other mens hives, the Huguenots, lound ginia,i6QQ. , , , -,7.. . . . , , ' work and rest on Virgmian rivers ; and at an earlier date a much less desirable class of immigrants siavesfirst ^^^ made their first appearance when, in 1619, imported. ^ Dutch sliip brought negro slaves to James- town. D. The West Indies. The Moorish wars of Spain had forged her people into a stiff rather than a strong nation. Eight centuries of fierce conflict had taught them that no Character " of the weapon was so powerful as a State under a bpanish ^ '■ conquerors, single head inspired by a uniform religion, and they never forgot the lesson ; to the latest days of her Imperial rule Spain unswervingly maintained her policy of centralization and of compulsory religious unity. They had conquered the Moors under the Cross in wars where quarter was rarely given ; in America they remained Crusaders, and became more regardless than ever of the value of non-Christian human life. When, therefore, the Spaniard found himself in the West rj,, . Indies faced by two native races, the gentle The native -' ' t> ""^^of Arawaks in the islands west of Porto Rico and the West Indies. tiig fierce Caribs east and south of that island, the fate of the milder race was sealed. Haiti (then * It is an interesting question how far that offer, if accepted, might have been the germ of such a North American empire as Brazil, a royal refuge under sinnilar conditions, became in South America, I.] THE WEST INDIES 35 called Hispaniola) became the chief Spanish settlement ; the white settlers enslaved all the Arawaks they wanted, and set the others to gold-washing ; when the natives died in thousands under this forced labour, or killed themselves to escape it, the Bahamas were depopulated to supply their place. When the supply of Arawaks gave out altogether, negroes were imported from j^^^ ^^ Africa — a race sturdier at labour, but fiercer slavery in- troduced, than the Caribs themselves, if once they escaped, 'S"- to revenge themselves upon their enslavers. So when English rovers followed in the path of Drake and Hawkins to harry all Spaniards through- out the Caribbean Sea, they found the Bahamas « /-^ ., • « . - Spanish empty, the Laribs m sole possession from America as Tobago to the Virgins, and the Spanish strength sea-rovLs concentrated in the empires it had conquered — in Mexico, with an arm reaching Europewards along Cuba, Jamaica, and Hispaniola, and in Peru, with a similar arm stretched from Panama along the Spanish Main to Trinidad. The Orinoco Valley and all further east was in Carib hands, with a few Arawak settlements along the coast ; and in the forests that edged freelvom the Main from Darien to Caracas prowled bands ^"""""^ ^" of Cimaroons (the escaped negroes), eager to help any enemy of Spain. This condition of affairs suggested the lines on which our colonization in this part of the world proceeded. Wherever Spain had a hold on the country Englishmen raided her cities and attacked her caravan- routes ; wherever the country was open they made friends with the natives and hastened to claim it as English. Raleigh, as usual, was first in the work of settling. He personally explored the lower Guiana, Orinoco and spread the fame of Queen Elizabeth '"^' abroad over the whole region of Guiana, that lies between the Orinoco and the Amazon ; then he came back with 36 BEGINNINGS OF THE EMPIRE [chap. reports that only the events of recent years have rendered credible. The soil was fertile, never tilled, waiting to yield great riches to its first cultivators ; the natives, whom he treated with a friendly justice, were already loyal subjects of the Queen ; there was gold, too, in abundance — some said there was the golden city of Manoa itself. The fame of Guiana went abroad. The Dutch , t-n i i i i i in Guiana, 1 hc Dutcli madc haste to settle on the Pomeroon and Essequibo ; James I. issued to Englishmen a grant of the country eastwards to the Amazon, and a colony was planted on the Oyapoc, which struggled on for many years. But for the seamen who frequented the West Indies island homes were preferable to a mainland annexed, colony. Settlers on their way to the Oyapoc discovered and annexed Barbados ; the Bermudas fn^n™edr Were colonized by the Virginia Company for '^'^' the planting of tobacco ; and when the death of James I. set Englishmen once more free to dis- regard the claims of Spain, a rapid immigration into the northern Carib islands soon eclipsed the prospects of prosperity in Guiana. Of course England was not the only power that , challenged Spain in the West Indies. Char- Chartered o c^ companies ^ered companics, with conveniently indefinite in the West r ' ^ J Indies. charters, were in vogue during the seventeenth century ; and the clash of jurisdictions which this in- definiteness brought about could not be minimised in the islands, as it was on the mainland, by the vastness of the territory to be occupied. A French company founded in 1626 claimed the same islands that Charles I. gave to the Earl of Carlisle in 1627. The Dutch West India Company had been incorpor- ated some years before. Actual settlement in almost every case preceded the formal grant ; and before the I-] THE WEST INDIES 37 century was half over, every Carib island had been annexed by one or the other of the three competing powers, some (and by no means the largest) harbouring two at once, as did St Kitts and Santa Cruz. The Bahamas, however, lying far to westward of the Spanish trade route, not so tropically fertile as the Carib islands, Sl. Jo/lit-..^ '.' Leeward I? ■■-^''' ..^ j' ^B.arbuda ^■■.KSSt. Kitts \ Wontserr'af'*^ I \ : Vp^Guadeloupe Domit'uccriA ■ \vt Martinique S*-^"f^Gj Barbados Windward ,'»/, St.Vinceflt{) / \W: Grenad:a{/ / ^^Tohag IValkcr ir ISoitCail sc. and connected by position with the mainland colonies of North America, were left outside this cut- ^^^ throat competition, and fell to England mainly fjt°re'd''"" by the enterprise of emigrants from the over- '^^^• crowded Bermudas. From St Kitts, where English and French settled 38 BEGINNINGS OF THE EMPIRE [chap. side by side in 1625, English emigration went on s read of P^rsistently to the neighbouring islands. On the European north-wcst, Dutch buccaneers had seized on the settle- ' ments. Virgin group as their depot for treasure and pro- visions ; on the south, French adaptability to native habits had made colonists of that nation more welcome than the English among the large Carib population of the islands from Guadeloupe to St Vincent. Barbados did try to emulate St Kitts by occupying Tobago and St Lucia, but both expeditions ended in failure. The proud little colony was, however, successful in making itself notable at home by proclaiming Charles II. as King in 1650, and refusing (more pluckily than Virginia) to submit to the Commonwealth until its chief town had been actually bombarded and burnt.* This called Cromwell's attention to the West Indies, and he C romwell's , . , , i -r- i • i ... Spanish determmed to enlarge the English territories in that quarter by an open invasion of Spanish America. One chance of peace he left to Spain — if she would throw her American ports open to English traders, no move should be made. On her refusal a fleet sailed against Hispaniola ; beaten off there by playing Drake's game without his daring, its com- manders consoled themselves with a descent on the half-empty island of Jamaica ; and Cromwell taken, made such good use of his bad bargain, en- listing settlers from Scotland, Ireland, New England, Barbados, and Bermuda, that Jamaica soon became a prosperous sugar-plantation and the centre of West Indian trade. At last the spell was broken, and conquest became a legitimate method of colonizing. The capture of * Barbados was always in the lead : it was the first colony to declare boldly (in 165 1) that it was not bound by the decrees of a Parliament in which it was not represented ; and the first (in 1691) to appoint an agent in England. I.] THE WEST INDIES 39 Jamaica began that long process by which the State of Britain, following in armed strength the progress f. . , rill Cromwell oi Its merchants to every corner of the globe, as Empire- enlarged itself into a world - wide empire. Standing midway between Elizabeth and the elder Pitt, Cromwell has a share in the glory of both ; he made England a power in Europe, and set her on the road that led to the lordship of the oceans. With Cromwell's Spanish war the West Indies entered on a forty years' fight in which all the nations repre- sented there had their share. At one time t, i he years France and England attacked Spain, at another °f'urmoii. France and Holland attacked England ; then Spain and Holland fought France and England, then England and Holland fought France. In this medley islands changed hands as quickly as one changes partners at a ball, though with the grimmer accompaniments of bloodshed and much suffering. The net result, however, was very small : England by 1690 had taken Tobago and most of the Virgin Islands from the Dutch ; Holland (as com- pensation for the loss of New York) had received from the Eng-lish a colony which the Cavalier governor ._^, ,1, ,.^. , The Dutch of Barbados had planted m Guiana on the get . «-r»i ■ 1 r 11 1 Surinam, Surniam. 1 he most important result 01 all the fighting lay not in re-arrangement of territories, but in the suppression of the buccaneers. The Caribbean Sea had been the resort of sea-rovers ever since the first news reached Europe of Spanish treasure fleets sailing homewards from Mexico ^hesea- and Panama. Trade, however, was what most of '■°'«=" the early rovers sought, although some of the more daring sacked Havana and seized a pearling fleet near the island of Margarita. During Elizabeth's reign English privateering formed a great part of the war with Spain ; when the complaisance of her successor 4o BEGINNINGS OF THE EMPIRE [chap. bade fair to restore in England the Spanish ascendency of pre-EHzabethan days, the rovers found themselves cut off from the mother-country, and began to make their homes around the sea where they found their prey. Spain grumbled to the home governments, but could get redress neither from France nor from England ; she had opened her mouth too wide, had arrogantly claimed the whole of the New World, all its treasure and all its trade — and for all her grumbling she got only the answer that she must defend her claims as best she might. So there grew up among the West Indian islets that nest of hornets we know as the buccaneers. When „ ^ times were hard they hunted cattle in Hispaniola, buccaneers, smoking their meat on the boucans* that gave them their name, or preserving it with the salt whose production made Tortuga so valuable a centre for them- In more fortunate moments they harried the fleets that voyaged between Mexico and Cadiz, or sacked the Spanish settlements of the Main. Flemings and French and English were among them, blended at first in a common brotherhood, but regaining their racial instincts during the years of international war that followed our capture of Jamaica — though even then they could act together on emergencies, so that the Welshman Morgan headed a joint raid on Panama, and Van Horn the Fleming led Frenchmen to the capture of Vera Cruz. But more often they hunted by nations, the Dutch harbouring in Tortola of the Virgins, the French in Tortuga above Hispaniola (from which they founded a French colony in the larger island), while the English „ . . , swarmed along the coasts of Jamaica and enriched British * •' Honduras Yoxt Royal in that island with the profits of circ. 1638. their trade. Relics of their power on the main- land are to be seen in the British colony of Honduras, * Wooden frridiions. I.] THE WEST INDIES 41 the remains of a series of (nominally) timber-cutting stations between Campeachy and the San Juan.* But while they had been valuable as a thorn in the side of Spain, when the other nations began to settle in civilized communities they were found to be mere disturbers of the peace ; towards the end of the seventeenth century the romantic name of " buccaneer " gave place to the harsher one of " pirate," their leaders were hung instead of being made governors,! and the islands that had sheltered them dropped (all except Jamaica) into a humdrum existence, and have since remained unknown to fame. In a crude fashion their exploits had done good in breaking up the Spanish monopoly ; their disappearance did more good still, for it was achieved by the final recognition of the principle that a nation is responsible for its citizens' acts beyond its own borders> and is bound to keep them in order wherever there is not already established a government sufficiently civilized for that purpose. The actual work of colonization was fairly uniform throughout the English islands. Sugar, cotton, and tobacco were the staple products. The climate ^T^, r 1 • • • Colonizing was tropical. The free white immigrants were the English , . , 111 islands. sailors or fighting men as a rule, and had every inducement to keep up their warlike pursuits in an age when a fresh war might at any moment set their neigh- bours in the next island raiding their property. Bond- labour was therefore needful, and until the Royal African Company provided a steady supply of negroes, Convict that bond-labour must be drawn from home, '^''°""■• for the Caribs were useless. Cromwell shipped to * For more than a hundred years this colony was a settlement of British subjects on Spanish soil. In 1798 the Spaniards tried to expel the timber getters, and were defeated : since that date, therefore, the colony has Ijeen ours by right of conquest, though not formally made a colony till 1S62. t Morgan became Lieutenant-Governor of Jamaica. 42 BEGINNINGS OF THE EMPIRE [chap. Barbados his prisoners from Drogheda and Worcester ; later on the great London prisons were drawn upon for a supply ; kidnapping, carried on for some years on a great scale, filled up the gaps. Charles 11. began his reign with a laudable imitation of Cromwell's policy. He established a Council of Plantations Council of to supervise the whole extent of the colonies, Planta- ... . r tions, With mstructions to arrange tor a common ' ^'^" system of government and trade, to institute State - assisted emigration, and to bind the mother country and the colonies together by schemes for mutual help. The one idea gave birth to Transportation, the other to Navigation Acts, and the follower of Cromwell lived to be a pensioner of Louis XIV. ; yet of all the Stuarts he was the one who did most for our colonies, and his charters sanctioned British enterprise alone; the Atlantic from the Guinea coast to the frozen shores of Hudson's Bay. With the slave trade began the commercial prosperity of the British West Indies, until Jamaica become^" ^ planters rivalled in wealth the " nabobs " return- ing from Bengal. Every sugar-island became a national asset of great value, a weight to be thrown into this or that scale when treaties were adjusting the balance of power. St Lucia and Tobago especially served this purpose, becoming English or French as the fortune of war gave either nation the upper hand in the negotiations for peace. St Lucia in 1763 was considered to compensate France in large measure for the loss of Canada — Tobago, left to its Caribs by both nations at Aix-la-Chapelle, became English at Paris, French at „.., Versailles, and English again in 1803. On British ' 00 -J Guiana ac- ^}^g wliole, the eightcenth-century wars resulted quired, > o •796. in a great British gain, adding to our empire all the Carib islands between Antigua and the Main, I.] THE WEST INDIES 43 except Guadeloupe and Martinique, and transferring to it also the three western settlements of Dutch Guiana, Berbice, Demerara, and Essequibo. With the slave trade we shall deal more particularly in the chapter on Africa; here it is worth while to look at the question from the planter's point of view, g,^^.^ It is, of course, impossible to justify even the '^''°"''- mildest form of slavery among men who rank human life as high as we have done for fifty years. But we are apt to forget that mere humanness was no great dis- tinction two hundred (or, for the majority of people, even one hundred) years ago. In the West g^^.^^^ Indies more especially, occupied at first by ^^^"„^y Spaniards and haunted for a century by buc- feeimg. caneers, a man's life or his sufferings were held pretty cheap. The man who might at any moment be burnt or flayed alive himself felt no great remorse at having flogged or racked a negro who rebelled ; there were Maroons enough in Jamaica, slaves of the old Spanish planters who escaped to the mountains at Cromwell's conquest, without increasing their numbers by making it a trivial thing for the English negro to desert to them. In the seventeenth century barbarous punishment was the lot of all offenders, white or black ; in the eighteenth white bond-labour was almost Eighteenth- extinct, white freemen were adopting for them- feeUng! selves the comparatively milder punishments which had just come into vogue in Europe, and the negro slave was left under the old code simply because his masters reckoned it was the only one that would appeal to his still savage nature. For the negro was, and where left to himself (as in Haiti) still is, a savage of a low type, and Uncle Tom is a very modern creation. The slave-owners treated their slaves very much as Australians treat their horses — good masters well, 44 BEGINNINGS OF THE EMPIRE [chap. brutal masters evilly. Real " nigger-driving " did not begin till the suppression of the slave-trade in 1807 cut off the supply of labour, and made men anxious to get all they could out of the slaves they already had. We are not called on to sympathize with the planter, but our blame should be laid upon the age, not on the individual. Who knows but that, if vegetarianism ever became a creed, our descendants might talk of us as sternly as we have talked of the slave-owner? After all, we are called on to sympathize with the planter, but in a different fashion. In no age has it been good for a man to rank human beings with Effect on , ^ , , . , , , r the cattle, or to depend entirely on the work 01 others for a peaceful and luxurious life. For their first hundred years the white freemen of the islands were the war-lords each of his little community, justifying their existence by their leadership in defence against buccaneer or French attack — a tropical repro- duction of the feudal system. During the next hundred years they did less and less for their money, absented themselves more frequently from the colonies, and became more and more absolutely dependent on the labour of their slaves. This strict drawing of the colour-line between workers and masters, so that freedom meant idleness as far as the negroes could see. Abolition ^^^ '^^^ effect when in 1833 slavery was abolished of slavery, \^y Imperial Act. The negro was told he was the negro fj-g^j • Y[q ^y^g ^Iso told hc must work for the next degene- ' ••ates, six years as an apprentice, and begin to support himself and his family ; and he quite failed to reconcile the two statements. Only in Barbados, where except in .' ' Barbados. ^\^q population was dense and the planters had lived and worked on their estates, was there a speedy recovery from the drastic revolution in the labour market. Everywhere else the free negro refused I.] THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM 45 altogether to labour for the planters, and lived as he could, becoming more degraded every day ; and ^ ,. . ^ _ •=> J J ■> Coolie im- only the importation of coolies from India into migration. Trinidad and British Guiana roused him again to a sense of the necessit}^ for steady and reasonable work. As for the planters, their house had collapsed about their ears. Their source of labour was dried up ; their property had vanished — for the twenty millions ^^^ ,^^ of compensation money represented but a third ^f[^°"^'j^Q,; of its value ; there seemed no chance of recovery. "'°"- While the few stout-hearted ones were still struggling to regain their feet, English markets were suddenly thrown open to the sugar-planters of Cuba and Brazil, p^^^ ^^^^^ Presently European nations began to grow beet, '" ^"ear. to get sugar from it, and to encourage its production by bounties, and the West Indian sugar trade g^ ^^ sank to one-fifth of its former value. In a few bounties. of the islands the opening up of new industries to some extent saved the situation — notably the fruit trade in Jamaica and the asphalt-lakes of Trinidad ; but the West Indies remained for many years a warning to their sister colonies in the Empire — both of the unwisdom of putting all your eggs in the one basket, and of the dangers that haunt European races who cannot them- selves work the lands on which they settle. E. The Old Colonial System. We shall repeatedly notice the Spanish wish to central- ize not only the administration, but the commerce of their colonies. In this course most of the colonics European nations followed the lead of Spain, a°"]'ojfrces and even England, while she gave her early "f profit- colonists more self-government than the rest, was not 46 BEGINNINGS OF THE EMPIRE [chap. behind them in exercising a rigid control over inter- colonial and foreign trade. A colony, according to the then universal idea, should be a direct source of profit to the mother land : not necessarily of revenue to the government, but of gain to the merchant at home and so to the country at large. Spain and Portugal drew from theirs a supply of gold and silver ; Holland (for her Companies were merely the State under another name) trafficked with much profit in the produce of her plantations ; even France got some sort of revenue from her Canadian fisheries. The commercial theories of the day, moreover, were closely bound up with its politics, and it was thought well to narrow profits rather than to share an increase of them with probably hos- tile nations. The monopoly, therefore, of colonial trade* which Spain tried to enforce by limiting the ports of entry and dispatch, which Holland, Portugal, and France confided to specially formed companies, England arranged for in her western possessions by a series of Navigation Acts. In Africa and Asia, where she traded without colonizing, the Company system was found useful. Navigation Acts were no new thing to the English merchant. Statutes of Richard II. and Henry VH. confined certain branches of trade to English- The Navi- . gation owned and English-built vessels. Elizabeth was Acts T not backward in a similar policy, and James I. included the colonies within its scope. But the first of the series which finally ruined Dutch trade and made our growing empire a single commercial organization was the Act passed by the Long Parliament in 165 1. A glance at its provisions will show how vitally it affected the Dutch, then the common carriers of merchandize between all parts of the globe. Goods and produce of any country might be imported into I.] THE OLD COLONIAL SYSTEM 47 Great Britain by ships of the producing country, or — to meet the case of inland states — of the country wherein the natural port of egress la}' ; all other traffic in imports of ever)' kind must be carried on in English-built and English-owned ships, with English captains and crews at least three-quarters English. The colonies, of course, were reckoned as part of England. Charles II.'s first Act added other still more stringent provisions. The colonies were now forbidden to ship certain goods — tropical products, ship-material, iron, and skins — to any place except England ; other goods might be ex- ported freely so long as the vessels were English. _ . . , , ., . , . of 1663 ; boon a new Act imposed prohibitory duties on goods entering the colonies from any but an English port, and presently another set of duties seriously hampered any intercolonial trade .that might compete with direct English commerce. At a much later date it was enacted that no goods should be manufactured in America that might be made in Britain. In return for these restrictions the colonies received two valuable privileges ; their goods paid lighter duties in the English market than those of foreign ^ , • , s> o Colonial nations, while the goods they bought there were pn^i'^ges. sent them free of the duties which the English consumer had to pay. The system, therefore, worked very well for all settlements which did not grow or manufacture the same articles that the mother country produced. If Jamaica planters had to dispose of all their sugar in England, at least they could outsell the foreigner who must pay 150 per cent, more duty. But the New Englanders, whose climate forced them to grow grain and spin wool as their cousins did at home, found the Acts hampering to commerce and almost prohibitive of their manufactures. Still the system as a whole, 48 BEGINNINGS OF THE EMPIRE [chap. until overdone by the zeal of Grenville, was not only- more liberal than the colonial arrangements of other European nations, but represented an honest and a three-parts successful attempt at commercial federa- tion of the Empire. F. Eastern Trade and Stations. On the eastern side of the Pope's line we are con- fronted with colonial work of an entirely different kind, if, indeed, it can be properly called the Portu- " colonial." The Portuguese, like the Spaniards, were intent on reaching India. But the fact that they did reach it, and that they were Portuguese, com- pletely altered the situation. They were traders seeking for the most famous trade-lands in the world ; they were seamen working along a sea route, caring little for the conquest of territory so long as they could monopolize the commerce of the gorgeous East. Year by year as their adventurous ships crept down the African coast, past the deserts of the Western Sahara, past the 1484- fever-stricken jungles of Guinea, past the stormy ''*^^' headland of Cape Voltas, they planted forts here and there to tap the inland trade of the Sudan and the Congo valley ; but always they remembered the j)j^^ commands of their beloved prince,* and passed Af^oa" each year with eagerness their limit of the year Bay, 1487. before, till Diaz found himself on a coast that bore away north-eastward, and da Gama climbed past Mozambique and threw his vessels into open '"^^'^ " ocean to light upon the long-sought Indian shore. Then Portugal with all her strength fastened * Henry the Navigator, the first organizer of systematic exploration in modern times. I.] EASTERN TRADE AND STATIONS 49 upon the prey she had so honourably won. Ahiieida broke the power of the Egyptian Sultan, whose p; ^^^^ fleet (provided by Venice*) was striving to drive ^'"' ^^°^- the intruders from the Indian Ocean ; Goa, Ormuz, Malacca, were the trophies of Albu- '^^°'^' querque. Ceylon fell next, and Sumatra, and 1521. the Spice Islands ; Sofala and Mozambique and jjo-.^. Mombasa were already annexed ; for eighty years the Indian Ocean was a private lake of Portugal's owning. Then dynastic troubles betrayed the little kingdom into the power of Spain, and the whole structure of her empire collapsed. Spain wanted gold, not trade ; and Spain had a bitter enemy who wanted the very trade which Spain despised. So what had been Portugal's became Holland's,! and hard „ » ' 1577-80. on the heels of the Dutch came the roving 1586-88. English, stirred by the achievements of Drake, '591-4- Cavendish, and Lancaster. The struggle that followed was a fierce one, marked by brutalities such as the Amboyna massacre. All through the seventeenth century fortune swayed this way and that, regardless of war or peace at home ; at last the combatants drew apart, still glowering at each other, and England clung to the Indian mainland, while Holland drew close her chain of forts round Ceylon and the islands of Malaysia. Portugal, which had joined again in the fight directly she regained her freedom, emerged from it stripped of all her Indian possessions except Goa. * Venice was aghasl at the invasion of her trade monopoly, and the Sultan of Egypt angered at the certain loss of his transit dues. t The Nctherland merchants had for a long time purveyed Indian goods to central lunope, oljtaining them from Lisbon. After 1580 they at first tried unsuccessfully to open up a trade route round the north of Europe, but in 1595 despatched their first fleet round the Cape of Good Hope. Portugal was too small a kingdom to supply the waste inevitable in early colonization. P2ven in 1441 slaves were being imported to fill up gaps in the home population. But Holland had all North Germany to draw on. D so BEGINNINGS OF THE EMPIRE [chap. This was the realm of the great Companies, English, French, and Dutch.* France and Holland, as we have seen, did a good deal of their American work The . , Honour- also bv Companies, which England, the colonizer, able East . /. , ^ r i 111 1 India lound m that part oi the world but a cumbrous device : in the East, where trade alone was in question, the English East India Company grew and prospered. Bantam in Java and Surat in the Gulf of Cambay were for a long time its head stations ; but the Civil Wars at home weakened its fighting power, while the Dutch threw their whole soul into the if,S2. contest for the Indies. So eventually Java was Madras, abandoned, the island trade dropped (except Bombay, '^^'^ Sumatra), and Anglo - Indian commerce Calcutta, centred on three more famous settlements 1690. ^^ Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta. Such were the Eastern outliers of our Indian trade ; in the West they were less important until the safety African ^^ '^^^ tradc-route forced us in 1796 to occupy out-stations. ^]^g Cape Colony. Everywhere we found our- selves as a matter of course following in the tracks of the Portuguese. These bold discoverers, but somewhat over-cautious mariners, were never fond of a Cape that * The English Company, founded in 1600, based its operations largely on the work of Drake : it was he who in 1579 made that treaty with the .Sultan of Ternate which gave the English their first footing in the Malay Archipelago, and he who captured at the Azores, in 1587, the great Portuguese carrack, whose papers disclosed " the long kept secrets of the East India trade." At one time there was talk of federating the English and Dutch companies, and a formal alliance (under which the English Company was to receive one-third of the profits from the Spice Islands) was made at headquarters in 1619, but not carried out by the rival traders in the East. It was this alliance that induced English merchants to settle at Amboyna, and so led to the massacre. The Dutch Company (chartered in 1602, with trade-monopoly east of the Cape of (}ood Hope and west of Magellan Straits), by unifying Dutch enterprise in the East, enabled little Holland to oust Spain and repel I'ortugal. The French indulged in no less than five companies within forty years : only the last, founded by Colbert, attained any great measure of success. I.] EASTERN TRADE AND STATIONS 51 seemed always to keep its stormiest weather for them ; and when their first great Indian viceroy, Almeida, was killed in a quarrel with Hottentots on the shores of Table Bay, they shunned the whole coast as one infested " with tigers and savages and stranger- killers." Much later, when the three Companies began their regular trafficking between Europe and India, the length of that sea voyage was found unhealthy, and search was made for some half-way house where the ships might refit and get fresh stores. Lancaster called at the Cape in 1601, and from 1605 onwards it was a regular port of call for our East Indian vessels. In 16 14 a ship was sent out with reliefs, provisions, and stores to meet the homeward-bound fleet in Table Bay, doing odd jobs of whaling and sealing while it waited : and in the two following years small parties of convicts were set ashore there to fare as best they might. In 1620 an English expedition formally annexed i/-< 1 r t ir-r*^' Helena the Cape, but got no further good of it ; for ni occupied, St Helena, well out in mid-Atlantic, the English Company now found what they wanted ready to their hand. The Portuguese had already, in 1502, made just such a settlement there — " it is," said one voyager, " an earthly paradise for the Portingall ships." It stood fair in the track of homeward-bound ships : the sailor set his sails after rounding the Cape, and the south-east trade-wind did the rest. There was at first a little trouble with the Dutch, who had claims to the island as vague as ours to the Cape : but since 1673 St Helena has been undisturbedly British. Mauritius, which for many years served the French Company as its half- way house, and more than once became the base i^jauritius, of French operations against British India and "^'°' against our Eastern trade, fell into our hands during the long Napoleonic war ; and Aden, that alone of all 52 BEGINNINGS OF THE EMPIRE [chap. seaports on the Indian Ocean had repelled the invading Portuguese, became important to us directly Aden, 1839. ^^ f- . 1 1 • 1 r 1 • t i- JNapoleon conceived the idea oi reaching India through Egypt, and was finally annexed from Bombay in 1839. Nearer home, along the shores which Prince Henry's men had so slowly opened up in the fifteenth century, Englishmen were active in the trade for ivory, gold, and Guinea pepper (the " grain " which gave its name to the Grain Coast of old maps). " Old Mr William Hawkins About °^ Plymouth " was our pioneer on that route, and 1530. his sQj^^ the more famous John Hawkins, made I 62 and several voyages to West Africa. His trafficking, onwards, indeed, was largely in slaves for the Spanish West Indies ; but no second English slave-trader made Exeter an appearauce for many years after. Four Tau'n'ton chartered companies were formed under Eliza- Co., 1592. i^g^h and the early Stuarts, and the third built African Co., 1618. forts on the Gambia and at Cormantine, near Co"*^^63i. the present Cape Coast Castle, besides sending an expedition up the Gambia to look for Timbuctoo. But for the most part they confined themselves to the trade in natural products and to the search for gold, hoping eventually by way of the Gambia to reach the goldfields of the Upper Niger. In India itself our Company's work was for a hundred and fifty years little more important. Not long after .a- ■ . the first Portuguese ships reached Calicut there Affairs 111 t> r India. happened one of the periodical invasions from the north-west to which India has been subject from time immemorial. Baber, the Chagatai Turk, Baber's . . invasion, Came down out of Afghanistan with twelve ^^''^' ' thousand men and overthrew the d}'nasty then reigning at Delhi, founding in its place that of the Moguls. His early successors consolidated the empire I.] EASTERN TRADE AND STATIONS 53 he had won : Akbar the tolerant, Jehangir the luxurious, Shah Jehan of the ^^orgeous imagination, were lords of a fairly peaceful and coherent dominion that stretched from Kandahar to Calcutta and from the Vindhya Hills to the Himalayas. Aurangzeb, Shah Jehan's son, was more ambitious : he stormed through the Deccan, up- rooting all the ancient Hindu kingdoms of the south, and so was able to call himself the master of all India ; but his conquests had really raised against the whole Mogul dominion every form of ruthless fanaticism which the intolerance and ambition of their enemy could excite in a warlike and bigotedly religious people. The Rj^eof the Mahratta power, more especially, became almost p^^J'//'"^ a centre of Hindu patriotism in resisting Aurang- ^?^^J^ zeb : and from his time dates the immitigable '^74- bitterness between Mohammedan and Hindu that even to-day flames up into religious riot through all the restraints of civilization and the bands of British law. The European companies hung on the outskirts . , ^ , ^ ... . , , , Position of of the tumult, quarrelhng with each other over Europeans the valuable but precarious trade, and treated by the Mogul Emperors with the same half-contemptuous, half-irritated neutrality that we are apt to bestow on the squabbles and the trade competition of Syrians and Chinese. CHAPTER II ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN AMERICA. A. The Land and the Natives. We have now come to a time when colonial questions really begin to enter into English history. For more than a hundred years — years of continual war and Colonial fumours of war, broken only by spasmodic influence peaces — BHtons over sea exert a more and more on JC/Uro- r peanwars. dominating influence upon the foreign policy of the mother-country. The three central wars of the eighteenth century, between 1739 and 1783, are in- timately connected with that group of settlements along the North American seaboard which to English- men of the day were The Colonies. But for fifty years before the first of these wars there had been active preparation for the great struggle ; the conquest of Acadia prefigured and made necessary the conquest of Canada, and the strategy of 1759 had been anticipated during 1690 in every point but success. We have already seen how five European nations shared the trade and the territory opened up by the enterprise of Henry the Navigator. Three of them, Spain, Portugal, and Holland as the spoiler of Portugal, exploited the tropical world ; France and England, both at the time real colonizers, worked side by side on the one temperate region which had been added to the map. During the latter half of the seventeenth century CHAP. II.] THE LAND AND THE NATIVES 55 when their settlements were really shaping themselves and feeling their way towards each other across the intervening wilderness, the policy of their rulers in Europe prohibited open enmity in America. But when at the Revolution of 1688 England not only cut loose from French protection, but openly ningsof challenged French hostility, Canada and New England were only too glad to gratify with straight- forward fighting the bitterness which they had till then been forced to indulge under cover of Indian raids. As we shall find again and again in this history, the long struggle was very much affected by the physical geography of its theatre. This was made up of two large river-valleys and a strip of coast-line, all 11 • 1 The geo- runnmg generally ni a north-east and south- graphyof west direction.* The French held the mouths of ing the river-valleys, and claimed therefore jurisdic- tion over the whole of them ; the English were in actual occupation of the whole coast strip from the Atlantic inland along the streams which run into it. Between the two nations stretched a low but difficult mountain range, which, where it divided the Ohio valley from Pennsylvania and the southern colonies, is a fairly compact chain of parallel ridges known as the Alleghanies ; where New York and New England abutted on the St Lawrence valley, it is very much more broken up, and goes by a dozen different names. It is with this part that we shall have most to do ; for when the French in Canada and the colonists of New England wished to get at each other, they must pass either through or round the intricacies of the dividing range. And there was one road through the confusion so * We have to deal with the Ohio-Mississippi valley rather than with the whole watershed of the Mississippi. 56 ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN AMERICA [chap. simple and direct that it became at once and for more ^jjg than a hundred years remained the highway of Hudson- attack. The Richelieu River, entering^ the St Richelieu ' •-' ''"^- Lawrence just below Montreal, gives easy access southwards to Lake Champlain, from whose lower edge Lake George hangs like an ear - ring. From the southern end of Lake George it is but a few miles across to the Hudson, whose broad stream prolongs the south- ward line to the defences of New York. Along that line, and close to the water-parting, one finds most of the well-known forts and battlefields — Plattsburg, Crown Point, Ticonderoga, Fort William Henry, Sara- toga, West Point. A second route of invasion was provided by the Mohawk River, up which from its junction with the Hudson canoes could The Mohawk Ontario line. II.] THE LAND AND THE NATIVES 57 be taken close to Lake Oneida, and so down into Lake Ontario. The third line of attack avoided the ^he sea- mountains altogether by using the sea route ''"'^• between the New England coast and the mouth of the St Lawrence. Quite as important as the shape of the land were its native inhabitants. Roughly speaking, the French were in alliance with a number of scattered clans The belonging to the Algonquin family, about 90,000 American c:> X • Indians. in number. They stretched along the whole dividing range from Nova Scotia round to Tennessee, and held territory as far north-west as Lake Michigan. By their aid in later years the French were able to attack simultaneously the long line of English colonies, harrying Maine and Virginia alike with savage massacre. The tribes in the English alliance mustered less than 10,000 ; but they held a commanding position across the lines of invasion, breaking the Algonquin chain just where its continuity would have been most fatal to the English. Among them, moreover, were numbered the Iroquois, most daring and dreaded of all North American Indians, whose raids were known beyond the Mississippi, while for many years the whole of Upper Canada had been emptied of its Huron tribes (their own blood relations) to serve as their hunting-grounds. The French, in spite of them, replaced their victims in the ancestral domain ; and in revenge through all the wars of the eighteenth century the Iroquois remained faithful allies of the English power. Over such country and with such allies the Canadian and the New England settlers wrestled up and ^ ' Tlie Euro- down for seventy years. To some extent we may pean com- include the colonists of New York among the English forces ; but the more southerly settlements took little note of the struggle till it was nearly over, while 58 ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN AMERICA [chap. Georgia, a late arrival in the family, occupied itself with troubles of its own on the frontier of Spanish Florida. Without their help the New Englanders had a great preponderance in numbers over their opponents, mustering nearly 100,000 inhabitants between the Hudson and the Kennebec, while the whole Canadian .-ind population was not more than 12,000 scattered French. Qygj. Acadia, Cape Breton Island, and the St Lawrence valley from Quebec to Niagara. The 12,000, however, were under one head, many of them wandering hunters by profession, and always ready to fall in with the habits and ideas of their Indian allies. The 100,000 were split up into five bodies, almost as jealous of each other as of the common enemy ; war meant to them perhaps the destruction, in any case the neglect, of their farms ; and in their utmost need they could never quite make up their minds to trust the Indians, or treat them with even the most dignified friendliness.* B. Indian Wars. For a long time there had been petty disputes between the French and the Iroquois, marked on both sides by diplomatic cunning that almost amounted to treachery ; Preii. and whenever it seemed probable that some minary , ... , fencing. Frcncli cuvoy might wm over the wavermg tribes, messages came hastily from Albany to keep them firm in the English alliance. The contest was not with- out its humour, the English governor vaunting his rum * See " Observations on the late and present Conduct of the French," by William Clarke of Boston (1755) for a contemporary statement of the situation. By that time the British population had increased to 1,000,000, 200,000 of them in Massachusetts. "The English, we know," Joncaire wrote to Washington in 1753, " can raise two men to our one ; but their motions are too slow and dilatory to prevent any undertaking of ours." II.] INDIAN WARS 59 against the Frenchman's brand)', and soothing him with a gift of oranges which unfortunately arrived all rotten. Eng-lish traders, meanwhile, pushed up and 1 1- 1 1 -1 r netroit across Lake Erie, where the rrench built a fort fortified, at Detroit to stop them, and there was already a rumour that Virginian settlers had designs on the Ohio. When in 1689 Count Frontenac arrived at Montreal with news of the English Revolution ^v^^ of the and consequent war with France, he was able ^mance, at once to hurl three Indian war-parties upon the 1689-97. half-unready colonists. New York was his chief aim, both because of its close alliance with the ^ Frontenac s Iroquois, and because by occupying the Hudson invasion, valley he would cut the English colonies in half and cfive France a short and almost ice-free route to the Lakes ; but the New Englanders were not spared, on the pretext that they were in revolt against their lawful kinor, Tames II. The success of these raids was ^ . . . , Congress complete. The injured colonies were driven by at New tr -> •' York, i6go. them into a lax confederation, which attempted to retaliate by attacks on Quebec and Montreal ; but they had no leader, nor any real unanimity — the expedition against Montreal wasted itself in futile farm- burnings, and that against Quebec, after being delayed in favour of a useless capture of Port Royal ,^ ^, , ^ . -; Port Royal in Acadia, was thrown away by the incapacity taken by . , . J Pnips, of its commander. The Iroquois were disgusted May n. at the weakness of men who had been urging Failure . , before them against the French ; for a time they Quebec, ,1 , , • , 1. 1 October. fought on by themselves, besetting the banks of the Ottawa, down which must come all trade from the west for Montreal ; but they were wise enough to recognize Frontenac's superior power, and gradually drew back into a position of armed neutrality. Still they protected the northern borders of New York, and 6o ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN AMERICA [chap. steadfastly refused to make peace at Quebec unless the English were included in the treaty. The brunt of war now fell heavily on New England. War, perhaps, one can hardly call it, for the tale is mainly Indian of savagc raids upon the little farming settle- on New ments that dotted the woods of Massachusetts England. ^^^ New Hampshire. It is from these years of sudden torture and massacre that the American of to-day inherits his hatred for " Indian vermin " ; though even the worst cruelties of the Abenaki and Huron "converts" were abetted and aped and exceeded by the French.* Before the Peace of Ryswick restored to each side what it possessed in 1689, Frontenac was able to record the recapture of Acadia, the destruction of the English D'iberviiie ^shing Settlements in Newfoundland and their Ei^lifh^ principal fort on Hudson's Bay, and the freeing from New- of Canadian trade with the West from all Iroquois foundland _ _ ^ and Hud. attacks. He had, in fact, established French son s Bay, '^97- Canada as the dominating power on the North American continent, supreme from Cape Race to New Orleans. What warriors could do to maintain that supremacy was done : but to fight the advancing and increasing numbers of the English settlers, settlers were France de- required. France had them — during these very cimes to years she was pouring out hundreds of families Hugue- ^-Q populate the West Indies and the Cape Colony, colonists. But; these were her neglected children, the Huguenots : and the French monarchy had no mind to repeat the experience of its neighbour and allow Canada to become a French Massachusetts. The Edict of Nantes had been revoked because it seemed to Louis XIV. and his ministers increasingly important that all France should be of one religion, and French colonies could not * Frontenac offered rewards for English scalps — but he was never quite sure that all the scalps he paid for were English. n.] INDIAN WARS 6l be excepted. So the Huguenots, the one great colonizing body that France has produced, spent their nation- making powers under other flags : and Canada was left with its serfs and trappers to build weak dykes against the incoming sea of English trade and tillage. In 1702 the war broke out afresh in Europe, blown into flame by a desperate scheme of Louis XIV. After much intriguing he had secured his grandson's accession to the throne of Spain, hoping thereby to rein- warofthe force his own strength with all the trade of the Spanish Netherlands and all the gold of Spanish America. '702-13. He knew well that no peaceful arts would induce his arch-enemy, William III., to acquiesce in this arrange- ment, and so drove England willy-nilly into war by openly recognizing the Pretender as its rightful king. Thence followed that war "of the Spanish Succession," which we know best from the victories of Marlborough : but the influence of America, too, was present in the minds of English statesmen.* It was the era of ,, . . o Union ot the Union with Scotland, and men talked bitterly f„"/s"„^. of the ruin that had overtaken a Scottish colony 'a"^^' '707- at Darien. The alliance with Portugal, too, was intended to counterbalance Louis' gains from the colonies of Spain ; the inflow of Peruvian silver was to be met by an inrush of gold from Brazil. For Anne's ministers the interest of the war was almost purely European, but New England was not quite neglected. The Queen herself paid for the equipment of four Massachusetts regiments, and in 171 1 Marlborough himself was deprived of valuable troops, that might have ended the European war, for the purpose of making an attack on Quebec. * Note the stipulations in the England-Iiolland-Austiia treaty of 1701 that — (a) EngHsh or Dutch captures in Spanish America should remain theirs ; (/)) France should never be allowed to master or even to trade with Spanish America ; (<) if Austria absorbed the Spanish Empire, the existing privileges of trade should be secured to England and Holland. 62 ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN AMERICA [chap. Not till the days of Pitt, however, was England to Failure of Understand that America needed good generals Quebec°" ^^ ^^^^ ^^ good troops ; the expedition failed Aug. 1711. miserably, and a companion raid on Montreal was abandoned in consequence. Still, the New Englanders had deserved better help. Three times, under the stress of Abenaki and Huron savagery, they had struck at Acadia, the one French possession which they could easily reach ; the third time they took the chief town. Port Royal, with the regiments the Oueen had Capture of , , r 11 11'^ Port armed, and grateiully re-named their capture Sept. ' Annapolis. Nor were they forgotten in the treaty of peace. Canada had always been Louis' favourite colony, but Acadia was forced from him ; the T , f cession of an undefined northern region round 1 reaty or o Utrecht, Hudson's Bay was of less importance to him, '7'3- since his officers had by now secured the control of the Great Lakes with a fort at Detroit, and contrived some sort of organization in the huge province of Louisiana, that stretched from Lake Erie to the Mexican Gulf and from the Alleghanies into the unknown West. From a strategic point of view France was still dominant, and the acquisition of Acadia by Britain did but add one more easily-raided settlement to the long weak line of her Atlantic possessions. C. The Treaty of Utrecht and its Results, [colonial terms of the treaty. (n) Hudson^ s Bay and Straits to remain British. {b) Acadia "with its ancient boundaries," and Neivfoiindlaiid^ to be handed over to Britain ; but French fishermen allowed to dry their fish on the Newfoundland coast from Cape Bonavista to Point Riche.* * One year's fisheries were, about 1745, worth to France nearly a million pounds. II.] THE TREATY OF UTRECHT 63 (c) French in Canada not to interfere with the " Five Nations " (Iroquois) subject to Britain. {d) Sf Kit/s to be wholly Iiritish. {e) Spain to cede to Britain Gibraltar and Minorca. (/) Assicnto to be given to Britain, also privilege of trade with the Spanish Main (one ship a year only). {£) No other powers to be allowed to trade with the Main, and no Spanish colonies to be alienated.] As a treaty of peace this Treaty of Utrecht is a great paradox. No treaty made between civilized states has ever embodied more challenges to war. The Of the Assiento we shall speak at length in the fuiiof chapter on Africa. We retained Gibraltar, and war. with it for a hundred years the bitter enmity of Spain. While reclaiming Newfoundland, we left to France just such carelessly defined privileges as must always be, and have been ever since, a running sore on the colony's prosperity. We gained Acadia " with its ancient boundaries," and the vagueness of the phrase sanctioned forty years of massacre among Acadian forests. And we bound France over to recognize the Iroquois terri- tory as under the dominion of the King of England — and stretched that expression at last to include every foot of ground that might have known an Iroquois raid, every bay that had seen the furrow of their daring war- canoes. Yet this explosive instrument — more like an infernal machine than a treaty of peace — secured for Great Britain the longest spell of tranquillity she en- ^^^^^^ joyed between the Armada and Waterloo. This j-'^,,*""^ arose from two causes. In the first place, the f'^"°"'- points in dispute were nicely apportioned between France and Spain : and the death of Louis XIV. in 171 5 severed the alliance between these nations and turned them into suspicious neighbours. Louis XV. was a 64 ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN AMERICA [chap. minor, and the Regent was only too glad to trust his naval foreign policy in English hands : he even forbade French trade with the South Seas in order to secure English support for the succession of the House of Orleans to the French throne, if the young king should die. It was this complaisance which so weakened the French fleet as to be the real cause of the loss both of India and Canada to France. In the second place, the British ministers, whose fortunes were bound up with the Hanoverian succession, dreaded a French-supported Jacobite invasion too much to insist on any point of dispute which might lead to a quarrel with France. As for Spain, if she provoked a war, the British fleets were powerful enough to paralyse her both in the Mediter- rannean and the Atlantic, and so hold her struggling but innocuous till she was tired. The danger was, after 17 1 5 as before, a Franco-Spanish league: till that came about, Britain could watch with little concern the vagaries of the continental states. o Meanwhile, British commerce flourished mightily. A king had made the war, but merchants made the . , peace — as the Tories found when next 3/ear they Commercial i^ _ '^ _ -^ expansion, tried to negotiate a Commercial Treaty with France, of which the merchants did not approve. And among the merchant adventurers who were encircling the globe with their trade-routes there appeared a great company — the South Sea Company, established by Harley in 171 1 — which hoped to exploit the Spanish markets in South America. The British Government gave all possible help, turning over to the Company such scanty privileges of trade with the Spanish Main as had been wrung from the kings at Utrecht. Year by year, lawfully and still more by smuggling, the company's business increased : till in 1720 a gigantic scheme was formed for lending the Government enough money II.] THE TREATY OF UTRECHT 65 to pay off the scattered National Debt of ;i^3 1 ,000,000, saving it i per cent in interest, and giving it ^j^^ a bonus of ;^7, 500,000 for the privilege of doing gf°^^^ so. The transaction in itself was feasible ; * Bubble," ' June-Aug., the very possibilities of the scheme, indeed, '7^°- proved its ruin. For people rushed to buy shares, at first in this, then in any company that promised big dividends : i^ioo shares went up to ;^ 1,000, and money was flung at the heads of the wildest projectors. The South Sea directors took alarm, and procured the down- fall of a large number of bogus speculations. But in that whirl of excitement nothing could be done steadily : with the fall in other shares the Company's own shares fell as quickly and unreasonably as they had risen : and the directors found themselves helpless before a raging crowd of disappointed speculators, whose losses they were forced partly to recoup from the wreck of their own estates. At this crisis a great financier was needed, and Walpole was found. He remitted the bonus of ^7,500,000 and gave the Company a little breathing time, so that it was found in the end waipoie; 1-1 11 r 11 1 1 his supre- that its shares had never even fallen below par. macy, It seemed to England that Walpole had saved the State, and from that time began his long supremacy over Parliament and the nation, only to be broken at last by the troubles of that same South Sea trade, to whose vicissitudes he owed his advance. Coming into power by such means, Walpole could not but feel how dangerous to genuine com- . , , . ^r 1- His free- mercial success was the existence of monopolies, trade It was the prospect of a huge monopoly that had so fatally inflated the price of the South Sea * The Company was to lend to the State at 5 per cent : State creditors, instead of their former 6 per cent, were to get 4 />/us a share in South Sea profits. E 66 ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN AMERICA [chap. Company's shares, and when things were quiet again, and the rescued Company set to work to utihze its privileges, their results were every year more disap- pointing. It is, therefore, easy to understand that Wal pole's colonial policy tended always to remove restrictions on trade, such as the conventional attitude of all European mother-countries still imposed on their colonies. Our North American colonies more especi- ally felt the burden of these restrictions, because they were the only manufacturing colonies then in existence. From Canada, from Mexico, from the Spanish Main, the exports were mainly of raw material — skins or precious metals ; from New England the colonists would gladly have sent not merely wool and iron, but the myriad products of wool and iron worked up among their own people. The English mer- The tner. , f i r ^ • i-rr cantiie chant s theory of trade was quite different ; the theory of , . . , i i • • i coioniza. colouists cxistcd to supply him With raw material, to take from him his manufactured goods ; if the colonists had other aspirations they must be made to understand the truth. The merchant, in fact, was no logician ; he held himself to be far above a Spaniard, but forgot the corollary that his New England countrymen was equally far above a Mexican. Walpole made no attempt to teach him better. He was in power during dangerous times, and he saw no politician as able as himself to preserve the ppportun- peace which England needed. The welfare of the country, he thought, demanded that he should retain power somehow — and certainly the history of fourteen years after his fall confirmed his belief. A man in such a position must be an opportunist ; he must be ready to sacrifice his most cherished ideas about law-making, and to pass laws that violate them, II.] THE TREATY OF UTRECHT 67 so long as he can keep a hold on the administration of the government. So Walpole's colonial policy was framed on the same lines as all the rest of his work ; he pacified the merchants by making laws as restric- tive as they desired, and soothed the colonists by letting those laws remain as nearly as possible a dead letter. When the Pelhams came into power they continued the same policy, from sheer laziness rather than from conviction. And so the theory and the practice of Britain's colonial relations were separated more and more, till a sudden attempt to wrest them back into coincidence brought about the loss of America. Walpole, with his South Sea Bubble experi- ence, created the situation that ended in the American Revolution. There was much else to be done in the intervening fifty years before such an ending could be possible. The South Sea Company and its half-legitimate trade with Spanish colonies had other mischief to do. The family relations between the French and Spanish Crowns were still capable of wrecking European peace. In 1733 the Franco-Spanish league was revived ; the two ^^^ j^^^^ Bourbon powers were to combine afjainst Austria Ji?" Family ^ o Compact, and England, damaging in every possible way '733- Austria's supremacy in Germany and Italy, and Eng- land's supremacy in commerce. Walpole, it seems, knew of this : * but he knew also that, while France had no immediate desire to crush England, the Spanish Queen had a bitter hatred of Austria, and the alliance was therefore likely to threaten Austria first and ^^^, ^,g j^ leave England alone for some time. So more for peace; urgently than ever he insisted on peace, every year of * " If the Spaniards had not private encouragement from powers more considerable than themselves, they would never have ventured on these insults and injuries." — Speech in Parliament, March 30, 1738. 68 ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN AMERICA [chap. which added to the wealth of the country, and made more popular the Hanoverian dynasty that began to seem synonymous with prosperity. But the nations were too strong for their rulers. With the fall of the Stuarts personal attachment to a dynasty had died out in England : the accession of the House of Hanover marks the rise of commerce to power in the political world. And prosperous though the merchants were, their very prosperity made the mer- , . ^ • . . . ^ "^ , , chants in- their lew grievances more irritating and less bearable. A single English ship of 500 tons burden might lawfully each year enter the harbour of Porto Bello on the Spanish Main : besides that one no vessel was allowed to bring British goods for sale in the markets Spain jealously guarded for herself. Yet every )'ear the South American colonists managed c ,- to smuggle in the forbidden wares. The one Smuggling OS" 2"'^^, admitted merchant vessel, men said, used to Spanish ' Main. discharge cargo by day and fill up again nightly from storeships that lay further out at sea ; strange craft put in for shelter at unlikely places, and dis- appeared lighter than they came. The Spanish customs-officers, irritated by such successful trickery, and fretted always by the want of support from their own colonists * — for why should a Carthagena man aid in getting revenue to be used in Madrid ? — made their rules stricter and stricter, their search of suspected vessels more and more inquisitorial. They had right on their side, and pressed it to the verge of tyranny ; their cunning enemies, usually outwitting them, were loudly and virtuously indignant at Spanish insolence. London, which during the eighteenth century con- trolled England almost as surely as Paris does France, * Note the quotations from Kaynal and Turgot in Sir G. C. Lewis' "Government of Dependencies" (pp. 219-20, ed. 1891.) II.] NORTH AMERICA, 1714-48 69 was wild with excitement ; and the statesmanship of Walpole collapsed like a house of cards at the dramatic advent of Captain Jenkins. This redoubtable person, a ship-captain from Jamaica, was lucky enough to have somewhere lost one of his ears. Lost from his head, that is — for he kept , , ■ . ' i^ Jenkins - the severed ear, and now produced it most '=^'^- opportunely. Six years ago, he said, Spanish customs- officers had raided his ship illegally, and finding nothing, had torn the ear off, bidding him send it to the King of England with a message that they would do the same to him if they caught him. " And what were your feelings," asked the captain's admirers, " in face of this outrage ? " Jenkins rose to the occasion. " I com- mended," he said with due gravity, " I commended my soul to my God, and my cause to my country." His country went wild with excitement ; Walpole might plead, and Walpole might negotiate, but the public preferred Jenkins ; and nine years of mis- managed war was England's reward for her misplaced credulity. D. North America, 1714-48. Meanwhile in North America the colonies of France and England had been steadily expanding along the lines of least resistance. The New England c^i^niai settlers devoted themselves to occupying more affairs, completely the land within their own borders, and found quite enough to do in compromising disputes among themselves as to where those borders were. Spare time was filled up by quarrels between the governors, who were appointed by and under the con- trol of the Crown, and the assemblies, who kept a very tight hand on the purse-strings, and absolutely 70 ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN AMERICA [chai>. refused to make fixed grants for the governor's salary or for any purpose beyond their own colony's bounds. As a natural result of these two sets of dis- Kederation , , . , . , a vanishing putes each colony grew as jealous ot the rest as it was of the mother-country, and any idea of confederate action became more and more hopeless. While the English strip was troubled with these internal dissensions, the two great French provinces Consoiida ""^^^^ being bound more firmly together.* The tionof q1(J line of communications had been forced by New •' France. Iroquois raids into a long curve through the Ottawa River and Lakes Nipissing, Huron, and Michigan : but in a few years after the peace a Wabash fort at Lewiston on Lake Ontario, and another at Niagara, not many miles beyond, secured for Canada the control of the western fur trade and shortened the French line of defence by several hundred miles. New York was always in peace-time disturbed by quarrels between the Albany Dutch, who welcomed trade under any flag, and the authorities in New York City, who objected to any trade with the common enemy ; and while the Governor did, after a time, confront the new French forts on Ontario w-ith a blockhouse on its southern shore at Oswego, he was much more anxious about Fort Edward on the main Hudson-Richelieu line, which was to break the traffic between Albany and Montreal. The Canadian authorities were quite as little inclined to favour this intercourse, and in 1731 began to build a strong fort at Crown Point.f where Lake Champlain narrows considerably. * It is a mark of the gradual consolidation of Canada and Louisiana that Law's Mississippi Company (a P'rench counterpart of the South Sea Company, and still less fortunate) held for some time the monopoly of Canadian beaver-skins. t A euphemistic translation of the French " Point de la Chevelure " — i.e. Scalp Point. ii.i NORTH AMERICA, 1714-48 71 While France was thus strengthening her hold on the territories she retained, she was no less eager to make useless the concessions forced from her at Utrecht. The Hudson's Bay Territory then handed over to ^^ ,^^3- England comprised only the waters of the bay, [^°vl°en'^^ its coasts, and the inland country to some ^'■>'^' distance on the east and south. A French explorer, de la Verendrye, who was in command of a fort on Lake Superior, set to work to block all English expansion westward. He pushed his explorations past Lake Winnipeg and up the Saskatchewan River, establishing forts along the road to overawe the Indian tribes and act as depots for their trade. His son pushed further on still, and some claim for him the first sight of the Rocky Mountains ; but he was at any rate able to set at rest the generally believed rumour that the Pacific Ocean was to be reached by some great river joining either the Mississippi or the St Lawrence. As for Acadia (without which Canada had no self- sufficing food-supply), its recapture was the dearest wish of every Frenchman in Montreal. No step was taken that might lead away from that end : no r T^i T-' 1-1 1 ■ Acadian sacrifice was too great for it. The English policy policy of r r , A J- England was from the first one of peace : the Acadians were left undisturbed in their possessions, neither their customs nor their religion were meddled with, and when they met with evasion several mild requests that they should swear allegiance to the King of England, their excuses were again and again accepted. The French began by offering to ship to Cape Breton Island all who preferred to remain French subjects : but no ^^^ ships were sent — the Acadians were much more France. useful where they were. Then for sixteen years the Governor of Cape Breton saw to it that Acadia remained stubborn against all English offers. They wished to be 72 ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN AMERICA [chap. French subjects, the farmers of Mines protested — they were only anxious to emigrate to French soil : but they could not think of doing so unless the British Govern- ment arranged for their passage and bought all the property they did not take with them. " If we take the oath to King George " — this was another excuse — " the Indians will slay us " : and then they went away to stir up Indian attacks on British trading vessels, and on the two wretched forts at Annapolis and Canseau, which were the only signs of British dominion in the peninsula. There was a very different scene beyond Canseau Strait. At Utrecht the French diplomatists had clung unshakably to Cape Breton, and the first France oc- •' '■ ^ cupies moment of peace saw it strongly occupied. Cape _ Breton Id., After some years of hesitation a new fortress was begun in 1720 on its south-eastern corner; and for twenty years the defences of Louisbourg grew Louis-"' ^ and multiplied, New England traders supplying ^°"'^' not a little of the material which was to shelter their deadliest enemies : for Louisbourg, men .said in France, might yet rival Dunkirk as a base for privateer- ing-. The harbour, certainly, was not a good one : but it soon became the rendezvous for French trade in both the East Indies and the South Seas. It was not surprising that the Acadians should still hope for restoration to French hands ; so in 1730, after much haggling, a strong Governor of Annapolis forced on them the oath of alle"-iance to George II., with much attention to the niceties of French grammar, lest they should outwit him by swearing to a meaningless form of words. But even when the peninsula was nominally peaceful there was still trouble brewing on the mainland. There had never been French settlements between the lower St Lawrence and the Bay of Fundy; that forest-ridden maze of land was left to roving Indians, mostly of the 11.] N.ORTH AMERICA, 1714-48 73 Abenaki tribe. For many years after 171 3 the English made attempts to settle on some definite boundary in that quarter between Canada and Massachusetts,* but the French had no intention of letting anything inter- vene between them and their lost Acadian province. So the land from the Kennebec eastward was de- liberately kept desolate; when the Indians themselves made a peace with New England, missionaries were sent from Montreal and from France itself to excite them again to war. We had a thirty }^ears' peace with France in Europe, it is true, but not for one single year of the thirty was France honestly at peace with us in America. So, when the war of Jenkins' ear broke out, and when a little later the two colonizing nations war 1 •!• ■ T^ XT 1 A • between came to open hostility in Europe, North America Engi.ind , r 1 /- \ ^• i ^""i Spain. was quite ready lor the tray. Acadia was at 1739-4S. once invaded by a mixed force of Indians and auT°^'^^ stnan French from Louisbourg, and Annapolis narrowly f"^';':"^'""' escaped capture. New England, aided by a grant France de- ^ '■ . ... Clares war of money from New York, retaliated with spirit against T . , ^ England, on Louisbourg. Shirley, the Governor of Massa- 1744- chusetts, with great secrecy organized an expedition of thirteen ships and four thousand men, all colonial ; Pepperell, his colleague in the command, spent — if we may believe his own statement — no less than ;!^ 10,000 on the enterprise. Orders from London sent the West Indian squadron up to help the colonists by intercepting any rescuing force : the siege, which lasted forty-nine^ . , o c> ' y Capture of days, was carried on against a much-puzzled Lou'^'joufg. ■^ o '^ June 17, garrison by men full of life, who cheerily sledged '745- their cannon across morasses and spent their leisure time in athletics. When the fortress capitulated, the * Massachusetts then held the district which is now the State of Maine. 74 ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN AMERICA [chaP. victors thought it a fine joke to keep the French flag flying, and caught three of the enemy's merchantmen with valuable cargoes before the trick was discovered. The war was not one of brilliant successes, and this one would have been notable in any war. Boston, of course, was triumphant, and London for the moment scarcely less so. Shirley and Pepperell, the commanders of the New England force, were made colonels in the regular army, and allowed to enrol their own regiments after the fashion of those days. And there the mother- country's enthusiasm came to a sudden stop. Two TheYoun ^ays after the news of Louisbourg came the Undrin" news of a Jacobite rising in the Highlands, Scotland, and American affairs lost their interest. The July 23. 1745- Duke of Newcastle, than whom Britain has had no more incapable Minister, made promises as lightly as he forgot them, saving himself trouble in both ways. Shirley planned a double attack on Canada, by sea against Quebec, and by Lake Champlain against Montreal : the northern colonies, now all afire with victorious ardour, raised troops for the enterprise — and the next news from Europe was that they were left to themselves, not only in the attack, but even for defence. Without hindrance from the British Govern- ment, a large fleet had left La Rochelle to recapture Louisbourg and Acadia and punish sharply the rash colonists who had insolently challenged the power of France. Canada took heart again, and French-Indian raids destroyed the fort at Saratoga and drove our Acadian garrison within the half-ruined walls of Annapolis. New England awaited with grim anxiety an invasion that never came. Forty- one fighting ships, besides many transports, put out of La Rochelle harbour ; seven warships and as many transports put in to Chebucto. Storms shattered the 11.] NORTH AMERICA, 1714-1748 75 great fleet, driving part of it home again to be captured in sight of France ; fever and dysentery decimated the crews and troops. The admiral died of apoplexy, the vice-admiral committed suicide. The seven ships made one more desperate attempt to reach Annapolis, and sailed into another storm. The invasion had collapsed without sighting an enemy. Next year France made another attempt to reinforce its Canadian colony. But by this time the Highlands were quiet again, and the British fleet was on the look- out. Anson destroyed one fleet, and Hawke p; ^^^^^ another. In Europe France was losing ground, ^'g'*'"*^^' in spite of fine fighting on the part of her 'j/^'*,{Jjj,^ generals. Prussia had retired from the war, Oct. 14. the only gainer by it. Every one else was tired of it. Early in 1748 Britain, France, and Holland, came to terms, and in October signed the treaty of Aix- la-Chapelle. It was as inconclusive as the war Aix.ia- had been. The commercial troubles which began the war were not even mentioned : the disputed boundaries in North America were mentioned only to postpone a solution of the difficulty. The one tangible result for Britain was a demonstration of the dangers of wide empire. More than ever the French Govern- ment saw their need of Louisbourg : to get it back they offered Madras, which a French expedition had wrested from our East India Company : and the New Englanders found their cherished trophy of victory once more in the possession of a vindictive enemy. The exchange was wise, from an imperial point of view. A French Louisbourg meant danger in North America, but a French Madras meant our expulsion from India. But to the men who had taken the fortress, who had done the one big thing of a miserable war, it was a cruel disappointment. 76 ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN AMERICA [chap. E. The French advance all along the Line. To the French in Canada this peace meant simply better opportunities for carrying on the war. No one expected it to last for long ; in a few years Europe would be again ablaze, and communications with home, The always the weakest point of Canadian defence, French . position would be in daily danger. While they had ened. timc, they must make their lines solid from end to end. Louisbourg must become impregnable, Acadia uninhabitable, Lake Champlain and the Great Lakes impassable by English invaders ; and the Louisiana road, still too devious for safety, must be shortened and strengthened through its whole length. The new fortifications at Louisbourg so alarmed the British Government that a counterstroke was determined on. Within nine months of the peace a fleet founded, of emigrant ships sailed into Chebucto Bay, and in three years the ramparts of Halifax contained four thousand souls. Canseau was abandoned, Annapolis neglected, and the new post became — as its natural strength demanded — the centre of British power in the France north-cast. But beyond its walls French in- rebeifion Aucnce was practically supreme. The plan of in Acadia, campaign, decided on in Paris, was carried out with unflinching ferocity. The " ancient boundaries " of Acadia, to which the Treaty of Utrecht referred, were still in dispute ; the French resolved that at most they should embrace the peninsula only. Forts were sejour built to Command the isthmus at the head of ,1749. (^j^jgj^g^^Q Bay; and within the territory thus left nominally to England tribes of Micmac Indians roamed to and fro, under their fierce director the missionary le Loutre, scalping the settlers near Halifax, II.] ADVANCE OF THE FRENCH -ji terrifying such Acadians as showed a wish to become quietly subjects of King George, and often forcing the unwilHng farmers to abandon their homes and cross the border to die of hunger round the French forts. EngHsh scalps were paid for, and all necessary supplies were furnished from Louisbourg. The Acadians themselves were not thought of in the matter. The Governor of Canada proclaimed them rebels if they did not take the oath of allegiance to Louis XV. and enrol themselves in the Canadian militia. The Governor of Halifax, more mildly, threatened death to all who had taken the oath to King George and afterwards armed against him. Le Loutre threatened waverers with Indian raids, and demanded the cession of half the peninsula as a reserve for his Micmacs. So, the Micmacs being everywhere, and the Enfjlish only at Halifax and on the Fort Law- isthmus (where they had opposed fort to fort), rence built, even the most peace-loving of the Acadians gradually drifted back under French influence, and met with half-hostile non - compliance every demand and every persuasion of their lawful rulers. Along the Lakes all the forts were strengthened, and a large vessel was launched on Lake Ontario, where the English post at Oswego seriously damaged French trade. Everything was done that Canadian ... . Intrigues diplomacy could suggest to win over the among the r . . 1-11 1 Iroquoist Iroquois : at one time nothing but the personal influence of William Johnson, a young Irish settler on the Mohawk River, restrained the Five Nations from a general raid on their former friends. There was nothing certainly in their relations with the New York people to encourage either friendship or respect : the Albany Dutch cheated them right and left, and the New York Assembly was so indifferent to danger that the Governor had to maintain the Oswego fort out of his own pocket. 78 ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN AMERICA [chap. At one point only were British colonists as active as the French. The Erie-Wabash line to Louisiana was The Ohio ^^^^ fortified. There was an eight-gun fort at valley Ncw Orleans and a six-gun fort above the mouth of the Ohio, with four smaller forts along the Mississippi in between : a palisade at the mouth of the Wabash, and a fort on Lake Erie. But the main valley of the Ohio was hitherto unoccupied by white men, and full of all manner of Indian communities, including stragglers from Iroquois as well as from Huron and Abenaki tribes. In 1749 the first official expedition from entered by Montreal crossed the watershed of Lake Erie B?inv°iie'^^ and launched its canoes on Lake Chautauqua ; '749: as it sailed down the Alleghany River towards the Ohio, it found English traders already on friendly terms with the natives. A year before, two exploring by Walker P^rtics had pushed across the rough Alleghany 1748. ridges, one from southern Virginia on the Kanawha River, one by the Potomac valley to the upper waters of the Monongahela, which runs north to meet the Alleghany, and with it forms the Ohio. The French expedition could only warn these intruding traders to leave French territory — a warning promptly disregarded ; but formal possession was taken of The Ohio ^ ' . / Company the vallev by the simple process of nailing tin (Virginia) "^ '^ . founded, plates bearing the French insignia to trees here and there. In 1753 a new governor, Duquesne by name, mustered a really strong force for the occupa- tion of the disputed territory, made a waggon-road on the portage between Lake Erie and the Alleghany watershed, and built a fort on French Creek, sends where canoes again came into use. The northern Washing- . . . t-n • • i i • ton to re- coloHics werc luactivc ; but Dinwiddie, governor connoitre. . - ^. . . , ... of Virginia, woke at once to the imminent peril, and boldly sent off a young militia officer to the II.] ADVANCE OF THE FRENCH 79 new fort with a demand that the French should at once evacuate them. So daring and dramatic is the first appearance in history of the man who broke a great empire in half and created the great republic ; for George Washington was the governor's messenger. Dinwiddie had sent the news to England, with a request to be given a free hand in acting. He got it — he was authorised to build forts and to ,,■ • • Virginia fig-ht if need be, and ordered to expel "any declines to o ' r J support its number of persons" who might dare to build governor, forts in opposition to him. But all this was to be done at the cost of the colony ; and the Virginian assembly was hard to deal with. After pressure it voted money " for the defence of the frontier," but the frontier was an indefinite locality ; money for work across the mountains it would not vote, not knowing whom the expenditure would benefit.* From Carolina, however, came a fairly strong detachment, and with these and his own men Dinwiddie took the offensive. But he was challenging, though he did not know it, the organised strength of France. His volunteers pushed forward to fortify the Alleghany- Monongahela junction, which he had noted on his former journey as the proper place for a Duquesne fort; they were turned out by a large French "' '^^^*' force, and Fort Duquesne was built on the site that they had chosen. Washington, with all the men he could collect, marched to recapture the posi- „ ' '^ Surrender tion ; he burst upon a French force lyins: in °S^°^^- ' ^ / & Necessity, ambush and destroyed it utterly; but within J"'v4. a month re-inforcements from Canada thrust him back * The vague western boundaries of Virginia and Pennsylvania clashed in that region. The Virginian claim ran north-west, continuing the general line of the Potomac across a vast region up to and beyond Lake Superior ; Pennsylvania thrust hers like a solid bar into the heart of the Ohio valley. 8o ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN AMERICA [chap. to a camp at Fort Necessity, and compelled him to surrender on condition that his men should be allowed to retire safely into Virginia. These definite acts of war forced the hand of the British Government, which had been trying for the last five years to settle peaceably the disputed boundaries in North America. A commission sat at Paris Boundary to adjust couflicting claims ; but they were sion, quite irreconcilable. On the French side the argument was that the nation which holds river- mouths owns the river-basins. Quebec and New Orleans, p therefore, would secure for France every foot of France ' ■' claims soil whosc rain drained off either into the river basins: Mississippi or the St Lawrence. The British commissioners believed in what we now know as the „ . . Hinterland theory : the nation that holds the Britain J f.'^i'T^ coast, they said, holds the land behind it as far ' Hinter- ' -' ' land." as it likes to go. They insisted, moreover, upon the Iroquois clause in the Treaty of Utrecht. The treaty acknowledged the Five Nations to be British subjects ; therefore, their conquests were British pos- sessions : and as every Iroquois raid was a conquest, this extended British North America from Montreal to Michigan and away indefinitely into the lands round Hudson's Bay.* Acadia was treated in the same way. " From the St Lawrence to New England," said the British commissioners — " the bare southern coast of the peninsula," rejoined the French : and one bold man suggested that if onl}^ the English had been " more tractable, less grasping, and more conciliatory," France might as well have asked for Halifax too. But on the whole, while the French claims were extravagant, those of the British were preposterous : and it was a * The Iroquois in 1744 sold to Virginia their right to the territory between the Alleghanics and the Mississippi. i II.] MISMANAGED WAR 8i relief to both sides when Washington's musket-shots broke in upon the strained peace. F. Mismanaged War. In spite of Canadian aggression the various colonies were little disposed to unite for self-defence. The Virginians insisted on an undignified squabble Thecoio- ° , , , . niesdis. with Dinwiddie before they would grant him united and supplies. The Pennsylvanians, half German,* em. half Quaker, wholly pig-headed, renewed a dispute about their constitution, and bluntly told the Governor that they preferred French conquest to giving up their privileges. New York quibbled over the territorial question. Only Shirley of New England, who had been a member of the lapsed boundary commission, came back from Paris full of energy, and began at once a diversion by marching into the lands graddock beyond the Kennebec. At home, however, ^"'1^^°^ the matter was treated more seriously. Two '° manage J the war, regiments under General Braddock \Vere sent '755- to Virginia, where Dinwiddie and Shirley, with four more colonial governors, met the new commander in a council of war. The arrangements were simple and straightforward. There were now four lines of communication between the French and English colonies. Each of cam- was to be used — though war had not been declared — for an attack on the enemy's country. A body of New Englanders was to seize the hostile forts in Acadia, with Louisbourg in view for future efforts. Johnson was to march with a mixed force of colonists and Iroquois against Crown Point. Shirley himself, with the two * " Aliens who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them." — William Clarke. F 82 ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN AMERICA [chap. regiments raised after the fall of Louisbourg, would take the Mohawk River route to Lake Ontario and destroy the forts at Niagara. Braddock and his newly-arrived troops, with the Virginian volunteers, were responsible for the capture of Fort Duquesne. Nine months before this representatives of New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and Mary- banycon- land had met in congress at Albany to make a fresh alliance with the half-alienated Iroquois. Benjamin Franklin, the chief delegate from Pennsyl- vania, had seized the occasion to propose a general federation, and his colleagues had listlessly accepted it. But now that federated action was urgently necessary, no trace of it was to be found. Each colony quarrelled wath the rest about expenses, about command, about the number of troops to be raised and the work they were to do. Franklin himself is a notable example of Franklin. -,,,.. the narrowness oi these local patriotisms, as Washington is of the fine national patriotism that becomes a great man. Where Pennsylvania was not concerned, as in the case of Braddock's expedition (which was to march through Virginia), Franklin could be zealous for the success of British arms ; if his own State was called upon, he became at once a querulous and quibbling partisan. The same man who in May personally procured for Braddock nearly all his trans- port waggons, spent November in exciting the Pennsylvanian Assembl}- to refuse a war-vote, till the enemy was within sixty miles of Philadelphia. Braddock's expedition was the first to start. With fourteen hundred regular soldiers, and about five hundred Virginians under Washing'ton, he The Ohio , , ^ ^ , , , t , , Valley ex- advanccd to Port Cumberland near the head- waters of the Potomac, and began to cut a road through primeval forest so that the army could move II.] MISMANAGED WAR 83 with all its paraphernalia. In eight days twenty miles were covered, and Washington advised his commander to leave the heavy baggage and push on with the best of his troops. Braddock pushed on accordingly — at the rate of four miles a day or so. This dawdling ruined all : it gave the French leaders time to cheer up their wavering Indian allies — for since Washington's repulse every Ohio Valley Indian was on the French side — and encouraged them at last to take the offensive. On the ninth of Juh^ Braddock reached a ford of the Monongahela, only eight miles from Fort . . Fiirht near Duquesne. The ford, to his surprise, was FonDu- undefended, and his little army marched across juiy 0,' and along the further bank in a well ordered array. The advanced guard had crossed a little gully and the flat beyond it, and was just crossing a second gully, when a force of about nine hundred French and Indians appeared in its front. The front files checked and fired : the main body came up to support them. Immediately every enemy disappeared from view: but from behind trees on all sides, and from the two gullies, just deep enough to serve as rifle-pits, a continuous fire poured in upon the crowded English. For three hours they stood thus, firing wildly at an invisible foe, but too helplessly puzzled to follow their officers into the death-giving forest : then Braddock, wounded and in despair, ordered a retreat, and a panic-stricken crowd melted away along the newly-made road. In a da}' and a half they were sixty-seven miles from the scene of disaster, infecting the reserves with their own fears. The baggage and ammunition were destroyed : „ °° '^ ^ Retreat of Fort Cumberland was disgracefully abandoned — Dunbar, for Braddock's death soon after the fight left a coward in command ; and the road constructed with so much labour became a highway for all the savagery of the 84 ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN AMERICA [chap. West, let loose by France upon the scattered settlers of Virginia and Pennsylvania. While Braddock was still at Fort Cumberland another part of the fourfold scheme of attack was in process of execution. Monckton, the commander jugationof at Halifax, landed on the Acadian isthmus a force consisting mainly of New England volunteers. Vergor, the French commandant, sent hastily for help to Louisbourg, and .set le Loutre to dragoon his flock into making some sort of defence. But Louisbourg was already blockaded by a British fleet, and the miserable garrison of Fort Beausejour (its commander included) was chiefly anxious not to be killed. Vergor surrendered without much resistance ; le Surrender , . , . . , , , of Fort Loutre escaped m disguise, only to be caught Beause- , . , , jour, on his way to r ranee and thrown into an English prison. The other French forts on Acadian ground were given up without fighting. Acadia was at last mastered, and Monckton took measures to secure its absolute obedience in future. The mistakes of the last forty years must not be repeated. Yet his New England troops were there only for the summer, and their departure would certainly be the signal for fresh efforts on the French side to Expulsion . \ 1 1 \ 1 • of the recapture the province. As long as the Acadians Sept. to ' were left in it, such efforts might at any time be successful. Therefore — he decided with some reluctance — the Acadians must go. Shirley and Lawrence, the governor of the province, agreed with his decision. One pities the unfortunate farmers while admitting that they deserved it. Their fathers, made British subjects by the act of the French king, had refused either to leave British territory or to obey British rulers. They themselves had been born under the British flag ; but they followed in their fathers' II.] MISMANAGED WAR 85 footsteps, and no small number had been actively and treacherously hostile to the British Government. Now they were given a last chance ; the oath of allegiance to King George, without equivocation, was proffered to them ; and their refusal left no course open but that they should be deported from the land to which they were a danger. For three months the work went on with perhaps unnecessary harshness, till six thousand of them had been removed and distributed among the thirteen older colonies ; and Acadia was no longer a weakness in the British line of defence. The fight on the Monongahela had put Braddock's papers into the hands of the French, who now had warning of the whole scheme of attack. Conse- , , Johnsons quently, before Johnson led his motley force from "pedition Albany (five colonies were represented in it besides the Indian allies), an army was already on the march from Montreal to defend Crown Point. The French Government at Paris had known from the first of the English preparations at the end of 1754, and had lost no time in despatching six regiments to Canada under the command of Dieskau, sending out at the same time a new governor, Vaudreuil, since Duquesne was enfeebled by ill-health. These six regiments were sent against Johnson, and lay at Ticonderoga while he was collecting his troops at the southern end of Lake George. Dieskau remembered with envy the defeat of Braddock, and hoped to equal it by contriving a similar ambush on the road between Lake George and the Mudson. The ambush was well laid : but the Massa- chusetts regiment that fell into it had previous attacked experience of Indian warfare, and made a hand- ^>: , '^ ' Dieskau, some retreat to its timber-walled camp on the Sept. 8. lake, against which the fury of Dieskau's assault was shattered. The PVench were routed, and their general 86 ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN AMERICA [chap. wounded and taken prisoner : but Johnson's loss was j,^^j too heavy to let him take the offensive, and the HcnJ^"" enterprise had no further result than the building built. q( Port William Henry on the scene of the victory. As for Shirley and his attack on Niagara, they collapsed altogether. His two regiments consisted of raw levies, unstrung by the news from Virginia. expedition Hc got them as far as Oswego, found that the French were ready for him, and decided to put off active hostilities till the next spring. So ended the last year of the nominal peace.* In two battles and a siege French and English troops had met each other as enemies. From the Roanoke to the Susquehanna the allies of France were ravaging British territory. Acadian refugees were straggling into Quebec or across the wilds to New Orleans with bitter complaints of Enorlish cruelty. It was War . ^ . . declared time to rccoguize that the nations were at war Franceand aud lu Juuc, 1/56, the Scvcn Years' War began. May 15, Europe only needed the signal to blaze with the war-fire from end to end. Yet America was not entirely neglected ; Montcalm was sent from France to replace Dieskau, while the English ministry despatched Webb, Abercromby, and Loudoun, one after The campaign the othcr, to countermand Shirley's plans and disagree about their own. Shirley was urgent to repeat the attacks on Crown Point and Niagara, and under his orders Bradstreet, a New Englander, took supplies up to Oswego and defeated with heavy loss a raiding party of French. It was the last * After all, the authorities in London had (as often since) made very little preparation nearer home to meet the coming war. On Aug. 27, 1755, they received information in great detail and almost simultaneously from Nice, Cartagena, and Madrid that 38 men of war and 180 battalions of troops were in Toulon ready to attack Minorca ; but in October England had only five small ships of war in the Mediterranean, and no real rein- forcement was decided on till March 1756. Vet Hawke was raiding French commerce betweeen Ushant and Finisterre from August 1755 onwaids. II.] MISMANAGED WAR 87 victory for very many months. The main colonial army collected at Fort William Henry, preparing for an advance on Ticonderoga, where Vaudreuil had built a fort during the previous winter. Webb and Aber- cromby were bent on this enterprise, and neglected Oswego, which Shirley vainly implored them to rein- force. When at last Loudoun despatched Webb to do so, it was too late ; Montcalm had massed troops Oswego on Lake Ontario, taken and destroyed Oswego, taken by and secured the sole control of the Lakes and French, Ohio valley. Webb ran shamefully before an imaginary enemy (for Montcalm was already on his way back to Lake Champlain) and settled down to sulk at Fort Edward. The news paral}'sed the army on Lake George, and the year ended with nothing done ; though the winter is made memorable in New England story by the exploits of Robert Rogers, who was continually scouting round the French forts even for miles beyond Crown Point, harassing their convoys, capturing their outposts, and keeping his leaders well supplied campaign . , . • r • T 1 • of '757- wath important mlormation. In the spring Loudoun decided to abandon attacks by land and co- operate with a fleet from England in taking Louisbourg. The two forces, however, only met in Halifax paiiureof in July ; a rival French fleet had already entered lo„-|:°" the threatened harbour ; and the storms that '^°"''s- saved New England in 1746 did equally good work for Canada in 1757. But Loudoun's arrangements were not without result. He had withdrawn the best of his troops from the land attack ; two thousand only were left at Fort William Henry, and fifteen hundred more under Webb at Fort Edward. Against them Montcalm moved the whole army of Canada, six thousand white troops besides bands of Indians from every tribe between 88 ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN AMERICA [chap. Louisbourg and Lake Superior. A five days' siege drove the garrison of Fort William Henry to Montcalm 7 ttt , i , • ... takes Fort surrcndcr, since Webb lay cowering; in his camp William , , r 1 , i , t ,• , , Henry, and left them unsupported ; but the Indians had got beyond control, and in spite of Montcalm's desperate endeavours to save them a large number of the prisoners were mercilessly butchered. G. William Pitt. Scarcely ever in Britain's history have her fortunes ^j^^ fallen so low. Not only in America was the shameful enemy triumphant : Minorca was lost, the years. •' '■ Loss of British commander in Germany had made a june°X disgraceful capitulation, the Ministers had even Conven- brought ovcr Hanoverian troops to defend Kiostlr England against invasion. But in July of the 1^"^"^ shameful year William Pitt took office, forced '757- there in spite of King and Parliament by an in- Pitt called , . ^ . - ^ , , "^ , . to power, dignant nation. It was too late to do anything in 1757 : Pitt set to work to have everything ready for immediate action at the earliest moment in 1758. The European war he determined to leave alone, except for the help given to our ally, Frederick of Prussia, by unstinted subsidies. For Britain in future the war was to be colonial and naval. In His new Amcrica especially victory must be won all policy. along the line. The fourfold attack was to be renewed, with good generals this time as well as good troops. Better than any general was Pitt himself, great with a self-confidence that he had right to feel, full of enthusiasm, masterful, a leader of men because he judged their powers as unerringly as he knew his own — whose room " nobody ever entered who did not come II.] WILLIAM PITT 89 out of it a braver man." For the Louisbourg expedition he chose Amherst, a man of the bull-dog type, with the bold and almost reckless Wolfe for his adjutant. Abercromby was left to attack Ticonderoga — for political influence required some concessions — but his brigadier, the real leader, was Lord Howe, according to Wolfe " the best soldier in the British army " : and the Mohawk-Ontario expedition was left in his hands. Forbes, a Scot in caution as in race, was sent against Fort Duquesne, with Washington to help him. Many thousands of troops were despatched from England, notably the newly-raised Highland regiments, who were to redeem in America the rebellion of 1745. And to leave the new generals and the new army a free hand in conquering Canada, the British navy was set to watch that no similar reinforcements should leave France. The new policy was not long in justifying itself. The French Toulon fleet was blockaded within the Straits of Gibraltar. Another was destroyed at St Malo, and a third burnt at Cherbourg, of victory. Louisbourg, left to its own resources, succumbed jun^Ja'"' after a brave defence against an eight weeks' '"^V o o Cherbourg siege, in which Wolfe's gallantry played a ^"s s. jt T A T-> 1 Louis- conspicuous part. * In August, Bradstreet, bourg, to whom the line of the Mohawk had been " ^ ^^' entrusted, dashed across Lake Ontario and took Fort Frontenac, thus breaking in half the r^ T r • • 1 • r • • Frontenac, Canada - Louisiana chain 01 communications. Aug. 25. And late in the year the doggedness of Duquesne, Forbes was rewarded by the capture of Fort Duquesne. At one point only had Pitt's combina- * Boscawen commanded the blockading fleet, and Rodney was captain of a 74-gun sliip in it. Wolfe was one of the first on shore, jumping from his boat into the surf under a heavy fire. 90 ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN AMERICA [chap. tions failed : Lord Howe was killed at the first P ., . attack of Ticonderora, and the second was a Failures at o ' Ticonder- bHiid Tush UDOii strong fortificatioHS that ended oga, July6 i o and 8. [^ rctrcat and panic. It was fatal to oppose Abercromby to Montcalm. The next year saw no change in Pitt's plans, or in his victories. The American war was now threefold only : Amherst was sent to Lake George, Wolfe to Louisbourg for an attack on Quebec, Prideaux to Lake Ontario for the capture of Fort Niagara — each expedition being destined finally to move in unison with the others upon Montreal. Canada, on the other hand, was in sad plight. France could spare no help : " when the house is burning," said the French Ministry, " the stable must take its chance." In the colony itself Vaudreuil and Montcalm were not working well together : the governor was a Canadian born, and his office was in the Naval department, * so that he had no great love for soldiers come from France. However, they were making great efforts to defend Lake Champlain and the Upper St Lawrence, when the news of an English fleet on its way to Quebec surprised them. Every available man was at once sent to this vital point : and, when Wolfe's army of nine thousand sailed into the river-reach below Quebec, it was faced by sixteen thousand posted on and below the most impregnable fortress in the New World. This diversion of course weakened the opposition m;,„,,-, to Amherst and Prideaux. Niagara fell without July 24. much trouble ; the glory was Johnson's, for Prideaux was killed at the first fire. The whole * Cf. the early troubles in New South Wales between the Governors (all naval men) and the New South Wales corps. II.] WILLIAM PITT 91 of the French West was at once thrown open, the Ohio valley completely deserted, and such French troops as could be rallied took refuge , in Detroit. Amherst meanwhile, no longer spurred into action by Wolfe, set to work on the Lake Champlain forts as if he had been besieging citadels in Flanders. Ticonderoga had been left in charge of a small detachment, Crown Point abandoned xiconder- altogether, and the French defence con- °jl^' centrated in Isle-aux-Noix, at the extremity Crown of the lake; but Amherst besieged and Aug. i. occupied the forts -with great deliberation, and ^om''"" refused to stir a step forward before he po°n't" had repaired and strengthened each of them. °'^'' "' If his had been the only enterprise on foot, there might have been some excuse for this slow advance. But while he built forts and Wolfe cut roads, W'olfe was wearing his heart out before in front of Quebec. The city stands on a long tongue of land that falls in cliffs to the St Lawrence on the right, and on the left less steeply, but still in difficult slopes, to the meadows of the river St Charles. Below the St Charles, along a shore gradually rising northwards to the heights of Montmorenci, Montcalm's whole army guarded the only possible approach to the city — for the cliffs on the St Lawrence above the town] were impassable except by winding paths that a dozen men could hold with ease. Wolfe encamped „ t^ He arrives, on the Isle of Orleans, opposite the Mont- J"">^26: morenci heights, and soon afterwards established siege batteries on Point L^vis opposite t> r^r^ occupies Quebec itself, from which he could bombard ^f^^ the town. But the ruin of the town made Ju"«3o; no difference to the citadel, or to the army below 92 ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN AMERICA [chap. the St Charles ; and although he established a and the third camp on the heights below the Mont- Montmor- morencl River, and harassed Montcalm from enci banks, ' July 9: that position, yet every direct attack on the French army failed. Autumn was coming on ; Montcalm waited patiently, strongly placed with all his forces within reach ; Wolfe had split his into three weak bodies severed from each other by a mighty river. But he was nothing if not squadron daring ; he made a fourth division, sent Quebec, part of the fleet up the river above Quebec, " ^ ' " and so drew away a part of Montcalm's force to Cap-Rouge, where the cliffs were more accessible and needed defence. Still he waited for Amherst, and Amherst did not come. His position could not be held much longer, and he risked every- thing on a desperate adventure. For some days he let his ships, crowded with troops, drift up and down with the tide past Cap-Rouge till the garrison there was tired out with following them Z^^uld" along the banks. Then, on the 12th of Sep- ts', 9?'' tember, a picked force of five thousand men was mustered partly on shipboard, partly on the bank above Point Levis. Night came on, and the main English fleet battered Montcalm's camp and put out all its boats as if for a landing : the ships at Cap- Rouge drifted quietly with the tide. As the tide turned, Wolfe and his forlorn hope dropped down in boats close under the bank, where sentry after sentry let them pass , , in the belief that they were provision boats for and scales •' '■ h^e! hts ^^^^ citadel. They landed at a spot Wolfe had Sept. 13. marked days before, and clambered one by one up the precipitous ridge. Vergor was on guard there, the man who in 1755 had surrendered Fort Beausejour so faint-heartedly : most of his picket was away on 11.] WILLIAM PITT 93 leave, harvesting their own fields on condition they afterwards harvested his. The few that were left with him went to sleep, following their commander's example : and when they woke the English army had gained the heights. By six o'clock Wolfe found himself and his gallant four thousand in line on the Plains of Abraham, with a large body of French from Cap-Rouge in his rear, Quebec in front, and be)'ond Quebec regiment after regiment of Montcalm's men hurrying up to crush him. But his daring had already won the battle, for there was not a cool head left in the French camp. If the English troops could scale those cliffs, they nettle on might be expected an)nvhere : Vaudreuil clung of^,^^,|.^"^ to what troops he could detain beyond the St ^^• Charles : Ramesay, Captain of the Quebec garrison, could barely spare a couple of guns, and Montcalm rushed out of the town at the head of a disorderly mass to stay the English advance. He got them into some sort of order, threw out skirmishers to annoy the enemy's flanks, and led them to the charge. Wolfe's line stood firm till they were at close quarters, then delivered two crashing volleys and charged. The rout was instant and complete. Montcalm, fatall}' wounded, was carried into Quebec : the remains of his army poured down the heights back to their camp, infecting everyone they met with their own panic. At vaudreuii nightfall Vaudreuil gave the order to retreat, ■■="■«"«"? '-' " ' the St and abandoned cannon, camp, provisions, and ^■•''"■rence. the fortress itself to the victorious English. Wolfe, happy in the success of his daring, died on the field. His successors intrenched themselves on the heights they had won, and pressed the siege with vigour. The commandant Ramesay found himself helpless in the face of a threatened mutiny, and on 94 ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN AMERICA [chap. the eighteenth surrendered the town. He could do nothing else ; but it was one more piece of Quebec t> > _ _ 1 surrenders, good fortunc for the British, seeing that a day's delay would have brought upon them L6vis, Battle of ,;r 1 , • 1 r 1 i Sainte Montcalm s successor, with a tresh army and Aprii'28, cooler plans for rendering their position un- tenable. As it was, when spring came, they found themselves besieged in turn, and a battle outside the walls ended in defeat. Now the full effect of Pitt's policy came into view. Both sides were waiting for help from home, and the first vessel up the St Lawrence would decide the fate of Quebec. But there were no more French vessels to come ; all through the previous year the French ports had been blockaded : Boscawen had shattered the Toulon Lagos, fleet off the coast of Portugal, and Hawke amid ^7"!; '^' November storms destroyed the Brest fleet in Quiberon the slioals of Quiberou ]3ay. In desperation Nov. 20. the Ministry trusted to luck, and despatched a convoy early in the year, hoping that it might escape the English guard — and hoping in vain. Canada was Arrival of left to abide its fate, and was not long left wait- fleet It ing. An English squadron raised the siege of Mayl^.'is, Quebec; Levis retired upon Montreal, and busied 7Jk ^ himself about its defence. Then, insistent and in- Amnerst ' arrives i,e- exorable, the threefold advance began again. fore Mon- ' o o treai, Murray from Quebec, Amherst from Ontario, Sept. 6 ; -' -^ ' ' Murray, moved iu along the St Lawrence. Haviland Haviiaiid, forced the passage of Isle-aux-Noix and came up ?,^P';^"., from the south. When the three armies joined Vaudreuil _ -^ capitu- hands, Montreal fell without a blow, and lates, ' Sept. 8. French rule in Canada was over. For twenty-five years Britain had been engaged in a struggle which, by whatever name it was called — Spanish war, Jacobite rebellion, French war, or 11.] WILLIAM PITT 95 even " peace " — was in reality one and the same. A Family Compact and a war with Spain had g^^^^j begun it : its closing years were marked by a c^JJ^''^,,^ renewal of the Compact and the re-entry of ^'^g- 's. Spain to share the fate of France. All over the war de- West Indies French islands were yielding to the agafnst victorious British fleet : the appearance of this d«'."3i. new combatant added Cuba to our conquests,* Havana and matched it with the capture of the Philippine Aug. '14, Islands at the other side of the world. But the Manilla man who had conquered France for us was not oa!"6'. allowed to conquer Spain also: a new king sat Georgeiii. on the British throne, and the Imperial minister zs'T^o •"'" was thrust out to make room for the royal ^g"s'',^oct. favourite. 5, 1761. The peace that came in 1763 was not Pitt's peace, but it was better than people expected from Bute ; p^^^^ ^^ and it was so full of glory for a nation that still ^^['=*' remembered Aix-la-Chapelle fifteen years ago '7^3- that men felt almost ashamed to grumble. Spain bought back Cuba by ceding F'lorida — a much more extended region than the present state of that name : France bartered island against island in the West Indies, and traded Minorca for Belle Isle in Europe, and the Senegal district for Goree in Africa. But beside this land-trafficking stood the great trophies of victory : Canada became British, and all the land from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, and Acadia, ancient boundaries and all : India became British as far as French cession could make it so : the fleets of Spain and France were gone, and the five great oceans, water- ways of all the world, became from that time highroads for British colonization. * Four thousand troops from America helped in tlie capture. CHAPTER III BRITISH CANADA. A. The New Rule in Canada. It seems probable that the Canadian officials had not expected Britain to retain Canada at the peace ; and Canada ^^^^^ ^^^Y ^" P^^^ explain the rather hasty "arcfed' " surrcndcr of Vaudreuil, who for all his faults as per- ^ya,s a Canadian and a lover of his country. manently -' British. There were some in Britain itself who would have restored the colony in exchange for one more West Indian island,* and French officials in Paris as well as at Montreal had seen that a British Canada would remove one of the strongest influences which held the American coast-colonies in allegiance to the mother-country. During the three years which separated the capture of Montreal from the Peace of Paris a new uprising was being fomented in the West, where France still held forts on the Upper Mississippi, while Rogers The Con- (°^ Lake George fame) had occupied the Lake spiracyof forts and garrisoned them with English troops. Pontiac, ° b r 1763-4. From the first, as we have before seen, the Indian tribes had found the French friendly and sympathizing allies ; to the English colonists, never * St Lucia — see p. 42. In the British Parliament of 1774 members spoke of giving back Canada to France as a possible line of policy. 06 CHAP. III.] THE NEW RULE IN CANADA 97 forgetful of their plundered homes in New England, Ottawa and Ojibvvay and Shawnee were just as much " vermin " as the Huron and the Abenaki. The whole West rose under Pontiac, a chief of the Ottawas ; Att.-ickon Detroit only and Fort Pitt (that had been Fort ^^l^^f' Duquesne) were held against the onrush of re- '763- bellion ; Virginia and Pennsylvania were again raided all along their western borders ; and it was a year before the approach of Bradstreet down the Lakes route and a daring march by Bouquet, one of gouqujt Forbes' men, into the heart of the Indian J^'l"? ' Muskin- country, brought the tribes to terms, and really ^^™'^ ^ ended the war in America. Pontiac's war just escaped great importance, and it was no fault of the colonies that it did so. Two things saved the situation — the ready despatch of British troops, and the personal exertions of Johnson among the Iroquois. One of the Iroquois clans actually ,., 11./-1 f II'- 11 Relations did rebel : if the other five had jomed them, with the and prolonged the area of revolt into the old fighting-grounds between Ontario and the Kennebec, Canada must have been conquered over again from the beginning. The New York Assembly, mainly at the instigation of the Albany Dutch, had made a mistake that has been repeated since in the history of British expansion — notably, as we shall see, in the first colonizing of New Zealand ; because the Iroquois had acknowledged British sovereignty, they assumed that Iroquois lands had become the property of New York colony, and had proceeded to make grants of them to all and sundry without thinking of compensa- tion for the tribes who owned them. Johnson soothed his Indian friends with the assurance that the home Government would do them justice: and while Pontiac's war was still in progress, a royal proclamation estab- G 98 BRITISH CANADA [chap. lished throughout British America the honourable The poHcy which in the Canadian Dominion Prociama- has cvcr sincc been honourably observed. No tion, Oct. . 111 1 • 1 T 1- 7, 176-,. private person could buy, and no smgle Indian could sell, the hunting-grounds of the tribes : the Governor alone, by a formal treaty with each tribe's representatives, was to obtain on fair terms such lands as a growing colony might require. Thirteen years later this act of good faith was to figure as part of the King's tyranny over his American colonies : but one need only cross to-day the border-line that parts Assiniboia from Montana, the Cree farmers from the Sioux marauders, to know on which side lay the tyranny, on which the just rule over willing subjects. Then for ten years Canada settled down into a some- what uneasy sleep. The royal proclamation had nominally created four new colonies, besides enlarging the bounds of Nova Scotia and adding the Labrador 'VrratKTe- coast aud Its fishcrlcs to the fishing-colony of mentsfor Newfoundland : and the governors were em- adminis- ^ teringthe powcrcd to summoii Assemblies and to intro- new i colony. duce EugHsh law. As a matter of fact, none of these provisions, except those relating to Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, were ever put into force ; Murray, the defender of Quebec against L^vis, governed the whole of the ceded country till 1766, and his successor, Carleton, maintained his conciliatory policy French- towards the French Catholic inhabitants. The Canadians . . r t^ i i i i i • well immigrants from England and the coast colonies were more intolerant, and demanded recognition as the real owners of the country : the city of London solemnly reminded George III. that his great grand- father had not been fetched over from Hanover to be lenient to Roman Catholics : but Carleton fought ably for the people he was set to govern, and secured at last III.] DISAFFECTION IN THE COLONIES 99 that the Quebec Act of 1774 should grant religious toleration and the maintenance of French civil .|-|,^.Q„g. law, while introducing British criminal law, a ''ecAct. legislative council, and a fairly free system of local government. B. Disaffection in the Colonies. The Quebec Act had other provisions which vitally affected the whole of British Xorth America : and to understand its importance on this side we must go back to the Peace of Paris and study its effect on ^^^ the colonies of the coastal strip. In 176^ American i 1 ^ colonies they contained nearly a million and a half of p^^^^^f people, mostly hardy country folk, whom years p^"^- of border fighting had trained to war, and Pitt's generals had led again and again to victory. And while the colonial troops had begun to understand war on a large scale, the colonial assemblies had gained some insight into extra-parochial politics. They had been part of the European political system : for them Frederick the Great had been subsidized to fight three nations at once. They had, they felt, with perhaps more than justifiable pride, made sacrifices and done great things for the P'mpire : not the least important work of the late campaigns had been done by their own men, Johnson, Rogers, Bradstreet, Washington ; and the New England colonies, at any rate, had spent their money freely on expeditions far beyond their own boundaries. Their position was a splendid one. Three thousand miles of a rough and tedious sea voyage separated ^^^^^ ^j_ them from the mother-country ; their own coast- y^i'^ges -' ' in a line was a thousand miles long, penetrated by f "ss'^ c>' 1^ J \ox mde- numerous inlets, almost impossible to blockade, pendence. Behind them stretched a land practically bound- loo BRITISH CANADA [chap. less, tenanted by a scanty population of Indians, well watered, fertile, rich in minerals. Now that France had abandoned the continent (for Louisiana west of the Mississippi she had handed over to Spain) they had no local enemy to fear ; it was in almost every case French inspiration that had fanned the Indian wars into a blaze, and the deliberate ferocity of French officials that had made them so unrestingly inhuman. There was little wealth in the northern colonies, but there was no poverty ; farmers in New England, cattlemen and small manufacturers in the middle colonies, planters in the South, made up the bulk of the population. Every man could fight ; some of the colonies ordained that every man should carry arms. If such a people wished for independence, what was to prevent them from claiming it? In the first place, there was a very strong feeling of loyalty to the mother-land. Even the Massachusetts But the Assembly, always the most stubbornly hostile wereioyai j-g control, acknowlcdgcd in an outburst of on the "-^ whole, enthusiasm what Britain had done for them. The Dutchmen of New York, the Germans of Penn- sylvania, indifferent at first as to their government so long as they could still make money, welcomed the power which could protect their trade. The Virginians, proud of their cavalier ancestry, maintained that romantic attachment to the country of their fathers which often defies the dictates of self-interest. In all the colonies the best men could not but own that where Britain interfered with their internal government it was nearly always on the right side — to veto sectarian laws, to modify over-harsh treatment of the Indians, to relax the oppressive rule of proprietary bodies. Again, the colonies were very far from a real union. While their troops fought side by side under Forbes III.] DISAFFECTION IN THE COLONIES loi or Amherst, their politicians fought each other over every trivial possibilit\^ of dispute. Questions of boundary, questions of trade, questions united of responsibility for failures, irritated and them- divided them even in the crisis of the struggle for independence. The New England traders were equally ready to supply the British armies and the French islands with food and other necessaries of war. We have seen the Albany Dutch preferring their trade with Montreal to the defence of New York, and the Virginians refusing to pay for regiments that might possibly do some good for Pennsylvania. " They all love England," said Franklin in 1760, " much more than they love one another." But the love and the loyalty, it is to be feared, were rather after the pattern of that sentimental affection which a young runaway is apt to feel for the home which he has deserted and the parents who no longer control him. Moreover, the eighteenth century object to r 1 n • • 1 • ^^^ super- had seen a development of the British constitu- session of tion which American politicians failed to under- control by Parlia- stand. Their experience was of rights defined mentlry by a charter, irrevocable except for serious mis- conduct — an organized colony, like a judge, should hold its office " during good behaviour," free from outside interference. The King was the granter of charters : the King, advised by his privy council, might alter or annul them — if he did so unjustly, they had a personal grievance against him. But by 1760 the acts of the King and his privy council were, to a large extent, controlled by the express wishes of the British Parliament : and that body, under Whig guidance, was rapidly assuming for itself the irresponsible supremacy, the power of altering laws without reason given, which from the days of ancient Greece has been I02 BRITISH CANADA [chap. rightly called tyranny. This was a new and a startling phenomenon to the xA.merican colonist. He was, willingly or unwillingly, a subject of the British king and a member of the British nation : that did not necessarily involve his subjection to the whims of a body of men elected entirely within the bounds of Great Britain.* A democratic people generally mistrusts, sometimes a little despises its own parliament, and is not at all inclined to have greater respect for that of any other country. The parliament of a democracy is a somewhat complicated device for bringing to the front men who can lead the democracy, and lending momentum to the impetus of brains by adding the weight of a majority. The colonies, as a whole, stood by Pitt in 1758 as the States stood by Hamilton in 1788 "f- : but what was Parliament that it should meddle in their affairs ? Parliament had equally determined beliefs in its own Parliament ^'^S^'^^ ^^""^ powcr to do SO. For 3. hundred years warole's ^^ ^^'^ been passing Navigation Acts, and it had laxity, just found out that they were being disobeyed with impunity. If Spain, decrepit and effete, could enforce restrictions of trade on her colonies, why should England drive her team with looser reins ? The answer is, of course, that Spain was ruling Spaniards, and England Englishmen ; but such questions at the time were rhetorical, and did not wait for an answer, and de- Grcnville, coming into office after the Peace, set cidesto himself to remodel the relations between Britain enforce striaP ^^^ ^^^^ colonies. The Navigation Acts must Grenviiie be obcycd ; the slipshod ease of Walpole's Ap^°^r' method was to be abandoned ; if Boston trade '''*'^' could not exist without smuggling, Boston trade must die. Strictness was after all only fair as between * This is what Otis meant when in 1761 he called it a " foreign legislature." Cf. the protest of Barbados in 1651 {supra, p. 38). t In the disputes about Federation. III.] DISAFFECTION IN THE COLONIES 103 the colonies themselves, for obedient Virginia had long complained of the laxity in New England. The law was enforced, and Boston cherished its grievance. One lesson was to be read very clearly in the history of the late war. America could not be trusted to defend herself against attack ; Montcalm and Pontiac alike had required British regiments to defeat them. And if a war came again, it would simplify matters to have the regi- ments on the spot to meet it. Grenville decided, First ^ , ' Quarter- therefore, to station about ten thousand troops ingAct, as garrisons in various parts of British America, The and to levy a tax on the colonies which would a^u^ pay about one-third of the expense. The agents [^^l'^ ^^' of the colonies protested at first,* and suggested that they might be told what they were to pay, and allowed to raise the money in their own way. This, in view of past experiences, was evidently impracticable; Grenville's Stamp Act was passed by a majority of four to one ; and the agents, accepting the situation, nominated officials who should carry it out in each colony. At the same time, to make it evident that the new policy was not selfish, Grenville relaxed the Navigation Acts, whose strictness was avowedly a matter of gain to British trade. Some months later Parliament was startled by bad news from America, which it had quite forgotten, congress The colonial assemblies protested against the yoJk^* Act ; the nominated officials declined to take up O"- 7-^5. their duties ; Boston rioted. A congress of politicians * Franklin in 1764 was not unfavourable to a similar scheme. "It is very possible," he wrote, "that the Crown may think it necessary to keep troops in America thenceforward, to maintain its conquests and defend its colonies, and that the Parliament may establish some revenue arising out of the America/! trade to be applied towards supporting those troops. It is possible, too, that we may, after a few years' experience, be generally very well satisfied with that measure." The italicised words raise the point referred to on the next page about the difference between internal and external taxation. I04 BRITISH CANADA [chap. from nine colonies made a united " Declaration of Rights and Grievances." " We cannot be taxed," they said, " by a body in which we are not represented." Grenville's Stamp Act ministry had fallen, and his successors were not Fib.^1766. proud of the Stamp Act ; Pitt denounced it, da^ator ^^^'^ ^^^ repeal was made easy. But the dignity ^^^- of Parliament had been hurt, and it consoled itself by passing another Act to assert its own power of taxing America. Pitt came into office again, but not into power. If he had been the Pitt of nine years before, who can say what Pitt joins rnight have happened ? for he was planning the J^'^^sovern- annexation of Bengal and an Imperial Customs 1766. Union. As it was, his name gave vitality to a ministry that did everything he disapproved of. The colonies had laid themselves open to what followed. In resisting the Stamp Act they had feared the precedent of their previous nominal submission to the Navigation Acts : and they drew a logical distinction between internal taxation — money to be paid in connection with transactions between people of the same colony, such as marriages, lawsuits, &c. — and external taxation, which arose out of transactions between a colonist and out- siders. The first, they said, must be dealt with by the colony's own assembly only : the second might be levied by the English Crown, seeing that it represented them in all other relations with the outside world. It is Towns- dangerous for relations to chop logic with one hend's another : but Townshend, the Chancellor of the introduced Exchequcr, thought it smart to take the into Parlia- ^ ' o ment May Americans at their word. He passed an Act 13, 1707: _ _ '■ passed in imposing Customs duties on half a dozen articles, and calculated to get by it ;^4o,ooo wherewith to pay colonial Governors and Judges. He got £16,000, of which nearly the whole went in the expenses of III.] DISAFFECTION IN THE COLONIES 105 collection, while the measures of coercion, which America's immediate resistance forced him to 11 1 /- /-I "American undertake, cost about i, 170,000 more. dreed, Cepan- at any rate, was not one of the mfluences which e^^tabiished, 1 T-. 1 • 1 • • • Vec. 1767. made rarliament obstmate in its purpose to tax. Boston, as usual, distinguished itself among the chorus of protests, and the irritated Ministry garrisoned bo„(,„ it with English troops, threatening at the same ^'^^^'^ ^g time to bring home agitators to be tried in Convention England. Then the mistake of five years before Haii, was repeated : the greater part of the Revenue damson Act was repealed, but the duty on tea was fheTow'", maintained for the sake of principle. Boston ^^p'' ^^- '■ Repeal an- renewed its riots, and in one of them a body of nounced, ... . July 1769 : l^ritish soldiers, acting under great provocation, carried, fired and killed four men. Before the excite- 177" ment arising from this misfortune had died down, ?. B^o^ton a British revenue-schooner was taken and burnt "j^^acre," Mar. 1770. bv armed smug-glers. This was followed up by The 1' 1 1- • r 1 • ,1 "Gaspee" the publication of some letters written by the incident, /-^ - , , . , . June 9, Governor of Massachusetts to a friend in 1772. England,* in which he had used, as men will whlteiy. privately, somewhat harsh expressions about ""ers,"""" the people he governed. The colony was still '"i- wrathful when a fleet of tea ships arrived in the princi- pal American harbours, despatched by the East India Company in the hope of getting a little money to pay its way. At Charleston the tea was landed, and stored' in cellars so damp that it became useless : at The New York a landing was refused, but no further tea-pany," 1111-1 -1 ^^'^- '^' steps taken : Boston raided the ships by night 1773- and flung their cargo into the harbour. To the English nation the act of Boston stood for the * Franklin got hold of iheni, knowing them to have been stolen, and sent them over to America for publication. io6 BRITISH CANADA [chap. attitude of all the colonies ; the humorous evasion of Carolina and the passive resistance of New York were forgotten in indignation with this perpetually riotous The Five town, and Parliament retaliated by a series of Acts, 1774. equally violent Acts. The port of Boston was closed to commerce, the charter of Massachusetts partially cancelled, and the garrison quartered directly upon the townsfolk. At the same time it was provided that any British officer accused of illegality in carrying out his instructions should be tried in England, not in the rebellious colony — a law easy of justification, but rendered odious because people confused it with the threat of a few years before. With these four Riot Acts, as they might be called, was joined the Act already mentioned,* which gave the Canadians their own religion — but which alarmed and enraged every colony from Connecticut to Virginia by making the Ohio the south- western boundary of Canada, and so cutting off" from the coastal settlements all hope of expansion and a good deal of land already taken up by their own people. In that particular, indeed, the Quebec Act lost its fairness and became oppressive ; for the Ohio valley had never been occupied by French settlers, and was already peopled by Virginian and Pennsylvanian farmers ; and to put them under French law, which the Act did, was no less unjust than to put Montreal under English law, which the Act was designed to prevent. C. The American Revolution. The colonies were still far from union ; but the Five Acts drove them nearer than they had ever been before. If Parliament could revoke the King's charter granted to Massachusetts, no colony had any guarantee for * P. 99. III.] THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 107 ro8 BRITISH CANADA [chap. security. Six colonies * claimed strips of the territory ^.j^g between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi ; dri°w'" ^^^^ Quebec Act destroyed the claims of towards three, and the other three might be similarly union. ' fc> J First Con- treated at any moment. A congress, irregularly congreis t)ut cnthusiastlcally chosen, met in Philadelphia Se*pT'i, to voice the grievances of twelve colonies ; it 1774- reiterated the well-known arguments, and re- plied to the closing of Boston harbour by a boycott of English goods. Even then, if Boston had not loomed so large in English eyes, conciliation might have been possible, and Pitt (now Earl of Chatham) advised Parliament to close with their offer of external taxa- tion rights — "regulation of commerce" he and they called it — doing so fairly and generously, not in Town- shend's spirit of cheap smartness. But the tea riots were too recent and too impudent, and neither Parlia- ment nor the nation was in a conciliatory mood. And now became plain the strategy of Samuel Adams, most influential and most prejudiced of Boston citizens. Three years before he had organized throughout The Com- , / . ^ ^ . r mittees of the colonics a system of " committees of corre- Corre- . spondence spondcnce," which became, like the Jacobin founded, , , . r i- Nov. clubs throughout r ranee m 1793, centres of dis- affection always ready for a concerted rising. Early in 1775 Massachusetts called out its militia and Affair at prcparcd for active resistance to the British Lexington, army of occupation. There was a skirmish at '775- Lexington, and a running fight between troops and militiamen from Concord back towards Boston. Instantly the news spread from colony to colony, the secret committees called their adherents to arms, the * Massachusetts, Connecticut, Virginia, Nortli Carolina, South Carohna, Georgia. III.] THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 109 royal governors were driven out, the offices of State seked by friends of the Revolution, and the slow- moving masses of the people found themselves headed by active partisans of Massachusetts, who called on them to rise and drive the English murderers into the sea. The loyalists, puzzled and helpless, found it wisest to keep quiet ; that large half-indifferent aggregation of dull minds which we call public opinion was being urged by the incessant efforts of the Adams •1 !• ■ r'i A The second party ni the direction of independence. A Continental 1 i>i •! 1 1 1 • 11 Congress second congress met at rhiladelphia and ad- meets, vised expostulation, but Massachusetts was already far beyond that. The militiamen were be- sieging Boston, where a new army under Burgoyne and Clinton reinforced the garrison on 25th May. The next day Congress called out the New York militia : three weeks later it resolved to form a continental army, and called Washington to be its commander. News of the stubborn fight of Bunker's Hill (falsely so-called, for it took place on a neighbouring hill. Breed's) p.; [^^^^ stimulated the revolutionary bodies to more j^'jff'^'^ confident resistance ; and Congress set about J""'= '^• completing its organization for defence b}' bringing Canada into line with its sister-colonies to the southward. The Congress of 1774 had already issued an address to the Canadians, which, with many quotations from celebrated French authors, called on them as „ I Oct. 26, brothers to claim all the rights of Englishmen. '774- Its sincerity is rather discounted by the fact that the same Congress had just denounced the Canadians and their religion as foes to all true liberty. Early in 1775 it was ascertained that Canada was defenceless and that its French inhabitants would remain inactive in case of revolt — they had bitter memories of war, and no BRITISH CANADA [chap. were threatened with a devastating war if they joined T , the Ens^hsh. Soon after Lexington American Lake o fc> champiaiii voluntecrs surprised Ticonderoga and Crown forts taken i & by Ethan Point — the first acrgressive act of the revoltinsf Allen, ""^ o May lo. colonies. Early in the autumn an organized attack on the St Lawrence settlements was made by two routes, Montgomery moving along the Richelieu on ,. . , Montreal, Arnold marching by a blazed track Montreal ' c> J aban- from tlic Kcnnebcc directly against Ouebec. doned, y o :^ Nov. II. Montreal was abandoned, and for a few months Quebec"" Qucbec, gallantly defended by Carleton, was ^^'^' ■^'' the only spot of British territory left in North America. But the spring brought a fleet from home that forced Arnold (leader since Montgomery's death Quebec ^^^ ^^ attack on Ouebec) to retire to the Riche- reHeved, |jgy ]jj-,g . ^j-,^ ^|-,g arrival of Burgoyne with a 1776. large army drove him back into New York territory and re-established British authority in the northern province. The Americans could console themselves with Boston the counterstroke by which Washington had Mar. 17. ' compelled the evacuation of Boston and so New York igf|- Massachusctts free of war for the future. becomes hM(f"''^^ This, however, transferred the British army quarters, i^q Ncw York, whcre it drove the American Long*^° troops from their position on Long Island, A'ug!2'7. entered New York City, and at last manoeuvred Washing. Washington out of the State altogether and ton retreats "-• "-" to Penn- sccurcd tlic southcm end of the Hudson- sylvania, end of Nov. RlcliellCU ImC. Meanwhile Congress had taken the final step. The bitterness of the colonies again.st Parliament had become personal enmity to the King who controlled and the nation which supported it. They had appealed to Caesar, and found that Caesar was at the back of III.] THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION iii all the acts they complained of. Moreover, during the last months of 1775 they had souq-ht vainly 11- 1 1 , • 1 • T ,• Both sides for allies; they had tried to raise Indian war seekout- parties for the attack on Canada, and they had implored French help against Britain as urgently as twenty years before they had implored British help against France. But Johnson remained a loyalist and brought his Iroquois to Carleton's aid ; and while French help was slow in coming, the British government was able to strengthen its American armies with Hanoverian and Hessian troops. Disappointment at their own failure, vexation at the enemy's success, gave edge to the colonists' wrath ; and on July 4, 1776, Congress adopted a Declaration of Inde- -j-^^j^^ pendence which began with doubtful philo- ciaratjon , '^ oflnde- sophy, strengthened it with a mob of practical pendence. arguments, good, bad, and indifferent, and wound up in a bold and lofty strain, that deserved much better preface, by renouncing British allegiance and calling into existence the free and independent States of America ; " for the support of which declaration," said the signers, " we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour." At the moment there was not a British soldier within the thirteen States. But the operations round New York, already spoken of, were the beginning of a determined attempt to crush American resistance. North and South were to be separated by a military occupation of New York and Pennsyl- the'ensu- vania : then, it was hoped, the natural elements '"^'^"' of discord between New Englanders and Virginians would soon dissolve this newly-announced union. On Washington's side, therefore, the war must be w.ishing- one of dogged holding on to the Middle States defensive. (where also were his food-supplies), securing his wine, Sept. II, 1777; 112 BRITISH CANADA [chap. communication with New England across the Upper Hudson and with Virginia across the heads of Howe s •-> attack: Chesapeake Bay. In 1777 both these Hnes were attacked : Howe, the British commander-in-chief, sailed up Chesapeake Bay, defeated Washington at "" ^' Brandywine, occupied Philadelphia (to which a fictitious importance was given by its being u>wn^" the meeting-place of Congress), and drove the Oct. 4. American * army to wretched winter quarters in a loyalist district at Valley Forge. Clinton had been left at New York with orders to force the line of the Hudson which was held by Gates, and meet another British army which was advancing from Canada. But both these move- ments were made too late in the year : if Howe and Clinton had started when Burgoyne did, Washington's army might have been annihilated and Gates crushed between his two assailants. For Burgoyne marched Burgoyne's ffom CrowH Poiut on July I : within the month attack: j^g j^^^^ crossed into the Hudson Valley, secured the Hud- Fort Edward on the Hudson, and invested Fort July 30: Schuyler on the Mohawk, to keep that road also open for expected reinforcements. Then his difficulties began. The troops that were to have met him did not appear : on his left flank swarmed the vindictive militia of New England : his Indian allies grew restless, his Canadian troops slipped home to get in their harvests, the loyalists of New York were half-hearted and ready to run at the first reverse. A detachment of his force Bennington, was defeated at Bennington, and the scare of it Aug. 16 : bj-Qi^e up the loyalist investment of Fort Battles of '^ i o -n Stillwater, Schuylcr : an attack on Stillwater, twice repulsed bct.'y. ' after desperate fighting, cost him his Indians and the rest of his loyalists. Fort Edward was * This adjective will be used, conveniently though inaccurately, for all that belongs to the United States. III.] THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 113 seized before he could retreat ; and on October 16 he surrendered the starving remnant of his army, surrender the only part of it whose gallantry had deserved log"""' success, to Gates at Saratoga. Clinton very *^'^'- '^• willingly sta}'ed his advance and fell back to New York : the succours from Ontario were defeated at Oriskany : and New England remained in unbroken connection with the central army and government of the States. The news of Saratoga gave the Revolution its first real hope of final success. Left to themselves, ' Theim- these divided States must have come back under portance the dominion of Britain ; the revolutionary goyne's . . , . surrender. leaders might have retired across the mountains — there would probably have been an emigration to the western prairies, and a New Englander republic in the Mississippi valley as implacable as the Transvaal Boers and far more dangerous — but the thirteen States would have again become colonies. They deserved no more, when each fought and worked only for its own hand. The ports of New England, the among the plantations of Virginia, brought wealth to the country around them, while the army on which their freedom depended was starving in Pennsylvania. At the moment of Union a Southern congressman talked freely of the " low cunning " of Massachusetts. Franklin had once offered Grenville, as a substitute for the Stamp Act, that each colony should vote whatever sums were required for general defence ; the value of the offer was now seen, when Congress found itself unable to get a penny from the States, and was driven to manufacturing paper money* and drawing bills on its European agents who had nothing in hand to meet them, in order to * In four years two hundred million dollars in paper were issued. Their value in specie by 1777 was 33 per cent., and by 1780 only two per cent, of their face value. They were never redeemed. The separate States also issued a paper currency. H 114 BRITISH CANADA [chap. provide Washington's troops with the simplest necessaries of existence. But the surrender of Burgoyne brought about an ahiance of the States with France, and from that moment independence became really possible. The France King himsclf was frightened into offering Ivir'Fe'bl^ everything short of that, but it was too late. 6, 1778. Cons^ress, as proud as it was impotent, Royal ^ ^ , ^ , , . t. . , Commis- refused to treat except on the basis 01 mde- tempfto ' pendence. The fear of a coming French with'con- fleet drove Clinton, who had succeeded Howe, jMe'4-17. from Philadelphia back to New York ; though French ^^iQ fleet itsclf on arrival did no more than ileet on American threaten an Engflish garrison in Rhode Island coast, ° ° J"'y- and take its departure for the West Indies.* But the mischief was done : Britain was no longer ^ , r supreme on the seas, and it was the French Death of ^ ' Chatham, ^um to dcfcat her by detainino- her best troops May II, -- o ^778. in Europe and cutting off at the critical moment her connection with the forces in America. The last war's strategy w^as still in the minds of combatants on both sides, and fragments of it reappeared. There was an Iroquois raid on Northern Pennsylvania, and a war of bitter retaliation on the Iroquois country below Lake Ontario. Repeated efforts were made by the British at New Progress -^ of the war. York to rccapturc the line of the Hudson, and Arnold has made his name infamous by his attempt to betray into British hands the T780. fort at West Point, the key of Washington's communications. Meanwdiile, Clinton had con- * The policy of France was : — _/7;-jiV, lo secure for herself the British West Indies ; secondly, to expel the British from India ; and only thii-dly, to free the Colonies after they had served sufficiently lo divert the British forces from the Indies. Ilcncc the French fleets spent most of their time in the West Indies. III.] THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 115 ceived the idea of rolling; up the American line of defence by advance from north and south at once, as Amherst had once rolled up the French line from Ontario and Quebec. Savannah in Dec. 1778. Georgia was taken, then Charleston in South May Carolina, and Lord Cornwallis was left to complete the work at that end, while Clinton Comwaiiis' i ' attack : returned to watch Washington. Cornwallis camden, defeated Gates (of Saratoga fame) and gained 1780V ' a sort of victory over his successor, Greene : guiiford but he had been drawn into Virginia before Ho"^^' ^ Mar. 15, his work was done in the South, and presently 1781; he found himself shut in at Yorktown on fpHngs, Chesapeake Bay, with both Carolinas again ''''''"■ ^' lost to Britain, and his small army surrounded by a French-American force under Washington and Rochambeau. Clinton lay idling at New York, wondering when he was going to be attacked. Again, as at Quebec in 1760, command of the sea decided the event : but this time it was a French fleet .. , Surrender under de Grasse that held the Bay, and Cornwallis ^' '^"^'i- -' ' town, Oct. was forced, after strenuous resistance, to an '9. 1781. honourable surrender. If one might judge by the power Britain was putting forth against France, this loss of seven thousand men was but an incident in the war. The Americans indeed so looked upon portanceof it, and Washington still despaired of ultimate, townsur" success. But as Saratoga convinced France, so Yorktown convinced Britain. The American war had not been very popular with the nation ; indeed, after the first zeal to punish New England's insolence and Virginia's ingratitude, viewof public opinion had come to look upon it rather as a civil war between two bodies of colonists, ii6 BRITISH CANADA [chap. the loyalists and the revolutionaries, in which Britain was helping the loyalists partly with British regiments, partly by subsidizing troops of other nations, as she had done in previous wars with France. And with proper management that is exactly what the war mieht have been. The Middle and Southern States Lo-aiists ^^^ been full of loyalists waiting to be neglected, encouragcd and organized, and New York privateers made havoc among the American merchant- fleet. A Wolfe or a Forbes could have done it ; but Pitt was out of power, and we had only Clintons. So when this last enterprise of Cornwallis, carried out in the very hot-bed of loyalism, ended in dYscolers such ignominious failure, the British nation ' ^"""^ ■ woke to a full knowledge of what its troops Peace wcre dolng, and the king found himself forced motion " ° carried in tocfivc uo all schcmcs of revcncre. Yet, while I'arlia- ^ ^ == ' . ment, Feb. no onc any longer disputed the necessity of giving the United States their freedom, it would be ungenerous to abandon altogether the men who had preferred an Imperial to a local patriotism ; and the war dragged on listlessly for another year in the hope of getting better terms for the loyalists. No such remorse visited the nation when it thought of the war with France. That state had flung itself The Euro- unprovokcd into the fight, bringing Spain in pe.-in war. j^^ ^^.^j^^ * ^|^g ^^j^^-j ^^^^^ ^^^ promeuaded enter.s ^hc Enijlish Channel, and an alliance of the June ID ; •--" ■779; other European powers (known as the Armed Neutrality) threatened to impose unbearable condi- * Spain wanted to regain her lost territory : hence her main efforts were directed {a) unsuccessfully against Gii)raltar; (d) successfully against Minorca ; {c) successfully from Havana against Florida. Holland's only interest was the protection of her commerce ; as she con- sidered it necessary for this purpose to join the Armed Neutrality, England declared war on her. III.] THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 117 tions on the actions of the British navy. When Holland in the winter of 1780 joined France "i°"^"'' and Spain, Britain flew to meet the three an- P^go;'"' ta^onists with a kind of warlike joy. At last Siegeof "^ -^ "^ , _ Gibraltar, there was fisfhtinsj- to be done of which Britain Juiys, 1779, to could be proud ; and Elliott's defence of Gibraltar, close of war. together with Rodney's brilliant victories at sea, Rodney were fit subjects for national pride. Neverthe- Spanish^ less it was time for the war to end. America cape°st was free, and almost bankrupt ; France had jan"i6,' gained from her efforts little but financial diffi- beats' de culties and the spread of revolutionary ideas ^"g^wes" among her people ; Spain had spent countless ^pr^i2, treasure to regain one fortress, and was still l^^^- , '=' ' . Results of outside it ; Holland was ruined, her colonies ti'e war. almost all torn away, her commerce destroyed. Britain herself was impoverished, in difficulties with Ireland, unhurt nowhere but in India. So peace came, welcome to all on any conditions. To her enemies Britain 1 he Treaty gave only the island of Mmorca and the now ofver- useless district of Florida ; to her children she Sept. 30, yielded freedom, and with it the lands of an The Treaty empire that stretched already from the Atlantic sept^'.^' to the Lakes and the Mississippi, and was soon to expand till another ocean determined its bounds.* It is well for the student of history to keep always in mind the true character of this American war. The freedom of the United States was due neither to Franklin nor to Jefferson nor even to Wash- . , .' A note on ington : it was begun, furthered, and finally '^e war. achieved by the incompetence of English generals and the eager desire of France for her revenge. Sea-power wrested America from Britain as it wrested Canada and India from France. But the power that kept alive the * For details see Appendix. Ii8 BRITISH CANADA [chap. fire of revolt through five weary years till help came over the sea was American entirely : it was the un- tiring energy of the revolutionary leaders — of American Patrick Hcury, ex-storekeeper, ex-farmer, bank- rupt, lawyer, and the greatest of American orators — of Jefferson, the man who believed in the people as much as he did in himself — of the two Adams, John and Samuel, whose diplomacy had organized the Revolution. And above all it was the o patience and courage and tactical skill of Washington. He was the leader of a perpetually varying and Washing- always undisciplined army against trained regi- ments in superior force, the servant of a Congress jealous of every success and mercilessly critical of every disaster : but by his endurance he so created a common patriotism among men of all shades of opinion as to secure in the end united action and complete triumph. His experience of war was not large : his learning was not remarkable : he had neither fluency of speech nor originality of thought. But his judgment was excellent, his firmness unshakable, his honour unblemished : by unswerving self-command he reached the summit of fame, and with calm self-denial took nothing for himself when the nation he had made acclaimed his supremacy. The empire that he built was not for Britain : but the British race may count him among the best of its empire- builders. D. The New Constitution. It may be easily imagined that the creation of a new and bitterly anti-British State on the Canadian tiiewaron bordcrs influcnccd considerably the fate of the territories which Britain still retained. The boundary line had been drawn through four of the Great III.] THE NEW CONSTITUTION 119 Lakes, leaving Michigan entirely to the United States — a just decision, since the destruction of the „ , -' ' Boundary. Ontario-Iroquois settlement and the capture ^'"^^■ by Virginian rangers of the Western forts at Kaskaskia and Vincennes had, before the war ended, brought all the land south of the Lakes under the control of Congress. In the east Acadia still was a difficulty, for its boundaries had not yet been defined. But every- where, defined or indefinite, the line was an imaginary one — the centre of great lakes on which both countries had ports, or a parallel of latitude that corresponded to no natural features at all. And just beyond this ,. .... r 1 TheU.E. Ime, withm the next few years, homes were loyalist im- found for the men whom of all others the Americans hated most bitterly. All the efforts of British statesmen had failed to secure an amnesty for the loyalists. At the peace they came streaming across the Canadian borders, leaving behind them all that had made their life happ}', forced to starve and struggle for years before the new country could become their home. Along the bays of Nova Scotia, in the valleys where they made New Brunswick, on the Eastern Farms round Sherbrooke, and throughout a fertile forest-land from the Ottawa to Lake Huron, the United Empire Loyalists built up a British Canada, and gloried in the title they so well deserved. The Mohawk Tyjo^awk Iroquois, too, who had fought well and loyally |fBr™nt"' after their fashion, settled down to quiet farming '^°'^'^- and intelligent citizenship in a district that still bears the name of their chief This introduction into a French province of a people accustomed to British law completely altered the situa- tion in Canada and made the Quebec Act unfair and obsolete. William Pitt the younger, no less a friend to colonies than his father had been, now governed I20 BRITISH CANADA [chap. England: and in 1786 he sent out Carleton (now Lord Dorchester) as governor-general of all the provinces, with instructions to prepare a full report on all branches of Canadian affairs — commerce, agriculture, law, defence, and political conditions. The result of this was The '■ Canada the Constitutional Act of 1791, which divided Canada proper into two provinces, with the Ottawa River as their common boundary. To each of these was given a Governor, a nominee Council, and an elected Assembly : Lower Canada, north and east of Montreal, retained the French civil law. Upper Canada (the new U.E. loyalist settlement) was given English civil law : in both provinces criminal law was to be administered after the English fashion. The home government reserved to itself the levying of Customs duties, which were still looked upon as regulating trade rather than producing revenue : but the money Constitu- .... tion given SO raiscd was given to the two Legislatures to '°Nova - , . , 1 r- , ^. ., Scotia, spend as they wished. Somewhat similar con- j^g^' stitutions had been granted already to Nova f^'g"g"f'''"^''' Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward p. Edward Island : and the five young colonies, the first- ■' '"^" fruits of our newly-learnt wisdom, began tran- quilly their prosperous career. At first sight it seems a daring thing for Pitt to have given Canada a constitution at that particular moment. The French province contained about i ^0,000 The French :: . Revolution pcoplc, the U.E. province barely 20,000 : and Canada but in Francc, the mother-land of that enormous little. . . . 1 1 A . majority, a revolution greater than the American was already in full blast. As it happened, however, the French Canadians were the last people in the world to take up a revolution on abstract principles. When in later years they feared the abolition of their land laws or their language, they could be fiery and III.] THE NEW CONSTITUTION troublesome : but they had already more liberty under the British rule than they had ever con- Canadian I'll r T- 11 1 • views on nected with the name ol r ranee, all the m- "Liberty, n r ^ • ^• r 11 • ^• 1 Equality, nuences oi then- hie told agamst equality, and and the first years of the United States had given nit'y."' them an object lesson in fraternity which hardly en- couraged them to desire it. The clergy, too, always a strong power in Lower Canada, set their faces against all forms of revolution, and Canada spent in peace those twenty }-ears which convulsed and shattered and re- created Europe. Of those years and the course of British policy through them one cannot write here in detail. But it is important to note that the matter at stake on Napoie- our side was really the continued existence of the Empire. Every stroke Napoleon dealt at Britain, and many of those with which he crushed the Con- tinental Powers, were aimed at the destruction Battle of of our colonial and commercial system.* And Aug. i, ' our long list of victories began when our Ministers Battle of saw his aim, and devoted the strength of the bI°^^^^ country to defeating it. He threatened our ^lH'"' Indian Empire with his expedition to Egypt: ^°"J*'i" we destroyed his fleet there and in the end Cairo and •' _ Alexan- captured his army. He called to his aid the '^'■'?'' J""^ navies of Holland and Spain, and planned to August. add that of Denmark : we took the Danish h.-igen, fleet into safe keeping, ruined the Dutch, and isoi', and annihilated at Trafalgar the naval organization "isT;";^' of Spain and France. He turned to conquer the * He made an attempt in 1800 to reconstitute the colonial empire of France by {a) regaining Louisiana from Spain (the treaty of San lldefonso), {d) occupying Ilispaniola — in which he was thwarted by Toussaint rOuverture, (c) making peace with Britain. When he failed in Hispaniola and found himself again at war with Britain, Louisiana was useless to him, and he sold it to the United States for twelve million dollars. 122 BRITISH CANADA [chap. whole continent of Europe, and weld it into one Camper- eighty weapon for the destruction of British down, Oct. trade*; we cut off Europe from the trade of the II, 1797 ; ' r Trafalgar, ^yorld. Mcanwhile the over-sea colonies of all Oct. 21, 1805. our enemies had fallen into the hands of the cree, Nov. Powcr whom Jervis and Nelson had made Orders in suprcmc at sca. At last the unwieldy fabric j°n."7 and of Napoleou's empire began to fall apart, dis- ^°^'."' solved by British subsidies and strained by the Milan De. cocrcion of our blockade: the Wellesleys fastened cree, Dec. -' 17, 1807. our army immovably upon the Peninsula and Peninsular drained the life-blood of France at that end of Au^g.' I, Europe, while the nations it had subdued rose Apr.'i'°, in triumphant hate to beat its ruler back from l^"*'. the other upon an exhausted kingdom. Invasion "-^ of Russia, Napoleon, conqueror of Europe on second June io . . . . Dec.1812; thoughts, is really the heir of the anti-British Liberation, Bourbon policy, the leader of France in a war I I3-I4- Q^ vengeance for Blenheim and Quebec : but the greatest general of his age was especially liable to perpetuate the Bourbon mistake, and to waste his strength in manoeuvring armies against an empire whose impregnable defence is the Ocean. Nor must we forget that " the Empire " means every separate part of the Empire. In matters of this kind the colonies, especially the Australian colonies, * The Berlin decree provided that — "Because England {a) treats as hostile and therefore good prize all property of Frenchmen ; (d) applies blockade to open towns and coasts ; (c) announces blockades which are not effective ; " therefore — (a) the British Isles are blockaded and all trade (hereto is forbidden ; (d) all English subjects found on the Continent are prisoners of war and all British property is lawful prize ; {c) vessels coming from Britain or her colonies are seizable^" III.] THE NEW CONSTITUTION 123 are apt to think of these Napoleonic wars as matters be\'ond their immediate concern. Because ^ * (Jur wars S}'dney was not besieged, because no hostile ^f^'okon fleets joined battle in Storm Bay, Australia ^^ere im- -" ■' ' penal plumes herself on her peaceful origin and talks ^''^^■ pityingly of the blood-stained lands beyond the oceans. Yet Australia was conquered on the shores of Europe ; Jervis and Nelson did for her what Hawke and Wolfe did for Canada : we owe it to Trafalgar that the island- continent to-day is free and peaceful from end to end. What it might have been we see on the new maps of Africa — a parti-coloured congeries of European settle- ments, each suspicious of its aggressive neighbour. But the event of the Napoleonic wars placed in Britain's hands the unfettered control of all Australia ; so Lord John that when in later years the French asked how Russeii's 1 • 1 -R /r • • answer to much of the contment we claimed, our Mniister France, could say " The whole," and with that answer dismiss them. Quiet as Canada was during the greater part of the liuropean turmoil, it was not to escape without a taste of war. The United States had begun their . , , . Ill-feeling career, not unnaturally perhaps, with very bitter between r 1- • 11 TTT, ., Britain feelings against the mother-countr\^ While and the . . ' U.S. Washington lived he did all in his power to allay the bitterness ; but his death in 1799 put an extreme party in control of the government, and Napoleon's transfer of Louisiana in 1803 renewed the old friend- ship with France. Consequently when the Emperor's ]5erlin and Milan Decrees threatened with capture every neutral vessel that carried British goods or had touched at a British port, and the English Orders in Council retaliated similarly on neutrals trading with France, it was about the Orders rather than the Decrees that the United States felt indisrnant. There were other 124 BRITISH CANADA [chap. grievances, too— one was that British frigates lay off New York harbour and searched every American vessel for British deserters. America had just grounds for complaint ; but Britain was engaged in a life-and-death struggle with Napoleon, and neither combatant was ^ likely to consider the feelings of outsiders who Congress J & declares came \\\ their way. The Congress of 1 8 1 1 was war, June J s> 19, 1812. largely made up of clever young men (Clay and Calhoun were two of its new members) who had never known war, and believed ardently in the " manifest destiny " of their countr}'. Clay was for war at once — war with Britain, because that meant the conquest of Orders in Canada,* and the dictation of terms of peace Council «a|- Quebec or Halifax." So war was deter- repealed, ^^ June 23. mined on, though the Orders in Council were withdrawn, and three American armies were to be thrown upon the quiet Canadian farm-lands. It was not only the Iroquois whom Britain had treated well ; along and beyond the western lakes Unsuccess- tribc after tribe mustered to the defence of their si'dnTof' Canadian friends, led by the Shawnee chief 1812. Tecumseh. So the western army of invasion Detroit . . ^ taken by found itsclf drivcn back to its base at Detroit, Canadians, Aug. 16. where it surrendered ; the key forts of Lake Michigan and Lake Superior were taken, and the whole Michigan peninsula was for a time subject to Canadian authority. The second army, advancing by Niagara, oueenston ^^^ twicc rcpulscd by inferior British forces ; 2"- '3.. and the third, to which had been given the Fort Erie, ' ° Nov. 28. Richelieu line of attack, never got beyond the frontier. Congress had hoped for a responsive rising among the Canadians themselves, but the U.K. men had memories. In 181 3 little more was done, though the * New England had no sympathy with the invasion of Canada, which was a Western project. III.] THE NEW CONSTITUTION 125 American fresh-water fleet gained the control of Lake Erie ; Canada, standing on the defensive, successfully blocked the renewed Niagara and St Lawrence attacks. But by this time the British navy was coming into action. Isolated ships had, at the beginning of the war, unsuccessfully challenged heavier American ships to single combat, and their capture had excited ^, enthusiasm throughout the States; in 181 3 the ^^\^^^_ ''Chesapeake and S/uDinon" fight damped this P/'^'"^' ■f fc> r June I, ardour, and before the year's end every American '^'3- man-of-war was either taken or shut up in harbour. The next }'ear began with an European peace, and two British armies, thus set free, were at auucate" once despatched across the Atlantic. The is^' "' troops already there had given a good account Peace of of themselves ; Oswego, now an outpost of New May 30. York State, was taken by a surprise, and a osweg'^,"'^ strong American army was repulsed after a ^^y^- stubborn fight in the dark at Lundy's Lane Lane, within hearing of Niagara Falls. The new armies, made up of Wellington's best regiments, sorely missed their leader. The northern — led by the Governor - General Prevost, whose military judgment was as bad as his political judgment was sound — failed through bad handling in an attack on Platts- Retreat burg, the i\merican advanced post on Lake pfj^t^. Champlain. The southern marred the effect of a ^"""S'Sept. well-planned and daring advance on Washington Washing- by wilfully firing the public buildings there, and Aug. 24; then sailed for New Orleans to be wasted in a ^ew 0°- desperate attack on the defending army, which ^^^^^i^^'^- Andrew Jackson had skilfully intrenched in an Peaceof impregnable position. Before this last battle uec."24, was fought peace had been made at Ghent. The ' '"*' European peace had removed the grievances which 126 BRITISH CANADA [chap. caused the war, and they were not mentioned in the treaty, which did Httle more than restore captures on either side. The United States tried to secure the formal renunciation of the right of impressment, but failed to do so. In the States the war had not been popular — it was rather a politicians' war from beginning to the war eud. The New England States had even United threatened to secede from the Union. The con- federation was still young, and could ill spare the 30,000 dead soldiers, the 1,700 captured ships, the ^20,000,000 expended, which had been the price of the and on pcacc of Ghent. But to Canada, in spite of the Canada, cruel ravagcs of the border war, the three years of struggle had brought confidence and prosperity and the sense of a common nationality through all its territories. The heroes of the war were common property : and in that list men saw names from the three nationalities of Britain, from French Canadians, from U.E. loyalists, from the friendly Indian tribes. Brock and Tecumseh had taken Detroit : Salaberry and McDonnell had saved Montreal : and all the petty grievances of past years disappeared in a white heat of patriotism which welded the Canadas into one, while Congress saw vanish its last hopes of winning over a people whose homes it had so wantonly attacked and so brutally destroyed. E. Constitutional Struggles and Reforms. For the next twenty years the history of Canada is mainly taken up with matters of local interest. It was an era of expansion : the waste lands were rapidly populated with European immigrants, and the provinces III.] CONSTITUTIONAL STRUGGLES 127 were opened up and at the same time drawn closer together by improved methods of communica- j^i.^jgr;3, tion. The Lachine Canal near Montreal, the e^'o^^'i^ ' and Welland Canal round Niagara Falls, were the P'-'^sperity. beginning of works which have since given an unbroken waterway from Lake Superior to the Atlantic : and the difficult passage of the St Lawrence River between its tidal waters and Lake Ontario was evaded „, „., 1 he Rid- by another long canal which struck across from ''^" Canai. Kingston (once Fort Frontenac) to By town on the Ottawa. Fisheries and farms, commerce and education flourished alike under the care of such governors as the Earl of Dalhousie.* But the long peace was loosening the bonds that war had welded ; and the Act of i/gi began to grow cumbersome upon the limbs of a nation so rapidl)' growing. That Act had given Canada grows representative but not responsible government : the elected Assemblies could help to make laws, but had no enforceable control over the executive bodies : and the Councils, composed of Crown nominees, were often antagonistic to the expressed wishes of the people. Canada was the first of British colonies on which trial had been made of the new colonial system : the partial self-government which Pitt's Act had granted was avowedly an experiment, and the time was coming when new experiments would be required to meet new conditions. In Lower Canada the disturbance arose mainly from racial quarrels. The French formed a great majority in the province and controlled the assembly: the ii,e radii British minority almost monopolized the Council f^ Lower and dominated the Government. Neither party Canada, did much to conciliate the other. The Assembly had * Father of ihc "real Indian Mcerov. 128 BRITISH CANADA [chap. control of all taxation except the Customs, and used its power in a way which resembled the Transvaal policy of recent years, to make the merchants pay as much and the land-owners as little as possible. It made an attempt to give its mere resolutions the force of laws. Adequate representation was refused to British settlers in the Eastern Farms, and a noisy clique among the French talked wildly about an independent republic and a " nation Canadienney The British party, on the other hand, was too prone to look on its French fellow-citizens as a conquered race : successive governors* abandoned the neutrality which was their duty and used their power to ignore and sometimes to insult the Assembly. When supplies were refused them, they annexed the Customs revenue and supplemented it with the proceeds of Crown lands, sales, and leases ; bills were vetoed on every possible pretence, and even when the rejection was justifiable it was made unnecessarily harsh. In Upper Canada the racial differences did not exist, but religious quarrels amply supplied their place. The ouarreis ^^^^ °^ ^79^ ^"^^ sct apart for the support of the Cam-ida"^ Protestant clergy one-seventh of all lands granted Jh'^ by the Crown. In Lower Canada this was simply Reserves, g^n endowmcut of the church of the minority, the Catholic Church having received similar and larger en- dowments before 1763 ; and any grievance in connection with it was thus merged in the racial dispute. In Upper Canada practically all the settlers were Protestants of one kind or another, and therefore claimed for their own denominations a share in the endowment. The Imperial Government tried to compromise by limiting it to the established Churches of Great Britain — i.e., the Anglican * The colonial governors of those days (sec Australia for other examples) looked upon themselves as chief ministers of the Crown controlling unruly Cabinets and Legislatures. III.] CONSTITUTIONAL STRUGGLES 129 and Presbyterian : but this failed to satisfy the Anglicans, who wanted the whole for themselves, and in no way appeased the denominations still shut out, which con- tained a very large proportion of the U.E. Loyalists. The political grievance also existed in Upper Canada, where the Council and the Government Family had fallen into the hands of a clique, known as the " Family Compact," which controlled the Governor * and judges, directed the banks, and distributed Crown lands lavishly among its friends. The Compact was strongly Anglican, and so the political and religious questions became one. The maritime provinces, too, were struggling against their imperfect form of govern- ment, and stf^ing to acquire for their assemblies control of all taxation and of the executive body ; but neither party went to extremes, and reforms were eventually brought about by peaceful means only. In the two Canadas this rapidly became impossible. The malcontents of the lower province gathered round Papineau, an orator no less indiscreet than ^ . ' The persuasive, who had been for many years Revoiu- Speaker of the Quebec Assembly. In Ontario leaders, r- 1 T->Ti !• \T7-ii' T Papineau a Scotch Radical editor, VVilham Lyon and Mac- Mackenzie, championed the cause of reform, but soon alienated the best part of his following by hinting at " freedom from the baneful domination of the mother- country" — which to the French Canadians might mean real independence, but to the U.E. loyalist savoured of absorption into the hated republic further south. It was the time of Reform Governments at home, and ^^^^-^ the Whigs did everything in their power to i^J^g'^it'^'i" satisfy legitimate Canadian grievances : first the •830-41. Customs, then the land revenue, were handed over to * Each province, of course, had a Governor to itself. I 130 BRITISH CANADA [chap. the mutinous Assembly at Quebec : the new Lord Governor-General, Lord Gosford, promised Governor- absolutc impartialit}' and the settlement of the 1835-8. ' Clergy Reserves in accordance with the Assembl}''s wishes. But responsible government was not to be given. It meant, so men not without warrant thought at home, an independent French community holding the lower St Lawrence, and blocking all the inland country to British commerce : and what Lower Canada could not be trusted with must be in fairness withheld from Upper Canada also. So Lord Gosford's mission failed, and the mutineers grew bolder daily. Papineau and Mackenzie corre- sponded, and the Frenchman openly advocated separa- tion. He wrote a letter to the Speaker of the Ontario Assembly, proposing a revolution and promising help Sir Fran- ^^'^^ the United States. " Let them come if cis Head, they dare," said the impulsive Governor of the Governor -^ ' ^ c^^ir U.K. province : and, dissolving the Assembly 1836-8. upon that cry, carried the elections against Mackenzie's party by a sweeping majority. In Lower Canada, too, the disclosure of Papineau's aims alienated from him the most powerful body in the province : for the Catholic clergy had no love for Puritan New England, and no desire to see in Canada a repetition of The revolt ^^^ Frcnch Revolutiou. The two leaders were breaks out ^hus driveu to extremes. Mackenzie, shut out of the Assembl}', tried to imitate Samuel Adams' famous Committees of Correspondence, and arranged for a sort of Canadian Runnymcde at Toronto in the coming spring ; Papineau incited his compatriots to form an atMon- armed militia, and allowed them to display the Nov 6 tricolor. The insurgents rose prematurely near 1837; Montreal, but were quickly dispersed. Papineau fled across the border ; New York and Vermont, whose III.] CONSTITUTIONAL STRUGGLES 131 people were inclined to aid the revolt, were kept strictly neutral by sensible governors ; and the remnants of the insurgent force, which had followed their leader, were taken prisoners in the spring by the U.S. federal army. The news from Montreal upset Mackenzie's plans, and he hastened to arrange an earlier rebellion for the 7th of December ; in the meanwhile warrants were issued for his arrest, and he was compelled to make a , _, 11- near Tor- desperate attempt on ioronto two da}'s earlier onto, still. All the regular troops had been sent to ''"'*' Montreal, but the loyalist volunteers mustered at once under Colonel M'Nab, and routed Mackenzie's men with very little difficulty. The leaders fled to the States, whence Mackenzie returned in a few weeks to seize an island in the Niagara River. The population of western New York was not so easy to keep in order as the Lake Champlain districts had been, and aided the ^^ . ^ •■^ ' Affair of rebels with men, provisions, and ammunition, '''fCar- , oline, sending them across in the steamer Caroline ^ec. 28. in full view of the loyal Canadian army on the opposite shore. In the excitement of the times a small British force boarded the Caroline by night as she lay moored to the American shore, fired her, and turned her loose to go over the Falls ; and the same Americans who had openly aided Mackenzie nearly embroiled their Govern- ment in a war with Britain by their outcries about this violation of neutral soil. During the next year there was intermittent fighting along the border-line, mostly at the Detroit end of Lake Erie : but the rebellion never had a chance of permanent success, and excited nothing but hatred among the Canadians of both provinces „ , " 1 Revolt from the moment its leaders appealed to IJ^'lf' American aid. By the end of 1838 every '^38. spark of it was quenched, and the guilty parties im- prisoned or in exile. 132 BRITISH CANADA [chap. The news of these risings stirred the Imperial Govern- ment to prompt and just action. The Constitution of Lower Canada was suspended in favour of a Lord - . 1 /^ M Durham, temporary government by a nommated Council, General, in spitc of the fiery oratory of Lord Brougham, to Nov. I, who was anxious to be a second Chatham oppos- ' ^ ' ing a new attack on liberty. But the measure was obviously one to meet an emergency, and the new Governor-General, Lord Durham, was instructed to use his powers with a view to the establishment of a still freer form of government while dealing as sternly as need be with the actual insurgents. Lord Durham spent five months only in Canada, during which he had, with merciful illegality, exiled the rebel leaders to Bermuda and pacified the colony : then he returned to England (like many another British statesman) a dis- appointed man, who had done his best in a very difficult position, and had gained by it the bitter denunciations of the malicious Brougham and a very half-hearted support from the Ministry he had served. But the five months' rule had resulted in his famous Report on Canada, a monument to his memory which will remain for centuries after Brougham's name ham Re- has been forgotten. Prepared under his direc- ^°'' tion by his secretaries, Buller and Wakefield (mainly by the former), the scheme of it and its final shape are entirely Durham's own. It laid bare the whole Canadian trouble — the race differences of Lower Canada, the Compact in Upper, the Clergy Reserves, and above all the irresponsibility of provincial Ministers advocates ^° ^^^ provincial Legislature. Going beyond respon- local gricvauccs, it laid down for the first time sible gov- *-" ernment \\^q principle that in all internal matters colonial for the '^ ^ Colonies. Ministries should be placed on exactly the same footing as the Ministry at home. " The Crown mus( III.] CONSTITUTIONAL STRUGGLES 133 consent," said Durham, "to carry the Government on by means of those in whom the representative members have confidence." Four questions he proposed to reserve for Imperial control — the form of the new constitution, foreign relations, the regulation of external trade (the same old vague and mischievous phrase), and the dis- posal of the vast western territories of the Crown ; everything else was to be left to the local legislatures. It was the beginning of responsible government beyond the British Islands. The race trouble he proposed to mitigate by joining the two Canadas in a single govern- ment, and encouraging a further federal union between all the provinces of British North America. The Special Council, which Durham had impartially chosen from men of both races, reported strongly in favour of his proposals. Union of the Lower and Upper provinces was, they saw, the only guarantee which would secure that under responsible government the lower St Lawrence should not become a purely xhe Union French stream. In 1841 the Union Act put into ^<='- force most of Lord Durham's proposals, uniting the provinces, retaining under Imperial control waste lands and Church endowments (both Catholic and Protestant) making English the official language, and arranging in all other respects for the introduction of responsible government. For some years the constitutional question was still unsettled : the trouble was to decide whether the Governor was a Prime Minister nominated in England to get on as best he could with a possibly hostile Legislature, or simply a representative of the Crown bound by the Crown's constitutional duty of taking the advice of Ministers whom his Legislature supported ; but the Imperial Government soon veered round to the latter view, and between 1848 and 1858 responsible government, as we now understand it, was 134 BRITISH CANADA [chap. given to all our North American colonies. The Council 1856. was made elective, the Navigation Acts were re- ^^^' pealed, the Clergy Reserves were handed over to 1853- local control, the French language was brought back to a position of equality in official matters, and the capital of the United Province, after being shifted from Kingston to Montreal, and then made movable for Ottawa some years between Toronto and Quebec, was ca^tar finally established by the Queen herself at 1857- Bytown on the Ottawa, henceforth to take the name of the great stream that rushes past it. F. Boundary Settlements. It was as well that the home Government did every- thing in its power to soothe Canadian feeling locally, for the Imperial policy of those years gave the colony Re ea! of little satisfactiou. The adoption of a Free-trade Law^°'^" policy by Sir Robert Peel in 1846 struck heavily 1846. at Canadian commerce, which had been fostered by the special advantages previously given to colonial over foreign products in the markets of Britain. Earl Cathcart, the Governor-General, protested in the colony's name against the change : and there was talk both in Ontario, and at New York of possible Canadian secession to the United States if the new Free-trade policy was persisted in. A more fatal, because a more permanent, loss was inflicted on British North America by two boundary treaties concluded with the United States in 1842 and 1846. One concerned the century-old dispute about the ancient boundaries of Acadia. When all Acadia The Maine and Canada became British territory in 1763, oun ar>. ^^^ bordcr-liue between Nova Scotia (then in- cluding New Brunswick) and the Maine district of in.] BOUNDARY SETTLEMENTS 13^ Massachusetts was fixed in writing by " the mouth of the river St Croix ; " but no river of that name was known, the phrase having been taken from the records of a French expedition in 1603. Behind the river certain highlands were named, also without clear definition : and treaty after treaty had shifted the line of compromise this way and that over the half-explored wilderness of the Aroostook and St John valleys. Franklin during the negotiations of 1782-3 had admitted to his French colleagues — but not in so many words to the prankiin's British commissioners — the correctness of the ™^p- British claim, which gave the Penobscot valley to Massachusetts, the St John watershed to Nova Scotia. But Franklin's map was left in Paris, and was ^j^^ unknown to Britain ; so that when (after an United ' V States re- attempt at Dutch arbitration in 1827) Lord ^e^^j t^e''''' Ashburton was sent to Washington to get the ^'"^f"^, t' o Hollands difficulty settled, he was ignorant not only of the decision. country in dispute, but of all previous admissions on the American side. Daniel Webster, the American Secretary of State, was much better informed : the British Government was not anxious to be urgent in the t,, , , s> ihe Ash- matter, seeing that important questions with i^""^°" regard to fugitive slaves had to be settled at the ^^■i^- same time : and the Ashburton Treaty, while pretending to compromise the dispute evenly, gave Maine a fertile district that runs up like a wedge into Canadian territory almost to the St Lawrence, and left New Brunswick the owner of a remnant of barren lands cut off from any real connection with the life of the central British province. A few years afterwards a more equitable but no less annoying adjustment of boundaries was The made at the other side of the continent. The question. Ashburton Treaty, confirming an earlier one of 181 8, 136 BRITISH CANADA [chap. had fixed a common border-line for the States and Canada as far as the Rocky Mountains, and here again displayed the English negotiator's weakness in the curious arrangement known as the " Minnesota kink." Beyond the Rockies Spain claimed territory up to latitude 42°, Russia down to latitude 54^ 40' ; the intermediate lands, known generally as Oregon, had been explored by Englishmen and Americans in- differently, and were held (under a Convention of 1818) by both nations as joint occupants without prejudice to any claim on either side. This meant for many years merely that the Fur Companies of either nation might hunt and trap unmolested throughout the entire area. But from 1836 onwards American settlers began to enter Oregon, and the British Fur Companies imported colonists to balance them. Whitman, the leader of the first American expedition, saw there was no time to be ,,,, . , lost : in five months he rode four thousand miles Whitman s ■■''^^- in the dead of winter over the most inhospitable of wildernesses and the most desolate of storm-swept prairies : he reached Washington almost at the time when Congress was about to abandon Oregon as useless, and secured a delay in the negotiations till he had done his best to people it with American citizens. Then he began a campaign among the hardy pioneers of the upper Mississippi, and succeeded by his enthusiasm in despatching caravan after caravan over the Rocky Mountains, till the land that in 1840 had numbered less than two hundred American inhabitants, in 1846 claimed twelve thousand. In 1844 the United States was plunged into the turmoil of a Presidential election. The Democratic party, whose strength lay among the Southern slave-owners, wanted to bring into the Federation as additional slave-holding territory the Mexican province of Texas. Their policy thus being III.] BOUNDARY SETTLEMENTS 137 one of annexation, they were quite willing to demand Oregon also : and " the whole of Oregon or none " was one of the cries that won them the election, president Their President, however, soon found that the ^eiHg"°' Mexican war would give him enough to do, and ^"^■ asked for a compromise in the north-west. Britain offered the line of the Columbia River. " Fifty-four forty or fight," retorted the irrepressible Western Democrats. But the Southerners, eager for Texas, preferred Polk's policy of conciliation : and after a good deal of haggling the line of latitude 49", which formed part of our boundary east of the Rockies, was prolonged across them to the sea, dipping southward there to leave Vancouver Island wholly British territory.* North of the now completely defined boundary there was not as yet much settled territory. Amid a good many changes of fortune during the years when Canada was French, the English contention had always rj,^^ been that Hudson's Bay and the river-valleys 5"''^°"* near its shores were independent possessions of Company, an English chartered company. Consequently, when the whole of Canada was ceded to Britain, the Hudson's Bay Company kept its own fur-trading district intact, perhaps enlarging its bounds a little ; while a ^j^^ new Canadian company was formed by some ^""j""" Scottish traders to work the country further back Company, from headquarters at Fort William on Lake Superior, adopting the old French trade-route from Lake Nipis- sing through to Lake Winnipeg, and employing French Canadians for the most part in the work out back. The rival companies naturally quarrelled, and the debatable land which both claimed was found in the * Many years later (in 1871), the last detail of this boundary was determined by an arbitration which gave to the United States the most important islands in San Juan de Fuca Strait. 138 BRITISH CANADA [chaP. Nelson River valley, where their lines of operation intersected. To the upper part of this, on the Red ^j^^ River, the Earl of Selkirk in i8i 1-2 * transferred Selkirk about a hundred emigrants from his own and Settle- ° ment. neighbouring estates in Scotland. The North- West Company, strong in its Canadian connections,! pillaged and burnt their farms ; the Hudson's Bay Company brought them back and helped them to repair the damage. Actual war presently broke out between the Companies, and the Metis (French- Indian half- breeds) of the newer body eagerly raided the forts of the older one and destroyed Selkirk's little colony altogether. Selkirk was compelled to take the law into his own hands, arrest some of the North-West officials at Fort William, and re-establish his settlers on the site of the present city of Winnipeg : the British Parliament took up his cause, and in 1821 compelled the two companies to amalgamate on terms which really swallowed up the newer in the older. Headquarters were now shifted to Selkirk's settlement, where in 1835 Fort Garry was built, Selkirk's interest having been bought up by the Company : and presently the River Set- Red River district found itself large enough to receive local government under a president and locally-chosen council, though it still remained part of the Hudson's Bay Territory. As for the Metis, they settled down a little way off on the Assiniboine. West of the Rocky Mountains the joint occupancy of Oregon for long prevented any definite scheme of colonization. But when the boundary was once fixed, we made haste to utilise a long-neglected posses- Vancouver o o i Island. sion. Vaucouvcr Island had been discovered by Captain Cook in 1777, and formally annexed * He had already made a similar settlement in Prince Edward Island, t It was backed by the Family Compact. III.] BOUNDARY SETTLEMENTS 139 eleven years later, whereby we nearly came to blows with Spain : but it was still unoccupied when, in 1849, the Hudson's Bay Company obtained an eleven years' lease of it, on condition that within five years a permanent settlement should be made there. A few years later the valley of the Fraser, on the mainland opposite, was found to be full of gold, and the con- sequent inrush of miners led to the proclamation of a new colony, British Columbia, with which in 1866 the island was incorporated. And so, with both ends of their long boundary-line secured by our command of the sea, the British territories of North America began to see their way clear to a more intimate and strenethenincf union. CHAPTER IV INDIA. A. The Country in 1740. For thousands of years India was a mere "geographical expression " — the name of a land area, but never of a simple state. As far as concerned India the . , , . . name of a inhabitants It was not even as homogeneous not of a' as the land area which we call Europe ; for within its boundaries were, and are still, found states very highly civilized and tribes of the most ignorant savages. It is only under British rule that the whole country has been brought under one supreme influence, and the wars which periodically ruined the native farmers have been finally prohibited. The Indian peninsula consists, roughly speaking, of two oblongs and a triangle. The oblong of the Indus valley and the longer and more fertile Its phy- 1 1 r 1 /-■ 11 sicaigeo- oblong of the Ganges valley are set at right angles to each other, the one bearing south- west and the other south-east. Their common north- eastern boundary, the range of the Himalayas, is impregnable against invasion. To southward there juts into the Indian Ocean a triangular table-land, the Deccan, which slopes towards the east and is com- manded from end to end by the ridge of the Western .-^S?%ii^ QKi©aa & CEYLON (physical) Land up to 600 ft. Land 600 to 3000 ft.. ! .!nd 3000 ft. & ouer_ .rz2 To face page 140. CHAP. IV.] THE COUNTRY IN 1740 141 Ghats. Both edges, however, eastern and western, are practically impregnable against serious invasion from the sea, especially as there is not a harbour worth speaking of between the Hugh mouth of the Ganges and Bombay. There are thus four routes only by which a conqueror could approach India — by Ganges mouth, by Indus mouth, and round the ends of the Himala}'an range ; and these may be reduced to two, since the Indus route is blocked by sandy deserts, and beyond the eastern Himalaya route (the Brahmaputra valley) there have never been tribes strong enough to carry out an invasion. The Ganges entrance is, of course, suitable only for attacks from the sea, and so remained unused until the arrival of the British. Wherefore it is by the western Himalaya route — the Afghan passes — that tribe after tribe has come down upon the riches of the Indian plains, until they now contain a confused mass of nearly two hundred different nationalities, speaking more than a hundred different languages. The history of British domination, as opposed to the mere trading communication which we spoke of in Chapter I., begins with the break-up of greak-up the Mogul Empire after 1707. In districts °[^^^, where Mogul conquest had been thorough, Empire o ^ C3 ' into semi- this meant the practical independence of the ""depen- i i dent prm- Mogul viceroys : in the Ganges valley, for cipaiuies. instance, the Nawabs of Oudh and Bengal established themselves as hereditary rulers of those provinces, and the Nawab of Hyderabad did the same Moham- m the central Deccan. All round these orderly medan ,. , , , states- Mohammedan governments there sprang up Oudh, , , TT- 1 1 • • Heiigal, agam mdependent Hmdu states, bitter enemies Hydera- of the empire which had for so long mastered them. On the Upper Indus a religious association 142 INDIA [chap. of Hindu clans was growing into the powerful Sikh Hindu nation. The Rajput chiefs of the lower Indus confeder- rcfused to Dav tributc. In the far south of the acies — ' •' Sikh Raj- £)eccan the ancient kingdom of Mysore began put, Mah- s> J -Q ratta. ^o flourisli again. But the most dangerous of these Hindu states was the Mahratta confederacy. Akin to the Rajputs, but more actively warlike, the Mahratta bands depended on their raids for their living. Their stronghold in the knot of mountains that ends the Western Ghats to northward commanded every fertile province of India. To the strongest Mogul emperors they had given trouble, and they took full advantage of the empire's decline. To save them- selves the trouble of repeated raids, they arranged with the rulers of the districts they had ravaged for a yearly payment of blackmail, known as cliout ; and in many of these districts the Mahratta tribute- collectors made themselves absolute lords, and thus extended the limits of the confederacy till it stretched from its centre at Poona north-eastwards half-way across India and southwards along the Ghats to Mysore, while there was even a Mahratta outpost in the principality of Tanjore, on the coast below Madras. B. The Struggle between England and France. On the edge of all this turmoil, and keeping them- selves as much aloof from it as possible, the staffs of three European trading companies occupied pean somc dozcu or so of trading settlements, com- nominally (and on occasion practically) on panics, sufferance of the Mogul viceroys. The com- panies themselves varied a good deal in prosperity. IV.] ENGLAND AND FRANCE 143 The Dutch East India Compan)- was prosperous enouG^h, but its Indian tradin i • i • i i evil plight, so ran a letter to Bussy s lieutenant which they fleet"saiis capturcd, " our money has gone, our fleet has in°d?a, gone, the army is discontented ; we cannot raise fylll '■ money on the credit of France, we are not even respected as Frenchmen." Such ruin had Clive and his policy inflicted on them since the glories of Dupleix's Wande prosperity ! After a good deal of manoeuvring wash, Lally was attacked outside Fort Wandewash by Jan. 22, •' ^ -' 1760. Captain Eyre Coote. The battle was a curious one ; the native troops on both sides deliberately held back in order to let the Europeans have a fair fight ; and when at last the capture of Bussy made the French IV.] THE BRITISH IN BENGAL 149 retreat, though in good order, the prestige that had once attached to French troops was gone for ever from the native mind. For a year more Lally held out desperately; but on the 17th of January, 1761, Pondi- cherry was surrendered to Coote, and within a month no spot of Indian soil remained under the French flag. By the Peace of Paris in 1763 the actual French trad- ing settlements were restored to their owners, but only on condition that no troops should be kept, no ^j^^ p^^^^ forts erected in Bengal, and no relations of any of Paris o ' '' puts an kind entered into with the native rulers. The 1."'^'°, rrencn restoration was therefore politically unimportant ; ^°Pf„^j°^ and on the renewal of war between France and Empire. England in 1778 there was no difficulty in recapturing these stations. So easy indeed was it, and so little have British administrations since feared that any hostile use could be made of the settlements, that they were again handed back to France in 18 15, and are hers to-day. C. Thf: British gain a Foothold in Bengal. The exceedingly great fertility of the Lower Ganges Valley had made it from very early times the most valuable prize of Indian conquest. The original Aryan invaders had expelled the tribes whom habitants they found there and occupied the country themselves ; but their greed was their ruin. Camped on an exuberant soil, themselves as prolific as their crops, they forgot their warlike skill and the courage that had placed them there. The conquerors who followed — Afghan, Turk, Tartar, Mogul — with better judgment left this degenerate race to till the soil, but 15° INDIA [chap. took care that the profits of it should be secured for their own reward. So the Hindu of Bengal was driven to cheat, as he could not fight, if he would retain the fruits of his labour. Cunning became his courage, and lying his virtue ; he thought of forging seals and docu- ments as lightly as some men nowadays think of smuggling a few pounds of tobacco through the Customs. A change of rulers was if anything welcome to him — there was always a chance that he could utilise against the newcomer tricks which his late governors had found out and made of no avail. As the Mogul Empire fell to pieces, Bengal had passed into the hands of an Afghan soldier, Aliverdy Aiiverdy Khan. Hc was a strong man, and just, as justice makes went in those disturbed times ; and during his abToiuTe Viceroyship (for nominally he was but a lieu- Ben^af tenant of the Emperor at Delhi) the three 1740-1756. European trading companies lived peaceably side by side. All were treated alike, and each forbidden to take any steps that might seem to threaten the others with war. But in 1756 he died, almost at the same time that news reached India of the imminent Seven Years' He is sue- W^^- ^^^ adopted son and successor, Siraj-ud- ceededby daula, had all his domineering spirit without Siraj-ud- ' . dauia. j-eal strength of mind at his back ; he was as vicious as the uncontrolled children of despots usually are, and he was stirred to hatred of the English by a suspicion that they had been intriguing against his succession. His protection, therefore, against outside attacks could not be counted on ; and the officials at Calcutta began to fortify themselves, expecting a raid from the French station at Chandernagore. The young Nawab imperiously forbade them to go on, and when they tried to explain matters took it as an insult that they should trust him less than his grandfather. He IV.] THE BRITISH IN BENGAL 151 marched against Calcutta, from which most of the officials and all the trading ships then in the ^^ ^^^^^ ^^ river fled at once ; those who were left in the Calcutta, ' June 2t, fort surrendered only to be packed (not, ap- .VsSi^^The parently, by the Nawab's orders) into a small "oie." and ill-ventilated prison ; and in one night out of a hundred and forty-six prisoners all but twenty-three died miserably. The horror of this event, even more than the actual loss of territory and trade, roused the Madras Council to take urgent measures against Siraj-ud-daula. • 1 r T. 1 Clivesent Clive had just arrived from Bombay, and was with • • 1 T-\ 1 troops plannmg a campaign in the Deccan ; he was from despatched to the Hugh with orders to get things settled as rapidly as possible in Bengal before the anticipated expedition should arrive from France- Six weeks had already been lost in transmission of the news from Calcutta to Madras, two months in discussion, and two more in the transport of Clive's troops to Bengal ; but by February of the next year Cal- B^t^ig^f cutta had been recovered, the Nawab's army p'^^*^""^' beaten outside it, and a treaty of complete '757- restitution exacted from the defeated prince. Clive had still a couple of months to spare, and em- Siege and ployed them in reducing Chandernagore. This capture of roused the Nawab again ; he formed a great nagore, camp at Plassey, and waited there in the hope to 24. of getting help from Bussy in the Deccan before moving to crush the small English force altogether. But Clive, abandoning all idea of returning to Madras as he had promised, now made up his mind by fair means or foul to establish English supremacy in Bengal. Siraj-ud-daula was not to be treated with on such terms — he hated the English too much ; the commander of his army, Mir Jafar, was more tractable, and it was 152 INDIA [chap. arranged that on the Nawab's defeat he should be placed on the throne of Bengal. Immediately Clive p,^ggg marched against the camp at Plassey, where lay a June 23. native army of more than fifteen times his numbers,* hammered it with well-served artillery, stormed it directly there were signs of yielding, and dispersed the unwieldy mass of soldiery without even the trouble of pursuit. The next day Mir Jafar was acknowledged as Nawab of Bengal. The new ruler had not a happy reign. By the terms of his arrangement with Clive he was com- j^j;^ pelled to pay the Company and its officers jafar'sun- niore than two millions of money, partly reign. ^s Compensation for their losses by the seizure of Calcutta, partly as presents to the men who had seated him on his throne. To supply his thus emptied treasury he had recourse to the usual native methods of extortion, and raised revolts against himself on every side. Clive, now President of the Bengal Council, was divided between the necessity of backing his own Nawab and the desire that a man whom English power supported should not discredit his friends by tyrannical acts ; and in the middle of this he was interrupted by an invasion of of Bengal Bengal from the north-west, where the Nawab Oudh, of Oudh was restless at the success of the '^^^" English. The mere approach of Clive's army, however, drove the invaders back over the border, and he was able to return without delay to Calcutta, where he found himself in the midst of a new conspiracy in which Mir Jafar had entangled himself with the Dutch. His arrival precipitated matters ; the Dutch began hostilities, and without hesitation Clive defeated * Estimates vary from 45,000 to 70,000. Clive had 1,000 English soldiers and 2,000 Sepoys. IV.] THE BRITISH IN BENGAL 153 and captured their fleet, and drove their land-forces with g-reat slauirhter inside their fort at Chin- ^ 1 r/- • T-i Opera- surah. These measures were sufficient. The tions against Dutch hastily agreed to keep no troops in the future, and to pay all expenses of the short Nov. war ; and no further attempt was ever made by Europeans to disturb British supremacy in Bengal. Meanwhile in Upper India things were happening in which the English took no share, but which proved of immense importance in aiding the consolidation of British rule. Mogul rule and Mah- ° rattas even at Delhi had become a mere pretence, fight for control of controlled at one time by the Afghan chief, the Mogul Ahmed Shah, at another by the Mahrattas. Either of these powers could have made from the ruins of the Mogul Empire a formidable barricade against the spread of Company rule. But the Mahrattas, who were nothing if not audacious, could not leave their rival alone. In Delhi Ahmed Shah might have left them, but they invaded his favourite province of the Punjab and seized Lahore. All Upper India ^^hrattas was drawn into the conflict, which roused ^J^^^'^"''^' to its utmost the perennial hatred of '758. Mohammedan for Hindu. The Afghan Prince swept down from his passes across the Indus, in ^hmed three fierce battles drove the invaders back ^^^^ '"' vades upon Delhi, and struck across into the Ganges ''^^ia, Valley by the old route that conquerors '759- had used since the days of pre-historic legend. At Panipat on the Jumna he met the whole Mahratta army, a little smaller than his own. No battlefield has seen more thrones lost and won : Babar, the first, and Akbar, the greatest of the Moguls, found their empire there ; and they were only the last of a line that runs into the semi-mythical times of the 154 INDIA [chap. Trojan war. This, the final battle, was worthy of the place. A hundred and fifty thousand Jan. 7, ' trained soldiers, besides innumerable masses ^^ '' of guerillas, charged each other desperately from morning to night ; and when the Mahrattas at last broke and fled, the slaughter among them was so great that for all practical purposes their army had disappeared. Even the victorious troops were too demoralised to be trustworthy any longer for conquest ; the last victor of Panipat was compelled to stay his progress just where the triumphant career of his predecessors had begun. Ahmed Shah retired to Afghanistan to reconstruct his army, and when after many years a fresh invasion from that quarter was thought of, the Sikh Confederacy had made itself an impenetrable barrier across the road now closed for ever. D. First Attempts at Ruling. So it happened that for the next few years no power existed in India formidable enough to seriously disturb the Company in its new dominions. Malad- ^, . , -^ - , 1 1 r ministra- This was a strokc of great good luck, lor Com- after Clive's departure from Bengal in 1760 officLlsin the administration of that province became *"^''' disordered and disgraceful. The Calcutta Council took up the position that it represented a trading company which had nothing to do with govern- ing, and required simply revenue and the fulfilment of contracts. This threw upon the Nawab, who was of course dependent on the Council's support, the responsibility of keeping order and collecting taxes in Bengal ; while he was equally forced to run constant risk of creating disorder, since the subsidies demanded IV.] FIRST ATTEMPTS AT RULING 155 by the Council were more than any legitimate taxation could meet, and the trade privileges which had to be granted to the Company irritated all the native merchants. Every member but one of the Council, moreover, was eager to use his position in his own private interests. They remembered the great division of spoil that followed Mir Jafar's enthronement, and they determined to repeat the process in the hope of sharing no less riches.* Mir Jafar 11- -1 n/r- t/ • Mir Jafar was deposed, and his son-m-law Mir Kasim deposed, made Nawab in his place ; the revenues of three districts were handed over to the Company ; and the Councillors got nearly a quarter of a million between them. But these further extortions naturally aggravated the evil ; Mir Kasim failed more miserably than his predecessor ; in desperation he broke with the English altogether, revoked their trading privileges, and killed one of their officers. The Council declared him deposed, and dragged poor old Mir Jafar out aGrain, taking care that he confirmed all the stored, . . . ive--. grants previously obtained from Mir Kasim. The rebel Prince was thrice defeated, and, after massacring at Patna all the English he could lay hands on, fled to Oudh. There he joined Shuja-ud- daula, who was at once Nawab of Oudh and Vizier of the sham Emperor at Delhi, and who had already since Clive's departure made one unsuccessful attack on Bengal. The united armies advanced siege of against Patna, but were met and utterly routed May'' at Baxar by Major Munro. This battle put ^^^^^ India for the moment absolutely at the Oct. 22. Company's mercy. In the whole Ganges Valley there * II is only fair to say that the Directors of the Company at home knew nothing of all this till it was done, and when they did know did their best to restrain and repress the arbitrary proceedings of the Council. 156 INDIA [chap. was no centre of resistance left, and the Mahrattas, not yet recovered from the blow of Panipat, were fully occupied with attempts to restore their influence in the Deccan and Mysore. The Vizier made one more Kora, attempt to rally Hindus and Mohammedans 1765.^' alike against the Company's forces; but the battle of Kora crushed even this forlorn hope. On the day that battle was fought, Clive, now Lord Clive, landed in Calcutta. The maladministration of „,. the last few years had become notorious in Llive re- -' turns to Enp-land, and the private avarice of the Calcutta bengal to >-> ' ^ K""g Council had almost annihilated the Company's about '■ •' reforms, profits. In the first four months of 1765 nearly ^^700,000 was paid to individuals in the Company's service from the treasury of the provinces, partly by Mir Jafar on account of his restoration, partly after his death to obtain the succession for one of his sons. It was to put an end to scandals like these that Clive came out, with a practical dictatorship in civil and military matters, and found the fate of all Northern India in his hands. If he wished it, Delhi was his ; but he had no desire to thrust greater dominion on a Company which so ill managed what it had. Also he knew the Mahrattas, and did not care to lay the boundaries of British territory open to their future attacks. The Emperor, therefore, was given the revenues of two rich districts along the Middle „. .^^ Ganges to support his state. Shuja-ud-daula range. ^y^g reinstated in Oudh ; for that province, left mentswith ^ theNaw- semi-indcpcndent, would be a useful buffer ab of '■ Oudh. between Bengal and the Mahrattas. But as a check on the Vizier Clive established on its southern border a small Hindu domain to be administered by the Raja of Benares. As for Bengal, two things were clear. The Company must undertake the responsibility IV.] FIRST ATTEMPTS AT RULING 157 of government — yet the merchants who formed it would be most unwilh'ng to exchange their commercial for Imperial duties. Clive solved the difficulty by Q;^^^^^f accepting for the Company the diwajii or 'hepi- ^ *-" '^ •' wani, Aug. treasurership of the Bengal provinces. The '=> 1765- Mogul diwans had been officers in the various pro- vinces charged with the collection of revenue and its remittance to the imperial treasury ; such an office was not inappropriate to the mercantile character of the Company; and its execution, in an Indian state, really included most of the acts which a government must undertake to keep order and to administer justice among its subjects. This arrangement, therefore, pleased both the emperor and the new puppet Nawab of Bengal, who saw sure incomes before them and no trouble ; it satisfied the Company, which obtained a revenue of more than a million and a half when all expenses in India had been paid ; and it offered the native population the firm control of a single master, intent on peace and prospering in their prosperity. These matters settled, Clive turned to reforms in the Company's official staff. He relieved a real grievance, and one which had been partly the cause of past qx„^<^ re- disgraces, by dividing the proceeds of the salt ^°j^f„|" tax proportionately among the civil servants, 'nation. who had been so badly paid before this that they could only make a living by cheating the Company. In view of that concession private trading was severely re- stricted, and every official was bound by covenant not to take gifts from any native prince. With equal stern- ness the perquisites of the army were cut off and the pay system simplified ; and when the officers jyi^tinyat resigned and the European soldiers mutinied, |J|°"^]\'''' Clive surrounded them with Sepoy battalions '766. and crushed the mutiny out. In short, in less than 158 INDIA [chap. two years he had consolidated British power in India, ciive established a strong and just government, and '*^y?= turned Bengal from an adventurer's hunting- Iiidia, o o 1^6' ^aAd ground into an orderly province ; and when he 's'^"':-, left nothing was needed to complete his work ceeded by ... Vereist. j^yt a second Clive to insist on the fulfilment of his plans. INDIA As left "by Clive 1767. A second Clive, unfortunately, was not yet forth- IV.] FIRST ATTEMPTS AT RULING 159 coming ; and matters in Bengal soon fell back into something like their old state. Discipline was relaxed, private trading began again, and the forms not Company, shrinking still from the responsi- carried bilities of administration, interpreted the dizvmii to mean simply reception of the revenue after it had been collected by native officials. Expenses had sprung up on every side to consume even the gigantic sums which Bengal could contribute. The British Govern- ment managed in various ways to secure nearly two million pounds a year of revenue from the Company's coffers. Worst of all, the three Councils that sat at Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay were quarrelling among themselves, and the two poorer entered on political intrigues, for which the rich one had eventually to pay. Madras was jealous of Calcutta, as of an upstart that had usurped the older town's position ; Bombay was actively envious — why should not Western India also have its Plassey and its Baxar? The question is easily answered ; the natives of the Bombay side were men of the hills, not rice-eaters of Bengal. But it had to be answered at the expense of Calcutta. The Madras Council found themselves, after expel- ling the French, in close relations with three fickle and dangerous Powers. The Mahrattas were 1 11 • 1 1 , • 1 1 Tlie Ma- gradually gettmg back their strength, and were dras • • 111 1 • 1 Council trauimg themselves by repeated raids over the entangles Deccan for a renewed attack on Delhi and Oudh. Deccan Hyder Ali, whose fighting abilit}^ had won him the rule of Mysore, was intent on building up a kingdom that should be supreme in the peninsula. Nizam ^j^,,,,, ^h Ali (usually called "the Nizam "), the Viceroy ^hbro^her of H)'derabad, was the weakest power of the ?^J;''''"' three, but had ambitions which clashed with '762. Hyder's, and a valuable territory which no Mahratta i6o INDIA [chap. could see without plundering. With such neighbours it was possible to pursue three courses : to guard one's own frontier well, and leave them entirely alone ; to fix on a definite line of interference, and work stead- fastly along that line till the peace of the Deccan was assured ; or to interfere first with one, then with another, now blusteringly, now timidly, till all three became so irritated that they would join hands readily against their common tormentor. The Madras Council chose the third course, and carried it out with great J767' success. They fought the Nizam alone ; they Treaty, fought tlic Nizam and Hyder ; they engaged by treaty to fight Hyder on behalf of the Nizam, and allied themselves with some of the Mahrattas in order to do so ; then they made with another treaty with Hyder and the Mahrattas, Hyder, . . "^ , , f, .. , / April promising to help either party 11 attacked. These two native powers at once began to fight each other, and each demanded the Company's help against the other; so that by 1769 the Madras Council had broken all its treaties and had incurred the reproach of treachery to every state in Southern India. Meanwhile the Mahrattas had regained their fighting strength, and marched large forces against Delhi : the Mogul emperor joined them, glad to get back to his capital on any terms ; and Clive's arrange- ments of 1765 were seriously imperilled in two quarters, since the invaders at the same time raided Rohilkhand, Mahrattas an indcpeiidcnt state on the north-western in Rohilk- , , ,- ^^ ,, i hand, border of Oudh, and attempted to annex the 1772- districts on its southern border which Clive had granted to Shah Alam. IV.] PRESIDENCY OF WARREN HASTINGS i6i E. The Presidency of Warren Hastings. It was just at this time that the directors of the Company began to see how mistaken had been their poHcy of non-interference in the collection of the • 1 1 Hastings Bengal revenue. They determined at last to be sent out as as bold as Clive had thought them, and to take of Bengal, into their own hands the duties of the diwani. 1772- To inaugurate this new policy they appointed to the Presidency of the Bengal Council a man after Clive's own heart, the only member of that degraded Council of 1 76 1 -5 who had refused to work for his own private gain. In the spring of 1772 Warren Hastings arrived at Calcutta, charged with the creation of a new financial system and the punishment of those who had ruined the old one. He was at once confronted with the problem of securing Oudh against Mahratta attacks. The maintenance of Oudh as a buffer state was a cardinal point of Clive's policy, which Clive's disciple was not likely to neglect. Shuja-ud-daula willingly fell in with this policy, and agreed to pay the Company half a million pounds if the two imperial districts hiiia war, were returned to him : he offered nearly another April half million if the Company's troops would help him to annex Rohilkhand. The Rohillas he represented as a turbulent Afghan warrior-clan dominating a cruelly- oppressed farming population, and their chiefs as men who had deliberately broken a treaty with him and were ready at any moment to invite the Mahrattas across the Ganges : there was some truth in the picture, but Shuja himself was in reality ten times more cruel and treacherous, besides being a coward. Hastings hesitated for some months, and at last despatched the troops required : Rohilkhand became a part of Oudh, L 1 62 INDIA [chap. and the Ganges was made our bulwark against Mahratta invasion from Benares to the Himalayas. Meanwhile the administration of Bengal was being remodelled, and Englishmen were installed as collectors T,, r of revenue. The chief native official under the old The finan- Ben°aiset system was Mohammed Reza Khan; Hastings, straight, by Order from the directors at home, removed him from office and put him under restraint, while strict enquiry was made into his treasurership. Bengal-fashion, every facility was given to his accusers, and to them only, to prove their case : and when, after nearly two years, Hastings pronounced his honourable acquittal, he made himself an inveterate enemy in the chief accuser, Nundkhomar, the high-caste Hindu. But the trans- ference of real government from natives to Englishmen had produced its effect, and justified all Clive's anticipations : Bengal was again flourishing, the times of oppression were over, and Hastings began to hope for a quiet and prosperous term of years in his Presidency. Then Parliament stepped in, and with the best inten- tions in the world tangled up Indian affairs very badly indeed. In the minds of the British public the scandals of 1 761 -5 were confused with the carelessness that followed Clive's last return from India. The Indian , ., , . 1. • • 1 • • affairs dis- philanthropic politician was beginnmg to assert Padia- himself — the class that abolished the slave trade and nearly ruined South Africa, so noble in its impulses, so dangerously meddlesome in its want of knowledge. The ministry of Lord North, deprived by the Company's losses of a great source of revenue, saw its chance of at once pleasing the philanthropists and soothing the House of Commons, whose dignity was just then ruffled by the brusque behaviour of the American colonies. In such a temper was passed the IV.] PRESIDENCY OF WARREN HASTINGS 163 famous Regulating Act, a monument of good inten- tions stupidly carried out. It proclaimed, with 1 \ • 1 • Lord a side glance towards America, " the emment North's /- T-i 1 • T-1 • • 1 Regulat- dommion of Parliament over every British ingAa, subject." It made Bengal the chief seat of the Company's authority, and made the Governor of Bengal Governor - General over all the British settlements — a necessary measure, but so executed as to excite in a most bitter form the jealousy of Madras and the envy of Bombay. It gave the Governor-General a Council of four members, of which under ordinary circumstances he was a member with no more power than any of the others ; if on any question there was a majority of votes against him, he was bound to carry out measures which he might think absolutely ruinous to the Compan)''s interests. He was, indeed, given a casting vote in addition to his own, if the Council should be equally divided — an unlikely event in a body of fiv^e. The Act went on to import into India all the complex system of British law. This meant a very great improvement in the administration of justice, for the laxity and corruptibility of the native courts were notorious ; but the effect of this reform was spoilt by the introduction of a complicated procedure which confused the native suitor, and a new valuation of crimes which ran contrary to all the native ideas of right and wrong. When one adds that all cases then being tried under the old standards were to be transferred to the new jurisdiction, the wrong-headedness of this pouring new wine into old bottles becomes evident. Such were the mischievous kindnesses of the Regu- lating Act ; but the Ministry improved even upon this. They quite omitted to mention whether the Governor- General and his Council could make laws which the Supreme Court must uphold — or whether the Supreme i64 INDIA [chap. Court could veto as unconstitutional edicts which the Council must thereupon revoke. And, having by the Act made it of the highest importance that the Council should work harmoniously together, they appointed to it a majority of amateur reformers, one of whom was Philip Francis, the most dangerous of friends Francis . ,. . - . , , chief and the most vindictive of enemies then engaged member of . _^ , . , ... -^ , , the new in Knglish politics. One cannot wonder that within a year the Council was divided by bitter quarrels, and only united against the pretensions of the judges ; while the Supreme Court had become a terror to every litigant in Bengal, and had quite confirmed in the natives that " peculiar turn of mind, by which they expect everything from power and very little from justice." The new members of Council very soon showed their hand. They were sworn in on the 24th October, 1774. Proceed- Within a week they had condemned, and ingsofthe annulled as far as possible, all Hastings' arrange- Councii. ments with Shuja-ud-daula. A month later they despatched to England an arraignment of Hastings' general policy, and were using every power they had to prove that the Rohilla war had been dis- graced by unspeakable barbarities.* Failing in that, they cheerfully began the next year with preferring and investigating charges of peculation, corruption, and others of like nature against the man who had reintro- duced honesty into Indian finance : and by May they were interfering with the Supreme Court over the custody of prisoners committed for trial. Their chief * There were, of course, what we should call barbarities, but not unspeakable ; and none which, in Hindu eyes, went beyond legitimate warfare. Of course Hastings' mistake was that he did not insist on putting the British general in supreme command : wherefore British troops looked on, while Oudh troops made war according to their nature. IV.] PRESIDENCY OF WARREN HASTINGS 165 witness in the charges against Hastings was Nund- khomar, the malevolent Hindu, the most skilful ■ -n 1 T^ The story of the many expert forgers ni Bengal, r or some ofNund- years a charge of forgery had been hanging over his head in one of the petty native courts. The Regulating Act transferred this to the Supreme Court, and brought it under the British law which punished forgery with death. The case was tried before the three judges and a jury : the Chief Justice himself summed up almost in the strain of a counsel for the prisoner, pointing out the hardship of this sudden change from native to British jurisdiction. But the jury — they could, in fact, do nothing else in face of the evidence — found Nundkhomar guilty. If at this stage the culprit had been let off lightly, every Bengali would have assumed that he had bribed the judges. It was the first judicial conflict between Eastern and •1 i'i /■ 1 Nundkho- vVestern ideas : and when the richest forger and mar the most treacherous Brahmin in Bengal was Aug. 5,' hanged in the centre of Calcutta, all India under- stood that the new rulers might be harsh, but were certainly incorruptible. Hastings was thus, by good luck and the Regulating Act, relieved of a dangerous enemy : though Francis and his party had calculated rightly, when they 11 11 • 111 1- r Hastings allowed the execution to proceed, that the relief obtains would be ascribed in England rather to good theCoun- management than to good luck. For a year '^' ' '" ' more the Governor - General was hampered by the hostile majority in Council : but when Monson, one of the imported three, fell ill and died, parties were suddenly equalized, the casting vote came into operation, and Hastings found himself once more in power. By a curious mischance it happened that at the same moment his friends in England were handing in his resignation, 166 INDIA [chap. which he had some time before placed in their hands to be used on certain conditions. But the directors, in- fluenced by Lord North's partisanship for his own nominees, cared httle about conditions. They hastily accepted the resignation, declared Clavering (the third of the amateurs) Governor-General in Hastings' place, and appointed a new Councillor to fill the vacancy. When the tidings reached India, Clavering with indecent haste asserted his new authority : but Hastings was now in no mood to go. He submitted the whole matter to the Supreme Court — a step which he afterwards re- gretted — and it was decided in his favour. Francis had tact enough to accept the decision gracefully ; Clavering died of the disappointment ; and for eight more years, the most critical years of British rule in India, Hastings was able to exercise his own profound judgment in preserving the empire, hampered indeed by the folly of subordinate Presidencies, but no longer bound hand and foot by vicious obstinacy in the men who shared with him the supreme control. F. Mahratta and Mysore Wars. We must turn back a little to discover what had Foolish in- happened in the Deccan that made those eight o7Bom"b" years so critical. To begin with, the Bombay Council in Council had in 1774 found its long-looked-for Mahratta / / t & .iffairs. opportunity of emulating and (it hoped) surpassing Dupleix. The Peshwa of the Mahrattas was dead, his natural successor was only just born, Na'rayan aud a prctcuder named Raghuba had sprung up wa, Aug. from an elder branch of the family. The officials 30, 1773- ^^ Bombay at once backed the pretender, but made a mistake in demanding — and seizing — their Jec. 28 IV.] MAHRATTA AND MYSORE WARS 167 reward beforehand. Salsette, an island close to Bombay, and Bassein, a town on the mainland opposite, had long been desired by the Bombay Council ; but the Mahrattas had driven the Portuguese from them not forty years before, and it was a point of honour with them not to give up their conquest. When, therefore, Raghuba ceded these places, and when an s^i^^^^ English army took Salsette by force, the pre- ^^^ tender's cause was seriously compromised. The '774- Bengal Council condemned the war at once, and sent over an agent who concluded a treaty with the ^^^^^ ^j. Mahratta ministry in which Raghuba was thrown P"""^!??' -^ ° har, Mar. over altogether ; but while negotiations were still '> '776- going on Monson's illness had put Hastings in power, and he saw that when action had once been taken — as it had been in the capture of Salsette disallows — that action must be supported to the point of * ^"''^'^• victory if the Mahrattas were to be kept in check at all. He therefore disallowed the agent's treaty and sent orders to press on the war ; but the Bombay Council, with the courage of a street boy who throws stones and runs away, marched their army within sixteen miles of the Mahratta capital, Poona, and then abandoned their heavy artillery and retreated. Raghuba gave himself up in despair to his enemies ; the Bombay army was surrender surrounded and laid down its arms. For- ofwar- gaum, tunately Hastings had already despatched J^"- '779- troops overland under the command of Colonel Goddard ; and for three years this officer maintained his position in the Mahratta country, gaining no great advantages, but occupying the attention of armies many times the size of his own, which otherwise could and would have harried Bengal and ruined Madras in the distracted times that were to follow. If Sir Eyre Coote was, as we shall see, Hastings' right-hand man in the coming turmoil. i68 INDIA [chap. Goddard may claim a place not much inferior. He Bassein took Basscin ; he suggested, and one of his Dec."ii, captains most daringly carried out, the escalade 1780. ^^ Gwalior, the strongest of Mahratta Popham . ^^'^^s fortresses ; and to his tact and courage is mainly Gwalior, ' _ _ '-' _ "^ Aug. 4, due the treaty which in 1782 gave both parties Treaty of an honourablc peace, and allowed Hastings to Miy""!';- ^^^^ ^^^ whole Strength against even more '^^^" dangerous enemies in the Carnatic. For the Council at Madras had been adding to their long list of ineptitudes. At Bombay, Dupleix in the had been the model : at Madras they set to work Madras .. ^ ^ , , i i r i • r ^^ Presi- to imitate Hastings most doubtiul piece of policy, ^"'^^' the Rohilla war. At the request of the Nawab of the Carnatic they invaded Tanjore and annexed it to Invasion of his dominioiis. The directors interfered, and ^anjore, j-cstitutlon was made : but from that time the llYs\e- English lost the confidence of their last allies in thTRaja Southern India. In this predicament news was in April, received that France had declared war : and the 1776. War with French fleet in Indian waters was known to be (war of stronger than any the Company could bring American . . ■, ^ . , indepen- against it. Hastiugs saw there was just one 1778. ' chance of safety. Every town on the coast under French rule was seized at once, as were the Dutch Pondi- settlements when Holland a little later joined in cherry ^^g ^ya^ 3o the Frcuch fleets which year after taken, •' Oct. year swept along the Coromandel coast, striving Mah6 to take India from us (as they were taking Mar"' America) by cutting off communications with '''"' the home islands, found no port where they could refit, no means of supplying our enemies with a steady flow of supplies and money : they were reduced to spasmodic landings of troops who were at once left to their own resources, while the ships either sailed IV.] MAHRATTA AND MYSORE WARS 169 back to their nearest station at Bourbon, two thousand miles away, or engaged in stubborn conflicts sea fights with a smaller English fleet that entirely declined Hughe" to own itself beaten. re"n, Fei)'- Indeed, it was not in French armies or French ^^p'-'^s^- fleets that the real danger lay, but in French intrigue with the finest soldier in India. Of the French Hyder ah settlements taken by Hastmgs one, Mahe, lay on war. the western coast of Mysore. Hyder Ali was not the man to claim less authority than had Siraj-ud-daula over Calcutta or Anwar-ud-din over Pondicherry. But he was not yet ready to attack Hastings : the Madras Council, however, he conceived to be at his mercy, and he had an old grudge against them. He matured his plans with great skill : from the Mogul emperor he procured a grant of all the Nizam's dominions ; from the Mahrattas, whom the French were guiding, he obtained almost equally favourable terms : he proclaimed a holy war against the infidels in every mosque and every Hindu temple of Mysore. Then he burst upon the Carnatic through the passes of the Eastern Ghats, and ^ij^ush drove straight at Madras, cutting in two the "po" Mf o ' o dras, July small English army. The two parts attempted '780. to unite, but Hyder knew the men he was fighting : he neglected the larger, whose general was incapable, threw his whole force upon the smaller, and marched oilm triumph with a few prisoners who survived Puiiaiur, his attack. But Hastings was undaunted : he scraped together every man and every rupee that could be spared from Bengal and confronted Hyder with Clive's old comrade. Sir Eyre Coote, who had replaced Clavering on the Bengal Council. The progress of the victor was at once checked. He was driven from the siege of several forts which were on the point of sur- rendering : twice Coote defeated him with great loss : 170 INDIA [chap. and next year the Mahratta peace let loose against Porto his western frontier the forces of Bombay. July I, French help came, but it did him little good : shoii'nghar, and at the end of the year he died in harness, Dea'thof ^^i^h the sure presentiment that his son Tipu Dec"^'"' would lose everything that he had gained. He 1782. had not, however, calculated enough upon the Madras Council, who, Coote being also dead, reassumed Capituia- control of the war. They abandoned to Tipu's Bedn°ur vengcance the troops that Bombay had sent to and Man. their help : when his auxiliaries retired at the galore, ^^ '783- peace of Versailles, and British troops were advancing from north and south at once into the heart of Mysore, they sent him commissioners to beg for peace: they allowed the commissioners to be insulted and threatened without protest, and implored the Mahrattas Treaty of ^"^ ^^^ Nizam to join in their supplications for iwTwiar ^ treaty. When the treaty was at last con- II, 1784. temptuously thrown to them, they did not even trouble to arrange for the release of the troops they had deserted. It is wonderful, seeing how rashness in Bombay and cowardice in Madras continually upset all his Hastings' ^_. adniinis. plans, that Hastmgs should have been able to trative r- 1 1 ■i-' 1 work in fight at once the French and the two most powerful states of India, and to leave behind him after the contest an empire undiminished in extent and strengthened in authority. But the whole story of his genius is not yet told. Through the years of struggle, though supreme in his own Council, he was harassed by disputes with the Supreme Courts in Bengal and never-ending reprimands from home. The judges, thinking they could easily manage the man whom their decision had settled in the Governor- ship, tried to draw even the details of revenue- IV.] MAHRATTA AND MYSORE WARS 171 collecting within the grasp of their highly technical pro- cedure. Hastings fought them till he succeeded p., ., o t> Fight with in establishing a separate revenue court under '^^ ^"- ° » preme the Company's control, and soothed them by Court, making the Chief Justice its first president. But this, in common with every other act of his, was made an accusation against him by powerful enemies in London : and ill some of their attacks, unfortunately, they had a more plausible show of right. All this fighting was not to be done without money : and the revenues of Bengal, large as they were, and in spite of Hastings' able administration, could not support at once a Mysore war, a Mahratta war, and the demands from England for a large dividend. Hastings, therefore, following the customs of the Mogul princes, demanded from ofchait the Raja Chait Singh of Benares an extra con- tribution for war purposes. This demand was no more unjustifiable to the Hindu mind than an extra penny on the income tax for war purposes would be to us : for by a treaty concluded in 1775 Chait Singh was not an independent ally of the Company, but merely a deputy- governor of one of its estates who farmed the taxes under a loosely-worded contract. Nor did he object to the demand as a matter of right, but evaded it on the plea of poverty — a plea amply disproved after his flight. In England, however, it was easy to magnify a bailiff into a native prince, and Chait Singh was installed beside Nundkhomar as a representative victim of monstrous tyranny. There was still another channel through which Hastings might receive the money so urgently re- quired of him. The Nawab of Oudh was a Thec.ise million pounds in arrears. When pressed for g[,||^s^ Terms of owners, paying for their land a fixed tax to the s''g';tf/"2^' ruling power : if the property increased in value, ■"=■"• or the currency in which the tax was paid decreased in value, it was to the zamindar's profit : if new land in his district was brought into cultivation, the whole of the new rent went into his pocket. Some few ryots who could prove a long tenure of their farms were given fixed occupancy at a fixed rent : a large number got fixed occupancy, with a rent that could be raised on appeal to the law-courts : but the majority were really at their new landlord's mercy from year to year. The zamindar had been a hereditary tax-collector with opportunities for extortion: he became in 1793 a land-owner not quite so independent as an English squire, but much more so than an Irish landlord of to-day. And he obtained this gift without doing a hand's turn for it : he performed no duties save that of handing over to the government a continually decreasing proportion of his rents ; and he was asked to perform no others except those of keeping order in the villages (which he never did), of preventing frauds on the salt and opium revenue (but the frauds were usually of his devising), and of carrying the mails through his district on cross-country roads. Everything else was done for him : the British Government protected him from Mahratta raids, the ryot cleared and filled and drained and worked his land. And the zamindar still sits and smiles at his own prosperity. It was an experiment tried on imperfect knowledge * Here the influence of Francis is traceable : he had strongly advocated permanence against Hastings' proposal for five-year settlements. i8o BRITISH INDIA [chap. of the facts, and made irrevocable against expert advice. It has never been repeated in its original shape outside It was on Bengal.*' We can see nowadays that a twenty the whole — Qj. even a ten — years' trial of the new plan an unwise ' -"^ measure, would have led to valuable amendments and distributed much more fairly the increased value of Bengal land. But two of its results were so important that for them one is almost tempted to consider the whole settlement justifiable. It gave, in the first place, ... a great and much needed proof to the Hindu but in two o r ways much ^]^q^^ j^jg j^g^y rulers Were as disinterested as they strength- ^ enedour were firm. Every former conqueror of Bengal position in . India. had rack-rciited it : these latest conquerors de- liberately bound themselves to abstain from any such arbitrariness. The shifty Bengali felt that he deserved to be the servant of men who kept their word against their own interests. And the settlement gave, in the second place, to the zamindars so great an interest in the maintenance of British government that the terrible year of the Mutiny hardly stirred Bengal at all. The Sepoys might mutiny in their cantonments, but beyond them they were powerless and friendless. And it is worth much revenue to have saved Patna and Dacca from the horrors of Cawnpore. Bengal, therefore, remained undisturbed, and has practically done so ever since. But the Deccan had still problems of foreign politics to be solved. in the Cornwallis had to face, with his hands tied, the situation which had all but mastered Warren Hastings — the balance of power between the Mahrattas, Tipus Tipu, and the Nizam. Tipu, like his father, embassies, ^^^ ^j^^ activcly disturbing element. He sent embassies to France and Turkey, getting from the one * Except as regards about 2000 square miles in Oudh, which were permanently settled as a reward for their owners' services during the Mutiny. v.] CREATION OF OUR INDIAN EMPIRE i8i cautious civility, from the other empty though effusive welcome : but when he ventured on open warwith . Mysore, war, the other powers of the Penmsula soon 1790-92- reduced him to a quiescence which chafed him. Still the English policy, both under Cornwallis and during the five years' rule of his ioaan tenens, Sir John - , . ^ , Sir John Shore, forbade any further mterierence than was shore, 11 /--A Governor- absolutely necessary to keep the peace. Our General, Governors looked on while Tipu gathered his strength, while the Nizam (whom we allowed to be defeated by the Mahrattas) organized an army ^^^^ under French officers, while the Mahratta chiefs between ' i\ izam and established themselves at Delhi and remodelled Mahrat- tas, 1795. their armies on the European fashion. Against M.ihrattas active French intervention only were strong measures taken. Cornwallis was as prompt to seize the French settlements in 1793 as Hastings had - " 1 XT 1 ) Bonaparte been fifteen years before: and INelsons eager in Egypt, pursuit of Bonaparte to Egypt was chiefly due to our knowledge of French schemes for an alliance with Tipu.* B. Wellesley Creates our Indian Empire. On the very day when Tipu heard that that alliance had been concluded — not by Bonaparte, but by the Governor of Mauritius — one of India's greatest treaty Governor-Generals landed at Madras. Richard J;,'^'''''''" , 1 ipu and Wellesley, Lord Mornington (he won in India 'jhe^^^^ his better known title of the Marquess Wellesley), |^i=>>' '7' was the eldest of four distinguished brothers, weiiesiey, William (Lord Maryborough) became a success- cenerX ful politician : Henry (Lord Cowley) a famous '798-1805. diplomatist: Arthur we know as the "Great Duke" of * Bonaparte wrote to Tipu fiom Cairo in 1799, promising him " release irom the iron yoke of the English." i82 BRITISH INDIA [chap. Wellington. Richard, to whom his brothers owed their first opportunities of distinction, surpassed them all in the variety of his genius : he was strategist and statesman too — which Wellington never was — and he had that far-reaching, all-grasping conception of the problems of empire, that eagle's view, which makes it no flattery to call such a man Imperial. For him as for his better known brother India was to be the training- ground on which they learnt how to defeat Napoleon : Waterloo may have been won on the playing-fields at Eton, but the Peninsular War (which was Wellesley's war as much as Wellington's) was more certainly a result of that victorious pro-consulate with which we have now to deal. The times were favourable to an energetic ruler. The acquittal of Warren Hastings after his long agony Warren ^^^ silcnced the Little-England party of those f ""uiufd <^^ys : and any war in India was merely a part 1795- of the all-pervading war with France, still dear to the nation's heart. Wellesley, moreover, had the support of Dundas, the responsible minister for Indian affairs : and he knew that, whatever defeat or reverses might bring, Dundas was not the man to betray a victorious friend. He made up his mind to be victorious, and (having thus secured ministerial support) to neglect and defy, if necessary, the dividend-spinners of the East India Company. Tipu was, of course, the immediate enemy ; but the English troops were in no condition for a war. Wellesley kept Tipu employed with diplomatic corre- ^^^ spondence while he turned sharply on the Nizam's Nizam of Hyderabad and forced him to dismiss French J troops dis- ^11 his French officers and replace them by missed, '^ ^ 1798. English ones. Tipu took no alarm, and thought himself safe enouerh to become insolent. Almost in the v.] CREATION OF OUR INDIAN EMPIRE 183 words of the American humorist he bade the Governor- General "go on writing me letters — I'm always glad to know how }'ou are." * The reply was prompt and decisive, for Wellesley had now got his army into condition. On February 3, 1799, he be- Mysore gan the war : in three months the English troops to May, had twice defeated the Mysore king, driven him '^^^' into his capital of Seringapatam, besieged and stormed it, and killed Tipu himself At home the news was scarcely believed : the glamour of the East had magnified our enemy into a second Bonaparte, and the name of his conqueror was in every one's mouth. Not undeservedly : for Wellesley's statesmanship was now proved to be in no way inferior to his generalship. His brother. Colonel Wellesley, was set to restore order. Mysore proper, the old Hindu kingdom which p^^tition Hyder AH had seized, was given back to the of Mysore. heirs of its ancient rulers. The districts bordering on Hyderabad were handed over to the Nizam, and some further west offered to the Peshwa of the Mahrattas if he chose to abandon the French. The strongest fortresses, and the whole sea coast of Tipu's dominions, remained in English hands, a sure guarantee against further disturbance in the south of the peninsula. The whole presidency of Madras became at once as tranquil as Bengal. Praises poured in upon the victor from all Anglo- India, from the Company, from Parliament, and (his greatest delight) from the Army — which rarely cares to admit that it has been led to conquest by a civilian. The House of Commons, that in 1793 had denounced any further extension of dominion, was for the first time stirred into an acknowledgment in so many words of " The British Empire in India." * " Continue to allow me the pleasure of your correspondence, making me happy by accounts of your health." Tipu to Wellesley, received 25th Dec. 1798. i84 BRITISH INDIA [chap. It was in this partition of Mysore that Wellesley first showed his plan of consoHdating our supremacy. The "buffer-state" principle had been found unsatis- Ine new r r policy of factory. It had not actually broken down : subsidiary •' ■' treaties. Qudh and Hyderabad had served their turn in keeping the Afghans and the Mahrattas at a distance while we learnt how to rule Bengal and Madras. But we were now strong enough to defend ourselves, and native states (as the Nizam's case had shown) were not by any means trustworthy allies in time of danger. Wellesley therefore decided to reverse completely the policy of his predecessors, to encircle the allied states with a ring of English possessions, and to let all possible inroads on the utmost borders of our jurisdiction break themselves against an immovable barrier of British troops. To secure the territories required for this scheme of defence he had recourse to his classical learning. Greek history tells us how the League of Delos between independent Greek states was converted into A araiiei ^^^ empire of Athens. It was provided in the g°^^ League that each state should contribute so histor>-. many ships to the common Navy. Presently the smaller states, being lazy, made an agreement with Athens that she, who had the machinery at command, should supply the necessary ships at a cheaper rate, so that all they need do was to pay her the cost. A little later it was found that the League's navy was over- whelmingly Athenian, and that the smaller states were practically paying tribute to their wiser neighbour. That way the course of our Indian policy had long been trending, and Wellesley took every advantage of The oiic ^^^ trend. The Nizam in Hyderabad, the carried Nawabs of the Carnatic and Tanjore, the out, ■' ' i8oo.i. Nawab of Oudh, had bound themselves to the Company, some to keep up an army for mutual v.] CREATION OF OUR INDIAN EMPIRE 185 defence against outside attacks, some to grant sub- sidies for the maintenance of the Company's troops for the same purpose. Wellesley induced them all to accept British troops : and because they complained of the cost of maintenance he at once offered to take over certain districts of their territory and subsidize the regiments himself from the revenues of those dis- tricts. In the case of the two smaller states, whose rulers had treacherously intrigued with Tipu, practi- cally the whole territory passed under British control. Hyderabad gave up the districts taken from Mysore: Oudh surrendered Rohilkhand and the Jumna-Ganges strip. The ceded districts soon became the home of an industrious and unworried population : and the work entailed on English officials in putting down local tyranny and extortion is sufficient evidence of the good done by the new policy. By 1802 the ring-fence was almost complete.* The coast-line was in British hands from Goa to Chit- ■^veiiesiey-s tagong. The Jumna formed our north-western ^'^'^'^^■ frontier against the Mahrattas. Mysore, Travancore, and Oudh, each completely shut in by British territory, were more or less prosperous under native rulers. The Madras and Bengal presidencies were tranquilly de- veloping their resources behind Wellesley's impregnable shield. Even the Nizam, still exposed on one frontier to Mahratta raids, feared them little since a British garrison had been assigned for his defence. The Mahratta powers alone were capable of disturbing the peace : and they held a position which gave them great advantages, while their complete exclusion from the most fertile scenes of their former raids made them every day more eager for an open and exterminating war. * See map, page 186, 1 86 BRITISH INDIA [chap. The Mahratta confederacy was fast breaking up into hostile states * The Peshwa, formerly undisputed leader Disunion °^ ^^^ whole clan, was now merely one among among^the flyg important chiefs. He ruled in Poona with t^s- less authority, if anything, than that exercised by Sindhiaat Delhi, by Holkar at Indore, by the Bhonsla INDIA As left loy Wellesley 1805. TRAVANCO in Berar, and by the Gaekwar in Baroda. There were * For a vivid picture of this period, see Hockley's " Pandurang HariJ' v.] CREATION OF OUR INDIAN EMPIRE 187 repeated quarrels, especially between Holkar and Sindhia ; and when, near the end of 1802, Holkar routed both Sindhia and the Peshwa under the walls of Poona, Wellesley saw that his opportunity was come. He made with the defeated Peshwa a treaty like those with the Nizam and the Nawab Bassein, Vizier : British troops were in future to guarantee his authority in Poona, and Mahratta territory was ceded to pay for their support. Arthur Wellesley, now a General, conducted our new ally back to his capital. Two only of the chiefs took immediate alarm. Sindhia, smarting under one defeat and sure that he had now lost all his influence over the Peshwa, united with the Bhonsla of Berar and threatened the Hyderabad frontier. Holkar sulked, and the Gaekwar was won over by astute diplomacy to become an ally of the English and to cede the whole coast-line of the Gulf of Cambay. But any delay might see the end of Holkar's ill-temper. Wellesley determined to war with strike at once. His brother advanced from Apn^sos"' Poona against the combined armies on the Mahratta '-' war, Aug. Hyderabad border, and routed nearly ten times '" ^^c. . 1803. his number at Assaye. Two months after he Assaye, met at Argaum all the troops the Bhonsla could ^^'"' '^' ° ^ Argaum, rally, and broke them to pieces. On December Nov. 29. 17 the Bhonsla signed the usual treaty, and the Deccan war was soon over. In the north events moved no less rapidly. General Lake stormed Aligarh Delhi, on September 4, defeated Sindhia's northern LlswaVi army a week later, occupied Delhi and Agra, ^ov. i. and broke up Sindhia's reserves at Laswari as com- pletely as his colleague did the Bhonsla's at Argaum. Sindhia signed his treaty on December 30. The war had lasted less than six months, and i88 BRITISH INDIA [chap. Wellesley had attained every object he had aimed at. Results of '^^^ ^^^^ °^ ^^^^ French officers in native employ the war. ]^a.d disappeared from India : there was no corner of the coast left on which a Frenchman could land. Delhi, and the last of the Mogul Emperors, and all the weight of undefined authority that the Mogul name still bore India, were from henceforth on the English side. From Cutch to Chittagong, from the Sutlej to Cape Comorin, Britain was paramount and incontestably sovereign. So at least it seemed to the great Proconsul for a few short months of 1804. So it would have been, but for the unexpected faint-heartedness of British Wellesley is not officers, and the usual fickleness of politicians at home. Wellesley had argued right from the first. Victories and successes could induce Dundas and his successor, Castlereagh, to back up the Governor- General against all attacks from the Company's directors: but victories and successes alone could do it. While they lasted, the directors themselves could only alternate irritating votes of censure with abject requests Friction , . *= . -r. , ^ between to him not to resign. But the first reverse was the ... Governor, fatal. Tfiis impcrious man, nominally their General i i i i • i and the servant, overwhelmed them m great matters and aimoyed them in small. Their interests were bound up with monopoly : he was all for free trade.* They headed a close corporation of officials : he brought in from wherever he could find them the men best able to do his work. They counted every penny of his salary and allowances : he lived among the princes he had conquered in Eastern state and ceremony, the master of an Empire, not merely the managing director of a firm. They sent out half-educated boys of eighteen to * /.tf. , the liberty of all British subjects to trade in India, not of the E.I.C. only. v.] CREATION OF OUR INDIAN EMPIRE 189 take in their hands the lives and fortunes of perhaps half a million natives : when Wellesley proposed to educate them for their duties, the directors snubbed and insulted him. His brothers especially were marks for their attack : they reduced Arthur's allowance when he was commanding in Mysore, and demanded Henry's dis- missal while he was reforming Oudh. They were honourable men in private life — they may even have been amiable: but they treated Wellesley as if he were a cross between Richard HI. and Jack Sheppard. His outlook covered half the world, and they thought he was trying to fill his pockets. Bottom on Pegasus could not have kicked his ribs more uselessly, or have been more horribly afraid all the time of a sudden fall. The reverse came. Holkar, the one Mahratta chief still unsubdued, recovered soon enough from his sulks when he saw his compatriots go down like ^|^^ ^^,^^ ninepins. In April, 1804, the war against him ^g^^^il^ °"' began. Lake moving from Delhi and Murray ^p""- ^^°^- from Gujarat against the Malwa lands. But Holkar had kept to the traditions of his forefathers, and did not believe in the regular European-drilled standing armies which had led Sindhia and the Bhonsla to their ruin. They were strong weapons, it is true, and hard to beat down : but, once broken, they had no rallying power. Laswari and Argaum would have been less decisive against the old hordes of roving Mahratta horsemen : and in such hordes Holkar placed his chief reliance. Murray and Monson (Lake's second in command) found no one to fight, but were constantly harassed by troops of ^onsons light horse. They retreated in opposite direc- Yuly'e'to tions over swollen rivers during the rains; and Aug. 31. Monson's force was a mere rabble before it reached Agra. The disaster was quickly retrieved. Murray plucked igo BRITISH INDIA [chap. up courage to seize Indore while Holkar was in pursuit T-,. of Monson, and the chief himself after a fierce Nov. 13. battle at Dig, was driven into the Punjab and forced at last to sign a treaty parallel with those of his r> „• fellow-chiefs. But the one defeat had done all Cornwallis jur^"o ^^^ mischief: Wellesley was recalled, Cornwallis 1805 ; dies ggj^^ Qu|- [^ haste to take over the government, on Oct. 5. o ' the treaties with Sindhia and Holkar were cancelled, and the policy of the eagle thrown aside for the policy of the snail. Cornwallis died within three „ , months of his arrival, and the local official who Barlow, ' Deputy- took hls place sympathized with the dividend- Governor, r y x^ 1805-7. requirers. They could not for shame abandon the territories which Wellesley had actually given them : but they drew a sharp line at the British frontiers, and left Sindhia and Holkar and the chiefs of Rajputana and the Pindari freebooters to tear each other to pieces in the lands beyond the pale. C. "Welleslev's System Completed. Yet however much the East India Company might desire to isolate its possessions and its affairs in Asia, the isolation could only be local and temporar)'. It was not dangerous, but only selfish, to let Rajputana stew in its own juice now that the Wellesleys had broken the T. Mahratta power : but new foes were being stirred Danger 1 " from Na- up j-^qj- ygj-y far away by the greatest enemy of schemes, all — Napoleon, whom from first to last the Wellesleys knew as ^//e enemy, whose intrigues they were thwarting at Assaye no less than they destroyed Peace of his plans at Torres Vcdras and at Watcrloo. In 1807.' 1805 a French embassy was at Teheran : in 1807 Napoleon was urging his new ally, the Emperor v.] WELLESLEY'S SYSTE\f COMPLETED 191 of Russia, to take part in a joint expedition through Turkey and Persia against British India. Lord Minto, the new Viceroy, sent out counter- Mimo, embassies in hot haste. Ranjit Singh, the Sikh GeneraiT ruler at Lahore — the Amirs of Sinde — Shah ' °'"^' Shuja of Afghanistan — and the Shah of Persia — were all besieged with offers of alliance : but the danger was averted by other means (yet by the Wellesleys * again) when the Peninsular War fastened itself like a leech on Napoleon's Empire and drained it to the point of exhaustion. So British India settled down to a slow but steady progress. The last years of Napoleonic war xheCape made it inaccessible to enemies from the sea : 'g^^"- the Cape of Good Hope and Mauritius passed Mauritius finally under British rule, and the French were iSio. ' ejected from their latest conquest, Java. In 1813 J^^^^^ the periodical renewal of the Compan\''s charter '^"■ by Parliament led to the throwing open of Indian trade to all British subjects, the Company retaining only the monopoly of trade with China, So step by step the rulers of India proceeded along the Hastincs, path which the Great Marquess had laid down General, for them : and by 18 18 he was able to rejoice in the complete carrying out of his great scheme of Indian pacification. For the chaos beyond the pale was stirring and breaking its bounds, and out of the turmoil came indig- nant complaints — " In India there has always been some dominant power to protect quiet people against banditti : you English have seized the supremacy, and have no right to shirk your duty as protectors." The * Three this time : for Henry was Ambassador to Spain while the Marquess was Foreign Secretary. 192 BRITISH INDIA [chap. appeal was emphasized by an attempted revolt of the Peshwa and other Mahratta chiefs whose treaties rattaWari Still held good : and Lord Hastings took the * "^'^ " opportunity to deal with the whole trouble in one scheme. The revolt was sternly put down : the INDIA As left by Lord Hastings 1823. Completion of Wellesley's policy. Peshwa was deposed and his dominions annexed : the remains of the Mahratta confederacy, together with the v.] WELLESLEY'S SYSTEM COMPLETED 193 kingdoms of Rajputana, were put under the British protectorate : and the freebooting Pindari bands were destroyed out of the land. All these roundings off of the British frontier were bringing us face to face with a number of in- i-hebor- dependent kingdoms on the outskirts of India, der states, which had sprung up about the time of our own first victories there. In the years immediately following 1757 four dynasties were establishing themselves in the Indian border-lands. The Gurkhas, a Rajput clan, made themselves a kingdom in the Himalayan valleys of Nepal. Alompra had added to his petty chief- tainship in Upper Burma all the Lower Irrawadi ' ^ '^ ^ _ Burma, and Salwen and the coast-lands below Chittagong as far as Martaban. The Durani chiefs laid hold on Afghanistan, and forced it like a kicking mule into j^fghani- harness. And the Sikh clans, of whom we have ^''''"' already spoken, drew together on the Upper Indus, till under Ranjit Singh they occupied Kashmir and 1 1 A r , r T^ 1 • 1 1 M, the Sikhs. drove the Afghans from reshawur mto the hills of the Soliman Range. The Afghans and Sikhs were our natural friends, securing our north-western frontier from invasion by land : their bitter hatred of each other — Mohammedan and strict Hindu — freed us from fear of a hostile combination between them : and when the embassy of 1808 had arranged with Ranjit Singh a mutual frontier on the Sutlei, our outlook in that direction was 1-1 War with undisturbed. But in 18 14 the Gurkhas encroached Nep.-ii, ■n 11/- r 1 '11 1S14-16. on Bengal, and the first of our hill wars was needed to bring them to reason. The western end of their state was ceded, bringing British dominion to the summit of the Himalayas : but no subsidiar}' treaty was imposed, and independent Nepal has been ever since our staunch friend and the nurser)- of some of our best Indian regiments. N 194 BRITISH INDIA [chap. The Burmese attacked us next, probably the least Lord Am- intelligent enemies we had faced since Plassey. Go'vernor- Practically ignorant of European warfare, ^8^2"^^' they thrust against us north-westward through First Bur- the liills of Mauipur, and infringed on our mese War, '■ ' t a 1 1824-6. coast-line in the Bay of Bengal. Lord Amherst wasted no time on border skirmishes, but struck at the heart of the Burmese Empire, forcing a passage up the Irrawadi to the capital at Ava. The expedition was ill-equipped and managed, but it was a success. Assam became British, and all the Bay of Bengal coast-line as far south as Tenasserim. There was peace again through the Empire, which nothing could disturb but the advance of a hostile Empire against our frontiers on the north-west. D. Bentinck and Internal Reform. The twelve years of peace which followed the Burmese war gave occasion for the work of another ,, ,. , great Governor-General. When Wellesley in Kentinck, o y Generar' ^^'^4 ^as at the height of his power, 1828-34. he received from the Governor of Madras a letter full of admiration for " the system which has founded British greatness upon Indian happiness." Twenty-four years later the writer of that letter, taking up Wellesley's office, set himself to complete Macau- by a wise scheme of internal reforms the luTogy system which he had so much admired. And of him. vvhen his seven years' work was over, it was with the consenting voice of British and natives alike that Macaulay (happier when he praises v.] BENTINCK AND INTERNAL REFORM 195 than when he blames our Indian rulers) could dedicate a statue TO WILLIAM CAVENDISH BENTINCK, WHO INFUSED INTO ORIENTAL DESPOTISM THE SPIRIT OF BRITISH FREEDOM : WHO NEVER FORGOT THAT THE END OF GOVERNMENT IS THE HAPPINESS OF THE GOVERNED : WHO ABOLISHED CRUEL RITES : WHO EFFACED HUMILIATING DISTINCTIONS : WHO GAVE LIBERTY TO THE EXPRESSION OF PUBLIC OPINION : WHOSE CONSTANT STUDY IT WAS TO ELEVATE THE INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL CHARACTER OF THE NATION COMMITTED TO HIS CHARGE. When we make allowance for the traditional pomposity of inscriptions and for such expressions as represent the political philosophy of that day, we find in this dedication a carefully Epoch of (- Ti • 1 ) 1 • T 1 • Reform. correct account oi Bentmck s work in India. His Governor-Generalship coincides with our English epoch of Reform, the belated revival in Britain of those abstract ideas of government on which the French Revolution had based itself The philosopher before he becomes a politician is the most uncompromising of reformers : he abhors monopolies, he shudders at enforced discipline, he has a stock of capital letters for the glorification of Right and Reason. To him such rule as the Company's was in India is almost unthinkable. Its monopoly of the China trade — its wars with Nepal and Burma (about which the abstract philosopher would know nothing except that xheCom they were successful, and would assuredly ^^hanlrr infer that they were wrong) — its edicts for the danger. better government of a subject population, on which 196 BRITISH INDIA [chap. that population could not so much as vote — were all crimes which cried out for its instant abolition. And while Parliament might be trusted to modify this philosophic severity for British use, the directors of the Company were quite aware that no Ministry would hesitate to sacrifice them, if terms could thus be made with the reformers. The Company's only chance of continued existence was to emphasize, before its Charter came up for renewal, the peaceful, prosperous, and humanitarian nature of its government : and Bentinck was selected to produce this effect. They builded better than they knew. Bentinck had quite enough sympathy with the party of reform to take every opportunity of applying its judicious principles to Indian politics : while his previous experience of the natives in Madras taught him how inapplicable those principles must be in their crude philosophic form. During the first years of his rule he confined himself to the careful super- vision of the machinery already at his disposal. He cut down the exorbitant pay of the military officers, economized in the land administration, and reorganized the local Courts of Justice. But in doing this he was He brink's ^^^^ ^° Introduce quietly one most important natives in- alteration in the details of government ; he to the Civil _ ° Service. entrustcd the simpler tasks of office to the natives themselves. It was a step hardly possible at any previous period, when the memories of native administration and native justice in the days of Clive and Verelst would have been strong in the Anglo- Indian mind. But fifty years of British rule had done something to raise the native standard in these matters — so far at least, that under strict European supervision a few of them might be trusted to deal fairly with their countrymen, and to relieve trained and valuable v.] BENTINCK AND INTERNAL REFORM 197 English servants of the Company from the drearier routine work of the departments. The Directors approved this step because it was cheap, the Reformers because it savoured of the rights of man ; for Bentinck it was the beginning of a new India, more trustworthy because more self-rehant — for even under the most benevolent of despotisms it ruins a man to do nothing for himself. It was partly the popularity which this measure gained for Bentinck among the Hindus that enabled him to carry out two great acts of interference with their re- jj^ ^^p. ligious cruelties, the suppression of the Thugs and ^hugs,'^^ the abolition of Suttee. In the first matter the ''8^9-35> great difficulty was to secure united action : the Thug bands had pursued their career of pious and profitable murder all over Central India, with branches in Oudh and the Deccan, and only the co-operation of several native States with the British Government could thoroughly dishearten and crush them. Still, united action once secured, the rest was comparatively easy ; murder was the Thugs' religion rather than that of their victims — piety is at a discount when it involves the right of some one else to strangle the devotee. But Suttee was a different thing ; the piety which demands and that some one else should kill herself for the Suttee, devotee's benefit is likely to be popular and 1829. often bigoted. From time immemorial widows had been burnt on their husbands' funeral pyres. The very name, Suttee, denoted the virtue of the victim. The Company's officials, rightly careful to respect Hindu religious traditions, had sometimes ignored the custom and sometimes tried to regulate it. Governor after Governor was horrified at its brutality, but feared still more the possibility of a revolt among the high-caste Sepoys of the Bengal army. It occurred to Bentinck to 198 BRITISH INDIA [chap. enquire whether the Sepoys were after all so much attached to this rite ; and when the answer came that it was almost unknown among them, Suttee was doomed. The Bengalis submitted with very little trouble ; they did indeed appeal to the Privy Council, but yielded at once to the adverse decision of that body ; and British officers were no longer required to sanction a barbarity which the French and Dutch had never permitted within the bounds of their pettier jurisdictions.* The extension of the land-settlements beyond Bengal was another work begun under Bentinck's direction. T,, In the North- West Provinces, where he set his Ine new ' surveys officials at work, the worst difficulties of the situa- and set- ' tiements. tion in Bengal Were not repeated. In Bengal the ryots were many-times-conquered Hindus, the zamindars were mostly the descendants of foreign adventurers, and the true successions of ownership were inextricably confused. But around Delhi and on the Upper Ganges the zamindars, being more directly under the monarch's eye, had found less opportunity of exalting themselves from rent-collector to owner ; so that the old village- communities had been much less disturbed. Land- settlements, therefore, in these districts had surer facts for their foundation, and their devisers had the great mistake of Cornwallis always before them for a warning. What Bentinck began was gradually copied all over British India ; for though Madras and Bombay had made experiments of their own, there was still much room for improvement. The ryot himself in Bombay and the greater part of Madras, the village-community of ryots in the Central and North-Western Provinces, were treated as direct tenants of the Crown, and the rent * Suttee still went on in the native States. Hardinge tried to suppress it ; Dalhousie was forced not only to warn feudatories, but to punish one of them for encouraging it. v.] BENTINCK AND INTERNAL REFORM 199 was settled with them subject to periodical and impartial revision. But the most important work of Bentinck's administra- tion came towards its close. In 1833, after a three years' investigation into the Company s charter of mercantile and political business, Parliament renewed its Charter for another twenty years. Such at least is the official record : the plain man would describe the act as a metamorphosis of the Company. Certainly the butterfly is not more unlike the grub than was the Company of 1834 unlike the Company of 1784. Not only the China trade, but all mercantile work of every kind, was taken from this renovated body. Bentinck's rule had proved more successful than the directors wished. He had convinced the British public not only that the Company would rule India on the most humanitarian principles, but that under its rule India could pay its own way without being subsidized from the profits of the China trade. "Your administration is good," Parliament practically said, " your trade is precarious : permit us to relieve you of the sordid cares of dividend- making, that your whole attention may be given to that task of governing which you even now so admirably perform," This altered position of the Company's servants, who were henceforth to govern India entirely for its own benefit without a thought of trade, gave Bentinck the opportunity he had been looking for. From , • ; , . . r . , English that time the admission of natives to the greater becomes /"" -1 r- • '^^ official part of the Civil Service became merely a language . ^ ~ T Ml 1 • • 1 °'^ India. question of fitness. It will long remain so : it takes more than a century of even British supervision to breed a Bengali fit for great command. But even the first steps in that direction were almost impossible while the natives spoke some Hindu dialect only, while lawyers 200 BRITISH INDIA [chap. argued in Persian and civil servants wrote minutes in elaborate English. By a resolution of March 7, 1835, the brains as well as the swords of all India were placed at the disposal of the Indian Government. English became the official language : European literature and science, unrepresented in the multitude of Eastern languages, which had not even the words wherewith to translate them, were given for food to brains no less subtle than those of mediaeval schoolmen : and Bentinck and Macaulay (for the time being a member of his Council) became the fathers of an Indian Renaissance that is still in progress. E. Wars Again. The conditions under which Bentinck had been sent out debarred him from any interference with the pro- tected native states. For the epoch of Reform states Warren Hastings was an able tyrant : and James tothem- Mill, the vilifier of many great Anglo-Indians, had kindly patronised the latest Governor- General as a humanitarian ruler. From Hyderabad and Oudh was taken even such small control as had been customary, — the population being thus abandoned to a native tyranny which Dalhousie in later years had to suppress, and whose suppression had much to do with the Mutiny. In Mysore the natives rose against the barbarities of their ruler, and would not be pacified till they were incorporated with the British dominions.* There are three well-marked eras in the history of The three °^^ Indian Empire. It begins with forty ages of years of competitive conquest, during which India. France was our eager and dangerous opponent in the struggle for dominion. Forty years followed, * Mysore was restored to a better native ruler in 1881. v.] WARS AGAIN 201 during which the French danger paled and vanished, and British authority was established over the greater part of geographical India without any interference from outside. And then from landward, across the deserts and the mountain ranges of our north-western ^ The frontier, loomed up the shadow of a more advance of , . , , , Russia. gigantic rival, of whom little was understood and nothing could be predicted but unremitting progress and increasing power. Russia has become much more commonplace to our modern statesmen : we have come to see that a great deal of her advance in Central Asia is merely the counterpart of ours in India — except in so far as Russia does not thwart her Clives and her Wellesleys. But for many years men watched her with bitter anxiety, as in the night one dimly watches a rising flood ; to many an Indian statesman she was an impending darkness that might be felt. When Bentinck arrived in India the Russian advance had begun. A treaty with Persia had confirmed Russian influence in that state, and its first result was a ^ . ' Persian threatened Persian attack on Herat. It was of siegeof Herat, immediate importance to strengthen our hold '^37- on the buffer states in that direction : and Bentinck initiated the policy, which Lord Auckland r ,, r 1 . . • , Lord carried out more lully, 01 combining with Auckland, Ranjit Singh and the Amirs of Sinde to General, establish a firm and friendly government in Afghanistan. That country was for the time ruled by Dost Mohammed, the son of a former prime minister, who had expelled the legitimate heir Shah Shuja. In 1837 it was learnt that he had received Russian agents at his court, and Lord Auckland at once The first marched a British army through Sinde upon Afghan Kandahar and replaced Shah Shuja on the throne. For two years we kept him there : but in BRITISH INDIA [chap. Afghanistan there is no long rule for a weakling, branded with the stigma of former defeat, and still further discredited by the acceptance of foreign sup- port. Moreover, our army of occupation had to draw its supplies by the devious route through Sinde, as the Sikhs (on the direct route) were unwilling to let us cross their territory — were, indeed, none too friendly allies. Presently Dost Mohammed's son, Akbar Mac- Khan, stirred up the tribes round Kabul ; the murdered British Residcnt there lost his head, tried to at Kabul, 1841. improve matters by treachery, and was murdered with equal treachery : the small British army, which could have held its own as a much later one did inside the great citadel> was led out to a hopeless retreat by an in- competent general — and one man reached in safety the nearest British garrison at Jelalabad, To leave the Afghans flushed with such triumph ca tared would have becH dangerous in the extreme : kK:if°' ^'^ army marched from Kandahar, another forced Sept. 15. j|-g yyo^y from Peshawur to Kabul, and Dost Mohammed, although replaced upon the throne, had learnt wisdom enough to understand that Britain could reach him through all his mountain-barriers and all his wild hill-tribes. These disturbances were the beginning of new wars Ranjh within Hindustan itself. Ranjit Singh died in diTs^Vne 1839. 3.nd the Sikhs grew restless. The heirs 27, 1839. Q^ Sindhia at Gwalior incited his army to open Ellen- mutiny. The Amirs of Sinde lagged somewhat Governor- in tlicir prompt obedience to the Governor- 1842-4. ' General's demands. Lord Ellenborough sus- nexed ^" P^ctcd treachcry on all sides : he crushed the 1843- Gwalior army, which deserved it, and forcibly annexed Sinde, whose rulers had not merited Burnes and nag Second Afghan War, 1841-2. Massacre in the Khurd- Kabul Pass, Jan. 8, 1842. Kabul re- v.] WARS AGAIN 203 such treatment. Before he could deal with the Sikhs he was recalled, and left this last Lord 1 . (^ • T T Hardinge, great conquest to his successor, hir Henry Govemor- . T- ,. General, Hardmge. 1844-8. The Punjab was bubbling over with anarchy. Six years of assassination had placed on the throne an infant whom his mother declared to be the son of Ranjit Singh. The mother was regent, her sikh War, favourite was her prime minister: but the only power in the state was the army, an organization of Hindu religious zealots as stark in fight as Cromwell's Ironsides, and as fiercely fanatic as Mohammed's first Arabs. Already this " army of the Khalsa " * was pre- paring to destroy the band of intriguers at Lahore when their general, himself one of the band, astutely turned their rage upon the British outside their borders. But Hardinge had foreseen an invasion, and met the Mudki, Sikhs at Mudki — a hardly won battle, which, Ys^^^/^' followed by a still more desperate one at Firoz- ..... shah, Dec. Firozshah, induced them to retire withm their 21-2. own territory. When in a month they broke fl'n.% out again, Hardinge's heavy guns had arrived, '^■♦^• 1 r 11 \i-i J Sobraon, and two more fierce battles at Aliwal and Feb. 10. Sobraon tamed even these hardy foes. The ocM°pTed, British army occupied Lahore : a council of ^*=''- ^°- Sikh nobles was set up to act as Regent during the boy- prince's minority : Sir Henry Lawrence was appointed British Resident : the Khalsa was reduced to ,, , . . Kashmir a third of its former numbers, and deprived of becomes nearly all its artillery. This weakening of the state under r-1, 11- • 11 1 British Sikh army rendered it quite unable to control suzerainty, •11 •! r T-. ••<-■• 1 ) 1 i6tb Mar. the unruly hill-tribes of Ranjit Singh s northern dominions, or to withstand them if they determined * "Saved Ones." 204 BRITISH INDIA [chap. on an invasion. To avoid trouble, therefore, the Kashmir province was detached from Sikh rule, and given to Gholab Singh, the most formidable of the upland chiefs, to rule under British suzerainty ; while a small strip in the east of the Punjab was added to the British dominions. And Lord Hardinge, when he left India after four years of hard work, assured his successor that " it would not be necessary to fire a gun in India for seven years to come." * F. Dalhousie. Fortunately for the Empire, that successor was the Marquess of Dalhousie. Hastings had made us secure Dalhousie ^"^ India, Wellesley had made us paramount : Generar' ^°^ Dalliousle it was rcserved to round off our 1848-56. territory, to make us protectors as well of the people as of their rulers, and to settle not only the administrative but the industrial development of India along lines which it follows steadily at the present moment. If British India now reaches from Chitral to the Mekong, it is because Dalhousie of set policy extended it from Peshawur to Pegu. If the peoples of India seem within measurable distance of becoming the Indian people, it is because with roads and canals and railways and telegraphs he bound firmly together the cumbrous ill-cohering mass, and by sharp lessons in Oudh and Berar and Nagpur taught princes and subjects alike that under British protection only wise and benevolent systems of government can dare to hope for existence. Dalhousie landed at Calcutta on the 12th January, * Others were not so sanguine: in 1846 Sir C. Napier said, "Tiie tragedy must be re-acted a year or two hence." v.] DALHOUSIE 205 1848, to receive from Hardinge a welcome that ended with the words already quoted. Bareh^ three • 11 n • Second months later the Puniab was all aflame agam. sikh War, ■^ ° 1848-9. The Sikh governor of Multan, a great market town on the Jhelum, was called upon to send in his financial report, and in default offered to resign. But when two British officers were sent by the Regency to take over his governorship he had them Rebellion treacherously murdered and broke into open aph"!,^"' rebellion. Lord Gough, the British commander- '^■'^" in-chief, refused to march during the hot weather, and Dalhousie was not yet experienced enough in Indian matters to overrule his decision. But a young English subaltern in charge of a small post on the Indus had heard the news also : hastily he got together a 111 iv,r 1 Herbert few hundred men and marched upon Multan, Edwardes' . campaign meetmcr on his way the rebel with a ten times on the larger army. " Like a terrier barking at a tiger, to use his own words, Edwardes * throughout the long summer faced and mastered the growing forces of rebellion, till he had driven them back into Multan and held them cooped up there. Lord Gough stayed at Simla and worked out plans of what he would do in the winter. Suddenly, he found the -j.^^ whole Sikh nation in arms against him, and ^'^hs rise, o ' and seek behind the Sikhs their hitherto mortal enemies, ^'.'j?"'?'' ' with the the Afghan tribesmen. He decided to reinforce Afghans. the besiegers of Multan, and his reinforcements arrived just in time for a much more hurried retreat. Dalhousie lost patience, and with 17,000 new troops rushed in person to the Punjab frontier. The siege of Multan was resumed, and the town taken : Lord Gough, spurred into a rashness scarcely * Afterwards negotiator of the treaty with Dost Mohammed that kept Afghanistan quiet during the Mutiny. 2o6 BRITISH INDIA [chap. less dangerQus than his former apathy, flung his army Ca ture of ^g^i^'^st the Sikhs to gain doubtful victories Muitan, with cnormous loss, till the all-but-disaster of Jan. 29, ' 1849. Chilian wala sobered him. Then, mustering his waia, whole strength of 24,000 men, he moved steadily Gujrat, upon the massed Sikh armies at Gujrat, where Feb. 20. .j-hey awaited their Afghan allies. No manner of defeat could have impressed them more. It was a full- dress battle from the first, with every possible effect of artillery duel and charging cavalry and the unbroken orderly advance of British infantry — a fair fight on a fair field ending in a fairly acknowledged victory. The The Sikh defeated troops were never allowed to rally : armysur- ^j^j wlien, three weeks afterwards, the last men renders at ' ' Find"' °^ ^^^ Khalsa heaped their arms in front of Mar. i*2. the British line, they almost forgot their defeat in delighted laughter as they heard of the laggards from Afghanistan, who had ridden like lions out of their hills only to be hunted back into them at the lance-point like curs. Such a conquest of the Punjab was brilliant : the ^ , settlement which followed was more than Dal- housie's worthy of it. What his brothers were to settle- J nient of Wellcslcy, that the Lawrences were to Dalhousie. the Pun- -' ' jab. Under Hardinge they had been the uncontrolled wielders of British influence in the Sikh state : the new ruler at once confirmed and controlled their power. Henry Lawrence directed the politics, and his brother John the finance, of the new province : it was Dalhousie who created and regulated the system which they so strenuously and successfully administered.* * Dalhousie was (letermiiied to he master everywhere. "The camp's business is to find fighting ; I find thought. ... I will not stand it in quieter times for half-an-hour, and will come down unmistakably upon any one of them who may try it on " (Letter to Sir \\. Lawrence, Feb. 20, 1849)- v.] DALHOUSIE 207 The new frontier was defended by forts and roads, and the raiding Fathan tribes confronted by a body , "^ The Pun- of troops as mobile as their own. The soldiers jab Fron. ,, , , 1-1 tier Force of the Khalsa were proud to be re-enlisted estab- among the regiments that had so well beaten them. The mass of the nation was disarmed : its turbulent rulers were given merely " their lives and their subsistence " : but the taxes were lightened and made more even, State forests. State canals. State roads were laid out over the whole province, and the last of British conquests became in a very short time the best managed, most trustworthy, and most loyal of the British possessions in India. Three years after the annexation of the Punjab another war broke out at the opposite end of the Empire. The Burmese king in his isolation at second Ava had never understood the strength of those Ku-^mese o War, armies against which his troops had broken '^52-3- themselves in 1825. The usurper who succeeded him outdid him, as pati'enus will, in insults to the British Resident and outrages on traders. Dalhousie found his demands for redress met with studied brutality, and prepared war at once. His clear eye mastered the whole situation — the deadliness of the climate, ^\■hich was the army's chief danger, the conceit of the Burmese that would acknowledge no conquest except a per- manent annexation. Everything was provided for beforehand : not a life was lost that any care Rangoon could save. The Burmese were driven from XprT"',' Rangoon, and the river opened as far as Prome. p/^^^^^^ij^ Ava was left untouched, because we were not yurma, June 30, yet prepared to annex it : * but as far as British '853. arms had penetrated, the country was taken over, and * "To march to Ava will give no peace unless the army remain at Ava" (Dalhousie, in a private letter). 2o8 BRITISH INDIA [chap. Pegu became a part of our dominions. There was no treaty, for the Burmese would not make one : peace was made by proclamation. Almost more important than these external additions to the Indian Empire were the provinces already within j)^^,. its bounds which now passed under direct native'^ British rule. According to Wellesley's policy, policy. which had remained unaltered in its main lines for forty years, our actual possessions formed a protecting shell round the less solid coagulations of the great native states. Some of these, Hyderabad for instance and Oudh and many chieftainships of Rajputana, had been states before we came to India : but a very large number, especially in the Mahratta country, were creations of our own. When a ruler died, his offspring naturally succeeded : but if, as often happened, he had no direct descendants, the custom of India, The '. ' question of handed down for centuries, was clear as to what adoption. ^,, i/-i-. iiiiri-i -i followed. To supply the lack of heirs he might at any time before death adopt any one he pleased, and the adopted son inherited without a doubt the whole of his private property : but the throne he did not inherit, unless the paramount Power had consented to his adoption. Territory thus left kingless passed directly into the hands of the paramount Power, which could appoint a new ruler or take over the control itself as might seem best. The British Government had been unsystematic in its use of this power. Some districts had been absorbed, others had been again and again handed to natives of its own selection. But the scandal of native rule was .T ,• becoming unbearable. Left to themselves. Native o ' states very ^j^g Rajas and Nawabs would have been treated badly gov- •' erned. y^hh. a kind of rough justice : the strong men would have founded dynasties, their weaker successors v.] DALHOUSIE 209 would have been ousted by their prime ministers (as among the Mahrattas) or their generals (as in Mysore). British supremacy, however, had altered all that. Safe behind the guarantee of quiet possession which we gave to all chiefs within our boundary, ruler after ruler gave himself up to luxurious living and the vilest oppression of his subjects. In Nagpur the Raja "lived and died a seller of justice, a drunkard, a debauchee." The Nawab of Oudh was, if possible, more barbarous and more licentious. The Nizam was not much better. And the minor princes copied faithfully the vices of their greater exemplars. Dalhousie saw at once the disease and its remedy. The law about adoption was a weapon with which he could fight this evil, and prove to the en't'^nrtive world that we were the protectors of the ne'^xeda" Indian peoples, not of their rulers only. In In?^^" state after state, as the succession fell vacant, Satarain 1849, he claimed the rights of the paramount Power : and so marked an improvement followed on annexation that one prince at least c u 1 i bambalpur refused to adopt at all, in order that his '" '^51, people might pass under British rule. Among many smaller districts the important kingdom jhansiin of Nagpur passed under this law into the hands 'f"' . "-'' / Nagpur in of the British Government. 1S54. The sovereign states were differently treated. Nothing endangers the value of a good principle like straining it, and Dalhousie was the last to commit that mistake. Wherever in such cases a failure of sovereign . . , 111 states are lieirs seemed probable, every encouragement was notan- ... , , nexed, given to the reignnig power to adopt the most promising of his relatives : and if no adoption was made, still a new native ruler was appointed. But flagrant misgovernment was dealt with as it deserved. O 2IO BRITISH INDIA [chap. The Nizam, whose faults were rather of waste than of cruelty, had been warned in 1843 ^^'^^ i^ ^^49 • '^^^ ^^S3> being still spendthrift and impenitent, he was forced to cede the Berar districts in lieu of pay for his subsidiary INDIA As left Iby Dalhousie 1856. troops, on condition that any surplus revenue should be paid over to him. The King of Oudh, the most abandoned of all native potentates, was treated with v.] DALHOUSIE 211 more severity. Four times * within the last twenty years warning - had been given that if there . except was any more anarchy and misrule the British Oudh, 111 11-1 whose government would take over the kmgdom. king'sruie Every warning had been unheeded. Dalhousie gracefully gave him five years more, and then proposed his removal from all share in the government of his kingdom. The home authorities were sterner still : neither power nor the emptiest shadow of authority must be left him: and almost the last act oudhan- of Dalhousie's administration was to depose fvk'^7, the miserable tyrant and add Oudh to the '^^^' Indian Empire. But in so enlarging this Empire, Dalhousie had completely altered its character. As he had taken it over, it was a chain of scattered territories mainly bordering on the sea, and all defensible there- from. Buffer states of more or less strength changes divided it from Russia on the north-west and date China on the north-east : and no other land- power in Asia was strong enough to undertake an invasion. As he left it, it was a much more solid mass of territory, much of which was a thousand miles from the sea-coast : Russia was one remove nearer, China was on our Burmese border. The centre of gravity had passed from Bengal to Delhi. But the mass needed binding together : and Dalhousie set himself to do it. He had been President of the Board of Trade in England, and had seen the sudden expansion of the English railway systems : there was the instrument ready to his hand. What he had done in the ofTh"'"^ Punjab he set himself to do all over India. Canai, With roads and canals he opened up the inland 1854. districts. He freed the ports, surveyed the coasts, and * In 1831, 1837, 1847, and 1S49. 212 BRITISH INDIA [chap, improved the harbours of the long coast-line. He 1854. built the first railways, and laid down the plan on which all railway-making in the Peninsula has 1854, since proceeded. He established cheap postage, ^^53- and threaded India across and across with telegraph wires. And while new engineering schools arose to train the men who should work out his plans, he found timie to encourage and to back with all his power and influence the man who created India's gigantic system of modern education. Such a man, so indefatigable, so resourceful, was the wisest of all Indian rulers, the second founder of our Empire there. The child cost its parent's life ; but though he lies buried in Scotland, his abiding memorial is oversea. " St inonumetituDi gticzris, circumspice" might be written on the Simla hills: our India of to-day commemorates the genius and the greatness of Dalhousie. G. The Mutiny. Not yet, however, was peace fully come to this land of many wars. Between the Company's India, with its " Brahminized " officials and restless Canning, feudatorles, and the strong coherent British General, India of to-day there stands the horror ' ^ ^' of the Great Mutiny. The East breeds tigers as well as elephants : the Mutiny was the tiger's last fierce leap at his hunters, when his claws strike deep in the howdah that carries them. For ^^ . , many hundred years India had been dominated The tiger s -^ •' last leap, by armcd forces for the benefit of their leaders ; it had been the prey of rival conquerors and contend- ing religions. British rule had disarmed the rivals, v.] THE MUTINY 213 and was extending to all religions that toleration which each sect claims as its own right and grudges as a concession to others. But this had been done by the help of another armed force, mainly native : and the weapon we had forged was now to be turned against us by the powers we had subdued. The Indian Empire of Britain, it has been said already, resembles in many ways the Empire of Rome. It is a commonplace in Roman history 1 • • , 1 T^ 1 ,• Thedan- that empire-makmg rumed the Republic : gerofa the standing armies that conquered Spain and mercenary Gaul and Asia Minor and Syria chafed under civilian rule, and in the end made their generals masters of Rome. To such a temper the Sepoy troops in India had come during Dalhousie's administration. * They had been during the last ten years victorious over Afghans, Baluchs, Sikhs, and Burmese : they had fought side by side with the best regiments of the British army, and had not suffered in the comparison. They were puffed up with pride, and ready on any excuse to assert their strength. And among them, in the later days of the great Marquess, came intriguers who represented the two most famous names . The of the days before Clive and Wellesley. From intrigues Delhi the sons of the last Mogul emperor passed to and fro among the Mohammedans of the Company's * Dalhousie's last act in Council was to lay on the table a series of nine Minutes on the Army, which advocated (a) a reduction of the Sepoy troops by 14,000 ; (A) an augmentation of the British force by six battalions ; (c) an increase in the Gurkha and Punjab irregular battalions ; (d) stronger British artillery ; (e) two more lieutenants to every regiment ; (/) a separate Army Service Corps. The Indian Army in 1808 consisted of 24,000 European troops and 154,000 Sepoys; in 1856 consisted of 39,000 European troops (with 276 guns) and 320,000 Sepoys (with 248 guns). In 1898 the European troopa numbered 76,000, with 88 batteries : the Sepoys were 143,000, with 10 batteries. 214 BRITISH INDIA [chap. army : from Bithur Nana Sahib, the adopted son and Mah- of the last Pcshwa, furious because a pension tenders. of ;^8o,ooo had lapsed at the Peshwa's death, sent out emissaries over Central India, reminding his Hindu co-religionists of the glories of the The fer- '^ ° mentin Mahratta confederacy. Then Oudh was Oudh. ^ annexed, and the processes of survey and settlement began. The ryots, ground down under the vile rule of the deposed king, found themselves rein- stated as landowners ; the talukdars, who [during that time of oppression had made themselves masters of the land they taxed, began to feel their gains slipping from them. Oudh was the principal recruiting-ground of the Sepoy army, and the recruits were mostly relatives of the talukdar class. From Peshawur to Calcutta their leaders determined on revolt. They went cannily to work. The whole native army must be brought into the plot, and given some more practical motive for mutiny than the glories of their ancestors or the grievances of the Oudh The con- aristocracy. The non-fighting population must wirk'on ^^ ^Noxv over if possiblc, or at least terrified slTtions^f ^"^° quiescence. So religion was utilized, ''"^'■^ and the Eastern belief in omens. Tales of country- f"^"- a wonderful prophecy spread through India : the stars had declared that the Company's raj ^^g should cease after a hundred years, and the "hundred ceutenarv of Plassey was close at hand. years ' •' prophecy. Morcover, it was time for the people to rise, if they would not all be made Christians : the railroads and the telegraph wires were magical chains to bind the country, and enforce soryChris- a gcucral baptism. With such talk the lani y. j-yots wcre kept expectant and uneasy : for soldiers there was worse news. To compel them v.] THE MUTINY 215 to Christianity the English had cunningly devised a plan by which every Hindu Sepoy would lose caste, every Mohammedan become impure : the new cartridges were greased with a mixture of greased I ^ • t r * 1 11 !•• cartridges. COWS and pigs lat, so that both religions would be simultaneously violated. Furthermore — and this was Nana Sahib's special argument — the English nation was in sore straits at home. His agent Rumours had been to the Crimea during the Russian Crimean war, and brought back tales of British losses and sufferings ; two regiments of white troops had been moved from India to the Crimea, and five were away in Persia, while a Chinese Persia, war called for more. Everything, said the plotters, called for instant action : they could save their yet unpolluted caste, regain for their friends their confiscated property, and rushing against a weakened and divided enemy, with the might of prophecy to strengthen them, thrust the intruding English back into the sea from which they had come. But it is hard in any conspiracy to make sure that every one shall do his part at the same moment : The plot with Sepoy conspirators, scattered over a premature million square miles of country, the task is "r"^"' ^ -' ' Mutiny at impossible. Mutiny began close to Calcutta : Rarrack- *• _ ^ o ^ pur^ Mar. the mutinous regiment was disbanded, and 29.1857: every ex-private became a sower of sedition along his way home to Oudh. Then came the news that at Meerut, the headquarters of the whole native army, men had refused to receive the new cartridges. ^^ Meerut They were imprisoned: their comrades rose, M^y^o: shot down their white officers, released the prisoners, * This was unfortunately a fact (though the alleged motive was of course non-existent), and the denial of it in all good faith by British officers shook the native trust in our honour. 2i6 BRITISH INDIA [chap. and marched off to Delhi, where they fetched out the old Mogul emperor and proclaimed him once more Lord of India. Three native regiments at at Delhi, Delhi joined them, and the townfolk turned to May II. tj-ie work of massacring Europeans. The Great Mutiny had begun. The Meerut Sepoys had broken out too early, but their comrades followed them at once. All over the North-West Provinces native regiments shot their officers and marched to Delhi, and more poured in from stations in Bundelkhand, south of the Jumna. The Oudh talukdars called their retainers to- rises, getlicr and joined the rebellion, and the regi- ments there rose to meet them. Troops from Gwalior came in, in spite of Sindhia's loyalty, and some marched half across Rajputana from our isolated domain of Ajmere. The Europeans were driven for refuge into three strong forts — at Lucknow in Oudh, at Agra, and at Cawnpore. All else between the Punjab and Bengal was a chaos of massacre and anarchy. But the Meerut Sepoys had after all saved India. Quickly as news flies in that country, the telegraph But the wires had outstripped it, and warned every Punjabis officer in the Punjab that mutiny had begun. kept under -' Jo control. I'hg Punjab garrisons were part of the regular native army — not Sikhs — and were implicated in the g^ ^ .^ conspiracy : but when those surprised and un- theredis- ready troops tried to imitate their comrades of armed, •' '^ May 12-15- thc Ganges valley, they found themselves faced by British regiments and cannon, and were forced to disarm at once. One or two bodies at isolated stations , ,^^ broke away towards Delhi : but their British Nicholson, officers promptly raised Sikh levies and cut the rebels to pieces. And then this newly-won province proved worthy of its conqueror's care. So loyal were v.] THE MUTINY 217 the Sikhs, so true to the rulers they trusted, so eager to help in the crushing of this revolt, that John Lawrence was able to send down regiment after regiment of British, levy after levy of Sikh warriors, battery after battery of artillery, to where on the ridges north of Delhi the British commander threatened the treacherous city. For three months he hung Defhl," there, immovable against attack, gathering his sepl 13° forces for a decisive blow : then by a week of J^^}'}s of •' _ Delhi, battery and six days of desperate street fighting Sept. Delhi was won, and the Mutiny as an organized rebellion ceased to exist. Much, however, had happened during the long delay. Three main motives, it will be remembered, had inspired the rebellion — Mogul influence, Mahratta influence, and the complaints of the Oudh aristocracy. Delhi was the Mogul centre : the hopes of the Mahratta rebels were centred in Nana Sahib. When regiment after regiment set out towards Delhi, he caught the Cawnpore 11 11 1 • 1 Cawnpore troops and brought them back to besiege the rises, 1111 /\ r 1 June 5. fort they had abandoned. After three weeks the little garrison, encumbered with women and children, surrendered on a promise of safe conduct to surrender Allahabad : the Nana provided boats for their ^"f^ ^f the transport, and as they embarked opened a fire t:awnpore 1 ' •>' s^ garrison, on them which killed nearly every man in the J""^^?- part)', while the 122 women and children who survived were imprisoned and kept for a worse fate. Meanwhile from Bengal the Governor-General, Lord Canning, was sending up regiments as fast as possible to the revolted districts. But he had twice the ^j^^ distance to send them, and very few were at ^^^^"'^^ hand : most had to be fetched from Burma and '^'="s^'- Madras and even Bombay — for in the Deccan Presi- dencies there was hardly a sign of mutiny. At last, 2i8 BRITISH INDIA [chap. however, a column under Havelock moved upon Cawn- pore, and in two sharp fights broke the Nana's forces : but fast as he fled he could still spare time for more slaughter, and the rescuing troops found no English c . women alive in prison, but only gashed and Second r ' / fc> cawnpore torturcd bodies thrown hurriedly into a deep massacre, •' '■ juiyi6. well. In calmer days men have condemned the ferocity with which our troops flung themselves, giving no quarter, upon the defeated mutineers : but calm and mildness was difficult to those who had seen the well at Cawnpore. Havelock had no time to spare for pity. Thirty-six miles away another British garrison was desperately c- f defending its cantonments at Lucknow. His Siege of fc> ^J=^^^'="'=y second attempt to force his way through the July I. besieging army was successful ; but the rebels He""^^" simply shut him in with the other defenders, ^^'' ^^' and went on with the siege. He had, however, left troops enough to hold Cawnpore : and by this time Delhi was taken, and a detachment of the victorious troops marched thence upon Cawnpore also, re- Reliefof ... . r- , , , Agra, lievmg Agra by the way. So that by the middle of October the rebellion was cut in half, and British armies held the line of the Ganges from end to end. A new commander-in-chief, Sir Colin Campbell, had arrived from England with twenty thousand relief of frcsh troops at his back. The two halves of the Nov. 17.' rebellion were forced further and further asunder. The city Sir CoHn Campbell himself headed the army stormed, '■ Mar. 9-20, that first rescued the Lucknow rarrison, and 1858. ^ later on stormed the city and hammered the Oudh Sepoys into submission. The Mahratta Sepoys, jj^^ g strengthened for a time by a mutiny among '^57- Sindhia's troops and the accession of the army of Jhansi under its fierce princess, were a second time v.] THE MUTINY 219 routed near Cavvnpore, and scattered over the native states of Central India: and Sir Hugh Rose, Rose's flashing Hke a thunderbolt from fortress to for- [„ Centfai tress, destroyed throughout that rugged country jan!june, the last vestiges of resistance. Some few fled '^^^" northwards across the Nepal border, and found the Gurkhas as pitiless to them in their own country as they had been in our avenging armies. The Great Mutiny was over. It was a high price to pay — but to the Mutiny Britain owes two splendid assurances. We know, for one thing, that the breed has not failed. The -r, •->' Ihe names that we know best of the Mutiny heroes 1"^^°"^°*^ — Havelock, Nicholson, Outram, Lawrence, ^"''"y- Kavanagh — are after all only types of a thousand others. Over a million square miles of country white men were scattered, a few here, a few there, isolated among rebels or would-be rebels : and every station had its list of brave men, whom Britain in 1856 knew as promising officers, and in 1858 as heroes. If ever such a stress is laid on the Empire again, we may be no less sure that the heroism is there.* And we know one thing more, less stirring perhaps but more valuable. We know that before the Mutiny began we had conquered India, not by arms alone, but by force of fine government. For the Mutiny was not an Indian Mutiny at all: it was a mutiny of Ganges Valley Sepoys, the representatives of an old military aristocracy. They caught us at a disadvantage : they were successful enough at first to give every disaffected native throughout the Peninsula a chance of joining the revolt. And yet the mutineers were strictly left to * This was written in 1897 : the assurance has been confirmed many times since then, and by men of Greater Britain also. 220 BRITISH INDIA [chap. themselves. Apart from the retainers of the Oudh nobles, their own countrymen let them pass of the through in a terrified but hostile silence. We wasonour put dovvn the Mutiny, as we had conquered the country, with the encouragement and the help of the native states. Sindhia, though his men mutinied at last, yet held them quiet till the greatest danger was over. Our old foe Dost Mohammed in the north-west stood by his treaties when the fanatics of Kabul were furious for a dash at Peshawur. From Hyderabad the same news came — the mollahs preached, but the State stood firm, and the Hyderabad Contingent did splendid service with Sir Hugh Rose. The Nepalese army came pounding down through Oudh to the storm of Lucknow : " Jang Bahadur would be driven wild," wrote Lord Canning, "to find himself deprived of a share in the work." And so India is ours to-day be- cause it has washed to be ours. The air was clear after the storm, and men could think out problems of state with minds un- india clouded by the prejudices of the past. Then we Company , ... -...,. disap. saw the cumbrous complications of the old regime ^''^'^' in India — the dead hand of the East India Com- pany moved, marionette-like, by a half-hidden Board of Control. It had been a drama — with a tragic fifth act — in which the prompter's voice was too much heard. But now all the pretence was swept away. The stars India had given the Company a hundred years of under tiie I'ulc : thcy wcrc only sixteen months out, for Crown. Qj^ November i, 1858, the Queen's proclama- tion was issued at Allahabad. Due in part to the Queen's own initiative, it nobly summed up the noblest aspect of British dominion. Absolute religious tolera- tion : the maintenance of all existing rights and treaties : a law which should be the righteous development of v.] THE MUTINY 221 ancient usage : administration by the best men without fear or favour : justice on murderers, and an amnesty to all others who had been misled by ambitious princes — this was the message of Britain to its Indian Empire. And if assurance were needed that such a message was not empty w^ords, it was given when the last Governor- General of the Company became the first Viceroy of the Queen. A notable Frenchman * lately characterized the British quality as " firm shoulders ready to stand the weight of great responsibility." Lord Canning jhe first was just such a Briton. The ghastliness of the Viceroy. Mutiny drove men blood-mad ; against the fiends who surrounded Nana Sahib no measures seemed too brutal : and no one who did not see Cawnpore and its victims has a right to condemn the avengers of Cawnpore. But it was well for Britain — for the Empire and for the nation — that behind the avengers there sat the judge. Unmoved, outwardly at least, in the days of stormiest excitement, Canning is among modern Englishmen pre-eminently the great Roman type of t\\Q Justnni et tenacetn propositi viruin : nor can there be in the wildest days to come a surer law for our rulers than words he wrote in the perilous year : — " 1 will not govern in anger. Justice, and that as stern, as inflexible as law and might can make it, I will deal out. But I will never allow an angry and undis- criminating act or word to proceed from the Govern- ment of India as long as I am responsible for it." * M. Alphonse Daudet. CHAPTER VI AUSTRALASIA A. Early Discoveries. From the earliest ages there were rumours among the northern nations of a great southern continent „, ,, that balanced Asia as Africa balances Europe, 1 he myths i ' of ancient ^nd not imoossiblv stretched itself below the geo- i -' graphy. Indian Ocean so as to make a greater Mediterranean in the eastern half of the known world. But the only sea-faring Asiatic nations whose records have come down to us lived in the north-western corner of that ocean : and as their powers of navigation were confined to following coast lines, and open-sea voyages were an unknown thing, they usually felt themselves quite far enough away from home when they reached Java and Borneo. In 1493, when the unexplored world was divided by the Pope between Spain and Portugal, this southern continent was still a dream of theoretical geographers. Not for long now, however. The Portuguese were slow explorers, but persistent ones. By 1 526 they had Pope's line rcachcd New Guinea, and seem shortly after to have worked their way down the eastern coast of Australia as far as Cape Howe. But in doing so they ^ p^^ had passed the Pope's line, which had been tugai for convenience sake extended into the waters of the Pacific, and became there approximately the CHAP. VI.] EARLY DISCOVERIES 223 meridian of 147° E.* The Spaniards, too, had begun to push westward from Peru, and in 1521 Magellan's expedition occupied the Philippines in their ^^^^^, name, although this was an encroachment on ^p^'"- the Portuguese sphere. Consequently the Portuguese took special precautions to keep their southern discovery a secret : they not only refused, as all nations ^j^^ did in those days, to let any other nation see ^°gge"(,on. their maps, but, as far as can be made out, they "^s'lss^'"^ cleverly altered the maps themselves so as to cleverly. bring the new coast-line into quite a wrong position within their own sphere, while leaving it possible for their own ships to use the altered maps with safety. And their scheme was so successful that for quite a hundred and fifty years no other explorers came where they had been. It was not for want of trying. Time after time Spanish ships came blindly across the Pacific, lighting Discover- now Upon the Solomon Islands, now upon the lesofMen- Marquesas, at last upon the New Hebrides: and 1568 and from these in 1606 Torres took a fresh start ofdeQuir towards the Terra Australis which was the aim of all this search. He missed it by the merest chance. He got among the islands which lie so thick between New Guinea and Cape York, and he was tired of islands ; he had, in fact, just gained a reputation by proving that one of the New Hebrides, rashly assumed by his former leader, de Quir, to be part of Terra Australis^ was an island after all : and he was determined not to be taken in himself by any more islands masquerading as continents. So, though he worked down past Cape York into the shallows of the Barrier * By the treaty of Saragossa (April 15, 1529) the line in the Pacific was fixed 297 leagues east of the Moluccas. A mere continuation of the Tordesillas line would have fixed it at about 135" E. 224 AUSTRALASIA [chap. Reef, he never knew that the real continent was in front of him, but sailed away north-west through Torres Straits to add one more misconception to European ideas about Australia. By this time the Dutch had occupied nearly the whole colonial empire of Portugal in the East Indies, T^ , and were working cautiously down from Java Dutch ex- s> / .; pioration. towards the same goal as Torres ; and while he was sailing through straits which he thought were open ocean, a Dutch ship was carefully avoiding those same TheDuA straits under the impression that they were ien, 1606. (]i-y land. Further and further the Diiyfken sailed into the Gulf of Carpentaria, in an attempt to round what seemed to be the southern point of New Guinea ; and when the shallowing water made it turn back, it took home a report that New Guinea and Terra Australis were all one, and that future explorers must go south-west, as the eastern passage was blocked. But explorers the Dutch were not : their business was to trade profitably, and what they heard of the Hartog, southern lands was not encouraging. Ship Edth after ship, however, on its way from Holland 1619. ^o Java, was driven out of its course on to the The Leeu- •' ' ., , zvin, 1622. western coast of Australia until the whole out- 16^28!"^'' line of it from Port Darwin to Spencer Gulf had been charted : and still the eastern and more colonizable districts remained unknown. At last in 1642 Antony van Diemen, governor of Dutch Malaysia, sent out a noted voyager, Abel Tasman, to find what he might Tasman, in the unkuowu south. But he had no better Discovers luck than Torres or the crew of the Duyfken : Tasmania, j^g thrust hls slilp wcll down into the " roaring JNov. 24, A o and New forties," and came full upon the west coast of D«:r9. ' Tasmania, round which he coasted for some way before continuing eastward to New Zealand : VI.] EARLY DISCOVERIES 225 there, taking the wide western mouth of Cook Strait for a bay (a mistake to which the Dutch seem to have been pecuHarly prone), he followed up the curve of the North Island, struck across to Fiji, and so returned to Batavia round the north coast of New Guinea. PLven so he had discovered two fertile lands that were well suited for settlement : but the fierceness of the Maoris and supposed gigantic size of the Tasmanian natives deterred him from exploration, while the Dutch authorities found work enough on their hands in developing their tropical colonies, and had no wish to open up new lands where other nations might settle. In 1644, however, they sent Tasman on one more attempt to find the passage between New Guinea and the " Great South Land " : and this time he sailed straight across the western opening of Torres Strait, thinking that its reefs were the sure sign of continuous land behind them. Forty-four years later the first Englishman, William Dampier, set foot on Australian shores, coming down past Timor from the Moluccas. His sights New . . r 1 1-1 Holland, opmion of the country was anythmg but com- ja,n. 4, plimentary, coming as he did from lands of spice to a land of waterless sand : and as for the natives — " the Hodmadods * of Monomatapa, though a nasty people, yet for wealth are gentlemen to these." Never- theless, when he reached England he could not rest till a ship (the Roebuck) was given him to make further explorations in the new country. Roebuck T, , , . ^ . .at Shark's i5ut the second view of it was no more appetiz- B.-iy, Aug. ing than the first : he coasted western Australia for nearly a thousand miles without result, and finally bore awa}' northwards to the delightful tropical islands whose beauty and wealth were unquestioned. * Hottentots. P 226 AUSTRALASIA [chap. The net result of all these voyages is rather curious. While at one point New Guinea was falsely supposed jyj^j.^ to extend nearly ten degrees too far south, every- myths. where else the explorers had found themselves among islands, or on a coast-line studded with islets. Also the older maps, demonstrably wrong (for those who did not possess the key to their distortion) in their northern outline of Terra Australis, yet agreed with theoretical geographers in marking a great continent stretching up from South Polar regions. Consequently an idea began to spread that this last was the real South Land, and that over what we now know to be the main- land of Australia there was spread an assemblage of islands something like the Malay Archipelago. Accord- ingly when in 1768 Lieutenant James Cook was ap- pointed to the ship Endeavour, with instructions to Cook's ^^^^ °^^ ^° Tahiti a party of scientific men to ^■^^^ observe the transit of Venus, he was further voyage, ' 1768.1771. ordered on his way home to make search for this continent, of which it was thought probable that New Zealand was a northern promontory. By dint of sailing round and round the two islands he discovered their real nature and shape, and then set off westward to look into Tasman's other discovery. Keeping still well to the south, he all but ran into Tasmania (and if he had done that, it is quite possible that he would have simply followed back Tasman's track and missed The En- Australia altogether) ; but a strong southern gale dca7wtr drove him out of the course he had set for himself, on Point ' "''^l^S' and brought him in sight of the continent's April 19, o ° ^770; south-eastern corner. His mind was made up at once : he knew from Tasman's work that there was open sea not far south — the point that wanted clearing up was, " Ls there mainland or island-studded sea to the north ? " He turned northward at once to coast along VI.] THE CONVICT SETTLEMENT 227 this new shore till he could find a break in it. At Botany Bay he anchored to explore the country, j^^ ^^^^^ , and receiv^ed reports that along George's River ^y' ^g (which flows into the bay) there had been seen to May 6. splendid pasture for cattle. Further and further north went the Endeavour, sometimes in great danger from the coral reefs of the Queensland coast, until Cook rounded Cape York and made certain that he was now at the end of his huge island, and could pass between it and New Guinea. Then, on August country 1111 r 1 ^T^ r^ • annexed to 21, 1770, he landed on one 01 the lorres Strait Britain, islands, and formally took possession of the new land from one end to the other on behalf of Britain. B. The Convict Settleinient. Cook's discovery made at the moment a great stir in England ; but scientific men were still hankering after that mysterious South Land, and when he • 1 • • • r ^^ Cook's came out agam his time was spent in a futile second voya.ee, search through the waters south and east of 1773- Tasmania. Then came the revolt of the Ar^erkan American colonies, and Englishmen had quite d"ncr"' enough to think about for some years without '''75-^3- troubling themselves with strange lands twelve thousand miles off. But there was one result of the American war which brought men's minds back to England's latest acquisition. The English gaols were full to overflowing, and no one knew what to do with the surplus of prisoners. It was the Portuguese who first thought of utilizing their criminals to work in their colonies ; but ^^ , ' Ine be- by the time of Charles I, the English had gj.nnings •" ° of trans- adopted the idea pretty thoroughly. At first a portation. convict, if sentenced to death, had his choice : he could 228 AUSTRALASIA [chap. either go to Virginia as an " indented labourer," or he could stay in England and be hanged. But during the Civil War Charles shipped off some Roundheads willy-nilly ; Cromwell retaliated with shiploads of Cavaliers; and from the reign of Charles II. onward the practice was systematized and regulated by Acts of Parliament. At the outbreak of war the American colonies were disposing of about 500 convicts per Transpor- annuvi, and the war of course stopped this America outlct altogether : while the leaders of the T'hT philanthropic movement, which was just gather- Howard, ing head, roused the British public to a sense of the inhuman treatment dealt out to prisoners in their over-crowded gaols. The Government was in a dilemma. The criminal law of those days was very severe, and every assize What is to ^dded a fresh batch of transportable convicts ^^•.u°!l^ to the accumulating mass, while there was still with the / o ' convicts? j-,0 place fixed to which they might be trans- ported. Parliament in 1779 discussed the question, and Botany Bay was suggested as convenient by Joseph Banks, a wealthy man of science who had accompanied Cook in 1769-70, and to the end of his life took active interest in the welfare of the countries then discovered. The matter was left to the Ministry of the day, and for some time they were content to shelve it. But in August, 1783, a fresh proposal, quite separate from the convict problem, was made to the Government by James Matra, who had been a member of the Endeavours Matra's crcw on its great voyage. This was for the memorial establishment in New South Wales of a British for a tree colony. colony on the old Carolinian * lines : the aristocracy was to be formed of loyalists f who had been recently expelled from the now United States — the * See p. 33. "I" See p. 119, VI.] THE CONVICT SETTLEMENT 229 working class was to be a mixture of Kanakas and Chinese, superintended by a few skilled Englishmen, preferably sailors,* from the ships that brought Australia its new population. Government protection was necessary, or the French (who had already been busy with explorations in the South Seas) might swoop down and annex the Convicts infant colony : and the price of Government 'he P"ce J r of Oovern- support was the admission of convicts. The mentaid. promoters agreed to this — and still the Ministry delayed. The promoters put their scheme before the public : but the Ministry wanted a place nearer home, and had surveys made all down the West African coast from Angola to the Cape — the Gambia scheme had been abandoned as too unhealthy. When at last the surveying ship returned with adverse reports, the long-delayed step was taken : and a little more than sixteen years after Cook's annexation an Order-in-Council pro- Order-m- 1 • 1 1 1 • 1 11 Council, claimed that the new convict settlement would Dec. 6, be at Botany Bay. Charles Townshend had lost us our American colonies : his cousin, to repair the loss, occupied Australia. It took nine months to get the expedition ready, and eight more to fetch it overseas to its new home. The First The commander in charge. Captain Arthur Mayis!'^' Phillip, had fought as a boy through the Seven ^^^^^^"^^ Years' War, and made himself a gallant reputa- Piii"ip> " '- Governor, tion m the succeeding war with France. He Jan. 1788 was now to show that he could rule as well as he 1792- fought. The work before him was certainly unique. The convicts who went to America had been distributed among an already existing population of civilized settlers in a land where food was plentiful, where roads * The press-gang forced plenty of young artisans and farmers to become sailors. 230 AUSTRALASIA [chap. were made, where law reigned. In the new colony- food must come twelve thousand miles until the work of unskilful hands dragged some from the none too fertile soil : outside the camp itself the country was unknown : law, such as it was, had to be enforced every moment at the point of the bayonet. Free settlers there were none : the Loyalist-Kanaka-Chinese scheme had disappeared, and not many free Englishmen were anxious to tempt fortune at the other end of the world in company with prisoners and their keepers. To so order things that in spite of these unsavoury surroundings the colony should nevertheless become a desirable place for free emigrants : to keep the settlement together till their advent, famine, drunkenness, and riots notwithstanding : this was Phillip's work, and in doing it so well he proved him- self in the truest sense the founder of an Australian nation. No sooner had he entered Botany Bay than its unfit- ness for the site of a settlement became very apparent. Four days after arriving he took boats round to lands in the next inlet noticed by Cook, and was the first Bay, Jan. (of how many millions since ?) to describe Port ' ' ''' ' Jackson as the " finest harbour in the world." A running stream falling into deep water at the head of one of its bays decided him to fix the town but trans- -' '^^'^tiement ^^^^^ '> ^^e ships wcrc brought round from to Sydney Botany Bay to the newly-named Sydney Cove, Jan. 26. and on January 26, 1788, formal possession was taken, the colony being proclaimed as such twelve days later. Nominally it was a huge one. It ran from Cape Bound York southerly to the extreme point of Tas- ariesofthe mania, and its western boundary (135° E. long.) colony. included the whole coast of Carpentaria and nearly the whole of inhabitable South Australia. East- VI.J THE CONVICT SETTLEMENT 231 wards the border was somewhat undefined. " All the adjacent islands," said the proclamation, " within the same degrees of latitude"; and no one quite knew how far awa)' adjacent islands can be. Governor King, at least, considered Tahiti as one of them, and appointed a magistrate there.* But the expression was at a later date interpreted not to include New Zealand. One island, luckily, it did include, to w^hich Phillip at once sent a party of occupation. The native flax of Norfolk Island was already famous in England : and while Phillip hoped to make the settlement at S}^dney suppl)' its own food, he looked to the island for clothes. It took some months to house the immigrants, and when at last they could turn their attention to raising crops the soil was found very poor. The sup- pij.^f j;^;. posed cattle pastures on George's River, which cuities. had told greatly in favour of New South Wales when the convict settlement question came up, were nowhere to be found. The Home authorities had sent out a farm- ing expert who did nothing but get drunk, and it was only by good luck that a reliable one was discovered in the person of the Governor's butler. The truth was that the whole scheme had been designed to get the surplus convicts somewhere well away from England, and every request for more food or fewer convicts, or for anything, indeed, which gave trouble at home, was looked upon as importunity to be discouraged. England was during the first years of Australian colonization in the thick of her most desperate struggle with France : what time had Ministers to spare, they asked, for details of farming and clothing in a settlement of vagabonds * It is curious that Tasmania, not being adjacent to the east coast, was for a long time not included within the area of New South Wales criminal jurisdiction. 232 AUSTRALASIA [chap. twelve thousand miles off? Phillip asked for intelligent farmers, and they sent him female convicts : Hunter persisted in the request, and he got all sorts of idle speculators. To get a mill erected, he had to apply to " an ingenious Irish convict," for the Government mill- wright knew nothing about his business. Consequently famine for many years stared the settlers in the face. Supply-ships were wrecked or delayed : nearly all the cattle were lost within five months Famines. r i i • *. i r i of landmg,* and out oi seventy sheep sixty-nme had died: from November of 1789 to July of 1792 the weekly rations were reduced to a minimum, and in the next year the trouble began again. Norfolk Island, only saved in 1790 by the sudden arrival of flocks of mutton-birds, soon became the granary of the colony- At Rosehill and Prospect Phillip marked out some fifty- acre farms, and retired Marines (from the military guard of the First Fleet) took up land in the Field of Mars : in 1794 the Hawkesbury valley was settled, and by 1801 attempts were being made to grow cotton at Castle Hill and vines at Parramatta. But of all these districts only the Hawkesbury farms were really fertile, and they suffered badly from floods. Even as late as 1807 New South Wales was half starved, and had to look for help to supplies of rice from China. One can imagine how eagerly men in these straits would explore the unknown lands that closely encircled Ex lora- them, in the hope of finding richer soil and ampler "on pasturage. One's imagination would, unfortu- nately, be at fault. During the early years inland ex- ploration was practically at a standstill. Phillip in four years got no further west than the Hawkesbury ; Hunter penetrated south-west a little beyond the Nepean. But * They were discovered six years later in the Camden district, a much increased herd, and were strictly protected as State property. VI.] THE CONVICT SETTLEMENT 233 for twenty years the settlement was a convict settlement and nothino- more — or if more, then more only in spite of its rulers. The Governors were naval couraged men, put in office as good disciplinarians, and afraid to enlarge the bounds of their jurisdiction too much lest their subjects should get out of hand. When a convict in 1799 came back to Sydney with stories of a pass through the mountains to the south-west and a large river beyond, his tale was pooh-poohed. Just before this the same governor had discouraged a proposal made by Banks to send out the great African explorer, Mungo Park : though, with grim humour, he despatched two parties of convicts north and south into the bush — to convince them that running away into such poor country was useless. The Blue Mountain barrier, only thirty miles from headquarters, was attacked time and again by private enterprise without result. In 18 10 the colony was still practically limited to the county of Cumberland, with a penal settlement on the Hunter, and a few distant dependencies that could only be reached by sea. In that direction the escape of convicts could be controlled, and the naval governors were not averse to encouraging men of their own profession. From 1797 onwards exploration along the coasts i_ • 'T-'i encour- became very nnportant. That year saw the aged along 1 • /- 1 T T 1 1 ''^"^ coast. discovery ol the Hunter estuary to the north, and the daring southward voyage of Bass in an open boat, which assured him that there was a channel between Tasmania and the mainland. Flinders, an old comrade of his, had meanwhile been surveying care- fully the coast nearer Sydney; and in 1798 the two set off for a voyage right through Bass Strait (noting on their way the estuary of the Tamar), worked down the west coast of Tasmania, surveyed the bays where 234 AUSTRALASIA [chap. Hobart now lies, and returned triumphantly with the news that soon gave Britain a new colony. A year later Flinders (for Bass now drops out of Australian history) explored the southern Queensland coast and the river on which Brisbane lies : but for the moment his most valued discovery was that whales were to be found along that coast, just as the year before it had been the seal fisheries of Bass Straits. However, in a few years the situation changed : Napoleon had taken advantage of the Peace of Amiens to send out an ex- ploring expedition under Admiral Baudin, and Baudin's * *= i. i . , , expedi- Govcmor Kuig found it advisable to occupy tion, 1802. ,^, , 11 Ml beforehand such likely colony-sites as were known. He therefore in 1803 arranged for the de- spatch of a party to Port Phillip, which had been dis- covered in 1800: but Collins, who was in command of it, saw no possibilities in those low-lying shores, and yearned after the delightful variety of the neighbour island, where another party had already occupied the Derwent mouth. So the next year he abandoned Port Phillip altogether and moved to the Derwent, where he established the settlement of Hobart Town. The northern river, the Tamar, was at the same time occupied by Paterson, and two years later a per- manent settlement was made at Launceston : the two towns were soon connected by a well-made road, and a large body of the settlers from Norfolk Island, which King had wished to abandon, were added to the Tasmania!! population. C. The New South Wales Corps. In a colony of so peculiar a character discipline was the first requisite. The home authorities therefore VI.] THE NEW SOUTH WALES CORPS 235 resolved to raise a new regiment for special ser- vice in New South Wales, and entrusted the -pheNew task to Major Grose, who had experience in ^.^^^^ recruiting work. The arrangement was one not corps, unusual in those days — Grose nominated the officers and received so much a head from Government for each private — but the circumstances made it an ideally- bad arrangement. England was palpitating with the hope of another French war ; this regiment was to be cut off from all such fighting, and to be sent across half the world to do gaolers' work. The officers who entered it, mostly transferred from other regiments, wanted profit rather than glory ; for the romance of Indian treasure was still fresh in men's minds, and it was not convicts only whose ignorance of geography made China a near neighbour. As for the privates, Governor Hunter found among them men who had been disgraces to every other British regiment — and we know from the Duke of Wellington Vv^hat material was used in those days to make up even his best troops. Not all the officers, of course, were hucksters, nor were all the privates blackguards ; but in such surroundings as were theirs the worst element comes to the top, and the corj^s takes rank by its lowest members. From its first arrival the new regiment was a thorn in the side of governor after governor. Grose com- plained that his soldiers had no better food than the convicts. "Nor have I," said Phillip, Sydney in who was determined to favour no man in time of famine. The soldiers consorted with the Acting- men they had to guard, and roused more dis- Dec. 1792- turbances than they quelled. When Phillip left,* Grose became Acting-Governor, and at once removed * The home authorities delayed the appointment of a successor in hopes that Phillip could be induced to return. 236 AUSTRALASIA [chap. all the restrictions which his wiser predecessor had Paterson, placcd OH thc salc of livestock by the poorer ^794 10°^^' farmers. The officers had almost all the money Sept. 1795. ^^Q^ jj^ ^}^g colony, and in a very short time they had formed a " Ring " which gave them complete con- trol of trade ; they fixed the price as well of imported goods as of the colony's produce, and at last drove King to debar them absolutely from all commercial pursuits. But this speculation in legitimate objects of trade was a mild evil compared to their traffic in liquor. The first settlers got food and clothing from headquarters ; spirits came to them through private and generally illegal „ agencies. At one time two officers had 4400 Rum- o T^T^ selling. gallons of rum in store, and grumbled at dis- posing of them for ;!^i a gallon. The establishment of the traffic must be charged against Grose's governorship, and both Hunter and King failed in their efforts "LI Govemir, to put it down, although they received all possible Sept'. 1800. support from home. It was not only against the King, imported spirits that they had to contend. The Governor, '■ "^ ^ Sept. 1800- farmers soon found that their wheat would bring Aug. 1806. 1- -11 1 1 • three times the money when distilled that it would fetch as grain ; and the edicts against private stills were even more severe and less effective than those against military rum-selling. Among the officers of this unruly Corps one has attained peculiar distinction. Captain John Macarthur ^ ^ ,, was the de^e noir of two governors and the John Mac- ... arthur, triumphant enemy of a third ; his insubordina- tion was only equalled by his cleverness in thwarting every effort to punish him. Yet these mischievous qualities have been forgiven — nay, even looked upon as virtues — by a people for whom he is the founder of the greatest industry in New South Wales. His quick eye saw from the first that the country was one for large VI.] THE NEW SOUTH WALES CORPS 237 estates and pastoral pursuits, and his quick temper could not brook the difficulties which more cautious ,..,. . ... TTT1 TT the first of disciphnanans put m his way. When Hunter the sheep- would not give him room for the big sheep farm he wanted,* he went to England and memorialized the Government till he obtained a grant of 5000 acres. Then he came back triumphantly, having resigned his commission to turn pastoralist, and chose his land in what was known as the Cow-pastures, a district across the Nepean which had been strictly reserved by the authorities for the herd of State cattle. There and nowhere else within the confines of the settlement had he found pasture-land fit for the Spanish sheep which he had been the first to introduce; and it was this Spanish merino breed, jealously guarded in Spain, but found in small numbers at the Cape (where the Boer farmers thought poorly of it beside their own big fat- tailed flocks), on which he depended to make the colonial wool trade a lasting success. After much demur King, who sympathized a little with his projects, allotted him a portion of the jealously guarded reserve ; but his successor, Bligh, was by no means of the same mind. He unsympa- f. ..... tbetic. was a man 01 some experience in mutinies, and came out with a determination to put down with a strong hand the men who had ousted Hunter ^,. , and driven King to resignation. The rum traffic 9°''""»°'i o o Aug. iSo6- must go ; if necessary, the officers who sup- J^"- '^os. ported it must be crushed ; and Macarthur was in Bligh's eyes the leading villain of the band. He happened just then to be interested in wine-making, and imported a still for producing grape brandy ; Bligh suspected (quite unnecessarily) that it was intended * One can hardly wonder at it ; at the time he had 13CXD acres, with ;^4000 worth of stock — a monster estate among the pigmies of that day. 238 AUSTRALASIA [chap. for rum-making, and confiscated it. Then a minor offence brought Macarthur under the jurisdiction of the Judge Advocate, an enemy of eleven years' standing. Macarthur appealed to his former comrades of the New South Wales Corps ; but Bligh would listen to no compromise and appoint no substitute judge. Major The Bii h Johi^ston, wlio, as commandcr of the regiment, mutiny, ^y^g g^ officio Lieutenant - Governor, at once Jan. 26, ■'•' 1808. arrested Bligh and all the civil officials ; new magistrates were appointed, Macarthur was acquitted without trouble, and Bligh was imprisoned for a year and at last shipped for home.* The triumph of the Corps was short. The English Government had been persuaded into deposing The Cor s Govcmors, but would not stand bullying ; and it abolished, replied to the violence of the insurgents by rein- stating Bligh (formally only), cashiering Johnston, and recalling the troublesome regiment to scenes of greater danger and less profit. Macarthur was sent home, and not allowed to return to the colony for eight years. D. The Beginnings of Freedom. It was a pity, for the next governor was a man to his mind. The real importance of the Bligh rebellion is this, that it caused a complete revolution in the treat- ment of the colony. Lachlan Macquarie, in Lachlan ^ Macquarie, somc rcspects not unlike Bligh, was the first of Governor, ... __.. Jan. 1810- a long line of real colonizers. His predecessors Dec. 1821. , , ^ , . , , ^ had opposed expansion because they were there to look after the convicts ; Macquarie stimulated it in every possible way because he looked upon himself as a * He did nol go all the way, InU waited in Tasmania for reinstate- ment. VI.] THE BEGINNINGS OF FREEDOM 239 governor of free men — at the worst, of men who soon would be free and should be helped to keep their freedom. New South Wales might be an ugly duckling, but he at least foresaw the future swan. He looked after his prisoners sharply, and gave them plenty of work on public buildings and (what was still more urgently needed) main roads. Internal exploration, which had been languishing since Hunter's time, ^j^^ ^^g was again pushed on. Gregory Blaxland thought ^ros^ed"'"* out a plan of surmounting the hitherto impreg- jj.n^g''"'^ nable Blue Mountains ; every attempt to cross '^'3- them European fashion, by the valleys, had been blocked with huge precipices — he determined to try the ridges, keeping as high as possible all the time along the water-parting between two of the streams. With Lawson, young Wentworth, and four men, he pushed through a wild and barren land for seventeen days, cutting every afternoon the track along which his horses would travel the next morning ; on May 28, 1813, he had crossed the range into good grass country, only fifty miles beyond what had been for so long the barrier of a half-starved settlement. Macquarie hailed the returned explorers with delight and grati- tude, and sent one of the Government surveyors Evans ex- to complete their work ; and in less than two Bathmst years from Blaxland's adventure a road had been made through to the western plains, and founded, the town of Bathurst founded as a nucleus for ' '^" the newly added province. This success gave a great stimulus to the long- neglected work of inland discovery. Evans during his journey had discovered two fair-sized streams running westward, to which he gave the Governor's names, ^ , . ' ^ ' Oxleysex- Lachlan and Macquarie. In 1817 the Surveyor- peditions General, Oxley, headed an expedition to follow the 240 AUSTRALASIA [cpAP. first-named of these rivers to the sea ; but he had hit on a wet season, and found nothing but swamps down the & r Lachian, all the way down its course. Just when a day's journey further would have brought him to its junction with the Murrumbidgee, he lost heart and turned and the ^way nortliwards to find the Macquarie, which ^^lac; where he struck it was running through much quane, " o 1817-18. more cheerful country : but when he took a second expedition along its course the next year, it vanished as the Lachian had done in impassable morasses. He therefore determined to strike due eastward, so crossing the Liverpool Plains and the rivers which he named after Lord Castlereagh and Sir Robert Peel ; and coming over the dividing range upon the head of the Hastings, clambered down with great difficulty into its valley and back by Port Macquarie and the coast route Hume ^^ -'^^^'^ Stephens. Meanwhile Hamilton Hume, theBer? ^^^° '^^ ^^H ^^d pcuetratcd the hills south of rimaand Camdeu as far as Berrima, was pushing his Goulburn ' '^ *> districts, explorations past Goulburn to Lake George : and adventurous settlers did steady pioneer work further and further south, till rumours came up to Sydney of the „ great knotted chain of Kosciusko and its daughter Rumours o o M^naro streams that we know as the Snowy, the Upper plains. Murray, and the Upper Murrumbidgee. While Macquarie rejoiced in discoveries which at last j^^^_ made a colony of free settlers possible, he was quarie's none the less anxious to make the best of the internal reforms. material he had in hand. In previous years convicts had been assigned rather promiscuously to all employers who took the trouble to ask for them, and this had relaxed discipline unduly : Government officials, moreover, had procured their own and their assigned servants' supplies from the public stores free of cost- Macquarie withdrew a great many convicts from undesir- VI.] THE BEGINNINGS OF FREEDOM 241 able private employment, and stopped the whole system of allowances to Government officials. The rum-sellers he endeavoured to fight by well-meant but somewhat unfortunate strateg}- : he contracted with three prominent men to build a hospital on condition that they should have the monopoly of spirit-selling in the colony, and so hoped to gain surer control over the rum-traffic and to enlist the biggest offenders themselves in the work of putting down illicit sales. The emancipist problem, however, was the one in which he took most interest. There was now a large number of men in the colony who had served xheEm- their time as convicts and become free again, andpists. Many of them had been sentenced on political charges, or others which would not nowadays imply disgrace ; and Macquarie saw no reason why they should not again take their place in a free society. The non-convict settlers with whom he came in contact belonged largely to the clique of the anti-Bligh mutineers : he felt it wise, therefore, to build up around himself a class of colonists who would be his firm and grateful friends, especially as he was thus carrying out the very purpose for which the colony had been founded. But the freemen would have nothing to do with the freedmen. The older magistrates declined to sit on the bench with the Governor's ^ Upposi- nominees : the first judge of the newly founded V?"°i JO J iMarsden, Supreme Court would not let emancipists J;^"'. ^"^ practise before him, and the second tried to ^'''^'''• deprive them for life of the ordinary rights of citizens. Macquarie fought hard for his favourites, and for some years kept the support of the Home Government, for indeed his policy was the right one ; but the hard fighter is often driven to put himself in the wrong, and a vain man like Macquarie is especially likely to do injudicious and extravagant things. The official class Q 242 AUSTRALASIA [chap. was still influential at home ; a commissioner was sent out in 1818 to make a general investigation into missioner colonial affairs ; and on the receipt of his report it was thought wiser, without exactly censuring the Governor, to recall him and entrust the series of What recommended reforms to the milder methods of Macquarie gjj- Thomas Brisbane. But Macquarie had no accom- '■ piished. reason to be ashamed of his work. He had turned a gaol into a colony, and changed many a sullen convict into a sober and prosperous citizen ; schools and churches, flood-prevention and road-making, prac- tically date from his governorship ; and it was directly owing to his stimulating zeal that year by year the patriarchs of inland Australia were journeying south and west past Goulburn and Bathurst, driving before them those ever-increasing flocks which have since built up the wealth of the Great South Land. The rule of his successor — of the next three governors, indeed — was still disturbed by the bitter conflict between emancipists and "exclusives," Darlingwas against Brisbane, .. -r>.i i-ri i-i Governor, the cmaucipists, but Brisbane and Bourke alike Dariin?, had an earnest desire to govern impartially and to Bourke,' keep the peace between the two sections ; each was sooner or later drawn into the quarrel, and ancipfst each owed to it his recall or resignation. From becoi^^s Brisbane's time onwards the "exclusive" party put itself more and more in the wrong. It had from the first been a combination of men who belonged to or sided with the old N.S.W. Corps, although claiming to Stead represent all the free men of the colony ; but immigra- when after Brisbane's arrival a steadily rising tion be- .' " gins, 1822. stream of free immigrants swelled the population, it was found that the new-comers sided mostly with the emancipists. Indeed, this name ceased to be a correct one for the party out of power, and was only retained by VI.] THE BEGINNINGS OF FREEDOM 243 its official opponents to prejudice its cause in the eyes of the home Parliament. With the often sordid details of this long dispute we cannot here deal ; but we must understand clearly that through the years from 1820 to 1840 New South Wales was passing through the same crisis that Upper Canada had seen in its struggle against the Family Compact,* — with this disadvantage, that while Canada was able to voice its grievances through a representative assembly, the Liberals of New South Wales had no outlet except the columns of two small newspapers. There was, of course, a certain amount of constitu- tional reform. Now that the Governor ruled a colony, not a prison, his absolute power must in some way be curtailed. Brisbane, as a first step, was tionof given a council of Crown nominees purely to ' ^^' advise him : if he disregarded their advice the matter was to be settled at home. The Supreme Court, hitherto a one-man affair working after the pattern of English Equity Courts, was remodelled to allow of a trial by jury in civil cases (although criminal cases were still left in the Supreme Court to a jury of seven military men) : and Judge Forbes, the first Chief Justice of the colony, earned the bitter hatred of the exclusionists by intro- ducing juries of civilians in criminal matters into the smaller country courts, where the Act allowed it. The amending Act of 1828, in fact, cancelled the judge's reform, and re-established military juries everywhere in criminal cases — a measure less retrogressive in practice than in theory, since the officials had already taken good care that no emancipist's name should appear on the jury list. The same Act enlarged the nominee tion of Council so that it should contain a majority of non- official members, gave it a restricted power of * See p. 129. 244 AUSTRALASIA [cHAP. law-making, and put under its control the whole of the revenue from Customs ; and by a later section imported into Australia the whole system of the English Common Law, Immigration, which was soon aided by Government contributions, more and more swamped * the convict and emancipist (properly so called) element with the flood of settlers and artisans. Wentworth, the younsfest of the Blue Mountain explorers, Went- y o _ _ r » worth and hcadcd the Liberal Party in an agitation for a Ausira. more popular form of Government ; the old cry news- of " no taxation without representation " was ^''^^''' heard for the first time south of the Equator ; Bourke, the most clear-headed and unimpassioned of our early Governors, pronounced definitely against the exclusionist policy; and in 1842 Parliament Constitu- . ^ o 1 TTT 1 tionof saw its way to advance iNew bouth Wales one step in Colonial grade, and gave it a single Legislative Council with twelve nominees and twenty- four elected members. Meanwhile the shape of the actual settlement was vastly altered. The " Cumberland County />/us toriai ex- Newcastlc " colony of Bligh's time had been given by Macquarie an outlet over the western mountains, and the first-fruits of the immigration under Brisbane were thriving communities round Goulburn and Bathurst, and in the valleys of the Upper Nepean and the Hunter. Oxley's discovery of the Liverpool Plains was comparatively useless, owing to his round- about way of reaching them, until Cunningham found a road through the Pandora Pass ; but Port Macquarie was used for a convict settlement, until it struck the Governor as a place too good to be wasted on convicts, * "Australia," wrote a visitor in 1842, "'is saturated with emigrants." The statement savours of hyperbole, but hints sufficiently at the effect produced on the colony by this influx of the thirties. VI.] THE BEGINNINGS OF FREEDOM 245 and the expedition sent out to find a substitute recom- mended one on the banks of the Brisbane River •11 TIT T-i T^i Moreton some twenty miles above Moreton Bay. ihree Bay ex- 1 A • 1 1 plored, years later Cunnmgham pushed northwards past 1823. the Peel, across the Dumaresq, and discovered Cunning- • T->. 1 , T-. 1 . . , ^ ham's ex- the Darhng Downs ; and so on opposite sides ot pedition of a difficult range Queensland began to live a double life — a convict settlement on the coast, an inland territory of noble sheep pastures. What Cunningham was doing for the northern country Hume did on the south, and Sturt and Mitchell on the West. Hume, with an old sea-captain, Humeand Hovell, for his mate, struck south-west from the Hoveii-s ' ' expedi- Goulburn Plains across the Murrumbidgee and ''°"' "^^4- the tangle of ravines among which it rises, found and with some difficulty forded the Murray where it runs strongly between noble hills, and traversed the north- eastern plain of Victoria to the Dividing Range not many miles from where Melbourne now stands. But there bush fires drove him westwards, and for some days concealed the expanse of Port Phillip from his view, so that the great bay was only reached at last near the present Geelong. The party returned full of good news — to find that even exploration was to be dragged into the exclusionist feud, and all their work must be officially ignored because they had done it as a private enterprise and not under orders from the Surveyor-General. Sturt was luckier, and set out with full credentials to solve Oxley's mystery of the Macquarie marshes. This time a drought held the land, and the river had sturtdis- disappeared altogether ; but in a vain search for pari^ng^*^ it Sturt lit on the Darling, which puzzled him '2^^- considerably by being a river of salt water. A year later he achieved a more daring and more important 246 AUSTRALASIA [chap. exploit Oxley had looked upon the Brisbane River as the possible outlet of the Peel-Castlereagh-Macquarie river-system ; Cunningham imagined the Darling as flowing overland north-west to the Arafura sea ; Hovell alone, putting together his sea-knowledge of the South Australian coast and the experiences of his journey with Hume, prophesied a river-system dis- o. , chargino; into Encounter Bay. Sturt was now aturt on o fc> •' tjJjeLower ggj^^ |-q verify this prediction. He struck the 1829-30. Murrumbidgee above Gundagai, and followed it along to the swampy country ; then, embarking in a whale boat, floated down past the mouth of the Lachlan, shot into the broad strong current of the Murray, explored, but could not ascend, the junction of the Darling, and after thirty-three days found himself in a wide shallow lake cut off by shoals and sand-ridges from the open ocean. A ship was to have met the expedition, but it was sent somewhere up St Vincent's Gulf; the whole journey had to be retraced against the stream with scant provisions and failing strength : and when after desperate struggles the explorers again reached Sydney, some were decrepit, some scarcely sane, and Sturt himself became quite blind. One more expedition was needed to make clear the general shape of Australia's south-eastern corner, which holds to-day three-quarters of the total Australian popu- lation. In 18^6 the then Surveyor-General, Sir Mitchell ^, ,,r- , ,, 1 -1 11 \nAusira- Thomas Mitcliell, determmed to complete and connect the explorations of Oxley, Hume, and Sturt. Starting by Oxley's Lachlan route, he traced that river to the Murrumbidgee, and so into the Murray : he explored the Darling far enough north to make sure that it was Sturt's river of 1826, and the Murray far enough east to identify it with Hume's river of 1824: then, striking south-west across the VI.] THE BEGINNINGS OF FREEDOM 247 Wimmera district, he climbed the Grampians and drifted down the Glenelg to its mouth. An eastward turn brought him unexpectedly in sight of white men's settlements, where the Tasmanian Hentys, The pioneers of Victorian prosperity, had started a Hentyset- ^ 11 r t'ement at farm and a whaling depot on the shores of Portland Portland Bay. Mitchell's return journey led him along the Dividing Range, within view almost of the still untrodden gold-fields of Ballarat, till from Mount Macedon, whence nowadays men see faintly the blurring smoke of Melbourne, he watched green waves of park-like plain spread southward forty miles to meet the still bright wavelets of the great bay, and his military soul was stirred to poetry as his diary recorded the name of Australia Felix. All this exploration brought settlement in its train — not so much the steady permanent agricultural settle- ment which establishes a body of yeomen on ^|^^ the soil, cultivating their own farms, as a roving squatters. occupation of large undefined districts by " squatters," men who pushed out one beyond the other into the unknown midlands wherever water and grass could tempt their sheep. In and about the " settled " dis- tricts — Goulburn, Bathurst, Mudgee, and the Hunter River valley — the exclusionists and their friends secured big grants of fertile country ; beyond these stretched a vast area of grazing land that no one owned, because it was worth no one's while to buy it at any price which the home government would take. This was the squatters' domain, claimed at first as their own by mere right of occupation : but when the authorities gave reality in Australia to that fiction of English law by which all land within the Crown's dominion is the Crown's property unless it has been explicitly granted away by deed, the squatters accepted the decision and 248 AUSTRALASIA [chap, stayed tranquilly where they were, sure that no one was going to take much trouble about disturbing them. The Land Colonial Office at home made various regula- dons"oT tions, first proposing to survey and value 1824 territory before allowing settlement, then insist- ing on sales by public auction with a minimum of five shillings an acre ; * but these orders were and 1S31. . .... f. to be only put mto practice withm a new set 01 " boundaries of the colony, within which settlers will be permitted to select land." These included, roughly speaking, the districts already opened up under Brisbane, and left the great plains to westward still beyond the law. Bourke's common sense found a way out Bourke r i 11 • 1 creates of the anomaly by treatmg- the squatter as a "Pastoral % "^ , , ^ , • • , • Districts," trespasser on Lrown lands, and giving him a licence to go on trespassing till further orders — a system which at least legalized the situation, and brought in a small revenue from licence fees. And Land presently a division of the cumbrous area of the Reguia. colony into three land districts — Moreton Bay, tions of -' _ •' ' 1840. Sydney, and Port Phillip — heralded, and was at once understood to herald, the severance of two new colonies from their unwieldy parent. It is wise, there- fore, to go back on our tracks for a while and watch the growth of these offshoots which were to be Victoria and Queensland. E. The Daughter Colonies. One child had already left the parent's apron-strings. Tasmania. The year 1804 had seen Tasmania colonized Comns,""^ at both ends, and in 1812 the northern settle- 1804-10. fjient of Launceston passed under the control of the Lieutenant-Governor at Hobart. Macquarie, * Raised to ;i^i an acre in 1S42. VI.] THE DAUGHTER COLONIES 249 eager for the prosperity of every part of his kingdom, found time to visit the Httle southern island and plan roads and schools and townships for its advancement. Davey's government was a coarse practical joke, Qo,,grnor but in spite of it a little progress was made : ^^^'f^'- though four years of Sorell, the sworn enemy of Governor bushrangers, doubled the colony's population. 1817-23. Then came Colonel Arthur, a ruler of much Anru"""^ experience from British Honduras, who was after- '^^3-36. wards to bring Ontario safe out of the Mackenzie revolt.* Freed by the Act of 1823 from any but a nominal dependency on New South Wales, he set before himself a ver)- clear idea of what he wanted the island to be. It was already a receptacle for many of the His worst convicts, those who had committed fresh ^°'"^^'' crimes since their transportation : he determined to make his rule a terror to these evil-doers, while the more hopeful characters should find Tasmania their home. Sorell's penal settlement at Macquarie Harbour, , T r -1 1 • Macquarie previously an Inierno without one redeeming Harbour, feature, was re-organised with that view ; and when its isolation was some years later broken in upon by the approach of free settlements on the land side, Tasman's Peninsula was chosen as a substitute, and an establishment built on its southern inlet, whose rigid discipline and attempts at scientific system Arthur, in punishment made criminals shudder at the name of Port Arthur. But in such an island as Arthur dreamt of there was no room for free settlers, who were indeed told many years later that they were only there on sufferance, and must not expect much consideration. Consequently the Governor was constantly at logger- heads with his subjects, and his ability did not produce results worthy of it. * See p. 131. 250 AUSTRALASIA [chap. It was in his time that the Black War took place. The aborigines of Australia have not hitherto been mentioned, because, although the settlers had traiian ab- bccn in contact with them from the moment of original. x-ii -ii- > i i- i • 11 rhiUips landmg, yet their presence had practi- cally no effect on the colonization of the country.* They are a race (or races, for their origin and relation- ship are still obscure) of small communities, kingless, and lacking in the power to combine against an enemy ; and their white supplanters, while never free from isolated (and sometimes unprovoked) raids, have found their progress quite unretarded by any serious and determined opposition. But in Tasmania the The Tas- ,.-- i-ii 11 1 manianab- casc was different ; the island was too small and its fertile belt too narrow to leave room for white man and blackfellow side by side ; and while the intruders were often escaped or assigned convicts whose cruelty the blackfellow ascribed to all white men alike, the natives were of a fiercer and more crafty t}'pe than their cousins of the mainland. For years each race vied with the other in brutality, in spite of the best efforts The Black °^ govcmor after governor. At last Arthur War, 1830. decided to have done with the trouble once for all. The natives were to be driven, as one drives kangaroos, by a line of four thousand beaters advancing from the north towards the neck of Tasman's Peninsula ; but after two months of marching and ;^30,000 of expense, the battue resulted in the capture of one man and a boy. Things were looking worse than ever when an ex-bricklayer, George Robinson, who had already succeeded well with a settlement of black fellows on Bruni Island, offered to collect the others by mere persuasiveness, and induce them to consent to emigrate. * Fear of them may, however, have discouraged the early governors from exploration inland. VI.] THE DAUGHTER COLONIES 251 In five years he had got together nearly all that remained, and they were shipped to Flinders Island in Bass Straits, where they dwindled and died of a curious home-sickness. Of constitutional history Tasmania in those days had little. The home government gave it about as much liberty as New South Wales, and the Tasmanians imitated their northern fellow colonists with great fidelity in agitating for more ; but there was no emanci- pist question, because the official exclusionist class was not strong enough to raise it. Sir John Franklin, Arthur's successor, was even oftener in hot water than Arthur : his rule was an attempt to run the iron system on soft-hearted- 1 1 • T Governor ness, and the result was somewhat chaotic. In Frankiin, his time, though, the island found itself the home of learning. Arnold of Rugby influenced its education, Darwin and Hooker and many of less fame in science made extensive research within its borders. Yet, when all was said and done, convicts remained the raison d'etre of the colony : when transportation to New South Wales ceased, the inflow to Tasmania was doubled : and when representative governments were set up on the mainland in 1842, Tasmania could not share the boon because the majority of her population was bond. Through some unaccountable ill-luck it took Australian settlers thirty years to discover the advan- tages of Port Phillip. Collins had camped there . ° ^ /^ Victoria. m 1803, and abandoned his camp ; Hume saw it in 1824, but the settlers who were to have followed him the year after, camped on Westernport instead, and gave the job up in disgust. At last in 1834 the The Hentys settled in Portland Bay, where Mitchell Portland. discovered them two years later ; and the report 252 AUSTRALASIA [chap. of their success so stimulated Tasmanian enterprise that in 1835 two parties, under the squatter Batman* and the trader Fawkner respectively, entered Port Phillip and quarrelled over the site of Melbourne. Batman, First set- howcvcr, had got only some worthless title- tiementsat deeds from the native tribes, while Fawkner's Mel- ' bourne ^q^ j^^d wisely camped on the ground they claimed ; so Batman devoted himself mainly to his ^^^ first-occupied lands at Geelong, and in a few Geeiong. years saw settlement extending from it west- ward to the lakes and noble pastures of Colac. The authorities in Sydney and London vainly proclaimed that the adventurers were trespassing on Crown lands — the stream of colonists was not to be dammed back, Bourke's ^^^^ wltliln a year Bourke found himself com- rio°n's'e'''t P^llsd to acknowledge facts, and to organize 1836. the Port Phillip district as a detached part of New South Wales. Melbourne was formally founded in 1837; and when the Act of 1842 came into force. Port Phillip found itself entitled to six out of the twenty-four elected members in the new Legislative Council. Of the third daughter, known later on as Queensland, there is little to be said at this stage. The Moreton Queens- ^^Y P^Hal establishment blocked for many land. years all settlement on the coast. Behind the dividing range, however, a pastoral population was rapidly occupying the Darling Downs, and spread- ing north and west into the domain of fiercer and more numerous tribes of blackfellows than had yet been met with on the continent. All these stations depended on Sydney or Newcastle for their supplies, and live stock trailed south and drays lumbered north for years along * Batman had already dislinguished liimself in Tasmania, both during the Black War and by his capture of the busliranger Brady. VI.] OTHER AUSTRALASIAN SETTLEMENTS 253 the weary routes by Walcha or the Pandora Pass ; but in 1 840 a practicable pass was found below Toowoomba to the coast, and the abolition of transportation freed Brisbane from its convicts, and gave the two districts a chance to amalgamate their interests. Organized government followed immediately, and in 1843 Moreton Bay sent its elected representative to the Council at Sydney. F. Other Australasian Settlements. It must not be imagined that Britain had claimed a whole continent for herself without exciting any jealousy among the other European powers. We have already seen expeditions sent out designson by Napoleon to explore and annex the southern (now Victorian) coast : and when ten years of peace had given France time to recover from her exhaustion after Waterloo, rumours of a new annexing expedition be- came frequent. Some said Port Phillip would again be the goal, and the abortive colony of 1826 was an attempt to forestall the invaders : but it was more likely that a spot would be chosen beyond the proclaimed bounds of New South Wales, so that there should be no technical ground of complaint against France for occupying British territory.* It became, therefore, at once important to secure our hold on the western half of Australia, by at least seizing a bay here and there along its extended coast-line to make a nucleus for inland settlement. Already Melville Island and ,, , .„ -' Melville Raffles Bay had been temporarily occupied, i-^'a^doc- •^ r J r ' cupied by partly with the hope of opening up a Malay B"ta'n- trade, partly because Cunningham's theory of the * This was before Lord John Russell's declaration. 254 AUSTRALASIA [chap. Darling brought it to the ocean in those waters : in - . 1826 a more lasting^ settlement was formed at Station at •=> King , Kinsc George's Sound, where the whale fisheries George s '^ ° ' Sound. kept alive a township that the barren lands at its back would otherwise certainly have starved. The next year Captain Stirling, sent to survey the inter- mediate coast-line, found delightful-looking country on the Swan River, and his report stirred enthusiasts at First rules home to try a new experiment in colonization. sw.-in There was to be no Government aid except in tiement. the matter of land grants : but every ^^"3 worth of goods (it did not particularly matter what goods) gave the immigrant forty acres of land, provided that five immigrants out of every eleven should be females — a curious little bit of theoretical colony-making. Unfortunately Stirling's distant view of the country had been altogether too rosy, and the soil was found to be poor and dotted over with poisonous shrubs : while a regulation which gave first choice of land to the men with the biggest claim surrounded the infant town of Perth with large speculative estates, and sent the working farmers to look for their smaller areas in the undefined and unknown interior. Very slowly the colony began to grow. Real settle- ment spread back along the Swan River, and townships g,^^ began to spring up. The station at Albany progress, ^y^s taken over from New South Wales, al- though many years elapsed before overland com- munication was established with it. Half-way along the intermediate coast-line a new settlement was made by a company at Australind, on the northern edge of Geographe Bay ; though other immigration ceased, the lapse gave room for slower and more natural expansion in a land unfit to nurture crowds. But in 1846 the Legislative Council took a bold step and VI.] OTHER AUSTRALASIAN SETTLEMENTS 255 asked the Home Government for convicts. They got all they wanted ; first reformatory boys, westAus- then ticket-of-leave men, then the regular brand ^'J'nllcir^ of convict, with an accompanying stream of 'S49- money for the new-comers' support. The farmers gained at once a cheap labour supply and a market eager for their produce ; and with their prosperity the whole country leapt into new life. A timber trade, a trade in horses for India, pearl fisheries, and mines were opened up in a very few years ; and so greatly did the settlers benefit, that, in spite of the many draw- backs of a convict population, they fought hard 1 • • r 1 TT 1 •• Trans- asfainst a later decision of the Home authorities portation , ,. , • 1 1 toW.A. to abolish transportation, and were only con- abolished, soled by receiving in 1870 a limited self-govern- ment of the type which the eastern colonies had gained in 1842. Far more interesting and (thanks to Sir George Grey) more successful was the Wakefield experiment in South Australia. Sturt's report on the lower Murray g^^^j^ basin, and a later survey by Captain Barker, •'Australia. set people in England thinking of settlement in that part of the continent : and Edward Gibbon ^ . The Wakefield formulated a scheme for an aristo- wakefieid cratic colony, where rich men should buy the land at high prices for cash, and poor men should be brought out as labourers with the proceeds of the land sales. Parliament appointed the promoters of this scheme a " Colonization Commission," and insisted that whole families should be sent out together where possible, that all land in the colony should be sold for the same price at any given moment, and that neither convicts nor any other form of Government support should be given. On this experimental basis the new colon v was an utter failure. The rich 256 AUSTRALASIA [chap. emigrants arrived first, found bush life not to their Its first liking, and settled down glumly to speculate in '".f'-'^ Adelaide town-lots ; the labourers, when they lailure. ' •' Governor arrivcd, could get no one to employ them, and marfh, had not the money to pay for high-priced land 1836-8. themselves. The Governor and the Resident Commissioner, one representing the Crown and the other the promoters, quarrelled violently and without ceasing. Gawler, who was sent out to super- Gawier, scdc tlicm both, had no ideas beyond starting relief works ; but when his own private fortune was exhausted in this way, the Home Government (after advancing ;i^i 55,000) insisted on its original contract, and refused to pay the accounts he had run up. For a short time the colony was bankrupt. Such a state of affairs brought about its own remedy. Gawler was not allowed to sell land at less than twelve shillings an acre, cash down : but by this time there were plenty of unhappy owners who would dispose of theirs for less, and the worker immigrants at last got The Over- their chance to farm. Moreover, young and landers. advciiturous squattcrs had begun to travel their sheep overland from the Sydney side, and take up runs in the lands behind Mount Lofty and along the Murray. Best of all, Gawler was recalled, and Captain Grey, George Grey sent out as Governor. Great as his services were later on to New Zealand and to the Cape Colony, none of Grey's work has been more fruitful than what he accomplished during this, His drastic ^^^ ^^^^ tcnurc of important office. He abol- reforms. ishcd thc relief works and dispersed the workers among farms and stations inland ; he cut down Government wages below those given by private employers ; he stopped all public works that were not absolutely necessary. He taught South Australia, in VI.] OTHER AUSTRALASIAN SETTLEMENTS 257 fact, to depend on that private enterprise which is the secret of British success. Fortune smiled on him in answer, and disclosed lead mines at Mount Discovery Lofty and copper mines of great richness at °'^'"'"^*- Kapunda and Burraburra. The authorities at home were quick to acknowledge this renewed vitality ; the Commission was abolished, the debt was forgiven, promise was made of representative government at the earliest possible date, and South Australia became a Crown colony like its eastern neighbours. South Australia had practically no native question at all; in New Zealand the native question has New been everything. The Australian blackfellow ^^^'^"''• is little better than a Cape Bushman ; the Maori is cleverer, and has been no less ferocious, than The the Zulus of Tchaka. A Cape colonist might ^^^°"'- have understood and managed these fearless savages, men more generous and honourable than most Europeans, warriors who fought for the mere joy of fighting. But the first white settlers in New Zealand did not understand that variety of savage ; their idea of " nigger " was borrowed from second- hand reports of the African negro's stupidity, and confirmed by the weakness and simplicity of the mainland blackfellows they knew. A " nigger " with land-laws, more especially, was something outside their wildest dreams. So the miscellaneous collection of escaped convicts, half-piratical whaling crews. The and other such jetsam of the Pacific, which camped and fought and lived a wild life on the shores of the Bay of Islands, was more brutal, perhaps, but no more exasperating in its treatment of the Maori tribes, than the refined but arrogant officials of the powerful New Zealand Company. This nest of outlaws in the Bay of Islands gave R 2S8 AUSTRALASIA [chap. white men such a reputation for villainy among the Maoris that no ship dared put in along the adjacent coasts without being fully prepared f<)r an attack. The DrMars- fifst attempt at improving this state of things ^" was made by Samuel Marsden, the head of the Church of England in New South Wales, a man whose political activity in the mother-colony enveloped him in a halo of prejudice, but whose work in New Zealand was never an^-thing but admirable. He first founds a established missionaries in the Bay of Islands, Mission, persuading Macquarie to support them against ^^''*" the unruly whites, by the appointment of four magistrates (one Englishman and three Maori chiefs) to preserve order. Soon afterwards the Home Parlia- ment confirmed this assumption of authority as far as Statute of British subjects were concerned, but deliberately ' ^^" refused (and continued obstinate for many years) to assert any authority over the natives or the islands. Other missionaries followed, but the best of them failed to control the Maori passion for war, and traders of the reckless and violent South Sea type gave the chiefs many chances of indulging it. At last, on a petition from some chiefs for protection against a worse set of traders than usual, Governor Bourke persuaded the Resident homc authoritlcs to appoint a Mr Busby and tra^tfs ^ Lieutenant M'Donnell as Residents in the *^"" disturbed districts ; and Busby utilized the experience of the missionaries, and soothed the natives by allowing them to declare their independ- ence as " The United Tribes of New Zealand," so that he was able to keep some sort of order till a more decisive step became necessary. The Shut out from annexing any part of Aus- again. tralia, the French had for some time been meditating a descent upon the twin islands to the VI.] OTHER AUSTRALASIAN SETTLEMENTS 259 east. Baron de Thierry, a half-English, half-French adventurer, was appealing to France to help him in asserting his title to land at Hokianga under erry. 1823 M'Donnell's supervision. Now while we were ° ' ^'" quite willing to leave the Maoris as much as possible to themselves, leaving them to France was a different thing altogether ; but private enterprise again antici- pated, and indeed hastened, Government action. Wakefield, the author of the South Australian wakefieid experiment, was ready with plans for another ^^^'"' colonizing Company. He himself took no active share in this enterprise, being called away to act as Assistant Secretary to Lord Durham in Canada,* where he after- wards settled for some years : but his brother went out in command of an emigrant ship, and ran up the British flag at Port Nicholson just two days The New before Thierry arrived with a French flag- company, It was not the only escape in New Zealand '^^^' history, for the same year a French fleet t sailed to annex the South Island : but, putting in at the Bay of Islands on their way, they gave unintentional warning to a British naval officer, who sailed in hot haste to their goal at Akaroa and beat them by four days. Colonel Wakefield began, immediately on his arrival, to buy up land from the neighbouring Maori chiefs, and later on claimed that he had secured twenty million acres in patches along the coast Company between Taranaki and Hawke Bay, besides the Wairau valley and a patch on Tasman Bay in the South Island. But his ship had been hastily followed by one bound for Sydney, which carried the formal proclamation of New Zealand as part of the colony of * See p. 132. t This fleet be-longed to a Company (the Nanco-l'ordelaise) which had engaged, in return for protection and convoy, to hand over to the French Crown one quarter of all the lands it should occupy. 26o AUSTRALASIA [CHAP. New South Wales, and a commission for Captain Hobson — an officer already experienced in New Governor Zealand affairs — as Lieutenant-Governor of the arrive"? Hew British possession. Hobson sailed at once Jan. 1840. ^^j. ^i^g jg^^ ^^ Islands, and called together the Maori chiefs to explain to them the altered condition of affairs : and out of this meeting arose a treaty, signed by the heads of " The United Tribes of New Zealand," and by many other chiefs of unconfederated tribes, which is still the basis of our rule in the North Island, arid is looked upon by the Maoris as the charter of their liberties. This Treaty of Waitangi is a very simple document when interpreted honestly and with a knowledge The of Maori "law: it has been a stumbling-block waitang[, Only to thosc who thought that the " bit of ^^^' ^' cloth and a few glass beads " style of treaty was good enough for any " nigger." The chiefs, .,, sig-ning for their tribes, surrendered their yields sov- o o ' ereignty, sovereign powers (such as the)' were) to the Queen of Great Britain. As against any other nation they were for the future British subjects, on a level with their fellows throughout the Empire, and the but retains Oueeu's officers would have authority to search Maorfs out aud to puulsh crime. But in return for this possession gm-j-gj^(-jgj. ^jj their proprietary rights in the '''"'^' land of the two islands were guaranteed to them, and they agreed to dispose of them — if they cared to sell at all — only to representatives of the sovereign. Now the Maori land-law was simple enough : the land belonged to the tribes, not to individuals, and could be parted with only by a tribe's deliberate act. No cession by a chief (much less by a private person), not even (according to some authorities) forcible expulsion after war, could bar the tribe's right to To face page 2(50. VI.] OTHER AUSTRALASIAN SETTLEMENTS 261 territory ; only the formal and solemn declaration of the whole body could sever the tribesmen's connection with the place where their fathers were buried. Attempts were at one time made to deny the genuineness of this law, but the Maori statement has been backed by the highest legal authorit}' ; from the very first strong protests were made against any neglect of the law by white men ; and the deviations which some- times occurred in practice can be explained as usurpations on the part of the chiefs like those of the zamindars in Bengal. Hobson therefore found himself immediately at odds with the settlers at Port Nicholson. Backed by his superior officer, Governor Gipps, he absolutely Hobson refused to recognize any of Wakefield's pur- fight°he chases except a patch on Port Nicholson itself comp.iny. Directly the islands were made a separate Crown colony, he put into force an ordinance by which crown no purchase made at any time from the natives ordhv should be valid unless he himself, now Governor, ''^""' ^^'^^' approved of it. The New Zealand Company fought hard : it allied itself with other English colonizing companies,* and hurried out settlers to its alleged Taranaki and Tasman Bay estates, rightly anticipating that Hobson's opposition would have to yield to accomplished facts. Hobson worked himself to dies, Sept. death in the attempt to manage unruly traders in the north, aggressive land-speculators in the south, and excited tribesmen buzzing like disturbed hornets in their fastnesses between the two. His temporary The successor. Lieutenant Shortland, was not firm in incident, his seat before the trouble had become acute. '^''^' Colonel Wakefield's brother saw in the interregnum * Plymouth was to the fore, as it had been in colonizing America, and left its name on the map of New Zealand also. 262 AUSTRALASIA [chap. a happy opportunity for pushing the Company's claims, and at once proceeded to occupy the Wairau purchase. The Maoris resisted ; Wakefield led a body of armed settlers to drive them away : shots were fired, and in the scuffle Wakefield was killed. Only the firmness and just behaviour of Shortland prevented an immediate war — and even his prompt acknowledg- ment that the Maoris were in the right did not Governor . i i • • ii • .... Fitzroy, avail to soothc their rapidly increasing irritation, which was intensified by the unwise weakness of the next Governor, Captain Fitzroy. Grey had already rescued one Wakefield colony from bankruptcy : he might be able to rescue another Governor from extermination. In 1845 he was suddenly 184^^53. transferred from South Australia to New ^°^l.^ Zealand, where a native war had just broken ^^'•- out in the northern peninsula. The Maoris had apparently been studying Parliamentary debates, and did not understand the sneers at themselves and the contemptuous references to their cherished treaty which they found there. The moment, indeed, was critical ; by way of attacking and discrediting the Ministry of the day, a Committee of the House of Commons had reported in favour of refusing to acknowledge Maori rights over any lands " not actually occupied and enjoyed by natives." Only Grey's firmness finally saved the situation. He began by proclaiming once for all that the Government would stand by the Treaty of Waitangi : then he called on friendly tribes The to assist him against the rebels, and with their .we""pro" help crushed the Bay of Islands rebellion and of'oa.'"" another that was just beginning near Port ceiltd'in" Nicholson ; while the loyal chiefs were rewarded June 1846. y^i^]^ offices Under the Crown, and the tribes in general pacified by the recognition of their own system VI.] OTHER AUSTRALASIAN SETTLEMENTS 263 of justice and the cancellation of Fitzroy's foolish con- cessions in the matter of land purchase by private individuals. With that began Grey's stubborn fight against the pretensions of the New Zealand Company. The points at issue were simple. He believed in cheap crey's land and men who tilled their own ground : the wfjththe Company held out for high-priced land and c°'"P^"y- gentleman-farmers. He took the Treaty of Waitangi literally, looked upon the Maoris as British subjects, and treated them (generally speaking) as equals of the white new-comers — just as the French-Canadians of Quebec were equals of the U.K. men in Ontario ; the Company's officials and its friends at home reckoned them a nuisance, to be cleared off the fertile lands of the colony as fast as white men might need them. In the North Island the struggle went on for xheCon- years. The Whig pro-Company home Ministry Act"of°" of 1846 gave New Zealand a fearful and wonder- ^ ■* ' ful Constitution, providing for its division into provinces, the establishment of Municipal Corporations all over it, and its government by a complicated system of Councils and Assemblies (wholly white, of course), while the Maoris were to be cooped up in arbitrarily formed "aboriginal districts." Grey proclaimed the Act, appointed Lieutenant-Governors of the provinces — thus relieving himself of much routine work — Amending and let the rest of it drop dead. The same LandsAct Ministry passed another Act to define Maori g'^t^'^Acts land-titles on purely British principles ; Grey ^^"f^^". absolutely refused to enforce this Act at all. ^"^^f^y The Ministry was wise enough to acknowledge its mistake — emphasizing the acknowledgment by knighting the Governor — and the North Island remained peaceful to the end of Grey's reign. 264 AUSTRALASIA [chap. In the South Island circumstances were different. The greater part of it seems to have been uninhabited, Different ^^^ thcrc vvas Certainly no Maori difficulty except conditions jn ^hc northcm districts already referred to. in the ■' ?°"'h^ Here Wakefield's friends found a chance of test- Island. The ing his system with everything in its favour, free sys'temat from nativc troubles, with a beautiful and fertile cfuce^good country to experiment on, and with the failure of resuts. ^^ Adelaide scheme to warn them against dilettante colonizing. By this time, too, there was Canadian experience to guide them, and the new ventures succeeded admirably. Otago became the seat of a flourishing Scots colony, under the auspices of the Scottish Free Church ; the wide well- Canter- Watered plains of Canterbury were occupied by ""^^^ a similar Church of England settlement. The guiding principle of each was high-priced land {£2 per acre in Otago, £}^ in Canterbury), whose sales, after ten shillings an acre had been paid as the value of the land, were to provide roads and bridges, churches and schools, and the passage-money of more immigrants. G. The Granting of Constitutions. Between the years 1840 and 1850 all the Australasian colonies were in training for the enjoyment of political freedom. New South Wales got representative colonies govemmeut in 1842, and South Australia a become ... . , .11 used to promise of it : transportation to the mainland was abolished in 1840, and only revived in 1849 for the isolated Swan River colony. The land question vvas the most prominent one of the day : in the older Statute of districts of New South Wales there was a suc- '^''^' cessful attempt to make the squatter pay a fair rent for the run, which was now to be defined and leased VI.] THE GRANTIxNG OF CONSTITUTIONS 265 to him ; round Port Phillip confusion had arisen because reeulations from home fixed the price of land • 1 o 1 Regula- there so that it should not compete with South tionsof Australia. The great grievance everywhere was the refusal of the home Government to sell land at less than ;^i per acre. The colonists said, truly enough, that a good deal of the land was not worth that sum, and should be sold at lower rates : Governor Gipps, backed by the home authorities, said the land would be worth it some day, and there was no need to dispose of all the colony to that generation of settlers. Gipps had his way, and subsequent generations have found some land still left for them. Presently the outlying districts of the mother colony began to find themselves hampered by their enforced connection with S}"dney — the Port Phiiiip Phillip men especially, since they took pride separa- in their freedom from the convict element and their growing town of Melbourne. Up North opinion was divided : the squatters of the inland plains never quite disconnected themselves from Sydney and New- castle interests, while the small settlers and traders of Brisbane thought that independence might bring the back-blocks trade their way. But Port Phillip had no doubts. The Melbourne men were not going to ruin their local business by attending Council meetings at Sydney : certainly they were not going to elect Sydney people as their representatives. They were already a separate land district with a separate treasury ; they had a see and a bishop of theirown — why not have a colony of their own ? They surprised the British Secretary of State for the Colonies by electing him as their member on the Sydney Council, and the humour of it struck him The Act of more than fifty petitions would have. In 1850 ' ^°" a new Constitution Act was passed, dealing with various 266 AUSTRALASIA [chap. Australian colonies ; and the next year Victoria found herself going alone. Bef )re she was quite firm on her feet a tempest struck her, and all south-eastern Australia was in a whirl. In 1848 gold had been discovered in California, and the whole world rang with wild tales of sudden fortune and more sudden violence. In their newspapers the quiet farmers and squatters of Australia read with mild interest strange stories of the far-off mining camps. And then — in the twinkling of an eye it was upon them, this rush of eager gold-seekers, this turmoil of lawless adventurers from all the nations under heaven. Gold was known to exist in the gullies of the Dividing Range : but hitherto the secret had been whispered by half- terrified discoverers to the ears of rekictant officials. Now the colonies knew that payable gold had been found in a gully not far from Bathurst, and the steep canon of Summerhill Creek was already the home of a thousand miners. The hunt was up, and new gold-fields broke out all along the main range. Clunes in Victoria dis- reported a rich find, then Buninyong, then Ballarat : presently men swarmed northwards, and Melbourne heard the magic name of Bendigo. Five months of the rush brought half a million's worth of gold for export ; in two years there were seventy thousand men on the fields. These were the results in Victoria alone, and the first strain on its resources was almost too great to be borne. In New South Wales a more firmly established government found it comparatively easy to control the smaller inflow of excited diggers ; South Australia and Tasmania had no discoveries to speak of, and suffered mainly through loss of population, while the former colony soon found it profitable to supply the eastern gold-fields with provisions. But in Victoria the administration was scarcely fledged ; at best it had hoped VI.] THE GRANTING OF CONSTITUTIONS 267 to rule seventy thousand people, and it was called on to face a population that doubled, and trebled, , . _ 111-1 The rush. and within tour years quadrupled ; its laws were made for farmers and pastoralists, and now a mob of wild Uitlatider miners (to use the modern name for them) had swallowed up even its local police. It sent to Tasmania for warders, to England for troops. It iicence-fee , . 1 1 • r 1 • 1 • • • trouble. attempted to raise the hcence-iee which, imitating the mother colony, it had imposed on all diggers. The diggers protested ; they were being taxed, they said, by a Council in which they were not represented ; they went so far as to form a Diggers' Congress. Bendigo petitioned for a lower licence-fee, and aided its cause with a little rioting ; the fee was reduced, and Bendigo quieted down again. Ballarat, though hitherto a less disorderly camp, was now not so to be soothed ; at last the miners there refused to pay any licence-fee at all, and entrenched themselves, when the troops were sent up to do police work, on the Eureka lead. It was a mistake as fatal as that of the Mahratta Eureka chiefs in Wellesley's time ; they were indomit- ablein their own tents, but the concentration of their forces made a defeat, when it should come, absolutely crushing. The troops attacked their stockade and carried it with a rush — and the revolt was over. The time had come for a permanent solution of the whole colonial problem in Australia. In Victoria, by the end of 1855, the Uitlander population had settled down finally as residents, and were therefore Free Con- justly entitled to a share in the government. """"°"^- In Tasmania transportation was a thing of the past, and its free settlers could at last claim that the island was theirs. South Australia in 1850 had received a Constitution such as New South Wales had in 1842, and was rapidly learning the lesson of self- government. 268 AUSTRALASIA [chap. vi. The very Act which gave it this Constitution empowered the Councils of all the four colonies to devise new ones for themselves, and the Colonial Office, anxious to be rid as soon as possible of these turbulent communities, was urgent that they should use their powers at once. New Zealand, steadily growing in prosperity under j^^^^ Grey's firm rule, gained in 1852 a federal con- Zeaiand. stitution practically designed by the Governor himself It was the only way of properly reconciling the divergent interests of the Crown and the Company — or rather the Company's heirs, for the Company itself had been dissolved two years before. So Auckland — the Crown-settled district — the Company's original settlements of Wellington, Nelson, and New Plymouth (since called Taranaki), and the later church colonies of Otago and Canterbury, each received an elected Council and a superintendent of its own, while all six were controlled as to important and non-local matters by an elected Assembly and a nominee Council. For two years this system was worked with an Executive of permanent Crown officials : then the British instinct asserted itself, and Ministers became responsible to the Legislature, holding office only while the Assembly supported them. Those two years taught the other colonies a lesson, and the constitutions which sibie they gained in 1855 embodied in practice from the Govern- r i • • i r -i i ^ mental hrst tlic prmciplc or responsible government. Each colony, moulding its own legislature, adopted the double-chambered (Council and Assembly) pattern with differing details : and with the severance of the Moreton Bay district from New South Wales in 1859 to form the new colony of Queensland, Australia assumed the shape and obtained the freedom which was to serve it for thirty years of quiet and isolated pro- gress. Tn til.'-'' V"'je. 26!). CHAPTER VII AFRICA. The African continent takes at once first and last place in the history of modern colonization. Before America was discovered, or Australia thought of, the Africa coi- Portuguese were establishing trading-stations very^'^ all along the Guinea coast : but Australia had '''°"''>'- been settled for years and xA.merica for centuries before those trading-stations began to grow into anything more like colonies. Away down at the southern end, it is true. Holland had in 1652 made a beginning of genuine settlement, which gradually spread eastward and became the nucleus of the present Cape Colony : but with that exception Africa proper, as late as a hundred years ago, was for Europeans an unknown wonderland bounded by a narrow ribbon of unhealthy coast-line. African geography is in some respects not unlike that of India. The Mediterranean coast-line was always closely connected with Mediterranean caigto- Europe, and is cut off by the Sahara from the main body of its continent. Leaving that out of con- sideration we have two great table-lands, the lower and more northerh- one stretching east and west, the higher running north and south. One river, the Niger, and one lake, Lake Tchad, drain through fertile valleys what there is to be drained of the northern plateau : 270 AFRICA [chap. the rest of it is practically desert. From the other, fed by many lakes, three great and for the most part navi- gable rivers (the Nile, Zambesi, and Congo) run north, east, and west. But the edges of both plateaux skirt the coast-line so closely that ships are blocked at a com- paratively short distance from the river mouths : and the mouths themselves of the Niger, the Congo, and the Zambesi, opening into tropical seas, are intricate deltas full of malarious disease for white explorers. So adventurers who sailed along African shores found that they could reach all the wealth of the East Indies without one-tenth of the trouble that would take them perhaps a hundred miles into this unamiable continent, and were content to tap its riches by mere trading forts along a fraction of its coast-line. I. West Africa. We have already spoken of early British trade with The Duke the nativcs of Western Guinea.* The first ch-^terV serious attempt to exploit the country was ^^^''' the result of a charter given by Charles II. in 1662 to his brother the Duke of York. Like the American charters of that century it was splendidly vague and comprehensive, granting a thousand years' monopoly of trade between Barbary and the Cape of Good Hope. Ten years later this charter was passed on to a new trading company, which set to work Afnc^in to make it commercially profitable by engaging founded^ in the slave trade. Cape Coast Castle had ^^''^' already been taken from the Dutch, and British 1661. ■' ships joined those from Portugal and Holland that haunted the Oil Rivers and the Niger delta. * P. 52. VII.] WEST AFRICA 271 In dealing with this form of commerce, which has played so important a part for both good and evil in the history of Britain's Atlantic colonies, we xhe slave- must be careful not to judge the events of past '"'^^ centuries by the moral standard of to-day.* The blacks of the northern tableland are a race physically strong, but with ill-equipped minds, at once cunning and super- stitious, childish alike in their quick passions and indigenous in their lack of organizing power. They fall easily '° ^'^"'^''" under the dominion of higher tribes, such as the Fulahs who lord it over Sokoto and its dependent kingdoms ; and under such leaders they eagerly destroy or enslave each other. Slaves were offered to English traders as regular merchandise many years before the Royal African Company engaged in the traffic. The first slave traders were, in their own eyes, practical philanthropists. They did not introduce slavery into Africa ; they simply took things there as they found them, bettering, they thought, the lot of the unfortunate victims by substituting civilized and Christian conditions for the ghastly barbarities of West African tyrants. Nation after nation followed in the track of the Portuguese. The first disgust of English traders at the traf^c was admirable, but founded on sentiment only, not on a sense of its wrongness ; and as Britain acquired tropical and semi-tropical colonies across the Atlantic, the necessity of obtaining labourers for their development became urgent. The home British islands had none to spare ; America itself had no doerno^''^ able-bodied workers ; but West Africa produced I'efolt'lhe all the colonists could want, and to West Africa ^'''''"'■ they went. For a short time they allowed the Dutch, slave-trade middlemen from the first, to do the work of transport; but the Navigation Acts of 165 1-5 in no * See also p. 43. 272 AFRICA [chap. long time ousted Holland from the carrying trade, and British ships brought over negroes at the rate of 7000 a year. Then came into existence that vicious triangle of commerce over which sailed ship after ship, vicious carrying slaves from the Oil Rivers to Jamaica and Carolina, receiving there the produce of slave labour, tobacco, molasses, and cotton, for transport to Bristol, and returning to the African coast with the rum and cotton goods into which that produce had been worked up. In 1 72 1 the Royal African Company obtained what they thought would be a very lucrative privilege. The Under the terms of the Pope's decree of 1493 Assiento. j^fj-'ica belonged to Portugal as against Spain : and the Spaniards could not well dispute the validity of this arrangement, whatever other nations might think of it. They were therefore dependent on Portugal, or on the nations that disputed Portugal's claims to Africa, for the supply of slaves to all Spanish America. Their colonial policy was always one of monopolies, and the King of Spain made money by assigning (for a con- sideration, of course) to some one nation exclusively the contract for slave-importation. By the treaty of Utrecht this contract; called the Assiento, was transferred from the French, who then held it, to the English for a period of thirty years, and was given (for a stipulated share in the profits) by the English Govern- ment to the South Sea Company. At the reconstruc- tion of that Company after its misfortunes in 1721, the African Company took the contract over. But the business was not a paying one, even from the purely commercial point of view. It was enormously wasteful of human life : the raids which supplied its market destroyed every other form of industry and the populations that lived by them, and in doing so annihilated VII.] WEST AFRICA 273 the material — the human beings — which they were intended to procure. The Company fell deeper and deeper into debt to the Spanish King, and to recover itself took a great part in forcing on the war of " Jenkins' ear," which was expected to cancel the King's claims ; but the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle The con- left them as urgent as ever, and in 1752 ca^n'ceiied, the Company ceased to exist, being replaced by '''^°' the African Company of Merchants, a body which represented all merchants engaged in the African trade, and was chartered to trade and hold posts between 20° N. and 20° S. Slave-trading, as we may imagine, did not promote the formation of colonies along the West African coast. The posts held by merchants of each nocoIo- nation were merely depots for the storage merJiyfor- of slaves and other merchandise, with a strong s'to?e- fort built beside each for its protection against °"^"' rival traders. Even the ground on which these buildings stood was not the property of either merchants or nation : it remained, in some cases up till only twenty- nine years ago, still a part of the dominions of some native ruler. The traders were tenants only, and the posts changed hands nearly as often as a leased house nowadays. The fort at Arguin, for instance, was first Portuguese, then Dutch, then French, then Prussian : England then had the offer of it, but the price was too high, so the Dutch got it again, and the French after them. In many places forts , . , . , Nor did of two or three nations stood side by side : any Euro pean na- tion claii territory. 1 I 1 • 1 1 • P^^" "^' and so natural did this arrangement seem — tio.. claim so little was there any thought of territorial rights in West Africa — that by treaty after treaty British and French merchants were allowed to settle and trade in close proximity. The Peace of Paris, which s 274 AFRICA [chap. gave Britain the Senegambia trade, wilfully left France at Goree : * the treaty of Versailles, in restoring Senegambia to France, kept open to British traders a strip of the ceded coast, f The forts were, in fact, only national in a very limited sense. From 1729 onwards the British Parliament voted yearly a sum of money for the main- tenance of the African Company's posts, and took them over from its successor in 1763 : but twenty years later they were handed back to the merchants (the vote being continued) and were held by them, with a six years' interval (182 1-7), for another sixty years. The slave-trade, then, prevented colonization : the first real colony was a mark of its approaching Beginning . i i o of the and- ruin. Half-way through the eighteenth century agitation, began a revolt of the more humane thinkers in France and England against the very idea of slavery. It took eighty years to convert public opinion to the whole of this new doctrine : the more visible and more horrible results of slave - owning were attacked and abolished in a much shorter time. In 1807 the carrying trade between Africa and America was finally prohibited ; but long before that a judicial decision J had declared in 1772 that on British soil no slavery was possible — the slave who trod it became a freeman at the touch. Now many American planters, coming home to enjoy themselves, had brought for economy's sake their household slaves with them : and as this decision set them free and made it necessary to pay them for their service, the economy vanished, and the unfortunate negroes were turned adrift. The * An island opposite Dakar on the mainland by Cape Verde, which is now the important settlement. t Compare the provisions of the Treaty of Utrecht with regard to Newfoundland. But the French have been wiser than we, and in 1857 made a bargain with us which cancelled our trade-rights in Senegambia. X In the Court of King's liench, delivered by Lord Mansfield (Somerset's Case). VII.] WEST AFRICA 275 Government, in order to be rid of this unwelcome body of unemployed, gladly aided a private company of philanthropists to transport them back to Africa : and in 1787 a part)^ of four hundred was sierra established on the shores of Freetown harbour, fir''s°"eai'^ the best in all ■ the Atlantic coast of Africa, '°'°"^'- where next year the purchase of a strip of land and the submission of the neighbouring chiefs gave Britain her colony of Sierra Leone. Here freed negroes were brought in 1792 from Nova Scotia and in 1800 from Jamaica. On the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 the colony was transferred from the private company to direct control of the Crown. This was the beginning of an entirely new policy in regard to African trade. " Open up the interior " was now the cry ; for slave-raiding had so ruined the coastal districts that from the table- terior"ex- land only could material for legitimate trade ^°^^ ^ be obtained. Side by side with the African Company of Merchants, from which it must be carefully dis- tinguished, the African Association took up the work of exploration. Of what lay behind the fever-breeding swamps of the coast nothing was known. But there was a rumour, thousands of years old, of a great river, the Niger ; and on this half-mythical stream later rumours placed the glorious city of Timbuctoo. The French, further north, had for many years vainly tried to get to it up the Senegal, which, according to some accounts, was a mouth of the Niger itself. The Gambia was another possible mouth — for eighteenth- century maps make the river a perfect octopus, some even joining it to the Congo and the Nile. Up the Gambia, therefore, went Mungo Park, Park, the first of a splendid line of Scottish ex- plorers in Africa ; he saw the waters that men had 276 AFRICA [chap. dreamt of, but was killed at Bussa in an attempt to follow them to the sea. After him Denham and Clapperton, cutting across the Sahara from ton, Tripoli, discovered Lake Tchad ; Caillie, the French explorer, reached Timbuctoo via the Senegal ; Clapperton (with a new companion. Lander) struck the Niger from the south-west, and died at Sokoto with his discoveries half done ; and Lander a few years later without knowing it explored the Niger delta and its great tributary the Benu6. But it was not till after 1850 that the whole truth was known. Richardson and Barth, English and Prussian andBarth, rcspcctively, made for Lake Tchad by the I 49-55- Tripoli route, with the object of checking the internal slave-trade of the Sudan by commercial treaties with the central negro states. Richardson died during the journey ; Barth before his return had joined the discoveries of Lander to those of Mungo Park, and the course of the Niger was mapped from start to finish. All this time the trading settlements on the coast had xu . been going to ruin. The abolition of the slave Ine coast o & ments trade had taken away their only source of abTn^' profit, and nothing but the mere fact of pos- doned. session prevented the British Government from abandoning them. A man is slow to throw into the ash- heap even his three - year - old hat. Ministry after Ministry experimented with new forms of control. They had three settlements to deal with — an island on the Gambia, the colony of Sierra Leone, and a row of Variable fo^ts aloug the Gold Coast, of which Cape fhl'British Coast Castle was the chief They began by Govern- su Dcrvisinc;' the Gold Coast traders in their rela- ment. <■ ^ 1818. tions with the kingdom of Ashanti. Then they '^'"" abolished the African Company altogether, and tried to govern all the settlements from Freetown. VII.] WEST AFRICA 277 Next they abandoned all the Gold Coast forts but two, and two years after proposed to let those go also. Then the whole row of forts was handed over to a committee of London merchants. Fifteen years afterwards the Gold Coast was taken back by 1828. the Crown, and to each of the three settlements '843- was given a separate Governor. In 1850 more forts — Accra, Quettah, and Addah, — were bought from Denmark, which thus disappeared from West Africa : and during the next few years each settlement gained new territory. In 1861 a fourth colony was founded by the cession of Lagos, the headquarters of such piratical slave-traders as had not yet been exterminated. And in 1865 a select committee of the House of Commons recommended the gradual abandonment of every West African colony except that of Sierra Leone.* It was not to be expected that colonies should flourish when they were treated with such perverse inconsistency. But the interregnum on the Gold Coast — the fifteen years of control by a committee of merchants — Maclean gave that settlement an opportunity for consolida- ooia''^ '^^ tion of which the Governor skilfully availed him- Peaomte? self. The confederated negro tribes of Ashanti '^^^-42. had conquered the coast natives very early in the century, and had claimed succession to their ownership of all Gold Coast soil. For twenty years they enforced the claim by repeated invasions, and twice at least succeeded in getting it admitted. But Captain Maclean, whom the merchants' committee had Terst'he^' made Governor, drove them from the coastal districts, freed the neighbouring tribes entirely from * The kaleidoscopic process did not stop there. In 1S66 all four settle- ments were placed under one Governor. In 1874 the two eastern were separated from the two western ones. I.agos again became self-administer- ing in 1886, and the Gambia in i8S8. 278 AFRICA [chap. their rule, and created what was practically a British Treaty of protcctorate over some eight thousand square '^^'' miles of territory. Britain was at last beginning in West Africa the work of peace-making and establish- ment of order which had long before this given to India the first restfulness it ever knew. For forty years Maclean's treaty confined the Ashanti warriors behind the river Prah. Sullenly declining all friendly commerce with their English conquerors, they settled down to manufactures of various kinds which they disposed of through such Dutch forts as were still left on the Gold Coast. But the Dutch Government was even more eager to get rid of its West African posts than the select committee of the House of Commons : and in 1871 Holland retired,* as Denmark had done twenty-one years before. This meant to the Ashanti king the disappearance of his last vestige of authority south of the Prah — for the Dutch had never disputed his right to a nominal tribute. As soon as might be The Ash- antiwar of hc marchcd upon Cape Coast Castle in such ^ ^^ *' force that it was determined to end his power once and for all. Sir Garnet Wolseley led the attack from the south, while a native force marched from Cooma<;Me furthcr castwards, upon the Ashanti capital of occupied, Coomassie : two defeats and the burning of his '^^■*" chief town, followed by the unexpected arrival of the subsidiary force, drove the king to abject sub- mission ; and the confederacy which he had long held together by the fear of his savage army broke up into a number of weak and peaceable chieftainships, which have since that time looked to British administrators for guidance and protection. * Even more eagerly; the Danes were bought out, while the Dutch asked only for the value of their stores. 7(1 face page 27 VII.] EAST AFRICA AND THE LAKES 279 II. East Africa and the Lakes. In Eastern Africa, too, there was a flourishing trade in slaves, but not an European one. The Dutch The East colonies of Further India needed no importation .^avT" of labour ; India was crowded, Australia un- "^'^^' explored and seemingly worthless. It was the Turkish and Persian dominions that required slaves, and the Arabs, as fellow - Mohammedans, had a complete monopoly of that traffic. So the Portuguese neglected their annexations along the East Coast, and the Dutch, after two failures to take Mozambique, lost all interest in a region which lay out of the direct route to their lucra- tive Mala}-an islands. But in her early career of Asiatic conquest Portugal had occupied Muscat in Oman : when after nearly a hundred and fifty years the Arab Sultan of those parts regained his chief city, he soon followed up this success with a determined attack on all the East African forts which his enemies held so slackly, till by the end of the seventeenth century he had driven them south of Cape Delgado. At the southern end of the nominal Portuguese dominions lay an unfrequented harbour protected from eastern storms by the islands at its mouth, and Deiagoa receiving the waters of three large rivers — the ^''^' best harbour, probably, on the African coast south of the Equator. Here now and then came a Portuguese coaster to trade with the natives for elephant tusks, and sometimes a Dutch boat from Table Bay or an English roving trader would put in for the same purpose on an equal footing with the Portuguese. When the Arab invasion was at its height, the authorities at Mozam- bique had enough to do at the centre of their territory 28o AFRICA [chap. and Delagoa Bay was left to itself: so that when a The Dutch expedition in 172 1 settled where now is the SpadonT town of Lourengo Marques, it was met with no 1721-30. protest and, indeed, no sign of Portuguese owner- ship but an old runaway slave. For ten years the assiduous Dutchmen did their best to make their new acquisition commercially valuable. They prospected for minerals, they pressed oil, they tried to grow indigo, they trafficked in slaves and ivory and got some profit out of the sale of pewter spoons : but in 1730 they were forced to abandon the place as useless for settlement, and after that only visited it occasionally to fetch away ivory. Then Austria, in a sudden fit of over-sea trading, in 1776 began to establish posts on Inyack Island and the mainland opposite. In two years' time the Portu- guese heard of this boldness, and at last thought it worth while to assert their own claims: in 1781 the Austrians were dislodged, and in 1787 they themselves made a fort where the Dutch fort had been, and began to encourage a more or less permanent trade with the interior. In 1822 an English naval captain, who was engaged in surveying the Bay and its inflowing rivers, was told by the resident commandant that the natives outside the little town were not subject to the Portuguese Government. Eager to secure for England the anchor- age behind Inyack — a most valuable naval treaties, station — Captain Owen at once concluded ' ^^" treaties with a couple of native chiefs that purported to give him the southern half of the bay. But he made no effective occupation, and the same chiefs immediately after his departure signed a declara- tion of loyalty to Portugal — showing their impartiality at once by killing the commandant and most of his men directly an attempt was made to hoist the VII.] EAST AFRICA AND THE LAKES 281 Portuguese flag on the disputed territory. So things went on on the old footing, till in 1861 another English captain re-annexed Inyack : and the subsequent negotia- tions dragged on until a boundary treaty concluded in 1869 between Portugal and the Transvaal made it urgently necessary that the British boundary in those parts should also be clearly defined. England stood upon Owen's treaties : Portugal claimed possession since the sixteenth century, but was willing to sell for i^i2,ooo. But this was the epoch of economies and arbitrations : we saved our money by submitting our claim to Macma- the decision of the French President, but we lost ward,%iy the Bay, and with it our absolute control of the ^''' '^"" South African coast-line. North of Cape Delgado little of interest happened during the eighteenth century. Early in the present one, however, Britain found herself involved in East African affairs : for when a revolt in Muscat set up a new dynasty in Oman itself, the African viceroy held his chief town, Mombasa, for the deposed rulers, and called in the British surveying squadron to help him ^ . „ ^ British agamst the new-comers. Captam Owen saw a protector- new opportunity of adding to the Empire, and Zanzibar obtained a protectorate over a long coast strip claimed, which he hoped would be the nucleus of another ' ^'*' India in East Africa. But the Government of the day had no use for empires, and our work in India was under a cloud : the protectorate was refused, and ceiied, after thirty-five more years of fighting the new Oman prince, Seyyid Said, was undisputed master of the whole Zanzibar coast, and had extended his sphere of influence to the edge of the Great Lakes. On his death in 1856 there was the usual Oriental dispute as to the succession between his sons : and an award of Lord Canning's gave Oman to one, Zanzibar and its 282 AFRICA [CHAP. dependencies to his brother. The permanence of this settlement was now formally recognized and virtually i i i-, i i but not guaranteed by Britain, and Zanzibar became formally . -r-. • • i renewed, to all uitcnts and purposcs as much a British protectorate as Hyderabad or Kashmir. But the simple step of proclaiming this state of things officially was for various reasons never taken. After the problem of the Niger's course had been settled by Barth, men began to look eastwards for fresh problems to solve. Geographically, the tionsin legends of the Upper Nile were even more East and - ^ - , . ' ^ i , . Central famous tor their age and their mysterious sur- roundings than those of the Niger : and directly affairs in East Africa began to settle down under an orderly form of government the long line of British explorers set to work in the district of the Great Lakes. Burton Burtou, Spckc, Grant, Baker, alone or in pairs 1856-8; mapped out Tanganyika and the two Nyanzas, 1856-63; while Livingstone further south opened up Lake f8^6'^i-73; Nyassa and the Zambesi valley, and all but dis- Living- covered the secret of the Congo. His work, stone, "-> I849-73- indeed, was the more effective of the two. Ever since the abolition of slavery in British dominions the nation had been proudly philanthropic towards Africa : and Livingstone's self-sacrificing toil as a missionarv excited an attention and an enthusiasm \\hich neither he nor his fellow-explorers could have aroused by the most astonishing of mere discoveries. His travels made the towns of Central Africa household words all over Britain: and his death in 1873 turned African explora- tion into a sort of nineteenth-century crusade. VII.] SOUTH AFRICA 283 III. South Africa. [Note on South African Names. — In Boer names the four following sounds must be remembered : ot — 00, 00 = oh, ei = ay, ij (often written y) = ay (very nearly,— the sound of last syllable in Fr. somineil). Thus '^\otvi\{ox\.l€\xi = Bloomfontayti, Boomplaatz = Bohmplahtz, Vryheid = Fray hate. In Kaffir names certain indescribable "clicks" occur which English can but feebly imitate by inserting minor vowels or semi- vowels to be half-pronounced ; as in Cetvwayo, Isand/^lwana.] A. The Dutch Settlement. A glance at the map will show that of Africa proper {i.e., not counting the Mediterranean countries) only a very small part is outside the tropics. Now within the tropics nearly all over the w^orld Africa the ,..- , 1 1 • 1 place for Europeans find it very difficult to establish European ... 1-1 colonies. permanent colonial settlements, which must always depend on farming or herding : and in Africa especially intra-tropical "colonies" are really at the best onl}' trading stations surrounded by a ring of protected native tribes. But the blunt southern point of the continent is thrust out into a cooler climate, and the European settler finds there at least the possibility of a healthy and comfortable home. After the terror-stricken flight of the Portuguese ships, and the falling through of the British East India Company's annexation, South Africa was for some time left to its Hottentots and Bushmen. But in _ ^ The Cape i6';2 the Dutch East India Company put into seized by ^ "^ / ^ the Dutch force a thirty-three years' old resolution, and e.i.c, established in Table Bay a " fort and garden " for provisioning their trade ships with fresh meat and vegetables. Very few settlers came to the new colony 284 AFRICA [CHAP. — it took twenty years to accumulate six hundred inhabitants — for the Company's trading rules were too strict to encourage any farming beyond what was necessary to supply its own fleet. In 1687, tionof the however, it was able to ship from Holland about Nantes, two hundred of the Huguenots who had been driven from France by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes ; these new - comers were not well treated by the Cape officials, and kept very much to themselves. Later on there came in Dutch soldiers who had served their time in the Indian colonies, and when they wanted wives the Company exported a number of The begin- gi^ls from the orphan schools of Holland. It Afrfkan*der was uot to bo cxpectcd that any of these sentiment, ^olonists would bear great affection to Holland or think of it as " home." They had been practically turned out of Europe, and everything that in the new land reminded them of Europe was detestable : the Governors were haughty and cruel, the laws were per- versely tyrannical, all the petty details of life were sub- ject to irritating regulations. Even the best of the Company's Governors put forth edicts against the use of umbrellas and silk dresses, and bade every man take off his hat to the Governor's house. As for business matters, the local Council took care that there should be no fortunes made outside the official circle. The Com- Tradere- P^^'^Y fij^sd a price for produce at which it could strictions. j^yy all that the farmers had for sale. If a trad- ing ship anchored in Table Bay the Company sold what it chose first, and then the farmer was given his turn — if the ship happened to want any more, and the Com- pany had not already bought the whole of his stock at its own price. By dint of such treatment, continued for a hundred years, the Dutch officials managed to weld their discontented collection of Huguenots, veterans, and VII.] THE DUTCH SETTLEMENT 285 orphans into what was almost a new nation — a nation of men whose great wish was to be let alone, who cared nothing for trade and very little for any sort of social life, who owned no allegiance (except by compulsion) to any law but their own interpretation of the Bible, and felt no patriotism for any country on earth but their own South Africa. Capetown remained Dutch, but the rest of the colony was Boer. As the young nation — though it was never really young : it was born middle-aged — increased, the area of the colony grew also. Whenever Dutch law g^^, and order came too near them, the Boers moved "^^''s- on into fresh country eastwards and northwards : and in doing so they found themselves in collision with a quite new variety of natives. The Hottentots, a some- t,, -' ' The native what lazy nation of cattle-breeders, were nearly ""^i all dead, mainly from epidemics of smallpox. ^°"^"'°'' The Bushmen, a smaller and more savage race of hunters, stole their sheep and cattle in thou- 1 1 11-1 • 11 Bushman, sands, and were trapped like vermm to check the thefts. But during the years of waiting between Portuguese discovery and Dutch occupation a more dangerous and more intelligent enemy had forced his way southwards from the Zambesi. Exter- minating or absorbing the milder tribes that lay in their path, clan after clan of the great Bantu * nation First had stormed down the east coast, each forcing its war'*^ predecessors before it, till in 1779 their vanguard, ^"o„^' the Kosas, met the eastward-trekking Boers not ^?^"^ ' o W ar, far from Algoa Bay. There for many years after '789-93. an almost perpetual war raged between the whites and the Kaffirs, in which the latter were forced back step by step from the Fish River to the Keiskamma, and from * Pronounced BahnC . These southern clans are generally known collec- tively as Kaffirs. 286 AFRICA [chap. the Keiskamma to the Kei. Luckily for the Cape Colony there was no civilized enemy in the back- ground to organize and make still more cruel the Kaffir raids, as the administrators of French Canada had envenomed the Indian raids on New England. But the grim story of eight Kaffir wars will help us to under- stand why Boers retain what New Englanders have not long forgotten — the tradition that treats natives as vermin, as brutes w^io cannot morally claim to be treated like human beings. As the French also had possessions in the East Indies, it was natural that they should now and again think of South Africa as a convenient half-wav house. French -. .. ., ,. , '... designs on Mauntius, ccrtamly, was their regular provisionmg station : but when events in India had all but destroyed their trade, and had left them little but the wish to cripple British commerce in revenge, the Cape offered great advantages as a naval station on the direct line between Europe and the East. In 1781, during a short alliance between France and Holland, French troops actually occupied Capetown. When, therefore, The in 1793 the newly-established French Republic Rep"ubiic became aggressive, declared war on Britain, and propagl'n- sct Up a fellow-Rcpublic in the Netherlands, the ''"'■ British Ministry resolved at once to forestall any such further occupations : and the Stadtholder of the Netherlands, who had fled to England to seek refuge from the French, was induced to write a letter to occupied the Cape authorities, commanding them to by British i • -n • • i • i i i- • troops, admit British troops into the colony lor its June 1795. . . -^ , . . rj^i protection against a rrench invasion. ihe recipients of this letter found themselves in a quandary. While some wished to hold Capetown for the Company, and some to await orders from the new rulers in Holland, there were a few in important positions who were de- VII.] THE DUTCH SETTLEMENT 287 termined to obey the Stadtholder's orders : and the Boers, though disunited among themselves, were in favour of cutting loose altogether from Europe and setting up an independent republic * with all the French • paraphernalia. The British knew their own minds : their half-hearted opponents were sure neither of their own nor of each other's. There was a slight attempt ^ ^, ., ^, \ The Dutch at resistance : the Cape Council passed energetic E.i.c.dis- 1 /■ 1 • 1 r 1 • 1 1 • appears. defence resolutions : and forthwith the garrison surrendered, and the British generals took over the administration of the colony. At first the new state of things commended itself to the majority of the Boers. General Craig did The new everything he could to make them understand fi"sl7ust that their country had not been conquered or ='"'^'"'''^- annexed to Britain : he maintained the best of the Dutch laws, and kept in office the most trustworthy of the late Company's servants : where he altered the laws it was to give them greater freedom, and all restrictions on their trade or their movements were at once abolished. But presently the British Ministry began to send out regular Governors, and all General Craig's arrangements were reversed. Lord Macartney, the first Governor, was the man who in Madras fifteen years before had so But after- mismanaged the war with Tipu : his year at ly^nny the Cape was productive of not much less ^["a'ffe"^ mischief His successor. Sir George Yonge, was "°"' corrupt as well as stupid. The Boers found themselves oppressed on all sides : the trade restrictions of the Dutch Company were revived, and they were r 1 11 • T^ ■ /^ Third lorced to swear allegiance to King George. Kaffir Worst of all, the Kosas burst into the border territory and ravaged it up to the Gamtoos, far west * At Graaff-Reynet and Swellendam republics were actually proclaimed, but lasted only nineteen and live months respectively. 288 AFRICA [chap. of Algoa Bay : and the British commander, instead of fighting, waited till their plundering was done, and then merely took their word that they would not do it again. As a natural result, the raid was repeated three years running, until the farmers took the law into their own hands and drove the Kaffirs beyond the border. And to men in this state of mind there came out agents of the London Missionary Society, full of abstract philanthropy,* to preach the social Amiens, equality of white man and black man, and to condemn the Boer self-defence against their " brothers," the savage Kosas. One cannot wonder that there was rejoicing throughout the colony when, in 1803 (as the price of Ceylon), it was handed back to the control of the Batavian republic, which had replaced the old half-monarchical constitution of Holland. This, the first and only real administration of the Cape by a Dutch government (for the earlier control was The Cape entirely the East India Company's), was in every Diftch way a model among colonial policies of the time, colony. Every mistake of the later English Governors was remedied. The laws were to be such as suited the colony, not a mere literal copy of the code which might suit Holland. Trade was again made free, and differences of religion were no longer a bar to political freedom. Reserves were allotted to the peace! ul native tribes, and the rest strictly excluded from the settled boundaries. How long this joyful state of things would have lasted we cannot tell, for the control was roughly ended in three years : but it left for very long in the minds of the Boers a regretful memory of the da)'s when they ruled them- selves. * On this question of the missionary influence in South Africa note the well-judged statement of both sides of the case in Lucas' " British Colonies," iv. 113-132, VII.] BRITISH RULE BEGINS 289 B. British Rule Begins. Barely three months after the handing back of the colony in 180^ war had broken out afresh in Europe, and it became a^ani a cardnial pomt 01 Napoleon, 1803-14. British policy to secure the Cape route to our Indian possessions. It was not, however, till 1806 that a great fleet sailed into Table Bay and landed an army of seven thousand men to occupy the unfortunate colony. This time there was a genuine attempt Capetown at resistance, but with no possibility of success ; jan!"io, and General Baird did his very best to follow in the footsteps of General Craig. The Earl of Caledon, the first Governor who was appointed after the recapture, worked along the same lines, and his successor ^ ^ ' Lord imitated him : but there is a great difference be- caiedon, . . Governor, tween doing what you wish and having to do iSoe-n. what you wish, and the Boers could not reconcile cmdock, themselves thoroughly even to the most benevo- ' "''■*" lent of despotisms. Nor was their distaste for British methods of government lessened by any great admiration for the British character. Every nation and m-feeiing every age has its own ideas about lying. The BoersTnd Englishman of Napoleon's time thought it no harm, on the strength of British victories at sea, to make a boast of his prowess on land which had little to justify it till Wellington held the Peninsula : and the Boer, knowing something from his French friends of the glories of Napoleon, set the Englishman down as an unmitigated liar. The Boer himself, on the other hand, being taxed on his stock and the produce of his farm, had acquired a habit of gross under-valuation : and the British tax- collector was quite ready to call him a swindling scoundrel. Such first impressions tend to become traditional, how- T 290 AFRICA [chap. ever flimsy be the causes that produced them : nor have the two races that dominate South Africa yet quite got over their mutual distrust. The Batavian Republic had disappeared not long after the outbreak of war, to be replaced by a kingdom^ Kingdom of Holland under Louis Bonaparte, a HoHand brother of Napoleon. In 1810 even this show of 1810''^''' independence was lost, and Holland became a mere province of the French Empire. From that time forth the Boers lost all interest in Europe. Those who still thought of revolt longed for an independent republic of their own : the great majority were not anxious to have any such responsibility, and made them- TheCape sclvcs as comfortablc as possible under British tie"doVn'' ^^^^- But from any government, they thought, quietly. thrcc things should be obtained : justice between Kaffir man and man, protection from the border Kaffirs, i8fw2, and freedom to use their own beloved language, abolft^he the Taal, and to abide by their settled customs, founding jf Qj-^ these three points the English could content hamstown. ^hem, wcll and good : if not — there were other places in the world besides the Cape Colony. When in 18 14 the Prince of Orange returned to Holland he was easily persuaded to sell his South Thecoi- African territory to Britain for six millions ster- finaiiy hng * ; it was a cheap way of showing gratitude over'^ro to the nation which had sheltered him during his Britain. long cxilc. It is from August of that year, there- fore, that we must date the acquisition of the Cape as a Lord c. British colony. The new Governor, Lord Charles Governor, Somcrsct, was a despot of a fairly common type : 1814-26. YiQ xvas not wilfully a tyrant, but rather a well- meaning though arbitrary and headstrong martinet. He * This price included Guiana. TVr ^ \ yf UJ 1 *u_-^J OL % j^ a. f ^ l5 " CO .g • n E I q: ~ <> m 1 'J •^ VII.] BRITISH RULE BEGINS 291 did his best for the colony, but he would take no advice as to what would be tlie best for it. Consequently, although among the important acts of his governorship those which most injured and irritated the Boers were the result of direct interference from London, and were not of his doing at all, yet his unpopularity for minor reasons caused these also to be put down to his account. In 181 5 there was an attempt at revolt among the Boers of the eastern district, caused by the use of Hottentot troops to coerce a recalcitrant Boer into paying his taxes. The insurgents tried to ally themselves with the Kaffirs — a fatal error in South Africa — and to mark the gravity of this offence, five of their leaders were hanged at Slachtersnek, where they had sworn the oath of rebellion. It was under Lord Charles Somerset that the first really British settlement in South Africa was made. Up till 1820 the colony was purely colonists Boer with a small leavening of English Civil s. Africa, servants. But in that year the Imperial Parliament granted fifty thousand pounds towards settling English and Irish families on South African soil. The Governor had spent the two previous years in fighting the Kosas, whom he had Fifth at last driven many miles eastward of their wa^"^ old boundary line, and separated from the '^'^"'9- European settlement by a strip of land where no habitation was allowed. The new settlers were located round Grahamstown, immediately behind this bare strip, to the number of nearly five thousand : and after a hard struggle under the new conditions, in which the government gave them judicious help, they became very prosperous. Then came upon the colony two great misfortunes. In the English Government of that day colonial 292 AFRICA [chap. affairs were looked after by the Minister of War, who was a weak man : while foreign affairs and finance had each a strong and energetic Minister. Consequently we studied the interests of other nations' colonies much more than those of our own : and the more we warned Spain against further interference in South America, the more we insisted on interfering ourselves in South Africa. The new settlers were the proteges English of the Ministry : the Ministry therefore saw ^fficfai' *^ fit to exalt them at the expense of the rest anguage. |_^^^ making English, and English only, the official language of the Cape Colony. Every official document, every word spoken in the law courts, was to be in a language which seven-eighths of the people could not understand. The example of Canada might well have deterred them : but the Ministries of 1815-30 had no taste for historical study. Then the financiers took their turn. The colony was over-loaded with paper money, which had been issued partly by reform thc Dutch, partly by the British administrations, carried This greatly hampered commerce with other countries, but was on the whole convenient for trade within the colony, such as the mass of the Boers engaged in. An order from England suddenly reduced the value of every paper dollar from four shillings to eighteenpence. The colonists protested angrily, English and Boers alike. They went so far as to send home the late Chief Secretary of the colony, Colonel Bird, who had been in office at the Cape ever since 1797 (except of course, during the rule of the Batavian Republic) : but neither this gentleman's experience, nor the strong advocacy of Lord Caledon and Mr Baring, could avail against the doctrinaire policy of the Government. To the merchants of Capetown and Port Elizabeth the inconveniences of this step VII.] THE ZULU TERROR 293 were balanced by the greater security it gave to their foreign trade : but the farmers of the interior simply lost five-eighths of their cash. C. The Zulu Terror. Meanwhile beyond the boundaries of the colony, all was war and massacre. In 1800 Africa south of the Zambesi was densely peopled with tribes ri-r. 1^1- -11 1 Rise of the of the Bantu stock, livmg peaceably together zuiu , , , . ^ , . . nation. as a rule, except when some chiei took it into his head to consolidate his authority over the outlying clans of his dominion. But it happened that one tribe, the Umtetwas, was ruled by a chief who had seen something of European discipline and knew the value of drill and organization. This knowledge he imparted to his grandson Tchaka, who was a son of the Zulu chief, and by the deaths of father and grandfather managed to become head of both tribes : then he set to work to amalgamate them, and very soon fashioned out of their warriors an army of brave, orderly, and well-armed regiments. With this new and irresistible weapon he made war on every tribe within reach : the men he slaughtered, the women he married to his own warriors, and the children as they grew up ranked as full-blooded Zulus. Other Bantus might breed and pasture cattle : his regiments should live on their cattle and be recruited with their best fighting-stuff. So out of central wars', ^^ Zululand he sent impi after impi on the work of destruction till no independent tribe was left within easy reach. Those who fought him perished utterly : those who fled attacked others in desperation, till * There were ninety-four distinct tribes in Natal alone. 294 AFRICA [chap. the land was full of indefinite slaughter, and even beyond the great range of the Drakensberg every tribe was in motion from the Orange to the Vaal. Natal he emptied of its people (except for one small clan that sheltered at the Bluff, by what is now Durban, and owned its degradation by becoming fish-eaters) that it might be a great reserve for the royal herds. Once he marched as far as the Bashee, but went no further, lest he should encounter the white men whose methods he had found so efficacious. Pondoland, however, he left a mere shambles : Bechuanaland was laid waste, and refugees found themselves at last on the Zambesi, where they were afterwards known as the Makololo. Tchaka, savage though he was, was not without greatness. His murderer and successor, Dingaan, had all his evil qualities in greater measure, and few of his good ones, and the work of extermination went on more brutally than ever. Soon of all the Bantu clans within reach there was but one left to carry on the fight : for in their strongholds between the two great ranges, the Quathlamba (Northern Drakensberg) and The Lobombo mountains, the Swazis could defy Swazis. even the victorious Zulu army. Presently the conquerors began to quarrel among themselves. Moselekatze (to keep his better known name, though Umsiligazi is a truer transliteration), one of Tchaka's The favourite generals, had before his master's death •Matabeie. ^q^^q^ ^q kccp for his owu army the booty it had won, and had found it wise, cur-like, to decamp hastily with the spoils to a safe distance. Through the Drakens- berg passes his regiments burst into the Trans- tie down vaal, and after completely devastating it and Marikwa, the neighbouring lands as far as the Kalahari Desert, settled down near the Upper Limpopo, where they founded the Matabeie nation. VII.] THE ZULU TERROR 295 Two more new tribes were among the results of this great upheaval. The Fingoes were a rabble of refugees who established themselves in Kosa country The near the British boundary, and were so hated ^'"s°". by the clans among whom they intruded that they were forced to look to the colonists as their only protectors. Further north a stronger body of fugitives had learnt a lesson from the Swazis. Under Moshesh, the cleverest of Bantu statesmen, as Tchaka was The the cleverest of warriors, every man who could ^''''"'°^" fight, if necessary, but preferred to live quietly, was provided with land and seed in the fertile valleys where the Orange River has its beginnings. Moshesh attacked no man : when the Matabele attacked him, he waited till they were starved out of his country, and then sent them food wherewith to get back to their own. It was typical of his conduct all through : he was one of those irritatingly successful men whose powers of putting everybody else in the wrong make them at once prosperous and unpopular with their neighbours : and with such weapons he built up the Basuto nation, the pet lamb of philanthropists and the despair of colonial statesmen. Of all these wars and migrations the net result was this: that in 1836 the Cape Colony was bordered everywhere, except on its extreme eastern corner, by waste and empty lands. Between the Keiskamma and Umzimvubu, Kosas and Fingoes harried each other : from their border the territory that The great is now Pondoland and Natal stretched to the land. Tugela in fertile valleys that no man tilled ; for behind the Tugela Dingaan and his Zulus lived on their plunder, and kept up their training by continued raids into Swaziland. From the heights of Basutoland Moshesh looked south and east across the deserted 296 AFRICA [chap. Zulu hunting-grounds, Dingaan's idea of a New Forest : north and west of him for hundreds of miles stretched the Matabele preserves, where two tribes only dared to live — the Matabele themselves* in their kraals along the Marikwa, and some way south-west of them a weak The Bat- Bcchuana tribe, saved from the general slaughter lapm. ^y ^j^g address and wisdom of the missionary, Robert Moffat. Besides these two there was no organized human society left between the tropics and the Drakensberg. Z>. The Philanthropists. Lord Charles Somerset went to England in 1826, and his successor was compelled by orders from home sirLowry to continue the same Anglicizing policy. Governor, The law courts and the local councils were now 1828-34. attacked and renovated on British lines, though Law "^ rL-form. ■[hg Imperial Government remembered enough of Indian history to avoid the abolition of Dutch civil law. But more injurious than any of these definite changes was the growing influence of English philanthropists with the Home Government. For years — ever since the second taking of Capetown — the white farmers had been charged with murders and outrages committed upon the Hottentots, and in 1 81 2 the whole colony had been thrown into The . "Biack_ confusion by an enquiry, which, after ample in- vestigation, proved that the great mass of these accusations was entirely false. But in England the charges were still repeated, in spite of Governors' reports and the decisions of judges. Such charges always are : the men who dare to make them at all are either too excited to understand the value of evidence or VII.] THE PHILANTHROPISTS 297 not chivalrous enough to admit their mistake. The missionaries who actually lived and did very . ^ Ine mis- iiood work amono- the Kaffir tribes knew the sionaries " '-' sensible, truth, but their recommendations were put aside : the zealous philanthropic societies had their agents in Capetown, ready at any time to interfere with the edicts of the Governor, superiors will not if need were, and to report to England every listen to ,TT 1- '''^"'■ attempt at controlling the Hottentot population or repressing the Kaffirs. It was as if a Government official should insist on the abolition of all discipline at a great public school, on the ground that all boys must be treated alike and no more strictly than the masters : whereas, of course, the right to be treated equally well does not necessarily imply the right to be treated similarly. Uneducated tribes cannot govern themselves with safety either to themselves or to their neighbours. The Hottentot tribal system had dis- appeared long before in an epidemic of smallpox, and the remaining natives of that race were a masterless crew, obeying no man and no law : trolling 1 T-" 1 ' r A 1 1 1 1 proclama- yet when the Earl of Caledon put them under tion, Nov. European law, seeing that their own law was no longer in existence, the Capetown agents fought him and his successors till they got a new ordinance from home under which the whole race was control again licensed to wander at large. One joned, effort was made to settle the best of them upon -^"'^ '^^^" farms of their own ; but the Hottentots were not farmers, and soon gave up hard work for their old pastime of living on the enforced charity of the European settlers. In 1834 came out the first of the three great Governors, Sir Benjamin D'Urban : the first, Durban, too, of a long line of Governoi's whose work 1834-6. was to be undone and whose reputation was to be 298 AFRICA [chap. sacrificed at the bidding of irresponsible critics in England. Certainly the fate of South Africa may make us grateful that India during these years of backstairs influence was governed by a non-political Company : * for every misfortune that ever came upon the Cape Colony has been a direct result of partisan pressure at home. D'Urban at once set to work to Retrench- rctreuch the extravagant expenditure on the ""^"'^ civil service, and to create an advisory council (called by courtesy " legislative "),t which should at least be able to let him know what the colonists wanted. These measures gave him a popularity which stood him in good stead ; for there were harder tasks before him. Since 1658 slaves had been imported into the colony, both by the Dutch and by the British during Abolition . . J . ^, , 1 1 r of slavery, their first occupation. They had been at first the Cape, a nccessity, for the Hottentots would not work : but they became less and less of a necessity as the colony grew and Kaffir labour became available. During Lord Charles Somerset's government their control was rendered much more difficult, owing to the regulations made at home, which increased in com- plexity year by year, till at last the slave-owner had less control of his men than a manufacturer has to-day, while he was still saddled with the responsibility of keeping them. More than once, indeed, the Boer Boer pro- slavc-owucrs made proposals to the Governor emticipa- by whlch HO child could in future be born a "°"' slave, so that the system must gradually die out. And when in 1833 the Imperial Parliament * India, too, was further from home and so less immediately under control. t In 1825 the Governor was given a " Council of Advice " of six officials. Two years later two of the officials were replaced by non-ofificial nominees. D'Urban's council was made up of five officials and five non-official nominees. VII.] THE PHILANTHROPISTS 299 emancipated all slaves throughout the British dominions, the Cape Colony at least acquiesced with a good deal of pleasure. But the slaves, although of little use as workmen for their owners, had a money value. Being property they had formed an important part of the _ , , The com- security upon which money had been lent to pensation landholders : there were 35,700 of them, and mis- . . 11/-^ managed. their total value was estimated by (jovernment valuers at about three million pounds. When there- fore news came from home that the compensation money would amount to not quite half that sum,* that every claim must be proved in London, and that payment would be made there not in money but in Government stock, the consternation of the owners was very great It meant just this : that the quiet old Boer farmer who had owned a few slaves worth, say, iJ^300 — and had probably got a loan for his farm on that security among others — would get at best not ;^300 in cash (which was the only form of money he had ever heard of), but about ^^125 in bonds payable in London. And to get even that much he, who had never been to Capetown in his life, must take to London documents (which probably did not exist) to prove that he owned these slaves — slaves that had been born on his farm : and while he was away it was more than probable that the bank would foreclose on the farm for the amount lent him, seeing that slaves were no longer a security and their value had depreciated 58 per cent. Again the British Government had made its favourite mistake — it had done the right thing in the most wrong-headed way possible. It had freed the slaves : but freedom was so given as to add them to the already large idle population of the colony, while the farms and vineyards were * ;,^I,247,000. 300 AFRICA [chap. untilled for lack of labour, and half the working population was almost ruined. So great was D'Urban's popularity that even through this time of misfortune he was able to keep the colony quiet. The Kaffirs, however, he could not keep D'Urban's ^ . , t • , ^ i i Kaffir quiet, as the Imperial Government thwarted all his plans. His scheme was borrowed, like so many others, from our experience in India : he proposed to guard the frontiers against depredation by creating a series of buffer states all along it. So far this was also the policy of the philanthropists : but whereas D'Urban saw that these states must be under British protection and guidance, the philanthropists, led by their Capetown agent, Dr Philip, insisted on their complete independence — which, they thought, would mean missionary control instead of official control. They found too late that it meant lawlessness and war. Real states like those of India did not exist, and D'Urban had to use what material he could get. On Buffer ^^^ Orange River he established a tribe of s^Africa Griquas (half-caste Hottentots) under Water- Griqua- boer, who fulfilled their work of keeping order West, admirably. But on the eastern border the task ' ■''*' was not so easy. Lord Charles Somerset's strip of waste land had proved of little use as a defence against the .Kosas, who had never really stopped their raids on the cattle of the English settlers. Behind the strip, moreover, they had been able unnoticed to consolidate their strength. An attempt of an English garrison to recover some stolen horses gave them an Sixth excuse for a new invasion, and once again there wa^/ was scarcely a white man left alive or a house '^^'^■^' standing in all the Algoa Bay district. D'Urban and his lieutenant, Colonel Harry Smith, at once hurried up all the troops and volunteer forces that could VII.] THE GREAT TREK 301 be spared, and drove the Kosas far beyond the Kei : then he set to work to form another buffer state which should guard the much- vexed eastern frontier, xhepro- As in the north he had used Griquas, so here he qllln estabHshed a large body of Fingoes on the land which had formerly been kept waste as far as the Keiskamma : beyorid them he placed the more trust- worthy of the Kosa clans : and over the whole of this new province to the Kei he proclaimed British authority, so that the movements of the chiefs should be carefully watched by British resident officers, while they were allowed to govern each his own clan in his own way. The Kosas were glad to be let off so lightly : the missionaries who lived among them welcomed this mild but firm control : the farmers of the eastern district hoped once more to live securely and at peace. But the philanthropists willed otherwise. In 1836 the whole colony stood aghast at an order from home D-Urban which recalled D'Urban, annulled all his ^^'^^ ^ ' arrangements, and handed back to the Kosas all our former conquests east of the Fish River, to be again their base of operations against the miserable settlers. Andries Stockenstrom, one of the few African-born white men who supported this disastrous policy, was made Lieutenant-Governor of the new frontier districts : to him, therefore, the ruined farmers made a last appeal for compensation and for protection against the Kaffirs. He ignored their appeal, and began to bargain with their enemies. So the Great Trek began. JS. The Great Trek. For twenty years the Boer farmers had lived under an alien government. Bit by bit they had lost their laws, 302 AFRICA [chap. their property, their language. The aboHtion of paper money had halved their earnings ; the emanci- griev- pation of the slaves had halved their working capital, and shocked their religious prejudices as well.* And now the Imperial authorities had left them open to the savageries of men on whom they were forbidden to retaliate — and had done this not from ignorance and carelessly, but deliberately and of set purpose. D'Urban they trusted — he was recalled, and his power given to men they detested, men who had falsely charged them with unheard-of crimes, bigots and slanderers at once.t There was no more to be said : no appeals could be of any use : they determined to have done with the British once and for all, and to find some home far beyond the limits of British rule where they might build up a new and independent nationality. Where should they go ? There was no difficulty about the answer : the land was prepared for them, they said. Why had Tchaka desolated Natal ? move a- Why did waste lands stretch so far north beyond Orange* tile Drakensbcrg ? The Matabele and the Zulus had been instruments appointed to make ready their refuge ; and, as instruments, would themselves disappear or be in some way made harmless when the warrior pilgrims entered into their predestined home. In such mood, comparing themselves to the children of Israel as they left bondage in Egypt, and gaining new courage from the comparison, band after band trekked northward from the farmlands of the coast across the Black Mountain, across the dry Karroo, over the great * " And yet it is not so much their freedom ... as their being placed on an equal footing with Christians." — Anna Steenekamf s Jottrnal. t This is, of course, the Boer view — the case as it presented itself to the voortrekkers. See Boshofs letter to the Grahainstown Journal, and the protest of the Natal Volksraad to Sir G. Napier (both given at length in Bird's " Annals of Natal," vol. i.). VII.] THE GREAT TREK 303 dividing range itself, and down the easy slopes of its northern watershed to the drifts of the Orange River. Once past these they felt safe, for British claims ran no further, and the Imperial Government had often refused to extend the bounds of the colony. But the appointed land was further away, and they pushed on steadily towards the Vaal. Pioneers had already in part mapped out the way. For years the farmers of the north and north-east had driven their herds for change of pasture beyond the Orange River, and an exploring party in 1834-6 tra- versed the Transvaal country to the Zoutpansberg and struggled through to Delagoa Bay. That way followed a band under Hendrik Potgieter (among whom a boy of ten, Paul Kruger, has since made Somerset himself known to the world) ; the main body camped between the Vet and the Vaal, while a dozen of the more adventurous penetrated almost to the northern curve of the Limpopo, and came back with cheering news of fertile country. But the Matabele were before them at the camp near Kroonstad, and had slaughtered some of their comrades without warning : a second attack found the emigrants in laager, and failed to destroy them, though the retreating Kaffirs carried off all their cattle. A third band under The Maritz came up from Thaba Nchu to their help. Reyn^t Without a moment's doubt they marched three "'^'^' hundred miles over the devastated country and surprised the nearest Matabele kraal, driving their op- ponents before them like antelopes. Then they Aibany- marched back to their settlement, welcomed yet uek"*"^ another band of their countrymen under Retief, Assembly and drew up the constitution of the new State. burg,'j"une Their capital, as became conquerors, they named ' '^^^' VVinburg ; and the land between it and the Vaal 304 AFRICA [chap. River was soon covered with the farms of Potgieter's men. Once more they marched against Moselekatze, a hundred and thirty-five of them against twelve thousand. TheMata- For nine days they kept his regiments at bay, from'^thr" never wasting a shot ; until the Matabele chief, Transvaal. a,lready harassed by Zulu attacks from the east, and worn down by the dourness of these unsubduable farmers, fled with all his tribe to regions beyond the Limpopo, leaving three hundred thousand square miles of wilderness to be once more the abode of free men. Piet Retief was the statesman of the Trek, and the Reliefs Winburg grondwet was mainly of his making. grondwet. Under it all whites were citizens, and eligible for any office, provided they took the significant oath, " I will have nothing to do with the London Missionary Society." * The Dutch Reformed Church was to be the established church of the community. Natives could have no citizen rights, but were not to be enslaved or deprived of their land without purchase. In other matters it adopted the old laws of that long-regretted Batavian Republic which had given the Cape its only three years of absolute content. In external matters there was a division among the leaders. Potgieter, the irreconcilable, was for cutting off all connection with Britain, founding an inland state, and obtaining sea- communications through Portuguese territory. Retief hoped for friendly relations on an equal footing with Britain, but saw that the desired independence could only be fully secured by holding a stretch of sea-coast in Boer hands. And over the range to the south-east lay the very land he wanted, the open downs and empty valleys of Natal, owned but little used by the Zulu king, against whose Matabele foes the Boers were fighting. In the centre of its coast-line was the only good port * Identified by the Boers with Dr Philip. VII.] THE GREAT TREK 305 between the Cape and Delagoa, where a little settlement of English traders and American missionaries pon Natal held a grant of land from Tchaka himself is"]!'^' Twice they had petitioned to be made a British P"'^^''"i ^ '■ _ founded, colony, and twice met with a curt refusal : the '^ss- British Government claimed them as subjects and appointed a magistrate over them, but insisted that Natal was " a foreign land, governed by foreign chiefs." To them, therefore, Retief went down, and found them well disposed, but not too willing to be absorbed in the new state : he went on to meet Dingaan, and arranged with him for the cession of Natal on friendly terms. Nearly a thousand families followed him down the Drakensberg passes, and camped along the Tugela and Bushman Rivers : but Dingaan had already re- pented his generosity, and after killing Retief and his companion envoys in cold blood sent his impis to slaughter the unsuspecting immigrants. Pot- near gieter hurried down from Winburg at the news, but his force fell into an ambuscade : seventeen of the Durban English, with fifteen hundred Kaffirs, fought desperately a whole day long against overwhelming numbers, and on the return of the few survivors Durban was hastily abandoned. Then came down a new chief for the disheartened farmers, the statesman Andries Pretorius ; and under his leadership the Boer army of five hundred took complete revenge for Retief's murder in a battle fought on the Blood river against twelve thousand men of Dingaan's best Day, bee. regiments. " Of that fight," wrote one who was ' ' ' ^ " in it, " nothing remains in my memory except shouting and tumult and lamentation, and a sea of black faces : and a dense smoke that rose straight as a plumb-line upwards from the ground." The Zulu tyrant himself was chased into the mountains, after firing his great u 3o6 AFRICA [chap kraal : outside it, on the hill of executions, the victors found Retiefs body lying as it had fallen, and in a leather pouch the treaty by which Dingaan had given away Natal " from the Tugela to the Umzimvubu, and from the sea to the north as far as the land may be useful and in my possession." A year later Pretorius moved again. During 1839 Dingaan had been making overtures for peace, but his power for mischief was by no means broken : so, when his half-brother Panda offered to become the Boers' friend and vassal if they would help him to the throne, their commandant accepted the offer readily. But his actual help was not required. Panda's Kaffirs met Dingaan's men in a fiercely-contested battle, and when Jan. 30, in the thick of the fight a cry was raised, " The '^''°" farmers are coming," the hostile Zulus broke and fled. Dingaan was chased across the Pongola, and there the Swazis caught him and tortured him to death. Pretorius seized the opportunity to make a not unjust settlement of the whole business. From the Umzim- vubu to the Black Umvolosi, from the sea to the Proclama- -r~v i i i i • i i r ^ tionof Drakensberg, he claimed the country for the us, Feb. " South African Society." Natal, as Dingaan had granted it to Retief, was to be the special territory of the republic, a white man's state : north of the Tugela, though the Boers retained the sovereignty (by way of a war indemnity). Panda and his Zulus were to be left undisturbed so long as they led a peaceful life — a condition all the easier to enforce because the veteran regiments had perished in the last great battle. How long this arrangement would have lasted if left to itself, we cannot well judge, though it was un- doubtedly the device of a statesman and a just man. But the Boers were not left to themselves. Their VII.] THE GREAT TREK 307 inveterate enemy in Capetown had not lost sight of them. News went home to England that bodies of rebels had stolen away from the Cape Colony, „ , . , • 1 1 1 Interfer- carrying off their slaves with them, and were encefrom massacring natives in Natal. To retain slaves — to ill-treat natives — the mere accusation was enough ; the whole body of philanthropists was up in arms at once. They knew nothing — they cared nothing — about the difference between a Matabele and a Bechuana. They pictured the Zulu as a mild, inoffensive, and down-trodden black man looking in vain to his trusted missionary for help against the fiendish Boer. They had yet to learn that Dingaan had kept his missionary as a useful decoy-duck for other white men whose goods he wanted, and had not scrupled to kill Retief in his presence. Sir George Napier, who had succeeded D'Urban as Governor, went cannily to work at first, doing his best to find out why the farmers had abandoned their homes and how their grievances could be remedied. When the Home Government ordered more stringent measures, he still did what he could to avoid friction. The slaves, he said, must be sent back at once, if any were found with the emigrants : and added that " no form of government which they may establish will give them the right to be ac- knowledged as a separate and independent people," so appl}'ing to the trekking Boers the same principle of international law which had been already asserted against the English at Durban. Also he seized the port of Durban, in order to control the Boer 1- r • • 1 T. • • 1 Durban supplies 01 ammunition and ensure British com- occupied mand of the whole sea-coast. Beyond this he Dec. 1838- was content to do nothing, hoping that matters ^'^' '^^^ would gradually settle themselves. The remnant of the first Durban colony had now 3o8 AFRICA [chap. thrown in their lot with the new-comers, and a Boer village soon faced the British fort on the Point. Napier strongly advised definite annexation of the whole country, but the authorities at home would not add an acre more than they could help to their trouble- some African possessions : they threatened the emigrants with vengeance for their attacks on Dingaan, they re- jected all demands for the acknowledgment of their independence, but they shrank from incurring any immediate responsibility. In December of 1839 the garrison was withdrawn from Durban, and the flag of the " Republic of Natalia " floated from its deserted flagstaff. Six months later Lord John Russell ordered a re- occupation : Napier, knowing how the abandonment had emboldened the Boer government, begged to be allowed to negotiate first. However, nothing short of independence would satisfy them, and their policy towards the natives was becoming dangerous. Now that the Zulu terror was over, stray bands of Kafiirs had begun to re-occupy their homes of the years before Tchaka. This, Pretorius well knew, was fatal to his idea of a white Natal, and he proposed to deport them all to the southern border and settle them next to Pondoland between the Umzimvubu and the Umtamfuna. At once the Pondo chief took alarm and complained to Napier, who sternly forbade the deportation : there were also rumours that slavery was being revived under the guise of apprenticeship, and stray Dutch traders had encouraged the Maritzburg Assembly to hope for active support from the King of Holland. Just as Napier had reluctantly decided on re-occupation, the new Colonial Secretary, Lord Stanley, ordered a reversion to the former policy of non-intercourse. But the Governor stood firm, and with persistent argument drove Lord VII.] THE GREAT TREK 309 Stanley into supporting his decision : meanwhile he sent a British force along the coast that seized j)^^^^^^ the fort at Durban, and held it in spite of '^{°^^'^^^ two disasters till reinforcements arrived by sea. 4> 1842. With that the resistance of the Natal Boers collapsed, although from Potchefstroom and Winburg and the Modder there came incitements to hold out and re- inforcing commandos. But Pretorius was wiser : and on May 12, 1843, Natal was formally proclaimed a British colony. The proclamation of British authority was followed by an unfortunate (but apparently unintended) reversal of Pretorius' policy towards the natives. Henry ^ -^ •' British Cloete, the British Commissioner, to whose tact poHcy the peaceful submission of the Maritzburgers gardtothe -,,,. . 1 r- natives. was largely due, was fully alive to the danger 01 swamping Natal with refugee Kaffirs. Personally visit- ing Panda, he obtained treaties by which the new colony was extended on the north from the Upper Tugela to the Buffalo River, and St Lucia Bay, the only remaining harbour on the coast, was made British soil. But in the parts beyond Natal proper he left the Zulu king quite uncontrolled, and one can hardly wonder that Panda at once set to work to build up again the regimental system which the Boers had broken down. What Panda began his son Cetywayo improved on, and the work of Dingaan's Day had to be done all over again at Ulundi. As for the Natal Kaffirs, their number increased daily. The Assembly petitioned the Commissioner : the Commissioner protested to the Governor at the Cape : the Governor wrote despatches to the Colonial Secretary in London. Lord Stanley was quite of opinion that something must be done : but he had to consider opinion at home, and in the meanwhile the delay did Natal irreparable mischief 3IO AFRICA [chap. When Retief entered it, it was No-Man's Land ; nor had Natal the Bantu tribes, themselves but recent invaders, aTa'fo more right to re-occupy it than the Boers who reserve. niadc hfc in it possible. Morally, as well as by right of conquest, it was white man's land ; but the British public and the philanthropists had other ideas. In the end the southern half of it was given to the Pondos, the northern was thrown open to miscellaneous fragments of Bantu clans, and the chance of establishing a genuinely English colony on the most fertile land in South Africa was lost for ever. As for the Boers, they had good reason to complain of their treatment. Their acceptance of British rule, as they understood it, had meant the retention of their farms and their local government system, and protection against raiding Kaffirs. Bit by bit these privileges were minimized. Their land-claims, scrutinized by the legal and precise mind of London officials, seemed irregular and exaggerated. Their somewhat from makeshift Assembly was viewed as a danger, and Natal. ... . their loose jurisdictions as a scandal : for in England the epoch of formulas was still in full swing. In 1846 began a new trek inland: and when in 1847 the pressure of incoming Kaffirs grew too heavy to be borne, and Pretorius himself, journeying to the Cape, could get no satisfaction from the Governor, his last hope of peaceable life under British rule disappeared. He called the malcontents around him : back went their waggons over the passes, and they settled down alons the Vaal. F. The Shaping of South Africa. D'Urban's successors had not had easy times. Like most of the rulers with whom England saddled South VII.] THE SHAPING OF SOUTH AFRICA 311 Africa, they found it very difficult to reconcile their pre- conceived opinions, and the orders they got from home, with a just handling of the real situation as they perceived it when they were actually at the Cape. It was with relief that Sir George Napier turned at last from the thorny problems of Boer diplomacy to handle the more immediate questions of native policy on the Cape Colony's own borders, and proceeded to carry out in full Dr Philip's policy of independent Napier, states. The Pondos were thus established in 1836^4".°'^' southern Natal, and from their mountain border More buffer- the Basuto chief Moshesh was given an enlarge- states: ment of territory. The gap between his boundary f°^^°'^ and that of the Griquas under Waterboer was B^suto- filled by the creation of a second Griqua state '''"'^' '^'^3, under Adam Kok. It was a fine scheme on koU's paper, but would not work at all. The white \t^^ farmers north of the Orange River scoffed at the The policy ° . fails. idea of obeying a half-caste puppet like Adam Kok. The Bantu clans of the Upper Caledon refused to be handed over as a free gift to Moshesh. And while Governor Maitland, Napier's less able sir p. • 1 . • i ^ i^ • Ui- Maitland, successor, was vainly trying to set matters right Governor, in the north, the Kosas continually harried gj'^jj' the colony's eastern borders with the utmost 0°"^"^^^' contempt for the shilly-shallying officials of ^246-7- Britain. They had done so, in fact, ever since D'Urban's recall : and after ten years of this torment the 1 A 1 T-> Seventh unfortunate English settlers round Algoa Bay Kaffir war, found themselves once more in the midst of a barbarous Kaffir invasion. By this time wiser counsels had begun to prevail with the Imperial Government. Governor after Governor owned, and impressed upon the home authorities, that D'Urban's policy had been the right one. It was ten years too late for South African 312 AFRICA [chap. union, but there was still time to recover much lost Sir Harry ground, whcH tlic ncws camc to Capetown that Governor, Sir Harry Smith, D'Urban's right-hand man in I847-52- 1835, had been appointed to rule the Colony, At last South Africa was governed by a man who knew The native it, and the changc of policy was immediate. The tribes put Eastern Province (between Kei and Keiskamma) under ^ ' control. ^2LS rc-anHcxed on D'Urban's conditions. Adam Kok was left to rule his Griquas in a reserve of his own : Moshesh found himself again confined to the land occupied by his Basutos. The land thus restored, and all that surrounded it between the Orange and the Vaal, was made a new colony, the Orange River Sovereignty, under direct British rule : this, it is fair to say, had been already proposed by Maitland, and Sir Harry Smith was but confirming his action. There was an attempt made by the Boers of the north, with Pretorius as their leader, to upset the arrangement : but after a defeat at Boomplaatz, and the discoverythat most of the Sovereignty farmers pre- ferred annexation by an old friend like Sir Harry Smith they retired across the Vaal and were left there in peace. One more Kaffir invasion — the last and the worst — imperilled for a time all Sir Harry Smith's arrangements, for it was complicated by a simul- taneous war with Moshesh. But the next Governor, Sir George Cathcart, was worthy of his predecessors. By 1853 he had at last settled the eastern border ; rewarding our friends the Fingoes with valuable land taken from the rebel Moshesh he restrained for the time rather by tact than by actual victory. The Transvaal Boers, whose leader Pretorius had diplomatically refrained from interfering in the Basuto war, were rewarded with a formal acknowledgment of their The Orange River Sov- ereignty, Feb. 3, 1848. Boom- plaatz, Aug. 29. Eighth Kaffir war, 1850-2. First Basuto war, 1851-2. SirG. Cathcart, Governor, 1852-4. tribes. The Sand River Conven- tion, Feb. 17, 1852. VII.] THE SHAPING OF SOUTH AFRICA 313 independence.* Then came fresh instructions from home. The Imperial Government had spent a great deal over the last two Kaffir wars : it was not disposed to open up a fresh source of expense in Basuto wars. Nor was it at all anxious for large possessions in South Africa — the days were at hand when it would be con- sidered a burden to have colonies at all. So it The was decided to let the Orange River Sovereignty River^sov- go, and a special commissioner was sent out to abandoned see it done. There has been no more curious ^y^"'"""' episode, one thinks, in British history. The farmers of the Sovereignty clung to the Empire. " You built up," they said to the envoy, " this dangerous Basuto power : it is but fair that you should control it. Do that, and we will gladly rule ourselves : but let us always remain part of the Empire." It was useless. The envoy's instruc- tions were to abandon the Sovereignty as soon as possible, and he even invited Boers from the Transvaal to go about preaching independence. This novel political andbe- campaign proved at last successful, and in 1854 orTnge ^ the Orange Free State came into existence. staTe, The Cape Colony itself had on the whole '^^'*' profited by these years of turmoil on its borders. The departure of so many farmers had left room for new immigrants who brought with them money and somewhat improved methods of cultivation. Kaffir wars meant the provisioning of British troops , , ,r . ,^ , r 1 Progress and the expenditure in the colony 01 much at the British money. Road-making — and the trans- port difficulty has alwa}'s been a serious hindrance * The exact terms are important, and run as follows : — "The Assistant Commissioners guarantee in the fullest manner, on the part of the British Government, to the emigrant farmers beyond the Vaal River, the right to manage their own affairs and to govern themselves without any interference on the part of Her Majesty the Queen's Govern- ment, and that no encroachments shall be made by the said Government on the territory beyond to the north of the \"aal River." 314 AFRICA [chap. to South African progress — flourished greatly under a system of locally elected Road Boards set up in 1843, British Secretaries of State turned gladly from the problem of trekking Boers and raiding Kaffirs to the congenial task of devising a constitution which should take off their hands this youngest and most troublesome of the great colonies. For there was no end to the trouble it gave. As Ministers in London tation move ment. viewed it, its sole use to Britain lay in the maintenance of the naval station in Simon's Bay : if they tried to make it of more use, there were at once energetic The Anti- a 11 1 1 transpor- protcsts and the threat of revolt. All through the forties they had hoped to disperse in the Cape Colony the convicts from whose inflow Australia had just been relieved, but had met with no encouragement from governors or colonists. At last Earl Grey — than whom no man was more eager to give colonies freedom, if they would take it in his way — made an attempt to settle the question " without any further VII.] THE SHAPING OF SOUTH AFRICA 315 nonsense," as benevolent despots of the nursery are wont to say. An Order in Council proclaimed •' ^ The Nep- the Cape a penal settlement : the Governor was ttme in .-,, ... . c Simon's notified that military convicts from all our Bay, Sept. Eastern stations would henceforth be sent to the Cape: and in 1849 a ship full of ticket-of-leave men from Bermuda arrived in Simon's Bay. The colony went wild with indignation. The ship was boycotted : the Governor and the garrison nearly suffered the same fate. Boer and Englishman forgot their dislikes and agitated side by side. Sir Harry Smith did what he could: he refused to let the obnoxious immigrants come ashore, and forwarded petition after petition to the Home Government, backing them strongly with his own warnings. Unwillingly Earl Grey gave way, and sent the Neptune on to Tasmania, where it met with a similar activity of protest ; for not the Cape only, but Sydney and Melbourne also and Hobart were firm in the resolve to have no more of this accursed transportation, even though (as Earl Grey plaintively put it) they were thus " declining the share of the common burdens of the empire which they might fairly be called upon to undertake." This agitation had a double influence on the welfare of the colony. The two white races, hitherto estranged by mutual misunderstandings, found that they could work together and had, on the whole, the same ideas of the public welfare. The British Government, for its part, was more than ever anxious to be quit of so puzzling and provoking a country. For colonists and Government alike a liberal Constitution was the natural resource. In 185^ a Parliament was set up in „ 1 • . , , , r V- , The Con- Capetown, elective in both houses, for which stiuuionof every occupant of a ^2^ house had votes, were he white or black : this provision, as well as one by 3i6 AFRICA [chap. which Ministers did not belong to, and were not responsible to the Parliament, being a relic of the desire to ensure fair treatment to the native races apart from the good feeling of the white colonists themselves. About the same time Natal, which had been part of the Cape since 1845, was made a separate colony with a Lieutenant-Governor of its own and a small mainly-elected Legislative Council. Under the Constitution of 1853 the Cape Colony settled down to a quieter life than it had known since the first British occupation. On its eastern border Trouble in BHtish Kaffraria was never entirely still, and Kaffrana. ^^j-Qgg ^j^g j^gj Pondos and Tembus and Kosas stirred each other up with the cheery enmity of old Sir George Highland clans. Sir George Grey, fresh from Governor, his Maori diplomacy, did his best to give the i8s4-6i. Kaffirs also a taste for orderliness and steady work : he began road- and harbour-making in the British province, and arranged for the founding of industrial schools where Fingo and Kosa might learn to make their own farm implements and till their ground in modern fashion. The Fingoes answered readily to his call, but our old foes could not rest. Chafing under Cathcart's settlement, their chiefs plotted a grand madness, outbrcak of the whole Kosa nation that should sweep every white man off the face of South Africa. They proclaimed a day of vengeance, when the heroes of old time should arise from the dead to inaugurate a Kosa millennium, while the Fingoes and the whites should be crushed by a falling sky. Only, said the prophet of this miracle, the believers must show their faith by killing all their cattle and destroying all their corn : then for them new cattle and nobler, fresh and inexhaustible fields of grain, would spring suddenly from the earth, while the incredulous who dared not vii.J THE SHAPING OF SOUTH AFRICA 317 trust the prophet would share the doom of their foes. The message ran hke wildfire through the clans. The Galekas of the Transkei devastated their land without a murmur : their brother Kosas, the Gaikas of the British province, yielded more sullenly, but yielded : with memories of Bible miracles and rumours of the Russian war a nation of two hundred thousand souls was urged to the most fanatic of suicides. For the chiefs had kept their secret too well. They had intended to hurl their starving followers upon the British in a desperate war of extirpation : but when the eighteenth of February came and went, and the millennium tarried, there was no spirit left in the men they had deluded. British Kaffraria swarmed not with warriors, but with suppliants : and the Kosa nation, decimated by the cruel ambition of its chiefs, disappeared from Cape history for twenty years. A re-distribution of territory in the affected districts naturally followed. Grey brought out more than two thousand Germans, who had fought in our gj^; German Legion during the Crimean war, and J'onand o ° ' transmi- planted them in the now empty Gaika country, gration. adding soon after a body of German peasants who brought their families with them and so made the settle- ment permanent. Beyond the Kei, as clans from the hills moved down among the scattered remains of the coast Galekas, Adam Kok and his Griquas from the Orange Free State were shifted into the abandoned hill-country henceforth to be known as Griqualand East. A little later British Kaffraria became an integral part of the Cape Colony, and the Transkei districts were one by one placed under British administration, until the last of them, Pondoland, was annexed to the Cape in 1894. Beyond the colony's northern frontier native wars for 3i8 AFRICA [chap. VII. many years harassed the unwiUingly-independent Orange The Free Free State. The Boers claimed Sir Harry Smith's fhe'^^"** border-line. Moshesh held out for Sir George Basutos. Napier's. Grey's attempt at mediation was a failure, as was also the first intervention of his successor, Sir Philip Wodehouse, for the Basutos would not yield a jot of their pretensions till they were really beaten. But in 1867 President Brand of the Free State at last mastered them : Moshesh, an old man without any able Basuto- successor, appealed for protection to the British : landan- ^j^^j Basutoland, east of the Caledon and north nexed, ' 1869. of Sir Harry Smith's line, became a British pro- tectorate. From 1 87 1 to 1884 it was part of the Cape Colony, but has since been replaced under Crown control. CHAPTER VIII THE DEVELOPING OF AFRICA A. Diamonds and Federal Schemes. In Canada and Australia the influences that made for federation were largely external. South Africa has had a different experience. Its spasmodic attempts at union have been born of a desire either to control better the native tribes or to harmonize the dissonant qualities of the two white races. And as the British people has always been distrustful of colonial dealings with the natives, and the two white races have been as a rule more than distrustful of each other, South Africa has lagged far behind in the march to federation, and successive federal schemes have fretted rather than healed the racial sore. Unity was the first ideal of Cape statesmen, but the events that culminated in 1854 put an end to that. Then came Sir George Grey, fresh from federat- ^ ,^ ing New Zealand, to a land of even fiercer pro- p^j"^."*^ vincialism and more dangerous native inhabi- ''°"> '^58. tants. So well did he rule the Kaffirs on his eastern border, that in 1858 the Free State, sick of Basuto wars, made overtures for a federal alliance with the parent colony. Grey flung himself heart and soul into the scheme. He had already been urging some such plan upon the authorities in London, and had stirred them 319 320 THE DEVELOPING OF AFRICA [cHAP. to the point of enquiring if it could be carried out on British territory, and what effect it would have on the two Boer republics. This result encouraged him so much that his hopes ran away with him : he sent off home a considered scheme of federation on New Zealand lines, and before a reply could be received had, on his own responsibility, laid before the Cape Parliament the propositions of the Free State Volksraad. The British Ministry felt it was being " rushed," and there are few things a British Ministry likes less. Grey was recalled : and though, on his arrival off the English coast, he un- expectedly found himself reinstated by a new Wode- Secretary of State, his scheme disappeared and house, 1 . 1 .1 1 TT- Governor, his hopes werc quite destroyed. His successor, however, never ceased to keep the idea before the eyes of reluctant officials at home, and at last drew from one of them (the Duke of Buckingham, Colonial Secretary in the Disraeli Ministry of i868) an admission that it might be politic to consider seriously any new overtures from the Boer States. But the Free State was now not so eager for our alliance. It was not best pleased at our annexation of Basutoland ; and on its western border, too, causes for irritation were springing up. In 1867 diamonds were Kimberie ^ound near the junction of the Orange and Vaal diggings rivers, and within a couple of years the country opened, ' J^ -' •' 1870. foj- miles round was full of eager diggers. The fork between the two rivers was Orange Free State territory : north-west of the Vaal there was a district to which the Free State, the Transvaal, Waterboer,* and gj^ jj the Batlapin, all laid claim, while none of them Barkiy, ]^a.d rcally looked after it. The lawlessness of Oovernor, •' 1870-77. jts mining-camps required instant regulation, and the Cape authorities determined to assert Britain's * Son of the original Waterboer. VIII.] DIAMONDS AND FEDERAL SCHEMES 321 responsibility for the peace of South Africa exactly as Lord Hastings had asserted it for Rajputana more than fifty years before. Mr Keate, the Governor of Natal, was set to arbitrate between the Transvaal and the natives about the disputed territory : he took The Keate occasion, on the evidence that came before him, award, to give Waterboer not only the districts west of the Vaal, but a slice also of Free State country in the fork, which included nearly all the newly-opened diamond fields. The Griqua chief at once asked for annexation to Britain, and Griqualand West was proclaimed a British dependency. The Free State complained loudly : it had not been represented in the arbitration court, and Waterboer's claims were so vapoury that they were dis- allowed by the first land court held in the new colony : whereupon the Home Government, in which Lord Carnarvon was then Minister for the Colonies, had at last the courage to assume its rightful position, and to assert the necessity of Britain's control over the diamond-fields on the ground that we are the ventionof paramount power in southern Africa. The Free State received a money compensation of ;^90,ooo, and was freed from the difficulty which in later years troubled its northern neighbour — that of adapting the simple politics of a farming community to the swirl and welter of a modern mining town. As the goldfields brought responsible government to Australia, so the diamond-fields brought it to the Cape — but not altorether with the goodwill of the . . 1872. people concerned, who connected it with the current British policy of withdrawing imperial troops from every self-governing colony. It was, indeed, not so much an according of power by Britain to grown-up sons as a last attempt to shift the burdens of Empire to younger shoulders : and the colonists knew it, and re- X 322 THE DEVELOPING OF AFRICA [chap. sented it. But in 1874 the second Disraeli Government came into power at home, after a political campaign in which its chief had laid special stress on the importance Lord Car- °^ helping, not snubbing, the colonies : and Lord narvon Carnarvon, who had given Canada its Dominion Act, became Colonial Secretary. He, of course, wel- comed the suggestions made by Sir Henry Barkly (following in the steps of Wodehouse and Grey) for a confederation of South Africa which should be the natural consequence of the newly-granted self-govern- ment. Unluckily the Free State was still sullen, and the local Ministry at Capetown had learnt too well the lesson of anti-Imperialism which previous Colonial Secretaries had been so eager to teach them. Also Lord Carnarvon sent out Mr Froude, that eminent but perhaps too imaginative historian, on a curiously ill- defined errand of investigation, during which he managed to set the Cape Colony by the ears and stir up the always latent hopes of recalcitrant Boerdom for favou«^ independence. These were grave difficulties, e era ion. ^^^ ^^^ EngHsh Statesman did his best to meet them : he openly declared that he would force nothing on any one — there should be no federation except by the spontaneous action of the communities concerned : and he chose as the new Governor a man no whit behind D' Urban and Grey in capacity — perhaps the superior of both in statesmanship — Henry Bartle Frere. B. The Unquiet Transvaal. But more pressing than any constitutional reform was the problem of the so-called State beyond the Vaal River. Its career had from the first been one of turmoil. For years two rival Volksraads defied VIII.] THE UNQUIET TRAiNSVAAL 323 each other from Potchefstroom and Lydenburg,* and it was only in 1864 that unity was attained under Marthinus Pretorius, son of the greater Andries. On three frontiers continual hostilities with the natives threatened the general peace of South turbersof Africa : even with their own kin in the Free State these more restless Boers could not get on quietly. Slaveholding was a common thing outside the few towns : the nominal Government at Pretoria disclaimed and denounced it, but then that Government was for practical purposes no more than nominal. The only orders it could issue with a chance of being obeyed were orders to go on commando against neighbouring Kaffir tribes. It made up for this by assuming to itself great powers as against the outside world. It de- manded to be allowed its own Minister at Berlin. It claimed a protectorate over Swaziland, and talked about annexing Delagoa Bay. Anarchic and bankrupt, it challenged every Kaffir chief within reach : and from Khama and Lobengula and Cetywayo alike complaints of it came to Capetown, coupled with threats of retaliation. In 1876 it picked a quarrel with Sekukuni, who from almost impregnable fastnesses in the north-east ^^^^ watched the new goldfields of Lydenburgf, the ?;S?'"s' . ° _ •' o' sekukuni, home of English miners. This time even the '^^e. order for commandos was disobeyed, and President Burgers had to arm a body of mercenaries mainly attracted by the hope of loot. Sekukuni's success, and the cold-blooded ferocity of his assailants, were noised abroad among the Kaffir tribes ; from the Kei to the Limpopo there was talk of war and the wiping out of the white man. The British Government could not * At one time there were actually four, Utrecht and the Zoutpansberg maintaining their own rulers. 324 THE DEVELOPING OF AFRICA [chap. afford to let this rumour grow, and Lord Carnarvon determined to meet the danger at its source in Pretoria itself. For the work in hand he chose the ablest sirTheo- diplomatist of South Africa, Theophilus Shep- phiks stone, who had been Native Agent among the stone. Fingoes under Napier and among the Natal Kaffirs since 1845 — who now was Secretary for Native Affairs in Natal, and the one man who could at all influence the arrogant and suspicious Zulu king. To him was issued a Royal Commission, empowering him to enquire into the Transvaal disturbances, and, if necessary, to bring the territory under British rule. At the end of the year Shepstone left Natal, with an escort of twenty-five police : for three months he lived in Pretoria, taking stock of public opinion, and watching the Boer Assembly's futile attempts Transvaal at Tcform j then, breaking silence, he proclaimed Apr. ''12,' the dissolution of the Republic, the annexation " "' of the Transvaal, and its constitution as a British colony with its own laws and legislature. The Boer President " saved face," as the Chinese say, by a formal protest : his second in command, Paul Kruger, went to London to beg for a restoration of independence ; but Lord Carnarvon had grasped as no Minister had grasped before him (and very few since) the all-im- portant fact that in native matters South Africa was already a single community, and was not inclined to let Boer weakness encourage a general Bantu rising against the white man. The annexation was confirmed, and Shepstone remained in Pretoria as administrator of the Government. sirBartie Meanwhile Sir Bartle Frere had reached c'overnoT, Capctown. He was accustomed to high com- 1877-81. mand, had done good work during the Indian Mutiny, and had afterwards been Lieutenant-Governor of 30 20 W 10 20 30 40 50 60 To face page 325. VIII.] THE UNQUIET TRANSVAAL 325 Bombay. His mission in South Africa was to unify it as India was unified : he conceived a great assemblage of states, British and non-British, each self-governing within its own borders, all protected by the paramount power against outside attack. Therefore, first of all, there must be peace and the prospect of peace within; and the Kaffirs were restless everywhere. Sekukuni was not subdued : the Basutos were stirring •1 • 1 1 • • 1 TT- -1 Morosis uneasily amid their mountains : the Kosa tribes rebellion, , . . 1879-80. had renewed their strength and were in open rebellion on the Kei. Behind them all lowered the Zulu power built up again from its ruins by Panda and his son Cetywayo. This king had been a friend of the English as long as he could hope for their support against the Transvaal Boers : when the Transvaal became English he found himself cooped up in a narrow territory, and prepared to make room for his people as his ancestors had done. Frere crushed L^st Kaffir the Kosa revolt, and turned on the Zulus with ^g^""- g demands that their army should be disbanded zuiuwar, and the king's coronation-promises fully carried out. An ominous silence answered his demands. British troops invaded Zululand : a dramatic defeat at Isandhlwana (redeemed by the heroic defence of the Rorke's Drift hospital) for a time de- moralized both the army and the colonists of Natal ; then, recovering itself, the little force pushed on upon Cetywayo's capital, Ulundi, allowed the Zulu impis to break themselves in vain charges on its hollow square, and with a brilliant cavalry charge shattered for ever that warrior nation which had been for more than seventy years the terror of South Africa. We broke the French power in North America, and lost the United States. Kruger and his Boers were in 326 THE DEVELOPING OF AFRICA [chap. a mind to copy Adams and the men of Massachusetts. Chelmsford had crushed the Zulus, Wolseley Nov. 1879. 1 1 1 /- r- 1 1 • r-i Stormed the stronghold of Sekukuni : bhepstone, whom the Boers knew and respected, was replaced by a ruler less sympathetic and a good deal of a martinet, and the Gladstone Ministry had come into power in England. Sir Bartle Frere was in unmerited disgrace : his own chief, Lord Carnarvon, had left the Conservative Cabinet in 1878, owing to a dispute about British policy in Turkey, and his successor, Sir Michael Hicks Beach, was no enthusiast in colonial affairs. The times The ant!- werc full of coufusion. England as a whole had re'^ctTon'of Hot yct woke up from the dreams of the sixties, ^^^°' that promised her the commercial autocracy of the world at a price of political quietism and non- interference beyond the bounds of the home islands. The Disraeli Ministry, it seemed to our unimaginative middle classes, had dragged the nation into futile wars with Zulu and Afghan, while entangling it at the same time in the complications of Turkish misrule. It was the St Martin's summer of mid-century doctrinarianism — the last triumph of political a priori theorists over the scientific investigator of conditions. The years had come upon us that began with the disgrace of Frere and ended with the death of Gordon. In the Transvaal malcontents relied on the fervent support of English Radicals, and the well-disposed could only remember with anxious foreboding how again and again Britain had backed down in South African matters. Their anxiety was justified : we backed down once more. We irritated the Boers by giving them a Crown Colony The constitution instead of the self-government we revolts, promised : our Ministers talked of them as i83o. ' ' oppressed patriots, and made a half-hearted attempt to treat them as rebels. On Dingaan's Day, VIII.] THE UNQUIET TRANSVAAL 327 1880, the South African Republic was again proclaimed, and every British garrison in the Transvaal found itself besieged. Sir George Colley, the Governor of Natal, whose Indian experience had taught him the value of immediate action, marched at once with a small body of troops to relieve the garrisons, refusing the help of Natal colonists lest he should embitter the local feeling between the two white races. A larger force of Boers blocked the pass of Laing's Nek : failing to force his way through, he adopted the Indian strategy of seizing by night the hills above the enemy's camp. But he took no guns with him, and too few men, and in any case the Boers were dourer men than Pathans. Majuba all but 111 ■ r 1 Majuba ended the war in our favour : yet the younger Hiii, Feb. Boers replied to Colley's daring with a no less bold attack on his half-secured position, which killed him and drove his men back to camp : and the British Prime Minister, reversing in this as in all else the policy of his predecessors, allowed the struggle to end with unrepaired defeat, a course which half England might call generosity, but which South Africa from end to end, — enraged or exulting according to race — knew only as bitter humiliation. Majuba was the merest skirmish in itself, for the forces on both sides together did not amount to six hundred men. But this very insignificance made its effects the more startling, and convinced the triumphant Boers of the cowardice and weakness of Britain. In the first peace negotiations they were willing to conven- accept a diminished territory, all lands east of Pretoria, lat. 30° remaining in our possession : the Con- ^'^^' '^^'' vention of Pretoria allowed them their original limits, merely for the asking : within two years they had crossed the boundaries east and west, and were setting up filibuster-States on Zulu and Bechuana territory. While 328 THiE DEVELOPING OF AFRICA [chap. this was still unknown in England, Paul Kruger, — first, last, and only President of the reinstated Republic — arrived in London to negotiate a new Convention which should remove such appearance of subjection to England Conven- as had been left in the deed signed at Pretoria. London, The British Ministry was occupied with domestic Feb. 1884. ^f^a.irs, and conceded as much as it could afford to. The " Transvaal State " became the " South African Republic " ; the British Resident at Pretoria was reduced to a mere Consul ; the absolute control of external relations, and the right to move troops through the Transvaal territory, were given up for a power of veto on treaties concluded by the Republic with foreign powers; more liberal boundaries were conceded on the western border ; and the obnoxious words " suzerainty " and " Suzerain Power " were not mentioned in the new document — an evasive omission which led to much argument later, the Boers asserting that omission meant cancellation, while the British view was that nothing could be cancelled except by express mention of the fact. Our weakness was well requited. Before President Kruger's promise to adhere to the new boundaries was many months old, news came that his Boers had estab- lished themselves in three places beyond those limits. The " New Republic " formed itself in the heart of Zulu- land : Stellaland and Goshen claimed independence on lands already ceded by Batlapin chiefs to the pro- tectorate of Britain. The most peace-loving of Ministries could not bear this in silence : an armed force expedi- under Sir Charles Warren dispersed the Goshenites and exacted the submission of the Stellalanders : and the protectorate of Bechuanaland was extended northwards to latitude 22', thus forbidding any further exodus of Transvaal Boers except at the risk VIII.] THE RUSH FOR AFRICA 329 of open war. The " New Republic," however, was recog- nized with a lessened area in 1886, and in 1888 became part of the Transvaal itself. C. The Rush for Africa. Of all European sovereigns Leopold of Belgium was the one who had least to do. His State was , T^ . ^ . . Leopold guaranteed by Europe against foreign oppression, ofBei- 1 • 1 1 • • 1 1 gium. and its internal politics were on the same scale as its territory. When in 1875 Henry Stanley, "the man who had found Livingstone," started from the Zanzibar coast with the avowed purpose of crossing Africa, King Leopold seized on this new excitement as an opportunity for doing something to distinguish him- self, and " took up " Africa much as other men take up amateur photography or chemistry. Under his presidency a conference of geographers and ex- Brussels r 111 T^ • Confer- plorers from all the great European nations met ence.sept. at Brussels, and decided to form the International African Association. Committees of each nation were to collect subscriptions : the central Association was to do the work of civilization in the name of United Europe. The scheme was premature. The Association did little, and at a great cost. The Committees were more successful, but less unselfish. Britain refused to take any political action, and confined herself to exploration and missions in the Lake country. De Brazza, agent of the French Committee, turned his civilizing tour through the Gaboon hintet'land into one for annex- ing new regions to France. Germany was active on the east of Tanganyika and on the southern tributaries 330 THE DEVELOPING OF AFRICA [CHAP. of the Kasai. The Belgians sent Stanley back to the river he had just discovered to organize the ' ^^' Congo State, in the meanwhile turning the Inter- national Association into a Congo Committee, and that in 1882 into the Congo Association (also nominally International). Portugal woke up from her three hundred years' dream, and claimed ownership of the Congo mouth, bargaining with England for joint control of the great river's trade. And now with a rush Germany came into the field — Germany 3. brand-ncw Power, with a good deal of the 3-rnves. parveuii' s desire to assert himself, determined to rival Britain over-seas as it rivalled Russia on the Continent, and to have all colonial luxuries that complete the establishment of a first-class empire. For years it had waited for such an opportunity.* In 1876 it had cast longing eyes on the Transvaal, but later events made action in that quarter inadvisable till the air was quiet again : now, with South African feeling morosely anti-English, and the Majuba ministry still in power in London, the opportunity was too good to be lost. During the seventies had been outlined the great design of a " Cape to Cairo " German strip, and the time was come to carry it into execution. " No opposition," said Prince Bismarck, " is apprehended from the British Government, and the machinations of colonial authorities ^ , must be prevented." Accordingly he allowed annexa- ^ Bremen merchant to hoist the German flag at tions : _ ° Angra Angra Pequena, between the Orange River and mT."" Walfisch Bay, which latter place Sir Bartle '^^^' Frere had luckily persuaded the previous Ministry to annex in iS/S.f For a year Bismarck * As far back as 1843 there were projects for a German settlement at St Lucia Bay. t The Cape Ministry had urged annexation of the whole district from the Cunene south, but had not cared to share the expense. Attempt viTi.] THE RUSH FOR AFRICA 331 played with our Ministers, assuring them that he had not " the least design to establish any footing in South Africa": then orders were issued from Berlin, and the whole scheme became plain. From Angra Pequena on one side and St Lucia Bay on onSt . Lucia the other tongues of German territory were to Bay, Nov. be thrust inland to the Transvaal, barring the xogoiand, Cape Colony from any northward expansion : 1^84 1 further north similar annexations were to make Cameroons July 12 ; a second broad bar across Africa from Zanzibar Usagara, to the Niger. Everywhere the German grip fastened on lands already British in all but name, while French claims were treated with the utmost respect,* and France was encouraged to make trouble for us in Egypt. The audacity of the whole conception paralysed the Home Government, but our local officials did their best : St Lucia Bay was saved, the Dec. 1884. Niger delta occupied just in time, and the J">yj884. Zanzibar enterprise hampered enough f to give us some say in the now inevitable distribution of the East African coast. Meanwhile in Europe negotiations were going on which resulted in the Berlin Conference of . - , , - ,, The Berlin 1884-5. This assemblage of delegates from all Confer- ence Nov. the European states, ostensibly called to discuss 1884'jan. questions connected with King Leopold's Congo enterprise, resolved itself into a body for drawing up * The Cameroons' chiefs had for years petitioned us to declare a protector- ale over their territory, and Zanzibar, long ruled accordini; to the advice of Sir John Kirk, had been practically offered to us in 1878. As for Bismarck's courtesy to the F'rench, notice that he at once repudiated German flag-hoist- ings north of Sierra Leone and south of the Rio Campo, and settled bound- aries in Togoland on the French side long before he did so on the English side. t On November 24, 1884, Bismarck declared thai "Germany was not endeavouring to obtain a protectorate over Zanzibar" ; and in January 1S85 Earl Granville called the German Chancellor's attention to our special rights in that quarter. 332 THE DEVELOPING OF AFRICA [chap. the rules of a new game — the Partition of Africa. The The principal ones were these — that along the coast aIi^'^" no claim would be recognized unless the claimant Ffb.''24, Power effectively occupied and controlled the '^^^" district in question : but that behind any effec- tively occupied coast-strip a wide region of the interior might be delimited by treaties, in which the coast Power should have uncontested influence and a reasonable time for extending its sway over the native inhabitants. Under this arrangement the old blankness of the African Africa par- map soon disappeared beneath a patchwork of colouring. France seized the chance of connect- ing Algeria with the Senegal colony : Portugal en- deavoured to appropriate its unexplored * hinterland between Angola and Mozambique : Italy, as yet without a colony, seized a strip on the Red Sea and another north of the Zanzibar coast, and hoped to join them in the same way by a sphere of influence stretching across Abyssinia. Britain alone, unaccustomed to this direct State action, and still a little dazed by the general scramble, was for the moment at a loss : but her missionaries and her traders saved her. The Portuguese claim threatened to swallow up all the Zambesi valley and Nyassaland, districts sacred to the memory of Livingstone. Germany was ready to absorb our newer missions in Uganda. And every merchant knew that while British annexation left the trade of other nations equally unhampered with our own, regions which fell under French or German or Portuguese control were at once closed to British trade as far as duties could close them. So. Africa from the blankest has been turned into * Livingstone had travelled much in the Zambesi valley, but the Portuguese had paid no attention to it. Before Livingstone's time the journey from coast to coast had been made three times only, by native or Arab traders. VIII.] CHARTERED COMPANIES 333 almost the gaudiest of maps. Yet the scheme of its colouring is not hard to unravel. Its bulging western line includes lands almost entirely French, save where we hold the lower Gambia and a compact territory sur- rounding the lower Niger valley, and between them two coastal strips with a certain amount of back . . ^ . , , - The new country to bring in trade. In the main body of map of the continent we have built up, on the Cape Colony as pedestal, a pillar of dominion fifteen hundred miles high, cut off from the tropical coast-line by German and Portuguese possessions. Above that is the central block of the Congo Free State : and, making a half-arch round it from a base on the Indian coast, our colony of East Africa meets the other half-arch of the French Gaboon so that they stretch away side by side north- wards to merge indefinitely at last, ours into Egypt, the French Colony into the backlands of Tripoli. A nominal Italian protectorate (of southern Somaliland) rests against the curve of our half-arch, and the French half is similarly burdened with the German Cameroons. In all Africa three countries only remain unannexed by the powers of European Christendom : Tripoli in a vague subjection to the Turkish Sultan, Morocco and Abyssinia in weak and strong independence. D. Chartered Companies. Nations of the European continent, crowded against each other along boundary lines as artificial as those of our own counties, find unity and protection in an idealization of the State, and still appeal for State aid and guidance when they stray beyond the ij.i^inj,,^ limits of their native parish. To the more indi- colonizer. vidualist Briton, whose islands are merely his home-farm 334 THE DEVELOPING OF AFRICA [chap. and the seas his high-road, all unused lands of the world are his so far as he can put them to use. He does not greatly love, when left to himself, the possession of soil he cannot utilize — though he has been of late forced into much annexation of this sort, in order to guard himself against being excluded in the future from tracts as yet undeveloped. But in these tracts, where the Continental instinct is to govern, the British is to use : the one scheme of development proceeds by way of officials and subsidies, the other by way of trade and settlement. To free himself from officialdom the British trader will only too gladly burden himself with expenses of government that in an}' other nation would fall on the general tax-payer. And so, when after nearly a hundred years of comparative quiet the competition for colonial empires became again the rage in Christendom, England remembered that her mer- chants had of old been princes indeed, and had recourse to her tried instrument of colonization, the trading company with sovereign powers. On the east coast' of Africa matters were urgent and extremely tangled. There Germany, the most audacious and most irresponsible of our rivals Africa. (^for Gcrmans had no experience of colonies, and were still light-hearted about the duties their existence entailed), was reducing to chaos the none too definite jurisdictions of our ally and prot(fg^, the Sultan of Zanzibar. He claimed dominion from the coast at least to the great lakes : the Germans insisted that his influence was purely coastal, and were borne out in their contention by an international boundary commission of 1886, on which Colonel (now 1886. T i\ T^- 1 t • r Lord) Kitchener was the representative 01 England. This was followed by an Anglo-German agreement which left the Sultan a ten-mile strip of viri.] CHARTERED COMPANIES 335 coast from the Tana to the Rovuma, admitted that the interior was open to independent colonization, and divided it into British and German spheres by g^ynj^r the hne from Wanga to the Victoria Nyanza, qu^tions. which has not since been altered. This line was extended across and beyond the lake at a later date, to settle the questions involved in three sets of unofficial treaties — those made with the natives by Karl Peters in Uganda, by Stanley to the south- west of it, and by Swann at the northern end of Tanganyika. At the same time Germany withdrew from the lands north of the Tana, where at Witu a German trading company had attempted to effect a lodgment ; and the British sphere, thus enlarged to the north-east, was by a treaty of 1891 with Italy bounded in that direction by the river Jub. In the territory thus defined the Imperial British East Africa Company found more employment than profit. This Company was in the main the creation of William Mackinnon, to whom (being chair- -phe affairs man of the British India S. N. Company, °'"^'^^^ which traded to Zanzibar) the Sultan had in 1878 and again in 1881 offered the administration of his dominions. An association, formed by this gentleman in 1887 to lease the Sultan's ten-mile strip between Wanga and the Tana, began at once to secure its influence inland for at least two hundred miles, and on September 3, 1888, became a Chartered Company under the more imposing title used above. Mombasa was made the seat of Government, the prevailing institution of slav'ery was checked and regulated as far as possible, and a railway was projected to the Victoria Nyanza. The treaty of 1890 enlarged the Company's sphere of action in an unexpected and not altogether welcome 336 THE DEVELOPING OF AFRICA [chap. fashion. Uganda, an independent native kingdom , much affected by missionaries, had been some- ana J ' Uganda, what Unsettled by the attempt of Peters to bring it under a German protectorate, and found itself at the end of 1 890 in the midst of a bitter civil war, in which the Protestant and Roman Catholic mission converts fought each other less for religious reasons than as partizans of English and French supremacy. The British Government, urged to take action on behalf of British missions, persuaded the Company to under- take the administration of the disturbed districts, and Captain Lugard was despatched to enforce order. During the next two years he managed to bring under control not only Uganda itself, but the adjoining kingdom of Unyoro and the remainder of the British sphere south-westwards : but the work had strained too severely the Company's finances, and it determined to withdraw within its own proper boundaries. For a while this step was suspended, at the express request of the British Government, until Sir Gerald Portal, our Consul-General at Zanzibar, should visit Uganda and report on the whole situation : then withdrawal began, first from the Lake country, then from Witu and the northern coast-line; until in 1895 even the Sultan's original concessions were given up, and the Imperial British East Africa Company ceased to exist. Sir Gerald Portal's report, made at the end of 1893, decided the home authorities to maintain Uganda as a separate British protectorate, and this decision was formally notified on June 18, 1894, the boundaries of the protectorate being somewhat extended in 1896. The rest of the mainland within our sphere of influence now forms the East African Protectorate — for the Sultan was long ago persuaded to VIII.] CHARTERED COMPANIES 337 convert both our and the German " leases " of his ten-mile strip into definite transfers of territory ; and his only remaining possessions, the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba, form yet a third protectorate under the British flag. In West Africa our position in 1885 was at once less challenged and more secure. Togoland from first to last has inconvenienced us comparatively ^^^^ little ; and the north-west boundary of the ^'""'^*- German Cameroons, which at one time seemed likely to give trouble, was settled diplomatically by a series of straight lines that took no close account of con- flicting treaties with native chiefs. France, not Germany, has been our active neighbour in this quarter ; and for some years after the Berlin Con- ference no cause of quarrel arose with France. For it so happened that in 1879 George Taubmann Goldie had amalgamated the British trading interests on the lower Niger into the United (two years later renamed the National) African Company : and when two French companies, stimulated by Gambetta, set up rival stations in the same regions, they encountered such brisk trade-competition that they were glad to be bought out. In the Berlin Act, therefore, Great Britain is specifically recognized as controlling the lower Niger. Soon there was rumour of a German attempt to outflank the African Company's eastern posts, and gain influence in the Central Sudan ; at once a well-known explorer, Mr Joseph Thomson, was sent to negotiate with the rulers of Gando and Sokoto, and returned with treaties that acknowledged the Company's protectorate over those important states and all their dependencies. In July of 1886 Sir George Goldie reaped the due reward of his enterprise ; his Company received its charter under a new name, the Y 338 THE DEVELOPING OF AFRICA [chap. Royal Niger Company, and set itself to develop its territories and extend the area of peaceful settlement among the slave-holding, slave-raiding Emirs of the Niger valley. The larger politics of West Africa bear a curious resemblance to those of western and southern Asia, A historic There we have seen a British Company estab- paraiiei. Hshing itsclf in the south on a great river delta, among a packed Hindu population dominated by an aristocracy of Mohammedan invaders : and we have seen that Company forced to extend its influence far beyond its original desires by the approach from the north-west of another European power, militant, aggres- sive, embodying in its own armies the warlike tribes of the central Asian Khanates. Substitute the Niger for the Ganges, the Fulah rule over millions of Hausas for the Mogul rule over millions of Hindus ; put France for Russia, and the Senegalese for the Turkomans : and West African history becomes a precis of South Asian. For in those regions at least French colonization was no idea of yesterday : two hundred years ago pioneers were pushing up the Senegal in search of Timbuctoo : and although no steady progress was made until Faid- herbe in 1855-65 consolidated French dominion in Senegambia, yet the dream of African empire had never ceased to visit at least the slumbers of French statesmen. Between 1880 and 1890 the dream was made a reality. From the upper Senegal to the upper Niger, „ , and from that river southwards to its sources — French activity, where possible, to the coast — expeditions fought their way and left behind them the elements of per- manent rule. Developing the hinterland doctrine to its uttermost, France claimed the monopoly of expan- sion east from Senegambia and south from Algeria ; VIII.] CHARTERED COMPANIES 339 and in 1890 a definite arrangement was found necessary by which we allowed our colonies of the Gambia Anglo- and Sierra Leone to be completely enclosed by French French territory, while we thought to safeguard ment.Aug. 1 1 . 1 • 5i i8go. the eastern settlements by accepting a line, from Say on the Niger to Barua on Lake Tchad, which should mark the southern limit of our neighbour's sphere. The value of this line was, however, seriously discounted by the other side's interpretation of its use. It marked, said France's active young officers, the limit south of which they might not go — from the north : that they should work in below it from the west or east was in their eyes no breach of the agreement. Accordingly in 1897 Britain woke up suddenly to the fact that French expeditions had spread them- selves over all the backlands of the Gold Coast and Lagos, and were occupying districts on the Lower Niger, well to the south-east of Say, that had already been formally put under a British protectorate. Our local officials in their turn made expeditions, and occupied all the remaining points of vantage : at two points in the disputed region the flags of both nations floated over the same town, and only the utmost tactfulness prevented an armed collision. After much negotiation matters were settled by another 1 • 1 1 Anglo- treaty that gave us, scarcely our rights, but French at any rate our deserts : for we lost much tion, June country that was properly within our sphere ''*'"'■ of influence, but which we had not troubled to bring definitely under control. Even then there sprang up within a year a still more perilous boundary dispute to the eastward of Lake Tchad : but the story of Fashoda and the Bahr-el-Ghazal must be told in a later section. Through all this turmoil the Niger Company at- 340 THE DEVELOPING OF AFRICA [chap. tended as strictly as possible to its work, not only developing trade but taking sternly in hand the barbarous monarchs who ruled within its sphere, notably those of Nupe and Ilorin, and finding time , to abolish slavery once and for ail within its June 19, ' 1897. territories. But in the French disputes its double position as trader and British representative led to some awkwardness : " France at least bases her claims," said that country's partizans, "on treaties signed by officers, not by brokers." So, when the immediate troubles were over, a new regime began in West Africa. The Company that had won for England so wide a dominion surrendered its Charter and became again a private trader. Its inland sphere, the domain of Fulahs among Hausas, became one protectorate under Colonel Lugard, whose TheNi er ^^o^^ in Nigeria has deserved no less praise and territories \x^qx\ more than his work in Uganda. The rear- " ranged. regions of the Niger delta, home of innumer- able disconnected Pagan tribes, were united with the coast districts between the Benin and the Rio del Rey, that had been since 1884 under direct British rule. Lagos and the Gold Coast, their territory at last defined on all sides, and their inland commerce assured by a clause in the Convention of 1898 that established equal trade-rights for French and English alike, from Liberia to Lake Tchad, have time to develop a peaceful and organized prosperity among the tribes that crowd their hinterlaitd ; though the Gold Coast has scarcely yet mastered its unruly Ashantis, who still regret their vanished lordship, and have made more than one spasmodic attempt to regain it. viii] THE NILE VALLEY 341 E. The Nile Valley. The Mediterranean States of Africa are, as has already been said, for the most part cut off from the main conti- nent by desert wastes. But through those wastes at their eastern end the Nile thrusts its way from the Great Lakes to the sea, and links the history of its delta and lower valley indissolubly with that of the lands about its source. Egypt is the Nile: to control the flow of its waters is to control the fate of its people. Mehemet Ali knew this well enough, and took care to secure Kassala and Khartoum, while despatching 1823. an expedition southwards that reached the site 1840. of Gondokoro. In that direction his successors ex- tended their rule, getting much profit out of the slaves and ivory that could easily be procured throughout those regions. But slave-trading was in the end ^ ° " r.gypt and no less disastrous to the eastern Sudan than it ^^e Sudan. had been to the western, and the Pasha Ismail in 1869 sent Sir Samuel Baker to organize Egyptian rule on the Great Lakes and suppress the Arab slave-raids in those parts. Baker was followed in 1874 by Charles Gordon, already known as a fighter and organizer by his work in China during the Taeping rebellion. He in two years' governorship of Equatoria, and three more of absolute rule over the whole Sudan, had the slave-trade crushed, an army in formation, a deficit of i^2 50,000 extinguished, order maintained in the Nile provinces from Wadelai to Khartoum. But in the meantime Ismail had fallen, entangled in the complica- tions of his ruinous borrowings, and the new Khedive was a weakling swayed partly by native ministers who 342 THE DEVELOPING OF AFRICA [chap. hated Gordon's incorruptibility, partly by European The dual financiers who had no interest in Egypt beyond control. securing full payment of their loans. So with Gordon's retirement in 1879 the Sudan fell back into Orientalism : and Egypt itself, sweated Eastern-fashion to satisfy the demands of Western creditors, impatient of masters that were foreigners, and of a syndicate rule that is always less human than that of a monarch, gradually worked itself up into that hysterical rebellion- fit that we know as the revolt of Arabi. England and France had for some years been domin- ating Egyptian politics with a system of joint Egyptian coutrol : but when the Gladstone Government War. 1111 -1 suddenly determmed to quieten the country by force, and to that end ordered the bombardment of Alexandria and despatched nearly 40,000 men to the Levant, French co-operation ceased, and we took Egypt in hand unhampered by coadjutors. Arabi's bolt was Sept. 13 soon shot : his army was surprised in its 1882. trenches at Tel-el-Kebir, and an unresting pur- suit gave Cairo into our hands. Europe awaited the declaration of a British protectorate. Instead came the announcement that England would withdraw Granville's as soon as the state 01 the country permitted : Jan. 3, ' in the meantime she would — give the Khedive advice. Of course advice that must be followed is merely another name for orders : but it is a much more irritating name, and one liable to misconceptions. How it has hampered us for seventeen years lies not within the scope of this book to detail. But the history of British reforms in Egypt is one that will confute alike the pessimist who believes in our degeneracy and the cynic who is never tired of sneering at our un- selfishness. One piece of advice we had to give that brought in VIII.] THE NILE VALLEY 343 its train unwonted tragedies. While Arabi was still terrorizing the Khedive the Sudan was astir with more danfjerous revolution. To the slave-dealers of Darfur and Kordofan, incensed alike with Egyptian Pashas who robbed them and British Governors who freed their slaves, there came the Mahdi, the Messiah of all Moslems, promising victory and lordship and the j^;^^ ^^ blotting out of unbelievers. The tribes rallied Mahdiism. to him, and took El Obeid, the capital of Kordofan. From Egypt 10,000 men, the remnants of an army, were sent down under Hicks Pasha to stay his progress — England the adviser standing by, because we advised about Egypt only, and this was a matter of the ^^^ Sudan. The 10,000 marched into the desert, '^^3- and were cut to pieces. Sennaar joined the revolt : it spread like a bush-fire into the Bahr el Ghazal, south to the Great Lakes, east towards Suakin. Then, because a new " adviser " had arrived at Cairo, we stood by no longer. Sir Evelyn Baring, who still rules Egypt as Lord Cromer, took matters in hand too late to prevent the loss of Hicks Pasha's force, but not too late, he hoped, to prevent further loss. The Khedive was told that he must abandon the Sudan. Already more than half of it had abandoned him, cutting off Lupton and Emin, the loyal governors of the extreme south and west. Egypt had neither army nor funds to recover the vast province, which had always (except under Gordon) been a drain on her resources. And so, snatching at a suggestion made with a view of pre- serving it, the British Ministry despatched Gordon at Gordon to Khartoum to arrang^e for the pro- J^^^" •3 '^ toum. posed retreat. He went eagerly, throwing aside all other work, to the help of his old comrades : he made recommendations, and they were not carried out — requests, and they were refused : at last he was shut 344 THE DEVELOPING OF AFRICA [chap. up in the scarcely defensible city, hemmed in by the fiercest warriors of Africa, while for months and months a late-sent and only half-organized British force toiled up the Nile and across the desert to his rescue. Then, at the moment of relief, Khartoum fell. Two days saved anywhere along the line of march would have saved Gordon : that we knew, but nothing beyond it for many years. Only, we at last knew Gordon. His friends, the men who served under him, had known him well : his work for the Empire was the training, the inspiring of its builders. But the long tragedy of that lonely defence in the desert, the sudden tragedy and mystery of his death, concentred on him the emotion of Britain and Greater Britain : his name stirred in the common heart of the race a sense of the best it could be, the best it ought to do. Nations, however, are touched by emotion more readily than ministries, and the army that could not save its The full hero was not allowed to avenge him. Before '■'^^ the year was out Egypt had shrunk like a snail into its shell, and owned nothing south or east of Wady Haifa but the Red Sea port of Suakin. Upon these shrunken boundaries the sea of Mahdiism beat angrily for four years, until at Toski in 1889 fellah troops mastered the Dervish attack and slew the greatest of the Dervish war-leaders : so that for seven years more the frontier had rest, while matters of high politics were and ebb of settled on Nile and Thames, and the Mahdiist Mahdiism. tribcs torc each other to pieces beyond the pale. Unexpectedly in 1896 London issued orders to Cairo, and the long-prayed-for southward march began. That year saw the Egyptian army at Dongola : in the next, Berber marked the limit of advance, and a railway had been thrust to it across the desert from Wady Haifa : the third was the year of victory final and crushing, the VIII.] THE NILE VALLEY 345 grim and great slaughter of Omdurman, the flags of England and Egypt floating side by side over the ruins of Khartoum. Hard on reconquest came reorganization and the beginnings of a new Sudan ; for we have set up many monuments to Gordon, and the greatest of them shall be the land he died for. But the thirteen years of waiting had brought com- plications with them that made the fate of the Upper Nile a matter of European interest. Ismail's empire had stretched along the Red Sea almost to the straits, and along the great river to its parent lakes. The Dervishes swallowed up most of it, and the ambitious ruler of Abyssinia enlarged his bounds as he found opportunity : Italy took Massowah for a permanence, and Kassala for as long as Egypt could spare it — indeed, it was to help Italy out of difficulties in this quarter that the advance of 1896 began. Restless officers of the Congo Free State pushed across their border into Emin's old province on the Albert Nyanza : we ourselves were minded to occupy Equatoria when once we were surely set in Uganda. More audacious, however, and more dangerous were the desires of France. While from the Senegal she was thrusting in behind us to the Lower Niger, from her Congo colony she p^ench was making haste to anticipate us on the Upper f^^'f"^ °" Nile — hoping, too, to clinch her hold on it with N''«- the simultaneous arrival at that goal of a French-led force from Abyssinia. We had warnings in plenty, but just then we were not taking France seriously : our statesmen contented themselves with the vague threats contained in that most diplomatic of words, " unfriendly," and busied themselves with matters of more immediate concern. Occasionally among the crowded cablegrams a line or two was given to rumours of an expedition crawling round the northern boundary of the Congo 346 THE DEVELOPING OF AFRICA [chap. State : occasionally an indiscreet French journalist talked over-joyfully about the Mission Marchand. But the Briton, sure of his own strength, is a little slow to believe that another nation is deliberately " daring " him, and we could not realise that rude hands might be laid on the Nile valley in spite of our solemn warning " Hands off!" So we settled matters as amicably as might be with France in West Africa, and held our own quietly at the Abyssinian court against the too elaborate intrigue of France and Russia, and watched with great com- placency the irresistible success of Kitchener's march to Khartoum, Suddenly we found that the march had not ended at Khartoum. Leaving behind the mass of his army and a garrulous company of war correspondents, the Fashoda. vjctorious general disappeared up Nile with his little fighting-fleet. There was an expectant pause : then it became known that at Fashoda a small French force, come from westward through the Bahr el Ghazal, was set down patiently to wait for that other French- Abyssinian force against whose arrival we had already ensured. France thrilled for a moment with the thought of war, and the wilder English spirits gave challenge in answer : but the nation as a whole saw no reason to be anything but dignified — and rather overdid it. France retired from Fashoda, and from all the region of the Upper Nile, as a child retires that has overstepped the bounds its guardian has set for it : and if Fashoda is for years to come the watchword of French enmity to England, it is not so much because she was compelled to back down, as for the magisterial virtuousness of the expression with which we watched her go. VIII.] CECIL RHODES 347 F. Cecil Rhodes. The British Empire would suffer less than most if its history were writen in a series of biographies : for as it is maintained by the strenuous devotion of in- g^^ i^g. numerable citizens, so it was built by the un- building. constrainable genius of a few. It is therefore quite in keeping with the general plan of the fabric that South African history for the last twelve years should be essentially the history of one man, Cecil Rhodes — a deviser of far-reaching schemes alike in finance and statecraft, strong-willed and silent in executing them ; than whom no man of the last half-century has made more bitter enemies or more devoted followers. This, indeed, is the common lot of our Empire-builders. Raleigh and Cromwell and Clive and Grey and the rest, they have worked with the tools they had, careless how their hands might roughen in the using : they have had, and displayed, the defects of their qualities : and the Briton of the home islands ranks character so high above achievements, that qualities which in India or Africa or Australia win for the notable man his comrades' love are in England liable to be over- shadowed by the memory of their defects. The year 1886 was the beginning of a great trans- formation in South Africa. Hitherto it had been a land of flocks and herds and farms, with one patch r • 1 1- 1 • c Gold dis- 01 mmeral wealth — the diamond mmes of covered on Tr • 1 1 1 -n> • • 1 1 • - the Wit- Kimberley — under British rule in a corner of waters- the territory. Suddenly gold was found in the very centre of the pastoral region, on the summit ridge itself, in the weakest and most restless of all South African states. The loosely-framed Boer institutions, that barely sufficed to control a few thousand farmers. 348 THE DEVELOPING OF AFRICA [chap. were obviously incapable of adaptation to the needs of a packed and excitable gold-mining community. Some of the leading Boers, therefore, were for suppressing the new industry and retaining their valued isolation : but Paul Kruger, to whom the gold-fields meant wealth and power and the relief of his own countrymen from taxa- tion, preferred to encourage the influx of European capital for the exploiting of all this riches, while he could for some years, at any rate, deny to so alien and so shifting a population any share in their own and the country's government. The discontented Boers thereupon bethought them of their hereditary remedy, and made plans to trek across the northern border into Matabeleland, where Lobengula had succeeded his father Moselekatze, and with his Matabele warriors clustered in kraals about Buluwayo dominated all the weaker tribes between the Limpopo and the Zambesi. It was a country of great expectations, coveted not by Boers only but also by Germans and Portuguese. To block their pro- Moffat gress we hurriedly concluded with Lobengula Feb. II, a treaty by which he engaged to alienate no land and grant no privileges to any one without British consent. This, however, was not safeguard enough. As far as ancient claims go, the land was Portuguese : we had formally refused to admit those claims because they were not backed by effective occupation : it was necessary, therefore, that our claims should be instantly and effectively backed in that way. Cecil Rhodes had instigated the Moffat Treaty, and The Rudd ^^^^ "° time in making practical use of it. His Conces- agents obtained from Lobengula a concession of sion, Oct. D C) 30, 1888. all mineral rights in Mashonaland. When others put forward similar concessions he bargained with them, and by amalgamation built up the British South Africa VIII.] CFXIL RHODES 349 Company; which, receiving its Charter in 1889, occu- pied Mashonaland in 1890, and stoutly upheld T-. 1 Ti 1-1 Thefound- British claims against Boer and rortuguese alike, ingof ^ , . . , , ,,. . Rhodesia. Within three years came the inevitable collision with the Matabele impis, whom Lobengula found him- self unable to restrain : two fights broke their organiza- tion, never so good as that of the Zulus, and Matabele- land passed under the Company's rule. Already it had been empowered by the British Government to ad- minister large districts north of the Zambesi, that Lord Salisbury secured for Britain by treaties with Portugal and the Congo State: in 1895 they came directly under its rule — with the exception of the region around and below Lake Nyassa, which had for many Central years been the seat of Scottish missionary enter- prise, and which was constituted a protectorate under direct Crown administration. Of the "effectiveness" of the Company's rule there can be no doubt. It opened up with roads a new tableland full of possible mines and farms. It made a railway northwards from the Cape system to Buluwayo, and another west from the Portuguese harbour of Beira up to the hills of Mashonaland. It ran telegraph lines through its territory from end to end, and across the Portuguese Zambesi-belt into Nyassaland. Till the separation in 1895 it subsidized Nyassaland with ^10,000 a year. And wherever one says " it," one means its founder and prime mover, Cecil Rhodes, But Rhodesia was only a part of his scheme. The end of all was to be a federation of South African states under the British flag — the Cape Colony, Natal, the Free State, the Transvaal, Rhodesia: and be- TherWai cause the Cape was half Boer, the Transvaal for ^on"^' balance was to be made half British, while the ^'='*^'""- friendship of Natal and the Free State might ease the 350 THE DEVELOPING OF AFRICA [crtAP. working of the machine, and Rhodesia, English to the backbone, should ensure the predominance of the Imperial element. While the new state was in making, therefore, federation must be steadily prepared, and above all the Boers must be induced to co-operate. Mr Rhodes to that end allied himself firmly with Jan Hofmeyr, the acknowledged but unofficial leader of the Boer party in the Cape Colony — who also had his scheme of federation, with the Boer flag in place of the British, and hoped to work it out by organizing the sluggish Boer voters at the Cape and so attaining a parliamentary majority and placing a Boer ministry in control at Capetown. The strange alliance lasted longer than might have been expected : but neither leader could quite control his own friends. Natal and the Free State could be let alone till the decisive moment. The Cape was quiet under the Coalition. The Transvaal — there was the rub. When the first inrush of gold-diggers planted at Johannesburg an excitable and largely English popula- tion in the midst of the slow-thinking Boer farmers, a Transvaal law of 1882 still gave full citizenship to every man who lived five years in the country. But in 1890 the Uitlanders found themselves confronted with new requirements — fourteen years' residence, forty govern- years of age, and a few such : and when in 1 894 raent in . . . . the Trans- morc elaborate conditions were imposed, it became clear that the perpetual exclusion of the British element from Transvaal politics had been definitely resolved on. The President was not shy of emphasizing his resolve. Uitlander petitions were openly mocked by his friends, and his own language on many occasions smacked of the gutter and the prize-ring. He attempted intrigues with Portugal to secure Delagoa Bay : he accumulated war material and drilled troops : VIII.] CECIL RHODES 351 he talked unconcealedly of a German protectorate : in fifty ways he showed his intention of abandoning the cautious Afrikander policy of Mr Hofmeyr, and fling- ing his country into the arms of the European — German and Hollander — adventurers with whom he had sur- rounded himself His administration was notoriously corrupt, notoriously tyrannical in native affairs. The Boer farmers who supported him knew little about the corruption — the money did not come out of their pockets — and applauded his treatment of the natives. The Johannesburger, who paid the money, and was for a long time liable to be sent on commando against the exasperated tribes, and had not even the right to look after his own town matters, grew day by day more bitter and more sure that nothing but full citizenship would remedy his grievances. He stood for a Republic, as men devise republics nowadays : the President's Re- public might perhaps find its parallel in mediaeval Italy. So he agitated. The Transvaal National Union was formed in 1892, among men who lived in the country and felt the shoe pinch. In 1895, when the last hope of voluntary Boer reform was gone, and signs of the times grew ominous, came in the richer men — the much abused " capitalists," Cecil Rhodes leading. The Union fitted in well with his scheme : the Transvaal must be half British, or British predominance in the federation could not be assured ; but it must remain, for some time at least, an independent republic, or the Free State and the Cape Boers would be frightened out of federation altogether. A coup dUtat was arranged. At the year's end *> ^ The Re- Johannesburg should rise, arming itself partly formpro- with weapons smuggled in, mainly from the seizure of the well-stocked arsenal at Pretoria. Dr Jameson, the Administrator of Rhodesia, who was 352 THE DEVELOPING OF AFRICA [chap. camped on the western border with a body of Light Horse ostensibly to guard the Mafeking-Buluwayo railway works, should either simultaneously or when news came of the rising (for plans varied) march at speed to join the insurgents, so distracting the President's arrangements and adding semi-official prestige to the movement. The actual Government was to be upset, and a new one installed, with a Constitution based on equitable franchise laws and clean courts of justice. The year wore on, and every month added to the tension. In November the President deliberately broke the London Convention over what was known as the " drifts " question, and it required an ultimatum from the British Government and very strong pressure from the Cape Boers to make him cancel his action and so preserve peace. Then came a sudden misunderstanding in the Reform camp. Rumour said that the rising was to bring annexation to England and the British flag at Pretoria: the Union was too cosmopolitan for such a programme, and nothing more could be done till the matter was settled. Mr Rhodes hastened to set things straight : reform, not annexation, was what he wanted. But his lieutenants were tired of bargaining. When Thejame- the Rcform leaders postponed the rising, Dr son raid, jamcson restrained himself no longer; sending an impatient message to Capetown, he crossed the border with about six hundred men, and rode night and day for Johannesburg. Disaster followed. In London, in Capetown, in Johannesburg there was consternation : only at Pretoria was the sudden move expected and made ready for. The invaders were trapped and forced to surrender within a few miles of their goal. Lord Rosmead, the High Commissioner, tried to intervene, but was quite VIII.] CECIL RHODES 353 outwitted by the President. Jameson and his men were handed over to the British Government to be put on their trial at home : then the Boers felt they had done enough to establish a reputation for magnanimity, and turned savagely on the reformers, who had Boer actually in the crisis done no more than would ^''"'^'^^^■ keep Johannesburg quiet. Trials of the most irregular kind, death sentences on four of the chiefs, heavy fines, long and brutal imprisonment, — such was the portion of the leaders : for the rest, the old corruption, the old contemptuous neglect of grievances, the old round of petty tyrannies were revived with a more deliberate audacity of torture, because it was felt that the Raid must for years block any interference on the part of the British Government. As for Cecil Rhodes, his schemes and his influence were for the time annihilated. Dealing with so cunning an opponent as President Kruger, he had perforce been over-reticent with those to whom he owed official duty : he controlled so many big enter- prises that intrigue in any one capacity could not but infect his straightforwardness in the others. He soon redeemed himself as a man by the pluck and the tact he displayed in ending a serious native insurrection T-ii T-i Rising in that broke out m Rhodesia the same year. But as Rhodesia, a statesman he was compelled to look on while his cherished federation scheme fell to pieces, and his work of years — the union of Briton and Boer for the welfare of South Africa — was replaced by bitter hatreds and the openly anti-Imperial preachings of the new Afrikanderism. Yet if Cecil Rhodes failed, Jan Hofmeyr failed also — and even more disastrously. The Hofmeyr plan had a year or two of steadily-growing success. In The Boer 1898, for the first time on record, a Boer Ministry '''''" controlled the Cape Parliament. It became possible z 354 THE DEVELOPING OF AFRICA [chap. that in a short time the Cape Colony, the Free State, and the Transvaal, working solidly together and completely cutting off the English of Natal from their countrymen in Rhodesia, might force on a Federation in the Boer interest and constitutionally demand from Great Britain the removal of her garrisons from South Africa — a naval station being conceded to her at Simon's Bay, to ensure the maximum of Imperial protection with the minimum power of interference. President Unfortunately for this ingenious plan, President Kruger had his own ideas about Boer supremacy and the methods of its attainment. He went to the limits of tyranny : he accumulated armaments and drilled troops more vigorously than ever : he intrigued with every European Power that would listen to him, and persuaded himself of support from all the others. Rushing on his fate, he forced the Johannesburgers into formally petitioning for British intervention, and con- ducted the ensuing negotiations in a spirit of almost ribald defiance. Hofmeyr pleaded in vain that to gain time for the perfecting of his plans almost any concession was worth making : Kruger was obstinate. He dragged out the South African winter with tortuous diplomacy, until his fellow President of the Free State had inveigled The South his burghers into the plot : then, on the heels of War"" an insolent ultimatum, he flung the mass of his 1899-1901. fQYces on Natal, with intent to sweep through it to the sea and hold Durban as the long-desired Boer port. He had counted most of the chances, but he had forgotten to reckon with the character of his armies. Stubborn enough in defence, the Boers were slow to attack, and took as few risks as possible. Where they should have swept, they crawled. The invaders of Natal wasted precious time round Ladysmith, where viii.] CECIL RHODES 355 they had hemmed in the only army — a contingent just before hurried over from India — that Britain had on the spot. Smaller forces, that might have stirred half the Cape Boers into revolt, sat themselves storm- down outside Kimberle}' and Mafeking. Troops Ma|'ers- went hastily from England to the relief of the coS, besieged garrisons, attacked the besiegers as ^^''' '^^^" hastily, and were baffled by cunning intrenchments and their own ignorance of the country. Sore with defeats where she had looked for victory, Britain turned to men of whose victories she was already proud — Roberts of Kandahar, Kitchener of Omdurman — and backed them with all the forces of the Empire. The garrisons were relieved, one by one : a series of forced marches drove the Boers from berg, Bloemfontein, another series carried the main HiiCVeb. British army to Pretoria : the army of Natal, '^°°" proved already in mountain warfare by ten weeks of battle outside Ladysmith, stormed the Drakens- berg, thrust itself across country against the retreating Boers, and broke their last organized army Daiman- to pieces in the hill-fastnesses near Lydenburg. "'*'''■ Kruger fled to Europe : his fellow ex-President of the former Free State betook himself to raiding in company with Christian de Wet, the most notable of the guerilla leaders, into whose hands the Boer defence now fell. In such raids, politically useless, but cruelly wasteful of life, the war is still (May, 1901) flickering out. But its work is done, once and for all. That British rule will soon run unchecked from Capetown to Tanganyika, just, orderly, and civilizing, is the The war's lesser part of that work. The greater part was '^""''" made sure when from every colony of the Empire free men came gladly to fight in the Empire's quarrel. Greater Britain has grown since Gordon's time in 356 THE DEVELOPING OF AFRICA [chap. viii. territory, but far more in knowledge of her strength and her responsibilities. Not Canada only, or Australia only, thrilled from end to end with eagerness to help the mother-country : wherever under the British flag white men live strenuously side by side, the pick of them was banded together to demand a post beside their kin in battle. That such white heat of enthusiasm will last, it would be over-daring to expect ; but already it has lasted long enough to weld the Empire into an organic unity. There is no need yet to devise schemes of Imperial Federation. As we become more keenly conscious of this unity, we shall assuredly find the means of expressing it aloud to the nations. In the meanwhile, it exists, and by it the Empire has been made at last a living thing. CHAPTER IX IMPERIAL DEVELOPMENTS A. The American Colonies. When Canada once attained practical self-government, she became rapidly more prosperous and more impor- tant. The forests of Ontario disappeared, to - ., - . Canada. "ive place to fertile farms and growing^ towns : The . ^ ,T r- • 1 >T V. -1 federation those of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick sent move- out larger fleets yearly to the fisheries and the markets of the world. Presently the maritime provinces began to feel that they would be stronger if united, and held a conference at Charlottetown to discuss a sept. i, scheme of federation. In Canada proper the '^^■*' refusal of French-speaking Quebec to allow Ontario, now the more populous district, a proportional pre- ponderance in the joint Legislature so embittered the usual party-fights as to make government almost impossible : a remedy was needed which would restore to each district the management of its own affairs, without dissolving the union between them which was of such use against attacks from the south — for the United States, both before and after their own Civil War, were unmistakably anxious to annex the Canadian provinces. The two movements (Ontario-Quebec and maritime) soon coalesced ; a Quebec convention T- 1 1 1 7-1 Oct. 10-2S. drew up a Federal scheme, which was adopted by three of the Legislatures concerned ; a second 357 358 IMPERIAL DEVELOPMENTS [chap. conference, held in London at the end of 1866, amended the scheme in details (mostly financial), and early in The the next year an Act of the Imperial Parlia- ^ommion ^j^^^^ proclaimcd the Dominion of Canada. 1867. New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Quebec were from the first integral parts of the new federation. Each retained self-government in local matters : all joined in obeying a central government with nominee Senate and elected Assembly. In the Assembly Quebec was given 65 members, and the other provinces are represented by numbers propor- tioned to their population : in the Senate, Quebec and Ontario have each 24 nominees, and the rest (at first 24, now 30) are divided proportionally among the smaller states. The Dominion once formed, it became an important matter to extend its bounds. Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island had been represented at the to the Quebec conference, but declined to go further Domhiion. . - , 11 • i i m the matter : the smaller island came m through straitened finances during 1873, the larger still remains outside, chafed with the unsettled French claims on the " French shore," but making some attempt at last to open up the rich forests and ores of the interior. Far more important to the welfare of Canada was the admission of the great North-West and of British Columbia. During the years of quiet which followed the Selkirk disturbances, the Red River district had remained peace- fully unprogressive. The Hudson's Bay Company had no desire to foster agriculture, or to encourage settlement on those quiet expanses that yielded it such a wealth of furs. But in 1869 the newly-established Dominion Government bought from it the north-west territories for ^^"300,000, various small areas of land still remain- ix.J THE AMERICAN COLONIES 359 ing the Company's private property, while the rights of Indians and half-breeds were to be defined Trouble in and respected by the new authorities. Unfor- west, tunately Canadian officials were sent up before the district had been properly handed over : the Company's officers were sulky, the Winnipeg men a little hurt at being thus bought and sold, and the Metis put in extravagant claims for land on the ground of their Indian descent. A leader for the malcontents quickly made his appearance : Louis Riel, a young Louis French-Canadian, formed a provisional Govern- ^"''' ment (which included another French-Canadian, a dis- contented Scot, and an American Fenian), and pro- claimed Rupertsland and the North-West an independent colony. This step alienated most of his Winnipeg supporters, whereupon he arrested all who prominently opposed him, and finally shot one of them after a packed court-martial. Canada was at once in a blaze of excitement. Ontario cried out for vengeance : in Quebec Riel found ^, r. , •=> — The Red alargebody of supporters. The Imperial Govern- ^JdTuo'n' ment, which was still in control of the rebellious ^^y- district (for the Dominion had refused to take it over till the rebellion was put down), sent off Colonel Wolseley with about 1200 men to restore order. But before he could reach Winnipeg the Catholic Archbishop of the district had mastered the violence of Riel and his party : peace was restored, and Wolseley's arrival ended the rebellion at once by frightening the Provisional Govern- ment over the border. An Act of the Dominion Parlia- ment gave the Red River district responsible M^nitob-i government as the Province of Manitoba, and its created. Lieutenant-Governor was made ruler of the still un- organized North-West. Now Canada set about her promised work of settling 36o IMPERIAL DEVELOPMENTS [CHAP. the Indian claims. By seven treaties, concluded between 1 87 1 and 1877, the whole country as far west Indian as the Rocky Mountains and as far north as the Great Slave Lake was thrown open to white men's settlement, Indian reserves being marked out at the rate of a square mile for every five persons — about seven thousand square miles in all. Even the intractable Blackfeet, the terror of American settlers across the border, agreed quietly to a treaty which they have ever since faithfully observed ; and when other bodies of Indians came north, driven from their old hunting grounds because white tourists were shooting all the buffalo, successful efforts were made to establish them as farmers on Canadian soil. The admission of British Columbia to the Dominion was obtained by a promise, too recklessly given, Canadian that witliin tcu years a railway should be thrust Railway, across the continent, over lands and through ' ^' ' ' mountains only half-explored, to bring Vancouver within easy reach of Ottawa. For years this promise oppressed the Dominion like a nightmare. The first intention was to leave the work to a private company, subsidizing it with cash and land-grants. This ' '"*' plan collapsed amid whirling rumours of political bribery that upset a strong Government. The ten-year limit was abandoned, the railway was now to commence from Lake Superior westwards, and soon the new Government determined to undertake the work as a State enterprise. Five years of this arrangement proved it also impracticable, and in 1881 a return was made to the original idea. Private enter- prise was again enlisted, and in four years a finished line stretched from Montreal to the summit of the Rocky Mountains, while by the middle of 1886 trains were running regularly across the continent IX.] THE AMERICAN COLONIES 361 The route followed in the end lay well to southwards, at no great distance from the United States border-line. This was a bitter disappointment to settlers further north, especially those along the North Saskatchewan River, whose envy of Manitoba had led them to hope for a similar province of their own. Battleford was the chief British town in this district, the Metis ^^^^^ having land further east at Batoche. Now f^*^^"'"^^ English and French-Canadian survey methods ^°"j^' differ a good deal, as one may see at a glance by '^^3-4- comparing the shapes of counties in Ontario and Quebec : an English farm is laid out in broad oblongs, as nearly square as may be, while the French have a preference for narrow river-frontages and great depths.* The Batoche Metis were consequently much aggrieved about the new surveys, which had been made English-fashion : and it unluckily struck the good people of Battleford that another half-breed revolution might give them the constitution which, they argued, Kiel's had given ^j^^ Manitoba. It was playing with fire. The g?°i"g. Batoche men caught eagerly at the suggestion teiiion. and got Kiel back from exile to lead them : he hurried matters on, intrigued with the Cree Indians of the neighbourhood, formed a half-breed Provisional Govern- ment, threatened the English with a war of extermination, and finally announced himself both king and prophet of a Metis nation with a new half-breed religion to match. This time war broke out in earnest. The half-breeds defeated bodies of mounted police, their Indian allies massacred missionaries, and Kiel's military leader, Dumont, for a time checked the advance of 4000 militia under General Middleton. But the Blackfeet, the really formidable Indian clan, did not stir : Middleton * Ten- chain frontages and two miles of depth were the Batoche farmers' choice. 362 IMPERIAL DEVELOPMENTS [chap. captured the insurgents' capital, Batoche, at the point of the bayonet : a young Canadian, Colonel Otter, dispersed the Indians who were attacking Battleford : the rebellion collapsed, and Riel was caught, tried for high treason, and hanged. For a short time his fate renewed the racial troubles in the east, but no longer with the old vehemence and the old accompaniment of demands for independence. Canada had greater matters to think about. Gordon was dead at Khartoum. That death, and the manner of it — so long delayed, so lonely, so Empire almost avcrtcd — in some mysterious way crystal- lized the Empire. Australia and India sent contingents to Suakin, where there was talk of a new advance to avenge Gordon's death : Canada, whose boat- men had done fine work in the expedition that was to have relieved him, from that time took the lead among our colonies in every enterprise that could knit the Empire together. All-British cables, Imperial penny postage, a Customs Union, colonial regiments for the Imperial army — all these have been suggested and advocated and pressed for by the statesmen at Ottawa : nor advocated only but where possible put into practice — for Canada was ready to lower her postage rates within the Empire before we were ready to reciprocate, and so designed a recent Customs tariff as to favour British imports, though we do not make her any return in kind. The Dominion's relations with the United States were from the first unsettled, at one time almost encouraging over-sanguine Americans to talk about annexation, at others verging on armed neutrality and prohibi- Disputes . Tr /-\r 1 with the tive tarms. Of late years the always remote possibility of annexation has vanished into thin air, for the eternal boundary dispute has sprung up again IX.] THE AMERICAN COLONIES 363 Ul HO 139 13S 137 13G 135 131 133 364 IMPERIAL DEVELOPMENTS [chap. in the far north-west, and more than once questions that involved serious loss to Canada have become mere tools of electioneering for Presidents going out of office. The The Beh- Canadian seal-fisheries in the Behring Sea were seaf-^^"" thus attacked in 1886 and for a time annihilated, fisheries, uudcr the pretext that the boundary of Alaska ran continuously from isle to isle of the Aleutian chain and made that sea a private possession of the States. Even when after much diplomacy and a long arbitration the American pretensions were utterly rejected and compensation decreed to the sealers who had been Klondike interfered with, Canada had to wait five years Aias'u before the compensation was grudgingly paid, boundary. Tlicn Came the discovery of rich gold-deposits on the Upper Yukon, close to the eastern edge of Alaska. For a time it seemed as if this boundary also would be challenged, in the hope of bringing Klondike under the jurisdiction of the States : then it became evident that the gold was indisputably Canadian, but all feasible roads to it must pass through United States territory, either up the Yukon River or across the northern Rockies by some port in the long Alaskan coast-strip. American officials made none too easy the transport of goods in bond across this strip : Canada appealed to the wording of the old boundary treaty * with Russia, drawn up at a time when no accurate information about the mainland was in existence. Americans had established the towns of Dyea and Skagway at the head of the Lynn Canal, which — said the Canadians — was crossed near its mouth by the correct boundary line. When the diplomats of the U.S.A., copying the usual practice of Continental Powers, refused to admit of argument about their right to land they were actually occupying, Canada offered to raise no question about Dyea if another branch of the * See Appendix. IX.] THE AMERICAN COLONIES 365 Lynn Canal was acknowledged indisputably Canadian : failing this arrangement, we offered to accept arbitration on the whole question. None of these solutions, how- ever, has yet proved acceptable to the other side, and the dispute still continues. The history of the British West Indies and British Guiana for the last fifty years bears little on the ^ The intra- achievements of Empire : partly because the tropical 11 r • 11 II colonies. problems 01 government m small and long- settled communities are mainly of local interest, partly also because the greatest problem in connection with them belongs to a stage of Imperialism we have not yet reached. Sugar is still their chief product, though Jamaica depends largely on its fruit, Trinidad on its asphalt, and Guiana on its gold : and to the prosperity of sugar plantations Britain's steady persistence in universal free-trade, despite the bounties of Continental States, is at the least inimical. A Royal Commission sat in 1896 to consider West Indian troubles, but devised no very definite remedies : palliatives must suffice, till the whole question of Imperial trade- mutuality becomes ripe for settlement. The neighbouring mainland, however, has twice been the occasion of difficulties between Britain and The the United States. It happened in 1823, when Monroe -r. • • 1 • A 1 1 1 doctrine. Russia was trying to colonize Alaska and Continental Europe seemed likely to interfere in the quarrel between Spain and her revolted American colonies, that James Monroe, President of the United States, made a bold declaration to Congress. The Americas, he said, were now so free that no European [)0wer need think of establishing fresh colonies there : any interference with, or control of, American countries would be " unfriendly " to the United States. He added (for Britain had instigated his declaration) that his 366 IMPERIAL DEVELOPMENTS [chap. words had no reference to the existing colonies of European nations — the West Indies, that is, and Canada and Guiana, for the Spanish colonies had claimed their independence already. When, therefore, Californian gold-discoveries made it probable that a ship-canal would be cut through some part of the Central American isthmus, the authorities at Washington watched jealously the supposed increase of British political activities in The that quarter. In the end an agreement was Buiwe" made between the two Governments establish- treaty. j^^^ ^ joint protectorate over any such canal : the British diplomat said, truly enough, that we had no wish to occupy, and would not occupy, any part of Central America beyond what we had, and to obtain a similar avowal from Washington, agreed to give up our rights on the Mosquito Coast. So we paid a price for that promise, which, nevertheless, in recent dis- cussions many American politicians have desired to break. A far more unexpected difficulty showed itself in 1895. Guiana was from the first an intrusion of the younger colonizing nations — Britain, Holland, and France — upon lands in dispute between the two older, Spain and Portugal. Hence, while Dutch Guiana, lying between the territories of France and England, enjoyed fixed treaty boundaries, France in 1895 had still Guiana hcr boundary-dispute with Brazil, and England hers with Venezuela. Suddenly President Cleve- land conceived the idea of interposing in our dispute, on the ground that we were attempting to take Venezuelan lands to add to our existing colony. Lord Salisbury tried to explain to him that we were simply trying to settle what lands had all along been ours, and what Venezuela's, and that the Monroe doctrine was in no danger. The President refused to listen, and proceeded IX.] AUSTRALASIA 367 to appoint a commission of his own to mark the boundary — hinting not obscurely that, if we then trans- gressed the limits so defined by him, he would treat it as an act of war. This rather wild challenge sobered his own countrymen, and matters went more equably there- after. Spanish misrule in Cuba was nearer and more important business for Washington politicians, and the coming Presidential election of 1896 would turn, it was found, rather on questions of currency than on foreign affairs. So a scheme of arbitration was arranged, the United States taking the legal part of Venezuela's " best friend " : the appointed tribunal was constituted in 1899, and after exhausting the evidence on both sides gave to Great Britain practically the whole of the territory she claimed, except a small district bordering on the mouth of the Orinoco. B. Australasia. Secure in their girdle of oceans from the turmoil of European or American wars, the colonies of Australia expanded steadily into the unoccupied continent ^u^t^^,;^ which Britain had handed over to them. Each fi"sout. had its own enthralling subject for discussion and legis- lation — New South Wales its land-system, Victoria its fiscal policy, South Australia its settlement at Port Darwin, with the consequent building of its great over- land telegraph line. Queensland, which had been encour- aged during the Civil War in America to begin cotton and sugar plantations, found the question of cheap labour insoluble except by importing Kanakas from the nearer South Sea Islands. In the two south-eastern colonies the ordinary pioneer work of squatters or selectors sufficed to 368 IMPERIAL DEVELOPMENTS [chap. fill in yet unexplored portions of the map. The three lars^e ones, where settlement was still a mere fring'e Explora- ^ ' ^ tion : on the enormous waste of Central Australia, were Eyre, for many a day full of opportunities for more daring adventurers. Eyre, the first of the Over- landers, after opening up the track from Albany to Perth, had journeyed painfully along the cliffs of the Great Bight from Spencer Gulf to Albany. Sturt had discovered the lower waters of Cooper's Creek, Mitchell and Kennedy traced its upper course. Leichhardt hardt, opened up the coast- line of Queensland from the Fitzroy northwards, and surveyed the Gulf country from the Mitchell to the Roper. Gregory crossed the unknown land from Cambridge Gulf to Moreton Bay. After 1858 there was an outburst of exploring energy. Stuart, M'Douall Stuart, a man of Sturt's training, after 1859-62. ^Q^j. attempts traversed the continent from south to north where the telegraph line now runs, and established South Australia's claim on the Northern Territory. The even better known expedition Wills, ' of Burke and Wills kept a more easterly line from Melbourne by the Darling, Cooper's Creek, and the Flinders to the Gulf of Carpentaria ; but the arrangements for relief had been badly made, and Burke and Wills themselves starved to death during their return in spite of the kindness of some native tribes. The four expeditions that went to their help worked across districts not already explored ; so that by the end of 1862 Eastern Australia was known in all its essential outlines, and only the more barren west re- mained for mapping — work well done in many adven- turous cross-country expeditions by the Gregorys, the Forrests, Warburton, and Giles, Until recent years Australian politics were matters of IX.] AUSTRALASIA 369 mainly local interest. Each colony began with schemes of assisted immigration, which gradually brought Local on an era of much borrowing, because money p°''""- was required to open up communications through the sparsely-peopled districts behind the main range. This culminated in the "boom" years from 1886 to 1891, and was quite naturally followed by a commercial crisis and very severe retrenchment in all public expenditure. For the rest, there were repeated quarrels between Council and Assembly in New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia, which opened up all manner of questions interesting to the student of British constitutions : there were fresh discoveries of gold, notably in Queensland and West Australia, and of less precious metals, as of silver at Broken Hill and copper in northern Queens- land. The most Imperial work, however, was done by South Australia, which took over the land teie- , - , . . , • 1 -n graph-line. control of the region to its north, revived on rort Darwin the long-abandoned settlement of Port Essington, and connected it — and through it Europe — with the populated south-eastern corner of Australia by nearly sixteen hundred miles of telegraph-line at a cost (borne solely by the one colony) of almost five hundred thousand pounds. New Zealand had less peaceful times in store for her when the British colonists first took over their New own administration. The native lands question, ^''^''"'''• which Grey had managed to keep in the background, soon asserted itself again. A large body of Taranaki Maoris were against any further cessions of land to white men, and the chief, Wiremu Kingi (William King), routed a survey party that had entered land within his jurisdiction by overwhelming them with all the ugliest and dirtiest old women of his tribe, who hugged the startled surveyors till they ran in dismay. But 2 A 370 IMPERIAL DEVELOPMENTS [chap. humorousness fares ill when matched against offended The dignity, and the Governor was already on move"-^ thorns about a movement in the Waikato district to establish a sort of Maori feudal monarchy: Imperial troops were sent to Taranaki, Second and a war broke out which lasted, off and on, wa"!-!" for nearly eleven years. At the first definite ^^^°'^" news of war Grey was hurried back from the Cape, but to a very different state of things from that which he had left. The Colonial Ministry advised one course, the Imperial commander-in-chief another: the Maoris had forgotten how to trust the white man, and were suspicious of all overtures. For a year or so Grey's imperious will seemed triumphant, and Maoris and settlers alike were regaining confidence : then Third another unfortunate outburst in Taranaki upset wa^°" all his plans, and the island was aflame again. 1863-5. Eight years followed of indecisive fighting. From Taranaki, from Auckland, from Tauranga, British troops endeavoured to penetrate to the enemy's country, storm- ing pas with much loss of life to find the same work must be done all over again a few months later : for in the west a new sect had developed, the Hauhau Hauhau fanatics, who added to the war a previously- 1864-70. unknown brutality, and carried massacre into the East coast districts long after the Waikato natives had withdrawn themselves in passive hostility within their own border. The three-cornered quarrel between Grey, his ministers, and the British general, ended in the withdrawal of Imperial troops and the recall of the Governor : and the colonists were left to themselves to finish the work of pacification, which they did in 1871. Four Maoris now sit in the New Zealand Parliament, which altered its constitution in 1876 by abolishing the provinces and making both islands a To face page 370. IX.] AUSTRALASIA 371 single colony with a large measure of local govern- ment. The islands to eastward, always watched with interest by Australian governors and statesmen, had no charm for Ministers in London. Only extreme Pacific pressure could induce the British Government to deal with them at all. Tahiti was offered to and refused by us in 1825, and within a few years snapped up by France, already considering the outcome of a Panama Canal. Grey, during his first period of rule in New Zealand, devised and half carried out a scheme of Customs Union with several of the neighbouring island groups, but Downing Street would have none of it. France in 1853 annexed New Caledonia, and protests from Australia were peremptorily vetoed at home. At last the scandals of the Kanaka-trade made Fiji a by-word in the South Pacific, and there was hint of interference by other nations : Britain, which had refused the group in 1859, was driven to break through its set policy of non-interference, and Fiji in 1875 became a Crown colony. Three years later there was another outburst of diplomatic activity in this direction. We secured from France the neutrality of the New Hebrides, and made commercial treaties with Samoa and Tonea. And now New Guinea became the centre of New attention. Gold discoveries in 1878 were not *^"'"^'''- permanent enough to force us into annexation : but early in the eighties alarming news reached Australia — Russia was being asked to annex, Italy had thoughts of a settle- ment, Germany was hot on the scent, and had already formed a colonizing company. Queensland in haste hoisted the British flag at Port Moresby, backed by the enthusiastic approval of her sister colonies. When Lord Derby, the Colonial Secretary, 372 IMPERIAL DEVELOPMENTS [chap. deliberately cancelled the annexation, Australia from end to end protested and petitioned. A Convention, at which every colony was represented (New Zealand and Fiji included), resolved that New Guinea must be British : that convict settlements in the Pacific (such as the French one in New Caledonia) must be abolished : that no power other than Britain should be allowed to acquire new territory in the South Seas : and that Australasia was ready to share the expense of carrying out this policy. Lord Derby, aghast at this unauthorized programme of reform, would do no Dec. I, more than annex the south-eastern part of New '^^■^" Guinea : and on the heels of this concession came the news that Germany had taken possession of all the rest that was not Dutch, and included it in a protectorate with New Britain and most of the Solomons. Further east, also, trouble was brewing ; for Samoa, offered to us in vain by its king Malietoa, was being annexed by the German consul, made into a protectorate by his colleague of the United States, and torn with civil war. There was much fighting and more diplomacy : there were projects of partition, and joint protectorates, and all sorts of devices for postponing a final decision : then there was more civil war. In the end, after a series of international agree- ments, completed in 1900, the Pacific has been The final , i i~ -i i settle- mapped out as definitely as any contment. France keeps its two groups, one spreading east of Tahiti, the other centring in New Caledonia. The United States hold Hawaii and the Philippines, Guam of the Ladrones and Tutuila by Samoa. Germany, besides the rest of the Samoa group, has a compact area north-east of New Guinea that includes the northern Solomons, the Marshalls, and the Carolines. The New Hebrides are still neutralized. The rest is o c S ^ o 1 1 1 . " I H CI ; ■ " I 1 rt — o-g 1 *'. ■ H < ^o o W 1 2 • < • . W . •' z^ i" -^fa .•' P. . ■. < § ^: g ^^ ' CO § - LLl "^ 1= « \ . H ^ I i ^ O '^ i- o o • z — < ^\ i \ '"l^ « i'= o Ct WJ "■ ^ z • .c - / 'T-' I ^^^"" .c -/ l--i z » » < • . y 1 i z o-i o • < -§■ •r z » .- - \ CO 5 g < z • ^ K o ° — . li o s; K 1 Q " < 2 -■ Q < CO < Ld * f i M i ■• •^1 .1* ' » - Q w si 5: o -UJ— 5 » "•- '- . 1^0- \ . 1 ' i^ p^ ^fYi UJ m ' f' J - • \ T MARSHA \ ^^'Kj^l'T^ ) \ %. 1 fI-^^^ ^ O ^ ° - 1 \= ^ " iil ki ••••* • ' -^.p5 oHi^'^^ ^ 1 z =m ft »'£ - o i 3 ? V -i *_ 36 . _ Plymouth of Virginia, 23-5, 30 Massachusetts, 13, 26 Hudson's Bay, 30, 1 36-9, 358 South Sea, 64-7, 272 Ohio, 78 North-West, 136-8 East India (see under separate heading) North Borneo, 388 Companies, Colonizing and Ex- ploring : in Africa, 275, 329-30 in New Zealand, 257, 259, 261-4, 268 in South Australia, 255-6 in West Australia, 254 Conferences and Conventions : at Albany (1754), 82 at Berlin (1884-5), 331-2 at Brussels (1876), 329 Federal, in Australia, 372, 374 Federal, in Canada, 357-8 at New York (1690), 59 at New York (1765), 103-4 Congo Free State, the, 330-1, 333, 345. 349 Congo, French, 11, 329, 333, 345 Congo River, the, 270, 276, 282, 330 Congress (U.S.A.), First Continen- tal, 108-9 Congress (U.S.A.), Second Conti- nental, 109-14, 118 Congress (U.S.A.), of 1811, 124 Constitutional changes in Austral- asia, 243-4, 251-3, 255, 257, 263- 8, 369-70, 374-5 Constitutional changes in British America, 120, 127, 129, 132-4, Constitutional changes in South Africa, 296, 298, 315-6 Conventions (see Conferences or Treaties) Convicts in America, 41-2, 228 Convicts in Australasia, 229-33, 238- 41, 244-5, 249-53, 255, 3I5> 372-3 Convicts ill South Africa, 51, 314-5 Cook, Captain James, 138, 226-7, 230 Coolie labour, 45, 377, 388 Coote, Sir Eyre, 1 48-9, 167, 169- 70 Cornwallis, Lord, 115-6, 176-81, 190, 198 Coromandel coast, the, 144-5, 168 Council of Plantations, the, 42 Craig, Sir J. H. 287, 289 Cromwell, OHver, 27, 38-9, 41-3, 228, 347 Crown Point, 56, 70, 81, 85-7, 91, no, 112 Cuba, 35, 39, 45, 95, 367, 403 Cunningham, Allan, 244-6, 253 Cyprus, 396, 408 Da Gama, Vasco, 48 Dalhousie, the Marquess of, 198, 200, 204-13, 377 Dampier, William, 225 Darien, 17. 35, 61 Darling, Sir R., 242 Darling River, the, 245-6 D'Urban, Sir B., 297-302 Deccan, the (see also Hyderabad), 53. 140-9. 151, 156, 159-60, 166, 180, 197, 217, 377 ' For foreign companies see under their respective nationalities. INDEX 415 Declaration of Independence, the, III Delagoa Bay, 279-81, 303, 323, 350 Delhi, 52, 150, 153, 155-6, 159-60, 181, 1S6-9, 198, 211, 213, 216-7 Detroit, 59, 62, 91, 97, 124, 126, 131 Dieskau, Baron L. , 85-6 Dingaan, 294-6, 3058 Dingaan's Day, 305, 309, 326 Dinwiddie, Robert, 78-9, 81 Disraeli, Benjamin, 320, 322, 326 Diwani, the, 157, 159, 161 Dost Mohammed, 201-2, 205, 220, 378, 380 Drake, Francis, 20-1, 35, 38, 49, 50 Dundas, Henry, 176, 182, 1S8 Dupleix, Joseph, 143-7, 166, 174 Duquesne, Fort, 79, 82-3, 89, 97 Durand, Sir M., 383 Durban, 294, 305, 307-9, 354 Durham, Lord, 12, 132-3 Dutch, the, as colonizers, 7, 10, 11, 46 Dutch, the, in America, 25-6, 32, 36, 38-40, 61, 366 Dutch, the, in Australasia, 224-5, 372 Dutch, the, in South Africa, 51, 279-80, 283-8, 308 Dutch, the, in the Indies, 49, 50, 143. 152-3. 168, 198, 385-7 Dutch, the, in the slave-trade, 34, 271-2 Dutch, the, in West Africa, 270, 273, 278 East India Company, the, 13, 14, 50-1, 75, 105, 143-7, 150-77, 182- 5, 188-91, 195-7, 199, 212-4, 220, 283, 298 East India Company, the, in China and Malaysia, 50, 191, 195, 199, 385-8 East India Company, Bengal Council of the, 152, 154-6, 159, 161, 163-7, 170-1 East India Company, Bombay Council of the, 147, 159, 166-8 East India Company, charters of the, 176, 191, 196, 199, i^-j East India Company, directors of the, 146, 155, 161, 166, 168, 172-3, 188-9, 196-7, 199 East India Company, Madras Council of the, 145, 151, 159-60, 168-70, 173 Edict of Nantes, the, 60, 284 Edward, Fort, 70, 87, 112 Edwardes, Sir Herbert, 205 i^gypt, 49, 52, 121, 331, 333, 341-5, 395 Elizabeth, Queen, 8, 16, 20, 23-4, 35, 39,. 46, 52 Emancipists, the, 241 -4 Empires, ancient and modern, 1-7 Eric, Lake, 59, 62, 70, 78, 125, 131 Eureka Stockade, the, 267 Explorations in Africa, 52, 275-6, 282 Explorations in America, 17-21, 26, 28-30, 32, 35-6, 71, 78 Explorations in Australasia, 222-7, 232-4, 239-40, 244-7, 368-9 Falkland Islands, the, 395-6, 408 "Family Compact," the Bourbon 67, 95 " Family Compact," the, in Canada, 129, 138 Federal Schemes, Imperial, 356 Federal Schemes in Australia, 373-5 Federal Schemes in Canada, 357-8 Federal Schemes in South Africa, 319-20, 322, 325, 349-51, 353-4 Fiji, 225, 371-2, 396, 408 Fingoes, the, 295, 301, 312, 316, .324 Firozshah, 203 Flinders, Matthew, 233-4 Florida, 17, 28, 95, I16-7, 403 Francis, Sir Philip, 164-6, 172-5, Franklin, Benjamin, 82, loi, 103, 105, 112, 117, 135 Franklin, Sir John, 251 Freetown, 275-6, 396 French, the, as colonizers, 7, 10-12, 46, 393 French, the, in Africa, 51, 273-5, 286, 331-3, 337-40, 342, 345 6 P"rench, the, in Australasia, 229, 253, 258-9, 371-3. 396 4i6 INDEX French, the, in the East Indies, 50, 72, 143-51, 168-70, 180-3, 188, 190-1, 198, 200-1, 384, 3S9-94 French, the, in North America, 18, I9> 27-9, 54-63, 69-96, 100, 135, French, the, in the West Indies, 36-40, 42, 60, 95, 114, 366 Frere, Sir Bartle, 322, 324-6, 330 Frobisher, Martin, 20 Frontenac, Comte de, 59, 60 Fulahs, the, 15, 271, 338, 340 Gaekwar, the {see Baroda) Gambia, the, 52, 275-7, 333, 339, 408 Ganges River and Valley, the, 140- I, 153. 155-6, 161-2, 198, 216, 219, 376 Gates, General H., 112-3, 115 Gawler, Colonel G., 256 George, Lake (U.S.A), 56, 85, 87, Georgia, 32, 58 German Empire, the, 3, 329 Germans, the, as colonizers, 8, 10, II Germans, the, in Africa, 329-37, 348, 351 Germans, the, in Australasia, 371-3, 396 Germans, the, in China, 391 Gibraltar, 63, 116-7, 394, 396, 402, 408 Gilbert, Sii Humphrey, 21-2, 30 Gilgit, 382 Gipps, Sir George, 261, 265 Gladstone Ministry, the (1880-5), 326-8, 330, 342 Goddard, Colonel T., 167-8 Gold Coast, the, 276-8, 339-40, 408 (}old as a colonizing impulse, 10, 17, 20, 22-3, 35-6 (Jold in Australia, 206-7, 369 Gold in South Africa, 323, 347-8, 350 Goldie, SirG. T., 337 Gordon, Charles, 34i-5> 3^2 Goree, 95, 274, 402-3 Goulburn (N.S.W.), 240, 242, 244- 5, 247 Gienville, George, 48, 102-4, 112 Grey, Earl, 265, 314-5 Grey, Sir George, in Australasia, 256-7, 262-3, 268, 369-71, 397 Grey, Sir George, in South Africa, 316-20 Griquas, the, 300, 311, 317, 321 Grose, Major F., 235-6 Guadeloupe, 38, 43, 402 Guiana (see also British Guiana), 35- 6, 39, 366 Gujrat, 206 Gurkhas, the, 193, 213, 219-20 Gwalior, 168, 202, 216 Haiti, 34, 43 Hakluyt, Richard, 21, 23 Halifax, 76-7, 80, 84, 87 Hardinge, Lord, 198, 203-4, 206 Hastings, Lord, 191-2, 386 Hastings, Warren, 161-76, 179-82, 200, 204, 386 Hatteras, Cape, 18 Havelock, Sir IL, 218-9 Hawke, Admiral E., 75, 86, 94 Hawkins, John, 20, 35, 52 Hentys, the, 247, 251 Hindus, the [see also India) 141, 156, 183, 214-5, 375 Hindus, the, as coolies, 13, 45, 377,388 Hindus, the, their characteristics and customs, 150, 177-8, 197-8, 208-9, 376 Hindus, the, their religious hatreds, 53> 153, 193 Hobart, 234, 248, 315 Hobson, Captain W. , 260- 1 Hofmeyr, Jan, 350- 1, 353-4 Holkar, 186-7, 189-90 Hongkong, 387, 389, 391, 396, 408 Hottentots, the, 51, 285, 291, 296-8 Howe, General W. , 112 Howe, Lord, 89, 90 Hudson's Bay, 18, 20, 30, 32, 60, 62, 71, 80, 137, 401 Hudson River, the, 23, 25, 32, 56, 58-9, 70, 85, no, 112, IJ4 Huguenots, the, 28, 32-4, 60 i, 284 Hume, Hamilton, 240, 246, 251 Hunter, John, 232-3, 235-7 Hunter River, the, 233, 244, 247 Hyder Ali, 159-60, 169-70, 183 INDEX 417 Hyderabad {see also Nizam, the), 141, 146-S, 159, 182-5, 187, 200, 208, 220, 377 India {see also tinder names of separate states and tribes), 5, 45, 140-221, 375-85 India, its physical features, 140- 1 India, history of, under native rulers, 52-3, 141-2, 145-7, 149-54, 208-9 India, history of, under the E.I.C., 13, 14, 49-52, 15462, 166-220 India, history of, under the Crown, 6, 12, 220-1, 375-85 India the goal of European expan- sion, 16-18, 48, 397 Indians, the Red, 11, 12, 15, 5760, 62, 71-4, 76-8, 83, 85, 87-8, 96-8, 100, III, 1X2, 124, 126, 360-2 Ireland, 8, 21-2, 38, 117 Italy, 332-3, 335, 345, 371, 391 Jamaica, 35, 38, 40-3, 45, 47, 272, 275. 365. 401, 408 James I, 23-6, 29, 34, 36, 46 Java, 50, 191, 222, 224, 385-6, 398 Johnson, Sir William, 77, 81, 85-6, 90, 97, 99, III Kabul, 202, 220, 379-82 Kaffirs, the, 285-8, 290-1, 293-5, 297-8, 310-1, 323-5 Kanakas, the, 229-30, 367, 371, 373 Kandahar, 53, 201-2, 379-80 Kashmir, 193, 203-4, 382 Keate Award, the, 321 Khartoum, 341, 343-6 Kimberley, 320, 347, 355 King, Philip Gidley, 234, 236-7 Kitchener, Lord, 334, 346, 355 Klondike, 364 Kosas, the, 285, 287, 291, 300-1, 316-7, 325 Kruger, Paul, 303, 324-5, 328, 348, 350-5 Labourdonnais, Mahe de, 144, 174 Labrador, 17, 20, 98, 407 Labuan, 3S7, 396, 408 Lagos, 277, 339-40, 408 Lahore, 153, 191, 203 Lally, Comte de, 148-9. Laswari, 187, 189 Lawrence, John (Lord Lawrence), 203, 206, 217, 219, 378 Le Loutre, 76-7, 84 Leopold, King of Belgium, 329, 331 Lexington, 108 Livingstone, David, 282, 329, 332 Lobengula, 323, 348-9 Loudoun, the Earl of, 86-7 Louis XIV, 29, 42, 60-3 Louisbourg, 72-7, 81-2, 84, 87-90, 144, 39S, 402 Louisiana, 29, 62, 70, 76, 78, 89, 100, 121, 123, 402-3 Loyalists, the, 109, 116, 1 19-20, 124, 126, 129, 228, 230 Lucknow, 216, 218 Lugard, Sir F., 336, 340 Macarthur, John, 236-8 Macaulay, Lord, 194, 200 Mackenzie, William Lyon, 129-31 Mackinnon, Sir W., 335 Maclean, Captain George, 277-8 Macquarie, Lachlan, 238-42, 244, 248, 258 Macquarie Harbour, 249 Macquarie River, the, 239-40, 245 Madras (city), 50, 75, 142, 144-8, 151, 159, 169, 181, 398, 402 Madras (presidency), 163, 167, 183- 5, 194, 198, 217, 287, 377 Mahdi, the, 343-5 Mahe, 168-9 Mahrattas, the, 53, 142, 145, 147, 153-4, 156, 159-62, 166-71, 175, 178-81,183-90, 192, 208-9, 214, 217-8, 376, 387 Maine, 26, 57, 73, 134-5, 404, 406 Malacca, 49, 386-7, 405 Malaysia, 5, 16, 49-50, 143, 224, 279, 1>^1, 392, 408 Malta, 396, 404, 408 Manitoba {see also Red River Settle- ment), 359, 361, 407 Maoris, the {and see New Zealand), 225, 257-64, 369-70 Marsden, Samuel, 241, 25S Mashonas, the, 348-9 Massachusetts, 13, 26-7, 58, 60-1, 73, 85, 100, 105, 107-10, 113, 135 Matabele, the, 294-6, 302-4, 34S-9 2 D 4i8 INDEX Mauritius, 51, 191, 286, 395-6, 404, 408 Melbourne, 245, 247, 252, 265-6, 31 5> 368 Metis, the, 138, 359, 361 Mexico, 17, 18, 35, 40, 66, 136-7 Milan Decree, the, 122-3 Minorca, 63, 86, 88, 95, 116-7, 402-3 Minto, Lord, 191, 386 Mir Jafar, 151 -2, 155-6 Missionary influence in New Zea- land, 258 Missionary influence in East Africa, 282, 332, 336 Missionary influence in South Africa, 288, 296-7, 301 Mississippi River, the, 17, 28, 55, 57, 71, 78, 80, 95-6, 100, 113, 117, 136, 402-3 Mitchell, Sir Thomas, 245-7, 251, 368 Moguls, the, 52-3, 141-3, 149, 153, 157, 160, 169, 178, 188, 213, 216-7 Mohawk River, the, 56, 77, 82, 89, 112, 119 Mombasa, 281, 335 Montcalm, the Marquis de, 86-8, 90-4, 103 Montreal, its founding, 19, 29 Montreal in French hands, 56, 59, 62, 70-1, 73-4, 78, 80, 85, 90, 94, 96, lOI Montreal in British hands, 107, no, 120, 126-7, i3o-i> 134) 360 Moreton Bay {see also Queensland), 245, 248, 252-3, 268, 368 Moselekatze, 294, 304, 348 Moshesh, 295, 31 1-2, 318 Mozambique, 16, 48-9, 279, 332 Murray, General, 94, 98 Murray, General James, 189 ^Murray River, the, 240, 245-6 255-6 Mudki, 203 Multan, 205 Murrumbidgee River, the, 240, 245-6 Mutiny, the Great, 12, 180, 200, 205, 212-21, 324, 375 Mysore, 142, 156, 159, 169-71, 175, 181-5, 189, 200, 209 Muscat, 279, 281, 396 Nagpur, 204, 209 Nana Sahib, 214-5, 217-8, 221 Napier, Sir George, 307-8, 311 Napoleon Bonaparte, 15, 52, 121 -5 181-2, 190-1, 234, 253, 289, 386, 395 Natal, 13, 293-5, 302, 304-ii> 316, 321, 324-5, 327, 349-50, 354-5, 377, 407 National Debt, the, 14, 15, 65 Navigation Acts, the {see Acts) Nelson, Lord, 122-3 Nepal, 193, 219-20 New Brunswick, 119-20, 134-5357- 8, 407 New Caledonia, 371-3 New England, 24-7, 32, 38, 47, 55-62, 69, 72-5, So-2, 84, 86-7, 97, 99->oi, 103, 1 1 1-3, 115, 124, 126 New Guinea, 222-7, 37i"3 New Hebrides, 223, 371-2 New Orleans, 60, 78, 80, 86, 125, 402-3 New South Wales, 90, 230-49, 253-4, 264-7, 367, 369, 374, 407 New York (city), 32, 39, 70, 105, 107, no, 1 12-5, 124, 134 New York (Colony and State), 32, 55-7, 59, 70, 73, 77, 81-2, 97, loo-i, 109-12, 116, 125, 130-1 New Zealand, 97, 224-6, 231, 257- 64, 268, 319-20, 369-72, 397, 407 Newfoundland, 17-9, 22, 26, 30, 60, 62-3, 98, 274, 358, 402-3, 407 Niagara, Fort, 58, 70, 82, 86, 90, 124-5, 127, 131 Niger River and Valley, the (and Nigeria), 13, 52, 269-70, 275-6, 282, 131, 333, 337-40, 408 Nile River and ^^alley, the, 270, 282, 341-6 Nipissing, Lake, 70, 137 Nizam, the {and see Hyderabad), 159, 169-70, 180-5, 187, 209-10 Nizam-ul-Mulk, 144, 146 Norfolk Island, 23 1 -2. 234 North, Lord, 162-3, 166, 172 Nova Scotia {see also Acadia), 14, 29, 57, 98, 119-20, 134-5, 275, 357-8, 407 INDEX 419 Nundkhomar, 162, 165, 172 Nyassaland, 13, 282, 332, 349 Ohio River and \'alley, the, 55, 59. 78-9, 82-3, 87, 91, 107 Oil Rivers, the, 270, 272 Ontario, Lake, 57, 70, 77, 82, 87, 89, 90, 94, 97. 1 13-5. "9, 127 Ontario, Province of, 120, 128-33, 243, 357-9, 361, 407 Orange River, the, 294-5, 3°°> 3°3, 311-2, 320 Orange River Colony, the (formerly OrangeFree State), 312-3, 317-23, 349-50, 354-5, 408 Oregon, 21, 135-8 Oswego, 70, 77, 86-7, 125 Otago, 264, 268 Ottawa, 134, 360, 362, 374 Ottawa River, the, 19, 28, 59, 70, 119-20, 127, 134 Oudh, 141, 152, 155-6, 159-61, 164, 171-2, 180, 184-5, 189, 197, 200, 204, 208-11, 214-8, 220 Owen, Captain W. F., 280-1 Oxley, John, 239, 244-6 Panama, 35, 40, 371 Panda, 306, 309, 325 Panipat, 1 53-4, 156 Papineau, Louis J., 129-30 Park, Mungo, 233, 275-6 Parkes, Sir Henry, 374 Pegu, 204, 208 Penang, 386-7 Pennsylvania, 32, 55, 79, 81-2, 84, 97, loo-l, 107, iio-i, 113-4 Perim, 396, 409 Persia, 190-1, 201, 215, 279, 379- 80, 395 Perth (W. A.), 254, 368 Peru, 17, 35, 61, 223 Peshawur, 193, 202, 204, 220, 379, 381-2 Philadelphia, 82, 108-9, 112, 114 "Philanthropists," the, 162, 178, 200, 288, 295-302, 307, 310 Philippine Islands, the, 95, 223, 372, 403 Phillip, Arthur, 229-32, 235 Pindaris, the, 190, 193, 387 Pitt, William (Lord Chatham), 62, 88-90, 94-5, 102, 104, loS, 1 14, 1 16 Pitt, William (the younger), 119-20 127, 173, 176 Plassey, 151-2, 214 Plattsburg, 56, 125 Plymouth (England), 23, 26, 261 Pondicherry, 143-4, 149, 168 Pondos, the, 293-4, 308, 310-1, 316-7 Pontiac, 96-7, 103 Poona, 142, 167, 186-7 "Pope's Line," the, 17-8, 222-3 Port Arthur, 249 Port Darwin, 13, 224, 367, 369 Port Jackson, 230 Port Macquarie, 240, 244 Port Phillip, 234, 245, 248, 251-3, 265 Port Royal, 28-9, 59, 62 Portland (\'ictoria), 247, 251 Portuguese, the, as colonizers, T, 8, 16-18, 46, 48, 227 Portuguese, the, in Africa, 16, 48 51, 269-73, 279-81, 330, 332-3, 348-50 Portuguese, the, in Asia, 10, 16, 18, 48-9, 52 Portuguese, the, in Australasia, 222-3 Pretoria, 323-4, 327-8, 351-2, 355 Pretorius, 305-6, 308-10, 312 Prince Edward Island, 120, 138, 358, 407 Punjab, the, 153, 190, 203-7, 211, 216, 377, 383 Puritans, the, 25-6, 34 Quebec (City), 28-30, 58-62, 74, So, 86, 90-4, 110, 115, 134 Quebec (Province of), 120- 1, 127- 30, 132-3, 357-9> 361, 407 Queensland {see also Moieton Bay), 227, 234, 245, 252, 268, 367-9, 371, 374, 407 Quetta, 379-80 Raffles, Sir Stamford, 386-7, 398 Rajputs, the, 142, 190, 193, 208, 216, 378 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 21-3, 35, 347 Ranjit Singh, 191, 193, 201-3 Red Indians, the [see Indians, Red) Red River Settlement, the, 138, 358-9 420 INDEX Relief, Piet, 303-7 Rhode Island, 26, 114 Rhodes, Cecil, 347-53 Rhodesia, 4, 349-51, 353-4, 408 Riel, Louis, 359, 361-2 Roberts, Lord, 355, 379 Rodney, Admiral G., 89, 117 Rogers, Robert, Sy, 96, 99 Rohillas, the, 160-1, 164, 168, 185 Russell, Lord John, 123, 253, 308 Russia, 3, 136, 191, 211, 346, 364-5, 371. 405 Russian advance in Asia, the, 12, 201, 376, 379-80, 382, 389-91 Ryots, the, 178-9, 198, 214 St Helena, 51, 394, 396, 408 St Kitts, 37, 401, 403 St Lawrence River and Valley, 19, 28-9, 55-8, 71-2, 80, 90-4, no, 125, 127, 130, 133, 135, 403, 406 St Lucia, 38, 42, 96, 402-4, 40S St Vincent, 38, 402-3, 408 Salabutjung, 146, 148, 159 Samoa, 371-3, 396, 398 Sandeman, Sir Robert, 380, 382 Saratoga, 74, 113 Sarawak, 3S7, 409 Scots, the, as colonizers, 8, 29, 38, 61, 264 Sekukuni, 323, 326 Senegambia and the Senegal River, 274-6, 332, 338, 345, 402-3 Sepoys, the, 148, 152, 157, 180, 197. 213-9 Shepstone, Sir T., 324, 326 Sher Ali, 378-80 Shirley, Williain, 73-4, 81, 84, 86-7 Shore, Sir John, 179, 181 Shuja-ud-daula, 155-6, 161, 164 Siam, 384, 393-4 Sierra Leone, 275-7, 33 1, 339, 4o8 Sikhs, the, 12, 13, 142, 154, 193, 202-6, 213. 216-7 Sinde, 191, 201-2 Sindhia, 186-7, 189-90, 202, 216, 218, 220 Singapore, 13, 387, 405 Siraj-ud-daula, 1501 Slavery and the slave trade, 34-5, 43-4, 49. 52, 270-5, 279-80, 298- 9, 307 Slavery and the slave trade, aboli- tion of, 44, 274-6, 282, 299, 340 Smith, Sir Harry, 300, 312, 315, 3.18 Smith, John, 23-4 Sobraon, 203 Socotra, 396, 409 Sokoto, 271, 276, 337 Solomon Islands, the, 223, 372 Somaliland, 333, 396, 409 Somerset, Lord Charles, 290-1, 296, 298, 300 Sorell, Colonel W., 249 South Africa {see Africa, South) South Australia, 230, 246, 255-7, 264-7, 367-9, 407 Spain, 3, 4, 61, 63-4, 67, 95, 1 16-7, 121, 139, 237 Spain, colonial policy of, 3, 4, 10, 45-6, 49,. 54, 68, 102 Spaniards in the East Indies, the, 10, 49, 223, 403 Spaniards in America, the, 4, 7, 8, 10, 12, 16-18, 20-2, 34-41, 61, 64, 66-9, 95, 100, 136, 272, 401-4 "Squatters," the, 247-8, 256, 264 Stanley, Henry, 329-30, 335 Stanley, Lord, 308-9 Straits Settlements, the, 387, 40S Slurt, Charles, 245-6, 255, 368 Suakin, 343-4, 362 Sudan, the, 48, 276, 337 Sudan, the Egyptian, 341-3, 345 Sumatra, 49, 50, 385, 387, 402, 405 Superior, Lake, 19, 28, 71, 79, 88, 124, 127, 137, 360 Swazis, the, 294-5, 306, 323 Swedes, the, as colonizers, 7, 32 Sydney (N.S.W.), 230-1, 233, 235, 246, 248, 252-3, 259, 265, 315 Tahiti, 226, 231, 371-2 Tanganyika, Lake, 282, 329, 335, 355 Tanjore, 142, 145-7, 168, 184 Taranaki, 259, 261, 268, 370 Tasman, Abel, 224-6 Tasmania, 224-7, 230-1, 233-4, 238, 248-52, 266-7, 374, 407 Tchad, Lake, 11, 269, 276, 339-40 Tchaka, 293-5, 302, 305 Ticonderoga, 56, 85, 87, 89-91, no INDEX 421 Timbuctoo, 52, 275-6, 338 Tipu, 170, 180-3 Tirah, 383 Tobago, 38-9, 42, 402-4, 408 Toronto, 130-1, 134 Torres, Luis Vaez de, 223-4 Torres Strait, 224-5, 227, 373 Townshend, Charles, 104, 108, 229 Trade, influence of, on colonization, 8-10, 13-4, 46, 66-8, 334 Trafalgar, 121 -3 Transportation system, the {see also Convicts), 41-2, 227-8, 251, 255 Transvaal, the, 281, 294, ^Pl, 312-3, 320-31, 347-55. 408 Treaties and Conventions : Aix-la-Chapelle, 75, 144, 273, 402 Alexandria, 121 Amiens, 121, 234, 288, 386, 404 " Ashburton," 135, 406 Bassein, 187 Berlin, 351 Breda, 401 " Bulvi^er-Clayton," 366, 406 Cairo, 121 " Durand," 383 Ghent, 125-6, 404 Gundamuk, 379-80 Hague, the, 61, 401 Klosterseven, 88 London (181 4), 290, 404 London (1818), 136, 404 London (1824), 387, 405 London (1876), 321 London (1884), 328, 352 Madrid (1670), 401 Madrid (1750), 402 Mangalore, 170 "Moffatt," 348 "Oregon," 137, 406 Paris (1763), 95, 149, 273, 402 Paris (1783), 117. 403 Paris (1784), 404 Paris (1814), 125, 404 Pretoria, 327 Ryswick, 60, 401 St Germain-en-Laye, 30 St Petersburg, 405 Salbai, 168 Sand River, 312-3 Saragossa, 223 Tordesillas, 17, 223 Treaties and Conventions — contd. Utrecht, 62-4, 71-2, 76, 80, 272, 274, 401-2 Versailles, 117, 170, 274,403-4 Waitangi, 260, 262-3 Washington (1842), see "Ash- burton " Washington (1846), see "Ore- gon" Washington (1850), see " Bul- wer-Clayton " Washington (1871), 406 Treaties of Partition (recent) : In Africa, 332, 335, 339, 349 In Oceania, 372 In Siam, 393-4 Trek, the Great Trinidad, 35, 45, 365, 404, 40S Tugela River, the, 295, 305-6, 309 Uganda, 332, 335-6, 345, 409 Ulundi, 306, 325 United Empire Loyalists, the {see Loyalists) United States, the, 11 1-9, 121, 123- 6, 134-7. 357, 362, 364-7, 372 Vancouver Island, 18, 137-9, 360, 396, 406 Vaudreuil, Marquis de, 85, 87, 90, 93-4, 96 Venezuela, 366-7 Vergor, 84, 92 Victoria, 245, 247, 251-3, 266-7, 367, 369, 374, 407 Victoria Nyanza, Lake, 282, 335 Virgin Islands, the, 35, 38-40 Virginia, 22-4, 33-4, 38, 57, 59, 78- 82, 84, loo-i, 103, 107-8, 1 1 1-3, 115, 119 Wairau River, the, 259, 261-2 Wakefield, Edward Gibbon, 132, 255, 259, 264 Walfisch Bay, 330 Walpole, Sir Robert, 14, 65-7, 69 Wand e wash, 149 Wars : Afghan, 201-2, 379-80 Ashanti, 277-8, 340 Basuto, 312 Boer, 312, 326-7, 354-6 Burmese, 194, 207-8, 384 422 INDEX Wars — continued. Chinese, 215, 389-91 Crimean, 215, 317 Egyptian, 342 Gurkha, 193 Kaffir, 285-7, 290-1, 300-1, 31 1-3, 325 Mahdiist, 343-5, 362 Mahratta, 160, 166-8, 187-90, 192-3 Maori, 262, 370 Mysore, 160, 169-70, 183, 2S7 Napoleonic (1793-1815), 15, 51, 121-4, 181-2, 187, 190-1, 231, 286-7, 289-90, 386, 395 of American Independence, 14, 108-119, 149, 168-70, 227-8, 386, 395 of Grand Alliance, 59, 60 of Jenkins' Ear, 14, 69, 73-5, 143-5, 273 of Spanish Succession, 61-2 Pontiac's, 97 Rohilla, 161 Seven Years', 86-95, 148-53, 395 Sikh, 12, 203-6 Sinde, 202 with France (1628), 30 with Spain (Elizabeth's), 20, 35, 49, 50 with Spain (Cromwell's), 38-9 with the U.S. (1812), 124-6 Zulu, 325 Washington, George, 58, 79, 81-3, 89, 99, 109-12, 1 14-5, 1 17-8, 123 Waterboer, 300, 311, 320 Weihaiwei, 391, 396, 409 Wellesley, the Marquess, 122, 181- 92, 194, 204, 208 Wellesley, Province, 386-7 Wellington, the Duke of, 122, 125, 181-3, 187, 189, 289 VVentworth, William Charles, 239, 244, 373 West Africa [see Africa, West) West Australia, 253-5, 264, 369, 374-5, 407 West Indies, the, 12, 34-45, 60, 95- 6, 114, 365-6 West Point, 56, 1 14 Whig colonial policy, the, loi, 129, 263 William III, 27, 61 William Henry, Fort, 56, 86-8 Winnipeg, 137-8, 359 Wolfe, General James, 89-93 Wolseley, Lord, 278, 326, 359 York, Cape, 223, 227, 230 York town, 115 Yukon River, the, 364, 406 Zambesi River, the, 13, 270, 282, 285, 293-4, 332, 348-9 Zamindars, 178-80, 198 Zanzibar, 281-2, 329, 331-2, 334-7, 409 Zulus, the, 15, 293-6, 302, 304-9, 324-8 PRINTED AT THE EDINBURGH PRESSj 9 AND II YOUNG STREET MR MURRAY'S TEXT-BOOKS OF SECONDARY EDUCATION Edited by LAURIE MAGNUS, M.A., Magdalen College, Oxford. Britain over the Sea, A READER FOR SCHOOLS. Compiled and Edited by ELIZABETH LEE, Author of "A School History of English Literature," etc. Editor of " Cowper's ' Task' and Minor Poems," etc. With four Maps of the British Empire at different periods. Price 2S. 6d. This School Reader is conceived on novel lines. The extracts are arranged in sections, comprising "The English Colonies up to 1900," "Australia," "India," "South Africa," etc.; and the story of these periods of British history is told by the actual explorers, navigators, colonists, and statesmen who were instrumental in the expansion of England at the time. The selections range from the works of Sir Walter Raleigh to the speeches of Lord Beaconsfield, and include yet more modern authorities. It contains a literary introduction, weaving the threads together, and the extracts are provided with biographical and historical notes. The name of the author, who is a contributor to the Dictionary of National BiograpJiy, carries assurance that the editorial work is well done. I\Ir P. A. Barnett (H. M. Inspector of Training Colleges). — " I congratulate you on the production of a very excellent piece of work. I hope the schools will use it ; but it is almost too good for them." Mr J. H. LoBBAN (formerly Examiner in English to the University of Aberdeen). — "I have read your Introduction and not a few of the extracts with very great interest, and I think you have achieved a really first-rate Imperial Reader. 1 admire verj- much the skill with which you have refrained from beating on the Jingo drum and yet have con- trived to satisfy fully the demands of all reasonable patriotism. I hope the book will ' take ' as it deserves. I shall be surprised if it does not appeal to an audience outside of educational institutions." ". . . . a very happy thought, very successfully carried out. . . . 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The author has been able to draw on his own experience of business, extending over more than twenty-five years, and he has been fortunate in the assistance of business friends and acquaintances, as well as in the courteous information put at his disposal by public officials. His volume includes chapters on Supply and Demand ; Free Trade and Protection ; Partnership ; Companies, Syndicates, and Trusts ; Principal and Agent ; Con- tracts ; Banking ; Transit ; Insurance ; Tariffs ; Employers' Liability ; Commercial Travellers ; Consols, etc. The Soil. By A. D. HALL, M.A. Principal of the Soutb-Eastern Agricultural College. This volume, by the Principal of the County Council College at Wye, is the first of a group of text-books intended for the use of students in Agriculture. Other volumes, which will be duly announced, will deal with " Plant Physiology," " Manures," etc. OTHER VOLUMES TO FOLLOW. LONDON : JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 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